Kearl starts to pay off for Imperial

Article Excerpt

Imperial Oil aims to double its production, to 600,000 barrels of oil a day, by the end of this decade. A big part of that gain will come from its Kearl oil sands project in Alberta. Kearl, which just started up, adds 78,100 barrels to the company’s daily output. Phase 2 will add another 78,100 barrels in 2015. Oil sands projects are expensive to develop, but their reserves last for decades, and their operating costs tend to fall after they start up. IMPERIAL OIL $39.57 (Toronto symbol IMO; Shares outstanding: 847.6 million; Market cap: $34.2 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Average; Dividend yield: 1.2%; www.imperialoil.ca) is a major integrated oil company with oil sands projects in Alberta and conventional oil and gas operations across Western Canada. Imperial also owns four refineries and operates 1,850 Esso gas stations. Imperial produced 284,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day in the latest quarter, down 1.7% from 289,000 barrels a year earlier. The decline was mainly…