Total hit by first quarter production slump

摘要

London—France’s Total, which as recently as February said it expected a return to production growth in 2013, revealed on April 26 that its output dipped by 2% to 2.323 million b/d of oil equivalent in the first quarter—despite a number of high-profile project start-ups. Total attributed the drop to the continued absence of output from the Elgin-Franklin field complex in the UK North Sea, which was shut in for the majority of 2012 and the first three months of this year, and the loss of production in Nigeria due to flooding and the incidence of crude theft from pipelines.