UPDATE: Occidental Petroleum Posts Higher Q1 Earnings

Occidental Petroleum (NYSE: OXY) reported a 2.6% gain in its first-quarter earnings. Occidental Petroleum's quarterly earnings rose to $1.39 billion, or $1.75 per share, versus $1.36 billion, or $1.68 per share, in the year-ago period. However, analysts were expecting earnings of $1.75 per share. Its sales climbed 3.7% to $6.09 billion, versus estimates of $6.21 billion. Occidental Petroleum's total oil and gas production jumped to 745,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day versus 763,000 BOE. In the quarter, oil and gas segment's sales climbed 5.3% to $4.68 billion. Stephen I. Chazen, President and Chief Executive Officer, said, "We continued to focus on our domestic production growth strategy, growing our oil production to 274,000 barrels per day. This was an increase of 10,000 barrels per day on a year-over-year basis and 4,000 barrels per day on a quarter-over-quarter basis. Our cash flow from operations was approximately $2.7 billion. Net of contributions from partners, we spent about $2.2 billion on capital expenditures and purchased approximately 10.5 million shares of our stock during the quarter. We are on track with our key long-term projects. The New Johnsonville chlor-alkali plant started production in March, the BridgeTex Pipeline is expected to start operations in the third quarter and the Al Hosn Gas Project is expected to start-up by the end of the year."Occidental Petroleum shares fell 0.58% to close at $94.44 on Friday.