Mesa Earnings Up More Than 600%

At Mesa Petroleum’s annual shareholders meeting in Amarillo, Texas, the company reported that its first-quarter profits increased more than 600% to $49.7 million from $6.9 million in the year-ago quarter.

Revenues, however, increased less than 2%, to $106.3 million from $104.6 million in the 1984 first quarter. The company said the sale of marketable securities was primarily responsible for the profit increase, adding $27.3 million.

During the quarter, Mesa’s average daily production of oil dropped 21% from the year-ago period, but gas production was up 19% and production of liquid natural gas rose 33%.

“During the first quarter, Mesa achieved the highest domestic production, on a gas-equivalent basis, of any quarter in its 21-year history,” Chairman T. Boone Pickens Jr. told the meeting.