OSLO: Norway’s Statoil will raise its dividend, investments and exploration spending in 2018, it said on Wednesday, after beating fourth-quarter earnings forecasts helped by higher oil prices.

Like other oil companies, Statoil is also benefiting from efficiencies it pushed through during the sector’s downturn, when firms were forced to slash jobs, projects and investment.

“We expect long-term underlying earnings growth, and in line with our dividend policy the board proposes to increase the dividend by 4.5 per cent to $0.23 per share,” Chief Executive Eldar Saetre said in a statement.

On Tuesday BP chose to resume share buybacks on the back of rising profits.

Statoil said it would increase its capital expenditure this year to $11 billion from $9.4 billion last year and lift exploration spending to $1.5 billion from the $1.3 billion it had planned to spend in 2017.

“The initial dividend increase is likely to be followed up by either another bump or share buybacks in 2019-2020, in our view,” RBC Capital Markets analyst Biraj Borkhataria wrote in a note to clients.

Statoil’s adjusted operating profit for the October-December quarter more than doubled to $3.96 billion and beat the $3.81 billion expected by analysts in a Reuters poll.

Its flagship project, the development of the Johan Sverdrup field in the North Sea with up to 3.1 billion barrels of recoverable oil, has a break-even price below $15 per barrel for the first phase, and $20 for the whole project, it said.

Reuters