Upstream capex continued to rise as another quarter of stable oil prices boosted confidence amongst the IOC’s covered in this re-port. The barriers to affordable finance have also weakened since Q3 ’09 and led to the sub $10 billion dollar group in particular, to raise capex by 58% quarter-on-quarter.
Refining and marketing capex has continued to lag despite the upturn in margins, with a 6% decrease quarter-on-quarter. Normalised net income in Q3 ’10 for the Evaluate Energy Group of global oil and gas companies, remained virtually identical to results in Q2 ’10.

Upstream realisations and R&M margins, held the strength that was built up in the first half of 2010 and led to a quarter that will further boost the confidence of the oil and gas sector. On a reported basis net income for the group fared better, increasing by 46% in comparison to Q2 ’10, a quarter that was hampered by BP’s $32 billion worth of Gulf of Mexico oil spill provisions.

Debt levels for the group dropped since Q2 ’10 with much of the decrease resulting from Petrobras’ massive share issue which raised $27 billion of cash. Omitting Petrobras from the group would have led to debt levels sig-nificantly increasing as ENI, BP and Royal Dutch Shell alone raised their debt levels by a total of $15 billion.