Equinor (NYSE: EQNR) slashed the amount of share repurchases for 2026 to $1.5 billion from $5 billion last year while it narrowly missed earnings estimates for the fourth quarter of 2025, as higher upstream production couldn’t offset the lower oil and gas prices.
The Norwegian major on Wednesday reported adjusted operating income of $6.2 billion for the fourth quarter, with results affected by lower liquids prices, partially offset by higher production and stronger gas prices in the U.S.
The earnings fell slightly short of the Equinor-provided consensus estimate of $1.562 billion and a $1.59 billion average analyst estimate.
The realized liquids price dropped to $58.6 per barrel in Q4 2025 from $68.5 for the same period of 2024, while the realized European gas price averaged $10.6 per million British thermal units (MMBtu), down from $13.5.
These lower prices more than offset a rise in realized North American gas prices and 6% production growth in the quarter.
Equinor’s full-year production grew by 3.4% to a record high of 2.137 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd), helped by the newly started-up fields Johan Castberg and Halten East offshore Norway.
Still, the $10 per barrel decline in oil prices and the lower European gas prices prompted recalibration of Equinor’s pace of buybacks for 2026, as widely expected.
Ahead of the earnings release, HSBC expected Equinor to slash annual share repurchases to $2 billion for this year.
To be sure, Equinor said it would continue to use share buybacks for competitive capital distribution, but noted that this year’s repurchases will be “subject to market conditions and balance sheet strength.”
“We are coming out of a supercycle in natural gas,” Equinor’s chief financial officer Torgrim Reitan told Bloomberg Television in an interview on Wednesday.
“This is the first year where we are normalized, where we have to manage within our means and this is a normal level.”
The other European majors could also tweak share buyback programs to the downside as oil prices have dropped significantly from the levels when these repurchases were first announced, analysts say.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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