Barnwell records
profit turnaround

Star-Bulletin staff

Barnwell Industries Inc., a Honolulu-based oil exploration company whose main business is drilling for oil and gas in Canada, today reported a fiscal fourth-quarter profit of $340,000, or 26 cents a share. In the year-earlier quarter, the company had a loss of $160,000, or 12 cents a share.

Revenues in the latest quarter, which ended Sept. 30, were $5.28 million, up 87.9 percent from $2.81 million in the 1998 quarter.

For the fiscal year, Barnwell had a profit of $520,000, or 39 cents a share, on revenues of $15.16 million, compared with a loss of $3.89 million, or $2.95 a share, on revenues of $11.92 million in 1998.

In fiscal 1999 the company had significant revenue gains in its oil and natural gas contract drilling operations, said Morton H. Kinzler, chairman and CEO. It also had no write-downs in 1999 while it took $3 million in noncash write-downs the previous year from its U.S. oil and gas business.

Kaupulehu Developments, a partnership 50.1 percent owned by Barnwell, is heading toward zoning approvals for a major Big Island resort development, the company said.