April 9 (Bloomberg) -- Chevron Corp., the second-largest U.S. oil company, said production headed for a quarterly gain for the first time since 2006 as new platforms in the Gulf of Mexico and offshore Africa began operation.

Chevron pumped the equivalent of 2.645 million barrels of crude a day during January and February, 1.8 percent more than the first-quarter 2008 average of 2.599 million a day, the San Ramon, California-based company said today in an interim report on its Web site.

Chief Executive Officer David O’Reilly in February said he planned to increase output by 4 percent this year to the equivalent of 2.63 million barrels a day. The company plans to spend more than $62 million a day in 2009 to search for untapped reserves, expand refineries and construct gas-processing plants in Africa and Australia.

Last year, Chevron’s output fell 3.4 percent, the biggest decline in half a decade, as higher energy prices reduced the company’s share of crude under production-sharing agreements with oil-rich nations.

Profit for the first quarter was “sharply lower” than the fourth quarter of 2008, when Chevron had net income of $4.9 billion, the company said in the statement. Chevron is scheduled to release complete first-quarter results on May 1.

The price Chevron received for U.S. crude slumped 63 percent during the quarter to $33.37 a barrel, the statement said. The company’s U.S. natural gas traded for $4.45 per thousand cubic feet, down 41 percent from a year earlier.

Chevron probably earned $2.02 billion during the first three months of the year, based on the average estimate of six analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. That would represent a 61 percent drop in net income, the company’s biggest profit decline since the third-quarter of 2002.

Exxon Mobil Corp. of Irving, Texas, is the world’s largest oil company by market value.

To contact the reporter on this story: Joe Carroll in Chicago at jcarroll8@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: April 9, 2009 17:36 EDT