Updates shares and adds details from conference call in paragraph 6

By Pranav Mathur

May 1 (Reuters) - Canadian oil producer Imperial Oil IMO.TO missed analysts' estimates for first-quarter profit on Friday, as weaker crude realizations and unplanned outages at its facilities reduced refinery throughput.

Shares of the Calgary, Alberta-based company, which is majority owned by U.S. oil and gas major Exxon Mobil XOM.N, were down 4%.

Geopolitical tensions in the Middle East tightened global oil supply, which boosted fuel prices, but the gains were not enough to offset weaker realizations and lower downstream volumes.

Imperial Oil's refinery quarterly throughput fell to 384,000 barrels per day (bpd) in the first quarter from 397,000 bpd a year earlier, while capacity utilization declined to 88% from 91%, primarily due to unplanned downtime and disruptions in synthetic crude feedstock.

At its Syncrude oil sands project, Imperial faced operational setbacks due to an unplanned coker outage.

The company said on its earnings call that additional maintenance requirements at Syncrude this quarter have led it to defer a planned coker turnaround to late summer.

Imperial Oil's synthetic crude oil average realization fell to C$96.13 per barrel in the reported quarter from C$98.79 per barrel a year earlier, while Western Canada Select was largely flat at $58.33 a barrel.

Quarterly upstream production, however, marginally rose to 419,000 gross barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd), compared with 418,000 gross boepd a year earlier.

The company also said U.S. trade measures introduced in 2025 and Canada's retaliatory tariffs were not expected to materially impact its financial position or operations.

Its net income fell to C$940 million ($692.96 million), or C$1.94 per share, in the quarter ended March 31, from C$1.29 billion, or C$2.52 per share, a year earlier.

Analysts had expected C$995 million, or C$2.47 per share, according to data compiled by LSEG.

($1 = 1.3565 Canadian dollars)