French and Italian oil majors, Total SA and Eni SpA reported lower second-quarter profits on Friday, reflecting dollar weakness and production outages partly due to fighting in Libya which shut some fields.

Total said second-quarter net income, excluding one-offs and non-cash gains due to changes in the value of fuel inventories, fell 6 per cent from the same period last year to 2.79 billion euros ($4 billion), just below the 2.85 billion average forecast in a Reuters analysts poll.

Eni’s underlying net profit fell 14 per cent to 1.44 billion euros compared with an average forecast of 1.65 billion, as Libyan outages pushes its production down 12 per cent to 1.49 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd).

A 13 per cent dip in the dollar hit both companies as the price of the crude they produce is denominated in the United States’ currency.

In dollar terms, Eni’s net income fell only 2 per cent and Total’s underlying result was up 7 per cent, performances that still paled in comparison to those of bigger rivals Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) and Exxon Mobil , which posted profit rises of 56 per cent and 41 per cent, respectively.

Even at Norway’s Statoil, the rise was 39 per cent.

Total shares traded down 1.8 per cent at 37.65 euros by 1100 GMT in Paris, wiping more than 1.5 billion euros of its market value, while Eni shed 1.1 per cent to 15.21 euros in Milan.

The European oil and gas sector fell 1.1 per cent.

“The earnings miss against the consensus … was notable because it is so rare at Total, which is so consistent,” UBS analyst Jon Rigby said in a note, while CA Cheuvreux analyst Jean-Charles Lacoste called Eni’s update disappointing.

Total lost around 2 per cent of oil and gas output, despite the acquisition of a 12 per cent stake in Russian gas company Novatek , as the Libyan conflict and maintenance downtime in North Sea fields pushed overall production to 2.31 million barrels of oil equivalent per day.

This highlighted the difficulty for Western oil companies to match natural field decline with new finds.

Total has spent billions of euros in recent months to build up its presence in energy-rich countries such as Russia, Canada, Brazil or Australia, but it has yet to fully benefit from this investment.

The start-up of the 220,000 barrel per day Pazflor field offshore Angola should contribute “substantially” to near-term output growth, while major gas projects in Australia and Russia will bolster production at a later stage, the French group said.

It targets 2 per cent average annual output rise in 2010/15.

Meanwhile Eni predicted a 10 percent drop in hydrocarbon production from 1.82 million boepd in 2010, a fall stemming from the near complete shutdown of operations in Libya, where Eni is the biggest foreign operator.

Eni said it could quickly restart output at its Libyan fields when the fighting there ended, as no damage had been reported to its facilities — echoing comments on Thursday from Spanish rival Repsol , which also has large operations in the North African country.

Total, Europe’s largest refiner by capacity, also reported lower profits from its refining division due to weak crude processing margins. The so-called downstream business saw adjusted net operating income fall 59 per  cent year on year.