MOSCOW (MRC) -- OMV Petrom SA, Romania’s largest oil company, said its net income declined 20% from a year earlier because of lower oil prices and output, said Businessweek.
Profit dropped to 1.02 billion lei ($288 million) from 1.27 billion lei in the same period last year as both the gas and power business had a negative contribution "triggered by adverse market conditions," the company said in a statement to the Bucharest bourse today. Gas sales fell 23 percent to 798 million lei.
Petrom, together with Exxon Mobil Corp. are searching for oil and gas off Romania’s Black Sea coast after starting drilling operations in the Neptun block in 2011. OMV AG (OMV), Petrom’s majority owner, made a preliminary estimate for the Domino-1 well in 2012 of gas accumulation ranging from 1.5 trillion to 3 trillion cubic feet (42 billion cubic meters to 84 billion cubic meters).
Results from the drilling of Domino 2 well will be announced at the beginning of next year, the company said.
Discoveries in the Black Sea may help Romania, which imports less than 20 percent of its natural gas from Russia, become energy independent by 2020, according to Energy Minister Razvan Nicolescu.
Petrom plans to boost efforts to stabilize Romanian production by performing more than 1,400 workovers, delivering about 140 new wells, with half of them being part of "complex field redevelopment projects and exploration wells," according to the statement.
As MRC informed earlier, Clariant, a world leader in specialty chemicals, has announced that it has signed a long-term supply contract with OMV. From 2015, the Austrian oil and gas company will supply Clariant’s site in Gendorf (Germany) with ethylene. This agreement will enable Clariant to source most of its requirements for this important basic chemical in southern Bavaria.
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