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OMV Petrom: In the absence of a buyer for Arpechim, the refinery may be closed down
The OMV Petrom group will keep the Arpechim refinery closed down, but it will use the reservoirs for oil storage and as there is no buyer, the unit will be probably closed down, stated in a press conference the general manager of the company Mariana Gheorghe.
Mariana Gheorghe said that if they wanted to reopen Arpechim OMV Petrom should invest several hundreds of million euro. She said that at present no buyer showed any interest for the refinery.
‘As there is no buyer for Arpechim, after the solution of the problems with the storage houses, probably we will disband the unit, if we no other solution’ said Mariana Gheorghe.
OMV Petrom recorded last year the first negative result from the privatisation of 2004, a loss of 690 million lei (155 million euro) as compared to the profit of 2.1 billion lei in 2014, and the leadership of the company of oil and gas, controlled by the Austrian group OMV announced their intention not to propose the distribution of dividends to shareholders among whom there is the Romanian state with a share of over 20%.
The result of last year was strongly influenced by a significant loss recorded in Q4 when the company recorded a cost of 1.9 billion lei from adjustments of depreciation of the assets in production, determined by the decrease of the price of oil, shows a report sent by OMV Petrom to the BVB.
OMV Petrom oil giant would have recorded a net profit of 1.8 billion lei in 2015
OMV Petrom oil giant would have recorded a net profit of 1.8 billion lei and positive earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) of 2.5 billion lei in 2015, had it not been for a depreciation of its upstream assets as a result of falling oil quotes, OMV Petrom officials told a news conference on Thursday.
"The operational result before interest and taxes was negative for the first time (- 530 million lei) because of small crude prices and depreciations on the upstream segment. In their absence, the results would have been positive," said OMV Petrom CEO Mariana Gheorghe.
OMV Petrom CFO Andreas Marje said that but for the depreciations, the company would have had an EBIT of 2.5 billion lei and a net profit of 1.8 billion lei.
He explained that in 2015, OMV Petrom twice downwardly adjusted its estimates of crude prices, which led to a downward revision of the cash flow as well. In turn, the book value of OMV Petrom's exploration and production assets in Romania and Kazakhstan dropped.
"Thus, OMV Petrom paid 519 million lei in taxes on its 1.8 billion lei profit because the taxes were not affected by the depreciation adjustments. At the same time we paid royalties of 656 million lei and 1.17 billion lei in excise duties and Value-Added Tax (VAT)," Marje added.
The OMV Petrom group ended 2015 in red, with a negative result of 690 million lei, down from a net profit of 2.1 billion lei in the year before, according to consolidated data released by the company on Thursday.
The net result attributable to the OMV Petrom stockholders was a loss of 676 million lei, against a profit of 2.103 billion lei in 2014. In 2015, there was a drop by 0.0119 lei apiece in the OMV Petrol shares, versus a gain of 0.0371 lei per share in 2014.