- Sales volume of 327,145 barrels of oil equivalent per day, an increase of 9.5% from the same period of last year
- Continue “SAVE…to be SAFE” program to tackle with unpredictable global oil prices
Tevin Vongvanich, President and Chief Executive Officer, PTT Exploration and Production Public Company Limited (PTTEP), said that the upstream business in the first quarter of this year remained tough for E&P companies mainly due to low crude price environment. PTTEP has run the business cautiously in that quarter with aims to minimize impact from plunging oil prices and, at the same time, maintain the company’s long-term growth and petroleum production volume to serve the domestic consumption. The careful business plan has resulted in positive bottom line and strong financial structure with enough liquidity to cope with volatile global crude prices. The first quarter’s performance is as detail below.
PTTEP and subsidiaries in the first quarter of 2015 booked unreviewed consolidated net profit of USD 264 million (equivalent to THB 8,616 million), a decrement of 31% from USD 380 million (equivalent to THB 12,435 million) posted a year ago. The major factors were attributed to a drop in petroleum sales revenue due to plunging average selling price from USD 64.92 per barrel of oil equivalent (BOE) to USD 48.74 per BOE albeit the increment of average sales volume which rose to 327,145 barrels of oil equivalent per day (BOED) from 298,621 BOED recorded in the same quarter of last year. The increased sales volume was contributed from Zawtika project which commenced the production in 2014, as well as higher sales volume recognition from Contract 4 project and Sinphuhorm project after the acquisition of Hess Thailand last year.
In comparison with the fourth quarter of 2014, PTTEP’s unreviewed consolidated net profit of USD 264 million in this year’s first quarter was more than 100% increased from net loss of USD 739 million in the fourth quarter which recognized impairment loss of assets in PTTEP Australasia project and Mariana Oil Sands project amounting to USD 997 million.
“Our operating results in the first quarter of this year were better than our expectation. The good bottom line was partly due to the result of our initiative “SAVE…to be SAFE” program. This can prove that we can cut unnecessary expense, reschedule some activities until the appropriate time for investment and streamline our business. As a consequence, our company is more flexible and able to adjust itself to suit with the global oil price situation. Now, we can maintain our strong financial status proven by approximately USD 4 billion of cash on hand prepared for future investment opportunity,” said Mr. Tevin.
However, the global oil price situation in the remaining quarters is quite uncertain and unpredictable. So, PTTEP will continue its cost optimization program and closely monitor the risk management implemented with both operational and financial sides.