KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia’s Petronas said Monday that “volatile oil prices” were partially to blame for a 21 percent revenue decline for the second quarter.
The company reported $12.02 billion in second quarter revenues, down 21 percent year-over-year. Before tax profit declined to $810 million in the second quarter compared to $3.63 billion in profit in the prior year quarter. The company’s after-tax profit fell to $400 million in the second quarter, down from $2.75 billion in the year-ago quarter.
Petronas reported $2.32 billion in after-tax profit excluding identified items and about $4.4 billion in EBITDA, a slight decline from an EBITDA of $4.91 billion a year ago. Cash flows from operating activities fell to $3.94 billion in the second quarter, down from $4.27 billion in the second quarter of 2015. Petronas’ operating profit slid down to $970 million in the second quarter compared to $3.74 billion in the prior year quarter.
The state-owned company booked $1.78 billion in net impairment losses for the quarter compared to $123 million in the second quarter of 2015. Petronas’ upstream segment booked $5.44 billion in revenues, down from $6.91 billion in the same quarter of last year. The company’s downstream segment revenue declined to $5.64 billion in the second quarter compared to $7.4 billion in revenues a year ago.
The company said on Monday that “volatile oil prices coupled by oversupply and lagging growth demand continued to impact the Group’s half year performance as compared to the same period last year.” Total production volume for Malaysia and international for the first half of 2016 was 2.39 million barrels of oil equivalent per day, up slightly from 2.33 million BOE per day in the first half of 2015.
Petronas said the production boost was mainly due to higher gas production from fields in Peninsular Malaysia to support the shortfall in imported gas, additional production streams from Indonesia and Algeria and improved facilities uptime and efficiency in Malaysia and Canada.
