OMV Petrom, the leading Romanian oil company, ended the first half of 2014 with a net profit of RON 1.38 billion (some EUR 310 million), down 42 percent year-on-year, according to the company’s report sent to the Bucharest Stock Exchange. In the first half of 2013, the company recorded a net profit of RON 2.39 billion.

Its sales also dropped by 7 percent year-on-year, to RON 10.7 billion (around EUR 2.4 billion).

The group’s EBIT amounted to RON 2.09 billion (EUR 468 million), 29 percent lower than the result recorded in the same period the previous year.

“In the first half of 2014, we continued to implement our CAPEX projects required to achieve our strategy. As such, we successfully finalized the EUR 600 million refinery modernization initiated in 2010, in time and on budget, which allows us to improve refining margins and better address market demand,” said Mariana Gheorghe, CEO of OMV Petrom.

“In the shallow offshore, the Marina-1 exploration well made the largest oil discovery in the Black Sea since privatization. In the deep offshore, we finalized the mobilization of the Ocean Endeavor rig, which enabled us to resume drilling in Neptun Deep, aiming for the Domino-2 well to confirm the initial gas discovery and allow identification of further exploration prospects,” she added.

In the second quarter of 2014, the oil company registered a profit of RON 312 million (over EUR 70 million), compared to over RON 1 billion registered in the same period the previous year, while its sales decreased by 6 percent to RON 5.4 billion (EUR 1.2 billion).

OMV Petrom is part of Austrian group OMV, which owns a 51 percent majority stake in the company, while the Romanian state has a 20.6 percent stake.

Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com