The hydrocarbon production of Romania's top oil and gas
group, OMV Petrom, edged up0.6% on the year to182,000 barrels of oil
equivalent per day (boe/d) in the fourthquarter of 2014,its majority owner,
Austria’s OMV, said on Thursday.
On a quarterly basis, Petrom's output
rose 2.2% in the three months through December, OMV said in its quarterly
trading statement.
The OMV group's overall production increased by 2.3%
on the quarter to 318,000 boe/d.
OMV Petrom's fourth-quarter gas sales
and trading volume rose by 65% on the quarter and by 5.5% on the year, to 14.31
terawatt-hours (TWh).The performance of the OMV group'spower business was
burdened by adverse market conditionsin Romania.
Net specialchargesof
approximately700 million eurowere recorded in the operational result of the
OMV groupforthe quarter, mainly due to impairments atits Turkish retail arm
Petrol Ofisiand in thepowerbusiness ofOMVPetrom, the group
added.
Out of the total, impairment for the Brazi power plant in Romania
stood at about 140 million euro and was due toadverse short-term market
conditions and revised future long-termperspective, OMV group said in a
presentation posted on its website.
Raiffeisen Bank Romania said in a
note to investors the news came asno surprise as Petrom had said a decision
would be taken at the conclusion of the full-year financial statements regarding
the impairment of itsloss-making power plant, an investment worth 500 million
euro.
"We expect a negative market reaction following the announcement of
the impairment," Raiffeisen Bank added.
The OMV group also said ithas
scaled down its investment programme for the period 2015-2017 to 2.5 - 3 billion
euro from 3.9 billion.
Raiffeisen Bank said that even though it cutits
investmentestimates for OMV Petrom to around 1 billion europer year from some
1.2 billion, itconsiders the adjustment might be higher, which couldhave a
stronger impact on production going forward.
Bluechip OMV Petrom was
trading down0.08% at 0.3634lei ($0.09/0.08euro) by 1128CET on the Bucharest
bourse.