Oriental Petroleum eyes power projects
ORIENTAL Petroleum and Minerals Corp. (OPMC) has unveiled plans to venture into power plant projects as the listed firm celebrated its golden anniversary.
“As the company starts a new chapter following its golden anniversary milestone, OPMC bared plans to participate in upstream and downstream natural gas projects, as well as venn ture into all kinds of renewable energy sources
like biomass, solar, wind, hydropower, geothermal and ocean energy,” Oriental Petroleum said in a statement.
Oriental Petroleum President and Chief Operating Officer Robert Coyiuto Jr. said this was a “fitting way” to bolster the company’s status as a pioneer in oil and gas exploration in the Philippines.
The company earlier declared a cash dividend of P0.0005 per common share, to be paid to stockholders on August 18, on the back of the improved bottomline in the previous year.
In 2019, Oriental Petroleum saw its consolidated net income surge by 172.6 percent to $2.33 million from a year ago.
Revenue from petroleum operations declined by 44.8 percent to $4.25 million from $7.69 million, which it blamed on the drop in crude oil production volume and average crude oil prices.
Total crude oil production volume decreased by 35 percent to 0.76 million barrels from 1.16 million barrels, because of lower production from the Galoc oil field.
A lower profit was also attributed to the termination of Nido and Matinloc fields in March last year. Seven production wells in Nido, Matinloc and North Matinloc fields were plugged and abandoned in May last year.
But petroleum production costs were reduced by 39 percent to $4.60 million from $2.91 million. These costs mainly include floating, production, storage and offloading charges, field/platform operation costs, management and technical fees, helicopter services, insurance expenses, marketing fees, repairs and maintenance and other general and administrative expenses of the consortia.
“Significantly, OPMC is practically debtfree,” it added.
Incorporated in 1969, OPMC has offshore locations northwest of Palawan where petroleum in commercial quantities are present.
Oriental Petroleum shares rose by 1.18 percent on Thursday.