OMV Petrom’s new report released last week led some analysts to interpret that the company would have taken a new decision to postpone investment in the Black Sea, a fact firmly denied by a company official for energynomics.ro.
“Nothing has changed, we have not announced anything new to what we have previously announced. It’s a misinterpretation,” said the official, who declined to reveal the identity.
The company’s report stressed exactly the same thing as announced at the beginning of the year, namely that “a stable, predictable and investment-friendly fiscal and regulatory framework is a key requirement for developing our future investments, both onshore and offshore”
As far as the Black Sea investment is concerned, the report echoes the previous idea.
“Neptune Deep: The current legislative environment does not provide the necessary premises for an investment decision worth several billion. We remain keen to see the developed Black Sea deposits and continue our dialogue with the authorities to understand the way forward.”
The company also maintains that the cost of OUG 114/2018 and OUG 19/2019 reaches to almost 40 million euros – but given an annual profit of about 857 million euros (reported in 2018) this tax would translate by only 4.7% of the profit – that would not significantly affect the company’s investment capacity. The shareholders of OMV Petrom have planned investments of 4.17 billion lei for the year 2019, or about 876 million euro, of which 82% are dedicated to the upstream segment. Last year the investments amounted to about 4.3 billion lei.
