Business | Oil & Gas
Petrobras profit up 29%
Brazilian state oil company Petrobras said on Friday its third-quarter profit rose nearly 29 per cent, below market expectations, help-ed by strong oil prices and slightly higher oil output.
- Reuters
- Published: 00:00 November 12, 2006
Rio De Janeiro, Brazil: Brazilian state oil company Petrobras said on Friday its third-quarter profit rose nearly 29 per cent, below market expectations, help-ed by strong oil prices and slightly higher oil output.
Petroleo Brasileiro SA's investor relations manager, Raul Campos, said net consolidated profit totalled around 7.2 billion reais ($3.3 billion), up from 5.6 billion reais a year earlier.
Petrobras Financial Director Almir Barbassa told reporters later the profit was reduced by the unexpected additional costs of natural gas reinjection and project finance payments from the Marlim field to the government's National Petroleum Agency, which together totalled 828 million reais.
Oil production in Brazil, where Petrobras accounts for practically all output and refining, rose 3 per cent in the quarter from a year earlier to 1.78 million barrels per day.
Barbassa also said Petrobras would not reach its 2006 domestic oil production target of 1.88 million bpd and should hit levels around 1.8 million bpd instead after delays with some rigs and equipment problems. Average output last year soared nearly 13 per cent to 1.68 million bpd.
Next year's target of 1.97 million bpd remained unchanged. "There were minor problems, but we will recover (output growth rates)," Barbassa said.
Two new rigs should go on stream before the end of the year. He said that, due to delays with putting some rigs online, Petrobras, which met Brazil's oil needs this year, would have a trade surplus of between $500 million and $1 billion in 2006 and not $3 billion as it expected earlier.
On the financial side, earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) rose to 12.9 billion reais from 12.4 billion reais in the same period a year earlier, Petrobras said. Analysts, on average, had expected Brazil's top industrial company to post net consolidated profit of about 7.8 billion reais and EBITDA a key measure of cash flow of 13.9 billion reais for the July-September period of this year.
Net revenues in the third quarter reached 43.4 billion reais, up from 35.7 billion reais in the same period a year earlier.
"Revenues grew a lot, but there was a loss in gross margin. I don't see any impact on stocks from this result," said Jose Francisco Cataldo of ABN Amro brokerage in Sao Paulo.
The company's refining levels fell 3 per cent to 1.75 million bpd in the quarter.
More from Oil & Gas
More from Business
Business Editor's choice
-
DFSA chief to step down in September
Executive has been at post since 2008
-
Geepas idea blossomed in Dubai
The journey led from a small shop in Bahrain to a $1.27b company in the UAE
