Malaysia's state-owned Petronas reported higher gas production in this year's first quarter but slightly lower crude output. The firm also posted marginally higher revenue for the period but weaker profit.
Petronas' gas production during January-March rose by 6.5pc to 1.74mn b/d of oil equivalent (boe/d). But oil production fell marginally by 2pc from the same period last year to 840,000 boe/d. The firm's output during the quarter was attributed to "stellar performances from Peninsular Malaysia, Sarawak and Sabah assets", it said.
It also produced 2.68mn t of petrochemicals during the quarter, largely stable from a year earlier.
The firm has been pressing ahead with its exploration efforts, offering five exploration blocks and five discovered resource opportunity clusters under the Malaysia Bid Round 2024. It was also awarded the Bobara working area last month under Indonesia's third petroleum bid round.
Its gross LNG sales and crude sales both rose by 11pc from a year earlier to 9.9mn t and 29.1mn bl respectively. But its oil product sales and petrochemical products sales dropped by 8pc and 4pc to 71mn bl and 2.3mn t respectively.
Petronas recorded revenue of 89.7bn ringgit ($19bn) for January-March, largely stable from the same period a year earlier despite prolonged price volatility, it said. But profit fell by 11pc to 21.3bn ringgit. Profitability was affected by lower realised gas prices, in line with market volatility, said the firm. It also attributed the lower profit to a rise in upstream operating expenditures and higher cash payments. The firm paid a 3bn ringgit dividend to the government for the quarter.
The firm's capital expenditure (capex) during January-March rose by 2pc to 10.7bn ringgit. Out of this, the biggest share, or 64pc, went towards upstream investments, especially in Argentina, Brazil and Iraq, while 17pc went to gas investments. Petronas also spent 10pc of its capex on cleaner energy solutions and decarbonisation projects. It reported a 2.6pc drop in scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions to 11.3mn t of carbon dioxide equivalent during the quarter.
The firm in February signed a storage site agreement for the M3 depleted field offshore Sarawak, with Japanese firms Japex, JGC and KLine. It also signed a joint study agreement in March with Japan's Jera to evaluate the feasibility of developing a carbon capture and storage value chain.
