Page 10 - EurOil Week 17 2021

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OMV Petrom uses retained earnings

to pay 7% dividend yield

ROMANIA THE shareholders of OMV Petrom (SNP), the Petrom CEO.
biggest energy company in Romania, approved Approximately RON360mn will go to the
OMV Petrom’s the distribution of dividends representing 136% Romanian state, which holds 20.6% of OMV
shareholders also of last year’s net profit, resulting in a dividend Petrom’s shares, via the Ministry of Energy.
apporved a RON3.3bn yield of nearly 7%. The Austrian group OMV, which holds
investment budget for The company will use part of the retained 51% of the Romanian group, will get close to
2021. earnings from previous years to pay dividends RON900mn of dividends.
totalling RON1.76bn (€360mn) — or RON0.031 Between 2005 and 2020, OMV Petrom has
per share — the same level as last year. paid dividends worth approximately RON3.5bn
“OMV Petrom honours its commitments to the Romanian state, including amounts to be
to its shareholders, including the Romanian paid in 2021 for the fiscal year 2020.
state, and distributes dividends similar to OMV Petrom’s shareholders also approved
2019, despite the volatile and challenging the investment budget for 2021 of RON3.3bn.
environment generated by the pandemic. The general shareholders meeting approved
The dividend yield is competitive compared the appointment of four new members to the
to that of our regional peers. This reflects supervisory board of OMV Petrom, namely
the good financial and operational perfor- Elena Skvortsova, Wolfram Krenn, Razvan
mance of OMV Petrom at a time when the Nicolescu and Marius Stefan, who join the exist-
resilience of our industry has been heavily ing members Rainer Seele, Johann Pleininger,
challenged by the pandemic, along the entire Daniel Turnheim, Jochen Weise and Niculae
value chain,” said Christina Verchere, OMV Havrilet. ™

Eni may sell some African assets to

fund shift to renewable energy

AFRICA ITALY’S Eni is reportedly looking into the pos- focus from oil and gas to renewable energy.
sibility of selling off some of its assets in Africa, Eni has not commented on reports that it
Eni is currently carrying the Middle East and East Asia in order to free up might trim its African portfolio, and Reuters’
€26.7bn ($32.23bn) resources for renewable energy projects. sources did not say whether the company had
worth of debt. Industry sources told Reuters last week that slated any of its assets in Egypt, Libya, Nigeria,
the Italian major was interested in following the Republic of Congo or Angola for sale. They did
model it had used to hive off its Norwegian assets report, though, that the Italian firm had been in
in 2019. “The company is working on doing talks with several large international oil com-
more of the same [as it did with Vår Energi] with panies (IOCs), including Total (France) and
chosen partners in West Africa and the Near-Far BP (UK), on the possibility of merging assets in
East and Far East,” one source explained. the Middle East and West Africa. It is not clear
The source was referring to Eni’s creation yet whether these talks will bear any fruit, they
of Vår Energi through a tie-up between its added.
Norwegian subsidiary Eni Norge and a private The sources also pointed out that the com-
equity firm known as HitecVision. Eni still has pany had a financial incentive to unload at least
a 69.4% stake in Vår Energi, which is now the some of its projects, since divestment would
second-largest oil producer in Norway, turning allow it to remove some of its debt load from its
out around 150,000 barrels per day (bpd). The balance sheet. Eni is currently carrying €26.7bn
Italian company has profited from the deal, as ($32.23bn) worth of debt, and it will have an eas-
it has collected nearly $1.3bn in dividends from ier time raising funds for renewable energy pro-
Vår Energi over the last two years. These funds jects if it no longer has to consolidate this sum at
have helped it the cover the cost of switching its group level, they explained. ™

P10 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 17 29•April•2021