KUALA LUMPUR |
Dec 1 (Reuters) - Malaysia's state oil firm Petronas posted a 54 percent increase in second-quarter profit on Thursday, helped by better crude oil prices and a stronger dollar.
The company warned however, the trend would not continue into next year. Petronas' president and CEO, Shamsul Azhar Abbas, told reporters that higher market volatility stemming from the price of oil, the eurozone crisis and an uncertain American recovery would impact its bottomline.
"I will not be surprised if the second recession were to come next year," he said.
Petronas was on track to meet its full-year pretax profit forecast of 70 billion ringgit ($22.02 billion) to 75 billion ringgit ($23.60 billion) for its nine-month fiscal year ending Dec. 31, Shamsul added.
Petronas reported a second-quarter net profit of 18.3 billion ringgit, which was 53 percent higher than the 11.9 billion ringgit from a year ago.
At the same time, Petronas said it was looking to cast a wider net around oil and gas assets in the region and has put in a bid for exploratory rights in Myanmar's on-shore blocks.
"At the moment in Myanmar we are only offshore and the business has been quite good," executive vice president of exploration and production, Wee Yiaw Hin said. "There has been recently a bid on the onshore block and we are looking at opportunities to go onshore in Myanmar."
Wee said the bidding process will end some time next year. He added that he was not aware of any other Malaysian companies bidding for the same blocks.
Petronas is facing depleting oil and gas reserves in Malaysia and has stepped up its deep-water exploratory activities as well as re-exploring marginal fields.
Meanwhile, Shamsul said Petronas was contemplating entering Japan's power industry because of the island nation's commitment to reduce its dependency on nuclear power.
Petronas bought a 30 percent stake in Singapore power concern GMR Energy (Singapore) Pte Ltd, which was its first foray into the international power business.
NORMALISATION OF GAS SUPPLY
Shamsul said Petronas has taken a number of steps to normalise the supply of natural gas in Malaysia, which has crippled the power production sector in the country.
A disruption in the supply of gas since the second quarter of this year has forced national power producer Tenaga Nasional to switch to more expensive alternative fuels.
Shamsul said Petronas would help pay for a third of the additional fuel cost incurred from the gas shortage but "would not fund inefficiencies."
"We need to ascertain from Tenaga whether (the additional fuel cost is) 3 billion ringgit...and not due to their own inefficiencies. We are not prepared to fund inefficiencies," Shamsul said.
He said the company was in the planning stages of building another regassification plant in Lumut, Perak, in addition to two plants already under construction.
The regassification plant in Melaka is expected to come online in the second half of 2012.
Shamsul said the gas supply disruption in Malaysia was expected to continue until the Melaka plant was in operation. Malaysia's energy minister had earlier said that the disruption would last "two to three months."
Petronas was also fast-tracking the construction of two floating natural gas production plants in East Malaysia, which will come online by 2016.
($1 = 3.1785 Malaysian ringgit) (Reporting by Min Hun Fong)
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