BackONGC Videsh profit falls 57% at Rs1,904 crore
The fall in profit was mainly due to a near 50% drop in crude prices in the last fiscal as compared with the year-ago period
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Mumbai: ONGC Videsh Ltd (OVL), the overseas oil and gas exploration and production subsidiary of state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp. Ltd (ONGC), posted a 57% drop in net profit for the fiscal year 2014-15.
This was mainly due to a near 50% drop in crude prices in the last fiscal as compared with the year-ago period.
The net profit of the unlisted company came in at ₹ 1,904 crore for the year-ended March 2015, as against ₹ 4,445 crore posted the year before. Its net sales for the financial year stood at ₹ 18,491 crore, down 14.63% from ₹ 21,659 crore posted in 2013-14, said a note issued by the company on Monday.
This was despite an overall increase in OVL’s crude oil and gas production in the last financial year.
In 2014-15, benchmark Brent crude fell 48.86% from $107.76 per barrel at the beginning of April 2014 to $55.11 per barrel at the end of March 2015. In the year to date, Brent crude has risen by 18.8% to $65.47 per barrel.
During 2014-15, there was an increase in oil and gas production by 6.19%—crude oil by 0.86% and natural gas by 16.37% as compared with the previous fiscal year. The incremental production was primarily due to better management and additions to its portfolio, the company said.
“Despite higher production during FY 2015, the decrease in profit is mainly due to lower oil prices, higher financing cost including exchange loss, higher depletion charge and impairment provision in one of the assets," said OVL.
OVL has a presence in 36 projects across 17 countries, out of which 13 are producing, four have been either discovered or are under development, 17 are exploratory and the remaining are in the pipeline. OVL currently produces about 167,000 barrels of oil and oil equivalent gas (volume of gas converted into units of crude oil) per day and had oil and gas reserves of about 612 million tonnes of oil equivalent as on 31 March 2015.
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