Lukoil, the Russian company, nearly doubled its net profit, year on year to $1.4Billion in 2012, compared with 2011.
But Africa is absent from the company’s profit centres. There have been exploration successes in Egypt and Cote d’Ivoire in the past two years. The Egyptian discovery is likely to come on stream earlier, but the company is not telling.
“Production of marketable hydrocarbons (from all international upstream projects of LUKOIL except for the Tengiz) totaled 68.4 million BOE (13% increase compared to 2011, which was mainly reached due to the progress of gas production in Uzbekistan)”, the company said in a release.
“Revenues were $3.2 billion (9% increase), EBITDA amounted to $2.3 billion (45% increase), net profit was $1.4 billion (almost twofold increase)”, Lukoil said in a widely circulated statement.
The company’s cash cows are mainly in Uzbekistan and Venezuela. Lukoil is looking to profitability in Iraq in the short term. There’s considerable pay from Kazakhstan, but Lukoil did not factor this into the report it released about its international operations.
“Within the development project for the giant West Qurna-2 field in Iraq, the first phase of field infrastructure development was started in April 2012 (Mishrif Early Oil Phase): development drilling and construction of the key production facilities including the central processing facility, the gas turbine power plant, the export pipeline and the Tuba tank farm. This phase covers achieving the production rate of 400 Kbbl of oil per day by the end of 2014, with a full pay-off period of 2-3 years. Production of the first oil from the project is expected in late 2013 – early 2014.
“In Uzbekistan, the largest field of the Southwest Gissar Project, Dzharkuduk-Yangi Kyzylcha reached its target production rate (1 bcm of natural gas per year). The gas production target at the Khauzak-Shady field was substantially exceeded due to application of production stimulation techniques. Drilling operations and facility construction in the Kandym block of fields are in progress.
“In the Junin-6 project in Venezuela (LUKOIL takes part in the project as a member of the Russian National Petroleum Consortium), production of early oil in the volume of 50 Kboe per day started in September 2012.
Exploration success was mainly achieved through follow-up exploration of the production acreages. Particularly the Company discovered two fields: Emry Deep in the Meleiha block (Egypt) and Shurdarye in the Southwest Gissar block (Uzbekistan)”.
