By Andy Sambridge
Abu Dhabi National Energy Co (TAQA) posted a second-quarter net profit of US$37million, down 71.2% from the year-earlier period.
The company made a net profit of $122.55 million in the first half of the year, compared with $272 million a year earlier, the firm said in a statement on Thursday.
TAQA reported net profit attributable to shareholders of $128.45 million in the second quarter of 2008 and $10.9 million in the first quarter of this year.
Peter Barker-Homek, CEO of TAQA, said: “As the oil price has improved from its lowest point, our second quarter performance has shown an improvement in comparison to the first three months of the year.
“With the oil price trending up to over $70 per barrel post-quarter, we are now a long way from the lows we saw earlier in the year.
“While performance of our upstream business is still lower than the same period in 2008, when oil prices were very strong, we have seen a welcome strengthening in business performance.”
The Abu Dhabi-based company plans to spend as much as $4 billion on power-plant projects and oil and natural-gas assets this year.
Taqa’s assets were valued at $24.5 billion at the end of June, and company seeks to boost that to $60 billion by 2016.
Taqa earlier this month took over as operator of the North Sea Brent oil system, responsible for about 8 percent of U.K. offshore crude production, from Royal Dutch Shell Plc.
It also bought a stake in North Sea natural-gas assets from the L11b Group and is the operator of a production platform that will start output before the end of the year.
The CEO added: “We continue to drive operational excellence and this is reflected both in the confidence placed in us by our partners in the North Sea who have entrusted the operatorship of the Brent system to us, as well as the over AED30 million of synergy savings we have achieved at TAQA North during the last six months alone.”
Source:Â Arabianbusiness.com
