Austrian oil group OMV said on July 31 that its second-quarter net profit rose 139 percent to 658 million Euros, higher than analysts' expectations, thanks to increased production.

This leap was mainly due to a 12% increase in daily output to 490,000 barrels of oil equivalent, thanks to investments in Abu Dhabi, New Zealand and Malaysia.

OMV, whose activities range from production to distribution of fuel products, employing 20,000 people worldwide, also pointed out that they have a plan to streamline their costs and portfolios, with production costs reduced by 9% in the last quarter.

Operating income in the second quarter increased by 80% to 1.09 billion Euros, while revenue increased by 6% to € 6.03 billion.

"This is a very good result for us, because the global oil and gas context has been completely unfavorable for the past 3 months," said the CEO of OMV Group, Rainer Seele, and noted that gas prices have fallen 27% in the last 3 months.

Immediately after announcing the above results, OMV shares on the Vienna Stock Exchange reached the highest growth rate (3.76%) on the morning of July 31 to Euros 45.03.

In the first quarter of 2019, OMV's net profit was reduced by 7% to € 496 million, mainly due to the Libyan war affecting the group's production in the country.

Although the situation has returned to normal, OMV had to slightly reduce the forecast of average production in the whole year, "slightly lower" than the 500,000 barrels of oil equivalent mentioned earlier.

After suffering a loss of 1.3 billion Euros in 2015 due to the collapse of oil prices, OMV has initiated a restructuring plan to help this group start to make profit in 2017 and achieve net profit of nearly 2 billion Euros a year. 2018.

In early 2018, the group made a strategic plan to increase production to 600,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day by 2025 to increase 70% of operating income minus inventories and abnormal arising, to 5 billion Euro.

To achieve this, OMV has replicated its partnership with Abu Dhabi Oil Company (Adnoc), Malaysia's Sapura Energy and Russia's Gazprom.

Source: PetroTimes