Abu Dhabi National Energy Company (Taqa), a state-owned energy giant, said its net profit for the first half increased 67.1 per cent year-on-year (YoY) to hit Dh981 million ($267 million) compared to Dh587 million in 2011.
However, the company saw its total revenues drop 6.3 per cent YoY to Dh11.8 billion from last year’s revenue of Dh12.6 billion mainly due to lower supplemental fuel usage during the period. Taqa said its total oil and gas revenues (including gas storage and other income) decreased from Dh6 billion to Dh5.9 billion for the first half. This was primarily due to the significant fall in natural gas prices in North America and lower production in North America following non-core asset disposals, offset by higher production and realised prices in the UK North Sea, said the company in a statement.
Total power and water revenues, excluding supplemental fuel income, increased from Dh3.5 billion last year to hit Dh4 billion in the first half of 2012. This 14.1 per cent YoY increase was primarily due to the contribution from Shuweihat 2 Independent Water and Power Project (IWPP) in Abu Dhabi which became fully operational in the third quarter of 2011, it stated. Operations in the UK North Sea also performed strongly, both operationally and financially, benefitting from higher production and oil prices, the company stated. However, the continued weakness of North American gas prices have impacted the overall performance of the oil and gas business, it added. The Abu Dhabi energy giant said it had benefitted from its disposal of non-core assets, such as its holding in Tesla Motors and non-core acreage in North America, which has boosted profitability.
Commenting on the results, Taqa CEO Carl Sheldon said: “We have seen a strong performance by our power and water business with new capacity at Shuweihat 2 coming online and high availability across our portfolio supporting this. We have also seen our UK energy operations boost production and continue to benefit from higher pricing.” On the investment plans, Sheldon said that it was on track to make capital expenditures of $2.2 billion this year. “We spent $949 million in the first half, we look to spend $2 to $2.2 billion this year,” he said.
