LONDON (Alliance News) - Dragon Oil PLC Tuesday said its pretax profit fell significantly during 2013 on lower realised sales volumes and prices of crude.
The oil and gas exploration and development company which operates in Turkmenistan, said its pretax profit fell 14% to USD698.6 million for the calendar year 2013 from USD809.2 million the previous year.
The company said its revenues fell 9% during the period to USD1.05 billion from USD1.16 billion in 2012 due mainly to lower realised oil prices during the period and a marginal decrease in volumes of crude oil sales.
It said that the average realised crude price fell 9% to USD91 per barrel from USD100 per barrel, and its sales volumes fell 1% during the period.
Dragon Oil added that it has increased its final dividend by 20% to 18 cents compared from 15 cents in 2012 bringing its full-year dividend up 10% to 33.0 cents from 30.0 cents.
The company announced in January that it had completed fewer wells than planned during 2013 due to delays in new rigs operations and maintenance of existing rigs, but still reported a strong increase in the average daily production rate of oil for the year.
At the time, the company said that average gross production grew by 9.1% to 73,750 barrels of oil per day in 2013, compared with 67,600 during 2012.
Dragon Oil said that it sold 11.5 million barrels of crude oil in 2013, marginally lower than the 11.6 million barrels sold in 2012. It said that the slightly lower volume sold over the previous year was mainly due to lower entitlement, offset by higher production.
The company said it is targeting annual production growth for 2014 at the lower end of its 10% to 15% growth expectations and expects to achieve its 100,000 barrels of oil per day production target in 2015, maintained from 2016 for at least five years.
Dragon Oil shares were up 0.2% to 605.00 pence in early trading Tuesday.
By Tom McIvor; tommcivor@alliancenews.com; @TomMcIvor1
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