Petronas to hike govt payout as Q3 profit jumps 43%

KUALA LUMPUR: Petroliam Nasional Berhad, or Petronas, today said it will increase its dividend payout to the government after its third-quarter net profit jumped on higher revenue and oil prices.

The new administration led by Dr Mahathir Mohamad is relying more on Petronas — a significant contributor to government revenue — to offset a revenue shortfall from the government’s plan to scrap a consumption tax.

Higher and more stable oil prices have helped boost profit and dividends from Petronas even as its sales of liquefied natural gas had been recently hit by a supply disruption.

Profit for the July-September quarter rose to RM14.3 billion, up from RM10 billion in the year-ago quarter. Revenue rose 19% to RM63.9 billion in the quarter.

“The board expects the group’s performance to show an improvement compared to the previous financial year,” the company said in a statement.

The company said its board last month approved an additional special RM2 billion dividend to the Malaysian government — its sole shareholder — on top of the RM24 billion it has already committed for the year.

In the Budget 2019 tabled earlier this month, the government said it will get a one-off dividend of RM30 billion from Petronas next year, on top of the regular dividend of RM24 billion.

Petronas is the only manager of Malaysia’s oil and gas reserves, and is the world’s third-biggest LNG exporter after Qatar and Australia.

The company said production volume totalled 2.313 million barrels of oil equivalent (mmboe) per day for the first nine months of the year, up from 2.296 mmboe per day in the same period in 2017.

However, LNG sales volume dropped by 1.12 million tonnes from a year earlier to 20.79 million tonnes.

Petronas told Reuters last week that a leak from the Sabah Sarawak Gas Pipeline in January had impacted production at the Kebabangan gas field in the eastern state of Sabah.

The gas field is expected to return to full capacity by August 2019.

Source: FMT