From Rueters – PETRONAS says to maintain govt payouts


Taken from Rueters, dateline 2009-12-16:

Malaysia’s state oil company PETRONAS [PETR.UL] will maintain its annual 30 billion ringgit ($8.79 billion) dividends to the government despite prospects of weaker profits and significant investment outlays in Iraq.

Malaysia is facing its largest budget deficit in more than 20 years. It currently depends on Petronas for nearly half of government revenue.

The Edge Financial daily quoted Petronas President and Chairman Hassan Marican as saying the company’s profits for financial year ending in March 2010 will not be as good as last year because prices and sales volumes were down.

This probably came about from the (wishy-washy) government’s fear of upsetting the people, as an article from The Star, dateline 2009-12-10 said:

Lower oil prices will limit royalty to Government

PETALING JAYA: Lower crude oil prices that hit Petroliam Nasional Bhd’s (PETRONAS) bottomline hard this year are likely to limit the national oil firm’s ability to repeat the huge payout to the Government last year.

Recent official statements indicated that Petronas’ petroleum payments to the Government are expected to fall between 14% and 19% in the financial year ending March 31, 2010 (FY10) to between RM60bil and RM64bil.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 19th, 2009 at 7:37 am and is filed under Malaysia, oil and gas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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