Eni’s gamble set to pay off, results positive
Eni’s offshore exploration “gamble” looks “set to pay off,” Andrew Ward writes in the Financial Times. Ward covered Eni CEO Claudio Descalzi’s trip to Port Said to oversee the development of a gas processing plant to serve Zohr, which he says “would be the fastest a project of its size has started production in industry history.” Descalzi says his company took a different direction: “the industry has forgotten how to do exploration … Everybody else went looking for tar sands or tight oil or acquisitions. We thought there was still potential in conventional exploration.” An analyst at Goldman Sachs says “among the European majors, only Eni has been able to successfully translate exploration activities into valuable giant oil and gas discoveries.” Next up for Eni is seeing whether Descalzi would be staying at the company’s helm or not as his mandate is up for renewal. Ward’s piece also includes a video report, in which he says, “Egypt remains one of the brightest spots on the horizon for oil and gas companies looking to breathe new life into their traditional fossil fuel businesses” (runtime 04:21).
…The piece came in time for Eni’s announcement of expectations-beating 4Q2016 results as the company recorded its first quarterly profit in 18 months. Eni reported an adjusted net profit of EUR 459 mn for the quarter, according to Reuters.