Petron, the country’s biggest oil company, expects net income to exceed P20 billion this year, based on monthly earnings of P2 billion a month, a top executive said Tuesday.
Petron president and chief executive Ramon Ang told reporters at the sidelines of the stockholders’ meeting that a P20-billion full-year income was not only attainable but could be the “minimum” of what the company could earn this year.
Petron owns a 180,000-barrel-per-day refinery in Bataan, the country’s largest. Petron generated P10.8 billion in net income in 2016.
Petron’s refinery was generating P2 billion a month, but the 30-day maintenance in April and May could affect the full-year projection, Ang said.
“If crude prices are stable, Petron should deliver P2-billion net income per month. This April, May, the refinery underwent maintenance,” he said.
Ang said that once Petron completed the reconfiguration of the existing refinery, income could go up further by 50 percent to 70 percent.
The reconfiguration will increase the refinery’s capacity to 250,000 barrels per day and is estimated to cost $500 million. Construction will take two years.
“We are tweaking something in the refinery. If we are able to do that, [it would be] 50 to 70 percent better in income. We tweak it to produce petrochem and aromatic,” he said.
Ang said the company was also readying the construction of a new refinery that would cost around $15 billion.
The new refinery will have a capacity of 260,000 barrels per day and will be built in partnership with two foreign companies, Ang said.
“We are in talks with two foreign partners and this is the biggest investment ever undertaken in the history of the Philippines,” he said.
“We have to wait for the ECC and government approvals,” Ang said, adding that the project could be started early next year.
Ang said Petron would also expand its Malaysian refinery to 150,000 barrels per day from 88,000 barrels per day at a cost of $1.5 billion.
“For Malaysian refinery, we have to upgrade. We are doing the study,” he said.