Indonesian Pertamina Reports 24% Drop in 1H Net Profit

Indonesian Pertamina has reported a sharp drop in net profit for the first six months of 2017 as a rise in the price of petroleum products reduced demand, the company said August 16.

The net profit was $1.4bn, which decreased 24% compared to the first half of 2016.

The president director of Pertamina, Massa Manik, said the market in the first half of 2017 remained "very volatile".

The rise in crude oil prices has been an incentive for the company's upstream business as well as increasing the cost of the product sold in the downstream sector, which has had a significant impact on Pertamina's profit, Manik said. 

The revenue during the period was $20.5bn compared with $17.2bn in the same period last year, which is a 19% growth. The revenue growth rate is relatively low compared to Indonesia's crude oil price increase, which reached $48.9/b during the first half of 2017, up 35% year on year, Pertamina said.

The company’s natural gas production grew by 4% to 2.02bn ft³/d.

Shardul Sharma