NGC suffers $316 million loss owing to covid19

The National Gas Company (NGC) has recorded a massive $316.2 million loss after tax for the first half of 2020.

In a media release, on Saturday, the company attributed the loss to the negative economic effects of the covid19 pandemic.

NGC said, “This represents a decrease of 296 per cent or $477.3 million from the six-month profit for 2019 of $161.1 million. Revenues decreased by 22.9 per cent or $1.74 billion from $7.61 billion for the six months ended June 2019 to $5.87 billion for the six months to June 2020.

“Margins continue to be adversely affected by the volatility in the commodity markets with prices decreasing by 33%, 9% and 44% for methanol, ammonia, and natural gas liquids respectively in the reporting period.”

NGC group chairman Conrad Enill said several factors contributed to the loss, such as, changes in the market outlook, legacy issues, and non-payment for gas sales by NGC’s largest customer.

“These factors have caused the overall results to be negative and contributed towards a tightening of NGC’s liquidity position,” he said.

Enill added that NGC, however, remained optimistic toward growth and profitability over the medium term, through an uptick in the upstream sector, strategic partnerships and acquisitions, technological investments, and a sharpened focus on cost management and value generation initiatives.

He added deals via a framework agreement with Touchstone Exploration Inc and Heritage Petroleum Company Limited for the development, sale and purchase of natural gas from the Ortoire block; a new gas supply contract with BHP Billiton; its continued with its internationalisation thrust with Phoenix Park Gas Processors Limited in the acquiring of the NGL marketing assets of Twin Eagle Liquids Marketing LLC based in Houston are expected to be favourable performance for the company.

NGC said not only was it able to sustain delivery of its critical services to the petrochemical, manufacturing, and power generation sectors, but changes effected during the first half of 2020 helped create a solid platform for future innovation and improvement.

“These have included process improvements in the areas of supply chain management, health, safety, security and the environment (HSSE), operations and communications.

"Across the group, people are working smarter, making greater use of available digital tools to streamline tasks and increase efficiency. This in turn is helping to build a leaner and more agile organisation,” NGC said.

In September, the company had announced a $396 million profit after tax for 2019, just under $2 billion lower than what was recorded for 2018.