Production for Austrian major OMV up 20 percent

Jan. 12 (UPI) -- In a trading update ahead of the company's fourth quarter report, Austrian energy company OMV said output was up nearly 20 percent from last year.

One of the company's last moves of 2017 was to pay $2 billion for the 24.9 percent stake held by Russian energy company Uniper in the Yuzhno Russkoye natural gas field located in Western Siberia. The field is one of the largest in Russia and the Austrian company said it grabbed recoverable resources of 580 million barrels of oil equivalent.

OMV Chairman and CEO Rainer Seele said the field added 100,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day to its output.

An emailed trading update offering a look at key performance indicators, published ahead of the Feb. 21 release of fourth quarter results, show total fourth quarter production at 377,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, with natural gas accounting for more than half of that.

Those figures are up 10 percent from third quarter 2017 and 20 percent higher than during the fourth quarter of 2016.

Seele said the acquisition from Uniper would actually increase production closer to 400,000 boe per day.

In September, the company started assessing the discovery of oil from an appraisal well drilled in a section of the Barents Sea. Before the appraisal, the Austrian energy company estimated the area, dubbed Wisting, held between 138 million and 500 million barrels of recoverable oil equivalents.

OMV reported an operating net profit in the third quarter of $933 million, up 52 percent from the same period last year. The company said then that gains were supported by a 14 percent quarterly gain in Brent crude oil prices during the period.

In its trading statement, the company said it realized an average price for Brent crude oil of $61.26 per barrel, up nearly 18 percent from the third quarter.

Brent crude oil touched $70 per barrel in trading Thursday, a four-year high, before giving up most of the day's gains.