The Ordinary General Meeting of Shareholders approved OMV Petrom’s budget for 2019, according to a company statement. It is estimated that investments in 2019 will reach approximately 4.17 billion lei (about 876 million euro).

A large part of the allocated amount of about 3.42 billion lei (82% of the total budget) is for the Upstream segment and an investment level of 551 million lei is estimated for Downstream Oil. Investments in Upstream will partially offset the natural decline in production due to the maturity of the deposits. It is estimated that crude oil and gas production in Romania, excluding new portfolios optimization initiatives, will fall by 4% in 2019 as compared to 2018. The budget for 2019 was based on an average price of Brent crude oil of USD 70/ boe.

„The investment budget of 4.17 billion lei for 2019 represents the sums that will, for the most part, take the Romanian economy. OMV Petrom is an important player in the economic environment: it provides the necessary energy for millions of Romanians and thousands of local businesses, contributes to business development and provides thousands of jobs for Romanians,” said Christina Verchere, OMV Petrom’s CEO.

The Ordinary General Meeting of Shareholders also approved the Directors proposal to distribute dividends of 0.027 lei / share for the financial year 2018, up 35% over the previous year. The gross amount of distributed dividends amounts to approximately 1.53 billion lei, representing 38% of the net profit of the OMV Petrom SA shareholder group for 2018. More than 315 million lei will go to the Romanian state, which holds 20,639% of the shares of OMV Petrom S.A. through the Ministry of Energy