27th Mar 2018 11:20
Pretax profit for 2017 was
Production, however, fell further than anticipated, Nostrum said. This was mainly due to the loss of two producing wells as well as the inability to bring new wells online in time.
Average daily sales volumes in 2017 were 37,844 barrels of oil equivalent per day, compared to 39,043boepd in 2016. Nostrum's average production after treatment in the year was 39,199boepd compared to 40,351boepd.
Construction of Nostrum's third gas treatment unit is continuing and should be finished in 2018, while the completed on the KazTransOil pipeline during 2017 has "significantly" reduced crude oil transportation costs.
The focus for 2018 will be stabilising production by focused drilling on production wells, with production guided to be flat on 2017 at around 37,000boepd, and this is expected to more than double by 2019. Re-financing has been completed, Nostrum said, and this means it can solely focus on operations going forward.
Chief Executive Kai-Uwe Kessel commented: "2017 was a challenging year operationally. We encountered a delay to the completion of GTU3 and some disappointing results from wells that watered out in one of our producing reservoirs, which led to a 3.1% decrease in sales volumes.
"Financially, 2017 was more positive for Nostrum. We successfully refinanced all of our debt due in 2019 and now have no maturities until 2022. As we last went to market in 2014 when the oil price was over
Nostrum shares were up 0.5% on Tuesday at
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