The Italian oil and gas company Eni has issued its 2017 full-year results and reports a record hydrocarbon production of 1.82 mb/d (+3.2%), which is the company's highest ever level. The giant Zohr gas field started production in late 2017 and contributed significantly to the production increase along with new projects in Angola, Ghana and Indonesia and production ramp-up in other fields. Gas production soared by 9.6% to 5,261 mcf/d (148 mcm/d or 54.2 bcm/year), while liquid production dipped by 3% to 852 kb/d.
Around 1 Gboe of new hydrocarbon resources were discovered during the year, bringing the company's total proved hydrocarbon reserves up to 7 Gboe with a replacement ratio of 103%. Besides, Eni achieved increased operation efficiency with a 40% reduction in capital expenditure (Capex) on upstream development projects since 2014. Approximately €8bn in Capex are planned for 2018, and production is expected to increase by 3% during the year (ramp up of fields entered into production in 2017 and start up of satellite phases at giant producing fields).
In 2017, refining throughputs dipped by 2% to 24 Mt (-2.1% to 21.1 Mt in Italy). Wholesale sales fell by 6% to 10.7 Mt (-6.4% in Italy to 7.6 Mt), while retail sales contracted by 0.6% to 8.5 Mt (+1.3% to 6 Mt in Italy). In 2017, Eni sold 80.8 bcm of natural gas (-6.3%): sales on the Italian market dipped by 2.6% to 37.4 bcm (declining sales across all the market segments, despite higher sales to power plants), while they contracted by 9.9% in the rest of Europe to 38.2 bcm (lower sales in France, the United Kingdom, Benelux and the Iberian peninsula, along with disposal of Eni's retail business in Belgium and Hungary). Gas sales eroded by 5.1% to 5.2 bcm in the rest of the world. Eni also sold 35.3 TWh of electricity (-4.6%, due to lower sales to the wholesale market).