MOL Group announced its financial results for Q1 2020. Large inventory and foregin exchange losses resulted in MOL reporting a USD 152mn net loss for Q1, the first sign of the pandemic-related crisis.
Underlying operations were running strong until mid-March, as reflected by the USD 622mn Clean CCS EBITDA, however, the pandemic had already started to severely affect all business lines in the last 2-3 weeks of March and the situation further deteriorated in April.
Due to the unpredictable external environment, 2020 EBITDA guidance was withdrawn and organic capital expenditure guidance was cut by more than 25%.
Due to the extremely low oil prices from the beginning of March, Upstream EBITDA decreased to USD 185mn in Q1.
Oil & gas production volumes were 110.6 mboepd, 4% lower than a year ago, due to the natural decline in CEE. In Q1, MOL, as an operator, made an oil and gas discovery offshore Norway with a preliminary estimate of recoverable resources between 12-71 million barrels.
