Power and water drive Taqa through H1 2012

Abu Dhabi National Energy Company PJSC (Taqa) a publicly listed company on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (ADX: TAQA), reported its operational and financial results for the second quarter and first half of 2012.

The first half of 2012 saw a strong performance by Taqa’s Power '&' Water business, which grew revenues by 14% during the period, largely due to new production coming online at the Shuweihat 2 Independent Water and Power Project (IWPP) in Abu Dhabi.

Operations in the UK North Sea have also performed strongly, both operationally and financially, benefitting from higher production and oil prices.

However, the continued weakness of North American gas prices have impacted the overall performance of the Oil '&' Gas business.

Taqa benefitted from its disposal of non-core assets, such as its holding in Tesla Motors and non-core acreage in North America, which has boosted profitability.

At the end of the first half, Taqa had strong liquidity with cash and cash equivalents of Dh5.1 billion.

Carl Sheldon, Chief Executive Officer of Taqa, said: "We have seen a strong performance by our Power '&' Water business in the first half, with new capacity at Shuweihat 2 coming online and high availability across our portfolio supporting this.

“We have also seen our UK Oil '&' Gas operations boost production and continue to benefit from higher pricing in comparison with last year.

“Particularly, pleasing is that we have passed our 1,000th day as duty holder of our North Sea assets and more than 100 million barrels of oil have now safely passed through the Brent Pipeline System under our operatorship.

"However, it is clear that the first half of 2012 has been a challenging period for the global economy, a fact that can be clearly seen in falling global commodity prices.

More positively, we have seen our expansion plans at the Jorf Lasfar power plant in Morocco continuing on time and on budget, and that combined with the start of construction of Bergermeer Gas Storage, the acquisition of power assets in Iraq and additional acreage in the UK North Sea, we are positioned well for future growth."

Stephen Kersley, Chief Financial Officer of TAQA, said: "We continued our programme of non-core asset disposals, with the sale of our holdings in Tesla Motors for an attractive profit.

“We have maintained strong liquidity, with cash and undrawn committed credit facilities of nearly Dh20 billion at the end of the period.

“We also successfully closed a US$ 1.4 billion equivalent, 16-year, multi-currency non-recourse project financing for the expansion of Jorf Lasfar, which further increases our financial flexibility on a group level.”

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