By Tristan Veyet
(Reuters) -Austrian oil and gas group OMV said on Wednesday gas production in the Black sea is envisaged to start in 2027, as part of its Neptun Deep project.
“Drilling for the first of ten wells commenced in March and is anticipated to take two to three months,” the company said in a statement.
Neptun Deep, a project in which OMV’s Romanian subsidiary OMV Petrom and state-owned gas producer Romgaz have invested a total of 4 billion euros ($4.55 billion), is expected to yield around 8 billion cubic meters of gas annually.
Neptun Deep holds an estimated 100 billion cubic meters (bcm) of recoverable gas, making it one of the EU’s most significant natural gas deposits.
Once it comes online, Romania will become the EU’s largest gas producer and a net gas exporter for the first time.
OMV missed expectations for its adjusted operating result in the first quarter on Wednesday, citing lower contribution from its Fuels & Feedstock and Energy divisions.
The Vienna-based firm reported an operating result of 1.16 billion euros for the first quarter, falling 5.7% short of analyst estimates based on a company-provided consensus.
A clean operating result is based on the current cost of supply, and excludes one-off items and short-term gains and losses from energy inventory holdings.
Earlier this month, OMV flagged lower sales volumes in its energy business due to divestment of SapuraOMV, higher liftings in Norway and a catch-up effect in Libya.
($1 = 0.8785 euros)
(Reporting by Tristan Veyet in Gdansk, Additional reporting by Antonis Pothitos; Editing by Christopher Cushing, Sherry Jacob-Phillips and Lincoln Feast.)
