Companhia Moçambicana de Hidrocarbonetos (CMH), Mozambique’s state-controlled oil and gas company, is to distribute dividends of 349.70 meticais (€4.99) per share to shareholders for the 2024 financial year, to be paid on 14 October, according to information consulted on Monday by Lusa.
The decision, according to the same information, was approved at a general meeting on 30 September.
CMH is 70% owned by Empresa Nacional de Hidrocarbonetos, which is also state owned, with the Instituto de Gestão das Participações do Estado (IGEPE) also holding a 20% stake, and the remaining 10% in the hands of individual and collective Mozambican investors.
Lusa reported in September that CMH’s profits fell by 15.5% in the fiscal year ending last June (2024), to $54.7 million (€48.1 million), according to data from the state oil company.
“Our operations were conditioned by various exogenous factors, in an environment influenced by the current international geopolitical situation,” CMH states in its annual report. “Fluctuations in the prices of reference commodities on the international market and the decline in initial reserves also influenced our performance.”
In the financial year ending June 2023, CMH recorded profits of $64.8 million (€58.1 million), an increase of 75% compared to the same period in 2022.
In this year’s report and accounts, the board of directors said that “other factors” – mainly operational – had “an impact on the production volumes of natural gas and condensate at the Temane Production plant” and that this had a “considerable impact on revenue levels compared to the 2023 financial year.”
In addition, it warned: “The weight of investments in future budgets will have an impact on our revenues in a context where our reservoirs are being depleted, which could impact natural gas production. In this context, we are committed to developing and implementing investment actions to sustain long-term production and supply of natural gas, within the scope of commercial commitments under current contracts.”
CMH oversees oil production operations and was appointed by Mozambique’s government to, together with South Africa’s Sasol Petroleum Temane (SPT), conduct oil operations in the Pande and Temame production fields for a period of 30 years, under an agreement signed in October 2000.
The oil company is also part of the joint operations agreements signed with SPT in December 2002, covering the reservoirs of the Pande and Temame fields, since the company only produces and sells gas and operates in an integrated manner.
In its annual report for the year ending at the end of June, CMH’s management highlighted the execution of additional (PEDOP-infill) boreholes and compression projects under the Plateau Extension and Decline Optimisation Programme (PEDOP), which it said “will involve the execution of three new boreholes and the installation of five additional compressors.
“They represent a great magnitude in terms of investment costs and risks in their implementation in the case of the low-pressure compression project on the Pande line, as the latter is still dependent on the approval of the development plan by the government and the final investment decision by the partners, which must be reached in time so as not to jeopardise the benefit of operations in 2026 and revenues for the consortium from 2027 onwards,” the text explains.
To meet these challenges, the board recalled that CMH signed a medium-term credit line of $50 million (€44.9 million) with commercial banks to finance its participation in the project.
CMH closed the financial year ending 30 June with total assets that fell to $378.8 million (€340 million), against liabilities that fell in the same period to $116.8 million (€104.8 million).