Italian energy giant ENI said on March 1, 2017, that it narrowed its losses in 2016, but its bottom-line was still hit by the the slump in crude oil prices and the year-end net loss came in wider than expected.
ENI said in a statement it booked a net loss of 1.46 billion euros last year, narrower than the year-earlier loss of 8.77 billion euros.
But the figure was still much wider than the 467 million euros that analysts had been pencilling in for 2016.
ENI said that hydrocarbon production amounted to 1.76 million barrels of oil equivalent (boe) per day last year, which was in line with 2015.
The steady output was achieved despite the shutdown of ENI's important Val d'Agri oil centre owing to a waste disposal investigation, the company said.
In December 2016, ENI said it was expecting output to rise to a record 1.84 million barrels of oil equivalent per day in 2017.
The group's profitability has been severely affected by the dizzying decline in oil prices since 2014.
The sector is also feeling the pinch of a drop in gas and petrol consumption in Europe, as well as downward pressures on margins.
ENI has said it planned to dispose of as much as seven billion euros in assets by 2019.
At the end of 2016, it sold a 30 % interest in the huge offshore gas field in Shoruk in Egypt to Russia's Rosneft for $1.125 billion.
It has already sold a 10 % interest in the field to Britiain's BP in November 2016.
To read this news in Russian.
