KUALA LUMPUR: Petroliam Nasional Bhd (Petronas), which has spent RM46.8 billion of capital expenditure (capex) in 2018, expects its capex this year to be slightly over than RM50 billion as it will be focusing on its plans to venture into new business such as renewable energy and specialty chemicals.
Asked to comment on the recent news report that the group is looking to buy into one of India’s largest rooftop solar power producers, Petronas’ president and group CEO Tan Sri Wan Zulkiflee Wan Ariffin (pix) said it is part of the group’s ongoing exercise to explore new ventures domestically as well as overseas.
“We will allocate our capex to where the opportunity is and India is one of them,” he told reporters at the group’s year-end 2018 results briefing here today.
The national oil firm spent RM46.8 billion on capex last year — up 5% from 2017— with a focus on the upstream projects.
On dividend, he said the group is confident to pay the committed dividend payout of RM54 billion to the government this year, RM30 billion of which, a special dividend which will be used to help the government to pay outstanding tax refunds.
Petronas has benchmarked its operations for 2019 on expectations of oil prices being at US$66 per barrel, compared with US$52 per barrel in 2018, he added.
