At the conclusion of what has been an eventful period for our company, Rusneftegaz held our annual general meeting on 8 April, with several of the major figures from our organization convening in Moscow to discuss both our performance and our long-term plans. The event centered upon the disclosure of our consolidated financial statements for 2015 earlier last week, which were unanimously approved in conjunction with the corresponding director’s report. All the data published in these documents were prepared in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards, also known as IFRS, and were externally audited to verify the reliability of our fiscal reports. While this was the principal focus of the convention, there were also a number of other motions passed, including maintaining the services of each member of our board of directors and reappointing our existing third-party auditor. In a similar vein, our stakeholders also voted to make no changes to the composition of our audit committee, in the opinion that no amendments were necessary. However, our shareholders once again opted to forego any dividend for the economic performance we recorded last year, believing that it was in the long-term interests of our enterprise to reinvest such funds in future projects. As a consequence, we plan to continue implementing our long-term investment strategy in the year ahead, potentially transforming our business by the end of the decade. In response to this, our Deputy Chief Executive Officer, Aleksandr Filyurin, issued the following remarks:
“I would firstly like to place on record the thanks of the board and I to all our staff who have helped the last year be such a success. It is usually very difficult for new management to come into an established organization like this and to try to implement their ideas, but we have had no problems at all. Speaking from a personal perspective, it has been a very productive year for us; a lot of the things that have happened I didn’t expect to happen so quickly. I would also like to place on record our thanks to the Ministry of Energy, who have let us join their missions to Algeria, Iran and Egypt over the last year to help us find new projects to work on around the world. To be honest, we are massively ahead of schedule. I certainly didn’t think that we would be trying to expand internationally in our first year, but here we are. Ultimately, I am optimistic that we are going to be able to establish ourselves across the Middle East and North Africa in the next few years. Our talks have been incredibly productive, and I hope that I will be able to bring you some positive news soon. Obviously, there is still a lot for us to do here; there are a lot of changes that we are going to need to make over the next year. There are some ideas where we haven’t fully decided the correct plan of action yet, and others that we are going to need to take time to implement properly. In general, I would say that there’s a lot to look forward to for Rusneftegaz. Things are only going to get better, and I hope that everyone associated with this great company can join us in being optimistic for what is yet to come.”
Overall, the continued uncertainty in worldwide commodity prices is likely to ensure that the fiscal performance of our oil division remains hebetudinous in comparison to previous periods. Thus, our management board has finalized and is now executing an extensive plan to mitigate the effects of the more challenging economic conditions. This is primarily to accelerate the volume of investments made in electricity infrastructure, which will establish greater efficiency over the next five years in this area of our business. In addition, we also intend to continue our existing plan of managing our levels of petroleum extraction appropriately, maintaining the profitability of this production unit in the immediate term. This is whilst preserving the integrity of our oil reserves for the future, when the value of such commodities is expected to be higher and will therefore cultivate increased revenues. Said agenda for the short term is also encompassed in a broader strategy for our long-term prosperity, involving our organization becoming one of the largest energy companies in the Russian Federation by the end of the next decade through an aggressive growth program that is currently being implemented. For instance, over the past twelve months, Rusneftegaz has made great strides internationally. We have held talks with officials in a plethora of countries across the globe to imminently expand our operations into their respective territories. Despite the fact that these negotiations are at a preliminary stage, our executive leadership is broadly confident regarding the likelihood of a positive and fruitful outcome. Our corporation will duly notify of any updates pertaining to this matter accordingly and politely requests the cooperation and understanding of all those involved at this time. Any and all queries in respect to this subject should be submitted in due course via telephone or email to receive a prompt reply from us.