Under the severe impact of Covid-19 and the drop in oil prices without any sign of stabilization; Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) forecasted the global Gross domestic product (GDP) growth in 2020 would be -4.5%, including: EU countries -7.9%, USA -3.8%, Russia -6.8%, France -7.3%, UK -10.1%, India -10.2% ... At the same time, according to the forecast of the global reputable energy organizations, the global crude oil aggregate demand in the last months of 2020 extending to the end of quarter II/2021 had dropped 0.5-1.0 million tons compared to the forecast on August (in the September report, OPEC stated that the global crude oil aggregate demand would decrease to 9.46 million barrels/day in this year instead of 9.06 barrels/day in the last month’s forecast). Due to the heavy impact of Covid-19, the decline in black gold global demand and the transition to renewable energy, many global petroleum “big corps” were operating at a loss, and had to reduce their personnel, sold their properties. Exxon Mobil reported that they had to lay off 1,600 jobs in Europe from now until the end of 2021; Royal Dutch Shell reported that they were going to lay off from 7,000 to 9,000 jobs, or about 10% staff in 2022 to reduce the cost; Schlumberger Oilfield Services Company of USA had also laid off jobs, and planned to reduce 21,000 jobs – a quarter of workforce; On June 2020, BP company of UK announced the loss of 10,000 jobs in the world, equivalent to 15% of workforce.

Domestically, under the impact of Covid-19, the product output market continued to experience a difficult time, low capital requirement for investment, financial market had not risen up, low credit growth, consumer psychology had not stabilized, … it continued to affect negatively to investment, production and household consumption,

Recognized the difficulties that we had to and would have to face, on September 2020, thanks to the drastic direction of the Group leaders, member units continued to effectively implement the solution package for “double crisis”, focusing on reduce the costs, maintaining business & production activities steadily, completing various key targets. Including, the oil reserve of September increased to 15 million tons of oil equivalent (the 2020 plan was 10-15 million tons of oil equivalent). Total exploitation output in 9 months reached 15.71 tons of oil equivalent, exceeding 4.0% of the 9-month plan. Total exploitation output in 9 months reached 8.64 million tons, exceeding 9.4% of the 9-month plan; of which total foreign exploitation output in 9 months reached 1.38 million tons, exceeding 5.2% of the 9-month plan. Nitrogen fertilizer production reached 1.34 million tons, exceeding 112 thousand tons (≈ 9.1%) of the 9-month plan.

Thanks to the stable and safe continuous production activities as well as effective implementation of response solution package and cost reduction, the Group’s financial criteria had been maintained better than the last month, in particular: total revenue reached 423.2 thousand billion VND, contributed to the State budget 50.2 thousand billion VND. Despite the impacts of Covid-19, the Group’s units were able to achieve the good business result, the Group basically still maintained a financial status at a stable and positive level.

Speaking at the conclusion of the online 9-month progress meeting to the bridge points nationally, General director Le Manh Hung had commended the Group’s member units which had successfully performed the key missions of the solution package to respond to double crisis and strictly implemented the optimization policy, cost reduction; On September 2020, the Group had reduced 636 billion VND of cost, in 9 months the Group had reduced 7,170 billion VND. A few units with a remarkable achievement on September, 2020 such as Vietsovpetro had put BK 21 rig into operation 1 month ahead of the schedule, they would have the first oil flow on October 2, 2020; BSR finished the 4th general maintenance to ensure the safety, quality, schedule and costs. Two units, PVFCCo and PVCFC had exported 320,000 tons of fertilizers, which was also the highest record.

General director Le Manh Hung particularly stressed that: “… thanks to the management system maintenance and improvement, with the foregoing positive production & business results, PVN’s standalone credit rating is still rated at the positive level BB+ by Fitch Ratings”; and it had been confirmed in the hard time due to the impact of “double crisis”, the Group had implemented the policies to ensure Petrovietnam employee’s income and employment well.

In the last months of 2020, General director Le Manh Hung had requested the units to keep focusing on maintaining the steady and safe business & production activities, trying to fulfill the planned goals of 2020; focusing on implementing and promoting the consumption chain to reduce the inventory, particularly for petroleum products; review and consider to resolve the difficulties in the implementation of petroleum value chain. While trying to fulfil the missions of 2020 successfully, the units needed to actively research, anticipate the situation, make a plan, criteria, missions of 2021 to implement in the most efficient way./.