Eastern Petroleum reports 500% surge in first quarter gross sales

MANILA, Philippines - Eastern Petroleum Corp. (EPC), one of the country’s leading independent oil players, yesterday announced that its gross sales grew by 500 percent in the first three months of 2011 to P2 billion from only P344.43 million in the same period last year.

EPC chairman Fernando Martinez attributed the substantial improvement to a higher comparative cost of fuel which increased by close to 20 percent, and actual sales volume of petroleum products which increased by as much as 480 percent.

The company’s operating net income also improved to P40 million this year.

If it will hit a revenue sale of P5 billion for 2011, Martinez expressed confidence that the company would be able to have a target income for the whole year of P100 million. “This will be an all-time high for the 15-year old company,” the EPC official said.

He said the hefty increase in revenues was driven by the company’s aggressive drive in introducing EURO IV compliant diesel, which contains less sulfur or equivalent to 90 percent reduction of sulfur content compared to the current EURO II standard.

According to Martinez, “even drivers and operators of public utility vehicles have expressed heightened environment consciousness. This is due to their constatnt exposure to the said state of air quality contributed by the emission of land base transportation. This consciousness resulted to a favorable response to the introduction of EURO IV compliant diesel which Eastern Petroleum started bringing in early January 2011.”

He said if only half of the diesel powered users will choose to load EURO IV complaint diesel with its extra low sulfure content, as much as 60 percent reduction in air pollution can be realized, therefore improving Metro Manila’s air quality, which is now considered as one of the Top 10 heavily polluted cities in the world.

At present, EPC and Unioil Philippines Inc. are jointly importing the first-ever Euro IV diesel products in Metro Manila.

The new Euro IV products will be sold at EPC’s 25 stations with no extra cost. Unioil, on the other hand, offers the products to 25 of its stations located in the metropolis.

EPC is currently importing some 40 million liters of Euro IV products every month.