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ajor oil and gas firm Medco Energi Internasional expects that its expansion plans and recent financing proceeds could help it reverse a 90 percent plunge in net profit in the first quarter of this year.

Medco Energi reported its first quarter net profit this year as US$4.19 million, sinking by 90.46 percent from $43.91 million in the same period last year, as sales and operating revenues dipped 33 percent to $127.72 million from a former $189.45 million.

'€œThe drop in revenue was mostly driven by oil prices getting cut in half, as well as delays in oil lifting and sales, a problem faced by nearly all oil and gas firms in the country,'€ Medco president director Lukman Mahfoedz told The Jakarta Post over the weekend.

Data from upstream regulator SKKMigas showed that during the first quarter of this year alone, oil lifting was recorded at only 762,000 barrels of oil per day (bopd), much lower than the 825,000 bopd targeted in the state budget.

While oil prices have begun to rebound recently from a six-year low in March, the first quarter oil price benchmark was still half last year'€™s value. WTI crude, the US benchmark, tumbled from $107 a barrel in June last year to below $45 in January this year.

Lukman said he was upbeat that the company'€™s performance would improve in the near future on the back of new and extended projects as well as hundreds of millions of financing programs from global financial institutions.

Medco Energi, which operates eight blocks in Indonesia as well as several blocks in six other countries, has just commissioned its Senoro Upstream project in Central Sulawesi, which is expected to produce 310 million standard cubic feet per day (mmscfd) of gas in June.

The company also just secured a S$500 million (US$374.16 million) multicurrency medium term note program with DBS Bank Ltd., Australia; New Zealand Banking Corporation Limited and Singapore'€™s Mitsubishi UFJ Securities. It has issued the first phase of the notes in April.

Medco Energi also signed last month an amended agreement which allows it to operate the Karim oil fields in Oman for an additional 25 years., with 51 percent participating interest.

Yasmin Soulisa, an analyst for BNI Securities, however, shared a positive recommendation for Medco'€™s shares despite several analysts predicting that oil prices were still likely to dive below $45 per barrel.

'€œFundamentally, US supply is still at a relatively high level such that we may see the stronger price lasting only temporarily. [However] Medco is expected to enjoy positive sentiment from the latest price updates,'€ she said in a research note.

Shares of Medco, coded MEDC on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX), dropped by 2.86 percent on a daily basis on Friday'€™s closing to Rp 3,060 a piece after the company announced its January-March result.