Competition

There is strong competition worldwide, both within the oil industry and with other industries, to supply energy to the industrial, commercial and residential energy markets.

Eni faces strong competition in each of its business segments.

• In the current uncertain financial and economic environment, Eni expects that prices of energy commodities, in particular oil and gas, will be very volatile, with average prices and margins influenced by changes in the global supply and demand for energy as well as in the market dynamics. This is likely to increase competition in all of Eni’s businesses, which may impact costs and margins.
• In the Exploration & Production segment Eni faces competition from both international oil companies and state-owned oil companies for obtaining exploration and development rights, and developing and applying new technologies to maximize hydrocarbon recovery. Furthermore, Eni may face a competitive disadvantage because of its relatively smaller size compared to other international oil companies, particularly when bidding for large scale or capital intensive projects, and may be exposed to industry-wide cost increases to a greater extent compared to its larger competitors given its potentially smaller market power with respect to suppliers. If, as a result of those competitive pressures, Eni fails to obtain new exploration and development acreage, to apply and develop new technologies, and to control cost, its growth prospects and future results of operations and cash flows may be adversely affected.
• In the Gas & Power segment, Eni faces strong competition from gas and energy players to sell gas and electricity to the industrial segment and the retail market both in the Italian market and markets across Europe. Competition has been fuelled by ongoing weak trends in demand due to the downturn and macroeconomic uncertainties, oversupplied markets and inter-fuel competition due to the rising use of coal in firing power plants and a dramatic grow in renewable sources of energy (photovoltaic and solar) which have materially impacted the use of gas in the production of electricity and hence sales of gas to the thermoelectric industry. These market imbalances owes to the fact that a few years ago, based on certain long-term projections about gas demand growth, European operators committed to purchase large amounts of gas under long-term supply contracts with take-or-pay clauses from the main producing Countries bordering Europe (namely Russia and Algeria) and built large upgrades at existing pipelines and new infrastructures along several European routes to expand gas import capacity to the Continent. Due to the economic and financial crisis and inter-fuel competition, those projected increases in gas demand failed to materialize resulting in a situation of oversupply and pricing pressure. The “shale-gas revolution” in the USA was another fundamental trend that added to the oversupply condition in the European marketplace. The discovery and development of large deposits of shale gas in the USA has progressively reduced till to zero the Country’s dependence on LNG imports. As a result of this, upstream producers were forced to redirect large LNG supplies to markets elsewhere in the world, including Europe. Large gas availability on the marketplace in Europe fuelled by take-or-pay contracts and worldwide LNG streams has driven the development of very liquid continental hubs to trade spot gas. Shortly spot prices at continental hubs have become the main benchmarks to which selling prices are indexed in supplies to large industrial customers and thermoelectric utilities. The profitability of gas operators was negatively impacted by falling sales prices at those hubs, where prices have been pressured by intense competition among gas operators in the face of weak demand, oversupplies and the constraint to dispose of minimum annual volumes of gas to be purchased under long-tem supply contracts. These negative trends were exacerbated by the fact that spot prices have ceased to track the oil prices to which Eni’s long-term supply contracts are linked, resulting in a decoupling between trends in prices and in costs. Due to those fundamental shifts in market dynamics and a current demand downturn, the Company’s Gas & Power segment incurred operating losses in each of the latest three years. The outlook in our gas marketing business will remain weak for the foreseeable future as management believes that the ongoing negative trends of poor demand, continuing competition and oversupplies have become structural headwinds. These developments may adversely affect the Company’s future results of operations and cash flows in its gas business, also taking into account the Company’s contractual obligations to off-take minimum annual volumes of gas in accordance to its long-term gas supply contracts with take or-pay clauses and until the Company manages to re-negotiate new pricing terms of such contracts which better tracks market prices than the original oil-linked indexation. See the sector-specific risk section below.
• Eni is also facing competition from large, well-established European utilities and other international oil and gas companies in growing its market share and acquiring or retaining clients. A number of large clients, particularly electricity producers and large industrial buyers have entered the wholesale market of gas by directly purchasing gas from producers or sourcing it at the continental spot markets adding further pressures on the economics of gas operators, including Eni. Management believes that this trend will continue in the future. At the same time, a number of national gas producers belonging to Countries with large gas reserves have started to sell natural gas directly to final clients, entering in direct competition with players like Eni which resell gas purchased from producing Countries to final customers. These developments may increase the level of competition and reduce Eni’s expected operating profit and cash flows in the gas business. Finally, gas prices in the residential market have historically been established by independent, governmental authorities in Italy and elsewhere in Europe. The indexation mechanisms used by those authorities have generally tracked a basket of petroleum products, mirroring the oil-indexed purchase prices of gas resellers like Eni, thus enabling resellers to pass a large part of cost increases of the raw material on to final customers in the retail market. In recent years, the Italian authority has introduced a number of adjustments to the oil-linked formula to take into account the public gaol of containing the impact of energy inflation on households and other public services (hospitals, schools, etc.). Finally, following enactment in Italy of a new regulatory regime which went effective October 1, 2013, management expects that the Company’s selling margins in the residential segment are likely to come under pressure due to the implementation of a less favourable indexation mechanism of the raw material cost in supplies to such customers than in the past. Such new mechanism establishes that the cost of the raw material be indexed to market benchmarks recorded at spot markets, as such replacing the previous oil-linked mechanism which mirrored a basket of long-term supply contracts. The Company expects that similar measures will be introduced by other market regulators in European Countries where Eni engages in selling gas to residential clients (see sector-specific risk factors below). Management believes these developments will negatively impact future results of operations and cash flow.
• In its Gas & Power segment, Eni is vertically integrated in the production of electricity via its gas-fired power plants which currently use the combined-cycle technology. In the electricity business, Eni competes with other producers and traders from Italy or outside of Italy who sell electricity in the Italian market. Going forward, the Company expects continuing competition due to the projections of weak economic growth in Italy and Europe over the foreseeable future, also causing outside players to place excess production on the Italian market. The economics of the gas-fired electricity business have dramatically changed over the latest few years due to ongoing competitive trends. As a matter of fact, spot prices of electricity in the wholesale market across Europe have decreased due to excess supplies driven by the growing production of electricity from renewable sources, which also benefit of governmental subsides, and a recovery in the production of coal-fired electricity generation which has been helped by a substantial reduction in the price of this fuel on the back of a massive oversupply of coal which occurred on a global scale. As a result of falling electricity prices, margins on the production of gas-fired electricity went into negative territory. We believe that the profitability outlook in this business will remain weak in the foreseeable future. Due to the projections of negative future cash flows, we decided to recognize an impairment charge of our power plants in the amount of approximately €1 billion in the 2013 consolidated accounts.
• In the retail marketing of refined products both in Italy and abroad, Eni competes with oil companies and non-oil operators (such as supermarket chains and other commercial operators) to obtain concessions to establish and operate service stations. Eni’s service stations compete primarily on the basis of pricing, services and availability of non-petroleum products. In Italy, the latest administrative measure in this field have targeted to enhance the level of competition in the retail market of fuels, for example by easing the commercial ties between independent and other non-oil operators of service stations and oil companies, enlarging options to build and operate fully-automated service stations, and opening up the merchandising of various kinds of goods and services at service stations. These developments have boosted the level of competition in the marketplace adding further pressure on selling prices and reducing opportunities of increasing the market share in Italy. We expect that competitive pressures will continue in the foreseeable future due to anticipated weak trends in the domestic demand for fuels, oversupplies of refined products due to existing excess refining capacity in Europe and growing competition of products streams coming from Russia, the Middle East, East Asia and the United States. Finally, Eni’s margins on refined products have been affected by production cost disadvantages due to unfavourable geographic location and lack of scale of Eni’s Refineries, and narrowing price differentials between the Brent benchmark and heavy crude qualities. This latter trend has reflected ongoing reduced supplies of heavy crudes in the Mediterranean area, reversing the pattern observed historically whereby heavy crude qualities trade at a discount vs. the Brent benchmark due to their relatively smaller yield of valuable products. This negative trend has particularly hit Eni’s profitability of complex cycles which depends upon the availability of cheaper crude qualities than the Brent crude in order to remunerate the higher operating costs of complex plants. This segment reported losses at the operating level in each of the latest three years driven by the structural headwinds in the industry described above. Based on those trends we believe that the profitability outlook in our Refining & Marketing segment will remain negative over the foreseeable future.
• In the Chemical segment, Eni faces strong competition from well-established international players and state-owned petrochemical companies, particularly in the most commoditized market segments such as the production of basic petrochemicals products and plastics. Many of those competitors based in the Far East and Middle East are able to benefit from cost advantages due to larger scale, looser environmental regulations, availability of cheaper feedstock, and more favourable location and proximity to end-markets. Excess capacity and sluggish economic growth may exacerbate competitive pressures. Furthermore, Eni expects that petrochemicals producers based in the US will regain market share in the future, leveraging on a competitive cost structure due to the increasing availability of cheap feedstock deriving from the production of domestic shale gas. The Company expects continuing margin pressures in the foreseeable future as a result of those trends. This segment reported operating losses in each of the latest three years including significant amounts of asset impairment losses, driven by the structural headwinds in the industry described above.
• Competition in the oil field services, construction and engineering industries is primarily based on technical expertise, quality and number of services and availability of technologically advanced facilities (for example, vessels for offshore construction). Lower oil prices could result in lower margins and lower demand for oil services. In 2013 a soft demand environment, intense competition among oilfield service providers coupled with Company-specific issues at certain projects drove a substantial reversal in the profitability at Eni’s Engineering & Construction business segment which reported an operating loss for the full year 2013. The Company’s failure or inability to respond effectively to competition could adversely impact the Company’s growth prospects, future results of operations and cash flows.