Italian energy giant ENI said Wednesday that it narrowed its losses in 2016, but its bottom-line was still hit by the slump in crude oil prices and the year-end net loss came in wider than expected. ENI said in a statement it booked a net loss of 1.46 billion euros in last year, narrower than the year-earlier loss of 8.77 billion euros. But the figure was still much wider than the 467 million euros that analysts had been pencilling in for 2016.

ENI said that hydrocarbon production amounted to 1.76 million barrels of oil equivalent (boe) per day last year, which was "in line with 2015." The steady output was achieved despite the shutdown of ENI's important Val d'Agri oil centre owing to a waste disposal investigation, the company said.

The site has since been restarted. In December, ENI said it was expecting output to rise to a record 1.84 million barrels of oil equivalent per day in 2017. The group's profitability has been severely affected by the dizzying decline in oil prices since 2014.

The sector is also feeling the pinch of a drop in gas and petrol consumption in Europe, as well as downward pressures on margins. ENI has said it planned to dispose of as much as seven billion euros in assets by 2019. At the end of 2016, it sold a 30-percent interest in the huge offshore gas field in Shoruk in Egypt to Russia's Rosneft for $1.125 billion. It has already sold a 10-percent interest in the field to Britiain's BP in November. ENI is also planning to sell parts of its interests in a gas field in Mozambique and in oil fields in Congo. The publication of ENI's results comes as chief executive Claudio Descalzi is in the hot seat over possible corruption in Nigeria.

Last month, Italian prosecutors alleged that Nigeria's former president Goodluck Jonathan and his oil minister received kickbacks as part of a $1.3 billion deal involving oil giants ENI and Shell. Both companies have denied any wrongdoing in the affair.

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2017