Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to OMV's earnings call for the second quarter, 2022. With me on the call are Alfred Stern, OMV's CEO, and Reinhard Florey, our Chief Financial Officer. As always, Alfred will walk you through the highlights of the quarter and discuss OMV's financial performance, and after his presentation, both gentlemen are available to answer your questions. With that, I'll hand it over to Alfred.
Thank you, Florian. Ladies and gentlemen, good morning, and thank you for joining us today. The markets in the second quarter of 2022 experienced a lot of pressure and unprecedented uncertainty. Oil and gas prices continued to rise, the refining margins reached all-time record highs, and daily headlines on the sharp decline of Russian gas supply to Europe dominated news feeds. At OMV, we were confronted with the incident at our Austrian refinery at the beginning of June. Since then, a large team of specialists has been working tirelessly to mitigate the impact. We are continuously optimizing our supply system and have been in constant contact with our customers to minimize the impact on their operations. Despite these headwinds, the second quarter of 2022 proved to be an exceptional one for OMV in terms of earnings. Let me start with a brief review of the market environment.
Brent prices continued to rally in the second quarter, averaging $114 per barrel, which is 65% higher year-on-year. The development was highly volatile during the quarter, with concerns over demand, most notably in China and Russian supply risks. Prices exceeded $130 per barrel in June, the highest levels since 2008. So far this year, global demand has been strong, but supply has been extraordinarily tight on the back of the Russia-Ukraine crisis and disruptions in various OPEC+ member states such as Libya and Nigeria. At EUR 102 per megawatt hour, central European gas prices were more than four times higher compared to the previous year's quarter.
Prices eased in April and May compared to the first quarter of this year, thanks to milder weather, healthy LNG inflows into Europe, and lower demand in China due to the lockdowns. June saw prices rallying again, driven by further reductions of Russian natural gas supplies to Europe. Before I comment on the refining indicator margin, I want to make you aware that starting with the second quarter, as Urals is no longer a relevant reference for OMV refining margins, OMV Petrom changed the crude oil transfer price from Urals to Brent. As a consequence, our group refining indicator margin calculation is now entirely based on Brent. The change triggered a profit shift between refining and marketing and exploration and production, with a neutral impact at group level.
Historical financial results of the segments have not been adjusted, but the refining indicator margins for previous periods have been recalculated, and our comments will refer to those going forward. The European refining indicator margin soared from $2.2 per barrel in the second quarter of 2021 to $20.5 per barrel in the second quarter of this year. This was primarily triggered by surging middle distillate and gasoline cracks, which offset the increase in Brent price. Following the announcement of the EU ban on Russian oil imports by the end of this year, the diesel cracks surged to a record high. The gasoline cracks also rose to a record high at the beginning of June, as demand had been ramping up ahead of the summer peak driving season in the U.S. and Europe, further supported by growing U.S. import requirements from Europe.
The European olefin indicator margins increased substantially year-on-year, with ethylene up 38% and propylene up 47%. Strong European demand, supply shortages, and logistical constraints led to higher olefin prices, which were able to more than offset increases in naphtha prices. The European polyolefin indicator margins normalized from the record high level of the prior year quarter, when the global supply chain experienced severe bottlenecks caused by the winter storm on the U.S. Gulf Coast, the blockage of the Suez Canal, and shortages of container ships. Year-on-year, the European polyethylene indicator margin decreased by 45%, and the polypropylene indicator margin by 39%, impacted by rising feedstock prices, softer demand, and increased imports from the Middle East and the U.S.
I would like to point out that despite this decline, indicator margins for polyolefins were substantially above historical averages from the last five years. In addition, 40% of our polyolefin sales are specialty products which have more stable and higher margins. Not directly linked to the market indicators. In the second quarter of this year, our clean CCS operating result rose sharply to EUR 2.9 billion and the cash flow from operating activities, excluding net working capital effects, soared to around EUR 2.4 billion. Looking at operations year-on-year, total polyolefin sales volumes slightly increased while fuel sales were slightly lower, impacted by the incident at the Schwechat Refinery. The utilization rate of our European crackers and refineries decreased due to the planned turnarounds and the incident at the refinery.
Oil and gas production was lower, primarily due to the exclusion of the Russian volumes following a change in the consolidation method. Following a successful IPO, Borouge was listed on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange on June 3rd, with a market capitalization of $20 billion at the time of listing. The IPO raised gross proceeds of $2 billion for 10% of the company's total issued share capital. The IPO facilitates the expansion of the company and the ongoing efforts in providing innovative and differentiated polyolefin solutions. Upon listing, ADNOC owns a majority 54% stake, and Borealis a 36% stake in Borouge Plc. The Borouge 4 project was carved out of Borouge Plc. OMV still holds a 40% stake in Borouge 4 LLC. An important milestone in our growth strategy in chemicals and materials was reached a week ago.
Baystar started commercial operations at the new ethane cracker with an annual production capacity of 1 million tons of ethylene. The ethylene will be used as feedstock to supply Baystar's existing polyethylene units, as well as the new 625,000-ton Borstar polyethylene unit, scheduled to start operations in Bayport, Texas, until end of this year. Baystar will run a world-scale 1 million-ton ethane to polyethylene integrated production complex. We are pleased to bring Borealis' proprietary Borstar technology to North America for the first time, allowing Baystar to produce enhanced polyethylene products for the most demanding applications, such as wire and cables.
Executing on our strategic direction to become a leader in circular economy solutions in May, we agreed to form a new joint venture with Reclay Group, the international experts in waste management, with the aim of designing a smart systems thinking approach to ensure more post-consumer lightweight packaging is sorted and recycled into high-quality materials. This complements the cooperation we signed with Alba Recycling in the first quarter to jointly build and operate an innovative sorting plant in Germany with a capacity of 200,000 tons of post-consumer mixed waste per year. Looking at divestments, in May, we closed the sale of 285 retail stations located in southern Germany to EG Group with a purchase price of EUR 485 million.
At the beginning of June, we received a binding offer from Czech-based group AGROFERT for the acquisition of Borealis' nitrogen business. The offer values the business on an enterprise value basis at EUR 810 million. We expect to close the deal in the second half of this year. Let's now turn to our financial performance in the second quarter of this year. Our clean CCS Operating Result rose sharply to EUR 2.9 billion, an increase of more than EUR 1.6 billion compared with the second quarter of 2021, which was significantly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. All three business segments contributed to the strong performance, with the largest contribution coming from exploration and production. The clean CCS Group tax rate increased to 37%, which was four percentage points higher than in the same quarter last year.
This was due to a significantly larger earnings contribution from exploration and production, especially from high tax regime countries, partly offset by a higher contribution from refining and marketing and from at equity accounted investments. Clean CCS net income attributable to stockholders more than doubled to EUR 1.4 billion. Clean CCS earnings per share surged to EUR 4.34. Let's now discuss the performance of our business segments. The clean operating result of chemicals and materials decreased by 7% to EUR 602 million. Considering that the second quarter in 2021 was a peak at unseen levels, the result of this year's quarter were very strong. While European polyolefin margins normalized from the record highs of last year, the contribution from the nitrogen business and from Borealis JVs increased considerably. The performance of OMV's Base Chemicals business was slightly higher.
The stronger market environment was, to a large extent, offset by reduced production at Schwechat, higher costs of the feedstock mix, and higher customer discounts resulting from the rising olefin prices. The negative impacts of the customer discounts was largely recovered in our polyolefin business, as the majority of the olefins are sold to Borealis. In addition, lower benzene margins had an impact on the result. The contribution of Borealis, excluding the joint ventures, decreased slightly by 4% to EUR 412 million. Normalized polyolefin margins and the lower contribution from the Base Chemicals business were almost compensated for by the exceptional performance of the nitrogen business and higher positive inventory effects. In Borealis' Base Chemicals business, strong increases in olefin indicator margins were outweighed by the planned Stenungsund cracker turnaround, negative inventory valuation effects, and higher discounts to the polyolefin business.
The performance of polyolefins declined due to substantially lower polyolefin indicator margins, partially offset by higher inventory effects and lower feedstock costs. The high share of specialty products in our portfolio enables higher and more stable realized margins due to the higher performance they provide. Sales volumes, excluding JVs, declined by 7% compared to the exceptionally strong prior year quarter, mainly in the consumer products and infrastructure segments, while volumes in energy segment saw slight increases. The contribution of the JVs rose by 18% to EUR 159 million due to the improved performance of Borouge and a stronger dollar. Sales volumes of the JVs increased by 23%. While in the previous year, Borouge sales volumes were impacted negatively by the implementation of an ERP system and logistical constraints in the second quarter of 2022, Borouge benefited from the startup of the new polypropylene plant.
Realized premium to benchmark prices improved, reflecting the differentiated product mix and the ability to capture regional price opportunities. Borstar experienced a softer market environment as increased ethane prices weighed on margins, while sales volumes remained at a similar level. The clean CCS Operating Result in Refining & Marketing increased by EUR 579 million year-on-year to EUR 745 million, mainly due to substantially higher refining indicator margins, an exceptionally strong result in gas and power Eastern Europe, and a significantly higher contribution from OMV Refining & Marketing. These effects were partially offset by the costs for the refinery turnaround, the impact of the incident in Schwechat of around EUR 90 million, and significantly lower retail results. Total sales volumes were down 5%, primarily as a consequence of lower supply availability in Schwechat.
The retail results decreased due to substantially lower margins, higher costs for utilities, and slightly lower volumes impacted as well by the divestment of the German OMV retail network in May. Retail margins came under pressure due to price caps in some countries and substantially increased product quotations. This was partly offset by improved non-fuel business performance, driven by rebounded customer frequency. The commercial business showed a slightly lower contribution, mainly due to price caps on gasoline and diesel in Hungary and Slovenia, partially compensated for by higher jet fuel demand. The contribution from OMV Refining and Trading improved from -EUR 5 million to +EUR 112 million, driven by higher refining margins, further efficiency improvements, and the stronger performance of OMV Trading.
The result of the gas and power business in Romania rose substantially to EUR 167 million, mainly due to higher gas margins as well as better power results. The result of the power business was driven by higher selling prices and production volumes, partly offset by the newly introduced power overtaxation regulation in Romania. The clean operating result of Exploration and Production rose considerably to EUR 1.6 billion from EUR 512 million in the second quarter of 2021. The driving factors were significantly higher realized oil and natural gas prices, and a stronger dollar with a total effect of more than EUR 1.5 billion. Lower sales volumes and a negative result in the gas business partly offset the positive contribution.
Compared with the second quarter of 2021, OMV's realized oil price increased by 78%, and thus more than Brent. Supported by the change in the transfer price from euros to Brent at OMV Petrom. The realized gas price rose nearly four-fold compared with the prior year quarter, mainly driven by the exclusion of Russian volumes from the group production and the termination of gas hedges. Production volumes decreased by 145,000- 345,000 BOE per day, primarily due to the change in the consolidation method of Russian operations and the force majeure in Libya. Planned maintenance work in Malaysia and New Zealand, an unplanned outage in Norway, and natural decline in Romania contributed to the decline. Production increased in the United Arab Emirates after a revision of OPEC restrictions.
Production cost rose to $8.3 per barrel, impacted by the exclusion of the low-cost Russian barrels. Sales volumes were lower following the production decline and fewer liftings in Libya. The gas marketing business in Western Europe recorded a significant loss of EUR 170 million. In addition to the impact of supply curtailment of around EUR 50 million, which we announced at our trading update, we recorded customary half-year impairments of receivables triggered by high gas prices and changes in customer credit ratings and mark-to-market valuation adjustments. Turning to cash flows. Our second quarter operating cash flow, excluding net working capital effects amounted to almost EUR 2.4 billion, 37% higher than the previous year's quarter, primarily driven by high commodity prices.
This includes dividends from Borouge for the second quarter in the amount of EUR 256 million and tax payments in Norway of around EUR 600 million. Net working capital effects generated a tremendously high cash outflow in the amount of EUR 1.9 billion, predominantly due to the sharp increase in gas prices. As a result, cash flow from operating activities for the quarter declines to around half a billion euros. Looking at the half-year picture, cash flow from operating activities, excluding net working capital effects, amounted to EUR 5.7 billion, up by around EUR 2.3 billion compared to the first half of 2021. Despite the sizable cash outflow of around EUR 2.6 billion, net working capital effects, cash flow from operating activities rose by 19% to EUR 3.1 billion.
The organic cash flow from investing activities generated an outflow of around EUR 1.3 billion, slightly higher than the same period of last year, driven by the investments in the PDH plant in Belgium, the ReOil project, and the Schwechat turnaround. After payment of EUR 1.1 billion of dividends to shareholders and minorities, the organic free cash flow amounted to EUR 743 million. The inorganic cash flow from investing activities generated an inflow of EUR 1.1 billion in the first six months of this year.
This was driven by inflows recorded in the second quarter from the Borouge Plc IPO in the amount of EUR 745 million, a partial loan repayment from Baystar of EUR 602 million, as well as the divestment of the OMV retail network in Germany of EUR 416 million. The cash flow from investing activities also includes outflows from the capital contribution to Borouge 4 LLC in the amount of EUR 287 million, and cash disposed of in the amount of EUR 208 million related to the loss of control of Russian operations recorded in the first quarter. Consequently, the free cash flow after dividends in the first six months of this year amounted to EUR 1.9 billion, almost double the figure in the same period of last year.
Moving on to the balance sheet. In the second quarter, following a very strong cash flow, we were able to reduce Net Debt by around EUR 600 million since March this year to EUR 4.6 billion. As a result, our leverage ratio decreased by 3 percentage points to 15%. We expect to close the divestment of our Slovenian business and of the Nitrogen business this year, which will have a further deleveraging effect. At the end of June 2022, OMV had a cash position of EUR 6.5 billion and EUR 4.2 billion in undrawn committed credit facilities. Let me conclude with an update of our outlook for this year. Based on the developments we have seen so far, we now expect an average Brent price of above $100 per barrel for 2022.
Our expectation for the average realized gas price is unchanged, around EUR 45 per megawatt hour for the full year. In chemicals and materials, we now estimate the European olefin indicator margins to be above the 2021 level. The guidance for the European polyethylene indicator margin is unchanged at around EUR 400 per ton, while the one for polypropylene is now forecast to be lower at around EUR 500 per ton. Looking at operations, the utilization rate of our steam crackers is anticipated to increase in the second half of the year following the return to operations of the Stenungsund cracker in July, and the expected restart of the Schwechat refinery to full operations in September-October. The Burghausen steam cracker is currently undergoing plant maintenance in line with the refinery turnaround.
During the refinery turnaround, we are also expanding our steam cracker capacity by around 50,000 tons per year. The polyolefin sales volumes, excluding JVs, are now projected to be slightly below the 2021 level, which had benefited from an extremely tight market. The polyolefin sales volumes of the joint ventures are estimated to slightly increase compared to the 2021 level, supported by the startup of the new polypropylene plant at Borouge. In North America, we will see an increase in ethylene sales at Baystar until the new Baystar polyethylene plant will come on stream, expected until end of this year. The refining indicator margin is projected to be around $15 per barrel in 2022. The Schwechat refinery is anticipated to run at full utilization again in September, October.
The maintenance turnaround of Burghausen started on June 22nd and is expected to be completed in August. Total fuel sales volumes are projected to be slightly lower than in 2021 due to the reduced supply following the Schwechat incident. Retail margins are estimated to be substantially below the 2021 level, and commercial margins are expected to be below the 2021 level. In exploration and production, our average production guidance remains unchanged at around 390,000 barrels per day in 2022. The production forecast assumes that following the lifting of the force majeure in Libya this month, we can increase production to normal levels of around 30,000-35,000 barrels per day. As a result, we expect higher liftings in Libya in the third quarter.
Total production in the third quarter is expected to be significantly above the level seen in the second quarter. Production in New Zealand and Malaysia resumed after the planned turnarounds, and in Norway, the technical issues at the Edvard Grieg field have been resolved. No significant maintenance planned in the third quarter. The organic CapEx is expected to be around EUR 3.7 billion, reflecting the consolidation of the nitrogen business for a longer period than initially projected, additional costs following the Schwechat refinery incident, and higher costs in exploration and production due to FX effects. This amount includes non-cash leases of around EUR 600 million, which are expected to decrease next year by around EUR 400 million. The clean tax rate for the full year is expected to be in the high 40s%. Before closing, I would like to briefly comment on the gas supply situation.
In the last few months, we have worked intensively on various measures to minimize the impact of gas supply cuts from Russia on our customers and on OMV. First, we reduced the risk of gas supplies from Russia. We have two contracts, one for Germany and one for Austria, delivered to the respective hubs. The pricing is hub-based one month ahead. There is no oil link, nor a fixed price. We sell the volumes months ahead, and we hedge a portion of our sales in order to adjust to a potential reduction in supply. This means our financial risk is limited to a maximum of 30 days. To reduce the risk of this hedging, we drastically cut the so-called margin calls, which were quite common in the past. We have minimized that exposure, and today, we mainly use OTC hedges.
This means you do not need to inject further money for the margin calls in the event of a price rise. Second, we worked on the diversification of our natural gas supply. Two weeks ago, we took a major step in that direction. For the coming gas year, we have secured 40 TWh of European transport capacities via pipelines from Germany and Italy to Austria. These capacities enable the transport of the gas we produce in Norway, as well as purchased LNG quantities to Austria. For OMV and for Austria, this is an important step towards more independence because OMV would be able to cover all of its customer delivery obligations in Austria, which corresponds to almost half of the country's total annual demand.
Third, we started filling our storages back in March, and we are currently at a level of more than 80%, which is equivalent to around 20 TWh. Fourth, we have made good progress on ensuring that we are able to run our operations at our major production sites with limited volumes of natural gas. Our crackers in Austria and Germany are supplied with naphtha, while the ones in Stenungsund and Porvoo are able to use naphtha, butane, ethane, propane or LPG mix. The PDH plant in Belgium is based entirely on propane. In our western refineries, we have been able to replace some of the natural gas with LPG, steam cracker gases and naphtha. Thank you for your attention. Reinhard and I will now be happy to take your questions.
Thanks a lot, Alfred. Let's now come to your questions. As always, I'd like you to limit your questions to always two at a time, then you can always re-queue for a follow-up question. The first question comes from Josh Stone, Barclays.
Yeah, thanks, Florian, and good morning. Two questions, please. Firstly, you talked about securing the gas capacity into Austria from other places by sort of reversing pipelines. Can you just talk about what are the guarantees you have that that gas can actually flow, or how confident are you that that gas can flow if it needs to? And maybe how much did you spend or how much did it cost you to get this pipeline capacity? Secondly, on the working capital build, you know, it was well flagged, but is it reasonable to think that the working capital builds again at 3Q?
Maybe just let us know where is gas storage levels or where were they at the end of the quarter, and where do you think they'll be at the end of 3Q, to help us on that? Thank you.
I'll start with the gas capacities to Austria, and maybe Reinhard Florey can take the working capital question then, following this. What we did, Josh Stone, is that we participated in an annual auction, and we were successful in securing 40 TWh of pipeline capacity from Germany and Italy into Austria. This is the basis for a diversification of supply sources to Austria as we are a landlocked country here. It makes it possible then to also utilize Norwegian gas, both from our own production but also from supply contracts that we have with other regional producers such as Equinor in Norway.
It also makes it possible to bring volume from the LNG capacities that we have on the Gates terminal in Rotterdamm. Currently, we are supplying those direct customer quantities from our Gazprom contracts, and this is now giving us an option to secure the supply in case this Gazprom supply should be reduced too much or fall away. The regulatory situation may have an influence on this, as you point out.
If the level three of the security of supply regulation comes in place, there is to a degree intervention then of the governments how the gas is allocated to different sectors or customers. At this point, the government would take over this allocation, and we would also of course then be relieved of our supply obligations.
Yeah. Josh, maybe to your question on working capital. If you look into the recent history, you can see that in the past four quarters, we had working capital cash outflow in each of those four quarters, last four quarters. However, the biggest negative increment was in this second quarter, where we had in total net working capital build-up of EUR 1.9 billion, out of which around EUR 1.6 billion are attributable to the gas storage. We have built up significant levels of gas storage. As Alfred said, gas storage levels of around 80%. Now, when we are looking into Q3, will that still rise?
Yes, there will be an additional volumes that we intend to store because of the preparation for winter and the preparation for independence from the volatility and the curtailment of Russian gas deliveries are important to OMV, also in serving our customers. I'm expecting that on the E&P side, of course, very much depending on commodity prices, an increase in working capital will happen. We of course will also see effects from R&M, because in R&M you can imagine that with the supply that we have as an alternative supply after the damage in our Schwechat refinery. We have lowered our inventory levels, and we have to bring them back up when the refinery is up and running again. That's an effect in both Q3 and Q4.
Whereas we are expecting that working capital in the chemicals and materials business are rather reducing. Yes, Q3 probably will be still a negative cash out on net working capital.
That's very clear. Very clear.
Thanks, Josh. We now come to Mehdi Ennebati at Bank of America.
Good afternoon all. Thanks for taking my questions. First question is just yeah maybe a follow-up you know on your gas inventory level which are now above 80%. Should we consider that this could help you to get you know quite nice gas marketing business in the second half of this year if the gas price keeps increasing? Or did you already hedge your gas margin for that gas you know currently underground? I am asking because the loss in your gas marketing business in the second quarter is creating a little bit of confusion here. If you can help us that would be great. The second question is on the chemical business.
Can you maybe, you know, explain us why or what are the reasons, you know, of the decrease in the polymer margin, polypropylene margin that you are expecting in the second half? While, you know, at the same time, the monomer margin remains quite resilient if I am not mistaken. It would be good also to have your view here. Thank you.
Yes, sure, Mehdi. Thanks for the question. Regarding the gas effects, of course, whatever we put in storage in our gas business, we have already sold forward and with that also hedged. You can imagine that, of course, we are trying to also get positive results from that in the current environment. That certainly also is possible. But there is not an exposure to the volatility of gas price now to what we have stored or what we are storing, because that is immediately hedged. This is a little bit different, and there might be some part of the confusion with the gas supply.
You remember that I mentioned that there is some negative effects on our gas business from the curtailments on the Russian volumes. Of course, in principle, if you have a month ahead contract and a month ahead supply, then you immediately hedge that to avoid the exposure to a market volatility. However, if then volumes are being reduced, then you have to make up for that loss in buying gas on the market to be able to supply your customers that you have contracts with.
In that sense, there has been a loss of around EUR 50 million from these kind of hedges that we have made, and that is why also Alfred has indicated that we are now dynamically reducing also the hedging on these contracts to reduce this exposure to this volatility in anticipation of further curtailments, which we, I think, have met quite well. This is the areas that we are seeing.
You might then wonder why the gas business is even less than the minus EUR 50 million, because we also had to apply IFRS 9, which is more or less collective liabilities or collective write-downs when it comes to credit risk of some of the counterparties that you can imagine are also suffering there. Part of the loss of around EUR 150 million in the gas business is also attributable to this.
Thank you.
Okay, Mehdi. Yeah, I take the second question, Mehdi, on chemicals, on polypropylene specifically. As you point out, we have taken down the guidance for the full year to EUR 500 per ton for the rest of the year. Before I explain it, I want to make sure to point out that we are talking here about the standard polypropylene margins that you have in the market, right? When you look at this margin development and look, for example, at the Q2 result, you can see that our business is much more resilient to those moves because we have 40% of specialty contribution here with a higher margin contribution that does not follow exactly these things.
On the standard polymer on this indicator margin, why do we believe it has come under pressure? It is so that we see a certain headwinds for the demand situation and at the same time improvement in the logistics situation that we see some more imports coming into Europe in with the polypropylene also. I do want to point out that we have at the same time now also increased our indicator margins for ethylene and propylene, which are input materials, right? Input cost into making polypropylene. We think there's a bit of a pricing shift from polypropylene into propylene.
With this, we still get quite a good situation in this integrated supply chain for the rest of the year.
Perfect. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Mehdi. Next is Peter Low, Redburn.
Hey, thanks for taking my questions. Yeah, the first, sorry to get back to this, which is another terrifying one just on gas. I'm just trying to better understand your exposure in, I guess, the tail risk event that there's a full Russian cutoff of volumes. You talked about being able to use gas from storage or from other hubs, but that would still likely put you in a position where you're buying some gas from the spot market to fulfill your obligations. Am I thinking about that the right way, and is there any way you can eliminate kind of that exposure or risk entirely? If that's linked to that, kind of what are the pricing terms you're offering to your customers at the moment?
Are they fixed prices or are they linked to underlying spot? That would be my first kind of question. The second is hopefully a bit more straightforward. The reduction in the effective tax rate quarter-on-quarter was a bit greater than I expected. Can you just give any guidance on how you expect that to evolve through the second half of the year? Thanks.
Peter. Let me start with the gas topic. As I briefly explained, the major exposure that we have is actually this month ahead pricing situation. That has nothing to do with fixed prices or any kind of oil-linked prices or something like that. We don't have any of that. We have, of course, only spot-related pricing in our contract.
If your question is what happens if the Russian supply is fully cut off, then I would say the burden that we have to take is actually the rest of margins, the rest of hedges that we still have on the volumes that we have hedged because we of course cannot do that on zero when there is gas still flowing, that we have to buy this kind of volumes still on the market. Now, it is important to see that we are trying to reduce this exposure with anticipations that we have on curtailment. Of course, it's very hard to fit that 100%.
Therefore, we expect that there will be some negative effects, but, maybe, also comparable to what I have explained for, June, respectively quarter two. Your question was on the tax rate. Indeed, we came out with a lower tax rate in Q2 than, compared to Q1. In principle, there are three major reasons for that. The first is if you compare our results, Q1 versus Q2, in Q2, we have a clearly higher share of R&M and also chemicals in there, which traditionally have lower tax rates than, the E&P business. The second is that in the R&M, we, of course, have also a higher result because of better results of ADNOC Refining.
In ADNOC Refining, as this is a minority share, this is already fully taxed as we get it and as we show it, so there is no tax on that. On average then your tax rate also goes down. Specifically on E&P, if you look at where the volumes have been coming in Q2 versus Q1, there have been significantly lower volumes from Libya, and we all know Libya is a high tax country, and more from Romania, and this is comparably lower. Those are the key topics. Maybe still one comment that the tax rate that we are showing, of course, is totally detached from the tax payment that we are showing. The tax rate shows the tax liabilities and not the tax payments, because Alfred has mentioned that we paid more tax in Norway.
Yes, because the tax schedules which we are undergoing in each of the countries, of course, give us a schedule on what we pay when. But the total liabilities we show in the tax rate, so this is, I would say, independent of what we have to, in a certain period, pay the relevant tax rate.
Thank you. That's very helpful.
Thanks, Peter. We now come to Henri Patricot, UBS.
Yes, everyone, thank you for the presentation. I have two questions, please. The first one on refining and the Schwechat refinery. You're expecting full utilization September, October. You were talking previously about the second half of the third quarter. So I wonder if you could expand on what's proving a bit more challenging in terms of getting the Schwechat back on stream or is taking a little bit longer, what's the risk here that it could take a bit longer than you think? And the second one, I wanted to ask about the realized gas price guidance that you've left unchanged at EUR 45 for the year.
I understand that it's only part of your production that's linked to European spot prices, but we've seen a very significant increase in prices recently. Why did you decide to leave that guidance unchanged? Thank you.
Let me maybe just start with the refining incident. Here, the incident happened beginning of June, and then immediately we put a task force in place that is looking at multiple things. Two of the key parts that they look at is to build up an alternative supply system and the second one to come with a repair concept. We are making very good progress along the repair concept and the plan where we are moving forward. As you imagine, right, as we move forward, in the beginning of June, we did not have all the insights that we have.
We have now become a little bit more cautious to say end of September, October, because we are now fully understanding and have a more solid plan that is allowing us to make that prediction. We believe in the startup by end September, October is a realistic time frame. Also, we were able to build that alternative supply system to ensure that we have the capability to supply the market and our customers to this. On the realized gas price, Reinhard will try and explain this to you.
Sure, Henri. If we are looking at the realized gas price, you have seen a strong hike between Q1 and Q2. The main reason actually was that the Russian volumes were deconsolidated, and therefore, the relatively low realized gas price that was in Russia, partly from the buffer price, but also 50% Russian domestic price, which is very low, are falling away. That has increased in average very much the realized gas price. Now, looking ahead, this realized gas price is anticipated to be a little bit lower in the coming quarters. The reason for that actually is a positive one, that we have more volumes from Malaysia and more volumes from New Zealand compared to Q2, but both are in regulated price environments and not in the European hub price environments.
The average of the realized gas price will slightly decrease, but the volumes will go up.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks, Henri. The next questions come from Raphaël DuBois, Société Générale.
Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. The first one will be on significant cash inflows to expect in the second part of the year. You mentioned you expect to close the transactions for nitrogen and the Slovenian filling stations. Can you maybe say whether we should expect further loan repayment from Baystar? And also, any dividends may be to be received from ADNOC Refining and Trading now that it starts to contribute nicely to your results? That will be my first question. Secondly, it's again about this gas situation. Just to better understand who is going to bear the extra cost of the gas access?
I understand that you have secured the volumes, but when it comes to importing gas that will be transported via this new pipeline access, presumably it will be more expensive. In the end, will it be you, the customer, or the Austrian government that will bear the fruit of the extra cost? Thank you.
Raphaël, let me start with the cash inflows for the rest of the year, and then Alfred will comment on the gas situation. Regarding the transactions of Nitrogen and Slovenia, indeed, we are planning that those go ahead as planned. The Nitrogen business we certainly expect until end of this year. Slovenia, we actually also expect, but we are a little bit reliant there on what European Commission with their antitrust regulation will actually move forward. This is something which we cannot fully commit at the moment, but Nitrogen looks very good. But Slovenia, although we don't see an execution risk at the moment, may be a little bit of a risk of timing.
Regarding other areas, dividends from ADNOC Refining, actually, according to the dividend schedule, there is some dividends actually planned.
There of course, we are only a minority shareholder there, so we are not fully in charge and in control of the dividends as such. This is something at least where we see also an opportunity as situation has improved. Regarding the second part of the Baystar loan, this is something we are actually looking into very much how the situation of external financing is developing. You are seeing that interest rates are rising, which just have seen another significant Fed interest rate. This is something that we are quite flexible on. To be honest, that is a face value of gaining some cash. Indeed, the liability just changes from its internal to external.
I would not see that as something where we have a lot to change if we are moving along the schedule here.
Raphaël, and on the additional cost for the alternative gas supplies there, maybe what I would like to comment there is that I think it will depend a little bit on the situation that we will find ourself because some of these costs, of course, you will find reflected in the hub pricing, depending on where the gas flows come and what the demand is. As Reinhard pointed out before, all our contracts, both on the sourcing but also on the supply side, hub in some way hub based.
In any case, for this particular pipeline capacities, I want to mention a diversification law that was put into effect in Austria that was aimed to compensate for some of the additional cost for diversification of the supplies. The Austrian government has approved in this diversification law about EUR 100 million to be assigned for the diversification of gas supply and the added cost to this.
Thank you.
Thanks, Raphaël. Next is Tamás Pletser, Erste Bank.
Yes, good morning. There is only one question on my side. I remember when you had this accident in Schwechat, you received some products from the Austrian strategic reserves. Can you tell us a little bit more about this situation? Did you receive from these strategic reserves more than one times these products? How do you plan, or what is the obligation for you to give these products back? Would you pay for these strategic reserves, or would you give it back in kind, I mean, in products later on? Thank you.
Maybe I start with what happened and how it went. Maybe if I can cover everything on the costs, Reinhard may add. At the time of the accident, we were at the end of a multi-week turnaround, which also implied that our own storage was on the low side. This triggered us to immediately inform the energy ministry here in Austria about this situation and request them to make an emergency release of some quantities that are required in the market. That was also approved then and released.
At the same time as we started working on our repair concept and the alternative supply concept, we identified some weeks later that we still had some gaps in some of the product areas. Through discussions, further discussions with the government here in Austria, but also discussions in surrounding countries, we came to the conclusion that we needed some additional quantities and got also some further quantities supplied here in Austria to make sure that we can cover the required market demand and supplies. That happened so far.
The requirement is of course that we need to replenish those quantities that we have received to ensure also that they are then in the reserves again after we get through this emergency accident here. There we have slightly different kind of arrangements how we do that. Always there is a requirement to replenish the quantities.
Do you have any timing for that?
There is some time frames that are looking to replenish those in the months after the startup again of the refinery. As you will realize, right, that it is required the balancing of the supply-demand situation, the year that we can not then not use the entire capacity just to replenish. We will have a couple of months going forward from there.
Regarding the financial impact of that, as Alfred explained, this is more or less giving back in kind. All what we are doing actually is when we are taking something, then we are of course buying immediately something forward in the future at that point of time in the market. There are some small effects coming from that. Maybe some small positive effects if the market is in backwardation, but this is not a major impact.
Okay, great. Thank you very much.
Good. There's a follow-up question from Mehdi.
Yes. Hi, Mehdi again, Bank of America. Two questions, please. First one, you know, on Baystar. You will start the polyolefin, the steam cracker this year. And you have been highlighting, you know, quite several times that this is, you know, new technology, et c. Should we expect, you know, pretty high margin or let's say top range margin from Baystar relative to your other chemical assets, or no? And should we consider that most of Baystar polymer production will be kind of a specialty chemical, meaning that you will have, you know, fixed margin or no, just for me, you know, to try to model that?
The other question is, again, on the gas side, regarding what you said earlier. You said that you can fill in your contractual obligation in Austria, thanks to the new, let's say, pipeline capacities that you have been securing. What about your German obligations? Are you able, you know, to cover them? And also, when you say you are able to cover your obligations, is it from now on? Is it from 2023? And does this include, you know, your gas inventory's current level, which is particularly high, or no? Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you, Mehdi. Let me start with the Baystar joint venture there. The Baystar joint venture started off with about 400,000 ton of polyethylene capacity that was not integrated. The project that we had was to build a cracker for 1 million ton of ethylene and a Borstar polyethylene for 625,000 tons of polyethylene, Borstar polyethylene. With this, it then becomes a fully integrated 1 million ton complex that will produce polyethylene there based on ethane from U.S. source. Now, the first step, we have now succeeded in the beginning of July to start up the cracker that is converting ethane into ethylene.
The complex, while the Borstar polyethylene is not yet on stream. We are making good progress in constructing this, and we are expecting that before the end of the year, in the fourth quarter, we will start up that Borstar polyethylene plant. In this transition period, we will be long ethylene, but we will of course start supplying the already existing 400 kilotons of [PE] capacity there. In general, your statement that our aim is to make differentiated polyethylene products that are aimed for specialty segments, such as wire and cable, for example, is correct.
However, the procedure with these very big complexes is that you have to start them up and you have to get them running at full capacity, so that this will go over a couple of months before you can come to the full capacity. It is based on advantaged ethane from the U.S., and the aim is to go into differentiated products there. On the gas situation, okay, let me try and figure out if I remember all your question there. On the gas situation, you are correct.
We were talking about the 40 TWh coming to Austria and the contractual obligations that we have towards the customers here. We do also have a German contract which is built in a similar way, so we don't have any fixed price, and we don't also have any oil linked prices. Which means the exposure is also in a similar way to the 30-day ahead as Reinhard was explaining it. We believe the situation in Austria is fundamentally different because it is a landlocked country and it does require the entry capacity into Austria, either through Germany or Italy, because historically, only the entry capacities from the east were available and booked for the Gazprom contracts.
That's why this was an important step for our gas business.
Okay. Just to illustrate what I wanted to understand. Imagine Russia cuts, you know, its whole gas supply to Germany. Will you be able to supply your customers, your German customers, with natural gas, or no?
If they really this is capped 100%, I'm afraid the government will need to step in and start allocating to certain segments where they want to continue operations. That would basically relieve us from our capability of doing our own allocations.
Okay, thank you. Last question: Is there a risk? Would you say that there is a risk or there are some discussions, you know, in the Austrian government of a gas price cap for households in Austria in case, you know, gas prices keep increasing or just because, you know, gas prices, you know, are relatively high currently. I am asking because this is already the case, you know, in Romania. Why not, you know, in Austria?
Yeah, I think under the current situation with the inflation and the high energy prices, I think this discussion is taking place everywhere in Europe, but also in many other places in the world, and which is also understandable. I think the Austrian government here has so far chosen a different approach to find ways how to support low income or households that are coming to their limits in terms of spending and maintaining the things. We do not know at this point of such a idea here.
Okay, thank you very much.
Thanks, Mehdi, for your follow-up questions. I lost count on how many that were, but anyway. Now we come to Raphaël DuBois, Société Générale with another follow-up question.
Yes, thank you. Two quick follow-ups. The first one is on the inventory effect in chemicals and materials. Could you please tell us how much it was this quarter? Also on PP5 at Borouge, can you just say where you are in the ramp-up process of this unit? Because when I look at your quarterly data for polypropylene GV volumes, it's still roughly what it was in 2020. I'd just like to understand when do we see a step-up in volumes on that line?
Yeah, let me maybe start with the PP5 in Borouge and then maybe Reinhard can help me out on the inventory question in chemicals and materials. On PP5, we were actually able to start up the plant and ramp it up to the full production. What we observed at the same time in the second quarter was some curtailment of propylene supplies from the refinery in ADNOC. We expect this to improve on the way forward and with this also to then see the volume increase.
Great. Thank you.
Raphaël, on the inventory effect, you're right. There was a positive inventory effect in chemicals in the second quarter. It's in the range of some EUR 50 million. We are expecting that this falls away in Q3 because we are not expecting that the prices are going up further. This is something where we have to adjust then in the expectations.
Brilliant. Thank you.
Thank you, Raphaël. Now, we come to Bertrand Hodée, Kepler Cheuvreux.
Yes. Hello, everyone. I have just one question left again on gas hedging on a month ahead. You indicated at Q2 trading update a loss of around EUR 50 million in Q2 to cover your month ahead exposure after Gazprom curtailed volumes. Can you give us any color if you had a similar impact in July?
I cannot give you exact details, of course, Bertrand. If you follow what has happened in July, then you see that there was again volatility. Every volatility actually is something that is taking us off path from an expected level of hedge. You can expect that there is a negative impact from that also in July, on the gas side. As said, we are trying to mitigate that by also having different levels of hedges according to the anticipation of how curtailments would come.
Okay, fair enough. Thank you very much.
We now come to the end of our conference call. Thanks a lot for joining us today. If you have follow-up questions, the investor relations team is happy to help. Have a good day. Thanks again.