"One should do what fulfills him," says Ivana Kečkešová

The year 2025 was exceptionally successful for our division from both a financial and operational perspective. We achieved significant growth in production, revenue and profitability, and our overall results significantly exceeded the original plan. EBITDA reached CZK 1.7 billion, with our operations in Ukraine being the main driver of this outstanding performance.

At the start of 2023, the decommissioning of three wells in the Ždánice area was successfully completed. This symbolically marked the end of a chapter in the long history of oil and gas extraction in this region. Each well had a different history and significance, but what they had in common was that they had fulfilled their purpose and, upon reaching the end of their life cycle, were professionally and safely secured in a permanent state.

The site is awaiting reclamation and restoration to nature. After almost seven decades, mining at the Lanžhot deposit, the southernmost oil deposit in the Czech Republic, is coming to an end. In a remote forest area at the confluence of the Dyje and Kyjovka rivers, in a location that is located in a protected zone and whose administration is becoming increasingly demanding from a legislative point of view, only a few wells remain today. These will be gradually closed in the coming years and the entire area will be prepared for reclamation.

More space, more light and room for growth. On 18 November this year, MND Ukraine officially opened its new modern offices in Lviv. The spacious, wood-panelled and airy premises offer employees significantly better working conditions and a representative setting for meetings. The new headquarters in the very centre of the city also allows for further planned growth of the team.

The MND Group has been operating in Ukraine for over ten years and, despite the war, it has managed not only to maintain operations but also to gradually develop gas production. However, everyday work takes place in conditions that most of us in Czechia or Germany can hardly imagine. We talked to Volodya Stebletsky, Technical Director of MND Ukraine, about how MND Ukraine works today, what is most difficult and what gives them the strength to continue.

Four times more crude oil than before is sent by MND from the Lusatian railway station to Kralupy nad Vltavou these weeks. The reason for this is the termination of transport via the Druzhba pipeline. All the crude oil produced must be transported by tanker - first by truck, then by rail.

In March 2025, the abandonment of three production wells in the Prušánky area was successfully completed - specifically wells Prušánky 4b, 6 and 8. Together, these probes opened and produced the Labe horizon in the Middle Baden on the subsiding crust of the Schrattenberg fault system.

In June, colleagues used a unique method at the Krumvíř 3 well - for the first time in the history of MND, a thermal isolation method using a bismuth-tin alloy was applied. And as it turned out, it not only works, but has the potential to solve a whole range of technical challenges. The first deployment took place in challenging conditions that conventional methods would have found difficult to handle - or even at all.

This report brings you the first part of the interesting winemakers who work in our group. We start in Čejkovice, where father and son, Jiří and Petr Št'avík, cultivate their lines. Petr works in MND as the head of the mechanical department and Jiří is the manager of the Dambořice storage facility.

During the day he looks underground and works on dynamic models of bearings, after work he takes his camera and looks up at the stars. In his spare time, MND bearing engineer Milan Pagáč is an astrophotographer. He combines two hobbies: photography and his interest in space observation, which has been with him since childhood. His pictures are well known to many MND employees - they have appeared in the calendars of Drilling, where Milan's wife also works.