PetroChina's 2018 Net Profit Up 131%
State-owned PetroChina March 21 said it 2018 net profit more than doubled thanks to higher realised oil and prices.
Net profit attributable to owners of the company was yuan 52.59bn ($7.84bn), representing a sharp increase of 130.7% year-on-year. PetroChina’s revenue last year was yuan 2.35 trillion, up 16.8% year-on-year.
Average realised oil price in 2018 was up 34% year-on-year while realised gas price was up almost 11% on 2017, PetroChina said. PetroChina’s output of crude oil reached 890mn barrels, up 0.4% year-on-year. Marketable natural gas output was 3.6 trillion ft3, up 5.4% year-on-year. The oil and gas equivalent output increased by 2.3% year-on-year to 1.5bn barrels, including 200mn barrels from overseas operations, representing an increase of 7.8% year-on-year, which accounted for 13.7% of the company’s total oil and gas equivalent output.
For 2019, PetroChina expects global economy to recover slowly with the economic environment still facing risks and challenges. “As supply and demand in the global oil market gets eased up, the international oil price is likely to demonstrate a wide-ranging volatility and remains uncertain to a large extent,” it said.
China’s demand for natural gas, which has been trending higher since early-2017, is expected to remain strong in 2019 as well, PetroChina said
In 2019, PetroChina expects its crude oil output to be 905.9mn barrels and natural gas output to be 3.8 trillion ft3. It plans to boost capital spending to yuan 300bn this year, up 17% from last year.