China’s two oil giants, state-owned PetroChina and China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), have seen a sharp rise in net profit for the first nine months of 2022, boosted by strong global energy prices as well as expanding oil and natural gas output, according to the two companies’ recent financial reports.
In the first three quarters, the revenue of PetroChina rose 30.6 percent year-on-year to 2.46 trillion yuan ($339.4 billion), while profits increased 60 percent to 120 billion yuan. CNOOC’s revenue hit 265.8 billion yuan from January to September, up 67.6 percent year-on-year, while profits doubled to 108.7 billion yuan.
The profits at the two companies have exceeded those for the whole of 2021, when net profit for PetroChina was 92.17 billion yuan, and for CNOOC it was 70.32 billion yuan.
Analysts said that the surging profits for China’s oil giants should be maintained for two to three quarters, as demand at home is still rising.
PetroChina’s domestic crude oil output increased 2.7 percent during the first nine months, while gas output was up 5.1 percent to 3,296 billion cubic feet. CNOOC’s output of oil and gas equipment was 461.5 million barrels from January to September, up 9.3 percent compared with the same period last year, setting a new record high.
PetroChina said in its financial report released on Thursday that in the first three quarters, the company has effectively coped with the complicated external situation, and has strived to overcome sliding demand in the oil refinery market and the impact of natural disasters and flooding. It has also expanded oil exploration and optimized the industrial chain, so as to ensure the safe and stable supply of oil and natural gas resources.
The company also continued to promote refinery transformation and upgrading. PetroChina on Wednesday started trial runs of a key crude oil processing unit, part of its greenfield refinery complex in South China’s Guangdong Province with a capacity of 400,000 barrels per day (bpd). And it began trial operation of a 200,000 bpd crude oil unit.
In the first three quarters, CNOOC made 14 new discoveries and successfully evaluated 20 oil and gas fields. A total of six projects have been successfully put into production, and another seven projects are progressing steadily. In the third quarter, a total of five new discoveries were made and four oil and gas fields were successfully evaluated.
Overseas, two new discoveries, Seabob and Kiru Kiru, were made in the Stabroek block in Guyana, which once again confirmed the exploration potential of the block.
Source: Global Times