Like the other Chinese state oil majors, PetroChina-the country's largest oil and gas producer-has also benefited from the higher crude oil prices and strong refining margins this year, reporting doubled net profit for the first half of 2018 and the best quarterly performance in the second quarter since Q2 2015.
PetroChina, in which China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) holds 81.5 percent, reported on Thursday a net profit of US$3.96 billion (27.088 billion yuan) for H1 2018, up by a whopping 113.7 percent compared to H1 2017.
According to Reuters calculations based on the company's six-month income statement, PetroChina's second quarter net profit more than doubled to US$2.48 billion (16.94 billion yuan)-the best quarterly performance since the second quarter of 2015.
PetroChina's domestic crude oil production dropped by 1.3 percent in the first half of 2018, but domestic natural gas production rose by 2.5 percent, the company said in its H1 2018 earnings filing. Including overseas operations, the group's crude oil production inched up 0.4 percent, while natural gas production increased by 3 percent. Crude oil processing at PetroChina-the second-biggest oil refiner in China-jumped 16.1 percent to 551.6 million barrels of crude oil, while sales of refined oil products, including gasoline, diesel, and kerosene, rose 10.7 percent.
In the second half of 2018, PetroChina will look to boost natural gas production and will closely follow oil market developments.
Earlier this week, PetroChina's sidekick-China's biggest refiner Sinopec-reported a 54-percent jump in net profits for the second quarter of the year thanks to the rise in the price of oil.
Those positive results were preceded by offshore oil and gas firm CNOOC last week, which reported a 57-percent surge in its consolidated net profit for the first half of 2018, booking the best half-year profit since the first half of 2015.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. More