PetroChina profit tumbles in Q3

PetroChina, Asia’s largest oil and gas producer, reported a sharp fall in third-quarter profit, dragged down by weaker global energy prices and slowing growth in its domestic gas market.

Net profit for the July to September quarter was 8.83 billion yuan ($1.25 billion), down 58.4% compared with the same period a year ago and the weakest quarterly results this year, according to a company filing with Hong Kong stock exchange. For the first nine months of 2019, net income fell 23.4% from a year earlier to 37.25 billion yuan, the state firm said.

“Amid an increasingly complex and rigid global economic and trade environment international oil prices have fallen over last year,” the company said.

“Domestically, China’s refined fuel supply capacity is in severe overcapacity and growth in the natural gas market is slowing.”

Revenue for the quarter edged up 1.8% from a year ago to 618.14 billion yuan. For the first nine months, revenue rose 5.1% to 1.81 trillion yuan.

PetroChina also said its natural gas import business recorded a 21.76 billion yuan net loss during the January-September period, deepening from a 19.96 billion loss recorded for the same period in 2018 due to a weaker Chinese currency and higher import cost.

In a briefing to analysts on Thursday, PetroChina officials said the gas losses mostly occurred in the third quarter, adding the firm will step up efforts to boost domestic production and further optimise its fourth quarter operations to serve demand, which typically peaks during the winter heating season.

“We’ll raise the domestic gas sales prices (in the fourth quarter) to levels higher than a year earlier and divert higher-cost long-term imported gas to regions with higher affordability,” Wang Kaisheng, a finance director of PetroChina told analysts.

Reuters