BEIJING: PetroChina, Asia’s largest oil and gas producer, plans to boost its capital expenditure to a near record 300 billion yuan ($45 billion) in 2019, up 17 per cent from last year, a company filing to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange showed.
The surge in spending came as PetroChina pledged to ramp up oil and gas production and reserves to answer Beijing’s call for greater energy security.
PetroChina’s fourth-quarter net earnings, though, fell 18 per cent from the same period the previous year to 4.46 billion yuan, making it the worst quarterly performance since the third quarter of 2016, Reuters calculations showed.
The Chinese producer’s fourth-quarter revenue, meanwhile, rose to 644 billion yuan, compared to 558 billion yuan the previous year.
Brent prices touched four-year highs in October at nearly $87 a barrel, before plunging to just below $50 towards the end of 2018. The values, though, were still much higher overall than a $56-$64 range for the last quarter of 2017.
For the whole of 2018, PetroChina net earnings more than doubled to 52.6 billion yuan, the best since 2014. Total revenue expanded to 2.35 trillion yuan, up 17 per cent from 2017. — Reuters
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