October 28 -- PetroChina (601857.SH, 0857.HK) recorded a 7.9 percent year-on-year rise in net profit for the first three quarters to 37.43 billion yuan, while Sinopec (600028, 0386.HK) posted net profit of 59.96 billion yuan during the same period, an increase of 6.3 percent, reports yicai.com, citing a company filing.
Both the oil giants incurred huge losses from their oil refining business, in line with market expectations.
For the third quarter, Sinopec did not generate year-on-year earnings growth, with net profit of 19.7 billion yuan. PetroChina posted third quarter earnings of 37.4 billion yuan, an increase of 7.8 percent year-on-year.
According to the report, the low profitability for Sinopec was the result of the government controlling the prices of refined oil products in the third quarter.
During the first three quarters, Sinopec produced 240 million barrels of crude oil, a drop of 3.6 percent year-on-year, while natural gas output rose 22.1 percent year-on-year to 382.3 billion cubic meters.
During the same period of time, PetroChina produced 670 million barrels of crude oil, an increase of 4.8 percent year-on-year, while natural gas output increased six percent to 1.7 trillion cubic meters.
The crude oil produced by PetroChina were sold at an average price of $104 per barrel, compared to the price of $98.23 per barrel recorded by Sinopec.
According to the report, Sinopec’s output on mainland China is lower than that of PetroChina because the Daqing and Changqing oilfields, the two most productive fields, belongs to PetroChina.
Overseas expansion contributed to PetroChina’s growth in crude oil output, with the oil giant producing 92.9 million barrels overseas, an increase of 23 percent year-on-year.
In contrast, Sinopec posted a 44 percent year-on-year fall in overseas crude oil output to 12.75 million barrels during the first three quarters.
PetroChina recorded gasoline, kerosene and diesel output increases of 12.1 percent, 5.6 percent and 11.2 percent year-on-year for each of the first three quarters, while Sinopec recorded output increases of between 2.9 percent and 9.2 percent.
PetroChina lost 38.4 billion yuan from its refining business, of which the loss from oil refining topped 41.5 billion yuan.
Sinopec recorded an operating loss of 24.6 billion yuan from its refining business during the first three quarters, compared to a profit of 8.53 billion yuan during the same period of 2010.
Shares of PetroChina were down 0.52 percent to trade at HK$7.63 per share at 10:45 today.