CHINA National Petroleum Corp, parent of the world's most valuable company, said it's aiming for US$378 billion in sales by 2020, as it unveils a plan to process more oil and gas, while expanding into non-fossil fuel.
China National, as the parent of Hong Kong-traded PetroChina Co is also called, will have the capacity to process 200 million tons of crude oil by 2015 and sell 400 million metric tons of oil products, its Inner Mongolia sales chief, Zhao Yongqi, said yesterday during a meeting of the Chinese legislature in Beijing.
"We're aiming to become an integrated multinational energy company by 2015, a first-class world company by 2020," he said, according to Bloomberg News.
"We're aiming to expand our business beyond the scope of oil and gas in the next five to eight years."
China, the world's second-largest oil consumer after the US, imports almost half of its annual fuel needs to feed an economy that's grown 10 percent every year on average since 1978. Chinese oil companies including China National have been expanding fuel processing and exploration in Africa, Central Asia and South America to feed industrial demand at home in the world's fastest-growing major economy.
China National, the country's largest oil company, said resource fields outside China may contribute to about half of its 100 million-ton oil and gas output by 2015.
Sales may quadruple by 2020 from 2005's revenue of 672 billion yuan (US$94 billion), Zhao said. Exxon Mobil Corp, the world's biggest oil company by sales, reported $328.2 billion in 2005 revenue.
PetroChina was the world's first company to be valued at US$1 trillion in November 2007, boosted by record oil prices and soaring stock prices on the Shanghai and Hong Kong exchanges.
The company's market capitalization has since plunged to US$544 billion, compared with Exxon Mobil's US$452.1 billion.
Beijing-based China National is also generating electricity from wind power and solar power, aiming for alternative energy output to reach the equivalent of seven million tons of oil by 2015.
Prices of retail fuels in China are 2,000 yuan a ton lower than wholesale prices, because of government price controls, Zhao said.