MOSCOW (MRC) -- PetroChina Co. said preliminary net income for 2021 rose by 374% to 395% from the previous year as oil and gas prices surged, reported Bloomberg.
Net profit attributable to shareholders will increase by 71 billion to 75 billion yuan (USD11.2 billion to USD11.8 billion) over the 2020 level of 19 billion yuan, the company said in an exchange filing. Profits are up by as much as 48.3 billion yuan from 2019.
Brent crude rebounded to an average USD71 a barrel in 2021 as vaccines let governments around the world lift harsh transportation restrictions that cut oil demand in 2020, when it averaged about USD43 a barrel.
“The strong performance can be attributed to the oil price recovery and lower-than-expected import gas losses,” Morgan Stanley analysts including Jack Lu said Wednesday in a note.
State-owned PetroChina is the nation’s largest oil and natural gas driller, operating a fleet of refineries that produce transportation fuel. It’s also a major gas buyer and is required to import the fuel even if that means incurring losses. The company’s performance was the best in seven years, it said.
Investors will be looking for clues as to what PetroChina plans do with its windfall profits, after fellow state-owned oil giant Cnooc Ltd. on Tuesday promised a special dividend, stock buybacks and guaranteed dividends through 2024.
As MRC informed previously, PetroChina, Asia's largest oil and gas producer,aims to have oil, gas and green energies to each account for a third of its portfolio by 2035, as the Chinese oil major shifts toward a lower-carbon future.
We remind that in August, 2021, PetroChina Liaoyang Petrochemical Co Ltd , part of the Chinese petrochemical major - PetroChina,successfully started up its new polypropylene (PP) plant last week. Based in Liaoning City, Liaoyang Province, China, the new PP plant has a production capacity of 300,000 tons/year.
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, PP shipments to the Russian market were 1,363,850 tonnes in January-November, 2021, up by 25% year on year. Supply of homopolymer PP and block-copolymers of propylene (PP block copolymers) increased, whereas supply of injection moulding PP random copolymers decreased significantly.
PetroChina Company Limited, is a Chinese oil and gas company and is the listed arm of state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation, headquartered in Dongcheng District, Beijing. It is China's biggest oil producer.
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