China's top oil and gas producer PetroChina said yesterday its first-half earnings more than doubled. The surge was mainly driven by an oil-price hike and sales-volume surge.

The company's net profit rocketed to a record high of 38.6 billion yuan (US$4.7 billion), compared to 19.08 billion yuan (US$2.3 billion) a year earlier.

This is the highest profit reported by any Hong Kong-listed firm in this earnings season.

Its revenue rose 37 percent to 148.0 billion yuan (US$17.8 billion) for the six months to June 30. It proposed an interim dividend of about 0.099 yuan compared with about 0.05 yuan a year earlier.

Crude oil selling prices will drop 14.2 percent to an average US$24 per barrel in the second half from the previous six months, Chief Financial Officer Wang Guoliang told a results briefing yesterday. But he said the company is still "fully confident" of achieving record-high profits for the full year.

The average selling price for crude oil was US$28.08 per barrel for the first half, compared with US$20.11 a year ago.

"Every US$1.00 fluctuation in oil price will affect the company's pre-tax profit by 5 billion yuan (US$602.4 million)," Wang said.

The company produced 386.4 million barrels of crude oil through January to June, 0.58 percent up from the corresponding period of last year.

The exploration and production segment, which contributed 91.4 percent of the company's operating profit, increased by nearly 70 percent year-on-year in the first six months to about 50.3 billion yuan (US$6.1 billion).

For the first time, all of PetroChina's four major business segments - exploration and production, refining, chemical, and natural gas and pipelines - were profitable, said President Chen Geng.

The relatively weak chemical division recorded a profit of 648 million yuan (US$78.1 million) in the first half, compared with a loss of 668 million yuan (US$80.5 million) a year ago due to improved technology and product adjustment.

PetroChina's west-to-east gas pipeline is scheduled to begin pumping gas at the end of this year.

"We are negotiating with 35 customers (companies) who may consume 2.1 billion cubic meters of gas. We expect the natural gas transmission capacity could reach 5 billion cubic meters by 2005 and 11 billion by 2008," said Vice President Wang Fucheng. But the gas price is to be set by the central government.

The company had more than 300 billion cubic meters reserve of natural gas by the end of June 30, which will continue to rise in the second half.

"A sound reserve of natural gas is good for the development of the company which enables the west-to-east gas pipeline to be workable," said Wang Guoliang.

(China Daily August 28, 2003)