Page 10 - AsianOil Week 35

AsianOil EAST ASIA AsianOil
PetroChina profits climb on stronger sales
PERFORMANCE
STATE-RUN PetroChina has recorded a 3.6% year-on-year increase in its rst-half net pro t to CNY28.42bn ($3.96bn) on the back of stronger oil and gas sales. Revenue, meanwhile, climbed by 6.8% y/y in the period to CNY1.2tn ($167.2bn), the company revealed at a results brie ng in Hong Kong on August 29.
Crude oil production climbed 3.2% on the year to 451.9mn barrels (2.5mn bpd), while gas production expanded by 9.7% to 1.96tn cubic feet (55.51 bcm).
PetroChina’s domestic equity oil and gas pro- duction climbed by 5.5% y/y to 674mn barrels of oil equivalent (3.72mn boepd). Equity produc- tion from its overseas assets climbed 8.1% y/y to 105mn boe (580,000 boepd).
Crude sales climbed 28% y/y to 65.39mn tonnes (2.65mn bpd), while its average realised crude price increased by 5.8% to CNY3,170 ($441.68) per tonne. Natural gas sales expanded 23.5% y/y to 125.27 bcm.
Exploration investment rose by 14% y/y to CNY12.27bn ($1.71bn) in the period, in line with the government’s perennial drive to curb an ever-deepening dependency on imported energy supplies.
PetroChina’s upstream plans for the second half include “centralised exploration” in key regions, improving production from mature oilfields and focusing on its shale gas pro- jects. PetroChina CFO Chai Shouping said the
government would extend unconventional gas subsidies by three years and that his company was due to receive a CNY4bn ($557.35mn) gov- ernment grant this year.
Reuters quoted PetroChina executive direc- tor and president Hou Qijun as saying: “Looking forward, we will focus more on the Belt and Road Initiative [BRI] such as Russia, Central Asian and Middle East countries ... and will increase the natural gas percentage in our overseas port- folio to optimise the asset structure.”
e company’s re neries processed 597.4mn barrels (3.3mn bpd) of crude, while oil product sales amounted to 89.91mn tonnes.™
OCEANIA
PNG finally backs Papua LNG deal
PROJECTS & COMPANIES
THE Papua New Guinea (PNG) govern- ment has said it will honour the terms of the Papua LNG gas agreement, after months of mixed messaging that had left the project’s future in doubt.
Petroleum Minister Kerenga Kua said on September 3 that the project could proceed in line with the terms of the deal, which the former government signed with the Total-led develop- ment consortium in April.
Total has a 31.1% interest in the Petroleum Retention Licence 15 (PRL 15) joint venture, which is developing the Elk-Antelope gas dis- covery, post the state’s back-in right of 22.5%. ExxonMobil owns 28.3% and Oil Search has the remaining 17.7%.
Commenting on the decision, Oil Search managing director Peter Botten said: “We are pleased that the PNG cabinet has completed its review of the Papua LNG gas agreement and has validated the agreement as executed on April 9, 2019.”
e project’s fate had been up in the air fol- lowing former prime minister Peter O’Neill’s resignation in May. Kua, who was appointed to his position on June 6, has been a vocal critic of the Papua LNG deal. A er saying at the start of August that the Cabinet had “agreed in princi- ple” to honour the agreement, Kua revealed two weeks later that he was leading a team to Singa- pore to renegotiate terms.
is continued uncertainty prompted PNG opposition leader Patrick Pruaitch on August 30 to call on the government to back the deal.
“Abrogation of the Papua LNG agreement signed in April will jeopardise prospects for PNG’s economic recovery and perpetuate the O’Neill government leg- acy of falling wages and employment levels,” Pruaitch said. He argued that derailing the agreement would make returning economic growth to more than 4% this year extremely difficult.
He added: “ e actions could act as a signal to major international investors to avoid this coun- try. We are treading a very dangerous path.”
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 35 04•September•2019