Chinese oil giants Sinopec, PetroChina and Cnooc posted sharply higher first-half profits on soaring energy prices since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The public group Sinopec, Asia’s largest refiner, announced Sunday a net profit of 43.53 billion yuan (6.37 billion euros) between January and June, up 10.4% year on year.
However, over this same period, the company saw its sales of refined petroleum products fall by 9.8% over one year, due to the Covid-19 pandemic and confinements in China which weighed heavily on Chinese demand and growth.
For its part, PetroChina, a listed entity of the public oil giant CNPC, made a net profit of 82.39 billion yuan (12.05 billion euros) in the first half, up 55.3% over one year.
According to the Bloomberg news agency, this is a historic half-year performance for China’s leading crude oil producer. Indeed, in 2021, PetroChina had made 53 billion yuan in profits, over the same period, a figure well below that of this year.
In the first half of 202, some “geopolitical factors such as the Ukrainian crisis have led to a significant increase in the average price” world oilexplained the company when announcing its results.
For its part, the company China National Offshore Oil Corp (Cnooc), China’s largest offshore oil and gas producer, more than doubled its net profit in the first half. This amounted to 71.89 billion yuan (10.50 billion euros), once morest 33.3 billion yuan a year earlier.
The group, however, warned once morest a “external environment (which) will remain complex and changing” in the second semester.
