PetroChina expects that in 2016, supply and demand fundamentals will remain loose
By Anne Marie Roantree
HONG KONG, April 28 (Reuters) – PetroChina Co Ltd, the country’s largest oil and gas producer, on Thursday reported its first ever quarterly loss as oil prices touched near 13-year lows, and forecast continued volatility in the market.
Faced with the worst downturn in the oil sector in at least three decades, state-run company posted a net loss in the first three months of 13.79 billion yuan ($2.13 billion), compared with a profit of 6.15 billion yuan a year earlier.
In the first quarter of 2016, the average realised price for crude oil of the group was $27.27 per barrel, of which the domestic realised price was $26.55 per barrel, representing a drop of 44.2 percent from the same period a year earlier.
The company expects that for the rest of the year the supply and demand fundamentals will remain loose. “International oil prices will widely fluctuate at a low level,” the company said in a statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange.
A prolonged fall in oil prices has weighed on the industry, with U.S. giant Exxon Mobil this week losing its top credit rating from Standard & Poor’s for the first time in almost 70 years and British oil company BP reporting an 80 percent drop in first-quarter profits.
PetroChina expects total crude output this year of 924.7 million barrels.
Last month, PetroChina reported a net profit of 35.52 billion yuan for 2015, down 70 percent from the previous year, and said it would trim capital expenditure by 5 percent to 192 billion yuan this year ($30 billion).
The Hong Kong-listed shares of PetroChina rose nearly 2 percent in the first quarter, beating a 5 percent drop for the benchmark Hang Seng Index.
The stock closed up 2 percent on Thursday, beating a 0.2 percent gain for the broader index.
(Reporting By Anne Marie Roantree; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)