SHANGHAI: China’s major onshore oil firms Sinopec and PetroChina said profits rose in 2013, despite weakness in the world’s second largest economy.
Sinopec—a listed unit of China Petrochemical Corp—saw net profit edge up 3.5 percent year on year to 66.1bn yuan ($10.6bn), it said in a statement, with revenue up 3.4 percent at 2.9 trillion yuan thanks to “stable” domestic demand.
“China’s economy kept turning for the better, so demand for oil and petrochemical products in the domestic market grew stably,” Sinopec chairman Fu Chengyu said. This year, “China’s industrialisation and urbanisation push will facilitate stable growth in demand from the oil and petrochemical markets, and provide room for development of the company.” Sinopec was held partly responsible for a deadly pipeline explosion that killed more than 60 people in the eastern city of Qingdao in November, and caused losses of more than $100m.
Separately, PetroChina saw net profit jump 12.4 percent year-on-year to 129.6bn yuan in 2013 “despite the complex global and domestic economic environment”. Revenue for PetroChina, a listed unit of China National Petroleum Corp, rose 2.9 percent from a year earlier to 2.3 trillion yuan, the company said.AFP
