China National Offshore Oil Corp (中國海洋石油), China’s biggest offshore energy explorer, posted slower revenue growth last year following oil leaks and a failed overseas acquisition.
Sales at the state-owned parent of CNOOC Ltd (中海油) reached 480 billion yuan (US$76.1 billion), deputy general manager Lv Bo (呂波) said in Beijing yesterday.
This is a 35 percent increase from 2010. Revenue grew 78 percent to US$56.6 billion in 2010, the company said last year.
CNOOC cut its output goal after spills shut the country’s biggest offshore field and a venture co-owned by the company scrapped a US$7.1 billion bid for BP PLC’s Argentine unit. Hong Kong-listed CNOOC, whose profit accounted for more than half of its parent’s in 2010, plans to increase capital spending by as much as 63 percent this year to boost production.
CNOOC aims to produce the equivalent of 330 million to 340 million barrels of oil this year, a gain of as much as 2.7 percent from last year. It will start new deepwater fields, buy overseas assets and develop unconventional energy resources to expand output, chief executive officer Li Fanrong (李凡榮) said last month.
The Beijing-based company, which relies on areas off China’s coast for 80 percent of its output, has bid for at least US$7.8 billion of overseas assets in the past two years, including shale-gas and oil-sand acreages in North America, to diversify its reserves.
China National Offshore chairman Wang Yilin (王宜林) said yesterday the energy explorer will post a record profit for last year, without being more specific.
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