PetroChina Q3 profit slips on oil price rout

The state-run PetroChina has suffered a whopping drop of 81.4 percent in profits for the third quarter of 2015.

The continuous drop of oil prices has impacted the revenues for the China's biggest oil and gas producer. The company fears that the performance would be much affected if the oil price continues to hover at lower levels. The third quarter's performance was the worst quarterly profit in the recent time.

The net profit too fell to RMB5.2 billion from RMB27.92 billion ($4.393bn). The net income dropped to Yuan 5.2 billion ($818mn) less than 50 percent of the forecast. Sales also dipped to Yuan 427 billion registering a fall of 29 percent.

Analysts say that they see some signs supporting the rebalancing of oil prices in the near future. Oil price is bottoming and it may bottom out very soon. Energy analysts also forecast that oil price may rebalance in next 12 months.

Inventory losses are also adding to the decline of the profits. Sales and administration costs dropped 4.8 percent year-on-year to Yuan75.7bn for the nine months. The gas price cut coupled with bleak cost control efforts give little scope for the support of share price.

PetroChina has been facing a turbulent situation in the wake of low crude price regime. Analysts opine that there's need to find a solution to check the current adverse situation.

If oil prices remain sluggish in the fourth quarter, the realized price for crude oil may further fall pushing down the net profit of the company.

Profit for the nine months fell 68.1 percent to Yuan30.6bn. The company has also registered a drop of 68 percent decline in oil and gas production division, which had an operating profit of Yuan 46.5bn.

The 48.8 percent year-on-year drop for the nine months of the year at an average oil price of $51.2 a barrel has offset 3.6 percent rise in oil and gas production. This resulted in a 3.3 percent reduction in cash-based operating cost.

The profit for the third quarter was below 52 percent of the forecast made by analysts. The sluggish upstream performance was offset by better downstream results at PetroChina. Its oil refining and chemicals production division is back in black.

BNP Paribas in its report estimated that oil price may return to rebalancing level in next 12 months. It further said that 2016 would be the first year of near-zero supply growth since 2009. The return of Iran to oil production will also offset the supply cuts.