Cnooc Ltd., China’s biggest offshore oil and gas explorer, posted a 40 percent decline in first-quarter oil and gas sales because of lower crude prices.
Oil and gas sales dropped to 35.5 billion yuan ($5.7 billion) in the three months ended March 31 from 59.1 billion yuan a year earlier, the Beijing-based company said in a statement Friday to the Hong Kong stock exchange.
Cnooc, which gets most of its income from oil and gas production, didn’t report profit for the period.
The explorer’s average realized oil price fell 49 percent to $53.40 a barrel in the first quarter from $104.63 a barrel in the same period last year. Brent, the benchmark for half the world’s crude trading, has declined 43 percent in the past 10 months.
Output rose 9.4 percent to 118.3 million barrels of oil equivalent from a year earlier.
At its full-year result in March, Cnooc exceeded expectations with a 6.6 percent increase in profit, beating larger peers PetroChina Co. and China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. Analysts said effective cost control led to higher earnings.
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