Exxon behind Chinese upstart

NEW YORK: A big shift is happening in Big Oil: an American giant now ranks behind a Chinese upstart.
ExxonMobil is no longer the world’s biggest publicly traded producer of oil.
For the first time, that distinction belongs to a 13-year-old Chinese company called PetroChina.
The Beijing company was created by the Chinese government to secure more oil for that nation’s booming economy.
PetroChina announced yesterday that it pumped 2.4 million barrels a day last year, surpassing Exxon by 100,000.
The company had grown rapidly over the last decade by squeezing more from China’s ageing oil fields and outspending Western companies to acquire more petroleum reserves in places like Canada, Iraq and Qatar. It’s motivated by a need to lock up as much oil as possible.
The company’s output increased 3.3% last year while Exxon’s fell 5%.
Exxon’s oil production also fell behind Rosneft, the Russian energy company.
PetroChina’s rise highlights a fundamental difference in how the largest petroleum companies plan to supply the world as new deposits become tougher to find and more expensive to produce.
Every major oil company has aggressively pursued new finds to replace their current wells. But analysts say Western oil firms like Exxon Mobil have been more conservative than the Chinese, mindful of their bottom line and investor returns.
With oil prices up 19% last year, they still made money without increasing production.
PetroChina Co Ltd has a different mission. The Chinese government owns 86 per cent of its stock and the nation uses nearly every drop of oil PetroChina pumps. Its appetite for petrol and other petroleum products is projected to double between 2010 and 2035.
“There’s a lot of anxiety in China about the energy question,” says energy historian Dan Yergin. “It’s just growing so fast.”
While PetroChina was sitting atop other publicly traded companies in oil production, it fell well short of national oil companies like Saudi Aramco, which produced nearly eight million barrels a day. – AP
And Exxon was still the biggest publicly traded energy company when counting combined output of oil and natural gas. PetroChina ranks third behind Exxon and BP in total output of oil and natural gas.
PetroChina is looking to build on its momentum this year. – .AP