In The Era Of The Rise Of New Energy, Is The Oil Industry Still Making Money?

In the past two years, new energy has developed rapidly. With the rise of photovoltaic power stations and wind farms and the hot sales of new energy vehicles, more and more companies have achieved counterattacks because of new energy. The new energy industry in the spotlight has become a "cornucopia" for attracting money. In contrast, the oil industry is being questioned, and some people even think that the oil industry no longer makes money.

But is this really the case?

Regardless of the distance, let's take the domestic oil giants as an example. As my country's leader in oil and gas exploration and development, PetroChina is an oil company with a market value of over one trillion yuan. It has offices and gas stations all over the country. It also owns a number of large oil and gas fields such as Daqing Oilfield, Changqing Oilfield, Tarim Oilfield, and Southwest Oil and Gas Field.

By looking through PetroChina's financial reports since 2013, we can see that PetroChina has maintained high operating income and profits since its listing. Even in 2015 and 2016, when the oil and gas industry was relatively sluggish, PetroChina still maintained an annual revenue exceeding trillion, with an annual profit of more than 60 billion yuan.

On August 30, PetroChina released the latest semi-annual report. The financial report shows that PetroChina achieved operating income of 1.48 trillion yuan in the first half of 2023, and net profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company was 85.27 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 4.5%; free cash flow exceeded 100 billion yuan for the first time, reaching 110.35 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase 17.6%.

In recent years, PetroChina's profits have continued to rise, its revenue has exceeded one trillion yuan, and its operating strength has become stronger. In the 2023 Fortune 500 list of China's listed companies, PetroChina beat a number of large listed companies such as China State Construction Engineering Corporation, Ping An Insurance, and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China to become second.

Moreover, Sinopec, which is also a state-owned oil company, appeared in the "Fortune" list with the first place. PetroChina and Sinopec have also become the only listed companies on the list with revenues exceeding 3 trillion yuan.

In this way, the statement that the oil industry does not make money is indeed not rigorous enough. However, netizens may be able to make this conclusion because of a more common inference: new energy is developing rapidly, and humans are abandoning oil and natural gas.

However, the reality is that humans use more oil and natural gas every year. For example, the total amount of oil and natural gas that our country needs every year is also increasing year by year, and the dependence on foreign oil is also around 70%. In 2022, my country's oil consumption will exceed 700 million tons, and my country's oil production will only be 205 million tons.

Even though oil is gradually losing its energy attributes and new energy installed capacity is growing rapidly, according to predictions from the Strategic Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, my country's oil gap will still reach 400 million tons by 2035. Let’s take a look at the situation of natural gas. Natural gas has been classified as clean energy, and the demand for natural gas both internationally and in my country is increasing day by day. It is estimated that my country's natural gas demand will exceed 600 billion cubic meters by 2035, and about 200 billion cubic meters of liquefied natural gas will be imported to fill the gas supply gap.

Under the premise of the rapid development of new energy, the amount of oil and natural gas needed by humans has not decreased significantly, but is still growing. In this way, the comment that the oil industry is in recession and not making money is really unreliable.

In addition, PetroChina is also keeping up with the development of the times, continuously increasing investment in new energy and promoting energy transformation and development; in terms of refining and chemical industry, PetroChina has built new transformation and upgrading projects such as reducing oil, increasing fuel and new materials; at the sales terminal, PetroChina continues to strengthen energy transformation. , increase charging, battery swapping facilities and hydrogenation stations... In the new era, continuous reform to promote high-quality development of enterprises is an important magic weapon for oil companies to maintain vitality, high revenue and high profit margins.