PetroChina Discovers Shale Gas Reserves in the Sichuan Basin

PetroChina Company Limited PTR has announced its recent petroleum and gas reserve discoveries.

This largest integrated oil company in China has explored additional shale gas reserves at two new blocks in southwest China’s Sichuan Basin. The blocks, namely Changning-Weiyuan and Taiyang consist of a total 740.97 billion cubic meters of shale gas in the reserves. PetroChina intends to extract 7.7 billion cubic meters of shale gas this year while expanding its entire output to nearly 10 billion cubic meters shortly.

The company, which is China’s state-run energy giant, is raising its expenditure on domestic oil and gas drilling to a multi-year high in 2019. The drilling and exploration segment spending is expected to be RMB 228,200 million and will be mainly concentrated on the major basins, such as Sichuan, Erdos, Tarim, Bohai Bay and Songliao Basins.

In addition to shale gas reserves in the Sichuan Basin, PetroChina — a subsidiary of the China National Petroleum Corporation — has discovered a major oil field called Qingcheng in northwest China’s Ordos Basin with reserves of more than 1 billion tonnes. The total oil production in the current year is estimated to be 6,40,000 tons while the annual production is projected to hit almost 3 million tons.

PetroChina is engaged in wide-ranged petroleum-related activities including exploration, development and production of crude oil and natural gas; refining, transportation, storage and marketing that comprises import and export of crude oil and petroleum products; production and sale of chemical products; and the transmission, marketing and sale of natural gas.

Zacks Rank & Key Picks

PetroChina carries a Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell).

Better-ranked players in the energy space include BP Midstream Partners BPMP, Dril-Quip, Inc. DRQ and TC Pipelines, LP TCP, each carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

BP Midstream’s earnings beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate in three of the trailing four quarters.

Dril-Quip earnings beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate in three of the previous four quarters.

TC Pipelines earnings beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate in three of the last four quarters.

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