PetroChina Shares Fall; Earnings Plunge 23%

BEIJING (TheStreet) -- Shares of PetroChina(PTR Quote), Asia's biggest oil company, were trading about 4% lower in Hong Kong after reporting a 23.4% third-quarter earnings decline.

Earnings were 30.8 billion yuan ($4.5 billion), down from 40.1 billion yuan a year earlier, as revenue fell 12% to 267.7 billion yuan on weak demand and lower crude oil prices.

PetroChina said its production unit suffered from sharply lower crude prices, earning an average $49 a barrel over the first nine months of the year, compared with $97.24 for the same period of 2008. It didn't give figures for the third quarter.

Oil production for the first nine months of the year fell 3.7% to 631 million barrels, the company said.

In terms of market capitalization, PetroChina is the world's most valuable company after Exxon Mobil(XOM Quote).

-- Reported by Joseph Woelfel in New York .

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