Malaysia's Petronas announced on December 06 a 7.7 percent rise in net profits for the half year to September. The national oil company posted a net profit of 26.6 billion ringgit (7.96 billion dollars) against 24.7 billion ringgit for the same period last year.
Revenue for the period also increased by 15.8 percent to 102.9 billion ringgit, it said in a statement. Petronas maintained its overall gas subsidy of 8.6 billion ringgit, reducing the amount to the power sector by 6.1 percent to 6.2 billion ringgit and increasing the amount to the non-power sector by 20 percent to 2.4 billion ringgit.
Malaysia's crude oil reserves as at January 1 this year totalled 20.18 billion barrels of oil equivalent, compared to 19.91 billion barrels for the same period last year, it said.
Its total oil production rose to 1.759 million barrels a day from 1.630 million the year before. Petronas did not make any comment on its half-year results, but in June it announced record net profits for the financial year to March due to higher sales volume and strong crude oil prices.