Oil giants report big drop in half-year profits

In recent days, the world's oil majors have released half-year financial results reports. Comprehensive financial reports show that in the first half of the Chinese and foreign oil giants operating profits fell sharply.

For the cost of oil extraction only $3 Saudi Aramco, although the first half of the net profit of $ 23.2 billion, but compared with the same period last year's $ 46.9 billion, net profit fell by 50%. Meanwhile, British Petroleum, Shell, Total, Chevron, ExxonMobil and other five major oil companies in the world showed a collective loss. Among them, only the second quarter BP lost $ 16.8 billion, Shell lost $ 18.13 billion, Total, Chevron and ExxonMobil losses of $ 8.4 billion, $ 8.3 billion and $ 1.1 billion respectively.

Shell claimed that compared with the same period last year, the second quarter of this year's low oil and gas prices led to refining margins, refined products sales have been hit hard. And domestic oil companies were not spared. PetroChina released half-year results are expected to show that in the first half of the net profit attributable to the parent company year-on-year will fall sharply; and Sinopec, although not released the first half of the performance forecast, but from the quarterly results have been released, the company's net profit fell 234% year-on-year.

At the beginning of 2020, the sudden onset and spread of the covid-19 epidemic, resulting in a global economic shutdown, which led to the collapse of the U.S. West Texas light crude oil (WTI) May futures contract on April 20, closed at -37.63 U.S. dollars per barrel, the first negative value since the listing of crude oil futures on the U.S. New York Mercantile Exchange in 1983. According to the data, the average WTI price in the first half of the year was $36.82 per barrel, down 35.86% year-on-year. But the reality is that the full cost of a barrel of oil averages more than $45 for global oil producers, and low oil prices and weak demand have created unprecedented challenges for the global oil and gas industry, leading to industry losses in the first half of the year.