CNOOC earnings 'hit' by lower oil

China's leading offshore oil producer CNOOC Ltd's pretax profit fell 46 percent in the first three quarters year-on-year due to lower crude oil prices this year, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday, citing an unnamed source.

The company's pretax profit fell to 28.3 billion yuan in the first nine months, said the report, citing an unnamed person familiar with the matter. The company's revenue was 56.2 billion yuan in the same period, it said.

The decline in profit was mainly due to middling crude oil prices this year, said analysts. "CNOOC's business is mainly in upstream sectors -- oil exploration and production. Fluctuating oil prices will have a bigger impact on CNOOC compared with China's two other oil majors PetroChina and Sinopec," said Liu Gu, analyst with Guotai Jun'an Securities.