Strong H1 results expected for oil and gas giants

China's major oil and gas giants expect their net profits and net incomes to surge for the first half of this year, benefiting from the revival in crude oil prices, but analysts believe high earnings growth will be hard to maintain in the second half as oil prices are unlikely to rise much above current levels.

China National Petroleum Corp, the nation's largest oil and gas producer by annual output, expects its net profit to more than double for the first six months of this year, rising by between 13.5 billion yuan ($1.98 billion) and 15.5 billion yuan compared with the first half of 2017, up 107 percent to 122 percent from the same period a year ago.

Based on a net profit of 12.67 billion yuan in the first half of 2017, PetroChina's net profit is forecast to be 26.17 billion yuan to 28.17 billion yuan in the period, it said in a filing to the Shanghai Stock Exchange.