Investment conclusion: We lower our earnings for the
three Chinese oils to account for lower oil price
expectations and slower growth in China. We expect
China oil demand to grow by 2% in 2009, significantly
lower than the average of 7.8% in the last few years. As
such, we downgrade our industry view to Cautious.
Upstream E&P – Business as usual: Slowdown in
domestic demand would mean crude import volume
would be lowered. As for domestic production, it is
expected to remain at full utilization rate. Where we had
previously expected China’s crude import to exceed
50% by 2010, we are now looking at about 47% as a
more likely number. In terms of upstream capex, we
believe Chinese oils would take the current opportunity,
where equipment supply is no longer tight and prices are
falling, to increase their exploration activities. This is to
secure China oil supply in the long run.
Downstream refining – Risks still exist: Weakening
demand will put pressure on volume. We expect more
product price cuts to bring domestic margins back to
more normalised levels. China product prices are still at
20-45% premium to the region. As China decelerates,
cost control may become a policy tool for the
government. Besides, we see downside to marketing
margin. China’s marketing margins of ~8% over the last
few years have been one of the highest in the region.
PetroChina is our relative preferred pick: In our view,
PetroChina’s earnings are least at risk. We have
downgraded both CNOOC and Sinopec to Underweight.
Being a pure E&P stock, CNOOC would underperform
as oil prices remain weak. As for Sinopec, we believe
consensus expectation of more than 60% earnings
growth in 2009 is overly optimistic given ongoing policy
risks and exposure to the petrochemical sector.