PetroChina Company Limited said it achieved better-than-expected operating results in 2020, despite challenges brought by COVID-19 and the plummeting international oil prices.

The company's oil and natural gas equivalent output was 1,409.7 million barrels, representing an increase of 4.8 percent year-on-year; marketable natural gas output was 3,993.8 billion cubic feet, illustrating a rise of 9.9 percent year-on-year, it said on Thursday.

The proportion of natural gas output continued to increase, further optimizing the oil and gas output mix, leading to major progress in green and low-carbon transformation, it said.

The company has achieved a revenue of 1.93 trillion yuan ($295 billion) and the net profit attributable to owners of the company was 19 billion yuan. The unit oil and gas lifting cost of the company was $11.1 per barrel, representing a decrease of 8.3 percent year-on-year.

The financial position of the company remained stable with its gearing ratio decreasing by 2.1 percentage points year-on-year. It has also achieved robust cash flow with net cash flows of the company generated from operating activities amounting to 318,575 million yuan, it said.

In 2020, the company's exploration and production segment strived to enhance the value of its oil and gas resources, domestic oil and natural gas equivalent output was 1,409.7 million barrels, illustrating a rise of 4.8 percent as compared with last year. Marketable natural gas output was 3,993.8 billion cubic feet, representing an increase of 9.9 percent year-on-year.

The ratio of natural gas output rose to 47.2 percent, which further enhanced the oil and gas output mix. The company also focused on risk exploration, promoted concentrated exploration, precise exploration and high-efficiency evaluation in key basins and key areas, and achieved major exploration results.

Restructuring refining and chemicals also led to remarkable results. In 2020. PetroChina's refining and chemical segment continued to optimize its production arrangement and product structure through strengthening processing cost control and increasing the production of high value-added products last year.

It has produced 6.345 million tons of ethylene, representing an increase of 8.2 percent as compared with last year, and 28.853 million tons of commodity volume of chemical products, representing an increase of 12 percent as compared with last year.

The company will seize the opportunity of low-carbon transformation and development in the energy sector, actively lay out a low-carbon business model to foster clean production, endeavor to achieve "carbon emissions peak" by around 2025 and "near-zero" emissions by around 2050, thus contributing to achieve the global objective of "carbon emissions peak" and "carbon neutrality", it said.