PetroChina Co yesterday said it needs to raise 150 billion yuan (US$22 billion) this year to finance operations and investment activities.

The oil producer said in a filing to the Shanghai Stock Exchange that it had a negative cash flow of 44.9 billion yuan last year, a decline of 76.9 billion yuan from a year earlier, due to increased tax payments and investments.

PetroChina has raised 50 billion yuan in a bond issue in the first quarter of the year and will seek approval for the remaining 100 billion yuan in a shareholders' meeting this month, a spokesman said.

PetroChina, the world's second-largest firm by market value, earlier said it earmarked 233.1 billion yuan for capital expenditure for this year, slightly up on last year's, to resource exploration and key refining and petrochemical projects.

The company posted a 35.3-percent drop in earnings for the first quarter as a sharp fall in crude oil prices hurt profit margins.

PetroChina has also won initial state approval to more than triple the capacity of a refinery in Hohhot in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Xinhua said yesterday.

(Shanghai Daily May 7, 2009)