PetroChina Company Limited (PetroChina), China's largest oil and gas producer, said Thursday its net profit for 2009 dropped 9.7 percent year on year due to a slump of crude oil prices.

Net profit totaled 103.39 billion yuan (15.2 billion U.S. dollars) while earnings per share was 0.56 yuan, down by 0.07 yuan, the company said in a statement to the Shanghai and Hong Kong stock markets.

But the company said the result was "better than expected" as prices of crude oil had slumped about 38 percent year on year in 2009 under the impact of the global financial crisis.

Business revenues totaled 1.02 trillion yuan last year, down 5 percent.

The company's total gas and oil output last year reached 1.196 billion barrels of oil equivalent, up 1.2 percent, of which 104 million barrels were produced by its overseas businesses, up 13 percent.

Operating profits in oil drilling and production was 105 billion yuan, down 56.3 percent compared to the same period last year.

The company's total amount of crude oil refined last year dropped 2.5 percent to 112 million tonnes while operating profits in sales of refined oil surged 66.2 percent to 13.27 billion yuan, the statement said.

PetroChina is the Hong Kong and Shanghai-listed subsidiary of the China National Petroleum Corporation.

Share prices of the company in the mainland A share market shed 0.94 percent to 12.65 yuan Thursday, while the price in Hong Kong dropped 1.45 percent to 8.82 Hong Kong dollars.