BEIJING - PetroChina Company Limited (PetroChina), China's largest oil and gas producer, reported Wednesday that net profits surged 23 percent year on year in the first nine months.

Net profit totaled 100.03 billion yuan ($14.93 billion) and earnings per share stood at 0.55 yuan in the first nine months, the company said in a statement to the Shanghai and Hong Kong stock exchanges.

For the third quarter alone, net profit was up 12.5 percent to 34.7 million yuan from a year earlier, said the statement.

The company attributed the increase mainly to the price surge in crude oil in the first three quarters.

The average selling price of its crude oil was $71.76 a barrel in the first three quarters, up 46.3 percent year on year, while the price of natural gas was up 10 percent to $3.74 per cubic foot ($105.9 a liter), said the company.

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The Beijing-based company's oil output rose 1.3 percent year on year to 640 million barrels in the first nine months, while 1.68 trillion cubic feet of natural gas was produced, up 10.5 percent, it said.

The company said it has refined 657 million barrels of crude oil in the first nine months, up 8.3 percent year on year.

The company produced 57.79 million tons of gasoline, diesel and kerosene and sold 90.92 million tons of these products in the same period, up 7.2 percent and 24.3 percent, respectively.

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 dropped 2.08 percent to 11.32 yuan Wednesday, while the price in the Hong Kong market was down 4.29 percent to HK$9.59 ($1.24).