US oil producer, ExxonMobil, has ceded its top spot as the world's largest publically traded oil producer to a Chinese rival.
After announcing that it had pumped 2.4mb/d of crude in 2011, PetroChina pipped it's US counterpart by 100,000 barrels over the year. In just 10 years the Chinese producer has seen stellar growth, not just through domestic production, but with investment in the Middle East and North America.
Agressive prospecting strategies by all of China's major oil producers has seen the East steal a march on Western producers, whose profits were largely boosted by a 19% increase in oil prices which meant they made money without increasing output. In fact, ExxonMobil's output also slipped below Russia's Rosneft after the US company's output fell by 5% last year.
PetroChina's output is almost exclusively taken by the domestic market, with analysts predicting that China's demand for petroleum products will double over 25 years from 2010.