China’s biggest oil and gas producer PetroChina—the first company in the world to reach a US$1-trillion valuation more than ten years ago—is now so cheap that it is worth less than the value of its oil and gas reserves. PetroChina is listed in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and New York. It has been trading in Hong Kong and New York since 2000, a year after its parent, China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), created it by transferring most of the upstream assets to the new company. PetroChina’s H-shares traded in Hong Kong give the company a current enterprise value of the equivalent of US$169 billion , while analysts at Bernstein have estimated that its proven oil and gas reserves in the ground are worth US$208.7 billion, Bloomberg reports. Typically, no energy company should ever trade below the value of its reserves in the ground, because a premium to the resources value […]