PetroChina Co., the country’s biggest oil and gas company, said profit almost tripled last year as earnings from exploration and production overcame asset writedowns and losses from importing natural gas.

Net income jumped to 22.8 billion yuan ($3.6 billion) in 2017, it said in a statement to the Hong Kong exchange Thursday. Impairments more than doubled as the Beijing-based company wrote down the value of petrochemical and pipeline assets. Spending, which rose for the first time in five year, overshot the company’s target by 13 percent.

“Profit could have been very impressive if not for the large asset writedowns,” said Laban Yu, a Hong Kong-based analyst at Jefferies Group LLC. “Efficiency still looks to be an issue, as total production has fallen even as spending exceeded the budget it set at the beginning of last year.” Read More…