China National Offshore Oil Corp., the country's biggest offshore energy explorer, posted slower revenue growth last year following oil leaks and a failed overseas acquisition.

Sales at the state-owned parent of Cnooc Ltd. reached 480 billion yuan ($76.1 billion), Deputy General Manager Lv Bo told reporters in Beijing yesterday. That's a 35 percent increase from 2010, Bloomberg calculations show. Revenue grew 78 percent to $56.6 billion in 2010, according to the company last year.

Cnooc cut its output goal after spills shut the country's biggest offshore field and a venture co-owned by the company scrapped a $7.1 billion bid for BP Plc's Argentine unit. Hong Kong-listed Cnooc, whose profit accounted for more than half of its parent's in 2010, plans to increase capital spending by as much as 63 percent this year to boost production.

Cnooc seeks to produce the equivalent of 330 million to 340 million barrels of oil in 2012, a gain of as much as 2.7 percent from last year. It will start new deepwater fields, buy overseas assets and develop unconventional energy resources to expand output, Chief Executive Officer Li Fanrong said last month.

The Beijing-based company, which relies on areas off China's coast for 80 percent of its output, has bid for at least $7.8 billion of overseas assets in the last two years, including shale-gas and oil-sand acreages in North America, to diversify its reserves, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Capital Spending

Speaking at a company event in Beijing yesterday, China National Offshore Chairman Wang Yilin said the energy explorer will post a record profit last year, without being more specific. The company has planned for $17 billion in capital spending this year and is targeting to double its oil and gas output by 2020 from 2010, he said.

Cnooc's parent produced 46.61 million metric tons of oil last year and 16.7 billion cubic meters of natural gas, Wang said.

Cnooc's shares rose 0.3 percent to HK$15.98 yesterday. The stock has fallen 9.5 percent in the past year, compared with a 13 percent decline in the benchmark Hang Seng Index.

China National Offshore is also the parent of Hong Kong- listed China Oilfield Services Ltd.