Ahem, now, who told you to pay attention to China Oil companies?  But now China's state oil company Petrochina (NYSE - PTR) is the world's largest publicly traded company after a flotation on the Shanghai stock exchange, with a market capitalization of over $1 TRILLION!  Then again, the world's biggest money-making operation, Saudi Aramco, would probably be worth over four times as much (or about $150,000 per citizen if evenly distributed) were it put up for sale.  Don't hold your breath for that any time soon though.

From Bloomberg:

Nov. 5 (Bloomberg) — PetroChina Co. almost tripled on its first day of trading in Shanghai, becoming the world's first company to be valued at $1 trillion, larger than the entire Russian stock market.

PetroChina shares rose to 43.96 yuan from the sale price of 16.7 yuan, giving the state-owned oil producer a greater market value than Exxon Mobil Corp. and General Electric Co. combined.

The rally makes PetroChina shares four times more expensive than those of Exxon, even though China's biggest oil producer has a quarter of the revenue. China's stock market was valued at less than $1.1 trillion before tripling this year and giving the communist nation five of the world's 10 biggest companies.

... Billionaire investor Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. sold its stake in PetroChina this year, reaping an eightfold gain that contributed to a 64 percent increase in third-quarter profit for the Omaha-based company. Berkshire had 2.34 billion shares as of the end of 2006, the largest holding after state-owned China National Petroleum Corp.

... ``Production is static with limited upside for the next three to four years,'' Grace said. ``As for the downstream, the price controls and overall regulatory trend limit the company's earnings.''

... The other Chinese companies that rank among the world's 10 largest by market value are China Petroleum, known as Sinopec, China Mobile Ltd., Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. and China Construction Bank Corp.