[4][5] Traded in Hong Kong and New York, the mainland enterprise announced its plans to issue stock in Shanghai in November 2007,[5] and subsequently entered the constituent of SSE 50 Index.

[7] Fidelity Investments, after pressure from activist groups, also announced in a filing in the US that it had sold 91 per cent of its American Depositary Receipts in PetroChina in the first quarter of 2007.

[17] In February 2011, PetroChina agreed to pay $5.4 billion for a 49% stake in Canada's Duvernay shale assets owned by Encana.

[21] In February 2019, as part of the Arrow Energy joint venture with Royal Dutch Shell, the company was granted leases for $10 billion (AUS) towards the Surat project in Queensland, Australia.

[25] PetroChina was allowed to accelerate its renewable energy business in 2022, installing 5.36 gigawatts of wind and solar power plants and 11.2 million square meters of geothermal projects during the first half of the year.

The pipeline was put into trial operation on 1 October 2004, and the full commercial supply of natural gas commenced on 1 January 2005.

Originally, it was agreed that PetroChina would have owned 50% of the pipeline, while Royal Dutch Shell, Gazprom, and ExxonMobil had been slated to hold 15% each, and Sinopec 5%.

[38] It will cross Xinjiang, Gansu, Ningxia, Shaanxi, Henan, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Fujian, and Guangdong provinces.

[39] In November 2005, one of PetroChina's chemical plants exploded in Jilin, China, resulting in 100 tons of benzene, which is a carcinogen and toxic, pouring into the Songhua River.

[40] Li Zhaoxing, Chinese Foreign Minister at the time, issued a public apology to Russia due to the incident.

[44] PetroChina's development of gas reserves in Tarim Basin, Xinjiang has been the subject of controversy, as such a project could pose a threat to the environment.

Although PetroChina claimed that $565 million of the total investment would be dedicated to environmental protection, residents of Chengdu believed it might bring pollution to the local area and took to the streets on 3 and 4 May 2008, to protest the petrochemical plant.

[48] In 2011, Earthrights International accused PetroChina of complicity in serious human rights abuses in Burma,[49][50] a country known for militarily furthering its economic interests through the use of forced labor.

[51][52] In September 2013, Jiang Jiemin, a former chairman of PetroChina, was abruptly removed from his role as director of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council and investigated for corruption and abuse of power, along with four other senior oil executives.

On 12 October 2015, the court found Jiang guilty on all counts, including accepting bribes, possessing dark assets, and abusing his power.

[54] In January 2017, former vice chairman Liao Yongyuan was sentenced to 15 years in prison for abuse of power and accepting nearly $2 million worth of bribes.

[55][56] In October 2021, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection announced that it was investigating former vice president Ling Xiao, for “serious disciplinary violations”.

[57] In January 2014, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists published research based on leaked financial records from the British Virgin Islands, implicating CNPC, PetroChina, Sinopec, and CNOOC in offshore tax evasion.

Beneath the English-language version of the design is positioned the company's name in an emboldened, black typeset, "PetroChina" (Chinese: 中国石油; pinyin: Zhōngguó shíyóu).

The red substratum is intended to highlight "an angle of a square shape, not only demonstrating PetroChina's strong fundamentals, but also implicating the company's huge power of cohesion and creativity".

The general floral connotations of the logo are designed to capture PetroChina's "social responsibility of creating harmony between energy and environment".