Due to the soaring international oil price, China's petroleum mining industry enjoyed huge profits whereas the processing sector suffered huge losses in the first half of this year, said sources with the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) Friday.

Liu Fujiang, deputy director of the industrial transportation department of statistics of NBS, made remarks at the symposium on economic situation of China's petroleum and chemical industries of 2005.

From January to June, the total profits of China's petroleum industry reached 132.74 billion yuan (16.4 billion US dollars), a year-on-year increase of 73.7 percent, accounting for 21.2 percent of the total profit of the whole industry.

The newly increased profit is 56.32 billion yuan (6.95 billion US dollars), covering 56.1 percent of the new profits of the whole industry.

Stimulated by the huge profits, the petroleum mining industry had its heyday. In the first half of the year, the gross production of crude oil reached 89.797 million tons, growing by 4.8 percent year on year.

However, the petroleum processing sector suffered a lot because of the hiking oil price.

Compared with a profit of 16.38 billion yuan (2 billion US dollars) a year ago, the processing sector saw a net loss of 4.19 billion yuan (517 million US dollars) in the first half year.

The total loss of losing companies reached 15.88 billion yuan (1.96 billion US dollars), rising by 20 times more than the same period of 2004.

The sharp falling profit leads to the slow growth of China's petroleum processing industry. The amount of processed crude oil reached 144.992 million ton, growing by 7.9 percent year on year, decelerating by 10 percent from a year earlier.

Zhu Hongren, director of the economic circulation bureau of the State Development and Reform Commission (SDRC), said the continuous rocketing oil price in the international market, and the growing gap between the high international crude oil price and the low domestic oil product price were the key factors influencing the current development of the petroleum and chemical industry.

Source: Xinhua