China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation (Sinopec) announced on Tuesday that the company had a year-on-year net profit growth of 55.78 percent to reach 13.1 billion yuan by the third quarter.

According to the quarterly report released by the company, its income from principal operations was 273.2 billion yuan (34.15 billion U.S. dollars)in the third quarter, representing an increase of 25.48 percent over the same period of last year.

Sinopec produced 30.02 million tons of crude oil in the first three quarters of the year, up 2.84 percent from a year ago, and 5.35 billion cubic meters of natural gas, a year-on-year growth of 18.08 percent.

The realized price of crude oil in the first nine months is 3,388 yuan per ton (nearly 60 U.S. dollars per barrel), up 34.13 percent over the same period last year.

In the first three quarters, the processing volume of crude oil and the output of oil products grew by 4.45 percent and 2.93 percent on a year-on-year basis respectively, said the company.

Due to the price gap between domestic crude oil price which is directly linked to the international price and domestic price of refined oil products which is kept relatively low by the government, Sinopec continued to see losses in its processing sector amounting to 12.58 billion yuan in the third quarter.

According to the company, the sales volume of oil products grew by 7.17 percent in the first three quarters, and the retail volume was up 17.52 percent on a year-on-year basis.

Sinopec produced over 4.5 million tons of ethylene in the first nine months, up 17.8 percent year on year. The output of synthetic resins rose by 13.38 percent from the previous year to nearly 6.3 million tons.

In the first three quarters Sinopec increased crude oil production capacity by 4.13 million tons per year and increased natural gas production annual capacity by 1.29 billion cubic meters.

Listed in Hong Kong, New York, London and Shanghai, Sinopec is one of the largest crude oil and petrochemical companies in China as well as one of the largest gasoline, diesel and jet fuel and other major chemical products producers and distributors in China.

Source: Xinhua