China Petroleum and Chemical Corp. (Sinopec), one of the nation's leading onshore oil producers, registered a 112.6-percent rise in its net profits in the first three months of 2007.

The company announced on Monday a total net profit of 19.42 billion yuan (2.5 billion U.S. dollars) for the first quarter and the company's earnings per share stood at 0.224 yuan, up 112.6 percent over the same period last year.

Sinopec produced 70.96 million barrels - 9.99 million tons - of crude oil and two billion cubic meters of natural gas in the first quarter this year, the company said in its quarterly report.

The total turnover of the Shanghai and New York-listed company reached 278.25 billion yuan, up 23 percent.

The company attributed the rise to the major price discrepancy between the domestic and international oil price. The regulated price of petroleum and chemical products in China remained high while the global crude oil price continued to fall.

The price difference also enabled Sinopec to shore up losses and make profits in its refining sector.

The company reported a gross revenue of 28.1 billion yuan (3.6 billion U.S. dollars) in the first quarter, up 110 percent.

Sinopec also disclosed that the State Council had approved the company's project of exploring the 356-billion-cubic-meter Puguang Gas Field in northeast Sichuan and piping the gas from the largest gas field ever found in China to the country's energy-thirsty eastern regions.

The company said the field was expected to supply 10 billion cubic meters of gas by the end of 2008 and 15 billion cubic meters by the end of 2009.

The oil producer also forecast its consolidated net profits to rise more than 50 percent in the first half of 2007 under China's accounting rules.

The company's net profit in the first half of 2006 was 20.7 billion yuan, up 14.6 percent on 2005.

However, fund investors in China do not seem to share Sinopec's optimism.

The country's top seven funds, in terms of stock holding at the end of 2006, are no longer listed among the top ten shareholders of Sinopec's publicly tradable stocks.

The two funds under E Fund Management Co., Ltd. reduced their holding in Sinopec by 132.5 million shares in the first quarter - a total value of 1.25 billion yuan based on the average trading price for the first quarter.

The Sinopec shares held by the top nine shareholders of publicly tradable A shares decreased from an average of 86.9 million to 51.4 million in the first quarter.

Source: Xinhua