Asia's largest oil refiner Sinopec said its profit will surge over 50 percent in the first half of this year.

"The company estimates the first-half profit will rise more than 50 percent from a year earlier under the current operating situation," Sinopec said in a statement yesterday.

The company's profit in the first quarter was 19.44 billion yuan under international accounting standards, up 103.67 percent from last year. First-quarter sales rose 23.08 percent to 279.64 billion yuan, the quarterly report said.

It produced 70.96 million barrels of crude oil and 2 billion cubic meters of natural gas in the first quarter, according to the report.

Fluctuating international oil prices and high demand for domestic petrochemical products mainly caused the profit increase, Sinopec said in the statement.

"Sinopec's good first-quarter result is mainly driven by a lower crude oil price in the period between December 2006 and February 2007," said Liu Gu, a senior energy analyst with Shenzhen-based Guotai Jun'an Securities (Hong Kong) Ltd.

Crude oil prices in New York fell to an average of $58 a barrel in the first quarter, down from $63 a year earlier.

"Sinopec's good cost control and increased sales also pushed up profit," said Liu.

Sinopec's profit may have peaked in the first quarter, she said. "With the crude oil price rise in the summer, Sinopec will have a refining loss."

The company's refining business made a profit of 4.17 billion yuan in the first quarter, compared with a loss of 7.88 billion yuan a year earlier.

The company earlier signed an agreement with US energy giant Exxon Mobil and Saudi Arabia's Saudi Aramco for a mega-petrochemical expansion project and a fuel marketing venture in Fujian Province to tap demand in eastern China.

It is the first Sino-foreign venture with integrated businesses ranging from oil refining to chemical production and refined oil sales in China.

Its 2006 refining loss widened to 25.3 billion yuan from 3.54 billion yuan a year earlier. The company, which imported 70 percent of its crude oil, received 5 billion yuan in subsidies from the government in 2006.

The company expects to extract more oil and gas by increasing investment in upstream operations. It is now exploring the 356-billion-cubic-meter Puguang Gas Field in northeast Sichuan, the largest found in China, from where it is piping gas 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.

Sinopec's net income for 2006 increased 30 percent to a record 53.9 billion yuan as sales exceeded 1 trillion yuan for the first time, it said on April 10.

Shares in Sinopec rose 0.99 percent to HK$7.17 yesterday on the Hong Kong stock exchange.

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