China Petroleum & Chemical Corp (Sinopec), Asia's largest crude oil refiner, unveiled a plan to increase this year's spending to enhance production capacity by 9.2 per cent, after posting an annual profit in line with expectation.
Sinopec has budgeted capital expenditure of 124 billion yuan (HK$147 billion) this year, up from 113.7 billion yuan in 2009. The increase was mostly for expansions in the refining, distribution and chemicals segments.
Planned oil output of 45.6 million tonnes for this year is 1.3 per cent less than last year's output, while targeted gas output of 14.1 billion cubic metres is 12.8 per cent higher than last year.
The company's net profit for 2010 was 71.8 billion yuan based on international accounting standards, up 13.7 per cent from 63.1 billion yuan in 2009. It was in line with the average estimate of 72.1 billion yuan of 27 analysts polled by Bloomberg.
The profit growth mostly came from upstream oil and gas production. Sinopec, the country's second-largest oil and gas producer after PetroChina, recorded an operating profit of 47.1 billion yuan from this division, almost double the 23.9 billion yuan seen in 2009.
This was driven predominantly by a 45.4 per cent jump in average oil selling price to 3,349 yuan a tonne, or roughly US$72 a barrel.
