China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (Sinopec) announced its interim results for the six months ended 30 June 2024.

In accordance with IFRS, Sinopec’s operating revenue for the first half of 2024 reached RMB 1.58 trillion. Profit attributable to shareholders of the company was RMB 37.079 billion, up 2.6% year-on-year. In accordance with CASs, the Company’s net profit attributable to shareholders of the Company was RMB 35.703 billion, up 1.7% year-on-year; basic earnings per share were RMB 0.296, up 1.0% year-on-year.

Sinopec’s oil and gas output in the first half reached approximately 258 million barrels of oil equivalent, up 3.1% year-on-year. Natural Gas production reached approximately 700.6 billion cubic feet, up 6.0% year-on-year; refinery throughput was 127 million tonnes, up 0.1% year-on-year; total sales volume of refined oil products was approximately 119 million tonnes, up 2.1% year-on-year; ethylene production was 6.496 million tonnes.

Chemicals

“In the first half of 2024, the domestic chemical market was still in the trough of business cycle. The Company kept up with the market demand and strengthened coordination of refining and chemical business, regional collaboration and integration of production, sales and R&D efforts. It beefed up cost reduction efforts and achieved notable results in tapping potential and raising profits. Feedstock was further diversified to lower cost. The Company also ran profitable units such as aromatics at high utilization rate, arranged utilization rate cut as well as operational shutdown for units with negative marginal profits and increased the proportion of high value-added products steadily. In the first half of the year, ethylene production was 6.496 million tonnes. Production of synthetic fibre monomer and polymer was up by 17.8% year on year. The Company enhanced cooperation with strategic customers, pushed forward tailor-made product services and explored both domestic and overseas markets with export volume up by 17.8%. The total chemical sales volume in the first half reached 40.06 million tonnes with all products produced were sold.

In the first half of 2024, the operating revenues of this segment were RMB257.3 billion, up by 5.3% year-on-year. This was mainly due to increase in sales volume and prices of chemical products year-on-year. In the first half of 2024, the segment closely followed the market demand, enhanced integration of production, marketing, research in all aspects, dynamically measured product marginal profit, vigorously optimised the structure of feedstock, facilities and products, made efforts to increase production of high value-added products, enhanced cost control and realised an operating loss of RMB3.2 billion, narrowing by RMB0.2 billion year-on-year.”

Focusing on efforts to cut carbon emissions, reduce pollution, increase efficiency and promote green development, Sinopec formulated the Second Phase Plan of the Green Enterprise Campaign of Sinopec Corp. It set the following main targets through 2028: emission intensities of carbon dioxide and methane decrease by 5% and 20% respectively compared with 2023, capture and utilise 2.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, 100% compliance rate of carbon emission trading; over 92% comprehensive utilisation rate of industrial solid waste, 100% compliance disposal rate of hazardous waste; comprehensive energy consumption per RMB10,000 of production output decreases by 5% compared with 2023, over 60% reuse rate of wastewater.

Ma Yongsheng, Chairman, Sinopec, said: Going forward, we will thoroughly implement reforms to promote high-quality development, attach great importance to innovation-driven growth, accelerate business transformation and upgrading, strengthen lean management, and strive hard to overcome difficulties and create value.

“The Company will strengthen operational quality and further enhance profitability. By giving full play to our integrated operation, we will optimize the industrial chain and regional layout and reinforce cost management, thereby maximizing our profitability. Enhanced efforts will be made to promote the business transformation and upgrading, and new productive forces will be cultivated and developed.

“We will commit ourselves to the innovation-driven strategy so as to drive the business transformation and upgrading and the development of emerging businesses. As for the upstream business, we will insist on the expansion of oil and gas business, and the development of natural gas production, supply, storage and marketing system will be accelerated. The development of a multi-energy complementary system comprising “oil and gas + new energies” will be expedited by enhancing efforts to develop new energies such as hydrogen energy, wind power and solar power.

“As for the refining business, we will speed up the construction of "high-end, intelligent and green" production bases, coordinate the development of low-cost “oil to chemicals” projects and the projects for “oil to specialties with differentiated features”, and proactively formulate the plan for the development of emerging businesses such as new materials and bio-technology.

“As for the marketing business, we will further optimize the network layout, push for the development of EV battery charging and swapping service and gas filling station network along with the expansion of demonstrating application scenarios for hydrogen mobility. Moreover, the Easy Joy service ecosystem will be enhanced in order to sharpen the competitive edges of our integrated energy service network involving “petrol, gas, hydrogen, power and services”.