SINOPEC suffers 30% profit fall

Source: Xinhua | 2017-03-21

SINOPEC Engineering Group, China’s state-owned refining and chemical engineering company, suffered a 30 percent fall in profit last year as low crude prices and stricter pollution rules took its toll on the company.

The Hong Kong-listed company’s net profit totaled 4.29 billion yuan (US$621 million) last year, a drop of 30.3 percent from a year ago, “dragged down by a 50.9 percent loss in the advanced coal chemical engineering sector,” the firm said in its annual report yesterday.

Meanwhile, “low crude prices have shrunk the market for coal processing” as producers preferred to use oil rather than coal to produce chemicals,” China Shenhua Energy Co, the country’s biggest coal miner, said in its annual report.