
China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation, or Sinopec Group, is a Chinese
oil and
gas enterprise based in
Chaoyang District,
Beijing
Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...
. The
SASAC administers China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation for the benefit of
State Council of the People's Republic of China
The State Council of the People's Republic of China, also known as the Central People's Government, is the chief administrative authority and national cabinet. It is constitutionally the highest administrative organ of the country and the e ...
. China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation operates a publicly traded subsidiary, called Sinopec, listed in
Hong Kong
Hong Kong)., Legally Hong Kong, China in international treaties and organizations. is a special administrative region of China. With 7.5 million residents in a territory, Hong Kong is the fourth most densely populated region in the wor ...
and
Shanghai
Shanghai, Shanghainese: , Standard Chinese pronunciation: is a direct-administered municipality and the most populous urban area in China. The city is located on the Chinese shoreline on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the ...
stock exchanges. China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation is the world's largest
oil refining
An oil refinery or petroleum refinery is an industrial processes, industrial process Factory, plant where petroleum (crude oil) is transformed and refining, refined into products such as gasoline (petrol), diesel fuel, Bitumen, asphalt base, ...
conglomerate, state owned enterprise, and second highest revenue company in the world behind
Walmart
Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores in the United States and 23 other ...
.
History
Domestic
In 1994, Sinopec was among the large industrial
state-owned enterprises of China
A state-owned enterprise of the People's Republic of China ( Chinese: 国有企业) is a legal entity that undertakes commercial activities on behalf of an owner government.
, the People's Republic of China has more SOEs than any other country, ...
which were selected for a pilot program of restructuring as state holding companies, thereby enabling partial public listings of its subsidiaries' assets.
Sinopec Limited was established as a joint stock entity under the China Petrochemical Corporation Group (Sinopec Group) in February 2000. The company was simultaneously listed in Hong Kong, New York, and London in October 2000. The IPO raised $3.5 billion.
A Shanghai listing was completed in June 2001. Prior to its operation as a company Sinopec's assets came from the Ministry of Petroleum Industry and the Ministry of Chemical Industry which partially privatized in the 1980s.
Given its legacy asset base from Sinopec Group, analysts have categorized it as a more
downstream oil player than
PetroChina
PetroChina Company Limited () is a Chinese oil and gas company and is the listed arm of state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), headquartered in Dongcheng District, Beijing. The company is currently Asia's largest oil and ga ...
.
However, since 1998 Sinopec has expanded into upstream endeavors.
This expansion began with a state mandated asset swap with
China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) which gave some of Sinopec's refineries to CNPC in return for Sinopec acquiring some of CNPC's upstream assets.
China entered the WTO in 2001 which some experts claim put additional pressure on their domestic oil industry to be efficient.
In the lead up to going public, Sinopec cut over 200,000 jobs from its roster.
BP partnered with Sinopec, in 2005, to build SECCO an ethylene derivatives plant with an initial investment of $2.7 billion.
It is located in the Shanghai Chemical Industry Park, and generates over 3.2 million tons of petrochemical products annually.
In 2017, Sinopec bought out the remainder of BP's stake in SECCO through its Gaoqiao subsidiary for $1.68 billion.
Gaoqiao's operations predate the creation of Sinopec and it operates 75 plants for producing finished petroleum products such as fuels, oils, organic compounds.
Ineos bought out half of Sinopec's share of SECCO in 2022 as part of a broader partnership deal.
Sinopec operates the Jiujang Petrochemical Complex which was originally constructed in 1975 and has received a series of improvements over time.
The refinery processes 8 million tonnes of crude oil per year.
Xi Jinping
Xi Jinping, pronounced (born 15 June 1953) is a Chinese politician who has been the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Chairman of the Central Military Commission (China), chairman of the Central Military Commission ...
visited the refinery, in 2023, when the company highlighted the importance of
Socialism with Chinese characteristics
Socialism with Chinese characteristics (; ) is a set of political theories and policies of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that are seen by their proponents as representing Marxism adapted to Chinese circumstances.
The term was first establ ...
and presented awards.
Sinopec posted a 6.8% operating margin for the 2006 financial year. Profit was limited in part by government price controls on downstream petrochemical products. The National Development and Reform Commission sets gasoline and diesel prices and the Ministry of Finance collects
windfall tax on upstream profits.
At the beginning of 2006, Chinese retail gasoline and diesel sales were not profitable for Sinopec and sales were hurting the company's financials. To pressure the NDRC, Sinopec and CNPC cut production causing long lines at the pump. This led to NDRC approving a 15% increase in the price at the pump. To offset losses from the price controls, the state gave Sinopec $1.1 billion in subsidy during 2005 and $647 million in 2006.
This finance example demonstrates of Sinopec's implementation of policy adjusted profit.
Chinese methods on how to articulate, quantify, and report the sometimes conflicting interests of profit and political policy have evolved during over time. Some commentators on the Shanghai Stock Market, where Sinopec trades, call these methods "valuation with Chinese characteristics".
Sinopec demonstrated the "one profit, five rates" method in 2023.
This method calls for assessing the company's performance with profit, "asset-liability ratio, return on equity, operating cash ratio, overall labor productivity, and R&D investment intensity".

In February 2007,
Saudi Aramco
Saudi Aramco ( ') or Aramco (formerly Arabian-American Oil Company), officially the Saudi Arabian Oil Company, is a majority state-owned petroleum and natural gas company that is the national oil company of Saudi Arabia. , it is the fourth- l ...
and
Exxon
Exxon Mobil Corporation ( ) is an American multinational oil and gas corporation headquartered in Spring, Texas, a suburb of Houston. Founded as the largest direct successor of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, the modern company was form ...
signed a deal with Sinopec to revamp the
Fujian
Fujian is a provinces of China, province in East China, southeastern China. Fujian is bordered by Zhejiang to the north, Jiangxi to the west, Guangdong to the south, and the Taiwan Strait to the east. Its capital is Fuzhou and its largest prefe ...
oil refinery and triple its capacity to by 2009.
The Saudi Aramco investment is strategically aligned because Saudi Aramco produces a heavier crude oil which is not preferable for other Chinese refining facilities. Aramco, Exxon and Sinopec also signed contracts for a fuel marketing venture that will manage 750 service stations and a network of terminals in Fujian province.
Their subsidiaries also expanded cooperation in Tianjin the following year. They invested over $3 billion from 2008 to 2019 expanding the ethylene production capacity multiple times and finally achieving 1.3 million tons per year of production. In Fujian, Sinopec also operates the Gulei Industrial Park. It began as a joint venture with a group of Taiwanese companies operating as Dynamic Ever Investments in 2015. The venture took $4 billion of investment and has a production capacity of 1 million tonnes of ethylene per year.
At the time of its approval it was the only Taiwanese petrochemical joint venture in mainland China. It was approved by the Fujian branch of the NDRC which owns a 25% stake in the project. The plant began producing downstream chemicals in 2018 and became fully online in 2021.
Phase two began, in 2024, when Saudi Aramco made an additional $9.8 billion investment in the facilities. These expansions are scheduled to be fully operational in 2030.
Sinopec completed construction of a new ethylene plant in Wuhan at the end of 2012. The construction of this plant was done as a joint venture with the South Korean SK Group. This facility was planned in alignment with the
National Development and Reform Commission
The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) is the third-ranked executive department of the State Council of the People's Republic of China, which functions as a macroeconomic management agency. Established as the State Planning C ...
's goal of producing more ethylene domestically in order to rely less heavily on foreign imports. It will provide 800,000 tons/year which is a significant step towards the NDRC's 2015 goal of raising domestic production by 7.5 millions tons/year. In March 2013, Sinopec agreed to pay $1.5 billion for its parent company's overseas oil and gas-producing assets.
Zhejiang Oil Products Company was originally founded in 1950, but began operating under Sinopec in 1998. It is Sinopec's highest selling oil refinery and one of the most important companies in Zhejiang. Sinopec has continuously improved the refining capacity and it ranks as one of the largest refineries in the world.
The refinery prioritizes output of non-fuel chemicals at a notably higher rate than comparable refineries. This large scale production, particularly of
aromatic compounds hurt foreign competitors.
This attracted further investment in China from Saudi Aramco which acquired a 10% stake in Zhejiang Oil Products Company in 2023.
Due to the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...
, Sinopec reported a loss of 23 billion yuan in the January to June time frame of 2020. In 2021, they reported a 22% increase in revenue as the demand for fuel and oil slowly returned to normal. In 2022, the company reported a 25% net income increase in the first quarter. Diesel output was increased by almost 10% that year and the gasoline production saw only a 0.7% increase.
In 2021, Sinopec began a partnership with
NIO, when they unveiled that a NIO Power Swap Station 2.9 would be put into the Sinopec Chaoying Station in Beijing. Additionally, the partnership was to include cooperation between the two companies in new materials, smart EV technology, Battery-as-a-Service (BaaS), construction of recreational facilities, as well as the purchase of
vehicle
A vehicle () is a machine designed for self-propulsion, usually to transport people, cargo, or both. The term "vehicle" typically refers to land vehicles such as human-powered land vehicle, human-powered vehicles (e.g. bicycles, tricycles, velo ...
s.
China's imports of U.S. natural gas will more than double.
In March 2022, a memorandum of understanding was signed between Sinopec and Aramco to strengthen the already existing ties between the companies and to improve their downstream operations.
The Hainan Baling Chemical New Material Company, a Sinopec subsidiary in
Hainan
Hainan is an island provinces of China, province and the southernmost province of China. It consists of the eponymous Hainan Island and various smaller islands in the South China Sea under the province's administration. The name literally mean ...
, opened a one million tonne per year
Styrene-butadiene
Styrene-butadiene or styrene-butadiene rubber (SBR) describe families of synthetic rubbers derived from styrene and butadiene (the version developed by Goodyear is called Neolite). These materials have good abrasion resistance and good aging ...
(SBC) plant in 2023. This new facility made Sinopec the largest producer of SBC in the world at the time. Sinopec began operating the deepest oil well in Asia in 2023. As part of Project Deep Earth the drill went 9432m below
Xinjiang
Xinjiang,; , SASM/GNC romanization, SASM/GNC: Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Sinkiang, officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an Autonomous regions of China, autonomous region of the China, People' ...
. Sinopec and BP have worked together since Sinopec formed.
Their joint venture in
Zhejiang
)
, translit_lang1_type2 =
, translit_lang1_info2 = ( Hangzhounese) ( Ningbonese) (Wenzhounese)
, image_skyline = 玉甑峰全貌 - panoramio.jpg
, image_caption = View of the Yandang Mountains
, image_map = Zhejiang i ...
had 2024 gas stations in 2021. They signed a memorandum of strategic cooperation with
BP at the
Davos Economic Forum in 2024. Sinopec has set a goal of building 5000 new EV charging stations by 2025 and plans to cooperate with BP on achieving that goal. These and other of Sinopec's environmental goals are aligned with the
Fourteenth five-year plan.
International
Sinopec has demonstrated a willingness, characteristic Chinese national oil companies, to invest in foreign, often risky, infrastructure. These firms work in concert with the Chinese state owned financial sector via direct low cost financing and indirect infrastructure agreements between foreign nations and Chinese banks.
Several experts claim that the role of direct financing support is not as important as indirect support.
Large foreign purchases are particularly notable in the Chinese context because they require approval by the National Development and Reform Commission and the State Council. Sinopec made failed attempts to acquire Iranian oil reserves in 2001 and Kazakh reserves in 2003.
In subsequent years, Sinopec relied more heavily on off-taker agreements to gain access to foreign markets.
The
2008 financial crisis
The 2008 financial crisis, also known as the global financial crisis (GFC), was a major worldwide financial crisis centered in the United States. The causes of the 2008 crisis included excessive speculation on housing values by both homeowners ...
made a large impact on Chinese foreign policy and Chinese oil companies put a higher priority on mergers and acquisitions in the following years.
According to the OECD, foreign oil ventures are an attractive investment for Chinese national oil companies because China is a large importer of oil and wants to control its supply chain.
Some Chinese observes agree with this assessment and highlight Sinopec's 2005 goal of importing 15 million tons of crude oil for refinement in China. China's
Go Out policy explicitly stated, in 2001, that Sinopec should "make effective use of overseas resources, build the overseas oil and gas supply bases and diversify the oil imports". This was revised in 2006 to "broaden international oil and gas cooperation".
According to the company, in 2022, foreign operations were staffed 74% by local workers rather than Chinese employees.
Sinopec began its partnership with Iran in 2001, and signed a 30 year deal to invest $70 billion in the development of
Yadavaran Field in 2004.
Contract negotiation for this program took three years such that technical work and funding did not actually begin until 2007.
The US pressured China to block the investment due to sanctions, but Iran claims that pressure did not delay the deal.
Iran expressed pleasure with the deal and stated the goal of replacing Japan with China as the primary exporter of Iranian oil.
There is little agreement about the exact amount of oil and gas available through the Yadavaran project, but all claim that it is a large oil field by global standards.
The first phase of drilling was completed in 2012 and production continued to expand.
Sinopec claims to have ceased buying this oil due to US sanctions in 2019.
Sinopec established its first drilling rig in
Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in West Asia. Located in the centre of the Middle East, it covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula and has a land area of about , making it the List of Asian countries ...
in 2000. In 2004, Sinopec began exploring in Saudi Arabia.
Unipec, a subsidiary of Sinopec, signed a contract with French oil company
Total Gabon in February 2002. Under the contract China, for the first time, bought
Gabon
Gabon ( ; ), officially the Gabonese Republic (), is a country on the Atlantic coast of Central Africa, on the equator, bordered by Equatorial Guinea to the northwest, Cameroon to the north, the Republic of the Congo to the east and south, and ...
ese crude oil. During his African visit, in 2004, Chinese President
Hu Jintao signed a series of bilateral trade accords with his Gabonese counterpart
Omar Bongo
Omar Bongo Ondimba (born Albert-Bernard Bongo; 30 December 1935 – 8 June 2009) was a Gabonese politician who was the second president of Gabon from 1967 until Death and state funeral of Omar Bongo, his death in 2009. A member of the Gabonese De ...
, including a "memorandum of agreement aimed at showing the parties' desire to develop exploration, exploitation, refining and export activities of oil products". Three onshore fields were to be explored. One of the three blocks, LT2000, is some southeast of Gabon's economic hub,
Port Gentil, which lies south of the capital,
Libreville, on the Atlantic coast. The other two — DR200 and GT2000 - are around northeast of Port Gentil, according to the Gabonese oil ministry. In 2013 and 2014 Sinopec and the Gabonese government had significant disputes over licensing and fees. The Gabonese government nationalized one of the oilfields that Sinopec was previously licensed to extract from. Ultimately negotiations between the parties resulted in new leases for Sinopec's further extraction.
In 2004, the
Export–Import Bank of China signed a $2 billion loan with Angola to finance infrastructure projects by Chinese companies. This led to the Angolan government blocking a deal between
Shell
Shell may refer to:
Architecture and design
* Shell (structure), a thin structure
** Concrete shell, a thin shell of concrete, usually with no interior columns or exterior buttresses
Science Biology
* Seashell, a hard outer layer of a marine ani ...
and India's
Oil and Natural Gas Corporation in favor of a deal with Sinopec.
In 2005, Sinopec and CNPC jointly purchased EnCana an Ecuadorian Petrochemical company for $1.42 billion. The purchase gave the joint venture, called Andes Petroleum Company, access to over 62,000 barrels per day of crude and the OCP pipeline which can pump 450,000 barrels per day.
It was the largest petrochemical deal in Ecuadorian history.
Beginning in 2012, Chinese banks began large financing agreements with Ecuador to pre-pay for oil procured via Andes Petroleum.
Ecuador conducted major oil industry reforms in 2007 and 2010 which promoted many international oil companies to exit the Ecuadorian market. Sinopec, on the other hand, remained. As part of these reforms, Ecuador required that local labor be used for over 90% of unskilled and administrative positions. This put an end to further disputes about local job creation. International observers note that Andes Petroleum's operations were among the most successful in Ecuador through 2014. This success prompted an expansion of its operations. The company has generally had better relations with the local population than EnCana did.
Most of the planned expansions were halted in 2019 when opposition from environmental activists and small indigenous tribes prompted Ecuadorian courts to find that the tribes had not been properly consulted.
Sinopec is a partner in Petrodar Operating Company Ltd., a consortium whose partners also include China National Petroleum Corporation and Sudapet (the Sudanese state-owned oil company), among others. In 2005, Petrodar commenced production of oil in blocks 3 and 7 in South-east Sudan and transported them via its new pipeline. Petrodar's operations represent a major increase in overall Sudanese oil production. Sinopec is also looking into other companies such as
ERHC Energy which has multiple oil block assets in the Joint Development Zone. When
South Sudan
South Sudan (), officially the Republic of South Sudan, is a landlocked country in East Africa. It is bordered on the north by Sudan; on the east by Ethiopia; on the south by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda and Kenya; and on the ...
seceded it took most of Sudan's oil reserves with it.
The Petrodas pipeline is used to transport South Sudan's oil for export in Sudan.
In 2024, fighting in the vicinity of
Singa, Sudan halted the flow.
In 2006, Sinopec began operations in Russia with a
Rosneft partnership.
The companies invested in
Sakhalin-III and oil was first drilled in 2006. Rosneft expanded its cooperation with Sinopec in a joint venture called Udmurtneft. They acquired access to 551 million barrels of proven reserves and facilities capable of producing 120,000 barrels per day. The entirety of the deal was financed by Sinopec, but the total price was not disclosed. The sellers claimed offers were $4 billion.
In 2007, in eastern
Ethiopia
Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country located in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the north, Djibouti to the northeast, Somalia to the east, Ken ...
's
Ogaden Desert, a
raid
RAID (; redundant array of inexpensive disks or redundant array of independent disks) is a data storage virtualization technology that combines multiple physical Computer data storage, data storage components into one or more logical units for th ...
by
an ethnic Somali rebel group on a Sinopec drilling site left 74 dead including 9 Chinese oil workers, and 7 kidnapped.
The rebels, the
Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), later released the seven abductees and warned foreign companies against working in the area. Sinopec said it had no plans to pull out of the resource-rich region despite the attack. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson
Liu Jianchao says that China strongly condemns the violent attack carried out by Somalian insurgents on the premises of the oil company Sinopec in Ethiopia.
In 2008, Sinopec bought Tanganyika Oil for $2 billion giving Sinopec access to its Syrian oil fields.
These fields were reported to have over a billion barrels of crude reserves and a trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserve. However, the Syrian investments became significantly less valuable in 2012 when the
Syrian civil war began.
The turmoil forced Sinopec to stop regular operations in Syria. The company negotiated with several parties in Syria on multiple occasions in an attempt to restart operations.
Sinopec also began investing in Australia in 2008 with its $594 million purchase of a 60% stake in
AED Oil. AED was heavily indebted at the time of the purchase in part due to the Puffin oil fields producing less than expected. Sinopec took over operation of these fields after the sale.
In 2009, Sinopec acquired Addax Petroleum Corp for $7.24 billion. This was the largest foreign purchase by a Chinese company. Addax was producing an average of 136,500 barrels per day. Addax was based in
Geneva
Geneva ( , ; ) ; ; . is the List of cities in Switzerland, second-most populous city in Switzerland and the most populous in French-speaking Romandy. Situated in the southwest of the country, where the Rhône exits Lake Geneva, it is the ca ...
at the time, but the Geneva office was closed in 2017 after Sinopec agreed to pay $31.8 million to settle a Swiss bribery investigation of their operations in Nigeria.
Sinopec claimed the office closure was due to low oil prices. The alleged bribes stemmed from a tax dispute between Sinopec Addax and the Nigerian government. Both sides claimed they had not received their fair share of benefits. The dispute was settled in 2015. Addax's resources were concentrated in West Africa and
Kurdistan
Kurdistan (, ; ), or Greater Kurdistan, is a roughly defined geo- cultural region in West Asia wherein the Kurds form a prominent majority population and the Kurdish culture, languages, and national identity have historically been based. G ...
.
Sinopec's assumption of the agreements with the Kurds created difficulty in forming new agreements with the Iraqi government because Iraq has a long standing policy against dealing with anyone who makes agreements with the Kurds. However these issues did not spread to other Chinese energy companies.
On 13 April 2010 the company announced acquisition of Conoco Phillips's 9% stake in the Canadian
oil sand firms,
Syncrude, for $4.65bn.
While largely welcomed by industry, Sinopec's Syncrude stake has raised concerns about the influence the Chinese government may try to exert on Canadian policy makers. The following year, Sinopec took over
Daylight Energy for C$2.2 billion ($2.1 billion). Daylight was then renamed
Sinopec Daylight Energy Ltd.. The OECD and Chinese observers note Sinopec's attraction to the Syncrude deal is partly explained by a desire to acquire technical knowledge on oil sands extraction which can be used to boost domestic oil production.
Sinopec invested $7.1 billion in Repsol Brazil to begin a new partnership in 2010.
Chinese observers note that part of Sinopec's motivation for the deal was to bring deep water drilling expertise to China.
In 2011, Sinopec additionally invested $5.2 billion for a 30 percent stake in the Brazilian unit of
Galp Energia SGPS SA which owns the rights to biggest discovered oil reserve in the western hemisphere since 1976. This brought the total investment of Chinese energy companies in foreign oil assets for the year to $16 billion.
Sinopec partnered with
Chevron Corporation
Chevron Corporation is an American multinational energy corporation predominantly specializing in oil and gas. The second-largest direct descendant of Standard Oil, and originally known as the Standard Oil Company of California (shortened t ...
on a deep water drilling operation in Indonesdia in 2011. The project is located in the
Kutai Basin and has access to 15 million barrels of crude oil reserve and 700 billion cubic feet of natural gas. The deal closed with Sinopec getting an 18% stake for $680 million.
This project aligned with China's goal of doubling gas' share of energy production during the 2009-2015 period.
Unipec first became involved in Ghana in December 2011 when
Ghana National Petroleum Corporation agreed to supply 13,000 barrels of oil per day for the following 15 years in return for the Master Facility Agreement. The MFA was a $3 billion six year loan from CDB which Ghanaian President Mills and Hu-Jintao directly negotiated on.
The MFA also required Ghana to spend most of the funds on projects constructed by Chinese contractors. Unipec was awarded the first $750 million of these funds to build the
Atuabo Gas Plant. In 2013, Unipec halted work on the project to pressure Ghana into making amendments to the MFA that CDB had requested. By 2014, Ghana had only received $600 million of the promised MFA funds.
On 31 October 2011 Sinopec Addax acquired
Shell Oil Company's 80% share of an exploration firm called
Pecten that explores and drills in various offshore locations including the oil basin near
Douala
Douala is the largest city in Cameroon and its economic capital. It is also the capital of Cameroon's Littoral Region (Cameroon), Littoral Region. It was home to Central Africa's largest port, now being replaced by Kribi port. It has the country ...
,
Cameroon
Cameroon, officially the Republic of Cameroon, is a country in Central Africa. It shares boundaries with Nigeria to the west and north, Chad to the northeast, the Central African Republic to the east, and Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the R ...
in cooperation with
TotalEnergies.
BP and Sinopec was expanded on an existing base of joint ventures via new bunker fuel projects in 2015. Bunker fuel was then delivered to ports in
Singapore
Singapore, officially the Republic of Singapore, is an island country and city-state in Southeast Asia. The country's territory comprises one main island, 63 satellite islands and islets, and one outlying islet. It is about one degree ...
, China, and Europe in 2020. Sinopec Addax made a $1.5 billion investment in North Sea drilling operations in 2012.
The investment was rebranded multiple times. Originally, the deal was with
Talisman Energy and Sinopec exited this investment after a dispute with
Repsol
Repsol S.A.
El Nuevo Herald, 2012-05-31[Originally an init ...]
was settled for $2.1 billion. The dispute began in 2015 over amounts paid by Sinopec and was settled in 2023. In 2013, company sold a 30 percent stake of an oil and gas block in Myanmar to Taiwan's CPC Corp. This was followed by Sinopec's acquisition of a 33% stake in
Apache Corporation's oil and gas business in
Egypt
Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...
for $3.1 billion.
In June 2013, Sinopec agreed to acquire
Marathon Oil
Marathon Oil Corporation was an American company engaged in hydrocarbon exploration. In November 2024, it was acquired by ConocoPhillips and absorbed into the company.
Marathon was founded in Lima, Ohio, as the Ohio Oil Company. In 1899, the ...
Corp's Angolan offshore oil and gas field for $1.52 billion. As of at least 2023, Sinopec is a part minority owner of several offshore projects via Sinopec's half ownership of a joint venture with the private company Sonangol Sinopec International.
Sinopec is also a part owner of the joint venture POLY-GCL Petroleum, which as of 2023 is developing a $4 billion natural gas project in Ethiopia, which will include a pipeline to the Djiboutian coast and an export terminal.
According to
David H. Shinn and academic Joshua Eisenman, the Ethiopian project underscore China's commitment to expanding its import of liquified natural gas from African countries.
In November 2021, U.S. producer Venture Global LNG signed a twenty-year contract with Sinopec to supply
liquefied natural gas
Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is natural gas (predominantly methane, CH4, with some mixture of ethane, C2H6) that has been cooled to liquid form for ease and safety of non-pressurized storage or transport. It takes up about 1/600th the volume o ...
(LNG).
In January 2022 they offered to re-sell LNG to take advantage of high Asian spot prices. Following the 2022
Russian invasion of Ukraine
On 24 February 2022, , starting the largest and deadliest war in Europe since World War II, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, conflict between the two countries which began in 2014. The fighting has caused hundreds of thou ...
the company continued doing business in Russia. For this reason Ukraine listed Sinopec as an
International Sponsors of War
International Sponsors of War () was a publicly-available list of companies and individuals maintained by the Ukrainian National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP) in connection with the Russo-Ukrainian War, particularly the Russian invasion of ...
. Unipec, a subsidiary of Sinopec, is an
intermediary
An intermediary, also known as a middleman or go-between, is defined differently by context. In law or diplomacy, an intermediary is a third-party beneficiary, third party who offers intermediation services between two parties. In trade or barte ...
for
banned Russian oil. In March 2025, Sinopec reportedly halted purchases of Russian oil due to international sanctions. In April 2023, an agreement was signed between Sinopec and
QatarEnergy, making Sinopec the first Asian buyer to participate in the eastern expansion of
Qatar
Qatar, officially the State of Qatar, is a country in West Asia. It occupies the Geography of Qatar, Qatar Peninsula on the northeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula in the Middle East; it shares Qatar–Saudi Arabia border, its sole land b ...
's North Field liquefied natural gas project, with a 5% stake in an 8 million tonnes per year
LNG train. The contract has a 27-year term making it the longest ever purchase agreement for LNG. At the end of June 2023, Sinopec Overseas Investment Holding was established as a vehicle for investment, construction and operation of overseas refineries. Overseas investments at the time amount to 400,000 barrels per day at the Yasref refinery, as well as the $10 billion Amur Gas Chemical Complex in East
Siberia
Siberia ( ; , ) is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states ...
. In September 2023, Sinopec used a tender to purchase 30 cargoes of LNG from more than 10 suppliers for additional supply to begin in October 2023. This additional supply helped China during the winter months as well as offset the lacking supply from Venture Global. On 17 October 2023, an equity agreement was signed between Sinopec and
KazMunayGas JSC for a 30% stake in a $7.7bn
polyethylene
Polyethylene or polythene (abbreviated PE; IUPAC name polyethene or poly(methylene)) is the most commonly produced plastic. It is a polymer, primarily used for packaging (plastic bags, plastic films, geomembranes and containers including bott ...
project in
Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a landlocked country primarily in Central Asia, with a European Kazakhstan, small portion in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the Kazakhstan–Russia border, north and west, China to th ...
, which is expected to start construction in the second half of 2024. In 2023, Sinopec was approved to invest $4.5 billion in refinery construction at
Hambantota International Port,
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, also known historically as Ceylon, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, separated from the Indian subcontinent, ...
.
Governance
Sinopec is one of the "core" central SOEs overseen by SASAC.
The chairman of China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation, like all Chinese National Oil Companies, is a vice minister. This is a political appointment set by the Ministry of Personnel. This means that the post is always given to high ranking communist party members as a reward for career achievement in the industry.
Due to the high ranking nature of China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation's leaders in the communist party, the party does not have total control over the company and the company can exert influence on the government to get support in financing, international agreements, and pricing. For example, even though the state owns China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation, the company did not pay the state any dividends until 2008. China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation also appoints a member to the
Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party
The Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, officially the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, is the Central committee, highest organ when the National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, national congress is not ...
.
Chinese officials have seen some of Sinopec's investments as too politically risky. The Iran and Sudan oil partnerships in particular led to regulatory change by
State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council to hold Sinopec's leaders personally responsible if risky investments cost the government financially.
Sinopec is governed by a
Board of directors
A board of directors is a governing body that supervises the activities of a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government agency.
The powers, duties, and responsibilities of a board of directors are determined by government regulatio ...
. The members are nominated by a committee including the chairman of the board and then board makes decisions on these nominations. The board has highlighted its achievement on diversity, including gender diversity, in its annual report. The report highlights that 10% of the members of Board of Directors are female and 31% of the employees are female.
Sinopec's audits, like other publicly traded Chinese firms, are not subject to independent oversight.
The former head of the companies' board of directors
Chen Tonghai was sentenced to death in July 2009 after being accused of corruption. He had been relieved of his post in 2007. He was replaced by Su Shulin who was formerly the head of CNPC. The company culture moved on from Chen and acted as if he had never existed.
Environmental and safety record
In 2004, Sinopec prospected for oil in the 1,550 square kilometers of
Loango National Park in southern Gabon and encountered criticism for what domestic and foreign environmental critics said were poor and damaging methods.
Primatology professor Christophe Boesch of the US-based environmental organization, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), criticized the use of dynamite and heavy machinery in exploration and road construction by Sinopec through park, noting that it might drive native gorillas deeper into the jungle, where they would be outside legal restrictions on hunting. Gabonese law states that industries can extract oil from national parks, but must rehabilitate them to the prior condition. Boesch, and other international experts, have suggested that Sinopec use other methods such as horizontal drilling to minimize its environmental footprint.
[ Sinopec's activities in Gabon's national parks were suspended in September 2006, by the Gabonese national parks council.][ In 2007, Sinopec redid its earlier environmental study, this time in conjunction with the Gabonese environmentalist group Enviropass and the World Wildlife Foundation, winning high marks from Gabonese, Western, and Chinese conservation experts. Shortly thereafter, Sinopec resumed production with more environmentally friendly methods.
On 21 December 2006, gas started leaking during the drilling of a test well by the Sinopec Southern Prospecting and Development Branch in Quingxi. 12,380 people were evacuated after the leakage occurred. It took at least three attempts and two weeks for the company to seal the leak.
China's top environmental watchdog warned Sinopec in 2007 to stop operations at one of its oil fields due to chronic river pollution. Zhongyuan Oilfields Petrochemical Company, a unit of Sinopec, had failed to meet waste water treatment requirements and had been ordered to pay a pollution fine and operations had to be halted, according to the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA).
Guangdong Provincial Environment Bureau (GPEB) had also issued a red sign warning to 19 companies, including Sinopec Guangzhou, in February 2008. By GPEB's standard, the companies that have involved in excessive emissions or caused serious environmental pollution accidents will be given the red sign warning and will be placed under strict supervision.
An oil pipeline explosion on Friday, 22 November 2013, in ]Qingdao
Qingdao, Mandarin: , (Qingdao Mandarin: t͡ɕʰiŋ˧˩ tɒ˥) is a prefecture-level city in the eastern Shandong Province of China. Located on China's Yellow Sea coast, Qingdao was long an important fortress. In 1897, the city was ceded to G ...
, Shandong province killed at least 62 people, injuring 136, and displacing hundreds more after oil previously leaking onto a street during the day ignited.
In 2021, the company's total climate-warming greenhouse gases emissions reached 172.56 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent. By 2023, emissions were down slightly to 169 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent but the company still ranked second for greenhouse gas emissions among oil companies worldwide.
Renewable energy
As of 2021 Sinopec was the largest supplier of geothermal energy in China. Sinopec plans to expand this with the goal of creating what their leadership calls "smogless cities".
Sinopec has developed a megatonnes carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) project in China. It consists of two parts, the Sinopec Qilu carbon capture and the Shengli Oil Field shifting and storage. The project has been operational since January 2022. Sinopec has partnered with other firms for additional research and development CCUS projects.
By 2021, Sinopec was already the largest Chinese producer of grey hydrogen which is hydrogen fuel produced via petrochemical processing without recapturing the carbon. In 2023, Sinopec constructed its first solar powered green hydrogen facility in Xinjiang which plans to produce annually 20,000 tonnes be transported to and consumed by Sinopec's Tahe refinery. Sinopec's Demonstration Project of Hydrogen Transmission Pipeline from Ulanqab to Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region will connect additional grey, blue, and green hydrogen projects to Beijing by building a pipeline transportation network from Inner Mongolia
Inner Mongolia, officially the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, is an Autonomous regions of China, autonomous region of China. Its border includes two-thirds of the length of China's China–Mongolia border, border with the country of Mongolia. ...
to Beijing. Sinopec claims a lack of transportation infrastructure is one of the main barriers to hydrogen adoption. One such example is a 20,000 tonne per year green hydrogen wind farm built outside Ordos City
Ordos, also known as Ih Ju, is one of the twelve List of administrative divisions of Inner Mongolia, major subdivisions of Inner Mongolia, China. It lies within the Ordos Plateau of the Yellow River. Although mainly rural, Ordos is administered ...
in 2023.
Research Institutions
Sinopec operates several research institutions. It has operated the Research Institute for Petroleum Processing (RIPP) since before its IPO. The RIPP began operation in 1956 and continues to create new patents which Sinopec can leverage in its operations.
See also
* Chemical industry in China
References
External links
*
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