China's CNOOC says 1H profit up 89 pct

The Beijing-based company, the only one of China's three major state-owned oil companies that does not have a significant refining business, said net profit in the first half of the year was 27.5 billion yuan ($4 billion), up from 14.6 billion yuan in the same period of 2007.

"Benefiting from high oil prices and effective cost control, the companys net profit for the first half of the year increased significantly," CNOOC's chairman Fu Chengyu said in a statement to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

Revenues rose 64 percent to 69 billion yuan ($10.1 billion) from 42.2 billion yuan, the company said.

CNOOC had reported only a 1.1 percent increase in net profit in 2007, due to a large jump in a windfall tax on oil sales above $40 a barrel. But in the first half of the year its earnings showed strong growth despite a four-fold increase in the oil gains levy, to 9.7 billion yuan ($1.4 billion).

The company, which has shares traded in Hong Kong and New York, said it earned an average oil price of $102.49 per barrel in the first half of the year, up 74.3 percent over first-half 2007. That compared with an average selling price of US$66.26 a barrel in 2007.

Production rose 8.3 percent over a year earlier, to 92.4 million barrels of oil equivalent, CNOOC said. That increase in part reflected the reopening of its Liuhua oil field, which had been closed for most of the first half of 2007 due to typhoon damage.

CNOOC's shares rose 3.75 percent Wednesday to 11.62 Hong Kong dollars.