Jul. 23, 2012 (China Knowledge) - Sinopec Corp<600028><0386>, the largest refiner in Asia by capacity, announced last Saturday that it produced 163 million barrels of crude oil in the first half of 2012, reflecting a YoY increase of 4.33%.

The refiner saw its domestic crude oil output rose 1.16% YoY to 152 million barrels, while the overseas oil output amounted to 11.13 million barrels, up 82.46% from a year earlier.

From January to June 2012, the company's natural gas output increased 14.2% YoY to 289.93 billion cubic meters. Meanwhile, its output of ethylene decreased 4.09% YoY to 4.81 million metric tons which was mainly affected by macro-economy.

In the first half of this year, Sinopec sold a total of 77.03 million metric tons of refined oil product, 2.57% more than it realized in the same period of 2011.