Oil refining has not been a very lucrative business in China recently, with even the highly profitable Sinopec Zhenhai Refining & Chemical Branch suffering losses in its refining operations in the first half of this year, Shanghai's First Financial Daily reports.

Since international oil prices dropped in the first half of this year after a surge, and crude oil accounts for 96% of the total cost of refined oil, the branch lost 423 million yuan (US$66.29 million) in the period, the newspaper said.

Chen Jian, party secretary of the branch, told the newspaper that the company typically bought crude oil two months in advance, while refined oil prices were set according to international oil prices in the past month.

The state-run Sinopec is the most profitable refiner in the country. Even when the oil industry suffered widespread losses last year, the company's profits were 5.85 billion yuan (US$917 million), including 20 million yuan (US$3.13 million) from its oil refining segment.

However, the situation worsened to such an extent in the first half of this year that Sinopec also joined the ranks of loss-making refineries.

"Profits from our chemical products helped us become the only profitable refinery in the country in the first half of this year," Chen noted.

Since no profit was earned by its refinery, Sinopec's subsidiaries in various areas have been developing non-oil products and services, including convenience stores at gas stations and e-commerce channels.

Sinopec's non-oil revenues in 2011 were 8.26 billion yuan (US$1.29 billion), a 44.2% growth year-on-year, the company's financial report showed.

According to unconfirmed reports, Sinopec was targeting revenue of 50 billion yuan (US$7.84 billion) from non-oil products by 2015, a growth of 400% in four years.

In the first quarter of this year, Sinopec and its fellow industry giant China Petrochemical Development Corp lost a combined 20 billion yuan (US$3.13 billion). The situation in Q2 would be worse, an industry analyst said.

The chemical industry's total profits in the first four months of this year were 242.55 billion yuan (US$38.01 billion), a drop of 13.6% year-on-year. Its revenues from its main businesses were 3.72 trillion yuan (US$583 billion), a growth of 13.3% year-on-year.