CHINA Petroleum & Chemical Corp, Asia's biggest refiner, said taxes increased sixfold on crude sold at more than US$40 a barrel in the first three months as the price of oil rose to a record.

Sinopec, as China Petroleum & Chemical is known, paid 6.5 billion yuan (US$927 million) in so-called windfall taxes during the period, compared with 1 billion yuan a year earlier, Chief Financial Officer Dai Houliang told Bloomberg News.

Sinopec said yesterday that first-quarter net income fell 69 percent to 6.06 billion yuan because of refining losses and higher taxes. China needs to adjust the tax's trigger level of US$40 a barrel to help mitigate pressures on operations of state oil companies, an official at the country's top economic planner said last week.

The company hasn't received notice of any changes to the windfall tax, Dai said.

Adjust this year

Hu Weiping, oil and gas director at the National Development and Reform Commission's energy bureau, said on April 24 that the commission's view is to adjust the tax as early as this year, while the Ministry of Finance has the final say on the change.

Sinopec's lifting costs rose 19 percent from a year earlier because of inflation and higher wage bill, Dai said, without elaboration.

Refining losses were 454 yuan a ton during the period, the company said at the teleconference. Sinopec said yesterday that refining losses were 20.636 billion yuan in the first quarter, compared with a profit of 4.38 billion yuan a year earlier.

State-controlled Sinopec couldn't raise the prices of its products to pass on higher raw material costs because of government caps on fuel prices aimed at containing inflation.

Benchmark crude in New York averaged almost 70 percent higher in the first quarter than a year earlier.