In 2009, facing the severe challenge posed by global financial crisis and fierce competition in the global market, the Group accelerated its “going global” pace by giving full play to the advantages of upper-middle-down steam integration and trade-investment-engineering service integration, so that its overseas business witnessed rapid development and international operation achieved great progress.

Oversea oil and gas exploration and development

The Group’s oversea oil and gas business achieved new leapfrog by its firm efforts in strictly following the going global strategy and oil-gas resources strategy, addressing the challenges and grasping the opportunities. The Group made important achievements in several oversea oil and gas exploration projects: the testing of Yemen 71 block Rabaa-1 well and Nigeria 64 block Kukaku-1 well were completed with high-yield oil and gas flow being found; major progress was made in rolling exploration of Kazakhstan FIOC’s S block and relevant work of several exploration wells in Gabonese G4-188 block. Its oversea equity oil production ascended to a new high by deploying and pushing development projects in an optimal way with its overseas equity crude oil production of the year reached 12.79 million tons, up 42% year on year. Major progress was also made in the development of new projects. The Group successfully acquired five projects including Addax Company, and partial equity of three blocks in Angola, which laid a solid foundation for its sustainable and rapid development in the 12th Five Year Plan.

International Petroleum Engineering

The Group strived to tide over the influence of global financial crisis so that its oversea petroleum engineering business achieved rapid and healthy development. It further consolidated its position in its traditional Middle East market like Saudi Arabia. By the end of 2009, the Group had executed 355 petroleum engineering technical service contracts in 35 countries, with contracted value reaching 7.9 billion dollars; newly contracted value for the whole year was 2.81billion dollars and completed contracted value was 2.43 billion dollars, up 7.7% and 29.2% year on year respectively; the number of oversea team reached 322, with 5,522 Chinese employees and 11,434 foreign employees.

International Refining Engineering

In 2009, the Group had 7 engineering and construction subsidiaries who executed 16 contracts in 4 countries, among which 10 were under construction and 6 were completed. It completed a contracted value of 1.08 billion dollars in accumulation in the whole year. The oversea projects developed in an orderly way.  New breakthroughs were made in oversea refining engineering market expansion. The Group won 8 oversea engineering projects bidding for the whole year and signed the contracts with the value of 1.27 billion dollars. The staff engaging in the management and operation of the oversea projects reached 10,301, among which 2,416 are Sinopec internal employees and 4137 are Chinese nationals employed by Sinopec externally or by sub-contractors, 3,748 are foreign nationals employed Sinopec externally or by sub-contractors.

International Trade

Facing the large fluctuation in international oil price, the Group actively addressed the challenges from international market by intensifying market analysis and predicts and enhancing its strategy-based purchase and market operation capacity. The Group managed to guarantee the stable domestic supply and reduce purchase cost and supply risk by giving full play to the advantages of integrated oversea and foreign purchase and following the strategy of diversified the sources of resource imports. The Group made every effort in expanding the scale of crude oil trade by carrying out the third party trade with the total crude oil import reaching 138 million tons and third party crude oil trade reaching 38.8 million tons.

The Group sought to expand the trade scale of chemical products, catalysts, lubricants and equipment materials by overcoming the negative factors like shrinking demand in the international market and increasing operational risk. The Group achieved a breakthrough in exports to African market by relying on the state’s export-oriented credit policy, following the large-sized customer-oriented strategy, putting more efforts in expanding the key market of equipment material exports. The Group carried out domestic and oversea trade integrated operation so as to guarantee the supply of imported materials by continuing to push forward the cooperation with some world-renowned oil companies and large-sized engineering companies. The Group achieved rapid growth in import and export business by comprehensively integrating its foreign trade business with import volume reaching 3.03 million tons and export volume reaching 986 thousand tons, up 65% and 9.5% year-on-year respectively. The total import and export value of chemical products, catalysts, lubricants, and equipment materials reached 3.76 billion dollars.