China Petroleum & Chemical Corp, also known as Sinopec, saw its third-quarter net income climb 37.7 percent year-on-year to 17.94 billion yuan ($2.5 billion), backed by higher oil-product sales and higher refinery output, the company said on Thursday. 

The company processed 193.74 million metric tons of crude oil between January and September, up 7.6 percent versus a year earlier, it said.

Thanks to a continued demand recovery domestically as well as growing fuel exports, refined fuel sales soared 19 percent to 180.55 million tons. Domestic sales expanded 16.9 percent to around 143 million tons, it said.

The company has been stepping up exploring more geologically challenging reserves. In the upstream business, efforts were made to strengthen high-quality exploration and efficient development, resulting in increased reserves, stable oil production, rising gas production, and reduced costs, it said.

Several new oil and gas discoveries and significant breakthroughs were made in regions like the Tarim Basin and Junggar Basin located in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.

In the first three quarters, the equivalent oil and gas production reached 52.91 million tons, a 3.6 percent year-on-year increase, including a natural gas production of 28.1 billion cubic meters, up 8.7 percent year-on-year, it said.

zhengxin@chinadaily.com.cn