China's CNOOC says 1H net profit up 89 pct

CNOOC Ltd., China's largest offshore oil and gas producer by capacity, said Wednesday that its net profit jumped 89 percent in January-June thanks to higher output and surging oil prices.

The Beijing-based company, the only one of China's three major state-owned oil companies that does not have a significant refining business, said net profit in the first half of the year was 27.5 billion yuan (US$4 billion), up from 14.6 billion yuan in the same period of 2007.

"Benefiting from high oil prices and effective cost control, the companys net profit for the first half of the year increased significantly," CNOOC's chairman Fu Chengyu said in a …