Profits in March rose to 28.25 billion yuan (4.15 billion dollars), up 160 percent over the previous month, Xinhua news agency reported, citing the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Association.

The profit increase was mostly due to a government decision to raise prices of oil products domestically as world crude prices fell in the face of the global economic crisis, it said.

The nation's top oil producers include China National Petroleum Corporation, China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation, China National Offshore Oil Corp, Sinochem Corporation, and Shaanxi Yanchang Petroleum (Group) Co. Ltd, it said.

However, the oil industry's added industrial production value for the first quarter of 2009 fell 14 percent over the same period last year, while sales revenues were down 14.5 percent in the first three months, the Guangzhou Daily said.

It was the first time in 10 years that China's oil industry saw declines in both industrial output and sales revenues, it said.

"It is likely that the falling trend would continue in the second quarter, as the economic crisis will likely deepen," the paper cited Feng Shiliang, an industry association official as saying.

As world oil prices skyrocketed in the years before the global financial crisis, China capped domestic prices in an effort to protect economic growth, a situation that led to hefty losses to the nation's oil industry.

China's oil refiners suffered 120 billion yuan in losses in the first eight months of 2008, the industry association said earlier.

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