China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., the nation's biggest refiner, received 24.5 billion yuan ($3.58 billion) in subsidies for importing crude oil in the second quarter, said an analyst at China Merchants Securities Co.

    Sinopec, as China Petroleum is known, is unlikely to get state subsidies for crude imports in the third quarter after the government increased fuel prices last month to offset refiners' losses, China Merchants' Qiu Xiaofeng said. Qiu calculated the second-quarter subsidies based on the value of Sinopec's imports during the period.

    The government is paying Sinopec and PetroChina Co., the nation's largest refiners, rebates of 75 percent on the 17 percent value-added tax levied on crude imports. China controls fuel prices to limit their effect on inflation in the world's most-populous nation, reducing refiners' ability to pass on higher crude-oil costs.

    ``If Sinopec cannot get a state subsidy for the third quarter, then it increases the possibility that the government may raise fuel prices again later this year,'' Qiu said by telephone in Shanghai today.

    Sinopec's Beijing-based spokesman Huang Wensheng wasn't immediately available for comment. Calls to Deputy Financial Officer Wang Lisheng weren't answered.

    Tax rebates on crude-oil imports received by Sinopec were around 7 billion yuan in April, a company official said on May 27. That's enough to cover less than half of its refining losses, Chairman Su Shulin said on May 26.

    Hong Kong-listed Sinopec received 4.9 billion yuan in subsidies to offset refining losses in 2007 and 7.4 billion yuan in the first quarter of this year, it said in March. The Beijing-based company received a 9.42 billion-yuan subsidy in 2005 and 5 billion yuan in 2006.

    China raised gasoline and diesel prices by as much as 18 percent on June 20. The increase was the first this year. Crude- oil prices, up 59 percent in a year, climbed to a record $147.27 a barrel in New York on July 11.