By Ying Lou and Josh P. Hamilton Bloomberg News

HONG KONG: Berkshire Hathaway sold PetroChina shares for the fourth time in three months, banking an almost sevenfold gain since Warren Buffet first invested in the largest oil producer in China.

Berkshire sold 45.138 million shares at an average 11.26 Hong Kong dollars, or $1.45, each Sept. 13, a Hong Kong stock exchange filing Friday showed. That cut its stake to 7.99 percent of the stock not controlled by the Chinese government from 8.93 percent. The company remains the largest non-government shareholder.

The $65.5 million from the latest sale brings to $272 million the value of Buffett's PetroChina sales. Berkshire bought its stake in the producer for less than 1.70 dollars a share in April 2003. Activists have urged Buffett and other investors to divest PetroChina holdings over links to Sudan, whose government the United States accuses of supporting genocide.

PetroChina is controlled by state-owned China National Petroleum, which has developed Sudanese oil fields since 1996. In Sudan, 200,000 people have died and 2 million more are homeless because of conflict in western Darfur.

The Save Darfur Coalition on Sept. 5 called on funds including Fidelity, Vanguard and American Funds to sell their PetroChina stakes. Buffett has said his actions would have no effect on PetroChina, its parent or the Chinese government. Buffett, through a spokeswoman, Jackie Wilson, declined to comment on his latest sale.

The 77-year-old investor built Berkshire, based in Omaha, Nebraska, over four decades from a failing textile manufacturer into a $181 billion investment and holding company with businesses ranging from candy making and insurance to corporate-jet leasing.

Berkshire's PetroChina stake, worth about $3.3 billion at the end of last year, was equal to about 1.1 percent of the company's entire capital. Buffett paid $488 million for the shares in 2003, according to Berkshire's annual report.

Buffett last reduced his stake Sept. 6, selling 28 million shares for 11.47 dollars apiece. In August, he sold 92.66 million shares for 1.1 billion dollars at an average of 11.473 dollars. He sold 16.9 million shares in July, booking 210 million dollars at an average of 12.441 dollars a share.

PetroChina shares climbed 4.8 percent to a record 14.74 dollars by the market's close Friday. The stock has gained 30 percent from the closing level on the day of Buffett's latest sale.

Buffett's next investment may be a 20 percent stake in Bear Stearns, according to a Sept. 26 article by The New York Times that cited unidentified people. Shares of Bear Stearns, the fifth-largest U.S. securities firm, jumped 7.7 percent to $123 that day. Buffett declined to comment on the report.

Sinopec to sell gas field bonds

China Petroleum & Chemical, the largest oil refiner in Asia, plans to raise as much as 50 billion yuan, or $6.7 billion, selling bonds to finance the Puguang gas field and chemical projects in China.

Shareholders will be asked to approve the sale of 30 billion yuan in bonds and warrants, the company, known as Sinopec, said recently in a statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange. A 20 billion yuan transaction cleared by investors will proceed, Sinopec said in a separate statement Friday.

Sinopec last month started construction of a natural gas pipeline to transport the fuel from the Puguang field in southwestern China to Shanghai to meet rising demand for cleaner burning fuels. The 1,700-kilometer, or 1,056-mile, link will cost 62.7 billion yuan.

"We decided to sell another 30 billion yuan of bonds to raise funds, in addition to the 20 billion yuan issuance approved by shareholders earlier," Huang Wensheng, a spokesman for Sinopec, said Friday. The Puguang gas field held 356 billion cubic meters, or 12.6 trillion cubic feet of reserves by the end of last year, Wang Tianpu, the president of Sinopec, said last month.

Sinopec will also use proceeds from the 30 billion yuan bond sale to fund a 21 billion yuan ethylene plant in Tianjin and a chemical plant in Zhenhai, it said.