PetroChina, the local government and Sinopec, as China Petroleum is known, will invest in the refinery which obtained central government approval in February, Shen Gang, vice- president of PetroChina's chemicals and marketing unit, said after attending an industry conference in Beijing today.
``We are still discussing the share breakdown, and a final decision has yet to be made,'' he said.
China is encouraging local oil companies to expand oil refineries to meet the nation's soaring energy demand. The government wants to increase oil-processing capacity by 25 percent within three years to satisfy growing consumption of motor fuels and chemical raw materials.
PetroChina will take the biggest share in the Qinzhou project, Shen said at the conference organized by the China Petroleum & Chemical Industry Association. Sinopec will own 30 percent, Chen Tonghai, chairman of Sinopec, said Aug. 28.
The Qinzhou refinery will process 10 million metric tons of crude oil annually, the National Development and Reform Commission, China's top economic planning body, said Feb. 13.
Sinopec spokesman, Huang Wensheng, declined to comment.
Sichuan Investment
PetroChina, the nation's largest oil company, plans to build a refinery and ethylene plant at a cost of more than 50 billion yuan ($6.5 billion) in Chengdu, the provincial capital of Sichuan, to expand fuel and chemical output in southwestern China, provincial Communist Party Chief Secretary Du Qinglin said March 7. PetroChina and Sichuan authorities signed an agreement for the project on March 7.
PetroChina's Sichuan refinery will process crude oil from Kazakhstan, its Changqing field in Shaanxi province and the Tarim field in Xinjiang, Shen said.
The refinery will process about 200,000 barrels a day of oil, and the ethylene cracker will produce 800,000 tons of the chemical annually, Du said. Ethylene is the raw material for making plastics.
Ethylene Plant
PetroChina will double the capacity of its ethylene plant in Daqing by 2010 to meet rising demand for chemicals, Xu Baocheng, a senior engineer at PetroChina Daqing Petrochemical Co., said at the conference today.
PetroChina now runs a 7 million-ton-a-year refinery and a 600,000 ton-a-year ethylene plant in Daqing in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang, where the country's biggest oil field is, Xu said.
China relies on imports for half of its ethylene consumption and produced 9.41 million tons of the chemical last year, the reform commission said Jan. 31. China is building 7.2 million tons of capacity to produce the chemical, it said.
China may increase crude oil processing capacity to 355 million tons by 2010 from 285 million tons in 2005, the commission said in March. The nation's oil demand may rise 6.1 percent to 7.56 million barrels a day this year, the International Energy Agency, an adviser to 26 oil-consuming nations, said in February.
