BEIJING�The Guangdong based Maoming Petrochemical Corp. will submit a feasibility study for expanding its ethylene cracker to its parent company, China Petrochemical Corp. (Sinopec), in August.
Plans call for increasing capacity from the current 350,000 tonnes/year to 850,000 tonnes/year by 2003 in a bid to improve the viability of operations by lowering costs and gaining competitiveness in prices. Propylene capacity will grow to 200,000 tonnes/year from 140,000 tonnes/year.
The company also is planning to build a greenfield crude distillation unit with a capacity of 4-6 million tonnes/year to bring its total refining capacity to 20 million tonnes/year by 2005.
If Sinopec finds the 5 billion yuan expansion feasible, it will submit the project to the State Development Planning Commission for final endorsement.
Maoming is one of the six ethylene producers under Sinopec expected to expand their capacities. The other five belong to Yanshan Petrochemical Corp., Tianjin Petrochemical Corp., Qilu Petrochemical Corp., Shanghai Petrochemical Corp., and Yangzi Petrochemical Corp. These 350,000-450,000 tonnes/year crackers will be expanded to 600,000-850,000 tonnes/year.
