By an OGJ Online Correspondent
BEIJING, Apr. 18 -- China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. (Sinopec) plans to build a crude oil storage facility and a pipeline in eastern China.
The 40-million-tonne tank farm, near Zhenhai Refining & Chemical Co. Ltd. in Ningbo city of Zhejiang province, will store crude oil imported from the Middle East. It will be operable late this year or early next year.
Crude will be moved from the tank farm via a 500 km-600 km, 40 million tonne/year pipeline to four major refineries in Shanghai city and Jiangsu province.
The four refineries -- Gaoqiao Petrochemical Corp. and Jinshan Petrochemical Corp., both in Shanghai, and Yangzi Petrochemical Corp. and Jinling Petrochemical Corp. in Nanjing city of Jiangsu province -- have a combined of 30 million tonnes/year of crude distillation capacity.
Currently crude is transported to the refineries by sea or through a pipeline from Shengli oil field in Shandong province.
Sinopec will allocate 1.47 billion yuan ($180 million) for the construction of the pipeline, about 1.5% of the total outlay expected to be raised through issuing A-shares in Chinese equity market this year.
The bulk of the proceeds will be used to acquire upstream assets from Sinopec Star Petroleum Co. Ltd., owned by China Petroleum Corp. (OGJ Online, Apr. 17, 2001).
