Eric Watkins
Senior Correspondent
LONDON, June 27 -- The Port of Qingdao in eastern China has signed an agreement with China Petrochemical Corp. (Sinopec) to form a crude oil terminal joint venture.
The 50-50 joint venture, to be called Qingdao Shihua Crude Oil Terminal Co. Ltd., will build and operate a terminal to handle vessels as large as 300,000 dwt.
The terminal will handle oil for a refinery being built in Qingdao, which is to start operations in 2007.
Port officials said crude oil handled at Qingdao totaled 31 million tonnes in 2004. But throughput will increase following construction of the refinery by Sinopec unit China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. and two local partners.
The refinery will be able to process 10 million tonnes/year (tpy) of oil and yield about 7.6 million tpy of oil products.
