China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. (Sinopec) and ENN Energy Holdings Ltd. said they terminated their joint $2.15 billion takeover bid for China Gas Holdings Ltd. of Hong Kong, which operates gasoline stations and is a natural gas distributor in China.

The US Department of the Interior approved a land-into-trust application from three North Dakota Indian tribes, accepting 469 acres into trust for a proposed 13,000 b/d refinery on 190 acres and feed production on the remainder.

China National Petroleum Corp. has started up a 600,000-tonne/year ethylene unit that doubles capacity of Daqing Petrochemical with the country’s first ethylene plant based on domestically developed technology.

US Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s ranking minority member, has asked the US Federal Trade Commission to investigate a gasoline price surge in the Golden State.

In several senses, security governed the discussion on the opening day at Gastech in London. Executive panels through the day explored various meanings of the word and implications of the concept.

Marathon Petroleum Corp. has signed a definitive agreement to buy BP PLC’s 451,000-b/cd Texas City, Tex., refinery and related assets for as much as $2.5 billion.

ICA Fluor, an industrial engineering partnership of Irving, Tex.-based Fluor Corp. and Empresas ICA, is part of a joint venture that has been awarded an engineering, procurement, and construction contract by Braskem Idesa SAPI.

A fire at TNK-BP’s 130,000-b/d Saratov refinery in southwestern Russia burned four workers on Oct. 4, killing one. Injuries to the other three were not considered life-threatening.

Jiutai Energy Group, Beijing, has let a license and process design package contract to KBR for recovery of olefins from methanol produced from coal at its plant at Ordos, Inner Mongolia.

Kazakhstan’s state oil company KazMunaiGaz expects the country’s crude oil production to reach 90 million tonnes/year by 2015 and 130 million tpy by 2020.

Westlake Chemical Corp., Houston, will convert the feed to its Calvert City, Ky., ethylene plant to ethane from propane and increase ethylene production capacity to 630 million lb/year (about 286,000 tonnes/year) from 450 million lb/year.

Saudi Polymers Co. has begun commercial production at its petrochemical complex in Jubail, Saudi Arabia.