Chenshan oil depot operational

China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation (Sinopec) announced that the Chenshan Refined Oil Depot started operations in mid-August. The new depot is located in the Chenshan Crude Oil Depot at Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical Co., Ltd. in Shanghai. It has 175,000 cubic meters capacity; its largest single-tank can store 50,000 cubic meters and is also capable of 335,000 cubic meters of refined oil reserve. Meanwhile, Sinopecs commercial oil storage facility in the Yangpu Economic Development Zone in Hainan Province has obtained construction approval from the Hainan government. The facility will have a capacity of 15 million cubic meters. The company previously assessed that building the facility would require a total investment of 13 billion yuan (US$1.9 billion). It has selected a company from the Middle East to supply the oil, but did not give any further information. Sinopec has plans to build four more commercial oil storage projects in the Dalian City of Liaoning Province, Shanshan county of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Linyuan county of Heilongjiang Province and Lanzhou City of Gansu Province. The company also plans to expand the nameplate crude processing capacity of its Maoming refinery in the southern Guangdong province from 13.5 million metric tons per year (mtpy) or 270,000 barrels per day (bpd), to 25.5 million mtpy or 510,000 bpd. “The expansion program will be beneficial to Guangdong, which is thirsty for oil due to its fast economic development,” the source said. The province plans to increase its crude refining capacity to almost 100 million mtpy by 2012. (July 22/August 6/14, 2008)