PetroChina brings new fuel reserve capacity online

PetroChina Co. has begun operating new commercial oil product reserve facilities in northeast China’s Dalian city, parent company China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC) said. The facilities have a total capacity of 240,000 cubic meters or 1.5 million barrels and were built with a total investment of 257.4 million yuan (US$37.70 billion). The increased reserve capacity may help keep the refiner’s crude throughput at high levels in the coming months, especially as it also recently started construction on more storage facilities. With a planned 400 million yuan (US$58.58 million) investment, PetroChina will build an oil product reserve capacity of 300,000 cubic meters, which will start operating by the end of August. (January 19, 2010)