BEIJING (Reuters) – PetroChina’s Daqing refinery has expanded its crude oil processing capacity to 10 million tonnes per annum, or 200,000 barrels per day, from 6.5 million, after completing a two-year upgrade.
The refinery in China’s northeastern province of Heilongjiang also revamped its 1.2 million tonnes hydrocracker and 1.2 million gasoline and diesel hydrotreating units.
With total investment of 4.45 billion yuan ($651 million), Daqing also added a series of facilities, such as a 2 million tonnes per year fluid catalytic cracker, a 600,000 tonnes per year gas fractionation unit and two 20,000 tonnes per year sulphur recovery units.
The upgrade allows the refinery to process 3.5 million tonnes of Russian ESPO Blend crude oil annually, on top of its current refining capacity of 6.5 million tonnes of local Daqing crude.
“(The upgrade project) will help Daqing refinery to break the bottleneck of development, to adjust structure of units and products, and to improve risk resistance capacity as well as improve profitability,” parent China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) said in a statement.
The city of Daqing, home to the refinery and China’s largest oilfield by production, said this year it planned to embark on a five-year plan to expand oil refining and high-value added petrochemical production.
The refinery is expected to produce 180,000 tonnes of propylene, 260,000 tonnes of liquid hydrocarbon, 220,000 tonnes of toluene and 280,000 of xylene to supply chemical plants in the region.
($1=6.8349 Chinese yuan renminbi)
(Reporting by Muyu Xu in Beijing and Shu Zhang in Singapore; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
