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Shanghai, February 18 – A senior executive at China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOC) said on Wednesday that the company plans to start operating its first wholly-owned refinery next month. It had postponed the commissioning of this refinery in order to wait for the implementation of domestic fuel tax reforms as well as the introduction of measures to reduce refining costs and boost demand. The unnamed media relations officer said the plant is located in Huizhou City, Guangdong Province, with a daily production capacity of 240,000 barrels. It is scheduled to begin operations officially in March, having completed the preparatory work ahead of its launch about 3 months ago. He said that in the first two months of this year, the refining industry faced many uncertainties, such as the actual impact of the tax on new energy consumption and the revitalization plans to be introduced. The company has therefore decided to postpone the launch of this project until things become clearer. In addition, the company also plans to align the start of production at its factory with the peak period for fuel demand, which in China usually begins in March. He added that the factory’s operating rate will depend on market conditions. He said that it is expected that the revitalization plan for the refining and petrochemical industries will enable the Huizhou refinery to benefit from tax reductions. The details of the revitalization plan have not been officially released yet. The executive said that the revitalization plan may include preferential policies for the petrochemical industry, which will also benefit the Huizhou refinery project, as the company plans to build a new ethylene plant with an annual production capacity of 1 million tons as part of the second phase of construction. He added that the second phase of the project is planned to require an investment of 45 billion yuan (equivalent to $6.58 billion), with a planned oil refining capacity of 10 million tons per year, or 200,000 barrels per day. This also includes the ethylene plant project mentioned earlier; construction of the second phase will begin this year.