MOSCOW (MRC) -- China’s private refiner Xinhai Group expects to more than double its crude oil refining capacity by the end of 2021, according to Hydrocarbonprocessing with reference to a company spokeswoman's statement, which would make it the biggest oil processor in northern China’s Hebei province
Based in the port city of Cangzhou in Hebei, the refiner is adding a crude distillation unit of 8 MMtpy, equivalent to 160,000 bpd, on top of its existing 12,000 bpd plant.
“The new refining facilities are scheduled to be completed and start operation by the end of next year,” the spokeswoman said, but added that the exact start-up date could move ahead of or behind schedule based on the construction.
Xinhai received its first crude oil import quotas in 2017 and was allocated a 3.72-million-ton import quota in 2020.
With the launch of the 400,000 bpd Hengli Petrochemical refiner and a similar-sized one by Zhejiang Petrochemical Corp, Chinese private refiners have been leading the crude processing capacity expansion in the country.
The Xinhai spokeswoman did not say if the company was applying for a bigger import quota for 2021.
Beijing plans to raise its non-state import quota for 2021 by 20% on-year for the non-state refiners.
“It seems very difficult for Xinhai to receive more quotas for 2021, unless they can prove to be an advanced integrated complex with both refining and chemical production lines. Even though, they will still face very fierce competition with other mega-sized complexes across the country,” said Ding Xu, an analyst at China-based Longzhong consultancy.
As MRC informed before, Zhejiang Petroleum & Chemical Co Ltd, one of two new major refineries built in China in 2019, started up the remaining units in the first phase of its refinery and petrochemical complex in January 2020. The company, 51% owned by private chemical group Zhejiang Rongsheng Holdings, started test production at ethylene, aromatics and other downstream facilitiess. The newly started units at Zhejiang Petrochemical should include a second 200,000-bpd crude unit, a 1.2 million tonnes per year (tpy) ethylene unit and a 2 million tpy paraxylene unit, according to several industry sources with knowledge of the plant’s operations.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's DataScope report, PE imports to Russia decreased in January-November 2020 by 17% year on year and reached 569,900 tonnes. High density polyethylene (HDPE) accounted for the greatest reduction in imports. At the same time, PP imports into Russia increased by 21% year on year to about 202,000 tonnes in the first eleven months of 2020. Propylene homopolymer (homopolymer PP) accounted for the main increase in imports.
MRC