MOSCOW (MRC) -- China Petroleum and Chemical Corp, also known as Sinopec, the world's petrochemical major, plans to spend 30 billion yuan (USD4.6 billion) on hydrogen energy by 2025 as the state oil and gas major pivots to producing natural gas and hydrogen as part of becoming a carbon-neutral energy provider by 2050, according to Hydrocarbonprocessing.
Asia's biggest oil refiner plans to become China's largest company to produce hydrogen for use as a transportation fuel, targeting annual capacity of 200,000 tons of hydrogen refuelling by 2025.
"Sinopec will expand forcefully into making hydrogen from renewable energy, and zero in on hydrogen for transportation fuel and using green hydrogen for refining," acting Chairman Ma Yongsheng said.
The company aims to produce more than 1 million tons of so-called green hydrogen from renewable energy sources between 2021 and 2025, as well as add 400 megawatts of solar power generation capacity for supplying electricity to charge vehicles. Sinopec has so far built 20 hydrogen filling stations, with another 60 under construction or in the planning and approval stage. The company produces about 3 million tons per year of hydrogen from non-renewable energy sources that is mainly used in oil refinery and petrochemical processes.
China's natural gas consumption is expected to rise 13.3% in 2021 amid a strong economic recovery and Beijing's push to replace coal with lower-carbon gas, Ma said. That level of growth should continue over the next three years.
Like state-run peers PetroChina and CNOOC Ltd that are prioritising natural gas development over oil, Sinopec plans to boost gas output in the second half of 2021 by 13.5% from a year earlier, compared with 13.7% growth in the first six months.
Sinopec maximized its refinery operations in the first half, pushing throughput to 126.11 million tons of oil, or about 5.1 million barrels per day, up 13.7% from a year earlier when demand was curtailed by the outbreak of COVID-19.
As MRC reported earlier, in August 2021, Sinopec launched the first phase of the Gulei refining complex in Zhangzhou city in China’s southeastern Fujian province. The refining complex, a 50:50 joint venture between Sinopec’s Fujian Petrochemical Company Ltd and Taiwan Xuteng Investment Company Ltd, invested 27.8 billion yuan (USD4.28 billion) in the first phase. That will result in an 800,000 tonnes per annum ethylene plant, a 600,000 tonnes per annum styrene unit and seven other downstream petrochemical units, Sinopec said.
Ethylene and propylene are the main feedstocks for the production of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), respectively.
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,176,860 tonnes in the first half of 2021, up by 5% year on year. Shipments of exclusively low density polyethylene (LDPE) decreased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market were 727,160 tonnes in the first six months of 2021, up by 31% year on year. Supply of homopolymer PP and block-copolymers of propylene (PP block copolymers) increased. Supply of statistical copolymers of propylene (PP random copolymers) subsided.
China Petrochemical Corporation (Sinopec Group) is a super-large petroleum and petrochemical enterprise group established in July 1998 on the basis of the former China Petrochemical Corporation. Sinopec Group's key business activities include the exploration and production of oil and natural gas, petrochemicals and other chemical products, oil refining.
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