China's Yantai Port Group started on Monday pumping oil into a newly expanded crude oil pipeline that connects the port of Yantai to a group of independent refineries in the country's refining hub Shandong, said Reuters.
The 370-kilometer (229.91 mile) pipeline, with an annual transport capacity of 20 MMt (400,000 barrels per day), is solely invested by Yantai Port Group, a unit of provincial government-backed Shandong Port Group.
The new line, linking Yantai with city of Weifang, adds to an existing parallel 650-km pipeline connecting Yantai with Zibo, bringing total transport capacity to 40 MMt annually, or 800,000 bpd.
About ten independent refineries are linked to the two pipelines, according to Shandong-based commodities consultancy JLC. As part of commodities logistics operations, Yantai Port also operates a 300,000-tonnage crude oil terminal and a 3.6 MMcm3 (23 million barrels) crude oil tank farm. Yantai is also China's largest port for fertiliser and bauxite, according to the group's website.
As per MRC, China's Ministry of Commerce has released 52.56 million mt (385.26 million barrels) of crude import quotas to 35 qualifying independent and non-major state-owned refineries in the second batch for 2022. However, the higher second batch this year brought up total crude import quotas for 2022 by only 4.9% to 159.96 million mt as of June 28, from 152.44 million mt last year. The independent refinery sources said they were less anxious about this second batch than the one last year, because most of them had sufficient quotas in hand amid low throughput during the previous months.
mrchub.com