August 25, 2025 [China’s state-owned oil and gas giant China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) announced Friday that it has completed the construction of an integrated refining and petrochemical complex in east China’s Zhejiang Province.
The 21-billion-yuan (about $2.93 billion) project, built on the Daxie Island of eastern coastal city Ningbo, boasts a total olefin production capacity exceeding 10 million tonnes, marking a significant progress in high-end chemical materials research and development.
The complex comprises 18 large-scale refining and petrochemical units, primarily producing high-end chemical products such as polypropylene widely used in new energy vehicles and the electronics industry.
Commencing construction in July 2022, the construction team employed newly developed technologies, reducing the construction period by 90 days and setting a record for the shortest installation period for both reactor and regenerator in China.
“During the construction of the project, due to the fact that the diameters of the head covers of the core equipment reactors and regenerators are the longest in the country, the project team pioneered a method of ‘lining construction at an upward viewing angle’, which involves flipping and hoisting a massive steel bowl 21 meters in diameter and 1,145 tonnes in weight to a height of 25 meters. This is followed by construction workers entering the reactor and regenerator to carry out the lining construction,” said Huang Yingxi, manager of the project’s production technology department.
The project primarily utilizes domestically extracted medium and light crude oil from marine sources, supplemented by imported crude oil. After going into operation, the facility will process 12 million tonnes of crude oil annually and produce millions of tonnes of olefins and aromatics.
“The core equipment of the project adopts a brand-new production process, which can reduce the energy consumption per unit product by more than 30 percent compared with the traditional process. It will cut carbon dioxide emissions by 200,000 tonnes annually, greatly enhancing the utilization efficiency of heavy oil resources and providing a new development path for the low-carbon transformation of oil refining enterprises,” said Huang.
