The Chinese state-owned oil major fixed fuel oil storage capacity for 400,000 barrels in Los Angeles, barely five days after confirming a lease for over five million barrels of dirty storage space at NuStar’s Statia terminal in the Netherlands Antilles in the Caribbean.

Shanghai and Hong Kong-listed PetroChina is said to have plans to significantly expand its storage of bunker fuel products at both facilities.

The Caribbean deal will increase PetroChina’s dirty storage capacity at Statia to six million barrels by early 2010.

Statia is the biggest fuel oil storage terminal in the Caribbean.

The growing emphasis on regional trade in the Americas has seen PetroChina load fuel oil onboard oil tankers at Statia terminal, and crude and fuel oil at BORCO in the Bahamas.

Apart from Statia, PetroChina has a total of 2.5 million barrels of dirty and clean storage space at BORCO.

There has been talk that it may buy an oil refinery in the US to further reinforce its trading presence in North and South America.

PetroChina had earlier last year opened a trading office and hired crude, dirty and clean products traders in Houston. It maintains its US headquarters in New Jersey.