November 29, 2011 [Platts] - China largest refiner Sinopec Corporation has started operations at a new 1.45 million cubic meter commercial crude storage facilities at Cezi Island in east China's Zhejiang province, its state-owned parent China Petrochemical Corporation, or Sinopec Group, said in a report on its website Tuesday.
Prior to the new tanks being built, Sinopec already had 600,000 cu m in storage capacity at the terminal in Zhoushan city.
The storage expansion project, completed at a cost of Yuan 13 billion ($2 billion), comprised adding two new tanks of 100,000 cu m each at the existing site, and constructing 12 tanks of 100,000 cu m each and one tank of 50,000 cu m at a new site.
The new storage facilities will greatly boost Sinopec’s capability to meet rising crude oil demand in the eastern region, the report said.
The tanks at Cezi Island are one of the two transmission starting points of the 634-km Zhejiang-Shanghai-Nanjing crude pipeline network in the eastern part of the country.
The pipeline is used by Sinopec to deliver up to 43 million mt/year of imported crude to its five refineries in east China.
The other starting point of the pipeline network is from crude tanks at Daxie Island in Ningbo, Zhejiang province.
Sinopec operates five refineries in the east with a total processing capacity of 70 million mt/year.
This include the country’s largest 23 million mt/year (461,890 b/d) Zhenhai refinery in Zhejiang province; the 13.5 million mt/year (271,110 b/d) Jinling and 8 million mt/year (160,658 b/d) Yangzi refineries in Jiangsu province; the 14 million mt/year (281,151 b/d) Shanghai refinery; and 11.5 million mt/year (230,945 b/d) Gaoqiao refinery in Shanghai city.
