BEIJING, Sep. 9, 2010 (Xinhua News Agency) -- The following are top stories in China's oil, gas and petrochemical sector on Thursday:
1. PetroChina's (PTR.NYSE; 00857.HK; 601857.SH) Qinzhou Refinery with refining capacity of 1 million metric tons (tonnes)/year in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region officially started operation on Wednesday.
PetroChina had postponed the start-up of the refinery from June, due, as the market guessed, to bleak oil products market. The plant is designed to process crude from Sudan and may be reconfigured to process more crude from West Africa, earlier media reports said.
2. China's National Development and Reform Commission said Wednesday that it has approved China National Petroleum Corporation's (CNPC) Lanzhou-Chengdu crude oil pipeline.
The pipeline, with length of 882 kilometers, is designed to annually pump 10 million tonnes of crude oil, the NDRC said. The pipeline is expected to transport crude oil produced in west China to Chengdu and to supply feedstock to its under-construction 10-million-tonne/year Pengzhou Refinery in southwestern Sichuan province.
3. China's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said on Wednesday that it has approved Sinopec (NYSE:SNP) Corp.'s (SNP.NYSE; 00386.HK; 600028.SH) LNG project in East China's Shandong province.
It is the first LNG project for Sinopec to get government approval. The NDRC said the LNG project will have receiving capacity of 3 million metric tons (tonnes)/year after completion of the first phase project.
4. PetroChina's (PTR.NYSE; 00857.HK; 601857.SH) Changqing oilfield's oil and gas production during the January to August period hit 228.838 million metric tons (tonnes) of oil and gas equivalent, an increase of 14.45 percent year on year, reported its parent CNPC on Wednesday.
Changqing oilfield is PetroChina's second largest oil field by output after Daqing. In 2009, it produced 30.82 million tonnes of oil and gas equivalent, including 17.13 million tonnes of crude oil and 21.07 billion cubic meters of natural gas. (Edited by Qiu Jun, Qiujun@xinhua.org)
