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MOSCOW (MRC) -- China Petroleum and
Chemical Corp, known as Sinopec Corp, said it has set up a fuel oil company in
Sri Lanka as it looks to supply fuel to ships along a major maritime route,
reported Reuters.
The new unit,
called Fuel Oil Sri Lanka Co Ltd, has been registered in Hambantota on the
southern tip of the country, according to a report on the website of Sinopec
Group, parent of Sinopec Corp.
Fuel oil is a refined product mostly used
as bunker fuel for ships and is also burned in power stations.
The move
marks the latest investment in Sri Lanka by China, which sees the South Asian
island nation as a pivotal part of its Belt and Road Initiative infrastructure
plan.
Sinopec stressed the strategic location of Hambantota port on the
Indian Ocean along a key shipping route between the Suez Canal and the Malacca
Strait, which is transited by two-thirds of global oil shipments. The market to
supply fuel to ships had "huge" potential, it said.
In March, India’s
Accord Group and Oman’s Ministry of Oil and Gas signed a USD3.85 billion deal to
build a 200,000 barrel-per-day oil refinery near Hambantota port, in the biggest
single pledge of foreign direct investment ever made in Sri Lanka.
China
Merchants Port Holdings, China Harbour Engineering Corp and other Chinese
companies are investors in the port and industrial zone.
Sinopec has set
a company-wide target of 10 million tonnes of production capacity by 2020 to
supply low-sulfur bunker fuels that meet the cleaner emission standards set by
the International Maritime Organization (IMO).
As MRC wrote previously,
in Septermber 2018, Sinopec
Corp joined a group planning to build an oil refinery in Alberta, an
enterprise that would strengthen demand for the Canadian province's heavily
discounted crude. Thus, Sinopec along with an Alberta indigenous group,
China State Construction Engineering Corp and Alberta management company
Teedrum, plan to build a refinery to process 167,000 barrels per day of crude
into gasoline and other products.
Sinopec Corp. is one of the largest
scale integrated energy and chemical company with upstream, midstream and
downstream operations. Its principal business includes: exploring, developing,
producing and trading crude oil and natural gas; producing, storing,
transporting and distributing and marketing petroleum products, petrochemical
products, synthetic fiber, fertilizer and other chemical products. Its refining
capacity and ethylene capacity rank No.2 and No.4 globally. Sinopec listed in
Hong Kong, New York, London and Shanghai in August 2001. Sinopec Group, the
parent company of Sinopec Corp., is ranked the 5th in Fortune Global 500 in
2012. |
