MOSCOW (MRC) -- China’s Jinxi Petrochemical Corp, a refinery unit of state-owned PetroChina, last week loaded its first shipment of very low-sulfur fuel oil (VLSFO) for marine bunker hub Zhoushan, reported Reuters with reference to parent company China National Petroleum Corp's (CNPC) statement.
The 3,000-tonne cargo was Jinxi’s first export of the cleaner marine fuel to supply international vessels at Zhoushan port in east China, following a government tax-waiving policy in January to encourage exporting the fuel that meets the new global emission rules.
The plant, based in the northeastern province of Liaoning, manufactured the marine bunker by blending semi-refined fuels such as catalytic diesel, vacuum residue and gas oil from coking unit, CNPC said.
One of PetroChina’s nine designated producers of VLSFO, Jinxi will be able to make 700,000 tonnes a year of the cleaner shipping fuel, the parent company said.
State refiners China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC), PetroChina, Sinopec and privately-run Zhejiang Petrochemical Corp (ZPC) were among the first to export VLSFO under the new tax regime, putting the oil into bonded storage in the ports of Dalian, Shandong and Zhoushan.
As MRC informed before, state-owned PetroChina shut its Guangxi Petrochemical in southern Guangxi province on February 9 for scheduled 50-day maintenance. The maintenance should help the refinery to offset stock pressure after product demand slumped due to the coronavirus outbreak.
We also remind that Sichuan Petrochemical (part of PetroChina) undertook an emergency shutdown at its naphtha cracker in Sichuan province of China on July 11, 2018 owing to a gas leak at its natural gas supply pipeline. Further details on duration of the outage could not be ascertained. Located at Sichuan province of China, the cracker has an ethylene capacity of 800,000 mt/year.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 215,390 tonnes in the first month of 2020, up by 23% year on year. Shipments of all grades of high density polyethylene (HDPE) and linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) increased due to higher capacity utilisation at ZapSibNeftekhim. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market were 127,240 tonnes in January 2020, up by 33% year on year. ZapSibNeftekhim's homopolymer PP accounted for the main increase in shipments.
PetroChina Company Limited, is a Chinese oil and gas company and is the listed arm of state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation, headquartered in Dongcheng District, Beijing. It is China's biggest oil producer.
MRC