MOSCOW (MRC) - China's Jiasheng Gas Co Ltd, an independent gas distributor, has agreed an engineering and construction deal to build a 2.5 billion yuan (USD380 MM) LNG storage and receiving facility in east China, the Shanghai Oil and Gas Exchange and a company executive said, as per Reuters.
The little-known firm is among a group of companies outside the dominant state oil and gas giants that are expected to lead new investment in LNG import terminals over the next decade as China opens up the sector to more private participation.
The first phase of the project, to be built at Jiangyin port in Jiangsu province, will include two 100,000 cubic metre storage tanks and will have an annual total handling capacity of 1.5 million tonnes, the state-run exchange said in a statement posted on its official we chat account.
A Jiasheng Gas senior executive confirmed the project to Reuters. The company has awarded the contract to build the terminal to China Wuhuan Engineering Co Ltd, and plans to add another 160,000 cubic meter tank under a second phase of the project, taking total capacity to 3 million tonnes a year.
The facility - which will take about two years to build - will supply fuel to the cities of Wuxi and Jiangyin in Jiangsu, a top natural gas consuming region, as well as to inland areas via smaller tankers along the Yangtze river, the exchange said.
Jiasheng operates two berths at Jiangyin port each capable to anchor 50,000 tonnage vessels, the exchange added.
We remind that PetroChina has nearly doubled the amount of Russian crude being processed at its refinery in Dalian, the company's biggest, since January 2018, as a new supply agreement had come into effect. The Dalian Petrochemical Corp, located in the northeast port city of Dalian, was expected to process 13 million tonnes, or 260,000 bpd of Russian pipeline crude in 2018, up by about 85 to 90 percent from the previous year's level. Dalian has the capacity to process about 410,000 bpd of crude. The increase follows an agreement worked out between the Russian and Chinese governments under which Russia's top oil producer Rosneft was to supply 30 million tonnes of ESPO Blend crude to PetroChina in 2018, or about 600,000 bpd. That would have represented an increase of 50 percent over 2017 volumes.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing PE and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,760,950 tonnes in the first ten months of 2020, up by 3% year on year. Only high density polyethylene (HDPE) and linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) shipments increased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market reached 978,870 tonnes in January-October 2020 (calculated using the formula: production minus exports plus imports minus producers' inventories as of 1 January, 2020). Supply of exclusively of PP random copolymer increased.
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