China’s Sinopec newest Qingdao refinery to run at 70 pct in July 2008
Reuters / BEIJING, July 7, 2008 – China’s new Qingdao refinery will process at just over 70 percent of its capacity this month, above an earlier forecast, industry sources said on Monday, nearly two months after its smooth start-up and one month ahead of the Olympics.
“It’s in the process of trial production. You can’t really raise the operating ratio very high during this period,” said one official familiar with the 200,000 barrel-per-day refinery’s operations.
The plant, in the eastern province of Shandong and operated by Sinopec Group, parent of Sinopec Corp, is the only major new refining facility China has brought onstream so far this year.
It started churning out mostly diesel and gasoline in May, when domestic supplies were squeezed by refiners scaling back output to trim losses in the face of record crude costs and below-market domestic fuel rates.
Industry officials had earlier expected the plant to operate at about 60 percent of capacity through the third quarter.
The refinery has by now received at least two very large crude carriers , or 4 million barrels of Saudi oil, said a second official, a high-sulphur grade the plant is designed to process.
The refinery also processes Kuwait crude, the official added, without giving details.
