Dushanzi strategic petroleum reserve (SPR) base in northwestern China's Xinjiang region started to receive crude in September, the first among China's phase II SPR bases, according to a source with one refinery under PetroChina.
The facility has a storage capacity of 3-mil cu m and primarily stores Kazakhstan crude transmitted by the Sino-Kazakh Crude Pipeline, the source said.
However, the source declined to tell how much crude has been filled into the base.
Crude injection volume may be affected by limited transmission capacity of the Sino-Kazakh Crude Pipeline, market sources said.
The first phase of the Chinese section of the Sino-Kazakh Crude Pipeline (from Alashankou to Dushanzi) has a designed capacity of 10-mil mt per year, C1's record showed. The second phase of the section with an annual capacity of 10-mil mt is expected to start operation at the end of this year at the earliest.
PetroChina Dushanzi Petrochemical, which is the terminal of the Sino-Kazakh Crude Pipeline, has been running a 10-mil-mt/yr crude distillate unit while keeping a 6-mil-mt/yr aged one idle because of limited capacity of the pipeline, C1 reported earlier.
Construction of the Dushanzi SPR base started in September 2009 and was completed in July this year.
China plans to build a combined 26.8-mil cu m of crude stocks during 2011-2015 as the second phase of the country’s SPR bases, according to C1's record.
China started operating four SPRs as the first phase of the project in the first half of 2009. The total storage capacity of the first phase is at 16.4-mil cu m.
