Sinopec has recently put the Rizhao-Yizheng Crude Pipeline into operation, a company source said.
Operation of the pipeline could ease the burden of Ningbo port and ensure crude supply to refineries located along the Yangtze River, according to the source.
As of mid-October, Rizhao port has received about 460,000mt of imported crude in three cargoes, with 169,000mt of which from Angola, the source also said.
Sinopec started to inject crude into its 1.6-mil-cu-m commercial storage in Rizhao at the end of September, C1 reported earlier.
The 390-km Rizhao-Yizheng pipeline starts at the Lanshan port in Rizhao and end at Jiangsu's Yizheng after passing through eastern Anhui Province. It has a designed annual transmission capacity of nearly 20-mil mt and mainly transmits imported crude. The capacity will be enlarged to 36-mil mt in the future. The pipeline is connected with the Ningbo-Shanghai-Nanjing pipeline, the Linyi-Yizheng pipeline and the Yizheng-Changling pipeline in Yizheng.
Pipelines for supplying crude to Nanjing and Central China have been running at full blast before the Rizhao-Yizheng pipeline came on line, according to a source with Jinling Petrochemical, one of the refineries tapping into the pipeline.
Sinopec has seven subsidiary refineries located in Nanjing and Central China with crude refining capacities totaling 58.5-mil mt per year, C1's record showed. The total annual capacity will be increased by 16-mil mt during China's Twelfth Five-Year Plan" (2011-2015).
