China is targeting a refining capacity of 600 million mt/year (12 million b/d) by 2015 under the country's 12th Five-Year plan that ends 2015, according to a document detailing development plans for the petroleum and petrochemical industry published by the government.
The development plans also target an ethylene production capacity of 27 million mt/year by 2015 while total output capacity of paraxylene is set to reach 12 million mt/year by then, the document published by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on Friday showed.
According to an estimate by state-owned China National Petroleum Corp. last week, China's total nameplate refinery capacity is expected to reach 578 million mt (11.6 million b/d) in 2012 as the country is forecast to add 38.2 million mt of refining capacity this year.
In 2011, total refinery throughput rose 5.9% year on year to 447.7 million mt, or an average of 8.99 million b/d, data released last month by the country's National Bureau of Statistics showed.
"The development plan calls for refineries to be close to the market, close to the resources, easy to transport, be able to alleviate the 'uneven nature' of regional oil production and marketing, encourage crude oil and refined oil pipeline construction and improve the situation of having to transport oil produced in the North to the South," the ministry said in the document.
Under the plan, the country will boost refining capacities in central and southwest China, by developing Wuhan, Chengdu, Kunming and other areas to become key inland production areas.
"By 2015, the imbalance between demand and supply of refined products would have been largely mitigated [by the plan]," the ministry said.
The country will continue to rely on seaborne imported crude oil, as well as crude piped from Myanmar, Russia, Kazakhstan and transported through local pipelines to the refineries.
The country will have three petrochemical industrial zones in Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta, Bohai Sea region by 2015, and will form three-four oil production bases where each would have a 20 million mt/year refinery and three petrochemical bases with 2 million mt/year in ethylene production capacity each.
At present, the country has two refineries above 20 million mt/year including Sinopec's Zhenhai refinery in East China's Zhejiang province, which has a nameplate capacity of 23 million mt year (461,890 b/d), and PetroChina's 20.5 million mt/year (411,700 b/d) Dalian refinery in northeast China.
Separately, CNOOC will be expanding its Huizhou refinery in South China in the next few years to increase its design crude processing capacity from 12 million mt/year (240,986 b/d) to 22 million mt/year (441,808 b/d).
In the meantime, construction of a new 20 million mt/year (401,644 b/d) refinery at Jieyang city in southern Guangdong province to be jointly built by Venezuela's PDVSA and CNPC is expected to start soon.
The country's consumption of refined products -- gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel -- is forecast to grow by an average 5.5% annually to reach 320 million mt by 2015, the ministry said.
Ethylene consumption is expected to grow 4.1% every year to reach 38 million mt by 2015, while propylene consumption will hit 28 million mt by 2015 after expanding 5.4% annually.
