BEIJING, Dec 17 (Reuters) - Sinopec Corp's Tianjin plant is pumping crude into a new 200,000 barrels-per-day crude unit, and aims to process twice as much crude next year as this year, an industry official told Reuters on Thursday.
The newly revamped plant, in the northern port city of Tianjin, near Beijing, is the last of four major new refineries China brought online this year, boosting supplies as demand in the world's No.2 fuel user rebounded strongly.
"Crude is still being pumped into the new unit...Sometime in January it should enter normal operations," said the official familiar with the refinery's operations.
Crude throughput at the plant, which operates an existing 100,000 bpd crude unit, will likely reach 200,000 barrels of crude in 2010, or slightly more than double this year's level, the official said.
As Tianjin plans to switch off one 50,000-bpd unit after the new unit enters normal runs, the processing rate will represent 80 percent of its working capacities, below the average high utilisation of 90 percent at Sinopec's other main coastal plants.
"We are concerned with excess fuel output," the official added.Â
Sinopec will also start trial runs at an affiliated 1-million tonne per year (tpy) ethylene complex at the same site in early January, slightly behind an earlier target of the end of December. The petrochemical venture is jointly owned by Saudi Basic Industries Corp 2010.SE.
Apart from the new crude facility, Tianjin has started secondary units including a 1.3 million tpy hydrocracker and a 2.3 million tpy coking unit, facilities that allow the plant to process high-sulphur crude into premium fuels as China pushes for cleaner fuel standards from next year.
The refinery plans to secure about 80 percent sour crude, from suppliers such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran and Iraq, the official said.
