Rosneft, PetroChina Plan Joint Refinery

Jim Bai, Reuters

China's top oil firm CNPC, parent of PetroChina, and Russia's Rosneft may start to build a long-delayed, 200,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) joint refinery in 2010 in China's coastal city of Tianjin.

The first joint refinery between the two countries was planned several years ago but proceeded slowly as the world's second-largest oil user, and leading producer, failed to agree on a series of issues including pricing and mutual market opening.

The Tianjin city government has laid out a plan to complete a feasibility study and an application report by June and to get an approval from the central government by the year-end, it said in a release on its website (www.tj.gov.cn).

Tianjin said the 21 billion yuan ($3.07 billion) plant would be located in its Binhai Chemical Area and construction would be completed by 2012.

China's local governments often lobby for new and big projects as economic growth and expanding tax bases can help increase officials' chances for promotion.

Some industry officials said the project might move along quickly as Russia, hit by slumping oil prices, agreed last month to supply 300,000-bpd of crude oil via a planned pipeline to China in the next two decades, in return for $25 billion of Chinese loans.

CNPC officials were not immediately available for comment.

- Copyright 2009, Reuters. All rights reserved.

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