China’s Biggest Oil Refinery to Make Cleaner Gasoline

China’s Biggest Oil Refinery to Make Cleaner Gasoline 

 China Petroleum and Chemical Corp. started operating a unit at the country’s largest oil refinery that’s capable of producing gasoline that meets stringent European vehicle emission standards.

The unit at Zhenhai refinery in the coastal province of Zhejiang can produce 1.5 million metric tons of gasoline a year, parent company China Petrochemical Corp. said in a statement on its Web site.

China, the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, is promoting the use of cleaner-burning fuels to help reduce pollution. Beijing introduced Euro IV fuels last year to improve the city’s air before the Olympics.

 The Zhenhai unit can produce 34,700 barrels a day of gasoline that meets Euro V standards and will be the biggest of its kind in the nation, China Petrochemical said.

“The main target is still domestic consumption,” Qiu Xiaofeng, an analyst at China Merchants Securities Co., said by phone from Shanghai. “The capability to produce Euro V gives them the flexibility to export when the home market is bad.” Passenger-car sales in China surged 98 percent last month, the most in at least five years, as government incentives spurred demand in an auto market poised to surpass the U.S. as the world’s largest in 2009.

 Domestic gasoline production rose 11 percent in November from a year earlier to 6.33 million tons, or 1.8 million barrels a day, China Mainland Marketing said on Dec. 11. Sinopec shares gained 0.5 percent to HK$6.71 in Hong Kong trading today, compared with the 1.1 percent increase in the benchmark Hang Seng index.

Refinery Expansion The nation’s largest refiner, known as Sinopec, may expand the capacity of the Zhenhai plant to about 40 million tons a year, or 800,000 barrels a day, from 23 million tons a year to meet increased fuel demand, Jiang Zhenghong, general manager of the refinery, said on Dec. 11.

China’s economic growth accelerated to 8.9 percent in the third quarter, spurring fuel consumption.

 The country may use 8.3 million barrels of oil a day this year, according to data from Paris-based International Energy Agency. China, India and other emerging markets are increasingly driving oil demand, relative to the members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Abdalla Salem El- Badri, secretary-general of OPEC, said  in Angola.  

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