The nation's largest oil refiner Sinopec yesterday began work on
a 14.6-billion-yuan ethylene plant in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei
Province, to meet demand in the central region.
"The plant, the first large-scale refining and chemical
production base in Central China, with a production capacity of
80,000 tons of ethylene per year, will change the structure of the
nation's ethylene industry," said a Sinopec source, who declined to
be named.
"There's only one small ethylene project in Central China at the
moment. The new project should be ready by 2010 and will fill the
gap in the region," he said.
Sinopec plans to build 3 million tons of annual ethylene
capacity in the Yangtze River Delta in the east, Bohai Bay in the
north and the Pearl River region in the south by 2010, its parent
China Petrochemical Corp said in a statement.
That would cover more than 60 percent of the nation's ethylene
production capacity, the statement said.
The new Wuhan ethylene project will help tap rising demand for
the chemical and expand projects in the eastern and central
regions, Sinopec said yesterday.
"The project will also help to enhance the oil refining and
petrochemical downstream industry in the central region," the
source said. "To ensure supply, Sinopec has doubled its oil
refining capacity to 800 million tons."
The refiner invested 400 million yuan in pollution-control
equipment for the new plant after it was approved by the National
Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) in April.
"We adopted the most advanced and the latest technologies to
meet the government's energy saving and emission-reduction
requirements," the source said.
"Environmental protection and energy saving are priorities for
the nation and we wouldn't have been approved by the NDRC if the
project hadn't met their requirements."
Sinopec said the project would provide 50,000 new jobs.
(China Daily December 19, 2007)
