China to boost oil refinery capacity
(AP)
Updated: 2006-03-17 20:58

It described the domestic refining industry as "relatively backward and lacking in competitiveness compared with advanced world standards."

Ethylene output is to be boosted by up to 10.6 million tons annually, the commission said, with the construction of production bases in three industrial hubs: the Yangtze Delta, near Shanghai; the Pearl River Delta, near Hong Kong and the Bohai region, east of Beijing.

Last year China produced 7.55 million tons of ethylene, a chemical used in a wide range of products, such as plastics, that is in short supply domestically.

China National Petroleum Corp., the state-owned parent company of PetroChina, expects to develop offshore oil fields in the southern part of the South China Sea in the next five years, the China Daily reported, citing PetroChina vice president Hu Wenrui.

The project would be CNPC's first deep sea oil project, the report said.

It said the company had expected to install a well in the area by this year, but that the project might be delayed into 2007.

CNPC, China's biggest oil producer, hopes to find 2.5 billion tons (18.3 billion barrels) of crude oil reserves in the next five years, both onshore and offshore, the report cited Hu as saying.

New reserves are needed to replace stagnant output at older fields such as Daqing, in the northeast, it said.

Despite its exploration efforts, PetroChina expects its oil output to increase by only 1 percent from 2005 to 2010, to more than 107 million tons (781 million barrels), Hu was quoted as saying. But its gas output is forecast to surge 92 percent from 2005-2010 to 70 billion cubic meters.