BEIJING, June 5 (Reuters) - China has given the finalgo-ahead to China National Offshore Oil Company's (CNOOC) planto expand a refinery and petrochemical plant in southern China,according to a government statement on Wednesday.
CNOOC, parent of offshore oil and gas producer CNOOC Ltd, will add a 200,000 barrel-per-day refinery and a 1million tonne-per-year (tpy) ethylene complex at Daya Bay ofGuangdong province, the NationalDevelopment and ReformCommission, the country's top economic planner, said on itswebsite (www.ndrc.gov.cn).
CNOOC will need to fine-tune plant configurations to takeinto account the evolving market conditions such as thepotential impact from cheap petrochemicals and their feedstocksas a result of the shale revolution in the United States.
Natural gas liquids, co-produced from shale fields, wouldlikely become a competing feedstock for making petrochemicals,against the more traditional feedstock naphtha, a refineryproduct, said one CNOOC official.
"There are lots of changes in the market that need to beconsidered," said the official, adding that foreign crude oiland CNOOC's own crude productions from Chinese offshorefacilities are both options for the new refinery.
The plants will be built next to CNOOC's existing240,000-bpd refinery and a 950,000-tpy ethylene complex jointlyowned by CNOOC and Royal Dutch Shell. A second CNOOCofficial estimated that the two plants are likely to becompleted around 2015/16.
The NDRC statement did not give any financial details.
NDRC also gave final approval to Sinopec's plan to add200,000 bpd refining capacity at Hainan, where the Chineserefiner runs a 160,000-bpd refinery.
Factbox of China's refinery plans: