ASIA's top refinery, Sinopec Corp., is building a 300,000-ton oil terminal and 21.4 million barrels of crude storages in East China to handle surging oil imports.

The facilities, due to start up within two years at an estimated cost of US$240 million, are part of the refiner��s plan to build a commercial receiving and transfer hub in the booming Yangtze River Delta.

They would feed more than half of the area��s refining capacity of around 2.87 million barrels per day (bpd).

China is set to import close to 120 million tons, or 2.5 million bpd of crude oil this year, 30 percent more than last year, with Sinopec Corp. taking up more than 80 percent of the total.

Blistering oil demand in the world��s seventh-largest economy and the second-biggest oil consumer is stretching its energy infrastructure.

��The rapid demand growth we are seeing now requires Sinopec to build a new 300,000-ton sized terminal every other year,�� said a Sinopec official, adding that a terminal of this size could typically handle 20 million tons of crude.

The terminal, being built on Cezi Island off the east coast city of Ningbo, would boost the total number of super-tanker terminals to four in the city, China��s largest port for imported crude.

Other terminals able to dock 300,000-ton vessels are Huangdao, of East China��s Shandong Province, and Dalian in northeast Liaoning Province.

The new storages would include 12.6 million-barrel tanks in Yizheng city in Jiangsu Province, 6.3 million barrels on Cezi Island and 2.5 million barrels near the site of China��s top refinery Zhenhai Refining & Chemical Co.

The tank farms are linked to the 400-mile Ningbo-Nanjing crude pipeline started in May and a planned 600-mile crude line along the Yangtze river, scheduled for start-up end-2006 with a capacity to feed 555,000 bpd crude oil to inland plants.

The Ningbo-Nanjing pipeline allows Sinopec to take in 20 million tons (411,000 bpd) of crude oil a year. Sinopec also started operating in May 15.4 million barrels of crude tanks along the pipeline.

China is building its first strategic reserve storages, with the first batch of tanks due for operation next year, Chinese oil officials have said.

Led by independent oil firms, China is boosting its commercial oil storage on the eastern seaboard to nearly 80 million barrels, or about two weeks of consumption, by the end of 2006.

But most of these new tanks would store fuel oil. China is Asia��s largest buyer of the basic oil product.

Crude tanks are invested mostly by State refiner Sinopec and PetroChina, which have so far controlled the lion��s share of China��s crude imports.

Source: Shenzhen Daily-Agencies