China's two biggest oil companies each plan to establish a 300,000-ton crude oil terminal in northern China's Tianjin Port as part of the country's strategy to increase oil supplies to Beijing and Tianjin, state press reported Thursday.
China Petrochemical Corp, also known as Sinopec Group, plans to start construction on the project next year, said Yu Rumin, chairman of Tianjin Port, according to the China Daily.
Sinopec, the biggest refiner in Asia, will also establish a stockpile zone where crude oil from the terminals will be stored, Yu said at the National People's Congress session in Beijing, adding that work is to start on that project in July.
China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), the country's biggest oil producer, is also talking with the Tianjin Port about building its first crude-oil terminal there, the newspaper said. It has not set a schedule for that proposed work.
China, the second biggest oil consumer in the world, has increased the pace of its oil imports in recent years to meet a surge in demand for the fuel. CNPC forecast that China will import 266 million tons of crude oil in 2012, when the country's annual oil output may level off at 220 million tons.
The net amount of crude oil China imported increased by 6.3 percent in 2011 from a year before. That was the first time since 2006 that the figure had not shown a double-digit increase, according to Chinese customs data.
In addition, Yu said that work on the first phase of a liquefied-natural-gas (LNG) terminal is expected to start next March. In total, CNY 5.7 billion (USD 903.2 million) have been invested in the terminal, which is designed to process 2.2 million tons a year.
Construction began on it in February and LNG is to be imported from Australia, Qatar and various other places.