China's leading export refinery West Pacific Petrochemical Corp (WEPEC) plans a maintenance shutdown of a 2.5-million-tonne-per-year (tpy) fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) unit in March for at least a month, industry sources said on Friday.

The sources said WEPEC had yet to decide on a specific start date for the maintenance.

"Refineries are sustaining huge losses, so one option is to conduct maintenance," said one source.

WEPEC, controlled by state oil giant PetroChina Co Ltd , would cut crude runs in March to about 106,000 barrels per day (bpd) from 163,600 bpd last month, the sources said.

WEPEC, in the northeastern port city of Dalian, mainly processes sour Middle East crude.

Another big refinery in the city, PetroChina's Dalian refinery, plans to shut down a 120,000 bpd crude distillation unit and a 3 million tpy FCC unit from late March to the end of April, an industry source has said.