China’s top refiner Sinopec has won government approval to build a $3.1 billion refinery-petrochemical complex due for completion two years ahead of an earlier target, a company source said.

Sinopec will expand its refinery in Tianjin to 12.5 million tonnes per year (tpy), or 250,000 barrels per day (bpd), and build a new 1 million tpy ethylene plant by 2008, the official said. Tianjin now has a 100,000-bpd refinery.
The Tianjin ethylene complex will be China's second world-class petrochemical project after domestic rival PetroChina’s Dushanzi plant in the country’s northwest.
Sinopec, which submitted the plan to Beijing for approval in early 2005, will erect a new 200,000-bpd crude unit and secondary facilities including a hydrocracker to process sour crude with an average 1.5 percent sulphur content, the company source said.
The unit will replace the mostly low-sulphur grades the plant is processing now, and an ageing 50,000-bpd crude unit, which refines sweet and more expensive West African crude oil, will be mothballed once the new CDU is built, the source said.
“The refinery is designed to treat Saudi Light crude or crude of similar quality,” said the source from the northern city of Tianjin, near Beijing.
Chinese oil firms are planning to build or upgrade more than a dozen refineries before the end of this decade.