Sinopec Tahe Starts Construction of 3.5 MLN T/A Heavy Oil Modification Project   

Sinopec Corp. Tahe Branch started construction on its heavy oil modification project on April 20th, a key project under the Sinopec Group's 11th five-year program.
   The project, at the Kuche county petrochemical industrial park, needs total costs of RMB3.1 billion. It includes a 2.2 million t/a coking plant and corresponding crude oil pretreatment facility, a 1.4 million t/a gasoline/diesel hydrofining unit, a 40 000 t/a sulfur recovery facility, a 20 000 normal cubic meters per hour of natural gas for hydrogen plant, a 70 000 t/a naphtha isomerization unit, as well as supporting utilities installations and logistics facilities.
   It is expected that the project will start trial running in October 2010, which will help Tahe heavy oil processing capacity to rise to 5 million t/a from current 2 million t/a.
   The Tahe Branch is Sinopec Corp.'s sole refining plant in Xinjiang, mainly processing heavy oil from the Tahe oil field.