Asia downstream update: Mid July

China

During October, PetroChina Ltd will bring an ethylene unit onstream at the Fushun refinery. The unit will have the capacity to produce 800 000 tpy bringing total ethylene production at the plant to 1 million tpy.

India

Haldia Petrochemicals is to under go a technical audit to assess the condition of the plant’s machinery. After the audit, the operators will make final decisions with regards to increase polymer production at the facility.

Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd and LG Chem Ltd of South Korea have signed a joint venture agreement to construct a petrochemical plant. The facility will be built near Bharat Petroleum’s Kochi refinery. The venture will need an investment of US$ 2.51 billion over the next five years.

Japan

All refining units at the Mizushima-B refinery are being shutdown indefinitely due to the falsification of inspection records. JX Nippon Oil & Energy Corp, the plant owners, made the announcement on Friday after an internal investigation revealed that inspection records for the LPG tanks at the facility were fraudulent.

Vietnam

Following an eight week shutdown for equipment checks, Vietnam’s Dung Quat refinery reached full capacity on Monday 16^th July. The closure of the country’s only refinery on 16^th May prompted domestic oil product distributors to act quickly in seeking alternate resources in the spot market. 

Edited from various sources by Claira Lloyd.

Read the article online at: https://www.hydrocarbonengineering.com/gas-processing/16072012/mid_july_asia_news/