BEIJING: Sinopec Corp, Asia's largest refiner, started operating a major commercial crude oil storage base in northern China on Sunday, the parent company said on Monday, nine months behind an earlier schedule.
The 20-million-barrel oil tank farm in the coastal city Tianjin near Beijing, received its first shipment on Sunday of 130,000 tonnes (949,000 barrels) of crude oil sailed from Kuwait, the company said on its website (www.sinopecnews.com).
The facility, one of the largest in a single base, contains 32 crude tanks each with a capacity of 100,000 tonnes.
The 3 billion yuan ($490 million) base would also include a 22-kilometre pipeline with a capacity of 400,000 barrels per day, Sinopec said in May 2010, when the construction began. The facility was earlier expected to start up by the end of 2012.
The new storage will supply crude for Sinopec's subsidiary refineries in Tianjin, Yanshan, Cangzhou and Shijiazhuang via a pipeline.
Also in Tianjin, PetroChina operates a 7-million barrel crude reserve. A separate 20-million-barrel storage, part of China's strategic petroleum reserves, is under construction at the same port city, state media Xinhua has reported.
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