China's dominant refiner Sinopec, or China Petroleum & Chemical Corp, expects to spend Yuan 30 billion ($4.9 billion) annually over the next few years to upgrade its refineries to produce cleaner oil products, the company said Thursday.
China is transitioning towards using gasoline and gasoil with lower sulfur content. It aims to move entirely to National Phase IV-compliant gasoline, which limits sulfur levels to 50 ppm, from the start of next year, while Phase IV-compliant gasoil will be implemented from the end of 2014.
Sinopec has set an internal deadline for all its refineries to start producing Phase IV-compliant gasoline by this month. It has 34 refineries in China, with total primary distillation capacity of 261 million mt/year (5.24 million b/d) at the end of last year.
Current Phase III fuel standards limit sulfur levels to 350 ppm for gasoil and 150 ppm for gasoline. Eventually, the government wants to move to Phase V standards, with 10 ppm sulfur, by 2017.
Sinopec said it has invested more than Yuan 200 billion over the last 10 years on fuel upgrades.
Its investment in emissions mitigation and environmental risk management will total Yuan 22.87 billion over 2013-2015, Sinopec said.
The company reported total capital expenditure in refining of Yuan 32.2 billion, while spending during the first half of this year was Yuan 7.7 billion, mainly for upgrading oil product quality and revamping projects to process lower-quality crude oil.
