China National Petroleum Corp and Venezuela's PDVSA recently revived the plan for a 20 million mt/year （400,000 b/d） Guangdong refinery in southern China, adding a 2.6 million mt/year aromatics plant and 1.2 million mt/year steam cracker to the project.
The Guangdong refining and petrochemical project, which will be located at Jieyang in the southern Guangdong province and known as the Jieyang or Nanhai refinery, will be built by a joint venture between CNPC （60%） and PDVSA （40%） called PetroChina/PDVSA Guangdong Petrochemical Co. Ltd.
The JV published the first environmental assessment of the updated project for public comments on March 8.
"In order to adapt to new development changes, such as resources, markets, cooperation and industrial policies, we have now decided to adjust the Guangdong refinery project to a refining-aromatics-chemical integrated project," the JV said, but without giving a timeline.
This will be PetroChina's fourth refinery in southern China, after the 12 million/year Guangxi plant, 10 million/year Sichuan facility, and 13 million mt/year Yunnan complex.
PetroChina's refineries used to be concentrated in the north, close to onshore oil fields, and it would ship refined products to the consumption centers in eastern and southern China.
Other state-owned oil companies are also expanding their refining capacities in South China.
The second phase of CNOOC's 10 million mt/year expansion project in Huizhou started up last September, while Sinopec's 10 million mt/year greenfield refinery in Zhanjiang is expected to be ready in 2019. Sinochem is also expanding its Quanzhou refinery capacity by 3 million mt/year.
Refining capacity in southern China, including Fujian, Guangdong, Hainan, Guangxi, Yunnan and Sichuan provinces, is currently 133.4 million mt/year, according to S&P Global Platts data.
LONG SUSPENSION
PetroChina/PDVSA's Guangdong project had obtained approval from the National Development and Reform Commission in 2012 and was originally scheduled to start up in 2015, Platts reported previously.
According to the recent environmental assessment, the Guangdong refinery will be designed to process Merey 16 crude from Venezuela, Basra heavy crude from Iraq, and heavy crude from Iran.
PDVSA and CNPC in mid-2017 signed four agreements to process, refine and market heavy oil from Venezuela's Orinoco Belt. The heavy crude will be processed in China according the agreements, Platts reported earlier.
The Guangdong refining and chemical project will include a crude distillation unit, hydrocracker, continuous reforming unit, gasoil hydrotreater, jet fuel hydrotreater, alkylation unit, an aromatics complex, a steam cracker, butadiene extraction unit, styrene monomer unit, polypropylene unit, and other facilities.
