CNPC Moves Base to Xinjiang

(Beijing) – China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) is set to double its investment in Xinjiang while increasing the region's crude oil production capacity to 50 million barrels of oil equivalent (BOE) by 2015, to make the region its national base.

According to CNPC, the company will accelerate oil and gas exploitation in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region with a crude oil production target of 50 million BOE in 2015 and 60 million BOE in 2020. CNPC is also set to double its production in the Talimu oil and gas field.

CNPC plans to increase its oil refining capacity to 26 million tons a year by 2015 and further to 30 million tons by 2020, while improving its sales network and logistics services in an aim to offer a stable supply of refined oil. Production capacities of chemicals and fertilizer will also be expanded.

CNPC will speed up the construction of strategic and commercial oil reserve facilities in the next decade. The company will build six oil reserve complexes in Xinjiang and increase the reserve capacity to 15 million cubic meters by 2015.

CNPC will expand engineering services in Xinjiang to support its projects in the region and countries in Central Asia.

In addition, Xinjiang will become the center of China's oil and gas pipeline construction strategy. By 2020, two branches of the West to East Gas Transportation Project will open and two branches of pipelines will transport crude oil from Kahzakstan to China. By then, China's cross-border oil and gas transportation capacity will reach 100 million tons.

Jiang Jiemin, general manager of CNPC, said that the company will double its investment in Xinjiang over the next ten years. According to China Daily, CNPC has invested over 300 billion yuan in Xinjiang so far, running a total of 11 subsidiaries in the regions.

On July 19, a large-scale aromatic hydrocarbon production project, which is invested by CNPC's Urumqi subsidiary, was opened. The project includes the annual production of 100 million tons of para-xylene aromatic hydrocarbon, the largest of its kind in the world.

In late 2009, another CNPC subsidiary in Xinjiang, Dushanzi Petrochemical, began the production of an oil refining project with a capacity of 10 million tons a year, and an ethylene project with an annual capacity of 1.2 million tons.