Refinery news roundup: Maintenance planned in China, Japan in Q1

London — Maintenance works are planned to start in China and Japan in Q1.

NEAR TERM

EXISTING ENTRIES

JAPAN

--A spokesperson for Idemitsu confirmed that the process to shut its Keihin refinery run by its subsidiary Toa Oil, would be completed by December 27. Toa Oil started to shut down its 70,000 b/d Keihin plant in Tokyo Bay on December 23 after a fire at the refinery compound. According to the spokesperson, its vacuum distillation unit, coker unit and two other secondary units related to the coker were immediately shut after the fire. The spokesperson said its crude distillation unit was halted on the next day, adding "we will complete the shutdown of the entire refinery by December 27." The spokesperson said the restart schedule was unclear, pending permission from the local fire department, saying it would be highly unlikely that the company would be to be able to restart the refinery by the end of 2019.

--Japan's JXTG Nippon Oil and Energy Corp will shut the sole 120,000 b/d crude distillation unit at its Marifu refinery in western Japan in late January, for scheduled maintenance, a company official said Friday. The turnaround will last until late March, the official said.

--Japan's largest refiner JXTG Nippon Oil & Energy has decided to terminate its refining operations at the 115,000 b/d Osaka refinery in western Japan and turn the facility into an asphalt-fueled power plant in October 2020, it said.

CHINA

--PetroChina's Dalian Petrochemical in northeastern Liaoning province, will shut for an overall maintenance over April-May, for around 50 days.

--PetroChina's Guangxi Petrochemical in southern Guangxi province, will also shut for maintenance in the first quarter of 2020, for about 50 days.

UPGRADES

EXISTING ENTRIES

--Sinopec's 21 million mt/year Jinling Petrochemical refinery in eastern China will build a new 600,000 mt/year vacuum distillation unit, and reconfigure its No.3 gasoline hydrotreater to a 360,000 mt/year hydrotreater to produce RMG 380 CST bunker fuel oil with sulfur content no higher than 0.5%.

--Sinopec's 6 million mt/year Jingmen Petrochemical in central Hubei province planned to complete the construction of three units in 2019, including a 2.8 million mt/year heavy oil catalytic cracker, a 550,000 mt/year lubricant hydrogenation unit, and a 200,000 mt/year alkylation unit. The start-up of these units will help update the processing capacity at the refinery to around 8 million mt/year, from the current 6 million mt/year.

--Sinopec's Zhenhai refinery in Ningbo, eastern Zhejiang province, China, has issued four tenders for pre-construction works of its 1.2 million mt/year ethylene expansion project. The project also includes 15 million mt/year of refining capacity.

--Chinese independent refinery Haiyou Petrochemical has been building a new 1 million mt/year coker.

LAUNCHES

EXISTING ENTRIES

--China's Zhejiang Petrochemical Co., or ZPC, has successfully started up its 10 million mt/year No.1 crude distillation unit and most of its refining units, a key step to fully commission its 400,000 b/d integrated refining and petrochemical facilities, three company sources said. "Both CDUs are running now, with most of the refining facilities," the first company source said, adding that the total throughput has not hit its capacity yet. The No.1 CDU is integrated with secondary refining units. "Once the No.1 CDU is launched, all its connected secondary unit will be started up accordingly when feedstock from their upstream unit is available," the source said previously. A second company source said the refinery currently ran at 70-80% of its total capacity. ZPC's No.2 CDU has been in commercial operation since late May. The company is gradually commissioning its secondary units connected to the CDU since then.

--Sinopec plans to start up its greenfield 10 million mt/year (200,000 b/d) Zhongke (Guangdong) refinery in Zhanjiang, southern Guangdong province in April 2020, a Sinopec refinery source said. Construction works at the Zhongke (Guangdong) refinery complex, which have begun since April 2018, are scheduled to be completed be December 2019, Platts reported earlier. The Zhongke refinery complex involves building a 10 million mt/year crude distillation unit, 4.2 million mt/year fluid catalytic cracking unit, 4.4 million mt/year residual oil hydrotreater, 2 million mt/year hydrocracker, 2 million mt/year gasoil hydrotreater, 1.8 million mt/year continuous reforming unit, 2 million mt/year light-hydrocarbon reclaiming unit and associated facilities. Besides, it also includes building an 800,000 mt/year ethylene steam cracking unit, 400,000 mt/year pyrolysis gasoline hydrogenation, 550,000 mt/year polypropylene, 350,000 mt/year high density polyethylene, 250,000 mt/year EO, 400,000 mt/year EG, 100,000 mt/year EVA, 180,000 cu m/hour coal-to-hydrogen units, a power station and other utilities and facilities.

--China's independent Shenghong Group has opened a trading office in Singapore ahead of the start-up in the second half of 2021 of its 320,000 b/d refinery in Jiangsu province. Shenghong's refinery will only have one crude distillation unit with a processing capacity of 16 million mt/year, which will become the single largest distillation unit in China.

--Saudi Aramco is boosting its downstream investments in China, creating a joint venture to build a $10 billion refinery and acquiring a stake in the greenfield Zhejiang Petrochemical refinery and petrochemical complex.

--PetroChina officially started construction work at its greenfield 20 million mt/year Guangdong petrochemical refinery in the southern Guangdong province on December 5, 2018. Trial operations at the refining complex are expected to start in October 2021.

--China's coal chemical producer Xuyang Group has announced plans to build a greenfield 15 million mt/year refining and petrochemical complex in Tangshang in central Hebei province.