© Reuters. A worker walks past oil pipelines at a refinery in Wuhan, Hubei province, March 23, 2012. REUTERS/Stringer/Files
BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s oil refining capacity will surpass that of the United States as the world’s largest by 2022, an industry official said on Thursday, even though its production of fuel products lagged behind that of the United States. due to low utilization rates.
Total refining capacity in China will expand to 920 million tons per year, or 18.4 million barrels per day (bpd), by 2022, said Fu Xiangsheng, vice president of the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Association. (OTC:) to journalists.
That compares with US refining capacity as of December of 17.6 million bpd, according to the latest oil market report from the International Energy Agency.
China’s recent wave of refinery expansions has been led by state-owned PetroChina and large private companies such as the Zhejiang Rongsheng Group and Jiangsu Shenghong Petrochemical, mainly to fill a gap in the supply of petrochemicals rather than transportation fuels.
China’s total output of refined products last year was less than 700 million tons (5.1 billion barrels), with an average plant utilization rate of about 70%, the association said, compared with more than 800 million tons in the United States, where average utilization exceeded 90%.
China has 32 refineries with a capacity of at least 200,000 bpd each, according to the association, citing the launch of a new PetroChina-built facility in Jieyang in Guangdong province as a recent example of the country’s growing capacity.
