Page 12 - AsianOil week 23

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NEWS IN BRIEF
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SOUTH ASIA
Indian ambassador tours Mongolian refinery project
India’s Ambassador to Mongolia Mohinder Pratap Singh has visited the site of Mongolia’s rst re nery project which is being nanced by the Indian government.
Construction of the 16.36 km road that connects the re nery in Dornogovi Province’s Altanshiree soum with the province’s capital city of Sainshand is around 80% nished
and is slated for completion in September. Construction of railway access was wrapped up on May 22.
e next stage of development will see
a 110-kW power transmission line and a sub-station commissioned by July 1. e Mongolian government decided on June 5 to begin building on a residential complex for re nery workers in August.
SOUTHEAST ASIA
Vietnam’s oil imports jump 63% in May
Vietnam’s government has forecast that crude imports in May expanded by 62.9% year on year to 901,628 tonnes (213,000 bpd) in May.
According to preliminary customs data, Vietnam’s purchases from Kuwait climbed 47.7% on the year to 817,316 tonnes (193,000 bpd) while another 84,312 tonnes (20,000 bpd) came from Brunei..
Vietnam imported 3.83 million tonnes (186,000 bpd) of crude in the rst ve months of the, a more than fourfold increase over the previous year. Kuwait supplied 3.58 million tonnes (174,000 bpd) of that, while Brunei shipped 252,826 tonnes (12,000 bpd.
Crude exports, meanwhile, were e ectively at in in May, expanding by 0.7% to 344,703
tonnes (81,000 bpd). Exports over the ve- month period grew by 9.2% year on year to 1.71 million tonnes (83,000 bpd).
Vietnam’s oil imports have surged since the 200,000 bpd Nghi Son re nery’s start-up in November 2018.
EAST ASIA
Chinese oil imports shrink in May
China’s crude oil imports shrank by 8% month on month in May to 40.23 million tonnes (9.51 million bpd), according to General Administration of Customs (GAC) data published on June 10.
April’s imports hit an all-time high of 43.73 million tonnes (10.68 million bpd). Imports in the rst ve months of the year amounted to 205 million tonnes (9.95 million bpd), up 7.6% year on year.
SIA Energy analyst Seng Yick Tee attributed the slump in purchases to a draw down in shipments from Iran. e resumption in US sanctions on the Iranian oil trade has driven Chinese buyers to alternative supplies from the Middle East and Latin America.
Another contributing factor has been the start of maintenance programmes at several major re neries.
e GAC revealed that LNG and pipe gas imports climbed by 3.6% year on year to 7.56 million tonnes in May, down from the 7.65 million tonnes recorded in April.
Four Chinese teapots to win oil import licences
China is preparing to award four independent re neries with crude oil import licences, according to a new report from Platts.
e pricing agency cited the Ministry of
Commerce (MOFCOM) as saying this week that Haike Ruilin Petrochemical, Chengda New Energy, Lianhe Petrochemical and Xinhai Petrochemical would be awarded licences following a public review. e review could last until June 17.
Once the lincences are granted, China will have 31 re neries able to import crude directly without relying on a state intermediate, Platts said.
PetroChina’s Xinjiang arm
produces over 100 million
tonnes of oil
PetroChina’s Xinjiang division has produced more than 100 million tonnes (733 million barrels) of heavy crude to date, according to the o cial Xinhua news wire.
Xinjiang Oil eld produced 4.32 million tonnes (86,700 bpd) of heavy oil in 2018, with the newswire saying the company was China’s largest producer of high-quality naphthenic base heavy oil, which is used in industrial products such as rocket propellant and cold- resistant engine oil.
Xinjiang Oil eld’s chief technical expert, Qian Genbao, said the company had raised heavy oil recovery rates by 30 percentage points to more than 60% using new, but unnamed technological innovations. ese same innovations have been applied in oil elds in northeast China, as well as in Kazakhstan, Canada and Venezuela.
Chinese petroleum engineers have gained a reputation over the years for their skill in raising extraction rates at mature elds far beyond the global industry standard.
Sinopec buys stake in Amur complex
Sinopec and SIBUR Holding signed a framework agreement on June 5 that paves the way for the Chinese company to take a 40% stake in Amur Gas Chemical Complex (Amur GCC) in Moscow. e project is subject to
a nal investment decision (FID), which is expected in 2020.
Sinopec chairman Dai Houliang and
SIBUR chairman Dmitry Konov signed the agreement, which was witnessed by Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. e two sides also agreed on ZapSibNe ekhim distributing products on their behalf in Moscow. Sinopec bought a 10% stake in Sibur in December 2015.
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Week 23 23•June 13•2019