Two new facilities had already been put on stream this January, including the 1m t/y ethylene project of Tianjin Petrochemical which came on stream on Jan 16 and 450kt/y project of Huajin Chemical Industrial Group which came on stream in late January. Total ethylene capacity has arrived at 13.23 m t/y after the on-stream of these two projects, up 35% over three years ago.
Another 1.64m t/y ethylene capacity will be on stream this year, including Zhenhai Oil Refining and Chemical (ZRCC) s 1m tonne/year cracker and Baotou Shenhua Coal Chemical s new 300,000 tonnes/year ethylene plant.
In 2011, newly added capacity will be 1.81m t/y. PetroChina unit Fushun Petrochemical would put on stream its cracker capacity of 800kt/y in the first half of 2011, while Sichuan Petrochemical would have a new 800kt/y cracker by the end of that year. And more 2.4m t/y capacity will be added in 2013, including Sinopec Wuhan Petrochemical s 800kt/y cracker and the doubled capacity of Daqing Petrochemical from 600kt/y to 1.2m t/y.
The last two companies have some reservations on the scheduled start-ups, citing slow progress on the projects, industry sources said.
CNOOC is expected to start up its second phase of project this year, including 10m t/y refinery plant and 1m t/y ethylene cracker facility, which had been delayed due to global financial crisis.
Another potential ethylene project could be the $10 billion coal-to-chemical project invested by Shenhua Group and the Dow Chemical Company, which scheduled to put on stream by 2016, adding 500kt/y ethylene capacity to the domestic market.
