By Chen Aizhu and Shu Zhang
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - China's Sinopec Corp is set to launch a new $5.7 billion refining and petrochemical complex in the south of the country in second-quarter 2020 using crude oil from Kuwait as a key feedstock, industry officials with knowledge of the matter said.
The project being developed by Asia's top refiner, a 200,000 barrels-per-day (bpd) plant in Zhanjiang, a coastal city in Guangdong province, will become the third greenfield refinery-petrochemical complex to be built in China within a space of two years.
Sinopec (HK:0386) is seeking to finalise a crude oil supply deal that will help boost Kuwait's oil sales to China to a record of nearly 600,000 bpd next year, the sources said. They declined to be identified because they were not authorized to talk to media.
The 40 billion yuan ($5.69 billion) complex comes on the heels of two privately invested mega-refineries - Hengli Petrochemical (SS:600346) and Zhejiang Petrochemical Corp - that have piled onto an over-supplied domestic fuel market where demand for transportation fuels slowed and China's fuel exports soared.
Sinopec did not respond to a request for comment.
The refinery is slated for start-up in April, followed by an ethylene plant in June next year, said one official briefed on the progress of the plant, located on Donghai island, Zhanjiang.