French Firm Builds Distillate Hydrocracker in China

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--France's Total announced in December that it began construction on a distillate hydrocracker at the Wepec refinery in northeastern China's Liaoning Province. Total said that the $240 million unit will increase the plant's annual diesel production capacity 40% to 3.5 million tons per year.

Wepec is also China's first large foreign joint-venture oil and petrochemical enterprise. Its Chinese investors are Dalian Construction Investment Company, China National Chemical Corporation and China National Petroleum Corporation. Wepec has a total investment of $1.01 billion and takes up an area of 25,000 square kilometers. Its present crude oil processing capacity is 8 million tons per year.

Construction of Wepec started in 1992 and was completed in 1996. Partial trial production was carried out throughout 1996 and 1997. At the end of 1997, Wepec passed its first full-load trial run.

As a fuel-oriented petrochemical enterprise, WEPEC has 16 sets of advanced production units producing unleaded gasoline, light diesel, military diesel, aviation kerosene, naphtha, liquefied petroleum gas to sulfur and higher grade asphalt. Most of its products are exported. Its key market destinations include the U.S., Japan, Korea, ASEAN countries and the Middle East.

Wepec plans to expand its crude oil processing ability to 10 million tons per year through further tapping and upgrading the capacity of its existing production facilities and construction of chemical treatment facilities in the near future.

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