This month China's first strategic oil reserve will be completed
and go into operation in October, said sources with the National
Development and Reform Commission.
The oil reserve base in Zhenhai, east China's Zhejiang Province, has 52 storage tanks.
Sixteen of them were erected last September and the remaining 36
will be completed this October. Twenty-eight of the storage tanks
are made of high strength steel plates, said the commission.
Costing 3.7 billion yuan (US$462.5 million) and with a storage
capacity of 5.20 million cubic meters the base is now ready for oil
storage and operation.
The base, close to China's largest refinery, Sinopec Zhenhai
Refining and Chemical Company, is located at the head of the
YongHuNing oil pipeline which runs from Ningbo to Shanghai and
Nanjing.
The completion of the base is a breakthrough for China which
until now has had no national strategic oil reserves, said Zhang
Guobao, deputy director of the National Development and Reform
Commission.
China started to build national oil reserve bases in 2004. The
sites of the first four are Zhenhai, Daishan in Zhejiang Province,
Huangdao in east China's Shandong Province and Dalian in northeastern Liaoning Province.
(Xinhua News Agency August 10, 2006)