OREANDA-NEWS. April 05, 2011. Asia's top refiner China Petroleum and Chemical Corp (Sinopec Corp) has completed building a 1.88-million-cubic-metre commercial crude oil storage facility in Maoming city in southern Guangdong province, one month ahead of schedule.

The 1.7-billion-yuan facility, expected to be operational on April 20, is designed to store mainly Oman crude oil and Saudi Arabia's light crude, Sinopec's parent China Petrochemical Corp said in a report on one of its websites (www.sinopecnews.com.cn).

As a result, crude oil storage in Maoming, home to Sinopec's 270,000 barrel-per-day Maoming refinery, will increase to 3 million cubic metres or 18.9 million barrels.

Sinopec has reserved a spare space neighbouring the new storage facility that could house 15 additional crude oil tanks with 125,0000 cubic metre capacity each, the report said.

China's top oil firms have fast-tracked oil storage expansion in the past years to service their expanding refining systems and establish commercial space under Beijing's call to boost supply security.