OREANDA-NEWS. June 25, 2012. Offshore crude oil and natural gas specialist CNOOC has started construction of a CNY10.2bn (USD 1.6bn) crude processing facility in Taizhou, Jiangsu, China.

The crude processing plant, including ten main processing facilities, will be built at the company's existing plant in China, which produces asphalt and fuel oil.

The new plant will process heavy crude oil pumped from the company's main crude producing area in Bohai Bay, China.

China Energy News reported that the company is calling the Taizhou development an 'integrated petrochemical project' rather than a refinery, as the plant will produce feedstock oil for petrochemicals, liquefied petroleum gas and fuel oil.

The 60,000 barrels-per-day crude plant is scheduled to start operations by 2015.

CNOOC is also planning to add 200,000 barrels a day of refining capacity to its 240,000bpd oil refinery in Huizhou, Guangdong, China, by 2014.

Even with the expanded capacity, the Huizhou plant would represent less than four percent of China's current total refining capacity of 11 million barrels each day.