OREANDA-NEWS. February 27, 2013. China Petrochemical Corp., known as Sinopec Group, has received approval from China's environmental watchdog to expand its refinery complex in southern China's Hainan province, the Ministry of Environmental Protection said.

Sinopec will expand the capacity of its Hainan refinery to 13 million metric tpy of crude oil, or about 261,000 bpd from the current 8 million tons, or 160,000 bpd, the ministry said in a statement Sunday on its website.

Meanwhile, the company will build a new ethylene unit with an annual capacity of 1 million tons, the statement said.

Total investment in the expansion project will be 41.72 billion yuan (USD6.64 billion), it said, without giving a timetable for the completion of the project.

Sinopec is China's top ethylene producer and accounts for about two-third of China's total output. It produced 9.45 million tons of ethylene last year, the company said in January.

In 2012, China produced 14.87 million tons of ethylene, down 2.5%, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.