OREANDA-NEWS. September 11, 2013. Chinese state-owned oil giant, Sinopec, plans to improve the quality of its gasoline to National 4 standard and above starting on Oct. 1, according to a chinanews.com report.

The standard-upgrade would increase the quality of gasoline nation-wide, reducing its sulfur content by 67 percent from 150 parts-per-million (ppm) -currently present in the National 3 standard - to 50ppm. The change would make all gasoline in China near the quality of that found in the United States.

Furthermore, National-5-standard gasoline will be available in Beijing, Shanghai, eight cities in Jiangsu Province and six cities in Guangdong Province. Gas meeting the National 5 standard has a sulfur content of 10ppm, decreasing the amount in the previous standard by 80 percent and meeting the world's highest gasoline quality standards.

"Sinopec has spent over 200 billion yuan (32.6 billion USD) on improving its gasoline quality over the past 10 years and will spend as much as 30 billion (4.9 billion USD) a year on reducing environmental pollution," Sinopec officials told chinanews.com in regards to the planned improvements.