Sudan’s Khartoum refinery expanded, sees gasoline exports

July 10, 2006 (BEIJING) — Sudan’s sole major refinery, in Khartoum, has completed its planned expansion to 100,000 barrels per day (bpd), boosting the country’s gasoline exports and domestic fuel supply, Chinese part-owner CNPC said on Monday.

Khartoum Refinery has completed its planned expansion to 100,000 barrels.

China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC), a leading energy investor in Sudan and parent of Asia’s top oil and gas firm PetroChina , owns 50 percent of the refinery, which it built and operates. The Sudan government holds the rest.

A 400,000 tonne-per-year (tpy) reforming unit, which yields mainly gasoline, produced its first quality product on June 30, marking the successful completion of the $341 million expansion project, according to a notice on CNPC’s Web site www.cnpc.com.cn.

The upgrading, which doubled the plant’s capacity, also included a 1 million-tpy delayed coking facility, a unit that processes heavy residue oil into light transportation fuels. That unit had a smooth start-up in May, the report said.

The expanded plant will boost Sudan’s diesel supply significantly and allows for half of the gasoline output to be exported, it said.

The upgrade allows the plant to process more heavy crude oil, such as Fula from Block 6, 95 percent-owned by CNPC, now pumping at 30,000 bpd, a CNPC official told Reuters

CNPC gets its investment returns from the revenue but is not involved in marketing the refined fuels, which is handled by state-run Sudanese oil firm, Sudapet, said Beijing-based trading officials.

Malaysian state oil firm Petronas last year signed a $1 billion deal to build a second 100,000-bpd refinery in Port Sudan to process the new Dar Blend crude, which had been scheduled to begin production a year ago but had yet to be exported.

(Reuters)