China National Offshore Oil & Gas signed an agreement last month to build a large blending plant in Taizhou, Jiangsu province, significantly increasing the company’s capacity to make finished lubricants and specialty oils.
The plant constitutes the second phase of the China National Offshore Oil & Gas (Taizhou) Petrochemical Co. complex. According to government announcements about the March 18 signing of an agreement with the Taizhou Medical High-tech Zone, the project has a total investment of ¥5 billion yuan (U.S. $691 million). The second phase is also to include construction of a lubricant research and development center.
CNOOC is one of China’s three main state-owned oils companies, along with Sinopec and PetroChina. Over the past two decades it has expanded its activities in base oil and lubricant production.
Government announcements claimed the blending plant will increase CNOOC’s annual production of lubricants and specialty oil products from 600,000 metric tons to 1.4 million tons.
The announcements indicated the products of this project will be widely used in commercial vehicles, passenger cars, heavy machinery, military applications, coal mining, biopharmaceuticals, transformers and other fields, helping to reduce reliance on imports.
In late 2016, CNOOC began making base stocks at its then new fuels and petrochemical refinery in Taizhou. At that time, the company said it also planned to build a finished lubricant blending plant at the same site, using the base oils produced there. The plant made API Group II+ base oils and naphthenic oils, and it began producing Group III base oils as well in 2022. The projects are part of a strategy to expand CNOOC’s production of value-added oil products, including base stocks and lubricants.