China's largest sino-foreign capital investment project, the petrochemical project off South China Sea has completed construction and will go into production soon, said sources with China National Offshore¹ Oil Corporation (CNOOC), China's largest offshore oil producer.

    The board of CNOOC and Shell Petrochemical Company Limited (CSPC) announced on Friday the completion of the construction of the world-scale petrochemicals complex in the Daya Bay, Huizhou city of South China's Guangdong Province Friday.

    According to CNOOC, final preparations for start up are now being made at the complex, at the centre of which is an 800,000 tonnes per annum capacity Lower Olefins Plant.

    The project is a joint² investment by the CNOOC, Royal Dutch Shell and the Guangdong provincial³ government.

    With a total investment of 4.3 billion US dollars, the project is so far the largest joint venture project in China. Shell holds a share of 50 percent, CNOOC, 45 percent and the Guangdong government, five percent.

    After the start-up, the project is expected to turn out 2.3 million tons of petrochemicals products which will be supplied to markets in Guangdong and southeast coastal⁴ areas, where demand for petrochemicals are strong.

    Most of the utilities units and general facilities have already been in operation for months. The cracker⁵ and downstream units are being phased in as part of an integrated start up plan with a full complex product in tank expected in the next few weeks, said SimonLam, General Manager of CSPC.

    Having been focusing on oil and natural gas exploration and production offshore China, CNOOC is endeavoring to expand its business to middle and downstream of the oil industry such as refining, petrochemicals and marketing⁷ to build an integrated international energy company.

    CNOOC lay the cornerstone in mid⁶ Dec. for its wholly-invested oil refining project near the CSPC project.

    With an investment of 19.3 billion yuan (some 2.4 billion US dollars), the oil refining project boasts an annual refining capacity of 12 million tons, mainly sour crude from CNOOC's offshore fields

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