China Petrochemical Corp., known as Sinopec, said it would begin construction at the end of this month of its Beihai LNG import terminal in the southwest Chinese province of Guangxi bordering Vietnam, and completion of the facility is scheduled for September 2015.
Engineering, procurement and construction is being carried out by Luoyang Petrochemical Engineering, a unit of Sinopec.
The Beihai LNG import facility is one of at least 10 new terminals being developed along the Chinese coast by Sinopec, PetroChina and China National Offshore Oil Corp.
It will have berthing to handle the largest LNG carriers and will eventually have four LNG storage tanks of 160,000 cubic metres capacity, the company said.
Several natural gas pipelines of more than 1,000 kilometres will be connected to the Beihai facility by the completion date.
Sinopec is also planning an import terminal at Qingdao in Shandong province.
China currently has five import terminals in operation at Dalian, Fujian, Dapeng Bay, Rudong and Shanghai.
The Chinese import terminals are expected to import around 14 million tonnes per annum of LNG this year, rising to 40 million tonnes by 2020.
In addition to onshore import terminals the Chinese energy companies are also considering floating storage and regasification units as fast-track import facilities.
