China Petroleum and Chemical Corp (Sinopec) has taken delivery of the first LNG cargo at its new terminal at Beihai City in Guangxi Zhuang, with the arrival yesterday of the LNG carrier Methane Spirit, delivering a cargo from ConocoPhillips-operated Australia Pacific LNG (APLNG)project in Australia.
The cargo was delivered onboard the 160,000 cbm Methane Spirit LNG carrier, Sinopec said.
Located in Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, the facility is the second of five LNG terminals planned by Sinopec as China works to raise the proportion of natural gas in its energy consumption and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The first LNG facility in the Guangxi region.
The company started construction on the LNG project in 2013 with 17.78 billion yuan ($2.8 bln) of first phase investment.
The first phase of the facility in Beihai City can produce three million tonnes of natural gas a year, with most of the LNG to be imported from Australia, said Wang Zhigang, Sinopec senior vice president.
Guangxi LNG plant received the commissioning cargo from the APLNG project at the end of March onboard the BW Pavilion Vanda LNG carrier.
Sinopec has a 7.6 mtpa long-term contract with APLNG that shipped its first cargo of chilled gas in January this year. Chinese oil and gas giant also owns a 25 percent stake in the Australian LNG project.
In the future, some contracted volumes would go to Sinopec's existing LNG terminal in Qingdao, but given the size of the contract, more volumes would most likely be sold, a source close to the company said.