PetroChina Daqing Petrochemical is planning to start the construction of a 7m tonne/year crude distillation unit (CDU) in September, a company source said on Friday.

With the unit on line by 2013, Daqing Petrochemical will close a 2.5m tonne/year CDU at its refinery, according to the source.

The total crude refining capacity of the company will reach 10.5m tonnes/year by then.

The company will also expand the capacities of some secondary processing units, including delayed coker, hydrocracker and hydrogenation unit, the source also said.

Daqing Petrochemical brought on stream a 600,000 tonne/year naphtha cracker at the end of 2011; however, it has been running the unit at low rates because of feedstock shortage, C1 reported earlier.

Daqing Petrochemical, located in northeast China’s Heilongjiang province, is able to produce 1.2m tonnes/year of ethylene.