Exxon Mobil Corp. will build a diesel hydrotreater at its Singapore refining complex and increase its output of ultra-low-sulfur supplies by the equivalent of 2% of China’s demand for the transport fuel.
The world’s largest listed oil and gas company plans to boost supplies by 9 million liters a day to more than 25 million, Exxon said in an e-mailed statement today. The additional daily output is equivalent to 56,600 barrels. China may consume 2.87 million barrels a day of diesel this year, based on forecasts by the International Energy Agency.
The facility may be completed by 2014, Karen Wong, the company’s media relations and communications advisor in Singapore, said by telephone. She declined to specify the cost of the construction.
Exxon is spending more than $1 billion on diesel hydrotreaters at refineries in Baytown in Texas, Baton Rouge in Louisiana and in Belgium’s Antwerp to boost the plants’ capacity by 22 million liters a day. That’s about 140,000 barrels a day.
Diesel, or gasoil, has outpaced gains in crude as the global economic recovery bolsters fuel demand. In Singapore, gasoil’s premium to Dubai crude, the Asian benchmark, climbed to US$14.32 ($18.64) a barrel last week, the highest since January 2009, according to PVM Oil Associates, a brokerage.
Exxon’s Singapore refining complex, the company’s biggest globally, comprises a 296,000 barrel-a-day plant on Jurong Island off the country’s southwestern coast and a 309,000 barrel-a-day refinery on the mainland, according to its website.
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