THE storage arm of Asia’s top refiner, Sinopec Corp., plans to double its storage capacity outside China by 2020, a senior company official said yesterday.

    Sinopec Kantons Holdings has set its eyes on Africa and North and South America to double its capacity from the more than 5 million cubic meters expected in 2016, said Xu Ruiqing, chief commercial director of Sinopec Kantons.

    “Currently, there’s no major oil terminal in western Africa although it’s a big producer and exporter of crude,” he said.

    “Other areas like Brazil and Argentina are also exporting crude and there might be production increase, so somewhere between northern America and southern America could be a strategic location. We are basically looking at areas where there is an active trading business.”

    The company is currently in the design and pre-engineering phase to build a 2.6 million-cubic-meter storage terminal in Indonesia’s Batam free trade zone. The terminal is expected to become operational by mid-2016.

    On a land size of 75 hectares, the terminal will store 1.876 million cubic meters of crude oil and fuel oil and 730,000 cubic meters of diesel, gasoline and jet fuel.

    The company will focus on building the terminal for now, and has not decided if it will go ahead with a refinery project in the area as was originally planned, Xu said. “Refinery plans will depend on demand scenario and whether it’s worth building the refinery or not,” Xu said. “That’s not decided.”

    Sinopec Kantons is also building a terminal in Fujairah in a joint venture with Concorde Energy and a local partner, with a storage capacity of 1.15 million cubic meters. (SD-Agencies)