| China to produce liquid fuel from coal |
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| Saturday,March 31,2007 Posted: 00:10 BJT(1610 GMT) 驻英国使馆经商处 |
China's first coal liquefaction project, which will go into operation in 2008, will be able to produce more than one million tons of oil a year, significantly reducing the country's dependence on oil imports.
Shenhua Group Corporation Limited, one of China's largest coal producers, launched the coal liquefaction project in 2004 in Erdos, a city in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. Shenhua will invest 24.5 billion yuan (3.2 billion U.S. dollars) to build three production lines in the first phase of the project. When the second phase is completed in 2010, the plant will produce 6 million tons of oil products each year and help reduce China's reliance on crude oil imports.
The project transforms coal into refined oil. More than 60 percent of the equipment that Shenhua uses is domestically-made and the company also owns the intellectual property rights for the manufacturing technology. The coal liquefaction technique has drawn increasing attention in recent years as international oil prices have shot up.
It is said the Shenhua project is of great importance to China, the world's fourth largest economy, both in terms of energy safety and economic development. According to the Ministry of Land and Resources, China's coal reserves are around one trillion tons.
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