Hengyi starts up trial runs at refinery in Brunei

China’s Hengyi Petrochemical Co Ltd has started trial operations at its new refinery and petrochemical facilities in Brunei, the fourth refinery to commence production in Asia this year.

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The new plant in Palau Muara Besar consists an 8 million tonnes/year crude oil refinery (160,000 barrels per day), a 1 million-tonne/year aromatics plant and a 500,000-tonne/year benzene facility, the company said in a statement.

“All the facilities are entering trial operations and commercial production is expected to start fairly soon,” it added.

It will also produce nearly 6 million tonnes/year of gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel.

Pengerang Refining and Petrochemical (PrefChem), a joint venture between Malaysia’s state oil and gas firm Petronas and state-owned Saudi Aramco, started trial runs at its 300,000 bpd refinery in southern Malaysian state of Johor in April.

In China, private chemical giant Hengli Petrochemical ramped up its 400,000-bpd new refinery to full operations in May and another privately-run Zhejiang Petrochemical started pilot productions at a similar-sized plant around the same time.