PetroChina Huabei refinery completes upgrade

BEIJING, Dec 21 (Reuters) - PetroChina's (0857.HK) Huabei refinery has completed a 30-month expansion programme that raised the northern China refinery's daily processing capacity to 100,000 barrels, its parent CNPC said.

The plant earlier this month started a reforming facility -- a gasoline unit -- that allows the refinery to raise crude throughput by 30 percent from levels in the first half of this year, CNPC said on its Web site news.cnpc.com.cn.

The start-up of the gasoline unit marks the end of expansion works started in April 2005 that included a 100,000-bpd crude unit, a 32,000-bpd catalytic cracker and a 200,000 cubic metre (1.26 million barrels) crude storage, the report said.

The refinery, in Hebei province near Beijing, is located next to PetroChina's Huabei oilfield with a capacity of 87,000 bpd.

(Reporting by Chen Aizhu; Editing by Anne Marie Roantree)

(aizhu.chen@reuters.com; Reuters Messaging: aizhu.chen.reuters.com@reuters.net; +8610 6627 1211)