BEIJING, July 25, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Ma Yongsheng, Chairman of China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (HKG: 0386, "Sinopec"), has remarked that China's petrochemical industry is looking at profound adjustment and transformation in times of change at the forum for petrochemical industry development trends under the context of "Dual Carbon" goals (the "Forum") hosted on July 22 in Beijing. 

"As China pledges to peak carbon emissions by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, global and domestic oil demand will also peak, leading to excess production capacity of major chemical products in China," noted Ma. "The petrochemical industry needs to take the initiative to accelerate transformation and upgrading in response to the challenges and explore a high-quality development path centering on building unique advantages."

Sinopec has carried out an "Energy Efficiency Improvement" plan and "Green Enterprise Action", taking a holistic approach to implement eight major carbon peaking actions to promote the energy transformation. In 2022, Sinopec recovered more than 1.5 million tons of carbon dioxide. Since it introduced the "Energy Efficiency Improvement" plan in 2014, it has conducted 5,000 projects that have saved 8.36 million tons of standard coal.

Energy structure and consumption optimization lead to a greener future

Sinopec is actively adjusting the energy structure towards clean energy development targets, laying out multiple energy sectors to achieve complementary growth, promoting Project Deep Earth with continuous breakthroughs in shale gas and shale oil exploration and production, strengthening the oil and gas production, supply, storage, and sales mechanisms, and consolidating its leading position in geothermal heating and waste heat utilization while pushing forward the industrialization of biomass fuels.

Racing to develop green hydrogen, its green hydrogen pilot plant in Kuqa city of Xinjiang, now harnessing solar energy to generate green hydrogen, is China's first and the world's largest solar-to-hydrogen green hydrogen facility with an annual capacity of more than 10,000 metric tons. Sinopec has also launched the Inner Mongolia Erdos Wind-Solar Green Hydrogen Project, the world's largest green hydrogen-coal chemical project.

Recently, Sinopec's Yuanba Gas Field, the world's first 7,000-meter-deep ultra-high sulfur biohermal gas field, has achieved cumulative natural gas production exceeding 30 billion cubic meters, which reduces carbon emissions by 40 million tons.

To advance green, low-carbon operations and clean energy utilization at scale, Sinopec is optimizing the energy consumption structure, promoting partially replacing coal with biomass pellets, extending the upgrade and application of electric equipment for drilling, fracturing, well repair, and more, and developing clean energy projects including photovoltaic and wind power.

The company has strengthened efforts in greenhouse gas emission reduction and high-concentration carbon dioxide recovery to further improve resource utilization efficiency. In 2022, it flooded more than 650,000 tons of carbon dioxide into oil reservoirs, completed China's first megaton carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) project, the Qilu-Shengli Oilfield CCUS, and launched the operation of its first high-pressure carbon dioxide transmission pipeline to transport the captured carbon dioxide from the CCUS project for further displacement, storage, and well stimulation.

Aiming to push forward the high-end, green, and intelligent development of the petrochemical industry, Sinopec is empowering energy transformation with innovative, green, and low-carbon technologies. It has established CO₂-driven displacement and storage in low-permeability reservoirs, high-efficiency waterflooding in reservoirs with medium to high permeability, cold production of thick oil, and multi-sector energy integration of wind, solar, geothermal energies, and more.