Refinery Capacity Expansion Vs. Grassroots Capacity

The rapid growth of the world economy is increasing the demand of energy day by day. It is predicted that in just 25 years, the world energy demand will be increased by 50%, and it is broadly considered that in a rather long period of time in the future, oil and natural gas will still be the main body of the primary energy. Facing the oil price continuously high, figures in petroleum industry generally state that oil and gas resources are sufficient, but the problem is how to rationally transport petroleum and petroleum products to the terminal consumers, Le. this relies not on the availability of the resources, but on their deliverability. A lot of authoritative persons and petroleum experts state that one of the reasons causing high oil price is the limited oil refining capacity. The infrastructures of petroleum industry have made great changes. A big surplus in world oil refining capacity in the period of 1980s to 1990s has gone forever. This limited oil refining capacity results in no room for manoeuvre in petroleum product supply and it is hard to deal with the challenges of increasing demand, which has become a bottleneck in the supply chain of petroleum products. The urgent problem to be solved at present is to expand the oil refining infrastructures, increase oil refining capacity, improve the efficiency of oil refining industry through scientific research and technological development, fully utilize crude oil resources, make efforts to develop and produce environment-friendly and clean petroleum products and make contributions to environment protection and social sustainable development.