A delegation of our company visited China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (SINOPEC) from the People's Republic of China.

The main objective of the visit was to get acquainted with the capture, usage, and storage of CO2 (Carbon Capture, Utilisation, and Storage – CCUS) technologies applied within the CCUS project Qilu-Shengli by SINOPEC, one of the most important projects of this kind in the People's Republic of China. An additional focus was on the exchange of experiences of our experts with the Chinese peers regarding the potential application of innovative technologies within the NIS CCUS project at the Pančevo Oil Refinery, the implementation of which is planned.

Our colleagues presented the operations of NIS, its achievements in terms of modernization of the Pančevo Oil Refinery, as well as the current status of the implementation of the CCUS project to high-ranking officials of this company.

Our delegation also visited the CO2 capture plant within the petrochemical complex Qilu of SINOPEC near the city of Zibo (Shandong Province).

– It is a great honour and pleasure for me to be the head of the delegation of our company, which consisted of colleagues from several organizational units involved in the implementation of the CCUS project in NIS. I am particularly honoured by the warm and friendly welcome of our Chinese partners, which shows that physical distance is not an obstacle to establishing business cooperation. In addition, the technological capacities in the field of CCUS presented to us by SINOPEC indicate that companies from the People's Republic of China do not in any aspect lag behind Western technologies, and in this regard, they can be trustworthy partners in the implementation of innovative projects in NIS – said Vadim Smirnov, the Deputy CEO.

The next step was to visit the Shenli oil field near the city of Dongying (Shandong Province), where CO2 is injected into formations. In addition, our experts visited the SINOPEC scientific and research centre specializing in CCUS, within which an active and experimental laboratory for CCUS is equipped with state-of-the-art instruments, as well as a digital centre where they were presented with the most modern "digital twin" technology.

– At a very high-tech level, engineers from SINOPEC designed the project of transporting CO2 at ambient temperature through a pipeline that is over 100 kilometres long, which is perhaps a unique example of that in the world. As the head of NIS NTC, it is especially interesting to me that SINOPEC has developed a separate scientific research centre for CCUS, thus showing the importance of this topic for their company. The laboratory of this centre uses state-of-the-art instruments and equipment, so the general impression is that the CCUS centre of SINOPEC does not lag behind similar organizations in large global oil companies in terms of its technological equipment - said director of NTC Leonid Stulov.