China’s Rongsheng Petrochemical, a major independent refiner, has opened an office in Canada to buy Canadian crude and made its first purchase from local producer Suncor Energy, trade sources said.
Rongsheng, China’s largest independent refiner with capacity of 40 million metric tons per year or 800,000 barrels per day, has become a regular buyer of the heavy sour Canadian crude since the newly expanded Trans-Mountain pipeline started operations last May.
Its first purchase since opening the new office in the western city of Calgary is for June-arrival crude cargo to China, the sources said.
More Canadian crude is expected to flow into Asia this year, as U.S. President Donald Trump threatens to impose a 10% import tariff on its oil and gas.
Wang Jie, who founded and chaired PetroChina International Canada Trading, an arm of Chinese state oil giant China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), before joining Singapore-based Essence Energy, joined Rongsheng in January, according to his LinkedIn profile. He is Rongsheng’s general representative for Americas, Procurement & Trading.
Rongsheng said in an emailed response to a query from Reuters that “the company has always attached importance to the global talent layout and continues to optimize team configuration according to the needs of business development”.
Wang did not reply to a LinkedIn message.
(Reporting by Florence Tan and Siyi Liu in Singapore; Editing by Tony Munroe and Mrigank Dhaniwala)