New Saudi-Sinopec Oil Refinery Starts Exports

A major new joint-venture refinery in Saudi Arabia on Thursday shipped its first clean diesel cargo, the company Yanbu Aramco Sinopec Refining Co (Yasref) said.

The 400,000 barrels-per-day (bpd) refinery, a joint venture between Saudi Aramco and China’s Sinopec, started trial runs in September and had originally planned its first exports by November.

Yasref said in a statement it loaded 300,000 barrels of diesel from the refinery, located in Yanbu on the Red Sea coast.

Yasref is the second refinery to start up in Saudi Arabia in the past two years and will complete state company Saudi Aramco’s transformation into a leading exporter of diesel.

The company did not specify where the shipment was headed to.