1. Why a Province With No Oil Built the Largest Refining Complex in China

Petroleum, coal and other fuel processing is one of the few sectors in the national economy that is genuinely heavy-asset and deeply upstream. It turns primary energy such as crude oil and coal into gasoline, diesel, naphtha, ethylene feedstock and a range of basic chemicals, and sits at the very start of the petrochemical chain. The sector cares about three things above all: feedstock, ports and capital. A single refinery routinely demands hundreds of billions of yuan in investment, and most crude arrives by sea, so refining naturally clusters at coastal deep-water ports.

What makes Zhejiang unusual is that it has "none" of the resources yet made this the largest such industry in the country. Zhejiang produces not a single drop of crude locally, its coal reserves are negligible, and almost all feedstock is imported by sea. But it has two things others rarely possess: first, the fine deep-water shorelines of Zhoushan and Ningbo, able to berth ultra-large crude carriers of 300,000 tonnes; and second, the resolve to reclaim land from the sea and plan whole tracts of industrial land. On these two strengths, Zhejiang has forced a sector that normally belongs to resource-rich provinces into a coastal, processing-driven shape.

The reason the Tianxia Gongchang Industry Research Institute treats Zhejiang's petroleum processing industry as a regional sample is not its natural endowment but the fact that it has taken a path entirely opposite to that of traditional oil-producing regions: it relies not on oil underground but on ports at the water's edge; not on a single state monopoly, but on a state-owned refinery and a private giant each holding one pole. It makes one thing clear: in a heavy-upstream sector like refining, the combined force of location, ports and planning can sometimes matter more than whether there is oil beneath your feet. This report endorses no investment judgement; it simply sets out the two cores of Zhejiang's layout, the real weight of each, and the worries they share.

2. Zhoushan: A World-Class Refining Base Carried by a Single Project

To understand Zhejiang's petroleum processing industry, one must first look at Zhoushan, or more precisely at a single project.

The Zhoushan green petrochemical base sits on Yushan Island in Zhoushan, on a tract of industrial land reclaimed almost entirely from the sea. At its core is Zhejiang Petrochemical's 40-million-tonne-a-year integrated refining-and-chemical project. Built in two phases, with phase one coming online in 2019 and phase two fully operational in early 2022, it was China's first petrochemical project with investment exceeding 200 billion yuan. Once fully built, it formed a production capacity of 40 million tonnes of refining, 4.2 million tonnes of ethylene and roughly 8.8 million tonnes of paraxylene a year, lifting the Zhoushan green petrochemical base to the position of the largest, most advanced integrated refining-and-chemical base in the country and among the leading ones in the world.

How much weight a single project carries can be read in its pull on a whole city. According to public reporting, by October 2022 the project had cumulatively processed over 30 million tonnes of crude and generated nearly 200 billion yuan in industrial output, contributing as much as 88 percent of the growth in Zhoushan's above-scale industry. In other words, nearly nine-tenths of the growth in Zhoushan's above-scale industry was driven by this one refining-and-chemical project. The industrial lifeblood of an island city rests almost entirely on a refining base raised from the sea — a concentration rarely seen anywhere in the country.

The keynote of the Zhoushan line is "large" and "concentrated". Its scale comes not from a crowd of small and medium refineries but from a single mega integrated project that pushes refining, ethylene and aromatics to world-class volumes all at once. The advantage of this path is high efficiency and deep integration: from a single drop of crude, hundreds of chemical products can be drawn out downstream. Its worry is equally plain — the fate of the whole base is tightly bound to one flagship project.

3. From Refining and Ethylene to "One Drop of Oil, a World of Things"

To see Zhoushan merely as a large refinery is to underestimate what it truly intends.

Zhejiang Petrochemical built this 40-million-tonne integrated complex never just to produce gasoline and diesel. Refining and ethylene are only the opening of the game; the real intent is to use this complex as a foundation and extend downstream — into basic chemical feedstocks such as ethylene, propylene and aromatics, and then further into synthetic resins, synthetic fibres and various new chemical materials. The industry sums up this logic vividly as "from one drop of oil, a world of things". In the base's long-term plan, the emphasis is explicitly placed on high-end, precision and advanced chemical-materials projects, growing a higher-value downstream on top of the refining starting point.

The significance of this lies not in how much more oil is refined, but in answering a question: can a base that started from a mega refining-and-chemical project move beyond selling fuel and basic feedstock, and climb toward the more valuable and more difficult business of new chemical materials? The agglomeration effect of Zhejiang Petrochemical has already drawn a batch of upstream and downstream firms to settle in Zhoushan, and the base is building out its chain around high-performance resins and new materials. Whether the leap from refining to high-end materials can truly be made depends on whether these downstream links come of age, rather than remaining on the planning chart.

The Zhoushan line plays one more special role: the paraxylene, ethylene glycol and other basic feedstocks it produces are distributed across the province and beyond through the Ningbo petrochemical base across the bay, while some of the inorganic chemicals produced in Ningbo are shipped back to Zhoushan. The two bases do not operate in isolation; they supply each other across the bay and complement one another. This is where the "dual-core" pattern of Zhejiang's petrochemicals truly interlocks.

4. Ningbo: Another Refinery and a Cluster of New Chemical-Materials Firms

Move the view from Zhoushan to the southern shore of Hangzhou Bay, and the other pole of Zhejiang's petroleum processing industry appears — Ningbo.

Unlike Zhoushan, carried by one newly built mega project, this pole has a far thicker and older foundation. At its core is Zhenhai Refining and Chemical — a key backbone refining-and-chemical enterprise under Sinopec, located in Ningbo's Zhenhai district, now with crude-processing capacity of 27 million tonnes a year and ethylene capacity of 2.2 million tonnes a year, among the largest single-site refining-and-chemical enterprises in the country. Around this veteran leader, Ningbo has spread its layout across three districts — Zhenhai, Beilun and Daxie — leading with refining and ethylene and extending downstream into C2, C3, fine chemicals and new chemical materials, building a "world-class, high-tech, integrated" green petrochemical base.

The biggest difference between the Ningbo line and Zhoushan is that its chain is "more complete, top to bottom". It has not only the leading Zhenhai Refining but also a large cluster of downstream chemical firms. The Daxie district hosts Daxie Petrochemical and has drawn in new chemical-materials giants such as Wanhua Chemical; in the Zhenhai and Beilun area, Ningbo LG Yongxing is one of the largest ABS producers on the Chinese mainland, a joint venture between Korea's LG Chem and local state capital, with sales revenue already exceeding 14 billion yuan in 2021. At one end the state-owned big refining and big ethylene, at the other private and foreign new chemical materials — Ningbo has folded upstream and downstream, domestic and foreign capital, into one petrochemical zone.

Carrying all this is the Ningbo Petrochemical Economic and Technical Development Zone. The zone gathers about a hundred above-scale enterprises and once accounted for more than half of the city's total petrochemical industrial output, with the local authorities setting it a target to lift output to a new level. A veteran refinery as the foundation, a cluster of new chemical-materials firms around it, and a national-level development zone pinning upstream and downstream together — this is the most distinctive feature of the Ningbo line.

5. Beyond the Two Cores: Zhejiang Petrochemicals' Weight and Weak Spots

Drawing the Zhoushan and Ningbo poles together, Zhejiang's petroleum, coal and other fuel processing industry takes on a markedly "dual-core-driven" shape: to the east, Zhoushan relies on Zhejiang Petrochemical's 40-million-tonne integrated project to build the largest, world-leading refining base in the country — a sample led by a single mega project; to the south, Ningbo rests on Zhenhai Refining's 27 million tonnes of refining as its foundation and gathers a cluster of new chemical-materials firms such as Wanhua Chemical and LG Yongxing — a sample of a leader plus its supporting chain. The two bases face each other across Hangzhou Bay and the Zhoushan waters, supplying and complementing one another, and together they lifted Zhejiang's green petrochemical cluster to revenues exceeding 1.7 trillion yuan in 2023, among the highest in the country. A province with no oil of its own, on two industrial shorelines raised from the sea, has built one of the largest refining complexes in China.

Its weak spots are just as clearly drawn. Both poles depend heavily on imported crude, with their feedstock lifeline tied to international oil prices and sea-borne supply routes; if prices swing violently or maritime supply is disrupted, refining margins are squeezed directly. The Zhoushan pole is especially concentrated, with the whole base staked on a single flagship project and little room to manoeuvre. Refining is, moreover, a classic high-energy, high-emission industry; under the "dual-carbon" goals, this heavy-asset form built on refining and ethylene faces ever more tangible pressure to cut emissions, and the shift toward downstream new chemical materials and green low-carbon is both an escape route and a question that must be answered.

For sales teams supplying petroleum processing and petrochemical enterprises upstream — whether in catalysts, chemical equipment, pipes-valves-instruments or engineering services — to reach Zhejiang's petroleum, coal and other fuel processing factory customers at scale, Tianxia Gongchang lets you filter the factory directory and decision-maker contacts of this industry in Zhejiang precisely by region and sector, turning upstream sales prospecting from door-to-door inquiry into navigation by map.

The view of the Tianxia Gongchang Industry Research Institute is this: the interest of Zhejiang's petroleum processing industry lies not in how high its refining capacity figures can be stacked, but in whether this heavy-upstream system — starting from imported crude and grounded in refining and ethylene — can accomplish two things. First, to withstand the uncertainty of oil prices and shipping, and to spread out the risk of heavy dependence on a single project. Second, to make the "one drop of oil, a world of things" downstream real, lifting added value from basic fuel toward high-end chemical materials and green low-carbon. The answers Zhoushan and Ningbo give to these two questions will not be the same, yet together they will decide whether this oil-less province can convert today's lead in refining scale into tomorrow's lead in industrial depth. For a province that built its refineries on the sea, the real test was never how much oil it can refine, but how far down the chain from that drop of oil it is willing to go.

Data Sources

  • Tianxia Gongchang (factory directory and industrial data for Zhejiang's petroleum, coal and other fuel processing industry)
  • Securities Times, Tencent News: reporting on the Zhoushan green petrochemical base as a world-class cluster; Zhejiang Petrochemical's refining, ethylene and aromatics capacity and the base's standing
  • Zhoushan green petrochemical base materials, Zhejiang Development and Reform Commission: commissioning timeline, investment scale, cumulative crude processed and contribution to Zhoushan's above-scale industrial growth of the 40-million-tonne integrated project
  • State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, Xinhua: Zhenhai Refining's crude-processing and ethylene capacity, and the world-class integrated positioning of the Ningbo petrochemical base
  • Ningbo Bureau of Economy and Information Technology, CNR: the layout of Ningbo's Zhenhai, Beilun and Daxie districts and the extension of the green petrochemical chain
  • Chemical Industry Park Working Committee, Ningbo Petrochemical Economic and Technical Development Zone materials: above-scale enterprise count, share of the city's petrochemical output, and the Daxie district with Wanhua Chemical
  • Ningbo LG Yongxing public materials, CNNB: LG Yongxing's ABS standing, joint-venture background and sales revenue
  • AsiaChem, Securities Times: revenue scale and national ranking of Zhejiang's green petrochemical cluster