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HOUSTON, Sept. 16, 2005 -- PetroChina Co. Ltd. let a $140 million contract to Linde AG of Wiesbaden, Germany, to provide technology and key components to build what will become China's largest ethylene plant.

Linde will be responsible for a megacracker with capacity of 1 million tonnes/year of ethylene and 500,000 tonnes/year of propylene. The operating company, PetroChina Dushanzi Petrochemical Co., intends to start production in second half 2008.

The contract is part of a $3.29 billion expansion of a refinery and petrochemical complex in Dushanzi in Northwest China's Xinjiang province. The expansion will increase the complex's refining capacity to 10 million tonnes/year from 6 million tonnes/year and its ethylene capacity to 1.2 million tonnes/year from 220,000 tonnes/year (OGJ Online, Feb. 23, 2005).

The project will raise PetroChina's refining capacity by about 10% and its ethylene capacity by about 55% over last year's levels.