China ordered at least 255 Shanghai-based industrial facilities to fully or partially shut down for 14 days in a bid to reduce pollution ahead of the G20 summit, according to an official document reviewed by Reuters on Friday.
The document, issued by the Shanghai Environment Protection Bureau, has ordered a wide range of companies from power and petrochemical plants to logistics firm to shut down between August 24 and September 6 for the upcoming G20 summit in Hangzhou.
Shanghai Petrochemical Corp, a subsidiary refinery of state refiner Sinopec Corp, will reduce its capacity by 50 per cent, or about 120,000 barrels per day (bpd), for the event during those two weeks, the document said.
Coal-fired power plants in the area that do not meet emissions standards will be fully closed over the two weeks, the document said. In addition, the usage of heavy machinery will be reduced by 30 per cent across Shanghai.
Biggest diplomatic event
The G20 summit, hosted in the first week of September, has become China's biggest diplomatic event of the year and is expected to gather together world leaders like Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Barack Obama.
Shanghai Petrochemical, according to the environment bureau's document, will be closing a 120,000 bpd crude unit, a 3.9 million tonne-per-year (tpy) residue hydrocracking unit, a 3.5 million tpy catalytic cracking unit, and another dozen or so secondary refining facilities.
An official with Sinopec's Jinling Petrochemical Corp, another major refinery based in the city of Nanjing in neighbouring Jiangsu province, said his firm was also asked by local authorities to “appropriately reduce throughput", but was not given any specific size of reductions.
The ruling of limiting air pollution and safety hazards within a 300 km radius from the G20 summit site came from local governments, rather than from Sinopec Corp, the official said.
A spokesman for Sinopec said the company was not immediately able to comment on the shutdowns.
China has previously shut down factories and placed limits on cars and heavy equipment ahead of diplomatic events such as meetings of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation group.
Other areas, including port city Ningbo, have also issued lists of factory shutdowns ahead of the G20 summit in addition to the closures set for Shanghai.