China will try to close more small refineries this year to help protect environment and ensure quality oil, according to the State Administration of Petroleum and Chemical Industries (SAPCI).

All small oil refineries without government permits will be shut down, China Daily quoted an official from the SAPCI as saying.

Small refineries which fail to pass the government's quality and environmental tests will also be closed by the end of March, said the official. The administration, the State Bureau of Quality and Technical Supervision and the State Administration of Environmental Protection are doing quality-control and environmental protection tests to determine which small refineries must shut down this year. A small refinery is defined in China as one that produces less than one million tons of oil a year. So far, 70 such refineries have been closed. By the end of last year, more than 5,600 illegal refineries of all sizes had been shut down. Most of them were in Shaanxi and Gansu provinces and the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in the northwest, Shanxi Province in the north, and Shandong Province in the east. All of these factories' equipment will be dismantled to prevent them from being reused, the official noted. The government's move will save oil resources and reduce pollution caused by illegal refineries, said the official, adding that the move will also put better oil products on the market. The official acknowledged that unemployment concerns may work against efforts to close refineries. However, local governments are re-employing thousands of laid-off workers from the closed small refineries, he said.