New Type of Gasoline Goes to MarketChina Petrochemical Corp (SINOPEC) announced that all of its gas stations in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou will begin selling new lead-free gasoline for automobiles from July 1 on.The new and cleaner burning gasoline came fully in line with new State standards released by the State Bureau of Quality and Technical Supervision, according to a SINOPEC report. Though the cost to produce the new gasoline is higher than that of common gasoline, it will still be sold at the same price as regular gas over the next few days. In an telephone interview, an official with the price supervision department of the State Development Planning Commission said the prices of the new clean gasoline will not be raised over the next few days. He did not elaborate. Aiming to further curb air pollution due to tailpipe gas emission, the new State gasoline standard not only has a stricter limit on the amount of sulphur and lead content in the gasoline, but also adds content control indexes on alkene, arene and benzene. Though most content control indexes from the new State standard have been officially implemented since the beginning of this year, the restrictions on two indexes, including sulphur content and alkene content, will be initiated only in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou on July 1, 2000 and to be expanded nationwide by 2003. Striving to promote environmental protection, SINOPEC stopped producing lead-bearing gasoline in July 1999 and has began to sell lead-free gasoline since October. To provide the new clean gasoline, SINOPEC has launched a large-scale technical upgrading in its three subsidiaries including Beijing Yanshan Petrochemical Co, Shanghai Gaoqiao Petrochemical Co and Guangzhou General Petrochemical Works. |
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