China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), the country's largest oil and gas producer, yesterday said it had started expansion of its Liaoyang refinery in northeastern China to prepare for more oil imports from Russia.

The company will add some facilities to the project, including hydrocracking unit, hydrorefining unit, and sulphur removing and recovering unit. It will also add other facilities, including reserve tanks, CNPC said on its web site yesterday.

After completion at the end of 2010, the Liaoyang project will be able to process 10 million tons of crude every year, with feedstock coming from Russia, said the company.