Shanghai (ZXZC)- Sinopec Group, the world's largest t oil refining, gas and petrochemical conglomerate based in China, announced on July 1 that it has built an energy pumping station in Foshan, Guangdong Province that integrates hydrogen refueling and retail sales of conventional fuels like oil and electricity, the first of its kind in China.

The Foshan station has a hydrogen refueling capacity of 500kg on a daily basis, mainly serving the nearby hydrogen-powered buses and trucking fleets.

It takes only four minutes to fill a hydrogen tank of a bus with enough fuel and enable the vehicle travel up to 300km.

(Photo source: http://www.sinopecnews.com.cn)

The Chinese government has been stepping up efforts to develop the hydrogen industry with the construction of infrastructures like charging and hydrogen refueling stations mentioned in the 2019 Government Work Report.

Besides, China intends to establish a total of 1,000 hydrogen refueling stations and promote 1 million hydrogen-powered vehicles nationwide by 2030, according to the Blue Book on Infrastructure Development of China's Hydrogen Energy Industry issued by the National Technical Committee 309 on Hydrogen Energy of Standardization Administration of China.

Sinopec has been strengthening its layout in hydrogen energy industry. It is reported that the stated-owned oil and gas group is ambitious to build and operate 10 to 20 hydrogen refueling stations between 2019 and 2020.

Last year, Sinopec struck a deal with Japan's JXTG Nippon Oil & Energy to jointly develop hydrogen filling stations in the third-party markets. The latter would build an efficient hydrogen supply chain by virtue of its infrastructures and expertise related to automobile fuel provision.