At about midnight, the van pulled up to a rest stop near a Sinopec gas station.
"Sinopec is trying our best to purchase low-quality crudes — much heavier and more sulfur content," said Evan Jia, a Sinopec spokesman.
"Our company has been very anxious about the issue," Lu Dapeng, a Sinopec spokesman, told the Associated Press.
NEW YORK TIMES YPF Nationalization Said to Kill a Sinopec Deal | The Sinopec Group of China had considered buying a 57 percent stake in YPF, Reuters reports, citing unidentified people.
Last year petrochemical production began there in a joint venture with Sinopec, a Chinese oil company.
Chinese whispers suggest that BP may also soon announce a new joint venture with Sinopec, a partly government-owned Chinese firm, in refining and marketing fuels.
Canadian Natural Resources Limited has built Phase I of the gigantic oil sands project known as Horizon Oil Sands where it awarded a contract to a subsidiary of Sinopec, SSEC Canada Ltd. (whose parent company is Sinopec Shanghai Engineering Company Ltd).
In September Sinopec, a Chinese energy giant, sold a $17.5 billion stake in its marketing arm to a consortium of state bodies, entrepreneurs and shell companies in tax havens.
In July, Sinopec, a competitor to Cnooc, agreed to pay $1.5 billion for a piece of the North Sea operations of Talisman Energy, another Canadian oil company.
BLOOMBERG NEWS Sinopec Unit Sues BNP Paribasas | Unipec Asia, a subsidiary of Sinopec, is seeking to recover $46.6 million from BNP Paribas over an alleged contract breach, Bloomberg News reports.
She delivered a letter from Sinopec, one of China's giant, state-controlled energy firms, proposing a multibillion-dollar takeover.
