SINGAPORE - China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation (Sinopec), China's largest integrated energy and chemical group, celebrated on Thursday the opening of its first lubricant plant outside China.

The Sinopec Lubricant (Singapore) Pte Ltd, located at Tuas in the south western tip of Singapore, covers an area of 242,811 square meters.

The opening of the Singapore plant marks a major milestone for Sinopec and is key to its global expansion, starting with Asia. Besides functioning as its Asia Pacific regional hub, the Singapore plant will also be an important production, service and logistics center, enabling Sinopec to better serve the needs of its customers in South East Asia, Australia and New Zealand, says the company's press release.

The plant has an initial production capacity of 100,000 tons of lubricant per year and will produce high-end products to meet the increasing regional demand for high-grade lubricant and grease.

General Manager of Sinopec Lubricant (Singapore) Pte Ltd Pei Wenjun officially opened the Singapore plant, saying that the Singapore lubricant plant uses one of the world's leading lubricant production equipment and processing technology, 90 percent of which are proprietary to Sinopec.

"The completion of the Singapore plant will further increase our visibility and influence around the world, besides helping to greatly enhance the international competitiveness of other Chinese lubricant brand in general," said Pei.

Sinopec's core businesses are in oil and gas exploration and production, extraction, pipeline transmission and marketing; oil refining; production, marketing, storage and transportation of petrochemicals, chemical fibers, chemical fertilizers and other chemical products.

Last year, Sinopec was ranked number five on Fortune Magazine's global top 500 companies.