China's major oil producers fail pollution test

China's two biggest oil producers are being blocked from expanding their refining capacity after they failed to meet targets for reducing pollution.

The penalties, imposed by environmental re0gulators, for PetroChina and Sinopec are a fresh blow to China's state-owned oil industry.

The two oil producers failed to meet targets for reducing 'chemical oxygen demand', a measure of pollutants released into rivers and other bodies of water, the Ministry of the Environment announced.

According to the Courier Mail, such penalties are unusual in China, where critics have complained regulators ignore environmental violations by state-owned companies.

Chinese leaders also have been facing growing public pressure to curb industrial emissions that have made the country's major cities some of the world's most polluted and fouled water supplies and farmland, the report added.