China is expected to overtake the US as the largest market for Shell lubricants by 2015 when a new Shell Tianjin lubricants blending plant goes into operation, a top executive of the world's leading energy and petrochemicals company said in Beijing Tuesday.

"China is the fastest growing consumer lubricants market in the world, and around 50 percent of the global growth in lubricants demand is expected to come from the country," Mark Gainsborough, executive vice president of Shell Global Commercial, said at a press conference.

Gainsborough said Shell's largest blending plant in China, which is expected to become operational in 2015, will begin construction in Tianjin soon, without disclosing further details.

Shen Jian, China and Hong Kong Cluster general manager for Shell Global Commercial, revealed at the press conference that the combined lubricants production capacity of Shell in China will reach around 1.5 billion liters after the new plant is completed.

Lubricants growth in China will be driven by the number of vehicles, which is expected to triple in the next 10 years to over 500 million, as well as demand from infrastructure related sectors, according to a report by Shell released at the press conference.

But an industry watcher said Shell will face many challenges including its high product prices to compete with domestic players.

"Shell's lubricant products' average price is around 60 percent higher than its domestic competitors, especially the private companies," Xu Yanbin, an analyst at commodity information provider Zibo Zhongyu Information Technology Co, told the Global Times Tuesday.

"Many domestic consumers like some small-sized machinery works and ordinary vehicle owners with lower income prefer products with lower prices," Xu said.

With the foreign petrochemicals companies making an aggressive push to grab market share in China, domestic players have also expanded their business and speeded up the pace of mergers and acquisitions.

Sinopec, the country's largest oil producer in terms of sales revenue, announced at the beginning of this year to separate all its lubricants businesses from its parent company and form an independent company.

After the integration, the sales volume of the lubricants company in July increased by 6 percent year-on-year, according to Sinopec's website.

Many domestic small- and medium-sized private lubricant plants have gone bankrupt due to fierce competition, with the total number of such companies shrinking from 3,000 in 2002 to 1,700 currently, Huang Kejian, general manager of Shanghai Haishen Petroleum and Chemical Co, was quoted by China Enterprise News as saying on August 8.