The country's largest crude oil wharf has been put into operation in Dalian Port, Northeast China's Liaoning Province, the official China News Service reported Wednesday.

The crude oil wharf is jointly invested by Dalian Port and China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), Asia's largest oil and gas company.

"China can receive more oil imports after the project is put into use," said Lin Boqiang, director of the Center for Energy Economic Research of China in Xiamen University, East China's Fujian Province. "The port will get crude from nearby countries, such as Russia."

The crude oil wharf is designed with an annual handling capacity of 19 million metric tons of crude oil, the largest of this kind in China so far. The wharf completed construction in December 2009, according to the report.

The port is 447 meters long and can load at least 12,000 cubic meters of crude oil per hour. It is the first port in the country that is capable of receiving oil from oversized crude carriers, previously too large for China's other ports.

The Dalian Port is capable of handling 80 million tons of crude annually, squeezing into the world top 10 professional crude oil ports right after the completion of the project, according to the report.

"China will build more larger crude oil ports to meet its surging energy needs, " Lin said. "At the same time, it will raise more safety concerns."

On July 16, a pipeline that is owned by CNPC exploded in Dalian, an estimated 1,500 tons of oil has spilled and the leaking oil polluted 50 square kilometers of ocean waters. Workers who injected strong chemicals into the pipeline after a 300,000-ton tanker had finished unloading caused the explosion.

"The incident will improve management in transportation and storage in the future and I believe the central government will draft more regulations to prevent accidents, " said Zhong Jian, analyst with Toprise Information & Technology.