Sept. 4 (Bloomberg) -- BP Plc, Europe’s second-largest oil company, plans to build two bitumen import facilities in northeastern Australia because of increased demand for road construction in the area.

An $80 million terminal at Blackport in Brisbane, Queensland, will be also able to import and distribute marine fuel oil, Mike Bailey, a general manager at BP Bitumen Australia, said in an article published in Horizon, the company’s in-house magazine.

A second terminal will be built in Townsville along with a new plant to produce polymer modified bitumen to expand the range of the product, Bruce Woodward, BP Australia operations manager, said in the same article. Townsville has been a depot supplied by trucks from Brisbane, he said.

London-based BP supplies about 30 percent of Australia’s bitumen market and is the largest distributor in Queensland. Demand for road construction is rising because companies such as BG Group Plc, ConocoPhillips and Origin Energy Ltd. are developing plans to build as many as five liquefied natural gas plants in the state.

The import facilities will allow BP’s Bulwer Island refinery in Australia to increase complexity of processing and produce higher-grade fuel, according to the company. Bitumen is the heaviest of products distilled from Middle Eastern crude and is used in asphalt.

BP plans to use three tankers with so-called hot-bottoms to keep the bitumen liquid to supply the new terminals, Bill Paterson, the project director, told Horizon.

To contact the reporters on this story: Eduard Gismatullin in London at egismatullin@bloomberg.net;

Last Updated: September 4, 2009 03:13 EDT