*Sudan is now China's No.6 oil supplier

By Chen Aizhu

BEIJING, Aug 3 (Reuters) - PetroChina will accelerate an upgrade to a new, southern China refinery so that it can avoid processing oil from Sudan, after Washington said the firm's New York-listed unit should stay clear of Sudanese oil, company sources said on Tuesday.

The United States had imposed economic sanctions on Sudan since 1997, and former President George W. Bush imposed new ones in 2007 while seeking international support for an international arms embargo to end what he said was genocide in Sudan's Darfur region.

Reuters reported in early July that the U.S. government had told PetroChina, Asia's largest oil and gas producer, not to process crude Sudanese crude at the company's the new plant, despite the fact that CNPC, parent of PetroChina, is the largest foreign oil producer in the African state. [ID:nTOE66407I]

The refinery in the southern Guangxi region was designed mostly to handle the type of crude oil from Sudan, which is now China's sixth-largest crude supplier, with daily exports of about 269,000 barrels per day in the first six months of the year.