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Private refiners likely join oil reserve plan

By Si Tingting (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2009-03-13 17:07

Six private oil refiners, each with processing capacity above 200,000 tons, were proposed to the National Development and Reform Commission as choices for the oil products reserve tanks, according to Zhao Youshan, president of the oil circulation committee with the China General Chamber of Commerce.

Together, they can hold up to 2.3 million tons of refined oil products, Zhao said.

Analysts suggest that the government should talk to non-State oil refiners to use their idle storage capacity to take advantage of plunging crude prices.

Hundreds of non-State oil distributors and refiners in China are currently sitting on empty tanks that could hold 230 million tons of crude oil.

China recently completed construction of four strategic crude oil stockpiles. Two of them are in Zhejiang, one in Shandong and the other is in Liaoning. These reserves, together, represent the first phase of its strategic oil-reserve plan.

The country will start constructing crude reserves at eight more locations this year. With the exception of Huangdao in Shandong province and Jinzhou in Liaoning province, the locations of the other six have not been made public.