MOSCOW (MRC) -- China's Ministry of Commerce on Nov. 10 allocated an additional 1 million mt of quotas to Sinopec, PetroChina and CNOOC to export their domestically produced bunker fuel oil for bonded bunkering at China's ports in 2021, reported S&P Global with reference to sources with knowledge of the matter.
Meanwhile, the ministry has also approved Sinochem to transfer 230,000 mt of its bunker fuel oil export quota to export gasoline, gasoil and jet fuel in the rest of the year, the sources said. As a result, the total volume of fuel oil export quotas for 2021 will amount to 11.77 million mt.
China in January-October produced about 9.2 million mt of bunker fuel oil for export to the country's bonded ports for bunkering, according to local information providers.
Moreover, the volume of gasoline, gasoil and jet fuel export quotas amounts to 37.23 million mt for 2021, with Sinochem's quota transfer. In comparison, the country exported 33.70 million mt of these three key products in January-September, data from General Administration of Customs showed.
On Nov. 10, MOFCOM also approved PetroChina, Sinopec and Sinochem to transfer their key oil products export quotas, totaling 969,000 mt, from the processing trade route to the general trade route.
Under the processing trade route, export quotas are restricted to specific refineries, specific volumes and specific products.
Sinochem's key oil product export quotas under the processing trade route were allocated to the 15 million mt/year Quanzhou Petrochemical that it built.
With the transfer to the general trade route, the state-owned oil company will be able to fully use the quotas by sourcing from the ChemChina refineries that it merged this year, as Quanzhou Petrochemical is going to shut for scheduled maintenance around the end of November into early December, a company source said.
As MRC wrote before, China's Sinochem Quanzhou Petrochemical began production of ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) at a new EVA/high density polyethylene (LDPE) plant in Quanzhou, Quanzhou, Fujian, China on July 10,2021. In early July, this year, the company began production of LDPE at this plant with a capacity of 100,000 tons of EVA/LDPE per year. The plant was originally slated to be launched in Q4 2020, but the launch had to be postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic. Then the start of the test production was postponed to Q2, 2021.
According to MRC's DataScope report, September EVA imports to Russia fell by 14,2% year on year to 3,070 tonnes from 3,570 tonnes a year earlier, whereas overall imports of this grade of ethylene copolymer into the Russian Federation rose in January-September 2021 by 21,13% year on year to 33,35 tonnes (27,520 tonnes in the first nine months of 2020).
China Petrochemical Corporation (Sinopec Group) is a super-large petroleum and petrochemical enterprise group established in July 1998 on the basis of the former China Petrochemical Corporation. Sinopec Group"s key business activities include the exploration and production of oil and natural gas, petrochemicals and other chemical products, oil refining.
PetroChina Company Limited, is a Chinese oil and gas company and is the listed arm of state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), headquartered in Dongcheng District, Beijing. It is China's biggest oil producer.
CNOOC is China's third largest national oil company after CNPC and Sinopec. The company was founded in 1982. The headquarters is located in Beijing. The company is engaged in the production, processing and marketing of oil and natural gas offshore China. The Chinese government owns 70% of the company's shares.
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