Where is the spring of private oil prices?

As the pace of spring approaches, private oil companies seem to smell a glimmer of hope in the breath of spring. When Premier Wen Jiabao convened a symposium in Zhongnanhai in early February this year, he pointed out that for the "new 36 articles" that have been introduced for the past two years to encourage and guide the healthy development of private investment, it is necessary to formulate implementation details in the first half of this year.

The development of geological refining can be described as a microcosm of the development of privately-owned oil enterprises. It has roughly gone through three stages: From 1998 to 2003, Guangdong and Shandong developed large-scale landscaping, and Shandong refining, which is based on deep processing routes, eventually survived. From 2004 to 2007, due to the elimination of the license management of fuel oil import quotas, large quantities of fuel oil were imported from the international market in order to develop quickly; since 2007, due to the shortage of resources in the refined oil market, the refining industry has "Stopped" has become an "important supplement for refinery and chemical industry" and has received certain policy support. According to statistics, as of the end of 2011, the number of local refineries reached 114, with a total refining capacity of approximately 131 million tons, accounting for one-fifth of the country's refining capacity.

However, in 2009, after the reform of refined oil products and taxes, the cost of refining imported fuel oil was greatly increased. In addition to the lack of import rights for crude oil, the problem of oil sources became the biggest heart disease that restricted the development of the refining industry. In addition, the lack of refined oil pricing power and relatively narrow sales channels have hindered the progress of refining.

Cooperation with state-owned oil companies has therefore become a choice for survival methods in geo-refinery. “In the long run, the cooperation between major refining companies and major oil companies will tend to centralize the entire resources and sales.” Yu Yuhua, deputy secretary-general of the Shandong Provincial Fuel Oil Association, believes that refining and state-owned oil companies can Funds, markets, cooperation in three aspects.

To improve the processing capability of the device and to make it deeper and deeper is a way to improve the way of self-improvement. It is understood that if the processing of fuel oil only calculates the profit of the refining stage, the possibility of losses is greater, but if the processing chain is extended, a series of chemical products will also be produced, which can be considered as profitable. However, it takes a lot of money to extend the processing chain and transform the device. It is not affordable for many small and medium sized refineries.

“After several years of 'Ebbing in the Big Waves', there is an advantage in both the technical strength and the financial strength of the retained ground refining. In the future, these local refineries will surely find ways to transform the devices and make them large-scale. The market share will be smaller and smaller, and with the country's improvement in various aspects of the requirements will be phased out." Anson Xunwang energy analyst Zhu Jiasheng said.

Whether it is cooperation or transformation, the development of geo-refinery still faces a problem that cannot be passed, namely identity. Although its refining capacity has accounted for one-fifth of the country's refining capacity, but many of the refining establishments were not approved by the National Development and Reform Commission at the beginning, they are often labelled as “illegitimate children” and the related policies are not clear. .

“Actually, whether state-owned enterprises or private enterprises, Chinese-funded or foreign-invested companies, they should be allowed to enter the oil industry effectively. They should not care about the nature of their ownership, but should focus on their efficiency. Whoever has high efficiency should become the protagonist of market operations. According to Jiang Xinmin, deputy director of the Energy Economics and Development Strategy Research Center of the Energy Research Institute of the National Development and Reform Commission and Executive Director of the Policy Center.

“State-owned enterprises represent a planned economic model, and land refining represents a market economy model. The two models are competing in the same industry and the conditions given are not equal. Conflicts are inevitable. The energy industry should not allow these two economic models to coexist. Marketization is the trend of the times, said Mao Jiaxiang, vice president of the Institute of Economics and Technology of Sinopec.

Over the years, China’s oil industry has been monopolized by several major oil giants, and the voice of the oil industry to open up to private capital has been uninterrupted. Since the “new 36 article” proposes to support the encouragement of private capital to enter the oil industry and cooperate with state-owned enterprises in oil and gas exploration and development, the hope of private capital to enter this monopoly industry has been ignited again and again, but the process is not obvious.

Can the refinement of the “new 36” speed up this process and let the spring of private oil companies really come? We will wait and see.