Beijing allocates extra 1 mn mt bunker fuel export quota to Sinopec, PetroChina, CNOOC

China’s Ministry of Commerce this week 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, sources with knowledge of the matter said.

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.

The transfer allows the exporting companies to source the volume of barrels without restriction in the domestic market, and to choose the barrels from gasoline, gasoil and jet fuel.

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.

Source: Platts