Three more companies have been granted oil product wholesale licenses by the Ministry of Commerce of PRC (MOFCOM), according to an announcement released by MOFCOM on Aug 12.
These three companies are PetroChina Xuchang Sales Co in Henan, Xiamen Lvdi Energy Co in Fujian (transliteration) and Tianjin-based Huifeng Energy Development Co (transliteration).
One of these companies is under the five biggest state-owned ones, while the others are private ones.
More and more enterprises outside the fold of the big-five have got oil product wholesale licenses since the second half of 2008, but they will encounter hardship in the market which is dominated by Sinopec and PetroChina.
The competition will become fiercer in the future with the participation of other large-scale state-owned enterprises like CNOOC and Sinochem International.
So far, a total of 176 companies have been qualified for oil product wholesale business. Among these companies, 50 or 28.4% are owned by CNPC, Sinopec, CNOOC, Sinochem and China National Aviation Fuel Holding; 126 or 71.6% are private or state-owned companies outside the five oil giants, with ten of them as joint ventures.
