Five 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 Mar 8.
These five companies are PetroChina Xinyang Sales Co in Henan province, Sinopec Huludao Petroleum Co, Dalian Xinfu Port Service Co and Dalian Zhongbeiya Petroleum Sales Co in Liaoning province and Beifang Petrochemical (Zhuhai) Co in Guangdong province.
Three of these companies are 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, industry sources denoted. The competition is becoming fiercer and fiercer with the participation of other large-scale state-owned enterprises like CNOOC and Sinochem International.
So far, a total of 165 companies have been qualified for oil product wholesale business since Administrative Measures on Oil Products Market were published in December 2006. Among these companies, 48 or 29.09% are owned by CNPC, Sinopec, CNOOC, Sinochem and China National Aviation Fuel Holding; 117 or 70.91% are private or state-owned companies outside the five oil giants, with nine of them as Sino-foreign joint ventures.
MOFCOM granted at the same time oil product storage licenses to Daqing Refined Chemical Co and Longde Petroleum Sales Co in Heilongjiang province and Zhuhai Mingsheng Petrochemical Storage Co in Guangdong, the announcement shows.
