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 May 11.
These three companies are BP Guangzhou Development Oil Products Co, Huachen Petrochemical Co in North China's Hebei and Sanshan Conch Port Co in Wuhu City in East China's Anhui Province.
Two of these companies are private ones, and one is a joint venture.
More and more enterprises outside the fold of five largest state-owned companies have got oil product wholesale licenses since the second half of 2008, but they encounter hardship in the market which is dominated by Sinopec and PetroChina, industry sources denoted. The competition is becoming fiercer and fiercer with increasing participation of other large-scale state-owned enterprises like CNOOC and Sinochem International.
So far, a total of 171 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 28.07% are owned by CNPC, Sinopec, CNOOC, Sinochem and China National Aviation Fuel Holding; 123 or 71.93% are private or state-owned companies outside the five oil giants, with ten of them as Sino-foreign joint ventures.
