The interim period of national IV standard for vehicle-use gasoline published on May 12 will expire on Dec 31, 2013, market sources said.
National IV gasoline may become dominant grade in domestic gasoline market by 2014, the sources expected.
"National IV gasoline can be spread nationwide as planned if refineries completed units upgrading in advance and the government effectively implemented the standard," said a source with a major refinery.
However, some market sources expected the real practice of the new standard may be delayed to second half of 2014 or early 2015, considering the delay of implementation of national III standard from 2010 to the second half of the year.
Compared with the existing national III standard, national IV has severe restrictions on sulfur, alkene and manganese content. To meet these requirements, a part of domestic refineries have to upgrade their units and gasoline blenders will face technical obstacle.
However, most blenders are still optimistic about the quality upgrading.
"New standard requires higher blending skills, and we have confidence in improving techniques in a year or two. Besides, blended gasoline has decent market shares in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou where national IV gasoline is popular”, a gasoline blender remarked.
According to the latest promulgated standard, sulfur content of national IV gasoline should be no more than 50ppm, alkene content no more than 28 and manganese content below 0.008.
