C1 Energy (Shanghai) – May 25, 2010 －－－A total of 8 enterprises bid for national petroleum reserve projects in Beijing on May 14, marking the first time that the national oil reserve project was opened to private enterprises, C1's survey found.
Most of them were private ones, with four from Shandong Province and 3-4 from Zhejiang Province,
It was directional bidding this time, according to a source with Zhoushan Century Pacific Chemical, one of the eight bidders.
"It is said that enterprises bidding for the projects should have tank farms with total capacities more than 300,000 cu m and the volume of a single oil storage tank should be no less than 10,000 cu m," said the source.
The government would evaluate bidders and give priority to those with higher scores, added the source.
It was a step forward for involving private enterprises in the national strategic reserve, although the bidding just aimed at ranking the bidders instead of awarding licenses, market sources denoted.
"Entering into the national petroleum reserve system is conducive to stimulating bad assets of private enterprises," said a market source.
However, it was still unknown by which way private enterprises could participate in national petroleum reserve projects and how to guarantee their profits after they enter into the system, according to market sources.
On the other hand, the enterprises would take into consideration whether they could secure crude sources, or even get crude import licenses.
Shandong Changyi Petrochemical had 100,000-cu-m tank farm in Laizhou port approved as national oil reserve storage earlier, the first of all independent refineries in Shandong.
The government may give priority to enterprises which have good tank farms and favorable port locations with refineries clustering, market sources reckoned.

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