Economic Observer Reporter Li Zichen Zhang HengOn November 22, 2012, an underground pipeline with a special significance received crude oil from the sea for the first time.
This batch of crude oil produced in the Middle East set off from Lanshan Port in Rizhao City, Shandong Province on the same day. The pipeline passed through 4 cities, 16 counties (districts) including Rizhao, Linyi, Jining , Heze and finally entered Shandong Dongming Petrochemical Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Dongming Petrochemical") in Dongming County, Heze City. This crude oil pipeline is called "Ridong Line", and its end point is Dongming Petrochemical, a domestic private oil refining company.
From that day on, crude oil from the Middle East began to go directly to the company's refinery through this pipeline. Zhang Hongyan, who is in charge of Dongming Petrochemical's crude oil import business, told the Economic Observer that the pipeline put into use five years ago brought huge changes to the company - before that, Dongming Petrochemical's oil was mainly transported by train, while suppliers were mainly from a few large state-owned oil and gas companies such as China National Petroleum Corporation (hereinafter referred to as "CNPC").
Zhang Hongyan introduced that now, the oil source transported through this pipeline has expanded from the Middle East to South America, West Africa, and Russia's crude oil can meet most of the oil used in Dongming Petrochemical. The pipeline's designed transportation capacity is 10 million tons, while the total needs of Dongming are close to 10 million tons.
In 2009, Dongming Petroleum and PetroChina went through a not-easy negotiation and finally reached an agreement on the Japanese East Line: the project was constructed and constructed by PetroChina. At the same time, both parties held 30% and 70% of the shares respectively to establish a pipeline company, specifically for the operation of this pipeline. The two parties obtain a share of the profits from the transportation costs of the pipeline through the shareholding ratio, and the transportation costs are collected by PetroChina from Dongming Petroleum. The significance of
Japanese East Line to Dongming Petrochemical is that it greatly reduces the total production cost of the enterprise. The total length of the Ridong Line is 462 kilometers. Compared with the oil pipeline of more than 180 million kilometers in the country, it is just a small step. However, it is a breakthrough step for China's oil and gas pipeline reform and even the entire oil and gas reform process. In the following five years, China's oil and gas system reform has been on the verge of stops, repeatedly weighed, and gradually became clear, and the separation of transportation and sales have been separated, and the monopoly has been broken, which has become a consensus.
Until May 2017, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council issued the "Several Opinions on Deepening the Reform of the Oil and Natural Gas System" (hereinafter referred to as the "Opinions"). This "Opinion" clarifies the guiding ideology, basic principles, overall ideas and main tasks of deepening the reform of the oil and natural gas system. It is a programmatic document for China's oil and gas system reform, and covers all the upstream, middle and downstream links of the oil and gas industry chain.
As one of the eight key tasks, pipeline network reform was clearly stated by the "Opinions": Promote the independence of trunk pipelines of large state-owned oil and gas enterprises in step by step, and achieve separation of pipeline transmission and sales. Improve the fair access mechanism for oil and gas pipelines, and the oil and gas trunk pipelines, intra-provincial and inter-provincial pipelines are all fairly open to third-party market entities. The independence of
pipelines and the clear separation of transportation and sales have once again aroused the outside world's imagination of "national pipeline company".
School of Business Administration, China University of Petroleum, told the Economic Observer that the so-called step-by-step advancement is roughly possible to first implement independent accounting of within the company, and then dive it out to establish a company. During the process of divestiture, the main line is first separated into an independent company, and the local pipeline network is then gradually independent of China National Petroleum Corporation and Sinopec. This completed the whole process.
On May 24, 2017, former chairman of Sinopec, Fu Chengyu, told the Economic Observer that he was worried that the merger of the pipelines of several companies would form a "national pipeline company", which would eventually lead to a combination of very low management efficiency, and doing so would probably bring about an increase in costs and expenses.
Fu Chengyu compared the power grid and believed that the oil and gas pipeline network is different from the power grid: the power grid involves thousands of households and many enterprises, while the oil and gas pipeline network has no direct correlation with the lives of most people. One end of the oil pipeline is an oil field and the other end is a refinery.If a private enterprise wants to use oilfield pipelines, it is fine. As long as a few state-owned oil and gas enterprises have surplus pipelines, transportation fees will be charged. The state will set the price, depreciation will be eliminated, and transportation fees and management fees will be calculated.
Guo Haitao said, "The probability of establishing a national pipeline company is relatively small, and there is a high possibility of two or three. The current pipeline companies are mainly state-owned capital, such as West-East Gas Pipeline and other pipelines. The social capital entering such as Baosteel is mainly state-owned capital, but after independence, it will leverage more social resources to enter. Originally, one of the purposes of the reform is to leverage more social resources, make the construction of pipeline networks more efficient, and ultimately better promote the development of the industry."
pipeline network predecessor
In oil and gas transportation, pipeline transportation represents the most advanced mode of transportation, with large transportation capacity, low cost, high efficiency, small loss, strong safety, convenient management, and simple measurement and handover. The transportation cost will directly affect the price of downstream products. It is precisely because of this that the oil and gas pipelines and transportation links are crucial to the petrochemical energy industry, which is equivalent to the throat of the oil and gas industry.
The "2017 China Oil and Gas Industry Development Analysis and Outlook Report Blue Book" jointly released by the China Petroleum Enterprise Association and the China Oil and Gas Industry Development Research Center on March 20 shows that as of the end of 2016, China has built a total mileage of oil and gas pipelines of 116,400 kilometers, including 68,000 kilometers of natural gas pipelines, 22,900 kilometers of crude oil and gas pipelines, and 25,500 kilometers of refined oil and gas pipelines. The newly built and put into production are mainly pipelines that continue the construction of the "12th Five-Year Plan" period, and have basically formed an oil and gas backbone pipeline layout that connects overseas, covers the whole country, spans the east and west, runs north and south, and closely follows the regional pipelines. According to relevant forecasts, by the end of the 13th Five-Year Plan, the total mileage of my country's long-distance oil and gas pipeline will exceed 160,000 kilometers.
However, due to the monopoly situation caused by historical and institutional reasons, nearly 95% of the country's pipeline facilities are in the hands of the three major oil and gas companies, CNPC, Sinopec and CNOOC. The oil and gas pipelines in the hands of the giant are closed and independent of each other. Even within a company, there are many pipeline branches, which are both responsible for transportation and sales. In recent years, with the gradual advancement of oil and gas system reform, the restrictive effect of this kind of closed and monopoly pipeline system has become increasingly obvious.
In January 2013, the State Council issued the "12th Five-Year Plan for Energy Development". According to this plan, "steadily promote the independent operation and fair opening of the natural gas pipeline network, and ensure the non-discriminatory access and unified transportation of various gas sources" will be the long-term goal. In February 2014, the "Regulations on the Fair Openness of Oil and Gas Pipeline Facilities (Trial)" was launched, which stated: "If the oil and gas pipeline facility operation enterprises operate other businesses such as oil and gas production and sales at the same time, they should gradually establish and improve financial systems and implement independent accounting of oil and gas pipeline facility operation business."
However, after the above document was issued, the supporting documents for promoting independent accounting of pipeline services have not been released for a long time. However, the reform of the oil and gas system, especially the reform aimed at promoting the independence of the pipeline system and promoting the fair opening of oil and gas pipeline facilities, did not stop, because the transportation price reform, which is regarded as the prelude to this reform, was launched two years later.
In February 2014, the National Energy Administration of issued the "Measures for Fair and Open Supervision of Oil and Gas Pipeline Facilities (Trial)". Article 5 of the Measures stipulates that when the oil and gas pipeline facilities operate enterprises have the remaining capacity, they should open the pipeline facilities equally to third-party market entities and provide transportation, storage, gasification, liquefaction and compression services.
On August 16, 2016, the National Development and Reform Commission announced the draft for soliciting opinions on the "Regulations on the Management of Natural Gas Pipeline Transport Prices (Trial)" and the "Regulations on the Supervision and Review of Natural Gas Pipeline Transport Pricing (Trial)" and proposed to establish a new open and fair pricing method for natural gas pipeline transportation; at the same time, a cost supervision and review system was introduced. Just half a month later, the National Development and Reform Commission website issued another notice on strengthening the supervision of local natural gas transmission and distribution prices to reduce gas costs in enterprises.
In early September 2016, the National Energy Administration issued the "Notice on Doing a Good Job in Information Disclosure Related to the Opening of Oil and Gas Pipeline Facilities". This move is considered a substantial step in the reform of pipeline networks due to its meticulous and comprehensive requirements for information disclosure.
According to this document, the National Energy Administration requires that the main body of local enterprises operating oil and gas pipeline facilities in various provinces (autonomous regions, municipalities) operating oil and gas pipeline facilities in charge of transportation functions will disclose relevant information that needs to be proactively disclosed before October 31 of that year, and encourage enterprises to disclose relevant information that needs to be proactively disclosed in real time and actively upon request. This part of the information that needs to be actively disclosed includes the project name, type, conveying medium, production time, starting and end point, name, length, design capability of the oil and gas pipeline facilities of the enterprise; the standard catalog of oil and gas pipeline facilities access; the measurement and pricing method of oil and gas pipeline facilities transportation services, as well as charging items, price standards and basis.
is particularly worthy of attention. In this document, the conditions for upstream and downstream users to apply to access the pipeline facilities of the above-mentioned oil and gas enterprises, as well as the departments, methods, procedures and specific processing time limits for accepting the access application are required to be disclosed.
Subsequently, Sinopec, CNOOC and CNPC successively disclosed their information as required. Among them, CNOOC's wholly-owned subsidiary CNOOC announced relevant information about oil and gas pipeline facilities including 8 LNG receiving stations. CNPC also disclosed the information of its oil and gas pipeline network and LNG import receiving stations, including five pipeline companies, including pipeline branches, West-East Gas Pipeline Branch, Beijing Natural Gas Pipeline Co., Ltd., Western Pipeline Branch, Southwest Pipeline Branch, and three LNG import receiving stations in Rudong, Dalian and Tangshan, Jiangsu.
Opening and Split
Under the dual promotion of reform and policy, the oil and gas pipeline network has begun to open its doors to private capital. According to the public information, from the beginning of 2013 to the end of 2016, PetroChina has successively (planned) to reorganize some of its pipeline assets at least 5 times by absorbing social capital and publicly transferring them.
In June 2013, PetroChina established PetroChina Pipeline United Co., Ltd. with 50% of the equity of Western Pipeline Company as its investment, and jointly established PetroChina Pipeline United Co., Ltd. with Taikang Assets and Guolian Fund, which was equivalent to selling half of the equity. In May 2014, PetroChina announced that it plans to invest in the first and second-tier assets and liabilities of the West-East Gas Pipeline Company, an wholly-owned subsidiary, Eastern Pipeline Company, and will publicly transfer 100% of its equity in Eastern Pipeline Company through the property rights exchange. In November 2015, PetroChina announced the sale of 50% of the assets of the Central Asia natural gas pipeline.
Director of the China Oil and Gas Industry Development Research Center of China University of Petroleum Dong Xiucheng believes that several state-owned oil and gas enterprises represented by Petroleum are not without pressure on the determination to reform at the policy level and the call for reform at the social level. To a certain extent, they also need to make certain responses and even cater to them. In August 2015, at Sinopec's interim performance meeting, Chairman Wang Yupu once said that the company is preparing for the issue of pipeline splitting in accordance with the relevant regulations and policies of the National Development and Reform Commission.
At the end of 2015, PetroChina's pipeline assets took the first step of "independence" within it: on November 23 of this year, PetroChina Pipeline Co., Ltd. was registered and established. A month later, China Petroleum announced that it would use China Petroleum Pipeline Co., Ltd. as a platform to integrate three domestic West-East Gas Pipeline Co., Ltd., with the total pipeline assets involved being approximately 250 billion yuan. After the restructuring, PetroChina held 72.26% of the equity of CNPC Pipeline Company.
public information shows that before this, various pipeline companies under CNPC were responsible for pipeline operations and natural gas sales of this pipeline. After establishing a China National Oil Corporation Pipeline Company, it will be responsible for the operation of each pipeline branch after the split. The five gas sales companies established separately are only responsible for the sales business.
However, at present, PetroChina Pipeline Co., Ltd. has not conducted independent accounting. When the Economic Observer asked the relevant person in charge of the Propaganda Department of China National Petroleum Corporation on a question, the other party said: "It will take time.""
Although it will take time to partially dismantle and independent within petrochemical central enterprises, the monopoly pipeline has gradually been liberalized under the requirements of policies. In May 2017, more than four years after the "Ridong Line" of Dongming Petroleum and PetroChina, Guanghui Energy Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Guanghui Energy) is located in the LNG? distribution transfer station in the Lusi Port District of Nantong Port, waiting for the LNG (liquefied natural gas) ship from the sea. On May 25, Guanghui Energy's securities affairs representative told the Economic Observer that the current distribution onshore Infrastructure such as transfer stations have been completed. According to the plan, the first gas ship will land from offshore around the beginning of next month.
On December 7, 2015, Guanghui Energy established a cooperation with Malaysian Petroleum, and began to sell and deliver LNG products to Guanghui Energy from 2017.
Half a year ago, in order to solve the natural gas transportation problem, Guanghui Energy signed a transfer agreement with China National Petroleum Corporation. According to the agreement, Guanghui Energy will be able to use China National Petroleum Corporation's West-East Gas Pipeline to transfer LNG Shipping to major domestic markets. As part of the agreement, PetroChina will charge the pipeline transportation fee approved by the state.
This time the cooperation is quite eye-catching because it is the first time that PetroChina's natural gas pipelines are open to third parties. The aforementioned Guanghui Energy Securities Representative told the Economic Observer that before such a cooperation, as one of the largest natural gas producers in China, Guanghui Energy does not own any natural gas pipelines in the country. Its three LNG production bases are located in Xinjiang and Kazakhstan's The land is mainly transported from the western border to the inland by land.
guess
Central Petroleum is China's central enterprise with the most pipeline assets. CNPC's 2016 financial report shows that as of the end of that year, the total length of the company's domestic oil and gas pipeline was 78,852 kilometers, of which the length of the natural gas pipeline was 49,420 kilometers, the length of the crude oil pipeline was 18,872 kilometers, and the length of the refined oil pipeline was 10,560 kilometers.
According to this data, CNPC's oil and gas pipelines are calculated in CNPC's oil and gas pipelines The range accounts for 68% of the total mileage of the country. According to a widely circulated and unconfirmed statistical data, as of 2014, PetroChina accounted for about 85%, Sinopec accounted for 8%, CNOOC accounted for 5%, and other companies accounted for 2%. In the past, these pipelines were operated independently by the three major oil companies, and were not connected to each other, and were not open to third parties.
Now, with the issuance of the "Several Opinions on Deepening the Reform of the Oil and Natural Gas System" (i.e. the "Opinions"), pipeline independence and points exported and sold Pipeline reform with the goal of departure is set off again.
In the view of Dong Xiucheng, director of the China Oil and Gas Industry Development Research Center of China University of Petroleum, the core purpose of the so-called "pipeline independence" is to promote fairness. According to the model, there are two basic models: independent asset independence and operation independence. If only operation independence and assets are still owned by several major oil and gas companies, it may be difficult to achieve complete fairness at the reality level. In the future, pipeline business will inevitably be limited to the above companies to a certain extent.
Dong Xiucheng believes that , Based on the fact that the pipeline assets of CNPC and other companies have been introduced into social capital several times, it is objectively difficult to achieve a "national official website company" with 100% state-owned holdings, and the most likely situation is an independent pipeline company with multiple entities participating.
Dong Xiucheng told the Economic Observer that assets such as the pipeline that are related to national security need the state to control. At the same time, based on the attribute characteristics of state-owned capital, it is easier to achieve the state's control of this link from the perspective of public interests. By complete Private capital is in charge, and the possibility is small.
Guo Haitao explained that from the perspective of government supervision, designing a pipeline company is not necessarily a good thing. The existence of several pipeline companies at the same time may be more conducive to achieving fair market opening. If the government wants to obtain more regulatory information, it should set up at least two or even multiple pipeline companies, so that more information can be obtained from different channels to strengthen industry supervision.
Guo Haitao believes that even if it is set up to two or three, pipelines should still form a regional monopoly.In this case, we must also consider whether to divest the pipeline business from three barrels of oil, whether it is gradually divested or in one step.
"The current pipeline is a business segment of several major oil and gas companies. It is a unified accounting within the company. Once it is independently calculated, pricing, operating mode, transportation costs, etc. will change. Independent accounting is just a transition, and divestitures are also a transition. The ultimate goal is to establish an independent pipeline company, so that various social capital will come in and gradually change the situation of state-owned capital control." Guo Haitao said.
