Chinese refiners ZPC, ChemChina win additional 2022 crude oil import quotas
(Reuters) - Chinese private mega-refiner Zhejiang Petrochemical Corp (ZPC) has been awarded a 10 MMt additional crude oil import quota for 2022, a company executive told Reuters on Wednesday.
Separately, state-run China National Chemical Corp, better known as ChemChina, received 4.28 MMt of additional quota for the rest of 2022, according to a trading source with knowledge of the matter.
Sinochem Holdings, parent of ChemChina, did not immediately respond to an email request for comment.
The issuance of new 2022 quotas with just over two months of the year left suggests the two refiners may ramp up imports to fully use up their quotas before the deadline.
These additions bring the country's total amount of crude oil import quotas so far for 2022 - allotted mostly to independent refiners - to 178.89 million tonnes. That compares with the annual total quotas released in 2021 at around 189 MMt.
With the new issue, ZPC, China's largest refiner with 800,000 barrels per day crude processing capacity, has obtained 40 MMt of quotas for the year, fully matching its refining capacity.
"(Our) plant has been in recent weeks raising crude processing volumes. It is our goal to fully utilize the quotas," said the executive, who declined to be named as he is not the company's spokesperson.
In a move to encourage higher refinery production to help a struggling economy, authorities earlier this month issued a small portion of the first-batch crude oil import quotas for 2023, months ahead of the usual timeline.
(Reporting by Chen Aizhu and Florence Tan; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman and Kenneth Maxwell)
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