Zhoushan to become settlement center for energy trade and consumption

Zhoushan in East China's Zhejiang province aims to become a regional settlement center for the trade and consumption of energy, according to an action plan recently formulated by the local government.

The city plans to spend five years and 1 trillion yuan ($150.35 billion) building an energy trade settlement center in the Yangtze River Delta to raise the cross-border renminbi (RMB) settlement volume to over 250 billion yuan and also spend the same time cultivating four settlement businesses worth more than 100 billion yuan.

According to Han Jun, vice-mayor of Zhoushan, the city will build four platforms for oil and gas trading, the production and marketing of petrochemical products, the consumption of bonded fuel oil, and an industrial chain for natural gas and hydrogen energy, respectively.

Zhoushan proposed building the settlement center after the three-year operation of the China (Zhejiang) Pilot Free Trade Zone (FTZ).

A complete oil and gas industrial chain has now taken shape in Zhoushan, where 7,000 oil and gas companies are currently operating and trade in oil products saw a 121 percent yearly increase over the past three years.

Zhoushan is home to the largest commercial oil storage base in China, with a total of 27.9 million metric tons in reserves.

In the first nine months of this year, trade in bulk commodities in the Zhejiang FTZ was valued at 415 billion yuan, including 315 billion yuan in oil products. Zhoushan offered 3.2 million tons of bonded fuel oil, making it the largest bunkering port in China and the eighth largest in the world. Cross-border RMB settlements in the city totaled 82 billion yuan.

Moreover, Zhoushan can cooperate with the Ningbo area of the Zhejiang FTZ to develop a world-class oil and gas industrial chain, said Li Guanding, vice-mayor of Ningbo.

Ningbo has already formed an oil and gas industrial chain involving imports, storage, logistics, trade, and services, with an annual refining capacity of 31 million tons and an ethylene production capacity of 1.3 million tons.