China is to maintain a strategic oil reserve amounting to the
equivalent of 30 days of imports by the year 2010, a senior
official said Saturday.
Chen Deming, vice minister of the National Development and
Reform Commission (NDRC), made the remarks at the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference?2007
held in Boao, a coastal town in southernmost Hainan Province.
At a symposium on energy and resources, Chen Deming said that
China should establish certain amount of strategic oil reserve to
hedge risks such as supply interruption.
China's plan for its strategic oil reserve capacity is based on
two factors, one is the country's financial power, the other is
conditions of the world market.
As the international oil price is still at a high level, China
will be prudent in building up its strategic oil reserve and try
not to cause sharp fluctuation in oil price, he said.
According to the vice minister, a regulation on oil reserve is
under constitution.
Chen disclosed that the regulation will require the Chinese
government to build up certain scale of strategic oil reserves and
oil enterprises to establish commercial oil reserves at reasonable
scale.
The regulation will also set the rules for selecting the sites
for strategic oil reserve bases. These sites should be convenient
for oil transportation and adjacent to oil refineries, he said.
The establishment of strategic oil reserve should also comply
with the country's land use and environmental protection policies,
he said.
China has decided to establish four strategic oil reserve bases
in Dalian, Qingdao, Ningbo and Zhoushan, respectively. The first
one in Ningbo of east China's Zhejiang Province has started to be fed with
oil, according to the NDRC.
According to Chen, China consumed 2.4 billion tons of coal
equivalent in 2006, with over 90 percent self-supplied.
(Xinhua News Agency April 22, 2007)