China has more than doubled its first round oil product export quotas to 20.93 million mt from a year ago to 27 refineries in 2016, industry sources told Platts Tuesday.
It contrasted to the 9.75 million mt released for the same period last year.
In addition to the traditional quota winners, the state-owned oil majors, five new qualified refineries also get their first batch of a total 430,000 mt quota for oil products exports.
This volume comprised of 250,000 mt of gasoline and 180,000 mt of gasoil. A total of 330,000 mt of quotas were given to four independent teapot refineries -- Lijin Petrochemical, Yatong Petrochemical, Sinochem Hongrun and Dongming Petrochemical -- in eastern Shandong province.
The remaining 100,000 mt of the quota for the new players goes to Huajin refinery in northeastern Liaoning province which is a subsidiary of state-owned Norinco.
These refineries all had been given both import quotas and import licenses last year.
In mid-November, they were allowed by China's Ministry of Commerce to apply for quotas to export oil products from 2016.
Dongming Petrochemical, which exported its first 10,000 mt cargo of gasoline from Rizhao port of Shandong, this time was allotted a total quota of 120,000 mt, including 90,000 mt for gasoline and 30,000 mt for gasoil.
The quotas, issued late last week, also cover 11 refineries with Sinopec, nine with China National Petroleum Corp., China National Offshore Oil Corp's Huizhou refinery, and Sinochem's Quanzhou refinery.
State-owned oil companies, as well as independent refineries which joined the fleet recently, normally seek export quotas for some oil products from the government based on their requirements and can also request to have unused volumes from the quota of a particular oil product switched to another one.
Quotas are given out roughly every quarter and unused volumes can be rolled over to the following quarter.
The latest quotas were approved by the Ministry of Commerce and General Administration of Customs late last week, according to sources.
Last year, China issued a total of 29.8 million mt of oil products quotas in five rounds, up 52.8% from 2014.
