Petroleum is a sort of complicated liquid, gaseous or solid hydrocarbon compound, and mainly refers to paraffin, also benzohydrocarbon and naphthene.
The component of petroleum changes with regions, generally speaking, it contains 84% of carbon and 11%-14% of hydrogen; also a little bit of oxygen, nitrogen and sulphur etc; and about 0.05% of the low content of ash. Petroleum was formed through long period of physical and chemical changes of the deposited palaeogeochronologic organic (mainly the unicell plants for exampleblue and green alga, unicell animals like foram).
According to the comments in 1993 on the nationwide oil and gas resources, the gross areas of sendimental basins in China's land and coastal continental shells was about 5.5 million sq. km with the total quantities of pertroleum 94 billion ton. Mainly with land reserve, the petroliferous sendimentray basins of China's petroleum resources could by divied into 3 fundmental types: the eastern, expansion basin, the central, interim basin, and the western, extrusion basin. The whole country could be divided into 6 petroliferous basins: the eastern part, mainly including the regions in the northeast and north China; the central part, mainly including the regions in Shaanxi, Gansu, Ningxia and Sichuan; the western part, mainly including the regions in Xinjiang, Qianghai and western Gansu; the southern part, including the 10 provinces and regions of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Guangdong, Hunan, Jiangxi, Yunnan and Guangxi; Tibetan region, including the regions south to the Kunlun Mountain Areas and west to the Hengduan Mountain Areas; the petroliferous zone on the sea, including the southeast coastal continental shell and South China Sea area. Chinese petroleum resources are low in survey level and the main surveyed fields are the continental stratums.
By the end of 1996, the detected storage of Chinese petroleum was about 3.287 billion tons and ranked the ninth in the world, which increased with the development of petroleum geological survey. The petroleum geological storage in 1949 was 29 million tons with 120,000 tons of output; the Daqing Oilfield was discovered in September 1959 and the petroleum geological storage in 1961 arrived at 2.6 billion tons; in 1978 Chinese petroleum output broke trough 100 million tons with the storage reached 6.81 billion tons and the petroleum output in 1985 was 124.9 million tons with 11.6 billion tons of storage. Chinese petroleum output in 1990 was 138.3 million ton and ranked the fifth in the world.
Situation analysis on Chinese finished oil market of the first half year of 2002
Chinese finished oil price in the previous half year of 2002 descended first then ascended and the gross price level was lower than that in last year over the same period. Of which, the average retail mid-standard price of gasoline decreased 15.57% than that in the last year over the same period and that of diesel oil decreased 10.42%.
The main reasons that caused the oil price weakness are as the following three points:
1. The non-flourish market demand
The finished oil consumption in majority months of the first half year entered into off seasons and the demand for gasoline and diesel oil decreased evidently owing to the reduced farming cultivation in the winter and forbiddance of catching fish in the coastal areas. The spring ploughing and spring sowing market demand slightly took a favorable turn in the second season, however, it happened to meet with the universal rainstorm falling in the southern area thus caused the freight transportation to reduce in a big margin. Also the demand for fuel oil in the first half year was obviously under that in the last year due to China's implementation vigorously the measures of environmental protection and energetically development of substitute energy, and the gradually weakened demand for fuel oil of electricity generation in the southern. During January-June, the apparent consumption in Chinese gasoline market increased 2.4%, but the increasing rate was under that in the previous year and the apparent consumption volume in the fuel oil market decreased 15.4% in comparison with last year.
2. The relatively higher storage
The surplus and relatively higher storage of domestic finished oil late last year has brought comparatively greater pressure to domestic oil market in this year, though two huge petroleum groups in the first half year strictly controlled the gross raw oil processing volume and maintained a rather low refinery work rate, it was still difficult to reverse the climbing situation of market supply. At the same time, some oil production dealers cornering and stockpiling in large quantities also made the finished oil storage in this half year to be higher than that in the previous year, for it is said that the state in this year was to carry out the policy of transformation administrative fees into taxes. Chinese final gasoline storage in the second season increased 63.9% than that in the previous year, kerosene increased 49.5% and diesel oil 7.4%.
3. The influences of international oil price
Chinese domestic oil price was to a great extent affected by international oil price, for the raw oil and finished oil price has already integrated with international market. Since the"9.11" incidents, international oil price turned round with a big margin and the oil price in the first season of this year has always been weak. Influenced by this, the average sale price of Chinese raw oil in January-June this year decreased 18.2% over the same period last year and the mill price of gasoline and diesel oil also descended 18.3% and 18% respectively than that in the previous year.
Seen from the changes of oil price in each month:
January-February was the period when domestic finished oil consumption was the lowest and as well the period when the two huge petroleum groups had the heaviest storage pressure. Though the state on January 1st elevated the retail mid-standard price of gasoline and diesel oil, the markets in the whole country just reacted with cold shoulder owing to low demand, high storage, soft finished oil vendition in various places and declining price. After the Spring Festival, there was track that the demand for oil products in the southern market began to rise together with the warming up climate.
In March-April, the demand for finished oil picked up and affected by the factors including the two huge petroleum group continually curtailment the total quantity of processing raw oil etc, the price of domestic gasoline and diesel oil got certain elevation, the long-term gathered high storage of finished oil product in the oil refinery also began to descend and the market took on an out-of-the-way prosperity. Especially after the spring ploughing and spring sowing in April, the concluded oil product transactions in various places increased and the price was at large ascended.
In May-June, domestic finished oil consumption stepped into the off-season. With the falling of international oil price and the gradually clarified fuel tax that was difficult be to come forth, and the in large quantities disgorged oil product cornered and hoarded by social management units, the supply and demand of the market was once again unbalanced, the oil product vendition was not smooth and the price dropped. Most regions in China in June were troubled by rain and some provinces and cities were stricken by flood, as a result, the oil used for production and transportation was severely affected and the finished oil vendition was in further hot water.
Increase of raw oil import has become sort of trend, for Chinese raw oil production was not able to meet the requirements of economy development. In the previous half year of 2002, China imported 32.99 million tons of raw oil, increased 3% than that in the last year over the same period, covering 30% of the total amount of domestic processed raw oil. At the same time, there existed great deficiency in Chinese fuel oil supply and 40% of it required to be imported abroad. Domestic produced gasoline, kerosene and diesel oil were able to meet the market requirements and the two huge petroleum groups even energetically organized gasoline to be exported in order to relieve the pressure on domestic market on the circumstance of supply surplus demand in domestic market. In this first half year, Chinese gasoline export amounted for 2.47 million tons.