National Development and Reform Commission (the “NDRC”) announced on the 23th that for this year and next year, the vehicle gasoline and diesel being sold across the country shall be upgraded to be the ones of Phase IV, and for each ton of the gasoline and diesel, 290 RMB and 370 RMB shall be added respectively; and from the end of 2017, the gasoline and diesel shall be upgraded to be the ones of Phase V, and for each tone of the gasoline and diesel, 170 RMB and 160 RMB shall be added respectively.
According to the NDRC, after the upgrading of oil quality, product oil shall be priced reasonably in accordance with the principles of such that the cost shall be reasonably compensated, the good quality shall be paid with good price, and the polluting party shall be required to pay price. And while the upgrading cost shall be adequately eaten up by businesses, the rest part of the costs shall be borne by consumers.
The report published by the NDRC claims that, since this year, the petro-chemical industry has accelerated structure adjustment, that production has gone up steadily, price drop magnitude has narrowed, and the overall situations is steady and turning to be good.
From January to August, the production output for the major petro-chemical products has gone up steadily, and among which, the crude oil processing output was 317.16 million tons and the product oil output was 195.88 million tons. From January to July, the revenue from the main business operation of petro-chemical industry was 659.68 million RMB, saw a 9.9% rise compared to that of the same period of last year. And the profit total was 221 billion RMB, saw a 43% rise compared to that of the same period of last year.
The personnel from Ministry of State Land and Resources disclosed that enormous issues exist in developing and exploiting the shale gas blocks tendered in 1st round and 2nd round of tender, and the main issues are that the geological structure is far complicated that what was expected by the people in the industry and, currently it is hard to say when the 3rd round of tender will begin.
Recently, Japan and Canada signed agreement on importing shale gas. Starting from the end of 2018, Japan will import from Canada more than 8 million tons of natural gas liquefied from shale gas.
In the past several months, the growth rate of American shale oil output has been slowing down. Data shows that in the first half of 2012, American shale oil output saw a 24% rise, while the same rose for only 7% during the same period of time in 2013. U.S. needs to develop large number of new oil wells to offset the loss resulted from the drop of the oil output from the old oil wells.