For example, for oil and gas enterprises and consumers, it is easy to regard the competitive structure and relationship of oil and gas market players, such as oil and gas market monopoly and oil and gas price control, as oil and gas systems; Or regard oil and gas management and market supervision institutions as oil and gas systems. Accordingly, the reform of oil and gas systems is simply understood as the reform of breaking monopoly, introducing competition mechanism, promoting the formation of oil and gas prices by the market or restructuring the Energy Bureau. Of course, we can't think this understanding is wrong. After all, the reform of the main body and structure of competition in the oil and gas market, the reform of oil and gas management and market supervision institutions and so on. It has the greatest impact on oil and gas enterprises and consumers.
However, from the national macro level, the understanding of oil and gas system reform can not be limited to this, but should be more comprehensive, extensive and systematic. Therefore, the author believes that the future oil and gas system reform in China should at least include the following aspects:
First, a series of institutional arrangements and their implementation mechanisms to ensure the stable and efficient operation of China's oil and gas market, that is, the market system, including legal norms system, market rules system, technology and industry standards system, and industrial policy system.
The second is to form an oil and gas market structure including market subject, market competition pattern and market concentration, and improve the efficiency of energy resource allocation.
The third is the oil and gas market operation mechanism composed of four mechanisms: supply and demand, price, competition and risk.
The fourth is the institutional arrangement, that is, the oil and gas market management and supervision mechanism, in order to implement comprehensive management and professional supervision of the oil and gas market, ensure the normal operation and balanced development of the market, standardize market behavior, and avoid the defects of the market mechanism itself.
2. What are the possible breakthroughs in the future oil and gas system reform?
Reform is always aimed at problems. Comparing the specific composition of oil and gas system, we can find that there are some problems in China's oil and gas system at present, such as the imbalance between supply and demand in the oil and gas market, backward infrastructure construction and increasing dependence on foreign countries; The legal system of oil and gas market is not perfect; State-owned oil and gas enterprises do not distinguish between government and enterprise, and the market players are not standardized; The access standard of oil and gas industry is too high, monopoly, especially administrative monopoly, is prominent, the marketization process is slow and the competition is insufficient; The formation mechanism of oil and gas price is difficult to be completely formed by the market, which leads to the distortion of oil and gas price; In oil and gas management, the phenomenon of "emphasizing examination and approval but neglecting supervision" is prominent, and government functions are offside, absent and not in place, and so on.
Among all these problems, the administrative monopoly and price control of oil and gas system are the most criticized. Only after understanding the problems existing in the oil and gas system can we prescribe the right medicine and know how to change the oil and gas system in China in the future. It is preliminarily judged that the future oil and gas system reform in China will mainly focus on the market access and industrial technical standards of the oil and gas industry; Laws and regulations of oil and gas industry; Separation of government and enterprise, separation of main and auxiliary, merger and reorganization of oil and gas enterprises; Formation mechanism of oil and gas price and management and supervision of oil and gas market.
In fact, recently, including the government and oil and gas enterprises are in full swing to promote some reform measures. Through these measures, we can find clues about the future reform plan of China's oil and gas system:
First, breakthroughs have been made in the exploration, development and opening up of upstream oil and gas. We can divide the whole industrial chain of oil and gas industry into upstream, midstream and downstream. If the three links are measured by the degree of marketization, the upstream and midstream of oil and gas (that is, oil and gas exploration and development, midstream transportation) are obviously not as good as the downstream distribution link. The monopoly situation in the upstream exploration and development field has not been broken, and it is difficult for other enterprises except several major oil companies to obtain oil sources, so it is impossible to realize the fair opening and access of oil and gas pipeline network facilities in the middle reaches. The existing oil and gas enterprises still transport oil and gas on their own managed pipelines.
It can be seen that upstream monopoly restricts the marketization process of the middle and lower reaches. Therefore, in order to build an effective competitive oil and gas market, we must break the monopoly and fully open the oil and gas exploration market, with the focus on reforming the current oil and gas block registration system. Under the current oil and gas resource block registration system, the incumbent enterprises can occupy a large number of resource blocks with very little money, and the problem of circling without exploring is outstanding. In addition, the blocks available for new entrants are very limited.
If this problem is not solved, the effect of stimulating technological innovation, reducing mining cost and improving mining efficiency through competition will be greatly reduced. The core of reforming the block registration system is to obtain the exploration right of resource blocks through competition, strictly enforce the existing conditions of exploration right, and take back the blocks that have not been substantially explored within a certain period of time and re-invite tenders to prevent the phenomenon of "circling without exploring".
According to media reports, PetroChina recently finalized Xinjiang as a pilot reform of mixed ownership in the field of exploration and development, and took out no more than 49% of the shares in some blocks of three major oilfields, including Karamay Oilfield, and introduced local state-owned assets and private capital. This means that once the cooperation is successful, the upstream monopoly of oil and gas, which has always been the most difficult for private capital to enter, will be broken, and the reform of mixed ownership will therefore enter the deep water area. However, opening up the exploration and development field in the upstream of oil and gas and breaking the monopoly in the upstream of oil and gas are very important for the fair opening of the pipeline network in the middle reaches and the construction of an effective competitive oil and gas market.
Second, Xinjiang will probably become a comprehensive experimental area for oil and gas reform in China. The above-mentioned reform measures of PetroChina also revealed another message: Just as Shanghai was initially positioned as a pilot of a free trade zone, Xinjiang may also be positioned as a comprehensive pilot zone for national oil and gas reform in the future. There are three reasons: First, Xinjiang is rich in oil and gas resources. In the second national evaluation of oil and gas resources, the predicted amount of onshore oil, natural gas and coalbed methane resources in Xinjiang accounted for 30%, 34% and 26% of the whole country respectively. Second, Xinjiang is the bridgehead of China's opening to the west and plays an important role in the construction of the Silk Road Economic Belt. It is the vanguard of the Silk Road Economic Belt and shoulders the important mission of connecting and building this economic belt. Third, the new director of the National Energy Administration is the former chairman of the Xinjiang Autonomous Region Government, and will definitely focus on Xinjiang.
Third, the existing state-owned oil and gas enterprises may be merged and reorganized, which does not rule out the integration of auxiliary businesses scattered in various oil and gas enterprises at present to realize the separation of main and auxiliary oil and gas.
On the eve of the Spring Festival this year, The Wall Street Journal reported that China is considering integrating large state-owned oil companies, possibly merging PetroChina and Sinopec, as well as CNOOC and Sinochem, in order to create an oil giant that can compete with ExxonMobil. The news has not been confirmed or falsified. Nowadays, the state intends to reduce vicious competition and waste of resources, promote the merger and reorganization of central enterprises, and enhance comprehensive competitiveness. It is not impossible for state-owned oil and gas enterprises to merge and reorganize their business.
In addition, according to Fu Chengyu, chairman of Sinopec, on March 1 1, eight research institutes under Sinopec have started restructuring and reform, allowing people to flow with each other, allowing projects to be freely selected, and teams with ideas can set up their own companies to share profits with Sinopec, so as to encourage internal entrepreneurial enthusiasm.
These two news show that the future oil and gas system reform plan will definitely involve the reform of the existing state-owned oil and gas enterprises themselves, without excluding the simple merger and business restructuring between the existing state-owned oil and gas enterprises, integrating the oil and gas technology industry standards, policy research institutes, survey and design, construction and other supporting service business institutions under the existing state-owned oil and gas enterprises, such as 20 1 1, and gradually divesting the social functions of enterprises. Promote the socialized management of enterprise retirees; Social affairs such as hospitals, schools and non-professional fire assets. Through various disposal methods such as closure, reorganization, unified management or handing over to the government, the essential functions of the enterprise are further restored, and the separation of main and auxiliary oil and gas enterprises is truly realized.
Fourth, speed up the construction and cultivation of oil and gas mining rights and oil and gas trading market, and make Shanghai an important oil (including crude oil and refined oil) and natural gas trading center in China and even Asia.
At present, the biggest drawback of upstream oil and gas mineral rights (including exploration rights and mining rights) in China is that, except for issuing mineral licenses through public bidding, stricter extension conditions for mineral licenses have not been formulated, resulting in the inability to transfer oil and gas exploration rights and mining rights between enterprises. Therefore, in the future oil and gas reform plan, the management of declaration, approval and registration of oil and gas mineral rights should be abolished, and an open and transparent bidding market for exploration and mining rights should be established. Whether it is an unproven oil and gas basin, an exploration block that has not reached the minimum workload standard and has been recovered by the competent government department, and the proven oil and gas reserves that enterprises have been difficult to exploit for many years, they should be put on the market, and qualified enterprises should be selected for exploration and exploitation through public bidding and public trading, so as to promote the establishment of the oil and gas mining rights trading market.
In addition, taking the opportunity of the establishment and operation of the Shanghai Oil and Gas Trading Center in April this year, in conjunction with the existing trading institutions such as Shanghai International Energy Exchange, on the basis of gradually canceling the licensing and quota control and liberalizing the import and export trade and wholesale links of crude oil, refined oil and natural gas (mainly liquefied natural gas), qualified enterprises of various ownership (including miners, refiners, importers, wholesalers, etc.) are allowed to enter the trading center and participate in spot and futures trading. Through market discovery and price formation, the government pricing will be completely terminated, and the market will really play a decisive role in the allocation of oil and gas resources, so as to make Shanghai an oil and gas trading center in China and even Asia.
Fifth, oil and gas prices are more market-oriented, and government price departments will change from price makers to price regulators.
At present, China's crude oil price has been in line with the international market. For the refined oil pricing mechanism, it is necessary to further study the combination with China's refined oil consumption structure, solve the problem of time lag with the international market, and determine a suitable price adjustment cycle. At the same time, considering that the reform of refined oil pricing is relatively mature, socially adaptable and difficult, we can delegate the pricing power of refined oil to enterprises on a pilot basis, and the authoritative information of international crude oil prices will be released by third-party institutions to enhance transparency.
After the merger of natural gas prices, the next step is to seize the best opportunity of the current oil and gas reform, choose a natural gas transmission line similar to the pilot reform of Shenzhen transmission and distribution price, carry out the pilot reform of the formation mechanism of natural gas transmission and distribution price, and issue the Measures for the Supervision of Natural Gas Transmission and Distribution Price, liberalize the upstream wellhead price of natural gas and the downstream non-residential gas price, and implement the ladder gas price for residential gas price. For the government price authorities, only natural gas transmission and distribution will be supervised in the future, and they will gradually change from direct price makers to price supervisors (including price monitoring, cost supervision and examination, and market behavior supervision), and from the previous price level to the price formation mechanism.
According to media reports, the Price Department of the National Development and Reform Commission recently signed a memorandum of cooperation with the National Grain and Oil Information Center, China Iron and Steel Industry Association, China Index Research Institute and other units 10 to build a platform for in-depth cooperation in price monitoring and analysis, indicating that the Price Department of the National Development and Reform Commission is actively changing its functions and shifting its focus from previous pricing and price audit to price monitoring, analysis and early warning.
Sixth, the liberalization of the right to use imported crude oil forces the liberalization of the right to import crude oil, which is expected.
On February 16, the National Development and Reform Commission issued the Notice on Relevant Issues Concerning the Use and Management of Imported Crude Oil, allowing qualified local refineries to use imported crude oil on the premise of eliminating backward production capacity of a certain scale or building gas storage facilities of a certain scale, among which three types of enterprises with overseas oil and gas resources, deep processing and advanced pollution control are preferred. Although the right to import crude oil was liberalized this time, it was not the right to import crude oil. In the process of import, local refineries still need to import through five enterprises, such as China United Petroleum, China United Chemical, CNOOC, Sinochem and Zhuhai Rong Zhen. However, this measure means that China has taken substantial steps to solve the problem of crude oil supply for local refining enterprises, which is conducive to breaking the monopoly of crude oil supply, promoting the diversification of oil supply and forming a full competition pattern, thus forcing the liberalization of crude oil import rights. Therefore, judging from the general trend of national policies and industrial development, the oil industry will be more open in the future, and the liberalization of crude oil import rights is actually just around the corner, and the oil and gas reform plan will definitely involve this.
Seventh, take the fair access of the third party of oil and gas pipeline network as a breakthrough, vigorously promote the separation of factory and network, network sales, transmission and distribution, storage and transportation, and finally realize the independence of the pipeline network.
Oil and gas pipeline network (mainly natural gas pipeline network) is a hub connecting upstream and downstream, and its stable development is a necessary condition for the coordinated development of upstream and downstream of oil and gas industry. The experience of the United States and Europe shows that the reform of oil and gas pipeline network is very important for establishing upstream and downstream competitive markets and oil and gas market pricing. Theoretically and practically, pipe network independence is definitely the future development trend. The United States and Europe completely dismantled the oil and gas pipeline network or established independent system operators (ISO) and independent transportation operators (ITO), so that the oil and gas industry chain realized the separation of network and transportation. Promote non-discriminatory third-party access and open the right to invest and operate the pipeline network. Japan also decided to fully liberalize the city gas retail around 20 17, and divest the gas pipeline business in Tokyo, Osaka and Dong Bang in April 2022.
However, judging from the current situation of China's oil and gas pipeline network, China has formed a situation in which many enterprises own long-distance pipelines, which is very difficult to dismantle. At present, PetroChina, Sinopec and CNOOC all have their own pipelines, and their upstream and downstream businesses are integrated. It is very difficult to separate and integrate all kinds of pipe networks into one network, especially considering that most of these pipe networks are assets of overseas listed companies, it is very difficult to separate assets and the cost is very high. Therefore, it is unlikely that the pipe network built by the three major oil companies will be stripped off and a new pipe network company will be established.
However, we can work hard on the fair opening of the transmission and distribution pipeline network, take the promulgated Measures for the Supervision of the Fair Opening of Oil and Gas Pipeline Network Facilities as an opportunity, take the fair access of the third party as a breakthrough, and gradually promote the separation of factories and networks, network marketing, transmission and distribution, storage and transportation in accordance with the three-step strategy of "financial independence, business independence and property rights independence", so as to finally realize the independence of the pipeline network and promote the development of the oil and gas industry.
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