SPE sets up trading center in Daqing

The Shanghai Petroleum Exchange (SPE) has set up an oil and petrochemical product trading center in Daqing City in northeastern China’s Heilongjiang Province, an SPE employee told Interfax on June 22. The center, which is located in Daqing’s High-Tech Export Processing Zone, will be up and running early next month on a trial basis and officially open in September, according to the employee, who asked to remain anonymous. The trading center will host trading of more than 20 oil and petrochemical products including gasoline, diesel, methanol and methane, the employee said. Small-scale oil traders are expected to be the major participants of the center, which will likely see daily trading volume of about 1,000 tons of oil and petrochemical products, the official said. The center’s annual sales turnover is expected to exceed RMB 5 billion ($732.06 million) once it officially opens. Daqing is one of China’s largest oil production bases and produces about 40 million tons of crude oil equivalent annually. Along with Daqing and Shanghai, SPE has two other trading centers, one in western China’s Xi’an City and another in eastern China’s Ningbo City. (June 23, 2009)