OREANDA-NEWS. August 28, 2013. China's state-owned China National Chemical Corp., or ChemChina, is planning to set up an oil trading desk in Singapore in mid-September, a source at ChemChina said.

"Our Singapore trading desk will have around 10 people for mainly crude and fuel oil in the beginning," the source said.

But the company will still need to use Unipec -- the trading arm of state-owned oil major Sinopec and Chinaoil -- the trading arm of state-owned oil major PetroChina or state-owned CNOOC as import agents if they want to import crude oil into China, said the source.

ChemChina has appointed three traders -- all from state-owned Zhenhua Oil Co. -- for Singapore desk. The desk will be led by Li Shu, -- a former crude oil trader at Zhenhua, the source added.
 
ChemChina imported five crude oil cargoes of a total of around 500,000-600,000 mt in July, and four crude oil cargoes or 400,000-500,000 mt in June, said the source.

The company plans to import five-six crude cargoes in August, she said.

"We source crude oil worldwide, including from the Middle East, Far East Asia, West Africa, and South America," she added.

ChemChina had been granted a 10 million mt/year crude import quota for 2013 by the National Development and Reform Commission at the end of 2012.

But the company was unable to import any crude oil until end-April, when it finally obtained approval from the Ministry of Commerce to utilize the quota, Platts reported earlier.

ChemChina owns seven refineries with a total processing capacity of around 25 million mt/year.

The seven refineries are Shandong Changyi Petrochemical, Shandong Huaxing Petrochemical, Zhenghe Group, BlueStar Petrochemical (Jinan) and Qingdao Anbang Petrochemical in east China's Shandong province, ChemChina Petrochemical (Tianjin) in north China, and Daqing Zhonglan Petrochemical in northeast China, according to ChemChina's website.