Beijing on Wednesday issued a draft of new regulations for China’s growing oil and fuel storage industry, helping loosen the state-owned oil majors’ grip on the sector as the nation pushes to reform its vast energy markets. The government is looking to update storage policies issued in 2006, consolidating regulations for crude oil and rules for oil products under a single framework. The main change in the draft is that it removes requirements for distributors and storage companies to have secure and steady supplies of refined products, a condition that only state majors like Sinopec and China National Petroleum Corp could comply with. Although the clause will still exist for crude. “(The draft) has lowered the threshold for entry to the wholesale and storage industry,” said Dong Xiucheng, a professor at the China Petroleum University. “The new draft emphasizes storage capacity first … As long as […]