State-owned China Oil & Gas Piping Network Corp, also known as PipeChina, has attracted hundreds of applicants for shippers’ licenses that will give companies access to its gas supply infrastructure, as the country’s gas market liberalization accelerates.
The high level of market interest comes after PipeChina was created earlier this year, in one of the largest energy market reforms by Beijing in recent years, with assets from the three state-owned oil and gas companies — PetroChina, Sinopec and CNOOC, who used to control access to most of the energy infrastructure along with a handful of local companies.
Over 900 companies have registered for a natural gas shippers’ license, which allows companies to apply for the use of PipeChina’s pipelines and LNG import terminals, after the company launched a customer management system for the licenses on Oct. 10, market sources said.
The full terms of third party access are not immediately known, but new entrants into the gas market who don’t have their own infrastructure to import LNG now stand a chance to utilize terminal slots without having to build their own terminal, lowering barriers to entry in the Chinese gas market.
This is expected to boost competition and introduce private and international players in the downstream gas market, which are the requisites for the liquidity needed to build a nationwide gas trading infrastructure, including financial and retail markets…
