SINGAPORE/BEIJING - China has granted Zhejiang Petroleum & Chemical Co (ZPC) a licence to export refined oil products, making it the first private oil refiner to win such permission, two sources with knowledge of the matter said on Thursday.

The license would allow ZPC to directly sell oil products to the international market, competing against state-owned refiners and helping to ease oversupply pressure in China's domestic market.

The refiner, however, will still need to be granted a government quota that will determine the size of its exports before it can begin shipments, said one of the sources.

Presently, only a handful of large state-owned Chinese refiners, including Sinopec, CNPC, CNOOC, Sinochem Group and China National Aviation Fuel Company, are allowed to export refined products.

Independent refiners have long lobbied the government to allow them to directly export refined fuel to the international market.

Earlier this year, ZPC, whose 400,000-bpd refinery is located in China's top bunker port Zhoushan, was allotted a quota of one million tonnes to export very low sulphur fuel oil (VLSFO) via state-run companies as proxies.

In 2016, the government temporarily gave oil product export quotas of 1.675 million tonnes to 12 Shandong-based private refineries.

Reuters could not immediately reach ZPC for comment.

China's Ministry of Commerce did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for a comment.

 

(Reporting by Shu Zhang and Chen Aizhu in Singapore and Muyu Xu in Beijing; Editing by Richard Pullin) ((aizhu.chen@thomsonreuters.com; +65 6870 3284; Reuters Messaging: aizhu.chen.reuters.com@reuters.net))