Oil tanker with bonded fuel oil mixed and blended for the first time departing from the port
On December 10, the intelligent logistics information platform of Aoshan Petroleum Base in China (Zhejiang) Pilot Free Trade Zone (hereinafter referred to as Zhejiang FTZ) finished its first whole data collection. The platform was constructed from September this year. Its completion has turned Aoshan Petroleum Base, the largest bonded oil transit base in Zhejiang FTZ, into a third-party warehousing and logistics base with the strongest integrated service capacity in China. Its completion has also helped Zhejiang FTZ to raise its work focusing on forming a full industrial chain for oil products to a new level and provided technical support for building itself into an international oil trade hub and an intelligent whole industrial chain park consisting of “one center and three bases”.
The base mainly covers port handling, depot warehousing, transit, and under bond. It also provides direct supply across customs, pledge supervision, shipping agency, metrological inspection and other additional services. The warehousing capacity of bulk oil under its operation and management has exceeded 10 million cubic meters.
Indispensable tool for expanding international oil trade
Zhejiang FTZ has gathered 4,797 oil enterprises, with an oil industry chain covering commodity warehousing and transport, transit, processing, trade, trading, supply, etc. Centered on the construction of a whole oil and gas industry chain, Zhejiang FTZ has been promoting its economic development, with the target of building into an international oil trade hub with the total oil trade amount of RMB 600 billion, crude oil trade volume exceeding 200 million tons, accounting for about 10% of the world’s total, and oil trading scale of RMB 7 trillion, about 50% of that in the oil trading market in Singapore by 2025.
The platform is designed to lay a solid foundation for achieving this target. Born with the general trend of accelerating the port logistics of international bulk commodities in Zhejiang FTZ, whose superiority has been leveraged by the platform to strengthen resource information sharing and the construction of the oil logistics trading platform.
By integrating the port water transport industrial chain vertically and the petrochemical logistics extension links horizontally, the platform connects among the flows of business, logistics, information, and capital of the traditional logistics supply chain to improve the operating management, making the collaboration and win-win among all links of the industrial chain possible.
Based on standardized hierarchy design, the platform enables relevant functions with unified data collection and storage. For example, if a ship with a capacity of 100,000 tons unloads 80,000 tons of fuel oil in Aoshan Petroleum Base, the business department shall launch the operation process according to the relevant ship data and inform the customs, marine, port and other departments of submitting the operation plan via the platform, while the production, storage and transportation department shall timely arrange the ship operation time according to the production operation status of ports to maximize the unloading efficiency.
Necessary condition for expanding the bonded oil business
Zhejiang FTZ is also committed to building a bonded oil dispatch center in Northeast Asia. In recent years, Zhejiang FTZ has ranked first by the supply of marine bonded fuel oil in China and among the world’s top 10 oil supply ports, and formed the “Zhoushan price” for marine bonded fuel oil, solidifying the vying for influence in the international market.
Last year, Zhoushan Bonded Port Zone undertook the national first batch of licensed refueling with bonded oil and paperless customs clearance services for vessels engaged in international voyages. It has also established the first non-state-run crude oil trading enterprise in China. Zhoushan has also built a multi-level bulk commodity trading market system with Shanghai Futures Exchange and other agencies. Zhoushan undertakes the delivery trading for 66.8% of crude oil and 100% of fuel oil futures warehouse receipts of Shanghai Futures Exchange, ranking first by market share in China.
The platform provides customers with true and real-time process inquiry for the direct supply of international bonded fuel oil. The platform offers commodity inquiry in several depots at the same time and allows for statistical analysis of data according to personalized needs, and real-time monitoring of liquid level changes in stock tanks. The platform also furnishes online transfer of the delivery right. One-click delivery is allowed for delivery right, storage cost, losses, and delivery instructions if needed.
The platform will adopt the implementation path of “in-depth online and offline integration” to enable one-stop integrated trading and logistics services. The business management subsystem of the platform follows the requirements of standardized management and employs the technical means combining software and hardware to create a closed loop of capital flow, business flow, logistics, and information flow, enabling coordinated and efficient running of the whole ecology and improving the production management efficiency for enterprises. Through business linkage with surrounding depots and terminal plants, warehouses have created a regional Internet of Things to effectively cut down the logistics costs and improve the operational efficiency of commodity trading.
“Intelligent change” to the whole oil industrial chain strategy
In the context of creating a full oil industrial chain in Zhejiang FTZ, the platform has brought “intelligent change” to the port logistics of bulk commodities, which is of extraordinary significance. Targeted for win-win cooperation, this largest port warehousing and logistics service provider in China combines the traditional warehousing and logistics industry with the Internet, big data, blockchain and other advanced technologies as well as integrates such data as business flow, logistics, information flow, and capital flow to create a whole industrial chain service system featuring port warehousing and transportation and industrial space development.
The platform has achieved the full lifecycle logistics management covering customer contract signing, customs clearance, commodity inspection, storage, inquiry, transfer, delivery, and quantity settlement as well as value-added services including supply chain finance, pledge supervision, information consulting, and management output.
In addition, by upgrading the hardware, especially the automatic control system in depots, the platform has improved the production and operation efficiency, automatically collected industrial control data, and ensured the authenticity and reliability of all kinds of data. On the basis of traditional warehousing cooperation, port warehousing enterprises will engage in independent billing, pledge supervision, etc. to address the problem of high frequency and short cycle of delivery plans, accelerate the demand for capital turnover, and further open up the information silos of cargo owners, warehousing enterprises, transport service providers, financial institutions and other related parties, so that customers can grasp the cargo dynamics in real time, thus improving transaction security and efficiency of capital use.
As an important central bunker of marine fuel oil in East China, Aoshan Petroleum Base has leveraged the platform to expand and strengthen its marine fuel oil filling business. From January to October this year, the base delivered 2.477 million tons of marine fuel oil, accounting for 78.5% of the total oil supply in the coastal area of East Zhejiang. By vigorously promoting the operation of the platform, the base provides one-stop services for shipping and freight forwarding for foreign ships at the port, and has formed an ecological circle around the supply chain of petrochemical products to promote the transformation and upgrading of the port logistics industry, better facilitating the investment and trade in port logistics and oil products throughout the industry chain in Zhejiang FTZ.