National petroleum reserve will be raised to 75-80 days of net import in 2030, more than 10 times the current level, what conditions are needed to do that?
According to the national energy master plan for the period of 2021 – 2030, with a vision to 2050, the national petroleum reserve (crude oil, products) will be raised to 75-80 days of net import in 2030, which is urgent. more than 10 times now and will increase 90 days after this period.
Responding to VTC News about this long-term plan, Dr. Giang Chan Tay, Director of Boi Ngoc Company Limited said: “The thin national petroleum reserve is one of the causes affecting supply when the market changes. Therefore, raising the national petroleum reserve is necessary to ensure food security. However, if it is to be implemented, it is necessary to issue a policy to compensate for the reserve so that enterprises do not fall. The more you sell, the more you lose.”
Mr. Tay said that at present, the price adjustment cycle is short, leading enterprises will buy less petrol. For example, in the past, the adjustment period for petrol and oil prices lasted for 1 month, the enterprise bought 3 ships, each with 30,000 tons to reserve for the whole month. After the operating time is reduced to 15 days, the enterprise will reduce the purchase of 1 ship. When the time to operate the price down to 10 days, the business abandoned 2 large ships, running only 1 8,000 tons. Therefore, when the input fuel source is cut off, the gasoline at the importing enterprises also cut off quickly, unable to respond in time like last year.
According to Mr. Tay, the 10-day adjustment period for petrol prices makes not only wholesalers but even retail businesses dare to import large quantities to hoard because it is easy to fall into the situation of selling at a loss.
“In the past, each retail business imported hundreds of thousands of liters for sale within a period of 15-20 days, but now they only import enough to sell for 10 days, because the more they import, the more volatile the price. more holes. Enterprises only import at a moderate level from the beginning of the period to the end of the price adjustment period,” said Dong Giang Chan Tay.
Therefore, as expected, the operating period is reduced to 7 days, the reserve of petrol and oil is even more limited.
Similarly, Mr. Hoang Trung Dung, Director of the Additives and Petroleum Products Development Joint Stock Company (APP), also said that the shorter the adjustment period for petrol and oil prices, the less reserves in the business.
“No business holds a lot of reserves, because if they hold a lot, they will lose a lot because gasoline prices are always fluctuating. There is no private enterprise doing business according to the market mechanism but storing petroleum in large quantities because it is not suitable for the private mechanism. They only guarantee the minimum inventory because the profit of petroleum business is low, and they have to pay for warehousing, loss, electricity, and fire protection. In addition, the tank retail businesses can only store for 10-15 days, “Dong Dung said.
Currently, according to Decrees 83 and 95, the focal enterprises must ensure a 20-day stock of goods and all the focal enterprises do well. According to Mr. Dung, in order to increase the national petroleum reserve by 10 or 20 times, national reserves must be built in suitable locations and this is the role of the State.
“We have built a system of national food reserves to ensure food security, so must gasoline. We have to build large warehouses and need to set up a separate storage management unit, for example. is the General Department of National Petroleum Reserve”, Mr. Dung suggested.
However, Mr. Dung said that, up to this point, the time to adjust retail gasoline prices in the country is not related to the national petroleum reserve. Because if there is enough stock for the reserve, when the world gasoline price falls, we will import it, when the world price of gasoline increases, we will take the reserve to sell to control the domestic price.
Meanwhile, representatives of many petroleum businesses expressed their opinion that in order for enterprises to build a larger petroleum reserve system, the State needs to have mechanisms and policies to support the investment and construction of petroleum products. system, with preferential credit, creating favorable conditions for enterprises to access land for storage. Because the cost of land is very large, possibly up to tens of billions of dong/year, many businesses cannot afford it. Many businesses said that there had been a plan to invest in petroleum reserves but had to stop because the costs were out of reach.
