SEOUL, KOREA - Korea's four major oil refiners, including SK Innovation, GS Caltex, S-Oil, and Hyundai Oilbank, will participate in the oil e-commerce market from July this year. Once they begin dealing petroleum products on the e-commerce market, the volume of oil being traded on this fledgling market will triple easily.
An official of the Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy said on May 14, "Starting this July, the four refiners would provide a sizable volume of their processed oil output to the e-commerce market." The total volume the four majors will put on the market is 10.4 million barrels (1.24 million kiloliters). To this, other oil importers such as PetroKorea and Namhae Chemical will add another 2.6 million barrels for online trading. In all, the volume of refined oil to be available on the e-commerce market will be 13 million barrels (1.55 million kL), about 10 percent of the oil consumed in a year.
The idea of introducing the online trading scheme was first suggested by the Lee Myong-bak administration as a way to rein in the skyrocketing oil prices. In order to improve the transparency of the transaction and thereby lower the prices, the online oil trading market has opened on March 30 last year. But the market has until now languished in obscurity as no major refiner has participated.
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