China set to launch new oil, gas pipelines firm

Bloomberg

China will announce the creation of its long-planned national oil and gas pipeline company on December 9, according to people familiar with the matter, as it seals one of its biggest reforms aimed at helping energy supply keep pace with swelling demand.
A ceremony to launch the company has been set for 10 am on Monday in Beijing, said the people, who asked not to be named as the information isn’t public.
The government will merge the networks operated by its three state-owned giants under a single operator, a key step to removing barriers that have hampered domestic production, and which dovetails with efforts to use more gas instead of coal.
Media representatives of the new pipeline operator didn’t respond to an email seeking comment. The State-owned Assets Supervision & Administration Commission, which oversees centrally owned enterprises, didn’t respond to a faxed request for comment. Nobody answered calls to the media departments of the three companies involved — China National Petroleum Corp, Sinopec Group and China National Offshore Oil Corp.
The company’s creation has been considered since at least 2014 and is part of President Xi Jinping’s drive to streamline industrial capacity among state-owned enterprises. The government is seeking to spur wider natural gas distribution and upstream exploration by shifting ownership from competing producers into a single operator, which can make decisions based on overall national energy needs.
The pipeline reform is also designed to help smaller private or foreign firms, which have found access to infrastructure blocked or prohibitively expensive. With the assets stripped from the hands of the big three state firms, other companies can gain access and move supply to where it’s needed.
The nation has been accelerating the overhaul of its energy sector in recent years, including changes to its gas pricing policy and merging power
giants.