Unipec Trading Arm To Get 1 Million Barrels Of SPR Oil

By Michael Scott for Oilprice.com- Jul 12, 2022, 

Major oil traders and refiners have been awarded contracts for the purchase of crude oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), including the U.S. wholly-owned subsidiary of Unipec, the trading arm of China's oil giant Sinopec.

Unipec America, Inc was awarded a contract for the purchase of nearly one million barrels, 950,000 barrels from the SPR, as part of the massive emergency oil release announced by President Joe Biden at the end of March this year.

Back then, President Biden announced the release of 180 million barrels of oil over the following six months. The announcement sent oil prices below $100 per barrel for a brief period of time, before the market started fretting about more losses of oil supply from Russia due to sanctions and embargoes.

As part of this SPR release, the largest release of oil reserves in history, as the White House said, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced this week it had awarded contracts to 14 companies that had responded to a sale notice from mid-June. 

Contracts were awarded to Atlantic Trading & Marketing, BP Products North America, Chevron USA, Equinor Marketing & Trading, ExxonMobil Oil Corporation, Glencore, Macquarie Commodities Trading US, Marathon Petroleum Supply and Trading, Motiva Enterprises, Phillips 66 Company, Shell Trading (US) Company, Unipec America, Inc, Valero Marketing and Supply Company, and Vitol.

Those companies submitted 68 bids for oil from the four SPR sites.

Crude oil deliveries will take place from each of the SPR storage sites between August 16, 2022, and September 30, 2022, the Department of Energy said.

Oil released from the SPR has been sent to Europe and Asia in recent months, including to China, according to ZeroHedge.

At the end of June, Amos Hochstein, Senior Advisor for Energy Security, said that the United States would reassess additional releases of crude oil from the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserves as the Administration struggles to rein in high prices at the pump.