For many domestic energy enterprises, with the sharp fluctuation of crude oil prices in recent years, it can be said that they have been in the "roller coaster" mood. On March 26, 2018, the introduction of crude oil futures in Shanghai changed the operational thinking of the operators of the above-mentioned spot enterprises.

Up to now, Shanghai crude oil futures have been in operation for one year. Its function has been well played in the exploration of enterprise application, and it also provides reference experience for the internationalization of futures market. Market participants believe that this indicates that the variety has officially stepped out of the "infant" stage and gradually moved to a mature stage.

Expanding the Internationalization Scope of Futures Market by Point and Area

Over the past year, China has steadily accelerated the pace of market opening and attracted more international investors to participate in China's capital market. As a part of the opening up of the domestic market, Shanghai crude oil futures has been widely recognized by investors in the international market after its launch and operation for one year.

One Futures Company CEO told reporters that since the listing of RMB-denominated crude oil futures, trading volume and position have increased several times, and the correlation with world oil price trend has increased significantly. The listing of China's crude oil futures not only makes up for the vacancy that international crude oil prices cannot be priced by RMB, but also provides investors with hedging tools during the closure of the international market.

James Shekerdemian, Asia-Pacific head of Faxing's main brokerage business, said that Faxing Bank was highly concerned about China's crude oil futures and had followed up its price movement for a long time. Generally speaking, it works well. At present, Faxing Bank has formally become an offshore intermediary for filing in the INE, and will actively promote foreign institutional investors to participate in the transactions in the market. It is hoped that China's futures market will accelerate the pace of opening to the outside world and introduce more international varieties.

"It is of great strategic significance for China to launch crude oil futures and open up to the world. Crude oil futures are denominated in Renminbi, and the US dollar can be used as a margin, taking into account the needs of domestic and foreign investors, which is the first step in the internationalization of the futures market. At present, the effect of crude oil futures market exceeds our expectations. Crude oil futures can promote the market-oriented reform of oil and gas products, accelerate the two-way opening of the futures market, and enhance the expected management of the futures market to the spot market. Crude oil, iron ore and PTA futures play an important role in point-to-face. We should take the opportunity of introducing crude oil, iron ore and PTA futures to foreign traders to further accelerate the internationalization of China's futures market. Hu Yuyue, director of the Institute of Securities and Futures, Beijing Industrial and Commercial University, suggested.

Promoting Energy Industries and Deepening the Combination of Industry and Finance

Zhenhua Petroleum is one of the first trading units in China's crude oil futures contracts. It is understood that the company's annual trade volume of crude oil and refined oil is more than 650 million tons, with annual sales revenue exceeding 100 billion yuan. At present, an industrial chain has been established, ranging from exploration, development and production of overseas oil and gas fields to international oil trade, storage and transportation, and petroleum refining.

At the end of July 2018, the Zhenhua Petroleum Trade Team noticed that, influenced by domestic macro-factors and international geo-situation, China's crude oil futures price has gradually followed the international mainstream futures and stepped out of a relatively independent market. Compared with Brent's crude oil futures price, China's crude oil futures price has a certain premium. If the crude oil is purchased from the international crude oil market and delivered domestically at this time, the risk-free profit will be realized.

"At this time, through the cooperation of the whole petrochemical industry chain within the group, we first solved the problem of physical goods, and then through the relevant business personnel for a week, we finally found the best time to build positions. In this process, the company also locked in the foreign exchange exposure, to ensure that the entire process without exposure risk. In the process of shipping, loading and unloading, the company has overcome many difficulties such as weather and time, successfully completed the first delivery of China's crude oil futures, and actively explored the whole business process. Zhenhua Petroleum related person in charge said.

With the increase of domestic and foreign participants in crude oil futures, the competition pattern of spot crude oil will gradually change. For local refineries, it is also very necessary to pay attention to and participate in Shanghai crude oil futures trading. As the designated delivery warehouse and brand of asphalt futures in the previous period, Jingbo Petrochemical has deeply felt the close relationship between finance and real industry during its participation in the past year.

The relevant person in charge of Jing Bo Petrochemical pointed out that the company mainly participates in Shanghai crude oil futures through two ways. The first is inventory hedging (mainly short selling), which used to be the main choice of Brent or WTI crude oil, but from the market and pricing mechanism, they can not effectively represent the real demand of domestic refineries. At present, the company tends to choose Shanghai crude oil futures for inventory hedging. The second is capacity hedging (lock-in cracking spreads). Previously, it mainly used the operation of "buy WTI crude oil futures contract of NYMEX in New York + sell asphalt futures contract of previous period" to lock profits in the high range of asphalt cracking spreads. Shanghai crude oil futures increased the company's capacity hedging operation channels, and it and asphalt futures are both domestic listed varieties with high correlation and delivery. Also, time consistency is high, which can prevent time exposure risk in external trading operation.

"With the development and maturity of Shanghai crude oil futures, domestic crude oil production enterprises, refineries and other processing enterprises as well as end users will gradually use Shanghai crude oil futures price as a benchmark for benefit calculation, and then lock in costs or profits by participating in the corresponding hedging operation of Shanghai crude oil futures." After the listing of crude oil futures, the whole PetroChina system attaches great importance to the liquidity of contracts, market reactions and the linkage with WTI and Brent, and makes a stage summary to lay a foundation for the follow-up discussion of using domestic crude oil futures to price and hedge upstream and downstream products.

It is understood that on March 26, 2018, when crude oil futures were listed, China United Oil took part in the collective bidding and successfully completed the first single transaction of PetroChina, which is one of the first trading enterprises of crude oil futures. Up to now, China United Oil has traded on many contracts of crude oil futures and participated in many deliveries.

Solutions to the Three Difficulties of Risk Management in Enterprises

Since the listing of crude oil futures on March 26, 2018, the overall performance has been good, and it has a good correlation with the international market prices. Especially, the volume has leaped to the third place in the world in less than half a year, and the market potential is obvious.

Serving the real economy is an important theme for the development of domestic futures market and opening up to the outside world. Crude oil futures are located in the upstream of the oil industry chain, and its launch and development have a far-reaching impact on the entire industry chain. It is understood that in the oil trade market, the pricing is still mainly based on Brent crude oil futures and WTI crude oil futures. Over the past one year since the operation of Shanghai crude oil futures, business people have deeply felt that under the impetus of China's crude oil futures, the combination of industry and finance plays an important role in dealing with cross-border hedging problems and promoting enterprise innovation and upgrading.

As an energy industry company, Sinochem Petroleum has been exploring the use of Shanghai crude oil futures contracts in the past year to further enrich valuation methods, diversify operational risks and assist in improving performance. According to reports, the company operates more than 100 million tons of crude oil and finished oil in the whole year. It has a strong ability to acquire overseas oil resources, with an annual crude oil volume of more than 70 million tons. Relevant person in charge of the enterprise said that through exploring and participating in crude oil futures, the company's three long-term risk management problems have been solved.

First of all, crude oil importers are facing on-the-way price risk. Due to the large geographical distance between major oil producing countries and China, it usually takes 1-2 months from loading port to unloading port. During this period, the fluctuation of crude oil price affects the operation performance of importing enterprises. The head of Sinopec said that oil importers used to choose contracts with better liquidity in paper cargo markets abroad for hedging, but the basis difference caused by the quality of overseas contracts and insufficient liquidity in Asian period often existed, which may affect the effect of hedging. After the launch of Shanghai crude oil futures contract, the liquidity in Asian period was abundant. Based on the characteristics of medium sulfur crude oil design, the contract gives crude oil importers more choices when choosing hedging schemes, and effectively improves the means of avoiding in-transit price risk.

Secondly, international crude oil trade settlement currencies and overseas futures markets are denominated in US dollars, and crude oil importing enterprises have exchange risk at both ends of purchase and sale. The above-mentioned person in charge pointed out that RMB-denominated Shanghai crude oil futures could also effectively avoid the impact of exchange rate factors.

Thirdly, importing enterprises can effectively reduce the cost of crude oil procurement through "physical delivery + spot combination". Sinochem Petroleum has adopted such a method in the specific procurement process: when the CIF price of crude oil is higher than the Shanghai crude oil futures price, it can choose to buy the Shanghai crude oil futures contract, sell the overseas futures contract and lock in the cost advantage of crude oil procurement; when the CIF price of the purchased deliverable quality crude oil is lower than the Shanghai crude oil futures price, it can choose to deliver the Shanghai crude oil period after overseas procurement. The contract will be profitable, and other alternative products will be purchased for processing. The overall optimization of purchasing will be achieved after overall planning.

Shandong Jingbo Petrochemical Co., Ltd. (abbreviated as "Jingbo Petrochemical") is a large private enterprise with petrochemical industry as the main industry, integrating petroleum refining and subsequent deep processing. Its crude oil processing capacity is 3.5 million tons per year. Shortly after the listing of Shanghai crude oil futures, the company, as the first refiner, purchased the real crude oil from the first domestic ship priced at Shanghai crude oil futures prices, according to the company's relevant responsible person. "The quality of WTI, Brent crude oil is different from that of crude oil actually used in domestic refineries, so there are deviations in price convergence, which reduces the risk aversion effect. In addition, the pricing mechanism of foreign crude oil futures in US dollars also increases the difficulty of hedging. At present, we try to choose the mode to price rising and discounting of China's crude oil futures, which greatly reduces the operational risk caused by exchange rate fluctuations.

原油期货上市满“周岁”

对国内众多能源企业而言，近几年伴随原油价格大幅波动，可谓一直在“过山车”的心境中度过。2018年3月26日，上海原油期货的推出，从格局上改变了上述现货企业经营者的经营思路。

迄今，上海原油期货运行满一周年，其功能在企业应用探索中得以良好发挥，也为期市国际化提供了可借鉴的经验。市场人士认为，这标志着该品种已正式走出“婴儿期”，逐渐走向成熟阶段。

以点带面扩大期市国际化范围

过去一年中，中国不断加快市场开放的节奏，吸引更多国际投资者参与中国资本市场。作为国内市场对外开放的一部分，上海原油期货推出并运行一年后，获得了国际市场投资者的广泛认可。

某期货公司CEO对记者表示，人民币计价原油期货上市以来，成交量与持仓量都获得数倍增长，与世界油价走势的相关性显著提升。中国原油期货的上市不仅弥补了国际原油价格尚无法通过人民币定价的空缺，同时也在国际市场休市期间，为投资者提供了保值对冲的工具。

法兴主经纪商业务亚太地区负责人James Shekerdemian表示，法兴银行高度关注中国原油期货，对其价格运行进行了长期跟踪。总体而言，运行情况良好。法兴银行目前已正式成为在能源交易中心备案的境外中介机构，并将积极推动境外机构投资者参与该市场的交易。希望中国期货市场能加快对外开放步伐，推出更多国际化品种。

“中国推出原油期货并向全球开放，具有非常重要的战略意义。原油期货以人民币计价，美元可以作为保证金，兼顾了境内外投资者的需求，是期货市场国际化的第一步。目前原油期货市场效果超出我们的预期。原油期货可以推动油气产品市场化改革，加速期货市场双向开放，增强期货市场对现货市场的预期管理。原油、铁矿石和PTA期货具有以点带面的重要作用，应以原油、铁矿石和PTA期货引入境外交易者为契机，进一步加快中国期货市场的国际化步伐。”北京工商大学证券期货研究所所长胡俞越建议。

推动能化产业深化产融结合

在中国原油期货合约首批交易单位中，振华石油名列其一。据了解，该公司原油、成品油年贸易量6500多万吨，年销售收入超千亿元。目前已建立从海外油气田勘探、开发生产，到国际石油贸易、仓储运输、石油炼化的产业链。

2018年7月底，振华石油贸易团队注意到，受国内宏观因素及国际地缘局势影响，中国原油期货价格已从跟随国际主流期货，逐步走出一波相对独立的行情，中国原油期货价格相比布伦特原油期货价格出现了一定溢价。如果此时从国际原油市场采购原油，并在国内进行交割，将实现无风险盈利。

“这时候，我们通过集团内部整个石化产业链相互协同配合，首先解决了实货的问题，紧接着通过相关业务人员连续一周盯盘，终于找到了建仓的最佳时机。在此过程中，公司还锁定了外汇敞口，确保全流程无敞口风险。在此后的船运、装卸等过程中，公司克服了天气、时间等多重困难，顺利完成了中国原油期货的首次交割，为业务走通全流程进行了积极探索。”振华石油相关负责人表示。

随着国内外原油期货参与主体的增加，原油现货的竞争格局会逐渐发生变化。对于地炼企业来说，关注和参与上海原油期货交易也是非常有必要的。京博石化作为上期所沥青期货指定交割仓库和指定交割品牌，在一年来的参与中深刻地感受到了金融与实体产业的密切关系。

京博石化相关负责人指出，公司主要通过两大方式参与上海原油期货。第一是库存保值（以卖空保值为主），之前主要选择布伦特或WTI原油标的，但从市场和定价机制来说，它们无法有效代表国内炼厂真实需求，目前公司库存保值倾向于选择上海原油期货。第二是产能套保（锁定裂解价差），之前主要通过“买入纽约NYMEX的WTI原油期货合约+卖出上期所的沥青期货合约”操作，以便在沥青裂解价差高位区间锁定利润，上海原油期货增加了公司的产能套保操作渠道，且它与沥青期货都是国内上市品种，相关性较高，且交易时间一致性高，能够防范外盘操作中的时间敞口风险。

“随着上海原油期货的发展和成熟，国内的原油生产企业、炼厂等加工企业以及最终用户会逐渐以上海原油期货价格作为基准进行效益测算，进而通过参与上海原油期货进行相应的保值操作来锁定成本或利润。”中联油相关负责人告诉记者，原油期货上市之后，整个中石油系统都很重视，密切关注合约的流动性、市场反应以及与WTI、布伦特的联动关系，并进行阶段总结，为后续探讨采用国内原油期货进行上下游产品定价或保值打基础。

据了解，在2018年3月26日原油期货上市当日，中联油参与了集合竞价，并成功完成了中石油的首单交易，是原油期货首批交易的企业之一。截至目前，中联油已在原油期货多个合约上进行了交易，并参与了多次交割。

企业三大避险难题得到解决

2018年3月26日原油期货上市以来，整体运行情况良好，与国际市场价格相关性较好，尤其是成交量在半年不到的时间里跃居全球第三，市场潜力可见一斑。

服务实体经济是国内期货市场发展与对外开放的重要主旨。原油期货处于石油产业链上游，其推出和发展对整个产业链影响深远。据了解，在石油贸易市场，目前定价仍主要以布伦特原油期货和WTI原油期货为基准。上海原油期货运行一周年以来，企业人士深刻地感受到在中国原油期货推动之下，产融结合对于应对跨境避险难题、推动企业创新升级的重要作用。

中化石油作为能源产业公司，过去一年中持续探索利用上海原油期货合约进一步丰富计价手段、分散经营风险、辅助提升业绩。据介绍，该公司全年原油和成品油经营总量超过1亿吨，拥有较强的境外石油资源获取能力，年原油长约量超7000万吨。该企业相关负责人表示，通过探索参与原油期货，公司长期面临的三大避险问题得到了解决。

首先，原油进口企业所面临的在途价格风险。由于主要产油国普遍同我国存在较大的地理间隔，从装港到卸港通常需要1-2个月时间，在这期间，原油价格波动影响进口企业经营业绩。中化石油有关负责人表示，此前原油进口企业通常挑选境外期纸货市场中流动性较好的合约进行套期保值操作，但由于境外合约品质和亚洲时段流动性不足等问题所造成的基差时常存在，可能会影响套保效果；在上海原油期货合约推出后，由于亚洲时段流动性充裕且合约基于中质含硫原油设计等特点，给予原油进口企业在选用套保方案时更多选择，有效提升企业规避在途价格风险手段。

其次，国际原油贸易结算货币及境外期货市场均以美元计价，原油进口企业在购销两端存在汇兑风险。上述负责人指出，人民币计价的上海原油期货推出后亦可有效规避汇率因素影响。

再次，进口企业可以通过“实物交割+期现结合”有效降低原油采购成本。中化石油在具体采购过程中就采取了这样的做法：当原油到岸价高于上海原油期货价格时，可选择买入上海原油期货合约，卖出境外期货合约，锁定原油采购成本优势；当所采购交割品质原油到岸价格低于上海原油期货价格时，可选择在境外采购后交入上海原油期货合约实现盈利，同时采购其他替代品种加工，统筹后实现采购整体优化。

山东京博石油化工有限公司（简称“京博石化”）是一家以石油化工为主业，集石油炼制与后续深加工为一体的大型民营企业，公司原油一次加工能力为350万吨/年。该公司相关负责人介绍，上海原油期货上市后不久，公司作为首家地炼买家买入了国内首船以上海原油期货价格计价的原油实货。“WTI、Brent原油和国内炼厂实际使用的原油品质存在差异，因此价格趋同性上存在偏差，这降低了避险效果。另外，国外原油期货以美元计价机制也加大了企业套期保值难度。目前我们尝试选择中国原油期货升贴水的模式进行定价，大大降低了汇率波动带来的运营风险。”