(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-11-22 11:47

China's biggest oil company says it will import 750,000 barrels of diesel this month to ease shortages that have disrupted trucking and caused long lines at filling stations.

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The move by China National Petroleum Corp follows a government requirement for CNPC and the country's No. 2 oil company, China Petroleum and Chemical Corp, or Sinopec, to increase diesel supplies.

The new imports are meant for filling stations in southern China, CNPC said on its website in a statement dated Tuesday. Fuel is so scarce in the south that filling stations are rationing supplies, requiring truckers to wait for hours.

The government raised retail prices for diesel and gasoline by almost 10 percent on November 1 in hopes of curbing demand.

CNPC gave no comparative data for how much diesel it usually imports per month. China imported a total of 690,000 barrels of diesel in September, the last month for which the government has reported figures.

For the first nine months of the year, China, the world's second-largest oil consumer after the United States, imported 3.4 million barrels of diesel, a 46.5 percent increase over the same period in 2006, according to the government.

Oil suppliers attribute the shortages to a lack of refining capacity caused by price limit, which prevent them from passing on record-high crude oil costs to consumers. Refiners have responded by cutting production to avoid losing money.

The government asked CNPC and Sinopec this month to expand diesel refining capacity but it was unclear how long it would take to make changes at refineries.