Trading center fuels energy reform

China's first national oil and natural gas trading center is playing a major role in helping to accelerate reform of China's energy market and further promote a market-based pricing system for energy products, said a leading oil industry executive.

"The center has been vital in linking supply and demand, and formulating market-oriented prices since its trial operations started in July 2015," said Wang Yupu, chairman of the board of directors of Sinopec Corp.

"The market has been playing an increasingly obvious part in energy pricing, and Sinopec will further participate to help boost the trading scale and optimize its trading structure, perfect the energy pricing mechanism in China and more actively merge into the international market system," Wang added.