Reconstructing China's natural gas price marketization reform based on competition

At present, China's multi-dimensional division between market oriented and non-market oriented natural gas price results in overlapping and crossing, which causes the de facto failure of the government guidance price control system based on the benchmark gate price of natural gas and leads to irregular price behaviors.To promote the market oriented reform of China's natural gas price, the main characteristics and problems of market oriented reform from a new view point (the marketization of natural gas price is divided into two types, i.e., oriented and non-oriented marketization) were analyzed based on a systematical reform process analysis. The idea and scheme of using competition as a yardstick to reconstruct the market oriented reform of natural gas price were established. The market oriented reform of China's natural gas price has the characteristics of seeking a breakthrough at the margin, promoting the reform in a gradual way, carrying out targeted adjustment and maturing reform ideas gradually. The market oriented reform is faced with several main problems, including policy overlapping and crossing leading the failure of price control; a competitive market structure unestablished completely; insufficient reform coordination and synchronization; unsatisfactory market supervision; and the unsmooth terminal price transmission mechanism. Therefore, the market oriented reform of natural gas price should be reconstructed based on competition while speeding up the opening of upstream markets and import links, cultivating diversified market main bodies, promoting the system reform of city gas industry, strengthening the fair competition supervision system of competition links, deepening the reform and supervision of intermediate pipeline networks and defining the positioning of trading platforms reasonably, to make an active preparation for the smooth and orderly transition to the full price marketization.