The Aoshan oil base in Zhoushan, East China's Zhejiang province. [Photo/WeChat account: zjzsqdxq]

Zhoushan in East China's Zhejiang province has witnessed significant strides in its oil and gas industry over the past two decades. 

The Aoshan oil base on Aoshan Island in Dinghai district ranks as China's largest oil transfer base, and handled 133 million metric tons of oil, natural gas and related product throughput in 2021. 

This achievement was largely due to the implementation of a series of measures rolled out by authorities following the philosophy of "88 strategies", a development plan proposed by the provincial government in 2003 aimed at pursuing innovations in systems and mechanisms. 

Authorities have made 46 institutional innovation achievements in bonded oil services over the past 20 years, and the city is currently home to 18 bonded oil enterprises that supplied 6.02 million tons of bonded oil in 2022. 

Authorities have also been trying to establish a complete oil and gas industrial chain that covers exporting, storage, processing, trading, transactions and related services. The chain currently includes 13,000 oil and gas enterprises. 

In addition, Zhoushan has been focusing on optimizing the business environment by reforming existing institutions, and has made 269 institutional innovation achievements, of which 125 are the first of their kind in the country and 32 have been replicated and promoted nationally.  

The oil and gas industry has been playing a significant role in Zhoushan's high-quality development. The city's GDP in 2021 was valued at 170.4 billion yuan ($23.51 billion), 2.3 times that of 2012, while its GDP in 2022 stood at 195.13 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 8.5 percent, the highest growth rate in the province.