The Ministry of Transport issued an urgent circular on 17 November, calling on all Yangtze ports, the Yangtze piloting centre in Jiangyin and the shiplocks at the Three Gorges Dam to give top priority to vessels carrying refined oil products.

The circular said that top priority should be given to scheduling and piloting, and loading and unloading in order to speed up lead times for vessels carrying refined oil products. Vessels bound for interior provinces such as Yunnan, Guizhou, Hunan and Jiangxi are particularly important, it went on, because of a relative lack of refining capacity in the interior.