中文
Under the stimulation of the sluggish warehousing caused by the production of Luxi and the port closure, the main contract of methanol futures began to rebound in the near future, but fell back in the intraday yesterday. The author thinks that under the condition that the supply and demand are expected to improve, the short-term methanol is difficult to fall sharply.
Limited incremental supply side
In terms of domestic start-up, the shutdown and load reduction of natural gas methanol plant due to gas limitation started at the end of November this year. At present, the affected capacity is about 4 million tons. It is estimated that 200000 tons of methanol will be lost in December, and the start-up is weaker than that in November.
Due to the preparation in advance of CNPC and Sinopec, the shortage of gas sources has been improved compared with previous years. The gas limitation time of natural gas to methanol enterprises is expected to be about one month, that is to say, the unit may be restarted at the beginning of next year, the maintenance time is significantly shorter than that of previous years, and the impact on the supply side is also significantly lower than that of previous years. In terms of new production capacity, there is no new production capacity planned to be put into operation in the year. At the beginning of next year, there are many new methanol production capacity planned to be put into operation, about 2 million tons, which is more likely to be put into operation. Therefore, it is expected that the pressure on the supply side will be greater at the beginning of next year. In addition, it is estimated that the import volume in November will be 1 million tons, and the import volume in December will increase significantly, between 1.1 million and 1.2 million tons. On the whole, the increment of supply side in December is limited compared with that in November.
Significant increase in demand
In terms of MTO, Luxi has been put into production in early December. Last week, due to the failure of shutdown, there was a restart plan recently. The original plan for maintenance of Yangmei coal in December is to be determined. It is estimated that the demand of MTO for methanol in December will increase significantly compared with that in November. However, the new MTO capacity planned to be put into operation at the beginning of next year is less, so the demand increase is limited.
In the traditional downstream, the recent formaldehyde start-up continued to decline, because it is the off-season of demand, and the enterprise holiday ahead of schedule, it is expected that the formaldehyde start-up will be weak. In terms of acetic acid, the 800000 ton unit of Thorpe was shut down last week. As of the week of December 12, the start-up of acetic acid fell slightly to 88.16%, and it is expected that the overall change of the start-up of acetic acid in the later period will not be significant. On the whole, traditional downstream demand is difficult to improve. It should be noted that the demand for methanol fuel will increase in winter generally, and the current methanol price is at a low level, and it is expected that the demand for methanol fuel will increase in the later period.
Therefore, although the traditional downstream demand is reduced, the overall demand for methanol is significantly increased.
In addition, it is difficult for the port to go to the warehouse continuously. As of the week of December 12, the port inventory slightly recovered to 941700 tons, mainly due to less arrivals. It is understood that most of the cargo will arrive at the port in the middle and late days, so it is expected that it will be difficult to go to the warehouse in the later period.
In a word, with the centralized arrival of imported goods in late December, the methanol price may have a correction, but the possibility of a sharp drop is unlikely.