Prospects for future development opportunities of China"s petrochemical industry
Although a large number of 10 million ton petrochemical enterprises, such as Yunnan petrochemical, Hengli petrochemical and Zhejiang Petrochemical, have been put into production in succession, and the market competition for petrochemical products may be white hot, but affected by the accelerated growth of China's energy consumption, better than expected import and export, and the continuous optimization and upgrading of economic structure, the petrochemical industry has shown a trend of rapid growth in benefits and a resurgence in investment. Although the petrochemical industry is in danger in the future, the investment in chemical raw materials and chemical products industry in 2018 is changing from negative to positive, with an increase of 6.0%, benefiting from the bottom recovery of main profits and the terminal driving force of profit focus. Recently, Fu Xiangsheng, vice president of China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Federation, introduced at the conference on the economic operation of the petrochemical industry in 2019 that the petrochemical industry is improving and has a promising future.
Zhu Fang, director of the information and marketing department of the petrochemical Federation, pointed out that in recent years, China's petroleum and chemical market has fluctuated a lot, with a large differentiation, but it is still relatively good in a comprehensive way, with rising prices, improved supply and demand growth structure, and innovative industrial benefits. In 2018, it has the characteristics of stable growth of market demand, rising bottom of main profits, terminal driving force of profit focus, and resurgence of industrial investment, However, the current economic operation of the industry still faces such problems and challenges as complex external environment, severe market shocks, weak demand growth and insufficient investment power. The report points out that in 2019, the world economy is still facing great uncertainty, with great downward pressure and possible slowdown in growth. China's petroleum and chemical market is facing great challenges, especially in the first half of the year, the contradiction between supply and demand in some markets has intensified, and the price may fluctuate at a low level. It is estimated that the overall price level of oil and gas exploitation industry will decrease by about 10% and that of chemical industry by about 3%.
Change in stability and worry in change
In 2018, the whole petrochemical industry realized "double growth" of main business income and total profit, and the overall situation continued to be stable and positive. However, there are some worrying aspects in the healthy and sustainable development of the whole industry in the future through in-depth and detailed analysis.
In addition to the continuous increase of downward pressure, market competition is becoming increasingly fierce. Influenced by the continuous increase of petrochemicals prices in recent two years, (the total level of oil and gas prices rose by 8% in 2017, 3.5% in chemicals, 26.3% in 2018, and 6.8% in chemicals on a year-on-year basis), petrochemical production capacity continued to increase, such as refining and chemical integration unit. After PetroChina Yunnan Petrochemical (13 million tons / year) and CNOOC Huizhou phase II (10 million tons / year) were put into operation in 2017, Dalian Hengli I Phase I (20 million T / a) will be put into operation in the first half of this year. These new refining and chemical integrated units have been put into operation in succession, and the products with high dependence on olefins and aromatics can partially meet the domestic market; however, the domestic refined oil market has become saturated, especially the annual apparent consumption of diesel oil has dropped by 3.3% again; another factor that will lead to more fierce competition in the domestic market is that the crude oil index in 2019 has reached 200 million tons, and the product structure of the refining units has been improved Mainly product oil. There are also some impulse to expand the production of traditional basic chemicals, and the scale of new materials such as PC under construction and proposed products is even more amazing.
In general, external factors such as safety production, strict environmental protection, trade friction, crude oil price, green development, supply reform highlight the industry's shortcomings, energy resource shortage, low-end product homogeneity, insufficient environmental protection investment, and capacity structure adjustment, all of which have become concerns affecting the industry's development. It is worth noting that the chemical industry sector, which has been regarded as the future transformation direction of the industry, is even more worried. The price of chemical products fluctuated greatly. The price decline became more obvious in November last year. When the main business income of chemical industry decreased, the number of Enterprises above the designated size and their benefits changed more. The number of Enterprises above the designated size decreased by 1381. The total profit decreased by 104.4 billion yuan compared with the previous year. The growth rate of profit decreased from 40.2% in the previous year to 16.3%. The proportion of total profit in the whole industry decreased from 71.5% in the previous year To 60%. After the fourth quarter of last year, the investment in chemical raw materials and chemical products manufacturing industry resumed growth, but the growth rate in 2018 was only 6.0%, still lower than the average growth rate of national industrial investment of 6.5%.
Pillar role of petrochemical industry highlights that backbone enterprises become ballast of stabilizers
As a pillar industry of the national economy, petrochemical industry not only plays an important role in agricultural production and harvest, provides important guarantee for high-end manufacturing and strategic emerging industries such as automobile high-speed rail, information energy, aerospace, national defense and military industry, but also makes an important contribution to the stable growth of the national economy. In 2018, the proportion of the total industrial economy will be increased again, and the main business income will be increased from the previous year's 11.8% increased to 12.1%, and the total profit increased to 12.7% from 11.3% in the previous year. The status and importance of the petrochemical industry is more prominent. At the economic operation analysis meeting of six major enterprise groups held at the end of last year, six major groups, including CNPC, Sinopec, CNOOC and Sinochem, had good production, marketing and economic operation of major products in 2018, with almost 100% of crude oil and natural gas production, 80% of crude oil processing, 60% of main revenue and 40% of total profits. In recent years, they have been large-scale enterprises By building a world-class enterprise with global competitiveness and constantly pushing forward supply side structural reform, the leading industry of the backbone enterprise group has become more prominent, its core competitiveness has been continuously enhanced, and its role of stabilizer and ballast in the development of the industry has become increasingly obvious; Yantai Wanhua, Jinzhengda, Huafeng, Fuhua and other enterprises with strong innovation ability have played a leading role in the industry and leading products The global competitiveness is increasing; Rongsheng, Hengli, Shenghong and other enterprises with strong market competitiveness are marching into the petrochemical field with new mechanisms and rich experience accumulated in market competition for many years, and will make important contributions to the scale effect, industrial chain extension and overall competitiveness improvement of China's petrochemical industry. Especially after the Symposium on private economy some time ago, the effect of policies such as tax reduction and fee reduction will appear this year. The vitality and development potential of private economy will be released intensively, which will inject new vitality into the high-quality development of petrochemical industry.
Optimization and upgrading of petrochemical industrial structure new technology has huge market potential
The structural contradiction of "low-end overcapacity and low-end supply" in the petrochemical industry has not been fundamentally reversed. New chemical materials such as high-end polyolefins, special resins, special engineering plastics, high-end membrane materials, special chemicals such as functional materials, medical chemical materials, high-end electronic chemicals, and some special chemicals such as catalysts, special additives (additives) used in the petrochemical process have not been fundamentally reversed, The domestic market has been in a state of insufficient supply for a long time, some of which even rely heavily on imports. These are the actual market demands for the transformation and upgrading of the petrochemical industry and structural optimization, and also the opportunities for the high-quality development of the petrochemical industry in the future.
The CPC Central Committee and the State Council attached great importance to the high quality development of the petrochemical industry. In recent years, general secretary Xi Jinping inspected Qinghai Saline Lake, Ningxia coal oil, Daqing petrochemical, Hubei Xingfa, Yantai Wanhua, Liaoyang petrochemical and so on. Premier Li Keqiang at the executive meeting of the State Council emphasized that stone industry is an important pillar industry of the national economy, aiming at the lagging development of the high-end petrochemical industry at present. Some products rely too much on imports and other prominent problems. We need to strengthen overall planning, scientific demonstration and reasonable layout, promote the transformation and upgrading of the petrochemical industry, and enhance domestic security capacity. BASF, ExxonMobil and other multinational companies continue to increase their investment in China, which proves the importance of Sinopec market and the prospect of future development opportunities.
In the context of tens of millions of tons of large-scale projects being put into production intensively and transportation seeking to replace oil, how can we solve the problem of oil overcapacity? Fu Xiangsheng told reporters that ExxonMobil's technology of producing olefins directly from crude oil without gasoline and diesel has been built in Southeast Asia, although it is small in scale, it may soon be transferred to China's wholly-owned Guangdong project. Therefore, in the future, innovation and breakthrough driven by the impact of some key factors from inside and outside may lead the world's petrochemical industry to usher in a change. In particular, under the guidance of some subversive new technologies, a technological transformation in the field of petrochemical process may be coming. At that time, it is unknown that China will dominate half of the global petrochemical market.
