Serious excess methanol capacity is still overweight investment

In recent years, despite the severe overcapacity in the methanol industry, the investment in domestic methanol plants remains unabated. According to data from business clubs, the industry's new production capacity will be 6.4 million tons in 2010, and 8.14 million tons will be added in 2011. In 2012, more than 5.5 million tons of new methanol plants will be put into operation in China.

Analysts said that the newly planned large-scale methanol plants are mostly olefin upstream matching facilities, and methanol facilities will be completed in advance. If this part of methanol flows into the market, it will increase the excess capacity of methanol. To digest excess production capacity, we should expedite the expansion of emerging fields such as methanol gasoline and methanol to olefins.

Coal-based methanol accounted for 70% of the data show that from January to May 2012, the country's total methanol production was 10.587 million tons, an increase of 16.6% over the same period of last year; cumulative import of methanol was 2.204 million tons, 2.83% lower than the same period of last year; cumulative methanol 2.46 Ten thousand tons.

Business analyst Wang Min said that according to estimates, China's cumulative methanol production in 2012 will reach 26 million tons, the cumulative import volume will reach about 5.2 million tons, the apparent consumption will reach about 31 million tons. China's capacity as early as 2009 has reached this value. This year, China's methanol production capacity will exceed 50 million tons, and the excess production capacity will be severe. In many methanol plants, the proportion of coal to methanol is about 70%.

In terms of market conditions, the monitoring data of business clubs show that, due to drag on demand, the prices of various varieties of the methanol industry chain rose first and then fell in the first half of this year. Prior to May, mainly due to the expected impact of the Iranian embargo, the market’s concerns about methanol imports have increased. The methanol increase in the first four months reached 12.87%; after May, as the domestic economy continued to slow down, downstream demand continued to slump, and upstream coal Prices continued to fall, and methanol lacked upstream cost support, with a cumulative fall of 11.06% in May and June.

Accelerating the development of the emerging downstream To change the status of serious overcapacity in the methanol industry, Wang Min believes that the traditional methanol downstream such as formaldehyde, acetic acid, etc. is not optimistic about the rapid development of dimethyl ether, methanol, gasoline, olefins and other emerging downstream. Dimethyl ether, as an alternative fuel for liquefied gas, has been controversial. In recent years, due to severe investigations, the market has been depressed. Therefore, the latter two areas have been placed on greater hope.

For coal-to-olefins, the Shenhua Baotou project has already achieved profitability. According to the data, in 2011, the project's production facilities had a cumulative safety operation of 7,630 hours, of which the methanol plant reached 95% of the design load and the olefin plant reached 87%. The main technical indicators of the project are close to or better than the design value. The company has cumulatively produced 500,000 tons of polyolefin products, operating revenue of 5.64 billion yuan, and a profit of nearly 1 billion yuan.

In methanol gasoline, industry sources said that in 2011 China's methanol gasoline use has reached more than 600 million tons, saving 2.8 million tons of gasoline. In March this year, the Chinese government decided to speed up the promotion and application of methanol fuel and methanol new energy vehicles. Shanxi Province, Shaanxi Province, and Shanghai Municipality were identified as pilot regions for methanol vehicles. Through the demonstration operations of two provinces and one city, they accumulated experience and then expanded to Other key provinces and cities.

Wang Min believes that the large-scale promotion of methanol gasoline still requires national support.

Although high-proportion methanol gasoline has been piloted, it is necessary to support methanol vehicles and it will take time to promote them. Although the low proportion of methanol gasoline does not require modification of the engine, its legal status has not yet received support from the national level, but it is only piloted in some provinces and cities, and its performance is also lack of authoritative testing.