Fuhai PX Is Expected To Resume Production On Schedule, Which Will Cause A Greater Impact On The Market.

PX is destined to be a hot topic in 2019. We have to stand at the beginning of the new PX era this year.

In the second half of 2018, the aromatics plant in Fuhai has been preparing for restarting work. It is worth noting that the device has successfully produced a qualified PX at 11:58 on December 26, 2018. A set of 800 thousand tons / year PX plant has been successfully resumed, and another 800 thousand ton / PX device has been restarted.

Reporters learned that the project Fuhai creation (Yuan Tenglong arene) PX project is located in Gure Port Economic Development Zone, Zhangzhou City, Fujian Province, with a total investment of 13 billion 780 million yuan and an annual output of PX160 million tons.

It was put into operation in 2013. It became the largest PX manufacturer in China. It also marked the rise of PX market share of private enterprises. It is now the largest PX producer in China and Ningbo CICC.

In April 2015, because of the installation accident and the PX device was seriously damaged, it was forced to close down.

In March 15, 2017, the headquarters of Tenglong Xiang Lu rectification and rehabilitation project of Fuhua Gure company was established at Gure petrochemical base.

Tenglong Xiang Lu rectification, repair and reorganization work in full swing, nine Longjiang group and Fuhua group has been fully involved in Tenglong aromatics, Xiang Lu Petrochemical rectification repair and reorganization work, and set up Fujian Fuhua Gure Petrochemical Co., Ltd., as authorized owners to carry out rectification and repair of Tenglong aromatic and Xiang Lu petrochemical, but also as the main body of reorganization, in May 2017 officially launched Tenglong aromatics and Xiang Lu Petrochemical reorganization.

Fu Hai Chuang's 4 million 500 thousand tons / year PTA plant first resumed production in November 2017, and the PX plant continued its long repair work.

Fuhai 90% shares belong to Fuhua industry and trade (Zhangzhou) Co., Ltd., Xiang Lu has a 10% stake.

Under the situation of crude oil fatigue, the restart of PX will undoubtedly cause a great impact on the market. Its PX is mainly used for its own use. Its 4 million 500 thousand tons / year PTA device operates normally, and another 1 million 650 thousand ton / year PTA device will stop for a long time or restart with the resumption of PX. Therefore, domestic PX and PTA supply will increase, while PX imports will decrease or decrease. At present, the profits of PX enterprises will be huge, and the restart of fukhai's PX device will cause competition among enterprises to intensify, but this is only the tip of the iceberg of China's PX industry.

In recent years, influenced by many factors, PX productivity growth is slow, far from meeting the downstream needs, resulting in a huge supply gap and expanding year by year. PTA factories can only rely on imports to neighboring countries, and PX's external dependence has been increasing year by year.

With the technological breakthroughs of independent intellectual property rights and the decentralization of project approval authority, the enthusiasm of enterprises investing in PX projects is rising.

Hengli petrochemical, Hengyi petrochemical, Sheng Hong petrochemical and Rongsheng group and other private PTA/ polyester enterprises have built aromatics integrated plant as the core of the integration project. It is expected that by 2021, China's PX production capacity will show blowout growth, and PX supply and demand in Asia will usher in a new pattern, which will have a deep impact on the entire polyester industry chain.

Several large scale refinery and petrochemical projects in China are under construction, including 3 refinery bases involved in the PX plant, with a total capacity of 15 million 300 thousand tons. In April 14, 2017, Dalian Hengli 20 million ton / year refining and chemical integration project was put into operation in 2018 December.

In addition, Zhejiang Petrochemical's 4 million ton / year PX plant will also be put into operation in early 2019, and Jiangsu Sheng Hong's progress is slow. It is expected to be put into operation in the second half of 2019.

The 20 million tonne refining and chemical integration project of Guangdong petrochemical, a total investment of 65 billion 400 million yuan, was held on December 5th in Jieyang, Guangdong, marking the start of the world's integrated refining and chemical integration project.

It is understood that the project is the largest investment in PetroChina's one-time refining and chemical integration projects, but also the key construction projects in Guangdong province.

The project is located in the Jieyang Nanhai International Petrochemical Industrial Zone, Guangdong, covering 953 hectares, with a total investment of 65 billion 400 million yuan. The construction scale is 20 million tons / year oil refining, 2 million 600 thousand tons / year aromatics, 1 million 200 thousand tons / year ethylene, 41 sets of processing facilities, and the processing of raw materials with "six high" characteristics of Venezuelan super heavy crude oil and Middle East crude oil.

So far, Sinopec has three major refineries in Maoming, Guangdong petrochemical, Guangzhou petrochemical and Zhanjiang Dongxing. In 2019, the Sinopec's crude oil processing capacity in Guangdong will reach 48 million tons / year after the completion of the project, the largest joint venture chemical project in China.

And the last barrel of oil? China CNOOC is starting to stir up in Guangdong.

It is reported that CNOOC is actively preparing for the three phase of the project after the commissioning of the two phase of the Huizhou project this year, and plans to invest $one billion to create a world-class integrated base for refining and chemical industry in Dayawan.

According to the reporter, in addition to the wave of chemical construction in Guangdong Province, other provinces are also speeding up the construction of petrochemical base. Its large background stems from the plan of petrochemical industry planning and layout formulated by the national development and Reform Commission in 2015.

The plan proposes that it will promote the development of the petrochemical industry and build 7 world-class Petrochemical bases in Shanghai, such as Caojing, Zhejiang Ningbo, Guangdong Huizhou, Fujian Gure, Dalian Changxing Island, Hebei Caofeidian and Jiangsu Hebei.

"By 2025, the refining capacity of the 7 major petrochemical bases will account for 40% of the total capacity of the country," the plan said.

Combing data, in the 7 refinery base projects, Zhejiang Petrochemical 40 million tons / year refining scale, more than the current largest U.S. refinery Motiva, refining 30 million 150 thousand tons / year.

China is the largest chemical market in the world, and that is why foreign giants are attracted to it.

Reporters interviewed learned that in the refining sector, in addition to the domestic three barrels of oil strong gunpowder flavor, foreign oil giants also put Guangzhou into the bag.

Among them, the German BASF group will build a fine chemical integration base in Zhanjiang, Guangdong, with an estimated total investment of US $10 billion.

It is reported that the base will be the largest foreign investment project to date by Basf Inc.

Exxon Mobil Corp also announced that it will invest 10 billion US dollars to build a large single proprietorship project in Guangdong.

With the opening of the right to import crude oil in China, the PX production of large refining projects will have significant cost advantages.

From the perspective of refining and chemical integration, the process of preparing PX from crude oil involves crude naphtha -BTX (petroleum aromatics BTX, benzene, toluene, xylene) -MX (mixed xylene) -PX.

The longer the process, the higher the integration degree and the lower the processing cost.

However, in practical installations, many devices do not start directly from crude oil, but are produced by PX as a raw material in the middle.

The shortest process is the PX produced by MX, but the number of MX can be purchased is less, and it is seldom applied.

At present, PX is commonly used by naphtha.

Generally, the device for preparing PX from naphtha has also become an aromatics unit.

Compared with MX, PX has more continuous reforming unit and toluene disproportionation device.

Further upstream, including fuel oil to make PX, through vacuum distillation and hydrocracking two steps, first convert fuel oil into naphtha.

Since 2018, the domestic spot price of PX is about 7000-8000 yuan / ton (including tax). Taking into account the production cost of crude oil starting from the crude oil, the production cost of PX is about 140 US dollars / ton. We use the "crude oil price +140" * exchange rate to calculate the price of refining and chemical integration under the cost plus pricing mode. The PX price is about 4000 yuan / ton, which is significantly lower than the PX price of the current market pricing. This also means that the integration of refining and chemical industry will help to expand the profit of the downstream PTA-PET- polyester filament industry.

The domestic non refining and chemical integration project has the same new capacity of PX, especially the two phase projects, such as Sinopec, Hainan refining and chemical industry, etc., with the Hengli Petrochemical Company of Dalian running smoothly, other PX projects are also in full swing, and the competition among enterprises is becoming more intense.

The following is the next Asian PX new capacity launch schedule.

In 2019, there were 8 New Asian PX installations, excluding the uncertain factors such as postponement and so on. It is expected that 5-6 new units will be put into operation, including Zhejiang petrochemical and Hengyi Brunei in the 1 quarter. The total supply of PX will increase significantly next year, and the import volume will be significantly reduced. The export giants of Japan and South Korea, such as Japan, will probably make profits to sell and compete with domestic enterprises. 18 years later, a sharp surge of PX has appeared in the late July of 18, and PX profits have hit a new high in recent years.

Therefore, in 2019, with the gradual increase of domestic PX self-sufficiency rate, PX prices and profits will be suppressed, and Japan and South Korea hype capacity will also weaken, and pricing power will gradually shift to China's domestic market.