Although a large number of 10 million tons of petrochemical enterprises such as Yunnan Petrochemical, Hengli Petrochemical and Zhejiang Petrochemical have been put into production one after another, the competition in the petrochemical products market may be white-hot, but it is affected by the accelerated growth of China's energy consumption, better-than-expected import and export, and continuous optimization and upgrading of the economic structure. The petrochemical industry showed a rapid growth in efficiency and a resurgence in investment. Although the petrochemical industry is in danger in the future, it has benefited from the bottoming out of the main profit and the focus of the profit center. In 2018, the investment in chemical raw materials and chemical products is turning from negative to positive, increasing by 6.0%. Recently, at the economic operation conference of the petrochemical industry in 2019, Fu Xiangsheng, vice president of the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Federation, said that the petrochemical industry is improving and the prospects are promising.

Zhu Yu, director of the Information and Marketing Department of the Petrochemical Federation, pointed out that in recent years, China's petroleum and chemical markets have fluctuated greatly and differentiated, but the overall outlook is still good, prices have kept rising, supply and demand growth structure has improved, and industry benefits have been high, 2018 It shows the characteristics of steady growth in market demand, bottoming out of main profit, end-of-profit profit margin, and industry investment re-emergence. However, the current economic operation of the industry still faces complicated external environment, violent market turmoil, weak demand growth, and insufficient investment momentum. And challenges. The report pointed out that in 2019, the world economy still faces great uncertainty, with downward pressure and growth may slow down. China's petroleum and chemical market faces great challenges, especially in the first half of the year, the contradiction between supply and demand in some markets has intensified, and prices may fluctuate at low levels. It is estimated that the total price of oil and natural gas mining industry will fall by about 10% for the whole year, and the total price of chemical industry will fall by about 3%.

There is change in stability, there is a worry in the "double growth" behind the dangers

In 2018, the petrochemical industry achieved a “double growth” in the main revenue and total profit. The overall situation continued to be stable and steady, but in-depth and detailed analysis, there are also some worrying aspects in the future healthy and sustainable development of the whole industry.

In addition to the continued increase in downward pressure, market competition is becoming increasingly fierce. Affected by the continuous rise in prices of petrochemical products in the past two years, (in 2017, the total oil and gas prices rose by 8%, chemical products rose by 3.5%, oil and gas increased by 26.3% in 2018, and chemical products rose by 6.8% year-on-year). For example, refining and chemical integration equipment, following the commissioning of PetroChina Yunnan Petrochemical (13 million tons/year) and CNOOC Huizhou Phase II (10 million tons/year) in 2017, Dalian Hengli Phase I (20 million tons/year) On December 15, 2018, Zhejiang Petrochemical Phase I (20 million tons/year) will be put into operation in the first half of this year. These new refining and chemical integration devices have been put into production one after another. The products with high dependence on olefins and aromatics can partially meet the domestic market; however, the domestic market for refined oil products has become saturated, especially the apparent consumption of diesel has dropped again. %; Another factor that will become more competitive in the domestic market is that the refining industry has obtained 200 million tons of crude oil in 2019, and the product structure of the refining equipment is mainly refined oil. There are also some impulses to expand the production of traditional basic chemicals, and the scale of construction and proposed construction of some new materials such as PC is even more amazing.

In general, external factors such as safety production, strict environmental protection, trade friction, crude oil price, green development, and supply reform highlight the shortcomings of the industry, shortage of energy resources, low-end homogeneity of products, insufficient investment in environmental protection, and adjustment of production capacity. Become a concern that affects the development of the industry. It is worth noting that the chemical sector, which has been the future direction of the industry, is even more worried. The price of chemical products fluctuated greatly. The price decline in November last year was more obvious. In the case of the decrease in the main income of the chemical sector, the number of enterprises and the benefits of the regulations changed even more. The number of enterprises on the regulations decreased by 1,381, and the total profit was higher than that of the previous year. The decrease was 10.44 billion yuan, and the profit growth rate dropped from 40.2% in the previous year to 16.3%. The proportion of total profit to the whole industry dropped from 71.5% in the previous year to 60%. After the fourth quarter of last year, investment in chemical raw materials and chemical products manufacturing continued to grow, but the growth rate in the whole year of 2018 was only 6.0%, still lower than the average increase of 6.5% in national industrial investment.

Although the petrochemical industry is also facing many uncertainties such as Sino-US economic and trade frictions, downward pressure on the global economy, and fluctuations in international crude oil prices, Zhejiang Petrochemical is still in the second phase of the project and plans for the third phase of projects, such as BASF and ExxonMobil. Increase investment in China, especially these companies with technology-sponsored layout of large southern projects against the trend of deep participation in the chemical business, the future of chemical products market competition is fierce.

The pillar role of the petrochemical industry highlights the backbone enterprises into stabilizer ballast stones

As a pillar industry of the national economy, the petrochemical industry not only plays an important role in the bumper harvest of agriculture, but also provides important guarantees for high-end manufacturing and strategic emerging industries such as automobile high-speed rail, information and energy, aerospace and defense, and military industry. Making important contributions, the proportion of the total industrial economy in 2018 increased again. The main income increased from 11.8% in the previous year to 12.1%, and the total profit increased from 11.3% in the previous year to 12.7%. The status and importance of the petrochemical industry. Sex is more prominent. At the analysis of the economic operations of the six major enterprise groups held at the end of last year, six major groups including PetroChina, Sinopec, CNOOC and Sinochem Group had good production and sales and economic operations in 2018, and crude oil and natural gas production accounted for almost all of them. 100%, crude oil processing volume accounts for about 80%, main income accounts for about 60% of the whole industry, and total profit accounts for about 40% of the whole industry. In recent years, large-scale key enterprise groups have continuously promoted by building world-class enterprises with global competitiveness. On the supply side structural reform, its leading industries have become more prominent, its core competitiveness has been continuously enhanced, and the role of stabilizers and ballast stones in the development of the industry has become more and more obvious; Yantai Wanhua, Jinzhengda, Huafeng, Fuhua and other innovation capabilities Strong enterprises, the leading role of the industry and the global competitiveness of leading products are increasing; Rongsheng, Hengli, Shenghong and other companies with strong market competitiveness are carrying out new mechanisms and years of experience in the market. Stride into the petrochemical sector and make important contributions to the scale effect of the Chinese petrochemical industry, the extension of the industrial chain and the overall competitivenessEspecially after the private economic symposium in the previous period, the effect of tax reduction and fee reduction will appear in this year. The vitality and development potential of the private economy will be released in a concentrated manner, which will inject new vitality into the high-quality development of the petrochemical industry.

Petrochemical industry structure optimization and upgrading new technology has a huge market potential

The structural contradiction of the “low-end overcapacity and high-end supply shortage” in the petrochemical industry has not been fundamentally reversed. High-end polyolefins, special resins, special engineering plastics, high-end membrane materials and other new chemical materials, functional materials, medical chemical materials, high-end electronic chemicals. Special chemicals such as special chemicals and catalysts for petrochemical processes, special additives (additives), etc., the domestic market has been in short supply for a long time, and some even rely heavily on imports. These are the transformation and upgrading of petrochemical industry and structural optimization. The real market demand is also the opportunity for the future high quality development of the petrochemical industry.

The Party Central Committee and the State Council attach great importance to the high-quality development of the petrochemical industry. In recent years, General Secretary Xi Jinping inspected Qinghai Salt Lake, Ningxia Coal-to-Oil, Daqing Petrochemical, Hubei Xingfa, Yantai Wanhua, Liaoyang Petrochemical, etc. Premier Li Keqiang at the State Council executive meeting Special emphasis: The petrochemical industry is an important pillar industry of the national economy. In view of the outstanding problems of the current high-end petrochemical industry lags behind and some products rely too much on imports, it is necessary to strengthen overall planning, scientific argumentation, and rational distribution, and promote the petrochemical industry to accelerate transformation, upgrading and enhancement. Domestic support capacity. Multinational companies such as BASF and Exxon Mobil continue to increase their investment in China, which proves that the importance of the Sinopec market and the prospects for future development opportunities are promising.

Under the background of the intensive production of 10 million tons of large-scale projects and the pursuit of alternative oil in the transportation sector, how to solve the problem of overcapacity in oil products? Fu Xiangsheng told reporters that ExxonMobil's technology for direct production of olefins from crude oil and gasoline has been established in Southeast Asia. Although it is small, it may soon be transferred to China's wholly-owned Guangdong project. From this point of view, in the future, innovations and breakthroughs driven by the impact of some key factors from inside and outside may lead the world petrochemical industry to usher in a revolution. Especially with the introduction of some disruptive new technologies, a technological change in the petrochemical process area that goes straight to refining and directing to the chemical industry may be coming. By then, the Chinese market will dominate the global petrochemical market. (Reporter Wang Qiaoran)