Since the beginning of the year, the spot price of methanol has risen first and then fallen. Among them, the prices in eastern and southern China are similar to those in the beginning of the year. Although prices in Shaanxi, Inner Mongolia, Henan and Hebei declined in late March, they increased by about 200 yuan/ton compared with the beginning of the year. Investigate its reason, the mainland enters the spring maintenance period, many enterprises centralized maintenance leads to the reduction of supply, the price of the mainland is easy to rise and difficult to fall, while East and South China are affected by both domestic and foreign markets, the increase of import to port, the entry of foreign equipment into the maintenance period, the continued increase of port inventory and the non-sustainability of depot drainage are the factors in turn. The prices of East and South China are in the same order. After the rebound, there was a more obvious drop. In the future, methanol prices are expected to show an inverted V-shaped trend.

Maintenance landing and demand recovery

At the end of March and the beginning of April, the Mainland manufacturers such as Inner Mongolia and Shaanxi came to the ground for spring overhaul. The market was in a state of supply reduction, and the willingness of the Mainland manufacturers to bid rose. However, due to the relatively high inventory level of Northwest manufacturers in March and the obvious price increase since the beginning of the year, it is expected that under the stimulation of the new round of maintenance, the price increase will be limited, or less than the increase since the end of the year. Compared with East China, Mainland prices are more resilient.

On the demand side, starting in mid-late March, offshore olefin enterprises such as Shenghong in Jiangsu, Xingxing in Zhejiang and Huisheng in Nanjing all restored to normal levels, which accelerated the procurement of methanol and the actual consumption of coastal stocks. In addition, the safety inspection of formaldehyde and other downstream areas may affect the procurement demand in the short term, but in the medium and long term, the impact is not significant, and the traditional demand still plays a leading role in methanol consumption.

Slow Deposit Speed in Port

Up to now, the total inventory of methanol in eastern and southern ports of China is 10.971 million tons, which is at an absolute high level in the past five years. According to Zhuo Chuang’s statistics, after the depot was discharged on March 21, the total stock of the port dropped again by a small margin of 0.74 million tons on March 28.

Iran’s 3 methanol plants with 5.6 million tons per year failed to restart in March. In addition, South America has always been an important source of methanol imports in China. In the competition between the United States and Russia, the United States sanctions against Venezuela in South America led to the blockage of cargo shipments in the region. The above factors will cause the decrease of methanol import in April.

Nevertheless, the continuity of depot disposal is doubtful, and the absolute high level of inventory leads to the weakening of market mentality. From the point of view of port stocks of other liquid chemicals, it is also at an absolute high level in the past six years. Therefore, the overall price of liquid chemicals including methanol is under pressure. Price rebound is only a short time before demand continues to grow.

By the end of April 2, methanol futures hedging was net hedging, with a holding capacity of 72770 tons. The net hedging volume of methanol September contract increased, and the seller’s hedging position was obvious. It can be seen from this that the seller’s hedging is in the main position. This situation occurred in January when the base spread continued to weaken, and there was no risk arbitrage space in part of the time, which made some manufacturers and traders participate in the base trade, lock in a large number of spot arbitrage positions, resulting in some inventory consolidation. Stocks locked in futures arbitrage are gradually released on the May contract of methanol futures, and the market will be impacted by the withdrawal of futures arbitrage or the start of delivery.

On the whole, the methanol disk is in a wide oscillation period for the time being, and the trend market needs the cooperation of key issues