Difficult to see improvement in demand for methanol will still fall

Methanol** recently chose to go down. Regardless of the impact from the demand side or the external market, the methanol market outlook is not optimistic.

European debt crisis is resurgent Spain and Greece are even worse. Spain's 10-year and 5-year Treasuries have all broken through 7%. Spain has actually lost its ability to rely on international aid. Obviously this can only be solved by the Nordic countries such as Germany. Moody's has therefore lowered its rating outlook for Germany.

At the same time, the “troika” began to investigate the terms of assistance for Greece. If Greece cannot meet the requirements of the “troika”, the possibility of Greece’s exit from the euro zone will further increase. This will be a huge pressure on the European and global markets. Global stock and commodity markets crashed sharply.

The supply continued to loosen, and the demand still did not improve. The output of domestic methanol companies remained high. In June, the output was 2.235 million tons, a year-on-year increase of 15.94%; from January to June, the cumulative output was 13.112 million tons, a year-on-year increase of 17.27%. With the recent resumption of the total annual production capacity of 3.11 million tons of methanol, such as the expansion of Yankuang Yulin Energy, Inner Mongolia Jiutai, Henan Zhongyuan Dahua Plant, and Shanghai Coking Chemical Co., Ltd., where the innocent new plant is put into operation, the pressure on the market is high.

The recovery of downstream demand has not yet seen the dawn. From the market situation, methanol demand is still sluggish. The State Council decided to send eight inspection teams from late July to launch a special investigation into the implementation of the State Council’s real estate market regulation and control measures in 16 provinces (cities). From this point of view, real estate control policies will not be the slightest relaxation, the real estate transaction continues to increase the difficulty of a substantial increase, thereby inhibiting the consumption of formaldehyde. In terms of acetic acid, the operating rate of acetate downstream acetate units and vinyl acetate units continued to be low, and the enthusiasm for acetic acid procurement was not strong. The acetic acid companies started to reduce their production. Production from 398,100 tons in February continued to fall to 329,000 tons in June. It is expected that the output in July will also be Staying low, there is insufficient demand for methanol. In addition, the import and export data is not optimistic. In June, the import volume of acetic acid in China was 6.46 tons, which was 8.36 tons less than in May. The export volume was 123,800 tons, which was an increase of 86,900 tons from May. On the whole, there is no change in the status of downstream demand.

The port price still has room to reduce. Affected by the decrease in China's demand, from January to June 2012, the country's methanol imports amounted to 2,471,600 tons, a year-on-year decrease of 13.69%, of which the chain's decline in June was significantly larger than that of the previous month, which was a decrease of 36.5%. The decrease in China’s demand has exerted greater pressure on the import prices of ports. Since mid-July, methanol spotting tanks in East China have been in a downward trend. The current average price is 2,805 yuan/ton, down by 25 yuan/ton. Recently, Iran's transportation situation has improved. In July, Iran's shipment of goods was about 200,000 tons. If the future methanol imports rebound, there will still be room for port prices to fall. As the benchmark of methanol delivery, the weakening of the spot price of methanol will drive down the price of **.

From the technical analysis point of view, the price of methanol ** also has a tendency to decline, from the MACD indicator, DIFF in the zero axis downlink DEA, the bar from red to green, and there is an expanding trend. It is expected that the methanol market will continue to fall further.