At the 2019 Petrochemical Industry Development Conference held on April 10. the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Federation (CPCIF) released the 2019 Annual Capacity Alert Report on Key Chemical Products.

According to the Report, in 2018. China's oil production, natural gas production, and crude oil processing volume ranked seventh, seventh, and second in the world, respectively, and the output of inorganic raw materials, ethylene, methanol, fertilizers, pesticides, and synthetic rubber ranked steadily among the world's top. The average capacity utilization rate of the 30 major petrochemical products monitored by the Petrochemical Federation was 76.4%, nearly 3 percentage points higher than the previous year. In addition to polycarbonate, caprolactam, PX, PTA and other products capacity utilization rate fluctuations slightly larger, the capacity utilization rate of other basic chemical products basically remained stable, olefins, PX, polyethylene, polypropylene and so on continue to maintain a high load operation, the domestic supply security continued to improve.

The Report expects that in the next few years, with the rapid rise of large coastal petrochemical bases, modern coal chemical projects to accelerate the upgrading of demonstration, a large number of large-scale refining and chemical integration, modern coal chemical projects put into operation, refined oil products, olefins, aromatics, ethylene glycol, polycarbonate, etc., a substantial increase in the domestic production capacity, the domestic petrochemical industry and the market demand and supply pattern will be a significant change.

In general, in the next few years, oil refining, olefins, aromatics, glycols, polycarbonate and other products will usher in the peak of production expansion, especially during the “14th Five-Year Plan” period, a large number of new production capacity will be focused on the release of olefins, aromatics, glycols, polycarbonate and other domestic production to meet the market demand, the domestic market of refined petroleum products, competition is fierce. Chlor-alkali, soda ash, fertilizer, acetic acid, synthetic rubber and other products continue to maintain stable production capacity or a slight decrease, with the conversion or withdrawal of some enterprises, the industry's concentration continues to increase, in addition to project support, the slow pace of expansion of new capacity.

Sun Weishan, vice president of the Petrochemical Federation, pointed out that the future of the industry should focus on the primary processing capacity of crude oil, paraxylene, propylene oxide, acrylonitrile, polyethylene, polypropylene, polyethylene, polymethyl methacrylate, polycarbonate, caprolactam, PTA, TDI and other products, it is recommended that some of the products in the planning and construction stage of the project, the need to do a good job in the downstream market research. At the same time, we should attach great importance to the industry's operational safety and environmental protection issues, as well as green sustainable and high-quality development issues, and further enhance the level of international cooperation in the industry.