Affected by this week’s OPEC+ meeting, which is expected to increase production by 1.6 million barrels per day from April, crude oil prices have plummeted. Today, all polyester chain varieties on the futures market are on the street. Among them, ethylene glycol fell by more than 6% after reaching a new high. Staple fiber fell below 8,000 yuan/ton for three consecutive days, falling nearly 4% during the day. PTA even closed the limit, and finally closed at 4,574 yuan/ton.
Zheshang Futures analyst Zhu Lihang told the Futures Daily reporter in an interview that the decline in PTA prices stemmed from two aspects. On the one hand, the OPEC meeting is about to be held on Thursday. Under the expectation of increasing production, international crude oil prices have Adjustments in the past few days; on the other hand, the supply and demand expectations of PX upstream of PTA have changed. The previous expectation of continuous destocking has supported the strong rise in PX prices. The processing fee has strengthened to a high of 288 US dollars/ton, high inventory and the recent domestic PX Affected by the rebound in construction, PX processing fees have also begun to adjust in the past two days, and the cost side of PTA has weakened, driving PTA prices downward.
“From a fundamental perspective, PTA supply and demand improved in the short term in March. Equipment maintenance increased under low profits. At the same time, the overall support for the downstream polyester segment is strong. The peak demand season in the later period will still support prices. Dadi Futures analyst Jiang Shuopeng said that overall, the short-term cost decline has caused the center of gravity of PTA prices to shift downward, while the short-term improvement in supply and demand still supports prices. In the long term, the pressure on prices from high inventory and high production needs to be considered. At present, PTA is still mainly cost-oriented, and the subsequent trend will still follow the fluctuations of crude oil prices.
Ethylene glycol, also a polyester raw material, has also shown a large adjustment range recently. The main reason is that the supply and demand situation has changed. “Previously, it was estimated that domestic construction started low and imports were low, and ethylene glycol may continue to be destocked before May. With the increase in ethylene glycol prices, ethylene glycol profits have surged, and EO profits have increased with the increase. Seasonality has weakened, and both oil production and coal quality production have shown a sharp upward trend. In addition, new units such as Satellite Petrochemical and Shaanxi Weihe Binzhou Chemical have test runs planned in March, and the pressure on the domestic supply side may increase significantly in the later period.”
In this regard, Jiang Shuopeng believes that the recent sharp decline in crude oil has weakened the support for ethylene glycol prices, but the current supply and demand pattern of ethylene glycol is still good, and price fluctuations are expected to remain large in the future. “The current port inventory is at a low level during the year and will still be destocked in the next two months. It is expected that import volume will be difficult to recover from March to April. The logic of near-end destocking and long-term high production is relatively clear, and there are still strong and weak expectations for ethylene glycol as a whole. situation.”</p
