rongsheng petrochemical refinery quotation

SINGAPORE, Oct 14 (Reuters) - Rongsheng Petrochemical, the trading arm of Chinese private refiner Zhejiang Petrochemical, has bought at least 5 million barrels of crude for delivery in December and January next year in preparation for starting a new crude unit by year-end, five trade sources said on Wednesday.

Rongsheng bought at least 3.5 million barrels of Upper Zakum crude from the United Arab Emirates and 1.5 million barrels of al-Shaheen crude from Qatar via a tender that closed on Tuesday, the sources said.

Rongsheng’s purchase helped absorbed some of the unsold supplies from last month as the company did not purchase any spot crude in past two months, the sources said.

Zhejiang Petrochemical plans to start trial runs at one of two new crude distillation units (CDUs) in the second phase of its refinery-petrochemical complex in east China’s Zhoushan by the end of this year, a company official told Reuters. Each CDU has a capacity of 200,000 barrels per day (bpd).

Zhejiang Petrochemical started up the first phase of its complex which includes a 400,000-bpd refinery and a 1.2 million tonne-per-year ethylene plant at the end of 2019. (Reporting by Florence Tan and Chen Aizhu, editing by Louise Heavens and Christian Schmollinger)

In a move to encourage higher refinery production to help a struggling economy, authorities earlier this month issued a small portion of the first-batch crude oil import quotas for 2023, months ahead of the usual timeline.

Privately owned unaffiliated refineries, known as “teapots,”[3] mainly clustered in Shandong province, have been at the center of Beijing’s longtime struggle to rein in surplus refining capacity and, more recently, to cut carbon emissions. A year ago, Beijing launched its latest attempt to shutter outdated and inefficient teapots — an effort that coincides with the emergence of a new generation of independent players that are building and operating fully integrated mega-petrochemical complexes.[4]

2021 marked the start of the central government’s latest effort to consolidate and tighten supervision over the refining sector and to cap China’s overall refining capacity.[14] Besides imposing a hefty tax on imports of blending fuels, Beijing has instituted stricter tax and environmental enforcement[15] measures including: performing refinery audits and inspections;[16] conducting investigations of alleged irregular activities such as tax evasion and illegal resale of crude oil imports;[17] and imposing tighter quotas for oil product exports as China’s decarbonization efforts advance.[18]

The politics surrounding this new class of greenfield mega-refineries is important, as is their geographical distribution. Beijing’s reform strategy is focused on reducing the country’s petrochemical imports and growing its high value-added chemical business while capping crude processing capacity. The push by Beijing in this direction has been conducive to the development of privately-led mega refining and petrochemical projects, which local officials have welcomed and staunchly supported.[20]

Yet, of the three most recent major additions to China’s greenfield refinery landscape, none are in Shandong province, home to a little over half the country’s independent refining capacity. Hengli’s Changxing integrated petrochemical complex is situated in Liaoning, Zhejiang’s (ZPC) Zhoushan facility in Zhejiang, and Shenghong’s Lianyungang plant in Jiangsu.[21]

As China’s independent oil refining hub, Shandong is the bellwether for the rationalization of the country’s refinery sector. Over the years, Shandong’s teapots benefited from favorable policies such as access to cheap land and support from a local government that grew reliant on the industry for jobs and contributions to economic growth.[22] For this reason, Shandong officials had resisted strictly implementing Beijing’s directives to cull teapot refiners and turned a blind eye to practices that ensured their survival.

But with the start-up of advanced liquids-to-chemicals complexes in neighboring provinces, Shandong’s competitiveness has diminished.[23] And with pressure mounting to find new drivers for the provincial economy, Shandong officials have put in play a plan aimed at shuttering smaller capacity plants and thus clearing the way for a large-scale private sector-led refining and petrochemical complex on Yulong Island, whose construction is well underway.[24] They have also been developing compensation and worker relocation packages to cushion the impact of planned plant closures, while obtaining letters of guarantee from independent refiners pledging that they will neither resell their crude import quotas nor try to purchase such allocations.[25]

To be sure, the number of Shandong’s independent refiners is shrinking and their composition within the province and across the country is changing — with some smaller-scale units facing closure and others (e.g., Shandong Haike Group, Shandong Shouguang Luqing Petrochemical Corp, and Shandong Chambroad Group) pursuing efforts to diversify their sources of revenue by moving up the value chain. But make no mistake: China’s teapots still account for a third of China’s total refining capacity and a fifth of the country’s crude oil imports. They continue to employ creative defensive measures in the face of government and market pressures, have partnered with state-owned companies, and are deeply integrated with crucial industries downstream.[26] They are consummate survivors in a key sector that continues to evolve — and they remain too important to be driven out of the domestic market or allowed to fail.

In 2016, during the period of frenzied post-licensing crude oil importing by Chinese independents, Saudi Arabia began targeting teapots on the spot market, as did Kuwait. Iran also joined the fray, with the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) operating through an independent trader Trafigura to sell cargoes to Chinese independents.[27] Since then, the coming online of major new greenfield refineries such as Rongsheng ZPC and Hengli Changxing, and Shenghong, which are designed to operate using medium-sour crude, have led Middle East producers to pursue long-term supply contracts with private Chinese refiners. In 2021, the combined share of crude shipments from Saudi Arabia, UAE, Oman, and Kuwait to China’s independent refiners accounted for 32.5%, an increase of more than 8% over the previous year.[28] This is a trend that Beijing seems intent on supporting, as some bigger, more sophisticated private refiners whose business strategy aligns with President Xi’s vision have started to receive tax benefits or permissions to import larger volumes of crude directly from major producers such as Saudi Arabia.[29]

The shift in Saudi Aramco’s market strategy to focus on customer diversification has paid off in the form of valuable supply relationships with Chinese independents. And Aramco’s efforts to expand its presence in the Chinese refining market and lock in demand have dovetailed neatly with the development of China’s new greenfield refineries.[30] Over the past several years, Aramco has collaborated with both state-owned and independent refiners to develop integrated liquids-to-chemicals complexes in China. In 2018, following on the heels of an oil supply agreement, Aramco purchased a 9% stake in ZPC’s Zhoushan integrated refinery. In March of this year, Saudi Aramco and its joint venture partners, NORINCO Group and Panjin Sincen, made a final investment decision (FID) to develop a major liquids-to-chemicals facility in northeast China.[31] Also in March, Aramco and state-owned Sinopec agreed to conduct a feasibility study aimed at assessing capacity expansion of the Fujian Refining and Petrochemical Co. Ltd.’s integrated refining and chemical production complex.[32]

Commenting on the rationale for these undertakings, Mohammed Al Qahtani, Aramco’s Senior Vice-President of Downstream, stated: “China is a cornerstone of our downstream expansion strategy in Asia and an increasingly significant driver of global chemical demand.”[33] But what Al Qahtani did notsay is that the ties forged between Aramco and Chinese leading teapots (e.g., Shandong Chambroad Petrochemicals) and new liquids-to-chemicals complexes have been instrumental in Saudi Arabia regaining its position as China’s top crude oil supplier in the battle for market share with Russia.[34] Just a few short years ago, independents’ crude purchases had helped Russia gain market share at the expense of Saudi Arabia, accelerating the two exporters’ diverging fortunes in China. In fact, between 2010 and 2015, independent refiners’ imports of Eastern Siberia Pacific Ocean (ESPO) blend accounted for 92% of the growth in Russian crude deliveries to China.[35] But since then, China’s new generation of independents have played a significant role in Saudi Arabia clawing back market share and, with Beijing’s assent, have fortified their supply relationship with the Kingdom.

Vertical integration along the value chain has become a global trend in the petrochemical industry, specifically in refining and chemical operations. China’s drive to self-sufficiency in chemicals is a key factor powering this worldwide trend.[42] And it is the emergent “second generation” of independent refiners that it is helping make China the frontrunner in developing massive liquids-to-chemicals complexes. Following Beijing’s lead, Shandong officials appear determined to follow this trend rather than risk being left in its wake.

As Chinese private refiners’ number, size, and level of sophistication has changed, so too have their roles not just in the domestic petroleum market but in their relations with Middle East suppliers. Beijing’s import licensing and quota policies have enabled some teapot refiners to maintain profitability and others to thrive by sourcing crude oil from the Middle East. For their part, Gulf producers have found Chinese teapots to be valuable customers in the spot market in the battle for market share and, especially in the case of Aramco, in the effort to capture the growth of the Chinese domestic petrochemicals market as it expands.

RONGSHENG PETROCHEMICAL CO., LTD. is a China-based company principally engaged in the research, development, manufacture and distribution of chemicals and chemical fibers. The Company’s main products include aromatics, phosphotungstic acid (PTA), polyethylene terephthalate (PET) chips, terylene pre-oriented yarns (POYs), terylene fully drawn yarns (FDYs) and terylene draw textured yarns (DTYs), among others. The Company distributes its products in domestic market and to...More

Miserable Chinese refinery margins will constrain runs among integrated refineries, incl major firms like Hengli & Rongsheng, whose profits fell by 90% y/y in Q3 22.expects low margins to persist into Q2 2023 -> cautious crude purchases.

China"s private refiner Zhejiang Petroleum & Chemical is set to start trial runs at its second 200,000 b/d crude distillation unit at the 400,000 b/d phase 2 refinery by the end of March, a source with close knowledge about the matter told S&P Global Platts March 9.

ZPC cracked 23 million mt of crude in 2020, according the the source. Platts data showed that the utilization rate of its phase 1 refinery hit as high as 130% in a few months last year.

Started construction in the second half of 2019, units of the Yuan 82.9 billion ($12.74 billion) phase 2 refinery almost mirror those in phase 1, which has two CDUs of 200,000 b/d each. But phase 1 has one 1.4 million mt/year ethylene unit while phase 2 plans to double the capacity with two ethylene units.

With the entire phase 2 project online, ZPC expects to lift its combined petrochemicals product yield to 71% from 65% for the phase 1 refinery, according to the source.

"Petrochemical contributes most of the companies" profit with healthy demand growth while the stakeholders have feedstock demand for their textile plants too," the source said.

Zhejiang Petroleum, a joint venture between ZPC"s parent company Rongsheng Petrochemical and Zhejiang Energy Group, planned to build 700 gas stations in Zhejiang province by end-2022 as domestic retail outlets of ZPC.

Established in 2015, ZPC is a JV between textile companies Rongsheng Petrochemical, which owns 51%, Tongkun Group, at 20%, as well as chemicals company Juhua Group, also 20%. The rest 9% stake was reported to have transferred to Saudi Aramco from the Zhejiang provincial government. But there has been no update since the agreement was signed in October 2018.

State oil giant Saudi Aramco signed an agreement on Thursday to invest in a refinery-petrochemical project in eastern China, part of its strategy to expand in downstream operations globally.

The memorandum of understanding between the company and Zhejiang province included plans to invest in a new refinery and co-operate in crude oil supply, storage and trading, according to details released by the Zhoushan government after a signing ceremony in the city south of Shanghai.

Zhejiang Petrochemical, 51 percent owned by textile giant Zhejiang Rongsheng Holding Group, is building a 400,000-barrels-per-day refinery and associated petrochemical facilities that was expected to start operations by the end of this year.

This is the third such project in China that Saudi Aramco has set its sight on as it seeks to lock in long-term outlets for its crude oil and produce fuel and petrochemicals to meet rising demand in Asia and cushion the risk of a slowdown in oil consumption.

Aramco also owns part of the Fujian refinery-petrochemical plant with Sinopec and Exxon Mobil Corp, and has plans to build a 300,000-bpd refinery with China’s Norinco. It is also in talks with PetroChina to invest in a refinery in Yunnan.

Bloomberg quoted another industry executive as saying that the economic decline that gripped China earlier this year amid the lockdowns is now over and refining rates are on the rise. Gasoline consumption has also picked up and will lead the rebound in fuel demand, Chen Hongbing, deputy general manager at Rongsheng Petrochemical said at the industry event.

With demand for transport fuels set to tail off in the years ahead, a new breed of processing plants is sprouting up across the region. These integrated refineries convert oil into petrochemicals, the building blocks for everything from food packaging to car interiors, and produce less fuels like gasoline.

In China, the biggest of these is Rongsheng Petrochemical Co.’s plant on Zhoushan island, near Ningbo. The 800,000 barrel-a-day operation opened in 2019 and will reach full capacity before year-end. An Indian Oil Corp.-led group is planning a gigantic 1.2 million barrels a day oil-to-chemicals complex on the country’s west coast. Saudi Aramco, as part of its strategy to invest downstream in Asia, has or plans to take a stake in both projects.

All told, more than half of the refining capacity that comes on stream from 2019 to 2027 will be added in Asia and around 70% to 80% of this will be plastics-focused, according to industry consultant Wood Mackenzie Ltd. Petrochemicals will account for more than a third of global oil demand growth to 2030 and nearly half through 2050, the International Energy Agency predicts.

“It doesn’t make sense now to operate a standalone refinery or a standalone petrochemicals plant for that matter," said Sushant Gupta, research director for Asia Pacific refining at WoodMac. Smaller facilities will find the new environment challenging, while there’s also a risk of over-capacity, he said.

The big new projects combined with low oil prices will potentially lead to refinery closures in developed markets over 2021 and 2022, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said in a note last month. Some 1.2 million barrels a day of Chinese independent refining capacity will shut down over the next few years, while simpler plants in Japan and Australia will also be stressed, according to Gupta.

Consumer and government pressure to reduce the use of plastics that are choking the world’s oceans is a hard-to-quantify threat to demand for petrochemicals. Asia consumes about half the world’s plastic packaging, according to BloombergNEF, and imports even more waste for recycling from the U.S. and Europe.

IEA forecasts for petrochemicals demand are based on strong historical growth where plastics consumption has outstripped economic expansion, according to Christof H. Ruehl, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy. But even moderate assumptions on more recycling and lower consumption of single-use packaging could bring forward the agency’s peak oil demand forecast by about a decade, he said.

Adding another wrinkle to the industry’s transition to petrochemicals is the pandemic, which has left refiners worldwide struggling with weak margins and could stem the flow of downstream investment from the Middle East to Asia. Complex refining margins in Singapore are at 52 cents a barrel, compared with a five-year average of $4.18.

In addition to what Indian Oil is planning, Reliance Industries Ltd. has invested about $20 billion in recent years to double its petrochemicals production capacity and make refining more efficient. Chairman Mukesh Ambani told shareholders last month that the company had proprietary technology to convert gasoline and diesel into the building blocks to produce plastics.

Indian Oil is investing heavily in raising the petrochemicals intensity of its refineries, said Shrikant Madhav Vaidya, chairman of the state-owned refiner. “We are still way below the global average and there is a big scope of improvement and further addition of petrochemical capacities."

Plans for a joint Saudi Arabia-China refining and petrochemical complex to be built in northeast China that were shelved in 2020 are now being discussed again, according to sources close to the deal. The original deal for Saudi Aramco and China’s North Industries Group (Norinco) and Panjin Sincen Group to build the US$10 billion 300,000 barrels per day (bpd) integrated refining and petrochemical facility in Panjin city was signed in February 2019. However, in the aftermath of the enduring low prices and economic damage that hit Saudi Arabia as a result of the Second Oil Price War it instigated in the first half of 2020 against the U.S. shale oil threat, Aramco pulled out of the deal in August of that year.

The fact that this landmark refinery joint venture is back under serious consideration underlines the extremely significant shift in Saudi Arabia’s geopolitical alliances in the past few years – principally away from the U.S. and its allies and towards China and its allies. Up until the 2014-2016 Oil Price War, intended by Saudi Arabia to destroy the then-nascent U.S. shale oil sector, the foundation of U.S.-Saudi relations had been the deal struck on 14 February 1945 between the then-U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Saudi King Abdulaziz. In essence, but analyzed in-depth in my new book on the global oil markets, this was that the U.S. would receive all of the oil supplies it needed for as long as Saudi had oil in place, in return for which the U.S. would guarantee the security both of the ruling House of Saud and, by extension, of Saudi Arabia.

Between the end of the 2014-2016 Oil Price War and now, there have been multiple high-level visits back and forth between Saudi Arabia and China, beginning most notably with the trip of high-ranking politicians and financiers from China in August 2017 to Saudi Arabia, which featured a meeting between King Salman and Chinese Vice Premier, Zhang Gaoli, in Jeddah. During the visit, Saudi Arabia first mentioned seriously that it was willing to consider funding itself partly in Chinese yuan, raising the possibility of closer financial ties between the two countries. At these meetings, according to comments at the time from then-Saudi Energy Minister, Khalid al-Falih, it was also decided that Saudi Arabia and China would establish a US$20 billion investment fund on a 50:50 basis that would invest in sectors such as infrastructure, energy, mining, and materials, among other areas. The Jeddah meetings in August 2017 followed a landmark visit to China by Saudi Arabia’s King Salman in March of that year during which around US$65 billion of business deals were signed in sectors including oil refining, petrochemicals, light manufacturing, and electronics.

Later, the first discussions about the joint Saudi-China refining and petrochemical complex in China’s northeast began, with a bonus for Saudi Arabia being that Aramco was intended to supply up to 70 percent of the crude feedstock for the complex that was to have commenced operation in 2024. This, in turn, was part of a multiple-deal series that also included three preliminary agreements to invest in Zhejiang province in eastern China. The first agreement was signed to acquire a 9 percent stake in the greenfield Zhejiang Petrochemical project, the second was a crude oil supply deal signed with Rongsheng Petrochemical, Juhua Group, and Tongkun Group, and the third was with Zhejiang Energy to build a large-scale retail fuel network over five years in Zhejiang province.

China"s Rongsheng Petrochemical purchased a total of six VLCCs of crudes in its July-loading crude buy tender. All of the cargoes were Middle Eastern grades. The purchasing volume doubled from the company"s June procurements, or three VLCCs. Demand apparently recovered as refining volumes increased after an end of maintenance. The details such as volumes for each grade, and sellers were unknown but the company procured six grades - Oman, Abu Dhabi Murban, Das, Upper Zakum and Basrah Light and Basrah Medium.