2019-2021 China Eliminated Methanol Capacity Analysis
In recent years, China’s methanol capacity has maintained steady growth, but continuously slipping prices have resulted in profit losses at some methanol producers. Consequently, the enthusiasm in newly added methanol unit construction and operation has been dampened since 2020. At the same time, some methanol units were phased out. Here SCI unscrambles the eliminated methanol units in the past three years from the perspectives of feedstock, region and capacity to find out the changes in China’s methanol supply structure.
From 2019 to H1, 2021, the capacity of eliminated methanol units totaled 4,360kt/a in China, including 1,270kt/a in 2019, 2,040kt/a in 2020 and 1,050kt/a in H1, 2021. In the future, there is still a possibility that more methanol capacity will be weeded out.
In terms of feedstock, the capacity of obsolete coke oven gas-based methanol units took up 49% of the total, and that of coal-based methanol units was 43%. Only a few natural gas-based methanol units were removed. In terms of region, most eliminated capacity was located in East China, with the proportion of 35% of the total. Most coke oven gas-based methanol plants are traditional coal chemical ones and concentrated in Shanxi, Shandong and Hebei. From H2, 2017, the quit of some 4.3m coke ovens was accelerated in the wake of stricter inspections on environmental protection and production safety, especially in Shanxi and Shandong. This also explained why the proportion of eliminated capacity was high in East China and North China. With the methanol supply decreasing further in East China, local dependence on external resources strengthened.
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