China refiners curb fuel output after massive new plants stoke glut
China’s fuel producers are making extended curbs to their output in the third quarter after supply from mammoth new refineries stoked an already-sizeable glut, potentially dragging on crude oil demand from the world’s biggest importer of the commodity. Private refiner Hengli Petrochemical ramped up its 400,000-barrels per day (bpd) plant in northeast China to full capacity in May, while Zhejiang Petrochemical began trial runs around the same time at a similar-sized refinery on the east coast. In the wake of that wave of fresh supply and amid slowing local demand for fuels such as gasoline and diesel, refiners are cutting their crude processing, or throughput, industry sources and analysts said. That drop should sap their appetite for crude imports, pulling down on international oil prices that have already been hit by fears over a slowing global economy. The swollen surplus of fuel products could also send China’s fuel exports surging to new highs and further pinch Asian refining profits. “For markets that are already consumed with fears about a global recession…headline numbers of oil demand growth slowing alongside talk of run cuts seem to reinforce a bearish narrative,” said Michal Meidan, a London-based analyst at Energy Aspects. Small-scale refiners known as ‘teapots’, mainly located in Shandong province, are coming under most pressure to make fresh output cuts, analysts said, extending curbs many of them made in May and June. Teapots have been seen as a bellwether for China’s oil demand since 2015 when they became first-time crude oil importers. They now make up a fifth of the nation’s total crude imports. Dongming Petrochemical Group, the province’s largest independent refinery, is closing its 240,000-bpd plant this week for two months of maintenance in the wake of “poor margins”, according to a company source. That comes after plants were losing 300-350 yuan ($44-$51) on each tonne of crude oil they processed in June, their largest such loss in nearly four years, said Shi Linlin, an analyst at consultancy JLC, and analyst Wang Zhao at Sublime China Information, another consultancy in the province. Seven plants in Shandong – including Dongming – with total crude processing capacity of 470,000 bpd will be offline in July for overhauls, JLC estimates. That’s equivalent to a throughput cut of 14mn barrels of crude in July alone, or nearly 4% of the country’s processing levels in May. Meanwhile, two major coastal plants run by Sinopec Corp, Asia’s largest refiner, are planning to trim throughput by nearly 2%, or roughly 10,400 barrels per day, in July-September from the second quarter, plant sources said. That comes after these two plants were hit by refining losses in June for the first time this year. Sinopec did not respond to a request for comment. All refinery sources declined to be named as they were not authorised to speak to the media. The losses at small refiners come a month after behemoth Hengli cranked up operations at its plant in the northeastern port of Dalian. Hengli, traditionally a polyester maker, shipped its first gasoline cargo in early June. That was 80,000 tonnes sold to Sinopec at 5,300 yuan ($769.48) a tonne at an ex-plant rate, which is 700 yuan, or 12%, below prices offered by Shandong teapots, said two sources with direct knowledge of the transaction. The refiner in June placed a total of over 500,000 tonnes of gasoline at 300 to 500 yuan a tonne below market rates on average and sold a similar amount of off-specification diesel fuel with smaller discounts as its fuel quality has yet to stabilise, the sources said. “We were indeed marketing at promotional rates to build our customer base. But this is a temporary marketing strategy as we are new to the market,” said a Hengli spokesman, without elaborating. The Hengli and Zhejiang plants are together expected to account for about 6.4% of total Chinese crude oil throughput.
ZURICH – Finland’s central bank governor, Olli Rehn, has reiterated his call for the European Central Bank to conduct a long-overdue review of its policy framework. The upcoming change of leadership at the institution – with Christine Lagarde, the International Monetary Fund’s managing director since 2011, likely to succeed Mario Draghi as president – offers an important opportunity to heed that call.
When the ECB was established 20 years ago, central banks were generally not too clear about the details of their policy frameworks. At that time, some ambiguity may have been helpful, because of the flexibility it offered when the ECB started operating. Furthermore, it allowed central bankers with different experiences and perspectives to agree on a framework, even though they may not have agreed on its precise details.
But the world has changed considerably since then, and the public is now demanding far more clarity. How can the ECB offer that, 16 years after the last review of its monetary-policy framework?
Since that review, conducted in 2003, the global financial crisis, and the ensuing European debt crisis, prompted the ECB to adopt a plethora of new policy instruments. These crisis measures – which have been deeply unpopular, particularly in Germany – can be justified only to the extent that they have been effective, and this must be evaluated. Moreover, as Rehn, who sits on the ECB’s governing council, has noted, long-run structural trends – such as population aging, lower long-term interest rates, and climate change – must be considered.
The effectiveness of ECB policy requires the members of the governing council to be singing from the same song sheet. They need a shared understanding of Europe’s long-term goals and the strengths and weaknesses of various policy instruments. And, in order to strengthen accountability and support smart decision-making, they need to be able to spell out the details of their monetary-policy strategies in ways that the public can understand.
As it stands, such clarity is at times hard to find, even when it comes to some of the most fundamental elements of the ECB’s policy strategy. Price stability – the ECB’s primary objective – is currently expressed as “inflation below, but close to, 2%.” Does 1% inflation meet that condition, or is it too low, demanding more monetary-policy accommodation? Different members of the ECB’s governing council may well have different answers to this question, and thus support different policies.
The same goes for the questions of whether the ECB’s inflation target is symmetric – with the authorities intervening as vigorously when inflation is too low as they do when inflation is too high – and whether inflation should be measured over time or at a given moment. If, over some period, the inflation rate ranges from 0% to 4%, but averages to “below, but close to, 2%,” has the objective been achieved?
The answer has major policy implications. If inflation is measured over time, the ECB could accept, or perhaps even aim for, a somewhat higher inflation rate in the medium term, to compensate for the excessively low inflation of recent years. If the public came to believe that a period of above-target inflation was likely, the expected real interest rate would fall, giving a jolt to the economy.
Of course, Draghi has established in speeches and press conferences that, in his view, the inflation target is symmetric; 1% inflation is too low; and the inflation rate should be measured over the “medium term.” But it is not clear whether this view is broadly shared within the ECB’s governing council.
Inflation targeting is hardly the only area where ambiguity is hampering effective policymaking and leaving market participants wondering what to expect. The ECB’s outright monetary transactions (OMT) scheme – whereby the ECB promises to purchase bonds issued by eurozone member states on secondary sovereign-bond markets – is also generating significant uncertainty.
OMT, Draghi’s chosen tool for fulfilling his 2012 vow to do “whatever it takes to preserve the euro,” was controversial from the moment it was announced, with Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann – one of Lagarde’s main rivals for the ECB presidency – arguing fiercely against it in public. But that was seven years ago, and OMT has never actually been used. Is the governing council still committed to it? Or have the events – and council membership changes – of the last few years rendered that commitment obsolete?
With public debt in Greece and Italy still far too high, the eurozone still at risk of slipping into a recession that would significantly worsen both countries’ fiscal positions, and Italian politics as volatile as ever, it would pay to know. A review of the kind Rehn demands would provide the needed answers – and put the ECB on much sounder footing for a new era of leadership.
STEFAN GERLACH