Coal chemical industry faces three major risk tests

Thread Content

1. Cost risk. The investment in coal chemical projects is huge, such as the 3 million tons/year dimethyl ether and supporting project in Inner Mongolia. This project was jointly invested by five major groups, including China Coal Energy and Sinopec, with a total investment of 21 billion yuan. cost risk. Generally speaking, the investment to build a coal-to-liquids project of 1 million tons/year is about 8 billion to 10 billion yuan. Industry insiders pointed out that most coal chemical projects that have been launched in my country often use the market price of pit mouth coal as the basis for cost calculations at that time, which also leads to an underestimation of the actual cost. Because my country's coal transportation costs are high, the terminal price is often double the pit price. Therefore, the profit forecast of some investment projects is unrealistic, and it will be difficult to achieve the target in the future. Industry researchers from Centaline Securities also pointed out that currently there are insufficient feasibility studies on many coal chemical projects in my country, and many calculations for coal chemical projects are based on high oil prices and low coal prices. 2. Environmental resource risks. The long-term stable development of the coal chemical industry has put forward higher requirements for resources. The first thing to bear the brunt is coal with rich resources and low prices, as well as sufficient water resources. ； Coal has high carbon content and only 5% hydrogen content. The carbon dioxide emissions produced when converting coal into vehicle fuel are 7 to 10 times that of the crude oil refining process. At present, my country's sulfur dioxide emissions and carbon dioxide emissions rank first and second in the world respectively, and 90% of sulfur dioxide emissions come from the use of coal. When constructing large-scale coal chemical projects, environmental governance must be considered, which will increase significant external costs. Secondly, the coal chemical industry has a huge demand for water resources. A coal-to-liquid project with an annual output of 3 million tons consumes about 10 tons of water per ton of product, which is equivalent to the water resources of a population of 300,000 to 400,000 people. Our country is relatively poor in fresh water resources. * * , especially in the western and northern regions. 3. Price risk. Changes in international oil prices and domestic coal prices will make coal-to-liquid production costs unpredictable, bringing huge investment risks to coal chemical companies. In this regard, * * Zhou Fengqi, former director of the Energy Bureau Research Institute, believes that when oil prices were high, the issues of high energy consumption, high pollution, and high water consumption of coal chemical industry were placed behind the issues of energy supply and energy security. Now it seems that if the oil price remains below 50 US dollars for a long time, the importance and necessity of coal chemical industry will be reduced. * * decrease, oil prices fell faster than coal prices, and the economics of coal chemical industry * * reduce.