Obstructing the sustainable development of natural gas

On November 12, Cangzhou Dahua announced that PetroChina suspended the supply of natural gas to the company on the same day, and the company’s urea and production facilities stopped production.

Following China National Petroleum's restriction of LNG companies in Shaanxi and other places, the "Limiting Air" began to spread to North China.

“The demand for natural gas this year has exceeded the plans previously made by CNPC. The excess gap exceeds 10 billion cubic meters, and may even exceed 20 billion cubic meters.” A related person from CNPC Overseas Development Co. told the reporter.

It is understood that, as of now, CNPC’s natural gas supply in North China, Northwest China, and Southwest China has begun to shrink substantially.

This is also in April of this year after PetroChina North China Company stated that it would limit gas in North China by 26%, CNPC once again issued a “Limiting Air Order”.

Many experts and analysts believe that the seriousness of the natural gas supply situation this winter is directly related to the speed of "coal gas change". However, the inversion of import prices and the monopoly of upstream resources and pipeline resources hinder the sustainable development of the natural gas industry in the long run. .

The imbalance between supply and demand "The speed of coal to gas" this year has exceeded the company's expectations and plans. The current "limit gas" is actually out of the need to guarantee gas supply." A related person of CNPC Overseas Development Company stated that the company had previously The gas supply plan has already taken into account the increase in the demand for natural gas every year. In fact, it is said that there should not be a large supply shortage.

Wang Zhen told reporters: "Each local government has an order list for natural gas supply, and residents, schools, schools, and public transportation facilities will receive the primary protection."

At present, in domestic natural gas applications, natural gas required for civil-related fields such as power generation and urban gas consumes about 41% of the gas, and the remaining nearly 60% of the amount is used in natural gas chemical industry and industrial use. As a result, some natural gas chemical companies have become the first target of suspension. According to statistics data from Zhuochuang, the average operating rate of domestic urea companies using natural gas as raw materials is 61.13%, which is about 4% lower than that at the beginning of November.

Since the supply of natural gas in North China mainly comes from PetroChina's Shaan-Jing Line, if the “restriction of gas” continues, industrial users in the areas of the West-East Gas Pipeline natural gas pipeline may be “limited”.

According to statistics from Anxun, overall natural gas consumption in 2013 is expected to increase by 14.1% year-on-year, and natural gas production is expected to increase by 9.04% year-on-year. In natural gas capacity, natural gas output growth in 2013 was 9.04%, and in 2012, it was 5.1%. . Obviously, the demand is far greater than the output. The growth of production capacity is not as fast as the growth in consumer demand.

The fundamental reason for the need for blowouts comes from the need to adjust the energy structure. According to the requirements of the State Council and the Ministry of Environmental Protection, the total coal energy consumption ratio will be reduced to below 65% by 2017, and Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and surrounding areas will reduce coal consumption by 93 million tons by 2017, with an average annual reduction of about 20 million tons. Under such requirements, the speed of "coal to gas" in many places has accelerated. The market is generally expected that the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the Yangtze River Delta, the Pearl River Delta and other regions will increase natural gas consumption by 150 billion cubic meters. This has also become one of the direct causes of the shortage of gas this winter.

Take Beijing as an example, according to the information provided by the Beijing Municipal Heating Supply Office: In this year's coal-fired boiler clean energy transformation work in Beijing, a total of 18 coal-fired heating boiler rooms have been transformed in the city, about 2131 tons of steam, heating With an area of ​​approximately 17.6 million square meters, all construction and commissioning work is completed before the heating season, which is also the largest amount of renovation to date.

In addition to the North China region where energy supply has always been tight, the “coal to gas” movement in some western provinces and cities where the population is relatively scarce and the energy supply is relatively sufficient is not small: the public information of the Xinjiang Urumqi government network, the city has completed 20 million square meters this year. M's “coal to gas” supporting heat source, heating network and energy-saving transformation of heat exchange stations, will also complete the energy-saving reconstruction of 4 million square meters of existing buildings, and implement reconstruction projects for the 120-kilometre old heating pipe network in 100 districts of the city. . This means that in addition to the “coal-to-gas” heating area in 2012, Urumqi City will have more than 136 million square meters of natural gas for heating.

The price change is not "a panacea"

The sudden increase in demand has once again brought the focus back to PetroChina, which has the right to import.

In May, PetroChina had warned that it might "limit gas" this year. At that time, it was widely believed that this was a move by CNPC to "pursue" prices in the market. In July, the National Development and Reform Commission agreed to raise the price of natural gas for non-residential use. Once again, this time CNPC has “limited gas”. Is there any factor in this aspect?

“After the NDRC raised the price of natural gas for non-residential use, the situation of price upside down has eased and the enthusiasm for corporate imports has increased significantly. At this time, the argument that large-scale gas restriction due to price inversion was not established.” said Xiaokun Wang .

The first three quarterly earnings reports recently released by PetroChina show that in the first three quarters, PetroChina’s operating income was 1.682684 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 5.3%. The net profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company was 95.293 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 9.6%. Among them, in the business of natural gas and pipelines, the two sources of domestic self-produced gas and imported gas are balanced and the supply of domestic natural gas is increased. The natural gas and pipeline segment realized operating profit of 23.438 billion yuan, only 885 million yuan in the same period of last year.

“As long as the direction of natural gas price reform is unchanged, the enthusiasm of the importing enterprises should be greater and greater,” Wang Xiaokun said.

In order to make the pricing of natural gas more market-oriented, the National Development and Reform Commission is now pushing for a pricing method that focuses on “net market return value”. This method emphasizes price linkage with imported liquefied gas and fuel oil, and then calculates the upstream and downstream prices of natural gas.

This year, including the first three quarters of natural gas imports (including liquefied natural gas), an increase of 27.3%, the degree of foreign dependence increased to 32%. This year, Indonesia's LNG has increased its price by 70%. Dow Jones disclosed that spot LNG prices in Asia for December were US$ 17.9 per million British thermal units, compared to US$14 per million British thermal units in the same period last year.

“Price reforms are not a panacea. If our prices are now marketized, companies will inevitably transfer the costs of natural gas upstream to the downstream, and then the terminal sales prices of natural gas will inevitably increase. The result of this phenomenon is natural gas and other Comparing alternative energy sources, they lose their competitiveness on the demand side, said Wang Xiaokun.

The difficult price of pipeline network can not assume the role of supply and demand adjustment. The long-term distortion of the price system in the domestic energy and power industry has also become the focus of reforms. The reform programs are endless.

The latest hot topic is the “383” reform plan issued by the Development Research Center of the State Council, which involves the term “natural gas” - “separating the oil and gas pipeline network business from the oil and gas enterprises integrated upstream, downstream, and downstream, and establishing several oil and gas pipelines. Network company and establish a government supervision system for the oil and gas pipeline network."

However, people in the industry said that at this stage, it is not the time for “separation of pipelines and networks”.

“Premier Li Keqiang made it clear at a recent Standing Committee of the State Council that such work as natural gas price reform has already been done this year, and it has also achieved certain results, so I think the ultimate reform plan is to follow the existing price. The direction of reform is steadily advancing. There will not be major changes like the split pipeline," Wang Zhen told reporters.

Why can't the pipeline be removed now? Wang Zhen cited the example of the United States. He said that the United States once compared its oil and gas pipeline network construction with that of the power grid construction, and discovered that the oil and gas pipelines were involved in planning and construction in the early stages of construction because the federal government was involved in the planning and construction of the pipelines. The development of the pipelines was very rapid and mature, and the pipelines became independent later. It has laid a solid foundation for third-party operations. The U.S. power grid, due to the self-construction of various states, has no unified plans, leaving huge hidden dangers. “So now that the pipeline construction is still immature, the country will not rush to separate the pipelines,” said Wang Zhen.

Is there any other way? The investment adviser Zhou Xiujie wrote that the key to the process of natural gas marketization reform is to coordinate the relationship between market regulation and government control.

In its view, behind the “limit gas” caused by “coal gas reform”, the solution to the environmental pollution problems and smog problems of government departments seems to be well accomplished through “coal gas reform”. This behavior of artificially increasing gas demand without taking into account the industrial cycle and supply-demand relationship will inevitably further distort the gas pricing mechanism. The increase in supply cannot keep up with the increase in demand. Under the premise that the supply cannot be satisfied, it is no longer important to talk about the price mechanism and marketization reform.

"The key to solving the contradiction between natural gas supply and demand is to increase domestic supply and vigorously develop shale gas." This is the view of Wang Xiaokun. In 2012, shale gas production in China was 50 million cubic meters, shale gas was sold 15 million cubic meters through the natural gas pipeline network, and accumulated sales were 30 million cubic meters. In 2012, China’s coalbed methane production was 12.602 billion cubic meters, with a utilization of 5.258 billion cubic meters. The output of these unconventional natural gas, under the large base of China’s total output of 108 billion cubic meters last year, appeared to be weak, compared to 1485 last year in China. The total consumption of 100 million cubic meters is also insignificant.