"Such a rapid decline has locked in a lot of speculative funds at once." A person from a natural gas downstream enterprise said.
In the eyes of the industry, with the careful deployment of natural gas supply shortage by relevant state departments this year, and the major oil companies strengthening the interconnection of pipe networks and actively expanding the storage and transportation capacity of liquefied natural gas, even if there is another shortage of natural gas supply this year, relevant departments have the ability to effectively resolve risks.
Zhang Yuqing, former deputy director of the National Energy Administration, pointed out in a recent forum that the global LNG supply will exceed the demand in the future, so the domestic natural gas supply is completely guaranteed.
Speculative capital "shows its magic"
2 1 century business herald reporters learned from many sources that since June last year 10, the domestic LNG market began to change suddenly, and a large amount of speculative capital poured in.
The reason is that in September last year, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development and other four departments issued the Guiding Opinions on Promoting Clean Heating in Cities and Towns in Northern Heating Areas, focusing on promoting "coal-to-gas" and "coal-to-electricity" and renewable energy heating in "2+26" cities in Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei and surrounding areas, and completely canceling loose coal heating.
"Therefore, speculative capital smells the opportunity to make money." According to the analysis of the person in charge of the above-mentioned downstream natural gas enterprises, on the one hand, the arrival of the winter heating season leads to a sudden increase in natural gas demand, on the other hand, the operating rate of LNG enterprises in many areas in the north is between 20% and 40%, and the supply is insufficient. Some organizations even predict that the total shortage of natural gas supply in the winter heating season of 20 17 is as high as 105 billion cubic meters, that is, the daily shortage of natural gas in China is about 80 million cubic meters.
This quickly ignited the enthusiasm for speculative capital.
He recalled that at first, many natural gas downstream enterprises trusted each other, purchased LNG from natural gas suppliers such as PetroChina and CNOOC in the south, and then shipped it to the north for sale. At that time, the shortage of natural gas supply in the northern region made LNG one price a day.
According to Baichuan information data, since September last year, the cumulative increase of LNG in the northern region has exceeded 100%. Even at the end of last year, several large LNG companies in North China increased their LNG quotations by more than 20% in one day.
"As far as I know, many hot money was still looking for downstream enterprises of natural gas to provide funds for the latter to hoard LNG for sale. Sometimes it takes only 4-5 days to hoard natural gas, and more than 30% of the price difference income can be harvested. " Introduction of Luo Gang (pseudonym), a domestic private LNG trader. What's more, many investment institutions simply went to Singapore to spend huge sums of money to buy out natural gas futures.
The reason is that, due to the shortage of domestic natural gas supply, the spot price of natural gas in Singapore once hit the highest value of US$ 65,438+00.26 per million British thermal units (mmBtu) since 2065,438+05 in late February last year, which doubled from half a year ago. Correspondingly, the LNG futures price hovers around $8/million british thermal unit, and the spread arbitrage is at least $2.
At the same time, some speculative capitals have bought out the freight of LNG ships in overseas shipping pricing trading market, betting that the surge of natural gas imports in China will lead to the soaring related shipping costs.
According to Clarkson's and Fearnley's data, in June and February last year, the freight of LNG carriers with a loading capacity of160,000 cubic meters once rushed to $80,000, an increase of more than 150% compared with eight months ago.
This has led to a continuous increase in domestic LNG prices. On February 25th last year, 12, the domestic LNG quotation hit a record high of 8477.78 yuan/ton. Some enterprises in the north even quoted 9500 yuan/ton, and even some LNG enterprises in Shandong and Jiangsu directly rushed to the 10,000 yuan mark.
Forced to stop loss and leave
In Luo Gang's view, one of the biggest drivers of the sharp drop in LNG prices in the past week is the "arrival" of the regulatory stick, and the other is that speculative capital underestimates the ability of relevant departments to coordinate all resources to improve natural gas supply.
In June 5438+February last year, Meng Wei, spokesperson of the National Development and Reform Commission, also pointed out that it is necessary to immediately carry out special supervision and inspection of natural gas market prices, focusing on investigating and dealing with acts of fabricating and spreading price increase information to disrupt market order, and resolutely investigating and dealing with illegal acts such as malicious hoarding, driving up prices, operators reaching monopoly agreements, and abusing market dominance.
Two days later, the Price Supervision, Inspection and Anti-Monopoly Bureau of the National Development and Reform Commission began to investigate the alleged violation of the Anti-Monopoly Law by 17 enterprises such as PetroChina Natural Gas Sales anniversary Branch.
"This had a considerable deterrent effect on speculative capital," recalled the person in charge of the above-mentioned natural gas downstream enterprise. From the end of 65438+February last year, some hot money with keen sense of smell began to ask LNG enterprises to sell their accumulated LNG stocks quickly and withdraw funds from the market as soon as possible. However, some speculative institutions choose to stay.
"Surprisingly, the relationship between supply and demand of domestic LNG has changed significantly in the past week." Luo Gang pointed out that on the one hand, the National Development and Reform Commission actively promoted the interconnection of major oil companies and stimulated the potential of natural gas supply; On the other hand, oil companies actively increased overseas natural gas procurement to make up for the domestic natural gas gap, and even diverted LNG ships from Brazil to China, effectively alleviating the domestic natural gas supply gap.
More importantly, under the guidance of relevant departments, the LNG quotation provided by large oil companies is lower than the market price. Even if the market quotation exceeds 8000 yuan/ton, their quotation is still between 4500 yuan/ton and 5 100 yuan/ton. With the increasing supply of low-cost natural gas, the LNG market quotation inevitably falls sharply.
The reporter learned from many sources that under the pressure of the domestic LNG price falling by more than 30% in the past week, many investment institutions have stopped losses on overseas LNG futures.
A person in charge of an investment institution that once participated in buying up overseas LNG futures revealed that since the average holding cost of LNG futures held by domestic funds is about 7-8 USD/million British thermal units (mmBtu), it will now face a loss of more than 15%.
"To make matters worse, many entrusted natural gas downstream enterprises hoard the hot money of LNG to be increased at a price of 7,000 yuan/ton, and the loss will exceed 20%." He speaks frankly. Nowadays, many investment institutions around him have also begun to retreat to avoid the LNG market price "knocking down the wall" and suffering higher losses.