July ACP paraxylene talks end without full settlement

18-Jul-12

For the first time since January 2012, Asian Contract Price in July for paraxylene ended without any settlement, as two of the four sellers were not able to settle at the same price with at least two buyers, as per Platts. Typically, the ACP negotiations are concluded on the last business day of previous month, which in this case would have been June 29. But the negotiations for July were extended as buyers and sellers were far apart. There are four ACP sellers in Asia -- ExxonMobil, Japan's JX Nippon Oil and Energy and Idemitsu Kosan, and South Korea's S-Oil -- and six ACP buyers -- BP, Taiwan's Capco and Oriental Petrochemical (Taiwan) Corp., Japan's Mitsui Chemicals and Mitsubishi Chemical, and China's Yisheng Petrochemicals. For July, ExxonMobil, Idemitsu and JX nominated their PX ACPs at US$1300/mt CFR and S-Oil at US$1,330/mt. This was lower than the June settlement of US$1355/mt CFR. Idemitsu settled with four end-users at US$1160/mt CFR on June 29, while ExxonMobil settled with Mitsubishi Chemical at US$1275/mt CFR on July 13. JX and S-Oil decided not to settle the ACP for July. Two sellers and two buyers have to agree at the same price for a full ACP settlement.