The lubricating oil industry is an important part of the petrochemical industry, which serves the national economy, especially the various fields of the industrial economy, and is closely related to the degree of macroeconomic prosperity. Lubricating oil is the main indicator of economic barometer. In developed countries, the ratio of lubricating oil consumption to GDP is relatively reasonable. However, in developing countries, the ratio of lubricating oil consumption to GDP is relatively unbalanced, and the consumption intensity of lubricating oil in China is 55, which includes the factors of rapid economic development in developing countries. However, more reasons should be attributed to the unreasonable consumption and waste of lubricating oil in China. At present, the intensity of China is much higher than the world average and developed.

As one of the earliest commodity markets opened in China, driven by the rapid development of economy and automobile market in the past decade, China's lubricating oil market has become an arena for domestic and foreign lubricating oil enterprises to compete, and the commercialization of lubricating oil industry has become a common trend. At present, there are more than 3,000 lubricating oil enterprises in China, including about 30 foreign brands, and most of the others are local and regional brands.

With the development of environmental protection and machinery industry, the quality of lubricating oil products has been more demanding. Lubricating oil should have high oxidation stability, better viscosivity, good low temperature fluidity, and excellent shear stability and wear resistance. The method of improving the performance of lubricating oil by adjusting the additive formula can no longer meet the requirements, which puts forward higher requirements for the quality of lubricating oil base oil. It is difficult to further improve the quality of mineral lubricating oil produced by traditional industry. In addition, the crude oil resources suitable for the production of lubricating oil are decreasing day by day in the world, and the production of lubricating oil must face the inferior heavy crude oil, which raises new problems for the traditional processing technology.

In the future, the competition in the lubricating oil industry will gradually abandon the low-end price competition, and then become the competition of products and brands. The demand of customers is gradually transformed into customization and refinement, which brings new challenges to the technical service ability of lubricating oil enterprises. Extensive strategic cooperation with the automobile industry and industrial customers will help lubricant enterprises to further improve their service capabilities and better meet the customized needs of customers.

Lubricating oil generally consists of two parts: base oil and additive. Among them, base oil is the main component of lubricating oil, determines the basic properties of lubricating oil, additives make up for and improve the performance of base oil deficiencies, give new performance, is an important part of lubricating oil. Data show that from 2018 to 2020, China's base oil production increased steadily; In 2020, China's production capacity of basic oil reached 21.3 million tons, with the output reaching 8.75 million tons, and the overall operating rate of the industry stabilized at 41 percent.

At the same time, in terms of the supply price of base oil, the growth rate of the demand side is obviously lower than that of the supply side in recent years, leading to the downward trend of the price under the dominance of the buyer's market. According to statistics from China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Federation, the market price of Chinese base oil (Class I) went down in 2020, reaching a lower point (4,070 yuan/ton) at the end of October, but recovered to 4,910 yuan/ton at the end of December:

The middle part of the industrial chain is the manufacturing of lubricating oil. In recent years, with the rapid development of economy, the sustained growth of automobile ownership and accelerating industrialization in our country, our country has become one of the larger lubricating oil consuming countries in the world. In 2020, the national output of lubricating oil is about 7.8 million tons, and the total volume of bidding and procurement is about 46,900 tons:

In terms of import and export, according to the statistics of the General Administration of Customs of China, the import volume of lubricating oil decreased and the export volume increased from 2015 to 2020. In 2020, a total of 289,500 tons of lubricating oil was imported in China, which was slightly lower than that in 2019, mainly due to the slow economic development caused by the epidemic. Now the epidemic has been slowly brought under control, and we believe that the market is slowly returning to normal.

The article is excerpted from Zhongyan Net.