Thai Oil see rebound of petrochemical business
The margin of Thai Oil's petrochemical business group would be better this year, after falling to its lowest level in the last quarter of 2019 due to negative factors throughout the year, said Wirat Uanarumit, chief executive officer and president.
“However, the gross refining margin (GRM) has since improved as related entrepreneurs adapted themselves to the new International Maritime Organisation (IMO)’s criteria which requires ocean liners to use oil with 0.5 per cent of sulphur, instead of 3.5 per cent ” he added.
Thai Oil has prepared numerous options to tackle the new market direction, such as refinery of low-sulphur oil, or high-sulphur one with no attention towards the IMO criteria.
“We estimated a refinery rate of more than 110 per cent this quarter” he said. “The corporative performance in 2020 depends on the margin, which would be affected by the Covid-19 outbreak if the virus decreased oil demand”.
Wirat, however, added that impact of the virus outbreak has yet to be seen clearly, except for the slightly decrease in crude price.
Thai Oil expected the margin to improve continually from entrepreneurs’ adaptation and containment of the virus situation.
“This year, the company is continuing the clean fuel project (CFP), which saw improvement and expansion of oil refinery production from 275,000 barrels to 400,000 barrels per day” he added.