Negotiations for the January Asian Contract Price for paraxylene remained slow Friday, the final negotiation day, with neither buyers nor sellers revising their prices to narrow a wide gap, sources close to the talks said.
There are four PX ACP sellers in Asia -- ExxonMobil, Japan's Idemitsu Kosan and JX Nippon Oil and Energy, and South Korea's S-Oil.
Idemitsu nominated its January PX ACP at $1,500/mt CFR on December 20; JX nominated at $1,480/mt CFR Monday; S-Oil nominated at $1,470/mt CFR Tuesday; and ExxonMobil nominated at $1,480/mt CFR Thursday. The nomination values are set to expire late Friday.
There are six ACP buyers: BP, Taiwan's Capco and Oriental Petrochemical (Taiwan) Corp., Japan's Mitsui Chemicals and Mitsubishi Chemical, and China's Yisheng Petrochemical. Sources said the highest counterbids so far were at $1,350/mt CFR.
Typically, discussions for the PX ACP start intensifying in the morning of the last negotiation day. But so far, neither buyers nor sellers revised their prices, sources said.
"There is still a big gap between buyers and sellers," said one of the sources. "But both buyers and sellers are not eager to narrow the gap so far."
One reason is the lack of participants for ACP negotiations for January, sources said. They said Mitsui Chemicals and Mitsubishi Chemical were not actively engaged with the talks.
"They are rather busy to settle term contracts for 2014," said an industry source.
In addition, sellers have been reluctant to reduce their nomination values.
"For 2014, the Asian PX market is expected to weaken towards the end of the year," another source said. "The sellers want to get profit [in its PX business] as much as possible in the first half of the year."
For December, ExxonMobil, Idemitsu and S-Oil had nominated at $1,470/mt CFR, while JX did not nominate. ExxonMobil reached an agreement with two buyers at $1,400/mt CFR for December, but the other ACP sellers did not agree on the same price, leading to the lack of a major settlement for the December PX ACP.
