The Northwest European methanol Q4 contract price was fully settled at Eur354/mt FD NWE (around $455/mt) late last week, up Eur32/mt from Q3, market sources confirmed Monday.
The CP was settled by BASF and Solvadis, Evonik and Mider-Helm, sources at BASF, Solvadis and Mider-Helm confirmed. Evonik could not be reached for comment.
Market participants attributed the Eur32/mt rise to global supply tightness.
Methanex's 2.36 million mt/year facility in Damietta, Egypt, has been idle since June. And Petronas' 660,000 mt/year methanol unit 1 in Labuan, Malaysia has been shut for a 60-day turnaround since August 17 and its 1.7 million mt/year no.2 methanol plant remained shut after a prolonged outage since July, sources said.
Sources also noted that there was no methanol coming out of Libya, reduced flows from Iran and less methanol production in Trinidad & Tobago due to feedstock natural gas curtailments there.
Not all parties shared the supply sentiment, however.
"There is no reason for an upside correction. We see good supply and I can't see any [supply] disruptions," one market participant said.
The same source also said demand fundamentals were steady from the third quarter.
Another source said "Fundamentally, nothing has changed. The hiccups in Asia should be fixed in the next few weeks, so really, there is no real pressure on the market."
Elsewhere, Methanex announced last Thursday that it restarted its 1 million mt/year plant in Punta Arenas, Chile.
The facility had been idled since May because of a lack of available feedstock.
In the NWE spot market, news of the Q4 contract settlement left spot activity stagnant as market players focused on contract offtakes, sources said.
"It's usually thin post-CP settlement," a trader source said. No bids or offers were reported for October or November loading by noon Monday.
A bid-offer range of Eur312-320/mt was reported for December loading.
The NWE methanol spot market was last assessed at Eur324/mt (about $416/mt) FOB Rotterdam on Friday, unchanged from the previous assessment.
In Asia, prices were assessed at $362/mt CFR China and $408/mt CFR Southeast Asia Monday, according to Platts data.
With freight at $107.50/mt, the arbitrage from Asia is firmly closed.
