For any investors who are new to the Thai energy sector, here’s a quick and dirty guide to the structure of the sector and which bits of it you can access through the Thai stock market.
The first observation is that the Stock Exchange of Thailand’s (SET) own sector categorizations are not that helpful. ‘Energy & Utilities’ includes a few non-energy companies – and petrochemical companies are found in several categories. For the purposes of this analysis, I will use AWR Lloyd’s own concept of the ‘energy sector’: coal, upstream oil and gas, refining and petrochemicals, midstream and downstream gas and petroleum, power and renewables.
Thai energy consumption (based on 2009 figures) is approximately 1.7 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (‘mboed’). Using rounded numbers, about 0.7 mboed is petroleum product consumption and another 0.7 mboed is natural gas consumption. Towards 0.3 mboed is in the form of coal consumption, including domestically-mined lignite for the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand’s (EGAT) mine-mouth Mae Moh power plant in Lampang and coal imports (mainly from Indonesia) for independent coal-fired power plants and industry. Only a very small amount (around 2%) is renewable energy consumption, the vast majority of which is hydro electricity consumption.
Petroleum product consumption includes about 0.1 mboed of LPG consumption, over two-thirds of which was derived from natural gas. Refinery product output was just over 0.8 mboed in 2009, of which around 0.2 mboed was exported. There are six main refineries in Thailand and one condensate splitter with a combined output capacity of around 1.2 mboed.
Crude oil and condensate supply to Thailand is 1 mboed, with 0.8 mboed imported (of which 0.6 from the Middle East) and 0.2 mboed from indigenous sources. Of the Thailand-sourced crude and condensate, just over a third comes from the Chevron group, with towards a third from state-controlled PTTEP (BAK:PTTEP) and a third from other companies.
In terms of natural gas, 0.5 mboed is from domestic sources, approximately one-third from Chevron, one-third from PTTEP and one-third from other companies. Another 0.15 mboed or so of natural gas is imported from Myanmar, from the Yetagun and Yadana gas fields (in which PTTEP has 19% and 26% stakes respectively). While around half of the gas goes via state-controlled giant PTT (BAK:PTT) pipelines direct to power plants, another half goes through PTT’s gas separation plants. From the separation plants much of the treated gas…
