Hot news reports on water rights conversion: Helping Inner Mongolian enterprises to "quench thirst"
August 26, 2022
In October of this year, the main canal of the water-saving renovation project in the Huanghe south bank irrigation district in Ordos City of Inner Mongolia was successfully irrigated, marking the initial victory of the first water rights conversion project in Inner Mongolia. It is reported that this project is the first approved water right conversion project in Inner Mongolia for the Yellow River Conservancy Commission. The project includes 18 km of Inner Mongolia Yili Chemical Co., Ltd. polyvinyl chloride project, 42 km of Ordos Cashmere Group's silicon power project, 45 km of Inner Mongolia Mengda Power Company's total trunk lining reconstruction and 10,000 mu of typical demonstration project. The three participating companies will also receive the right to use 59.28 million cubic meters of water in the Yellow River.
The completion of this project also made Yili Chemical Co., Ltd. the first chemical company to implement water rights conversion in Inner Mongolia.
Difficulties in the shortage of water resources In recent years, with the rapid development of the industrial economy, water shortages have become increasingly prominent in Inner Mongolia. As the pillar industry in Inner Mongolia, Inner Mongolia Chemical's “Eleventh Five-Year Plan” under development shows that the growth rate of chemical industry will be higher than the overall industrial development rate. By the end of the “Eleventh Five-Year Plan”, the sales revenue of the chemical industry in Inner Mongolia will strive to reach 150 billion to 200 billion yuan, and it will become an important chemical industrial base in China. Through the development of 5 to 10 years, several chemical industrial clusters have been established in areas where water resources can be adequately protected, traffic is convenient, transportation conditions are good, and resources are abundant. Build a coal chemical industry cluster with coal-based oil and coal liquefaction in a certain scale and competitiveness in major coal producing areas; build a coking coal industry cluster supported by coking industry in areas rich in energy and chemical mineral resources; Industrial cluster of downstream processed products of chlor-alkali and calcium carbide with the support of calcium carbide and chlor-alkali as the key; the industrial cluster of downstream deep-processing products supported by coal and natural gas to methanol; and silicon built with silicon resources and energy support built Industrial clusters.
With such a large scale of chemical industry, sufficient water resources guarantee is an indispensable condition.
It is understood that most of the chemical projects in the Ordos City are located along the Yellow River Basin, and access to the Yellow River water is the only option. Each year, the initial water rights allocated by the country to the Ordos Yellow River water is only 700 million cubic meters. Of these, 90% are for agricultural irrigation and 10% for residents' lives. A large number of coal chemical, natural gas chemical, PVC and other projects can be successfully implemented, provided that there is a reliable source of water, the only option is to use the Yellow River water.
So, where did the water come from?
The project of obtaining water rights conversion Yili Company with an annual output of 400,000 tons of polyvinyl chloride, 400,000 tons of ion-exchange membrane caustic soda and its supporting project (self-produced power plant, cement, refined salt) is made by Yili Resources Group Corporation and Shanghai Huayi (Group) ) The large-scale heavy chemical project jointly invested by the company and Shenhua Group Co., Ltd. has a total investment of 4.1 billion yuan. However, if there is not enough water, this grand plan cannot be realized.
In fact, this project has already started in May of this year, and it plans to invest 1.6 billion yuan at the end of this year. The reporter learned that it was precisely because the company signed a water rights conversion agreement with the local water conservancy department. According to the agreement, the water conservancy department will transfer part of the right to take water from the nearby Hangjin Irrigation District to the enterprise. The company will invest in the construction of a water-saving project in the irrigation district. The amount of water saved after the completion will just meet the needs of the company.
The person in charge of the company told the reporter: 'At the beginning, we did not understand the water use methods introduced here. Awaiting a wait-and-see attitude toward paying for the construction of irrigation canals, but the increasingly severe water use situation has finally made us understand that, as a shortage of resources, water resources must be saved first and then used. At present, we have achieved 17 million cubic meters of water right replacement indicator for the Yellow River. '
In addition, the reporter learned that the Inner Mongolia Xinao Group, which is also located in Dalateqi, Ordos, has an annual output of 600,000 tons of methanol and 400,000 tons of dimethyl ether. The project has now completed an investment of 280 million yuan and achieved 648. 80,000 cubic meters of Yellow River water right replacement indicator.
In an interview with reporters, the director of the Water Resources Department of Inner Mongolia Water Resources Department Wang Rongxiang stated that on April 1 this year, the Yellow River Conservancy Commission formally approved the “Overall Plan for Water Rights Conversion of the Yellow River in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region”. This is the first provincial water rights conversion master plan approved by major rivers in China. According to the plan, there are 37 proposed projects for the conversion of water rights in the Inner Mongolian Yellow River in the near future, and the amount of water that can be converted in the near future is 270 million cubic meters. After more than one year of screening, 27 industrial projects are planned to be established along the Yellow River, including 11 chemical projects with a total water consumption of 217.5 million cubic meters.
Policy needs to be continuously improved According to industry insiders' analysis, the method of paid water rights transfer has changed the previous practice of free access to water rights, fully embodying the regulatory role of the market and generating huge economic and social benefits.
However, at the same time as relieving the shortage of water in some chemical companies in Inner Mongolia, water rights trading still has some problems that are detrimental to the company. A person in charge of a chemical company in Ordos revealed to reporters that the conversion of water rights is indeed a good way to solve the problem of water use in large-scale chemical construction projects in water-scarce areas. However, enterprises cannot have a say in the specific conversion volume and conversion prices. In addition to the trials of new water rights trading projects between chemical projects and agriculture, the original chemical companies still used cheap water resources from the Yellow River, which resulted in a much lower product cost and severely affected the fair competition among enterprises.
In any case, in the trial of water rights conversion, Inner Mongolia Chemical and Energy Corporation will be the first to set a precedent for the Inner Mongolia and even the whole country to seek solutions to the problem of industrial water shortage and set an example.