By John Richardson The greater frequency of extreme weather events presents a huge challenge for chemicals companies. Take Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma as the most obvious current examples. Weather forecasting service AccuWeather writes in this article: This is the first time in the history of record keeping that two Category 4 or higher hurricanes, […]
Asian Chemical Connections
US Polyethylene Industry: Scenarios For 2017-2020
By John Richardson IT has been a remarkably strong few years for the US polyethylene (PE) business. The shale gas revolution has sent ethane costs plummeting, resulting in the kind of margins that you can see in the above chart. Lower oil prices have made naphtha cracking a lot more competitive of late, but the […]
New Petchems Business Model Based On Trading Blocs
By John Richardson THE above chart should give every analyst who thinks low feedstock costs are by themselves guarantee of success in petrochemicals pause for thought: US net polyethylene (PE) exports in 2016 were 5,000 tonnes lower than in 2015, even though one would have expected exports to have been ramped-up last year. Increased exports would have helped […]
Southeast Asia: Confronting The Real Downside Potential
By John Richardson SOUTHEAST ASIA’S (SEA) economies can be divided into two main categories. These are the heavily export-exposed economies of Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Singapore and the two countries with the biggest internal demand drivers – Indonesia and the Philippines. Next come the smaller emerging SEA economies with tremendous longer-term potential, such as Myanmar […]
China Becomes Dominant Superpower: Implications For Petchems
By John Richardson CHINA can become the world’s No1 Superpower, replacing the US, if it can rise to challenges such as these: Asia needs US$8trn of investment in the decade to 2020 to deal with its infrastructure deficit. As countries with urban populations expand, demand for transport, logistics and utilities will place a major burden […]
Trumponomics And A Global Recession
By John Richardson FIRST of all there was no chance he would win the nomination. No chance at all. Then nearly all the election pundits said it was almost impossible that he could beat Hillary Clinton because he had such a narrow Electoral College path to the White House. Now we are being told that […]
What Exclusion From China’s One Belt, One Road Looks Like
By John Richardson IS the whole world really turning again free trade? No, if you consider the potential improvement in trade flows between the 65 mainly developing countries which make up China’s One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative. What we could instead see is the creation of the world’s biggest free-trade bloc, accounting for 40% […]
China And A Breakdown In Free Trade: Scenarios For Petrochemicals
By John Richardson MY blog post last Friday, on the threat to the petrochemicals industry of a retreat in global free trade, has gained a great deal of interest. This is good as this is an essential debate. Today I am therefore going to take this important debate further by considering in more detail how […]
The Hypnotic Allure Of Emerging Markets
By John Richardson A GLEAMING new skyscraper in downturn Beijing, Bangkok, Mumbai, Jakarta or Kuala Lumpur made for fantastic TV viewing, especially if a photogenic reporter was standing in front of such a building. The reporter would then talk about “Asia’s rising middle classes” as the camera panned-out to people queueing outside Louis Viton and Cartier […]
Asia Polyethylene: Explaining The Past And Future
By John Richardson TAKE a look at the above chart and ask yourself this question, “Why is it that the spreads between high-density polyethylene (HDPE) injection grade and naphtha have been so good so far this year?” The same has therefore, of course, applied to margins for integrated PE producers. Let’s first of all look […]
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