By John Richardson MORE evidence has emerged of a slowdown in demand for polyolefins in China following the sharp decline in March imports. The Middle East is now feeling the pinch as a result of the impact of inflation and the reduced availability of credit. “I visited a propane dehydrogenation (PDH)-to-polypropylene (PP) producer in Saudi Arabia last week. The […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Old Growth Model Needs To Be Challenged
By John Richardson Calling all chemicals investors: If you hear any presentation from any company out there that talks about an uninterrupted boom in growth in China, please, please start asking some searching questions. Please….. We have so far yet to come across any evidence of such questions after scouring the web. Instead, we have […]
Broad Commodities Retreat Hurts Chemicals
By John Richardson WE hate to say we told you so but the 15 per cent fall in oil prices last week – the steepest one-week decline in two-and-a-half years – was evidence of growing concern over the health of the global economy. And as we predicted on 12 April, last week saw a broad sell-off […]
Cotton Support For Fibre Intermediates Declines
By John Richardson RISING cotton prices might well have been the single-biggest factor on the strength in the synthetic textiles chain for the last year. Other major factors have obviously been the surge in crude and supply constraints in both paraxylene (PX) and purified terephthalic acid (PTA) – but certainly not in mono-ethylene glycol (MEG)! […]
Dow’s Liveris On The Mark On China?
By John Richardson Dow Chemical’s CEO, Andrew Liveris, was reassuringly upbeat about the state of demand in China last week when he described it as “quite robust” during an analysts’ call on the release of the company’s Q1 results And very significantly, given that we can trust that his comments were based on plenty of […]
The Chemicals Party Is Over
By John Richardson IT has been a fantastic party. Nobody expected that the drinks would last for so long, thanks to Wen Jiabao and Ben Bernanke working overtime to man the 24/7 off-licence (it is called “liquor store” in the States and a “bottle shop” in Australia). But now the market has clearly reached the top with […]
China Inflation Impact On Chemicals
By John Richardson POLYETHYLENE (PE) prices were assessed stable-to-weaker by my colleagues at ICIS pricing late last week as Sinopec was reported to be evaluating a 10% reduction in operating rates. Sinopec hardly ever cuts production on market conditions as its main objective is not to make a profit, but rather serve local manufacturing industry […]
China’s Inflation Struggle
By John Richardson LIKE the boy who cried Wolf the blog might not be believed as we once again warn about the risks ahead for China’s economy. We have been worried for a long time that eventually China’s huge economic stimulus package, in response to the threat of social unrest, would cause some major problems. […]
Broad Commodities Sell-off Beckons
By John Richardson THE blog remains extremely worried that there is about to be a major sell-off of commodities in general, including petrochemicals, as conditions right now feel very similar to those in 2008. Whether we will face a systemic shock to the system, a black swan, on the scale of Lehman Bros is of […]
Was NPRA Off The Mark On China?
By John Richardson I HAVE been speaking to my colleagues who attended this week’s NPRA conference in San Antonio, Texas, and it didn’t appear from discussions during the event that a potential slowdown in China was high on anyone’s radar screen. In fact, for many of the delegates it didn’t seem to be blinking on […]
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