By John Richardson HERE is your essential cut-out-and-keep summary of what has happened in global polyethylene (PE) markets in 2020 and your guide to what I believe will happen next year. The first two sections will review demand in the developed world and China and the rest of the developing world. These sections will also […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Retreat of globalisation and implications for petrochemicals
By John Richardson EVER SINCE the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, and the last great geopolitical struggle came to an end, the petrochemicals business has benefited from a highly globalised world. Product has flowed, almost seamlessly, from one country to another in ever greater volumes. Sure, it has never been the case of feedstock advantage […]
China’s shift towards styrene self-sufficiency adds to pressure for new petrochemicals business model
By John Richardson IT IS dead simple, apparently. All you have to do is find alternative geographical markets to China as China moves towards petrochemicals self-sufficiency and everything will be fine. In my view there is just one slight problem with this commonly- expressed argument: The data. The data on every product show that China […]
Why the polypropylene industry must switch from volumes to value
By John Richardson EVERYONE knows about the oversupply in the polyethylene (PE) market as it has been discussed in more presentations and conferences than any of have had hot dinners. But less understood is the extent of oversupply in the global polypropylene (PP) business, which you can see from the above chart on the left. […]
China consulate closure underlines long-term split with US, potential big shift in petchems trade flows
The views in this blog post are, as always, my personal views and do not reflect the views of ICIS. Thank you By John Richardson A VIEW often expressed is that if Joe Biden wins the US presidential election in November, relationships between the US and China will greatly improve. I believe, though, that the […]
China’s real GDP could have been negative in Q2: What this may mean for PP
By John Richardson CHINA’S official GDP growth of 3.2% for Q2, which was announced last week, may not reflect real levels of economic activity, according to Derek Scissors, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, a non-profit research body. He goes as far as to say that the Chinese economy probably contracted […]
China paraxylene imports head for bigger declines as excess industrial production appears to boost GDP
By John Richardson SOME PEOPLE see the 9.9% year-on-year rise in China’s crude oil imports in January-May as a sign that China’s economy has come roaring back from the coronavirus. They have been even more encouraged by the 33% surge in China’s oil imports in July. It is sadly not as simple as this, as […]
Global polyethylene oversupply, the highest in 19 years, hasn’t gone away
By John Richardson BRENT crude futures surged by 80% during the second quarter and enjoyed their best three months since 1990, when, during the first Gulf War, they jumped by 142%. The market, as I discussed last month, has been heavily supported by China buying lots of oil when prices were cheap. As Reuters reports, […]
China could be in complete polypropylene self-sufficiency by 2022
By John Richardson SORRY to labour the point but this comes from a genuine concern for the readers of this blog, including many of our valued ICIS customers: the above chart, if you have been following the blog over the last six years, should come as no surprise. You may, as a result, already have […]
China’s long-term ambition for paraxylene self-sufficiency seems close to being realised
On Friday, I examined how China’s paraxylene (PX) net imports could fall to as little 8m tonnes in 2020 from last year’s 16m tonnes. This would have major negative implications for the big exporters to China such as South Korea, Japan and India. I believe this is the beginning of a long-term shift – the […]
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