HOUSTON (ICIS)–US exporters are being urged to book outgoing shipments four to six weeks in advance as US and Canadian port labor issues are ongoing and could coincide with the pre-Lunar New Year peak season on the Asia-to-US trade route. For US companies working to export excess volumes to balance year-end inventories, those shipments need to be going out this week. According to ICIS Senior Analyst Kelly Coutu, increasing export shipments at year end for US petrochemical producers trying to balance year end inventories with weaker domestic demand is becoming increasingly challenging. “Container availability, especially to South American west coast ports, have been cited by several traders as problematic to secure,” Coutu said. Yusen Logistics said in a customer advisory that rail terminals at the US West Coast are congested, and inland point intermodal (IPI) dwell times are up to 40 days with terminal utilization above 85%. Yusen cited Sea-Intelligence data through September showing that global schedule reliability has fallen to 51.4%, down by 1.2 percentage points from the previous month. The average delay for late vessel arrivals increased by 0.21 days month on month to 5.67 days – the third-highest figure for the month, only surpassed by pandemic highs of 2021-2022, according to Sea-Intelligence. For cargo shipping out of West Coast ports, Yusen said some rail carriers implemented allocation restrictions because of a surge in traffic, which caused delays in the cargo staging area outside of the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, although those restrictions have largely been lifted at present. For cargo shipping out of East Coast ports, Yusen said most of the major ocean carriers have ended some routes and replaced larger ships with smaller ones for higher volume trades. Hapag Lloyd is the only carrier that has increased its capacity on these routes in the past 12 months, Yusen said. For cargo destined for South America, ports along the east coast of the continent are facing congestion and increased waiting times due to high traffic volume. Bad weather in southern Brazil forced cargo to change routes to other ports, causing delays as this new cargo was processed. Additionally, ships delayed by the brief labor strike at US East Coast ports are arriving in South America, adding to the existing congestion/delays. Also, ports in Mexico are facing delays due to bad weather affecting ports on the Atlantic side. High occupancy rates at Manzanillo and Lazaro Cardenas are also reducing how efficiently they operate. USEC PORT LABOR TALKS BREAK DOWN While the East Coast labor issue is paused, concerns persist on whether the two sides can reach an agreement by the 15 January deadline. Talks broke down on Wednesday as discussions centered around automation and semi-automation at the ports. The US Maritime Alliance (USMX), representing the ports, said the union’s insistence on an agreement that “would move our industry backward by restricting future use of technology that has existed in some of our ports for nearly two decades” contributed to talks breaking off. The International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) said the USMX claim that its focus is on modernization and not automation was disingenuous. “The ILA has always supported modernization when it leads to increased volumes and efficiency,” the union said. “We embrace technologies that improve safety and efficiency, but only when a human being remains at the helm. Automation, whether full or semi, replaces jobs and erodes the historical work functions we’ve fought hard to protect.”

Traders agree that financial activity exaggerates trends on European gas benchmark TTF The number of individual players from investment funds is nearly the double of energy companies active on ICE TTF as of 8 November Their activity tends to be more frequent despite lower total open positions LONDON (ICIS)–The rising presence of investment funds relative to physical traders on the ICE TTF could exacerbate curve volatility this winter. While it is hard to attribute market movements to these entities alone, many traders agree that financial trading tends to exaggerate trends. What is undeniable is that their presence on the market has grown steeply since Europe lost access to its stable supply of pipeline gas from Russia and became reliant on LNG, a global commodity susceptible to global price drivers and disruptions. ICIS has previously observed that shifts in investment funds’ net long positions have correlated with TTF curve movements since the fourth quarter of 2023, but the causation is hotly debated. Financial players tend to have a higher risk appetite than physical ones, and are useful in providing bids and offers on far-curve contracts where there may not otherwise be any. INDIVIDUAL POSITION HOLDERS The Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) publishes the “number of persons holding a position in each category”in the weekly Commitment of Traders (CoT) table. The presence of investors grew by 1.7 times from January 2023 to January 2024 based on figures from ICE CoT reports collected from the ESMA register. Meanwhile individual energy companies’ presence (“commercial undertakings” per the CoT report) increased just 1.4 times. More recently, the investment fund total has increased from 312 on 30 August to 365 on 8 November, while energy companies grew from 191 to 196. The ratio of funds to energy companies went from 1.6 to 1.9 over that period. “Investment firms or credit institutions”, mostly banks, act on behalf of utilities and financial players alike, and are therefore hard to pin down. Their presence has remained relatively constant around 60-70 individuals throughout 2024. While overall energy companies hold a much larger amount of total positions – 1,900TW compared to funds’ 606TW as of 8 November – the latter comprises nearly double the amount of individual traders. “It depends what you do with the positions you have,” one trader explained. “If I buy 100MW Cal ’26 today and hold it for one year I don’t move the market, but if I trade 500MW front month every hour, day and week… you move the market.” Another trader mentioned hedge funds’ contribution to the current TTF Summer ’25 premium over Winter ’25 : “You know you’ll be full enough by winter, but you don’t know if you can get enough gas in as LNG supply is uncertain. And you know how a bullish market trades, it’s not only utilities and storage players in this market,” the trader said, adding that hedge funds can also move the market. A third concurred, “I would say the front is pushed up by financial players.”

TORONTO (ICIS)–The Port of Vancouver and other Canadian West Coast ports will resume operations on 14 November, 16:30 local time, after a strike and lockout of about 730 foremen who supervise more than 7,000 dock workers that began on 4 November. The Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) has issued an interim order to employers and union to resume operations and continue working until the board makes a final determination on Tuesday’s government directions, officials said. The government directed the CIRB to order the resumption of all operations at the West Coast ports and at the Port of Montreal, and to settle pending labor disputes through binding arbitration. The CIRB has scheduled a hearing for 18 November to hear from employers and unions on certain questions that were raised with respect to the government’s intervention. The British Columbia Maritime Employers Association (BCMEA), which represents West Coast port employers, said it would work with labor union International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and others to safely and efficiently resume operations at the ports. The Port of Vancouver, which is Canada’s largest port by far, confirmed that it was preparing for the resumption of operations. Timelines would be terminal specific, with container terminals expected to restart operations early Friday, 15 November, it said. More than Canadian dollar (C$) 22 million ($15.7 million) of chemistry and plastic products was traded through Vancouver and other West Coast ports each day in 2023, for a total of C$8 billion for the year, according to the Chemistry Industry Association of Canada. MONTREAL At the Port of Montreal, where labor disruptions started on 31 October and employers locked out about 1,200 dock workers on 10 November, the Maritime Employers Association (MEA) said it would take the necessary steps to ensure that port activities resume as quickly as possible. The MEA has not yet received an order from the CIRB but expects to receive it later on Thursday or on Friday, a spokesperson told ICIS. “As soon as we receive said order, we could be operational within 12-24 hours”, the spokesperson said. The Port of Montreal, for its part, said that cargo handling activities would gradually resume over the coming days. However, it would take several weeks to clear terminal backlogs and fully restore supply chains, it added. Container operations were still affected by the labor disruption on Thursday, according to information on the website of Termont, which operates two of the port’s four container terminals. The unions representing the port workers in Montreal and the West Coast ports said they would challenge the government intervention in court as the intervention violated workers’ rights to strike and to negotiate better wages. Earlier, another labor union, Teamsters Canada Rail Conference (TCRC), filed a court challenge against the government’s move in August to intervene and end a freight rail labor dispute. That case has not yet been decided. Meanwhile, at US East Coast ports a strike has been paused until 15 January. ($1=C$1.4) Thumbnail photo source: Port of Vancouver

LONDON (ICIS)–European senior editor for recycling, Mark Victory, and Helen McGeough, global analyst team lead for plastic recycling at ICIS, joined senior editor for recycling Matt Tudball to discuss their highlights from the recent 3rd ICIS Recycled Polymers Conference that was held in Berlin on 7th November. Topics covered ranged from ICIS’s own outlook for the recycled markets, panel discussions on collection systems and the ever-popular chemical recycling sector, plus electrical and electronic waste and EU regulation 2022/1616 around food contact, among others. Some of the key takeaways included: Unexpected positivity despite challenging market environment The need for and demonstration of strong collaboration through the recycling chain Regulatory uncertainty still a core challenge for the recycling market The issue of regulation was clearly on the mind of many delegates, as the two surveys conducted throughout the course of the conference show. The first question was: “What do you see as the key enabler to improved collection in Europe?”, followed later in the day by: “What is the missing piece of the puzzle to accelerate chemical recycling growth?”

LONDON (ICIS)–Senior market reporter Eduardo Escajadillo and Gas in focus deputy editor Marta Del Buono discuss Germany’s industrial gas demand development and what to expect going forward. This year German industrial gas demand has dropped to an eight-year low in August, with ICIS Foresight forecast indicating little possibility to recover until at least late 2025.

LONDON (ICIS)–Global crude supply growth is likely to outstrip demand by over a million barrels/day in 2025, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Thursday, with the “marked” slowdown in China consumption the main drag on consumption this year. Oil demand is expected to tick up modestly year on year in 2025 to just under a million barrels/day, as compared with current expectations of 920,000 barrels/day this year. Two years of sub-million-barrel daily demand growth “reflects below-par global economic conditions with the post-pandemic release of pent-up demand now complete”, the agency said in its latest monthly oil market report. A substantial headwind for stronger market consumption is China, where demand contracted for the sixth consecutive month in September, bringing third-quarter averages 270,000 barrels/day below the same period in 2023. The IEA projects global supply growth of 1.5 million barrels/day from non-OPEC+ countries next year, driven by the US, Canada, Guyana and Argentina. Brazil is also expected to return as a force in the market after a year of unplanned outages and operational underperformance in 2024, the IEA added. The OPEC+ bloc of countries has long planned to relax production cuts, but the start of this process has been postponed once more, with producers now pledging to begin unwinding voluntary reductions from January. OPEC+ players currently have around 6.19 million barrels/day of spare capacity, according to the agency, excluding Russia, with more than half of those potential volumes from Saudi oilfields. After a period of substantial volatility driven by fears of an escalation of hostilities between Israel and Iran, crude values have subsided from upwards of $80/barrel to the low $70s. Focus has shifted instead to China demand, expectations for Libya to resume production and the timeline for OPEC+ to start easing production cuts. “China’s marked slowdown has been the main drag on demand, with its growth this year expected to average just a tenth of the 1.4 million barrels/day increase in 2023,” the agency said. The prospect of a million barrel/day surplus does not take into account any move in OPEC+ production levels, the IEA said. “With supply risks omnipresent, a looser balance would provide some much-needed stability to a market upended by the Covid pandemic, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and, most recently, heightened unrest in the Middle East,” the agency added. Thumbnail photo: An oil pipeline running through Alaska, US (Source: JacobBoomsma/Shutterstock)

LONDON (ICIS)–In episode 19 of the ICIS Hydrogen Insights podcast, hydrogen editor Jake Stones meets with ICIS senior ammonia editor Sylvia Tranganida to discuss today’s global ammonia market. The pair review the current supply/demand balance of grey ammonia today and whether this balance could shift in the future, as well as whether price levels from the 2021-2022 commodity price spike are likely to return. Looking to the future, Sylvia explains the interest the current ammonia market has in decarbonizing and how renewable and low carbon ammonia trade is developing.

SINGAPORE (ICIS)–Shell expects the deal to sell its energy and chemicals park in Singapore to Chandra Asri and Glencore will be completed by the first quarter of 2025, a company spokesperson said on Thursday. Shell assets will be key to Chandra Asri’s growth strategy Chandra Asri plans for second petrochemical complex still unclear Closing of deal originally scheduled for end-2024 The energy major on 8 May announced the sale, which includes the physical assets and commercial contracts in Singapore, to CAPGC – a joint venture majority-owned by Chandra Asri with Glencore holding a minority stake – for an undisclosed fee. The transaction was initially scheduled to be completed by the end of 2024. “The divestment is subject to regulatory clearance and other customary closing conditions,” the spokesperson said. “Subject to regulatory approval, the transaction is expected to complete by the first quarter of next year.” Shell and CAPGC have also signed crude supply and product offtake agreements that will come into effect following completion. A new entity under CAPGC called Aster Chemicals and Energy will operate the facilities and handle its crude oil purchases and fuel sales, newswire agency Reuters said in a 13 November report, citing unnamed sources. The Shell Energy and Chemicals Park (SECP) in Singapore comprises its integrated refining and chemicals assets on Pulau Bukom and Jurong Island. The Pulau Bukom assets include a 237,000 barrel/day refinery and a 1.1 million tonne/year ethylene cracker. It was Singapore’s first refinery in 1961. SECP KEY TO CHANDRA ASRI’S GROWTH PLANSChandra Asri in a 4 October statement said that its move to acquire the SECP assets aligns with its growth strategy of “going global” as it seeks to expand in the energy, chemical and infrastructure sector not only in Indonesia but also abroad. “Through SECP, which is one of the largest oil refineries and trading hubs in the world, Chandra Asri Group will source petroleum products, including gasoline, jet fuel, gas oil, and bitumen to support various industries in Indonesia,” the company said. “Additionally, Chandra Asri Group will help fill gaps in the supply of chemical products, such as monoethylene glycol (MEG), polyols, and ethylene, propylene, and styrene monomers, to support manufacturing processes in the country,” it said. “This will ensure that the country’s energy supply is secured as well as reducing dependencies on foreign entities.” In a presentation to investors in early August, Chandra Asri said that it will establish offtake agreements for both fuel and chemical products, utilizing Glencore’s extensive trading network to “secure beneficial arrangements”. Chandra Asri currently operates Indonesia’s sole naphtha cracker in Cilegon, which can produce 900,000 tonnes/year of ethylene and 490,000 tonnes/year of propylene. The new assets in Singapore will boost Chandra Asri’s overall production capacity from around 4.2 million tonnes/year currently to more than 18 million tonnes/year by 2026. The company is also the sole domestic producer of styrene monomer, ethylene, butadiene (BD), MTBE, and butene-1, with a new world-scale chlor-alkali ethylene dichloride (EDC) plant development on the horizon. The company’s planned second petrochemical complex, dubbed CAP2, in Cilegon includes a chlor-alkali plant that is expected to produce 420,000 tonnes/year of caustic soda and 500,000 tonnes/year of EDC. The chlor-alkali plant is expected to be completed by the end of 2026 but Chandra Asri has not yet provided a firm timeline of the other proposed plants previously announced for CAP2. Focus article by Nurluqman Suratman Thumbnail image: Chandra Asri’s olefins plant in Cilegon, Banten province (Source: Chandra Asri official website)

SINGAPORE (ICIS)–Eight people were injured at a fire that broke out at Indian Oil Corp’s (IOC) Mathura refinery in the northern Uttar Pradesh state on the evening of 12 November, the energy company said in a statement. The blaze erupted at about 07:00 GMT (01:30 GMT) on 12 November during start-up of a crude distillation unit (CDU) at the site after a planned maintenance, it said. Located along the Delhi-Agra National Highway about 154 kilometers away from Delhi, the Mathura refinery has a capacity of 8 million tonnes/year. “Three of the injured have been admitted to Apollo Hospital, Delhi, while the others are receiving medical care locally,” IOC said. “All injured individuals are stable, and their recovery is being closely monitored,” it added. The blaze was extinguished with no disruption to refinery operations, it said. “The plant and machinery have not suffered any damage, and refinery activities are continuing as usual,” IOC said. The Mathura refinery incident happened a day after a fire hit IOC’s Gujarat refinery in western India on 11 November and killed two people.