Asian Aromatics '05: PX supply to fall short of demand in '07

16 June 2005 05:30  [Source: ICIS news]

SINGAPORE (CNI)--Global paraxylene (PX) supply is likely to be insufficient to meet demand in 2007, said Rajen Udeshi, president of Reliance Industries' fibre intermediates division.

 

Udeshi, in a paper presented at the first Asian Aromatics and Derivatives Conference, said PX supply growth was being constrained by the alternative value for reformate.

 

“Gasoline demand is growing very rapidly, particularly in India and China. A refiner does not build a refinery solely for extracting naphtha out of reformate for PX,” he said.  

 

Udeshi added that Asia has been in refinery capacity deficit since 2004 because of what had been poor investment economics.

 

He predicted that the short supply would increase next year.

 

As for the demand pull for PX, Udeshi said that there would be 5.5m tonne/year of polyester capacity added globally in 2007.

 

Purified terephthalic acid (PTA) demand would increase by 2.46m tonne/year against an effective increase in supply of 2.1m tonne/year, he said.

 

He added that PX demand would increase by 1.65m tonne/year against an effective increase in supply of only 500,000 tonne/year.

 

The conference, which is organised by Asian Chemical News (ACN)*, ICIS-LOR and International e-Chem, starts on Thursday and ends on Friday.

 

*ACN and ICIS-LOR are part of the same publishing group as CNI.

By: John Richardson
+65 6780 4359

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