Trusted market intelligence for the global chemical, energy and fertilizer industries
By John Richardson CHEMICALS company executives are going on the record to say that the outlook for growth in China has become exceptionally uncertain. This echoes comments first made by the blog 18 months ago. At that time, the consensus view amongst analysts seemed to be that China was definitely heading for a Supercycle, when it [...]
Pollution over eastern China Source of picture: Wikimedia By John Richardson IT wasn’t the kind of news that China’s polyethylene (PE) traders wanted to reflect on over the weekend. On Friday, China’s cabinet – the State Council – announced that it had adopted 10 measures designed to improve air quality. “Many of the measures [...]
XI Jinping (see picture), the country’s new president, is being described either as a nationalist, who has set China on an overly aggressive course or as someone who will skilfully and harmoniously guide the nation through major domestic and international reforms. According to Robert Lawrence Kuhn , an international investment banker and author, Xi’s nationalism, or [...]
The deadline of 3 July is closing in fast for entries to the 10th ICIS Innovation Awards, designed to reward innovation, environmental advances and sustainability in the global chemical industry. If you want a chance to win extensive coverage in ICIS Chemical Business and receive industry-wide recognition for your hard-won innovations as they enter the [...]
By John Richardson SOMETIMES petrochemicals markets defy reality, on the occasions when pricing moves out-of-synchronicity with the underlying nature of demand. This is the case with benzene today (see the above pricing chart) as my ICIS colleague Truong Mellor describes, in this excellent Insight article. He says that: *European Benzene pricing has been bullish, as [...]
By John Richardson GLOBAL shale resources are large enough to cover more than a decade of oil consumption, writes the FT in this article, quoting the US Department of Energy. And as my colleague Nigel Davis writes in this, as usual, excellent Insight article, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) has upwardly revised its estimate of worldwide recoverable [...]
By John Richardson Everything is still going to plan. As the chart above shows, China’s official bank lending is down by 16% in the year to date as the government rations credit to the big state-owned enterprises. The last thing that China needs right now is even more unneeded industrial capacity and infrastructure. But, of [...]
By John Richardson DESPITE a slight pick-up in China’s polyethylene (PE) prices over the last two weeks (see above chart), producers and traders remain gloomy about the immediate outlook. “What has driven prices up is that new supply hasn’t hit the June market in volumes that people expected,” said a source with a global producer. [...]
By John Richardson THE assumption behind big investments in auto capacity in China – and in butadiene, synthetic rubber, polypropylene (PP) and other chemicals and polymer capacities linked to the auto industry – is that, eventually, Western levels of car ownership will be achieved. But Hou Yankun, head of China Equity Research and head of [...]
By John Richardson AFRICA was described as “one of the last frontiers for the chemicals industry” by a delegate during last week’s 2nd World ICIS Polyolefins Conference in Berlin. The opportunity is certainly there with a population of around one billion people, and with six countries in the world’s top ten fastest-growth countries (See GDP [...]
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