Asian Chemical Connections

Source:Amazon.com

I remain perplexed by the direction of chemicals, oil and commodity markets over the last few months - and now I understand the reason why.

It's not about feedstock, it's not about inventory levels or what end-use demand is really like, it's all to do with affairs of the heart.

Thanks again to my fellow blogger Paul Hodge who writes:

The Illicit Encounters website has a major increase in traffic when either the market collapses, or has a sudden rise. Apparently, when markets are up, traders "think they can have an affair because they feel they can get away with anything. When the market hits the bottom, they are looking for a way to relieve the pressure."

The site first came to the blog's attention in December, when the Financial Times reported on its rather lucrative business model - a male membership fee of £119/month ($190). Now it appears to have forecasting potential too.

As with financial markets, surely with c hemicals pricing. All we need to do is to produce an index, on a confidential basis,of course, which tracks this particular form of intra-industry activity.

It's easy to get caught up in the excitement over the rebound in the Chinese economy and miss underlying weaknesses which point to some major problems ahead.

To some extent, in a desperate effort to compensate for collapsing export trade, China might have borrowed from the future in order to achieve a swift recovery.

"The (Chinese government's economic) stimulus programme borrows from a future investment cycle," writes the online research publication, the China Economic Quarterly (CEQ), in its Q2 report.

"Since 1978 China has run relatively regular five-year investment cycles followed by five years of retrenchment."

Spending by the State on infrastructure and industry boomed in 2003-07 and so the following five years were supposed to involve the reductions in expenditure necessary to repair a big hole in the national balance sheet.

But, of course, the reverse has happened with infrastructure and industrial projects scheduled for the next 5-10 years now set to be completed over the next 3-4 years. This includes speeding up investments in the refinery and petrochemical industries.

"China could be in for some rough times after the stimulus money runs out in 2011," the CEQ adds.

Repair work to the national budget might not be the only reason why longer-term prospects could be a lot bleaker than many expect.

China might also fail to boost domestic demand sufficiently to compensate for export trade which might take many years to recover.

"For the first time in the 30-year reform era, China faces an extended period - five years or perhaps longer - in which exports will provide no significant contribution to growth," says the CEQ.

The reason is the well-documented collapse in the West's debt-financed consumption binge.

On the surface, it looks as if China is making great headway towards realising more of its enormous domestic-growth potential: retail sales grew by 16% in Q1 this year, up from 15% in the first quarter of 2008.

If you dig deeper, though, as the CEQ again does, you discover that retail sales include many "institutional" purchases, meaning those by state-owned enterprises (SOEs).

The government has increased military salaries by 50% and is providing rebates of 13% and 10% respectively off rural purchases of household appliances and automobiles.

Despite all this cash sloshing about, however, when you take away the institutional purchases from the retail sales figures, the CEQ concludes that there is little evidence of a pick-up in consumption.

Longer term, this can be fixed if efforts to create much better pension and healthcare systems lead to more spending and lower savings levels.

Compared with the West, and particularly the US, the Chinese keep an awful lot more of their money bank deposits.

But here's another potential pitfall: all that money sloshing around (the CEQ estimates the total stimulus will be worth Yuan5-6 trillion, or 15-18% - much bigger than the originally announced Yuan4 trillion) could end up creating another non-performing loans crisis similar to that of the early 1990s.

This could force China's banks to lower interest rates on deposits in order to repair their balance sheets, warns Peking University finance professor Michael Pettis on his blog, China Financial Markets.As bank deposits are such an important method of saving money in China, lower interest rates could lead to more money being saved as compensation, leading to damaged consumer growth, he adds.

Numerous economists are also warning that too much of the stimulus is in the form of loans to the SOEs, which can be less efficient in boosting the economy than private companies.

The private sector, hammered by the collapse in export trade, is in contrast reported to be struggling for finance.

An inevitable slow down in bank lending, the result of the huge rise in loan growth during Q1, could also be put yet another brake on the economy.

"RMB (Yuan) net lending fell sharply to YuanB592bn in April from YuanMB1.9tn in March, broadly consistent with our expectation," writes Jun Ma, Chief Economist Greater China for Deutsche Bank, in a report.

"We believe this reflects the success of the window guidance by the PBOC (People's Bank of China) and the CBRC (China Banking Regulatory Commission) that advised banks to "appropriately control loan growth"; the decline in new project approvals; as well as the slower pace of equity capital injections from the central government budget.

"Going forward, the continuation of these factors will likely lead to a further decline in net lending to about Yuan300-400bn per month in the remainder of this year."

A further worry remains the potential global deflationary effect in H2 of China stockpiling raw materials, including perhaps chemicals and polymers.

Imports of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP) have, for example, been at record levels in Q1.

However, it's impossible at this stage to say whether this involves major stockpiling or is more the result of better demand and big production cutbacks by Sinopec and PetroChina earlier this year.

In the case of iron ore and copper, though, the steep rise in Q1 imports (iron ore was up by 33% and copper by 62%) are being widely attributed to state-backed inventory building and strong investment demand.

"China is stock piling commodities - everything from metals to oil," said a chemicals industry source.

"The argument is that it's better to store financial reserves in commodities rather than US dollars."

"There has also been some stock piling of gasoline and diesel in anticipation of price increases by the government."

Gasoline and diesel prices were indeed increased from early June - the first time since March.

But if you put five economists in a room, goes the old adapted saying, you are likely to get at least ten different opinions.

It can be just easy to interpret some of the recent data in a much more positive way, and it might just be possible that the current euphoria will create a self-fulfilling prophecy of a sustained recovery.

It's worth being aware, though, that a 50% rise in the local stock markets since the start of the year and lots of positive macro-economic news might not tell the full story.

Source: The Guardian newspaper

Apologies for letting this bog slip again. I am on leave, but still pondering where on earth we are heading. This makes a welcome relief from staring up at the grey skies and thinking "summer? What summer?" Yes, I am on leave in the UK and Wimbledon is about to start. I would recommend moving the tournament to drought-affected areas of the world, maybe on an annual rotation basis, to guarantee rainfall.

Anyway, back to the business of oil prices.

If you succeed in making acrylic acid from enzymes and microbes, as the company Novozymes is attempting to do, then maybe you can worry slightly less about the long-term likelihood of very high crude prices.

But as oil hits $70/bbl again, the old concern about boom and bust cycles driven by energy costs has to be very much in the forefront of everyone's minds - whether or not they are trying to break the direct link between oil and chemicals.

As the excellent Buttonwood column in The Economist points out, we are back in a commodities supercycle.

The 45 cents a gallon rise in gasoline prices over the last month is costing the American consumer an extra $60 billion.

As confidence in the economic recovery increases, might we soon be back to square one?

What are the solutions for the chemicals industry?

Cartoon: Peter Brookes, The Times

Yes, this blog has gone staggeringly quiet over the last few weeks as I gained a life: I went home to the UK and mixed with some people who had no interest in or desire to know anything about polypropylene. Do you realise that there are some people out there who have never even heard of catalytic reformers? Amazing....

Anyway, before I return to my sad little petrochemicals bubble, here are some reflections on the political chaos gripping good old Blighty caused by MPs' expenses.

The pleasure the Brits are deriving from their fuming indignation over some upper-class twit claiming the cost of cleaning out his moat, and other such extraordinary fiddles, almost makes up for the misery inflicted by collapsing house prices.

But as I kept saying over many a pint of wonderful British real ale during my leave: "Corruption? Call this corruption. If you want real, decent corrupt politicians then go to India or the Philippines, to name but two Asian countries affected by this problem.

"The good people there would be delighted if all that their political leaders did was claim the odd household plant or a bit or mortgage tax relief off the State."

It's good fun to have a go at politicians, though - God knows they all deserve it.

And there is never any excuse to fiddle your expenses and quite obviously, all the journalists enjoying the hunt have never, ever over claimed or falsely claimed for anything (you can be probably tell, except if you are American that is, that this is intended to be sarcastic).

I had a friend many years ago who worked on a national newspaper who received a major telling off for not claiming enough fraudulent lunches, dinners and gallons of alcohol, the reason being that if the accountants saw one person managing on less everyone else might have been forced to follow suit.

Most national newspaper journalists, certainly in the 1990s anyway and so this may have changed, could double their salaries by being on the fiddle.

But in the row over MPs' expenses perhaps not enough focus is being placed on a much bigger issue. This is how Britain is going to repair its government finances without creating major inflation problems or interest-rate hikes that will limit inflation but nip the recovery in the bud. The same applies, of course, to the US.

I don't pretend to understand Bond yields etc.

Perhaps nobody understands, nobody has control, nobody has a flipping clue and so in the absence of any clarity the only debate worth having is over why the former Home Secretary's husband, working as a government-paid political assistant, claimed porn movies on his expenses (still my favourite of all the scandals).

Toodle pip. I promise you in my next post that I'll write about polypropylene for all you fellow sad people out there.

Picture: The Daily Mail

Ok, I lied - I am having trouble getting back into my petrochemicals bubble and so this post is not about polypropylene. Apologies to all those disappointed C3 H6 molecules out there.

I was sharing lunch with a highly demotivated Singapore-based chemicals industry employee recently and the great British 1970s sitcom, The Good Life, came to mind (see above picture for the full cast - don't you just love the clothes?).

In that sitcom, Tom Good, played by the actor Richard Briers, is meeting "Sir", the boss of the plastics processing company where he works as a draftsman. The company specialises in desiging and molding those little plastic toys you used to get (or might still get - I am not sure) free in your breakfast cereal.

"Sir" puts his arm around Tom, who he has noticed for the first time because he has been introduced by his friend Jerry, played by the late and great Paul Eddington, as "our top designer". Jerry is a monumental crawler and, as a result, is in an executive position.

Anyway, "Sir" says to Tom, or roughly words to this effect: "A new bubble has just come off the top of our think tank and I want you to take charge of this project - plastic hippopotamuses (or was it giraffes? Couldn't find on Google). Are you excited? Do you think you are the man for the job?". He is speaking in one of those annoyingly enthusiastic voices you may have heard in meetings and wished "if only I could have the presence of mind to fake it that well".

Tom, is of course, supposed to show enthusiasm in order to crawl up the slippery corporate ladder, but instead bursts out laughing, goes home, quits his job, and decides to become self-sufficient by growing all his own food - and keeping lifestock - in his suburban back garden.

To return to my lunch with the unhappy chemicals-industry employee, he had been ground down by having to bite his tongue in so many long and dull meetings that when his boss asked for ideas for a new corporate slogan, he replied: "How about 'The Relentless Pursuit of Mediocrity?' ".

He lives in a condo with a window box as a back garden and so growing fruit and vegetables for a new career is not option.

Anonymous contributions would be gratefully received for comments you would have liked to have made in company meetings, but felt unable to do so. This is your chance to let off some steam.