Asian Chemical Connections

......spare a thought for whoever at Formosa ends up carrying the can for perhaps the biggest blunder in the history of petrochemicals. Any other candidates?

A guest blog - see Vanishing Post Boxes on this great blog by the authors of the book Freakonomics put me in mind of all those demand and supply forecasts that are invariably wrong.
Yes, I know I've written about this ad nauseum - see my last article on this subject.But surely, there has to be a better way of reaching investment decisions, a method that doesn't just cover your backside by using a consultant as a convenient whipping post.

The International Energy Agency has further brought forward its forecast on when China will become the world's biggest polluter to 2007 from 2010. Only three years ago, they were predicting not before 2025!
Coal-fired power stations are big cause of rising greenhouse gas emissions in China, says the IEA.
Will this result in a harder approvals process for not only coal-fired power stations, but also coal to chemicals?
And what about the international response to China's growing greenhouse gas threat? Will it become harder to invest in China?
Or do you care? Maybe not now, but you might in a few years' time when you either cannot build more ethylene and C2 derivatives to serve the China market, or have to find some new, cleaner ways of making C2s from renewables.

The industry we work either for or with is about as popular as George Bush Junior at I was about to say a wedding party in the Gaza Strip; but actually probably about as popular as George Bush at just about any wedding party in the world, even in some parts of Texas these days.
The point is we need some imaginative rebranding and advertising. A great example is this highly amusing ad from the agency BBH http://www.bartleboglehegarty.com/ for Smirnoff Raw Tea http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTU2He2BIc0
This is one of my familiar old themes, but if we can use this level of imagination in our marketing and job-recruitment efforts, we might start attracting more young people into the industry. We want the YouTube and My Space generation who might even - and let's be optimistic here as it's early in the morning my time - begin their careers wanting to make the world a better place through chemicals, Of course, they will inevitably end up bitter and twisted thanks to the corporate machine.
But still, we might end up with enough recruits to run the chemical plants and businesses of the future. We could also win the general public over, thereby reducing pressure for more nonsensical legislation like Reach.
Interested? Let's hold a "Marketing The Chemicals Industry" conference.

Petrochemical markets are being badly ruffled by two recent Chinese government decisions.
In late June, there was the decision to change the VAT export rebate system for yuan-priced product.
And then this week there was a widening of the deposit rules governing import duty and VAT rebates on petchem imports priced in US dollars.
But beyond the immediate disruptions to imports and domestic sales, the long term implications could require a major strategic shift by chemical companies.
See below for detailed anaylsis. But in short here, as China phases out its low-quality manufacturing through these and quite possibly other further measures, chemical suppliers will have to move up the value chain with their customers.

As everyone focuses on when the next downturn might arrive, macro issues such as the implications of a likely US withdrawal from Iraq are rarely publicly discussed.
But if I were on the board of any company making investment decisions, I'd be worried.
If the US withdrawal from Iraq is well managed then fears such as those expressed in this article will come to nought. Sadly, "Iraq" "the US" and "well managed" are words and phrases that rarely share the same sentence and so the future looks a little shaky to say the least.

......how long will it last is the inevitable question. Demand growth has been so strong so far this year with very little new production coming onstream that while crude oil and the price of monomers have set a floor for pricing, they no longer appear to be the main drivers behind fluctuations and increases; in other words, supply is so tight that it is the demand pull rather than the cost push that's the dominant factor behind pricing this year. The attached slides from Chow Bee Lin, Senior Editor at ICIS pricing, illustrate this point - Download file
But Chinese inflation is rising. This has led to negative real interest rates on savings, leading to money being poured into ever-more frothy (remember, lots of froth makes one giant bubble) local equity and real estate markets.
Inflation everywhere could be back with avengeance - made worse by the US interest rate cut that has led to more hot money flowing out of the US into China, India and other developing countries.
Plus there are the long term implications of the global credit crisis beyond. A lot of the polymers being shipped to China and elsewhere are for re-export to the US and Europe as finished goods.
And, of course, the second half of next year marks the beginning up the big new capacity upsurge.
But the doommongers, including myself, have been calling time on the industry upcycle for three years now.
Maybe the super-cycle, as it is now lovingly called, will continue if demand growth in Asia continues to accelerate.

Maybe I've been to too many conferences this year, and indeed over the last decade, and have seen too many forecasts go wrong.

Call me cynical, or plain wrong, but...........

With naphtha prices so high, heavy aromatics and pygas feedstock for producing benzene are not only expensive but are also in tight supply due to operating rate cutbacks.

Longer term also, as we've already discussed here, there are major doubts over whether China will produce enough naphtha to operate all the petrochemical projects it is building when the priority is gasoline and diesel production.

The economics of naphtha and pygas-based benzene look seriously challenged, therefore, both in the short and long terms.

And as the extended article below warns, watch out for King Coal as China ramps up exceptionally economic coal-to-benzene production

I sincerely hope not, but all the signs are there because of:

*A financial crisis which nobody again saw coming, this time with global implications

*What could prove to be too much spending on new equipment and capacity. This time high equity prices have paid for these investments rather than US dollar-denominated bank loans, as was the case in 1997.

The fundamentals are still strong, as today's article from ICIS news on share-price collapses points out. Asian demand is at much higher levels now than 11 years ago.

But the power of sentiment should not be underestimated.

It's too early to read the long-term effect on petrochemical pricing. More volatility seems certain with sentiment driving shifts in pricing on every piece of negative or positive economic and stock market news.

Lower feedstock costs on cheaper oil will also play a role, but as the extended article below points out, the impact on the real economy will take time to assess. It is this impact that will set the long-term direction and determine whether we the downturn has, finally, arrived.

I could easily be accused of ceaseless pessimism, but growth in China is moderating - regardless of what your view is of the extended article below on the impact of the bad-weather crisis.

Slowing exports were already eating into estimates of GDP growth, and these estimates surely what companies can expect in chemical export volumes to China, before the arrival of the worst snow storms in 50 years.

Shortly after I wrote this article (see below) on the doom and gloom surrounding China polyolefins markets, hey presto, prices rallied and I was wondering whether I needed to be wiping egg off my face.

But shortly after the slight rally occurred, a polyolefins trade told me it was likely to be the last margin grab, the last push to maximise earnings on the back of stronger crude as stock markets around the world tumbled and investors piled into commodities. However, prices did enter new territory - in the case of most grades of PP, for example, breaching the US$1,5000/tonne barrier on a delivered basis.

I think he could've been right. Based on the assessment of PE and PP markets by ICIS pricing last Friday, it certainly seems as if the recent retreats in crude (brought about by a realisation that weaker economic growth will ultimately undermine demand for oil and other commodities) and concern about the impact of the likely US recession has led to greater caution among buyers.

And, as I keep saying, this caution comes as the buyers prepare to benefit from the great supply surge.

The mood at the recent NPRA International Petrochemical Conference in San Antonio, Texas, was mixed, despite all the economic gloom.

Some producers said they were still making money - especially those selling into manufacturing sectors benefiting from a rise in exports due to the weak dollar.

What's certain, of course, though is that things will get worse regardless of the health of the global economy. The down cycle is just around the corner.

But we could quite easily see, as this extended article below speculates, another period of under-investment following all the over-investment that markets will need to absorb over the next 3-4 years.

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

Very interesting speech from Alan Kirkley, Vice President of Strategy and Portfolio for Shell Chemicals, which first of all goes over the predictable ground of where we are in the cycle and the threat from the Middle East.

However, he then makes the valid point - which I made earlier this week - that the end of the world has not necessarily arrived for the US and Europe.

There are some big question marks over how much more capacity the GCC region will be able to add post-2012, and perhaps even further afield as global LNG markets take off. Gas cracking may no longer as consistently benefit from feedstock at virtually give-away prices.

The likes of Shell and ExxonMobil have existing technology and know-how to make more highly competitive basic petrochemicals - and to take maximum advantage of the petrochemicals/refining interface.

Kirkley predicts that there will be an increasing use of hydrocracking to make petrochemicals, tapping into light ends that have a diminishing value in the gasoline pool and more revamping of catalytic cracking capacity towards olefin production.

Given the likely continued high cost of EPC and raw materials, anybody with a fully depreciated refinery requiring only relatively modest investment could be in a strong position.

But, of course, the first task is to survive the current downturn in one piece.

First of all, apologies to readers for my complete neglect of this blog over the last six weeks. I can only plead overwork and being too stunned by the collapse of the global economy to think about the blogosphere.

I promise regular posts from now on, provided I am not once again dazzled by the headlights of the advancing global-calamity juggernaut.

Now to the actual first post since early June: The recent fall in crude prices provides some hope for hard-pressed liquids cracker operators confronting the squeeze of higher feedstock costs and weaker demand.

But the pricing decline is partly a reflection of just how bad demand has become - surpassing all estimates of reductions in fuel consumption in both Asia and the West. It's not just energy efficiency triggered by high prices that has driven crude down, but also the credit crisis.

Another reason why crude has fallen was the decision by the US to meet with Iran.

Fundamentally, crude supply remains constrained and it would only take an Israeli attack Iran (a strong possiblity over the next six months) for oil to reach $200 a barrel.

Commodity chemical companies need a different approach to customer management, new methods to deal with with highly volatile raw material costs and fresh ways of keeping costs down. Otherwise those without feedstock advantages are in danger of going bust.

ICIS training plans to run hands-on courses, complete with exercises on customer management, negotiation skills and price assessment with our partner - International eChem.

This article from The New Scientist suggests we might have to develop a whole new way of asssesing what drives all commodity markets.

Intuitively, everyone knows that the herd instinct matters. But to measure this mathematically, or statistically, seems a mountainous but fascinating challenge.

At least it will keep the a few academics off the streets for a few years and journalists busy writing articles.

Regular readers of my blog might have seen last week's post linking through to the New Scientist article about research into new ways of assessing how markets behave. Prompted by the irrationally steep falls triggered by the credit crisis (or maybe they were reverse - the previous high valuations were based on irrationality, leading to a return to 'fair value'), the research looks at herd behaviour. Researchers are trying to quantify the influence of rumours over privately held views and verified and publicly available information.

Now The Eonomist has written about neuroeconomics - the emerging science of using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans to study how emotions affect behaviour.

Companies in years to come might be able to install hidden MRI devices that can map the feelings - and therefore the likely buying or selling positions - of suppliers, customers and competitors.

Imagine waking up in the morning, ringing up your ethylene customer and saying "My offer price is $1,150 FOB Korea only to be told "I know already and I know this is irrational and not based on your real cost position. Did you have an argument with your wife last night?

In my previous post, I talked about the collapse of the Doha round of trade negotiations and how this didn't auger well for a new global agreement for setting greenhouse gas-emission limits and a worldwide price on carbon.

The chemicals industry needs clarity. A global price for carbon would enable companies to plan R&D investments over the long term.

I also discussed how it seems more than likely that if no global agreement on carbon prices was reached, countries and regions with pricing mechanisms already in place would have to impose import tariffs based on carbon content. The tariffs would be levied on intermediate and finished goods from places where there were no carbon-pricing mechanisms.

But in this thoroughly globalised world, who should bear the blame for CO2 and other emissions?

Christopher L Weber from the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania and his colleagues have concluded that one-third of China's CO2 emissions are the result of exports. This is up from only 12% in 1987 and 21% in 2002.

Could proof of collective blame for emissions made through the WTO or other international bodies result in icarbon mport tariffs becoming unworkable?

You could spend fruitless years and millions of dollars in lawyers' fees trying to determine what percentage of tariffs to levy on companies at different points of production and logistics chains.

Shouldn't anyone who exports to China - whether for re-export or domestic use - carry the can for the country's emissions?

Might unworkable import tariffs force the EU to scrap or limit its cap-and-trade system out of fear of an investment drift?

The next US president could also be deterred from introducing a price on carbon, especially if the economic crisis drags on. Protectionist sentiment has risen since the slump began.

A consultant once told me a wonderful story - so wonderful I don't even care whether it's true or not - about how the monthly European benzene price in the 1950s was calculated based on the US price once the latest issue of Chemical Market Reporter had arrived in Rotterdam by boat.

Are we now wasting time and money on dealing with market volatility that's the result of how we gather and process information?

Nicholas Carr of The Atlantic.com argues that the Google age is making us think and behave differently.

The furious linking between one site and the next, the feeling of never knowing enough, of never being entirely up-to-date, might have turned us into what the playwright Richard Foreman calls "pancake people". In other words we have a broad range of knowledge thanks to all that surfing - but have an inability to read more than a couple of pages of text at any one time and to take a break from information-trawling long enough to consider what we have read. We have, as a result, lost our intellectual depth.

As our attention spans ever-shorten with the volume of information and information-solutions out there, are we making energy and chemical markets more volatile?

Are we no longer able to take a deep breath and stand back and contemplate what is really going on?

The financial players and the physical traders contribute to erratic price movements because they have an interest in volatility, but to what extent?

Could it be that the way we gather and process information plays a bigger role in erratic price movements than the speculators?

Fundamentals still play the biggest role. For example, oil supply is so stretched that the slightest disruption to production - or even only rumours of a disruption - can have a big effect on pricing.

But the speed with which information is flashed around the globe and how we react to that information might be increasing volatility in tight markets such as crude.

Quantifying the impact of the way the Internet is shaping the way pricing markets behave could be a job for the nueroeconomists who I wrote about earlier this month.

Perhaps the good old days were better, when CMR arrived by boat and a few wise old men with leather patches on their jackets puffed on their pipes and came up with a benzene price that was more stable and less damaging to both buyers and sellers. Or is this just rose-tinted and ill-informed nonsense?

James Burke (see picture above) has so far been proved wrong about the information technology revolution giving us the ability to be free, to create our own realities and to not be dictated to by governments, companies or other institutions.

In this clip from his wonderful series, Connections, he envisages such an era because knowledge will be freely available.

This is the great democratisation of knowledge written about by Chris Anderson in The Long Tail.

Sadly, the reverse has happened. We have become a slave to our machines - from our mobile phones, to our Blackberries to our PCs - and a slave to markets that we are nowhere close to predicting or controlling.

But give Mr Burke a break. His programme was broadcast in the 1970s, was way ahead of its time and perhaps so far ahead that one day his prophesies will come true.

A drowning man will grab hold of any floating debris - even a plastic bag made from standard-grade Chinese polyethylene (PE).

Hence, last Friday a statement by Wang Tianpu led to a few days of excited speculation about the cancellation of several Chinese cracker projects.

The president of Sinopec Corp, the Hong Kong-listed arm of the Chinese refining and petrochemical giant, was quoted in press reports as saying that projects that had already been postponed would be suspended indefinitely (taken as a face-saving euphemism for cancellations). He also reportedly said that the pace of other projects would be adjusted.

"Fantastic. At last we are seeing some commonsense," said a Singapore-based executive with a Western polylefins producer.

Sadly, though, only a few days later, Tianpu amplified his statement by saying that 2008 petrochemical expenditure would be cut by only $675m - amounting to much less than the cost of one cracker.

The excitement that greeted his first statement was the result of concerns over just how bad conditions could become over the next few years.

The hope was that a much bigger budget cut might take place - affecting the timing, or even the continued existence, of projects slated for commissioning in 2009 and beyond.

ICIS Plants & Projects estimates that 21 per cent of global ethylene capacity additions in 2008-12 will be accounted for by China.

The Middle East will be responsible for a further 36%, resulting in worldwide C2 capacity increasing to 156.3m tonne/year from 135.5m tonne/year.

China has every strategic reason to push ahead with more petrochemical capacity, even if growth looks precarious on the back of the likely frequent boom-and-bust cycles created by tight crude markets.

And we all know about the Middle East advantage, even if it might be eroding a little on tighter feedstock supply and higher capital costs.

"The knowledge society will strike back - eventually. Energy efficiency and renewable energy will be rewarding projects," says Norbert Walker, Chief Economist at Deutsche Bank in his Asia Trip Report 2008.

So if you are not in the Middle East and not in China, are not moving up the innovation curve or don't have good refinery-petrochemical integration (ideally, you will have a combination of all the above) you are in big trouble.

You're only option is to sell your business to some gullible fool during the next up cycle -but you'll have to be quick as the recovery is unlikely to last for long!

Yes, that's my target for the truck above, which is actually for 4-11 year olds and my son is only 22 months - but what the hell, don't we all deserve a second or, in my case probably a tenth or perpetual, childhood? And I am trying to teach him the value of recycling (the above picture is of a recycling truck) - even more bad news for the conventional chemicals industry.

The truck was S$249 (Singapore dollars) two weeks ago, has fallen to S$199 and surely has much further to go as the deflationary spiral begins to bite. My target is S$100, provided, of course, it hits this level before Santa sets off with his reindeer and his elves etc (poor old reindeer - less carrots this year, and I imagine Santa will be laying off some of his little helpers and moving those he retains to flexible short-term contracts with less healthcare and other benefits. Do the elves have a union, though? Not sure...answers, please).

But the serious point is that the deflationary vicious spiral - delayed purchases and higher savings rates leading to worsening corporate results, more unemployment and further delayed purchases - may have only just begun.

I remember reading an article in The Economist a few months ago which concluded that the US would not suffer a Japan-style decade-long slump because it had inflation. Not now.

Down every product chain, in the case of lego from crude oil to the plastic (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) to the finished goods, inventory has been manufactured using high- cost raw materials. Remember when crude was above US$100/bbl? It seems almost a distant memory.

So this means everyone - from the retailer in Singapore selling my boy's truck right up to the ABS producer and the cracker, aromatics and refinery operators - will have to endure lots of hair cuts in this first circle of the deflationay spiral.

Volker Trautz of LyondellBasell is right to say that destocking of this nature is a big cause of weak demand at the moment - and that the true nature of underlying demand might not emerge until Q1 next year (see below for interview).

But by the time the first quarter comes around, we could be into the second loop of a deflationary spiral that might push is into something as bad as the Great Depression, or a global version of Japan's long and painful economic paralysis.

What's your strategy to survive this?

18 November 2008 17:45 [Source: ICIS news]

HOUSTON (ICIS news)--Petrochemical customers have cut purchases as they expect prices to continue falling - a trend that has masked the true level of demand during the global economic slowdown, the CEO of LyondellBasell said on Tuesday.

Starting in the third quarter, customers reduced purchases on the expectations that prices would fall in upcoming weeks, said Volker Trautz, LyondellBasell CEO, during a conference call.

Such destocking accelerated in the fourth quarter, Trautz said.

At the same time, demand has dropped because of the global economic slowdown, he said. "The economy has clearly slowed."

LyondellBasell will not have a clear picture of underlying demand until the first quarter, he said.

As it is, LyondellBasell has idled an olefins plant and reduced operating rates as a result of the slowdown, Trautz said. The company has also shut down polymer plants.

The company has reduced its 2009 capital expenditures programme to $800m (€632m), the minimum deemed necessary to meet safety and environmental standards, Trautz said. LyondellBasell has also adopted a cost-cutting programme.

In the upcoming months, LyondellBasell may consider selling off noncore assets, such as real estate, the company said.

In all, the company should generate cash in the fourth quarter, which should allow it to reduce its net debt, Trautz said.

In other news, LyondellBasell expects to remain in compliance with its covenants in the fourth quarter and in 2009, the company said.

($1 = €0.79)

By: Al Greenwood
+1 713 525 2653

We need great leaders in the current crisis.

Below is the kind of speech I'd like to hear from my CEO - delivered in person - if I worked for a chemicals company.

Everything that now follows is fiction and any resemblance to an industry leader, either living or dead, might sadly be purely coincidental:


"Things are really bad - there is no disguising it, and they will get a great deal worse. This is at least the worst global economic crisis since 1980-1982. Conditions are a lot worse than during the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 when markets fairly quickly recovered.

"The financial security of hundreds of families depends on our company. Many of the main breadwinners of these families work for us.

"I have been through this myself - I was made redundant. It's not just the money that counts, it's the loss of self-esteem - because work for many of us goes to the core of how we define ourselves, of who we are, of what we mean to ourselves and others."

"I will do my very upmost to avoid having to tell anyone to leave for economic reasons. The only reason I will willingly let anyone go is if they make a careless mistake.

"We are all in this together, we must watch each others backs, support each other, encourage each other - and try not to make any mistakes.

"I would rather see volumes go down substantially than for us to acquire raw material from suppliers or sell product to customers in difficult financial positions.

"We need excellent market intelligence on the viability of all our suppliers and customers. How strong are their business models and credit positions? This knowledge needs to be constantly revised.

"I am not asking you to take any risks out of anxiety to achieve unrealistic sales targets. I will be revising those targets down, and will revise them and down even further if necessary - regardless of the initial impact on our share price.

"I believe that caution over business conditions will earn us the long-term support of our banks and our shareholders. I really don't care about my share options in the short term - all that matters is that we survive this together. And anyway my share options - and those of the fellow directors - will be worthless if we go bust.

"We cannot afford to make the mistakes of overbuying raw materials or over committing on sales because of our own credit position, the extreme energy-price volatility and the uncertainty over what is 'fundamental' demand'.

"Inventories have been run down because the industry was living in chemicals 'parallel universe', as Paul Hodges of International e-Chem so rightly pointed. Stocks were built-up earlier this year as crude prices soared on anticipation of further price rises up and down the product chains.

"This flew in the face of clear signals that the economic crisis was deepening. These signals included the collapse of Bear Stearns and the US government rescue of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. We were also guilty of this and I take the responsibility for following the herd.

"Once bitten twice shy and so everyone is as a result keeping stocks low. And as I've already mentioned, energy-price volatility and the uncertainty over demand is depressing buying and selling activity. Inventories are also being kept to a minimum due to the financial year-end.

"This means that I do not see our raw-material costs and finished-product prices moving up by anymore $20-30/tonne until at least the New Year and so there are no substantial gains to be made out there. But pricing hasn't necessarily hit the bottom and so declines could be much bigger than any temporary and slight increases - so the danger of taking a risk for the potential of a very small gain is the risk of a huge loss!

"But I am telling my sales team to be prepared for sharp upward price corrections at some point - possibly as early as January 2009. Demand is still out there, if only at very-much reduced levels, and once the end-user demand re-emerges, our prices could literally double overnight from very low levels.

"This creates an even greater risk for us and so the policy will remain the same: be cautious, don't take risks and if you miss targets and there is good justification for doing so, you will not be penalised. I would rather lose the odd upside deal when prices start rising and falling in large amounts than run the risk of a disastrous mistiming of raw-material buying and an increase in our operating rates.

"And finally, let's forget about the crisis for the rest of this evening. DINNER'S ON ME - LET'S GO AND GET DRUNK."

"
Yes, a great story in The Daily Telegraph describes how bankers are being written into Christmas pantomimes in the UK as villains. Their reputation has fallen almost as low as that of marketing executives.

But the few bankers that are still around are still shamelessly peddling their wares, including hedging mechanisms for the poor old chemicals industry. The other route to wealth for monsters of leverage is buying plants from bankrupt companies and leasing them out to operators with sufficient cost control to meet whatever feeble demand remains over the next few years.

On naphtha, the more immediate problem is a seriously weird market. As of Friday last week, naphtha was trading $257.50-258.50/tonne CFR Japan for first-half January delivery, according to ICIS pricing.

West Texas Intermediate crude was meanwhile at $53.50/bbl, meaning a multiple of crude to naphtha of less than five times compared with the usual eight or nine times.

In the normal world you would expect refiners to make big run cuts in response to abysmal petrochemical demand for naphtha and the collapse in gasoline consumption. This would restore multiples close to their historic norm.

But as everyone knows, we are not living in a normal world.

The heating oil season, though, is beginning in the northern hemisphere, creating the risk that naphtha might increase.

Would it be wise to lock in cheap prices now through either hedging or stocking up on physical cargoes, just in case naphtha returns to its usual relationship with crude?

At some point, petrochemical demand has to improve, no matter how anaemic. In such an event, prices might literally double overnight from their historic low levels - meaning good returns for anyone who has locked in their feedstock costs.

Is my colleague in London a cat lover? I am, but did not take offence at the analogy.

If I knew when chemicals prices were going to rebound, I would tell you - but only for some hefty fees.

By Nigel Davis
LONDON (ICIS news)--Beware the 'dead cat bounce'. Global chemical market intelligence service ICIS pricing editors are seeing some spot prices in Asia moving up from recent lows although contract prices remain severely depressed.
Are these the first signs that feedstock-to-product price differentials are recovering?
A dead cat bounce is a "figurative term used by traders in the finance industry to describe a pattern wherein a spectacular decline in the price of a stock is immediately followed by a moderate and temporary rise before resuming its downward movement, with the connotation that the rise was not an indication of improving circumstances in the fundamentals in the stock," according to Wickipedia. It is derived from the notion that "even a dead cat will bounce if it falls from a great height".
As with the world's stock markets, it is too early to call the upturn with anything approaching a degree of certainty. Chemical prices globally are falling because of much weakened feedstock costs.
Oil prices this week have dipped below $50/bbl which is hardly a position from which chemicals prices might be expected to recover.
But looking beyond that, it is the global demand slowdown that is giving the worlds' chemicals markets the jitters.
Industry economists work with real data and they have little visibility. Their forecasts make salutary reading.
The American Chemistry Council's (ACC's) chief economist, Kevin Swift, for instance this week told the New York Society of Security Analysts (NYSSA) that chemicals production in the US could fall by as much as 5.7% next year. This is a forecast for the sector excluding pharmaceuticals.
In the ACC's 2008-year end analysis and outlook Swift notes that forecasting now involves considerable uncertainty.
The general consensus, however, is that recession is spreading across the globe and this is affecting the business of chemistry worldwide.
"Global business of chemistry growth has essentially stalled since earlier in the year, with outright decline in the developed nations and slowing growth in most developing nations," the ACC's report says.
"As a result, global output will moderate significantly in 2008 and will further slow in 2009 before a recovery emerges in 2010. For the business of chemistry in the US the recession will adversely affect demand into 2009, resulting in lower production volumes."
Other sector economists point to slowed growth in the US and a sharp slowdown in Europe, Japan and elsewhere. The outlook is hardly bright, whichever way you look at it.
Analysts have continued to talk about the lack of visibility for the sector which is battling the demand slowdown, or rather consumer disinterest, against the backdrop of lower feedstock and product prices.
Demand has all but ground to a halt in December across great swathes of the sector. The (multi) million dollar question is when will it return.
Producers widely believe that demand will return once price/feedstock cost ratios have stabilised. There will be a new floor from which producer might expect to see greater interest in their products and from which they could hope to drive prices higher.
But we have yet to find the floor in relation to feedstock costs. And the chemical industry's customers themselves are not exactly overwhelmed with new orders.
The situation could change but is unlikely to do so rapidly and certainly not before the start of the New Year.
Swift suggests that the indicators for the US economy will become more negative as consumers retrench, sales fall, inventories rise, and production falls, which is hardly good news for chemicals.
A similar patter of reduced payrolls, mderating incomes and a "viscoious self-reionforcing cycle" is seen across other major global economies.
It pays to look forward, certainly, but it is too early yet to be overly optimistic. "Things will get worse before they get better," Swift says in his latest ACC report, "but eventually they will get better when confidence returns".

I was working with a chemicals consultant last month in India who gave me this priceless description of the true nature of a company:

"A company is a collection self-interested individuals who just occasionally -- and purely randomly - carry out actions that are for the benefit of the company as a whole".

Sounds like a comment, or a moan for those who actually care about who they work for, worth submitting to Lucy Kellaway, the corporate agony aunt, at the Financial Times.

In these straitened and grim times, the potential for office politics and such pontificating on the nature of the corporate world - as people sit around twiddling their thumbs and waiting for the bankruptcy administrator - must be huge.

Everyone will be looking for someone to blame. I blame Eric Cantona for leaving Leeds.

OK, this blog is supposed to focus on the long term, but in line with just about everybody else, all I can think about is the immediate and my collapsing share portfolio and the value of my home.

As a bit of light relief (and also, by the way, because it's my job) I've been taking a close look at polyoefins markets over the past week. More to follow on aromatics later.

It does appear as if current price levels are unsustainable, that buyers know it and that some modest further price gains are possible.

Some modest re-stocking was inevitable after the inventory-loss disaster of H2.

And the world economy hasn't completely stopped. Maybe we are only (?!) talking about 10-20% of lost demand into mainly consumer durables.

Perhaps also crude can't fall that much further, providing a floor for polyolefin pricing.

But the question now is how long pricing will remain around this new level, fluctuating by small increments with buyers maintaining an incredibly cautious approach.

If quarters turn into years, who will be left to pick up the pieces when the economy finally recovers?

At the moment, a shell-shocked chemicals industry is still recovering from the impact of destocking following the huge inventory write downs in Q4.

The next step will be to measure the state of genuine, end-user demand and how this compares with the fantastic growth we saw in 2003 right through until the end of H1 2008.

Comparisons will inevitably look bad, even if, as some hope, recovery arrives in the second half of this year. This is bound to have a pyschologically dampening effect on markets.

Plus, chemicals and plastics markets are about to be roiled by large amounts of new capacity.

Recent price rises in the aromatics and olefins chains might, therefore, be reversed.

And so cost will remain King in the second of 2009, and perhaps for several more years.

The rise of private equity in chemicals, which I examined in a previous post, resulted in claims that the sector's more efficient management techniques would result in money being made "even at the bottom of the cycle".

But key to survival may no be longer innovative financial engineering and cutting costs social and bureaucracy costs incurred by previously much bigger, listed companies.

It might instead be all about chemical engineers getting every last cent of value out of production processes through optimising "every pipe and every valve," says my colleague Nigel Davis - editor of the Insight section of ICIS news.

It will be fascinating to watch how this plays out - and what becomes of chief financial officers.

Herein begins an occasional series where I offer advice on how to make a little cash.

By the way, is it me or do I get the sense that a lot companies haven't woken up to the severity of the crisis we are in? A recovery this, and I think quite probably next year, is out of the question. We need to find new sources of growth to replace the US consumer who isn't going to start spending money again in the same volumes as before for a good many years.

Anyway, here is my handy tip: purely by coincidence discover one day that quite fortuitously you have priced your local product so high - way above international levels - that this has attracted competitively priced imports. Take advantage of this wonderful, joyouous happenstance, this glorious instance of serendipity and lodge an antidumping petition.

India has launched a petition for PP anti-dumping action against Saudi Arabia, Singapore and Oman. This is the first case of this type in India.

Producers, as we predicted on this blog earlier on, will be increasingly attempting to protect their home markets as everyone searches farther and farther afield to place distressed volumes.

Expect also that countries such as India - which much more lower applied than bound tariff rates under its WTO agreement,- will seek to raise tariffs to maximum levels predicted by the international trade body.

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Petrochemical markets, as is the case with stock markets, are I believe in the midst of a bear-market rally.

As chemicals consultant Paul Hodges predicted on his blog last year, restocking in Q1 was inevitable after the great inventory run-down of the fourth quarter.

Paul has consistently made the right calls on the economic crisis and on its implications for the chemicals industry. His accuracy in predicting the major events - from crude-oil pricing to the collapse of Bear Stearns - can be demonstrated by visiting his blog.

Read his post today which provides are summary of how we got we are and where the global chemicals industry appears to be heading.

Petrochemicals benefited from the Q1 restocking, of course.

We have also seen an across-the-board price rally sustained by a lot of speculation in China made possible by ample availability of credit. The question now is whether credit will be restricted as China becomes concerned over inflation.

Petrochemicals pricing has also been supported by stronger naphtha due to firmer crude, first of all because of refinery rate cuts when the Q4 crisis occurred and more latterly a huge programme of refinery turnarounds in Asia. According to oil and gas consultancy Purvin & Gertz, this turnaround programme is due to come to an end around June.

Naphtha supply will increase in H2 on more exports from India, higher production from one condensate splitter in the Middle East and the start-up of another splitter. Supply could increase in Asia by 20-30%.

I think crude is likely to trade around the $50/bbl mark for the rest of this year so this will set a floor for liquid-feedstock costs.

However,I don't believe that petrochemical producers will be able to use tight naphtha as a justification for maintaining current price levels because of the increased supply.

Petrochemicals supply will also lengthen when Asias' big cracker turnaround season ends after June.

Middle East project delays are likely to continue, but some further extra supply in polyolefins, MEG, aromatics and propylene oxide (PetroRabigh is in the process of starting up the region's first PO plant) can be expected in H2.

The second half of the year could also see the start-up of lots of capacity in China. But how much volume actually hits the markets will have to be closely tracked.

Demand will be better this year than in 2008, but hey, so what?

Last year was exceptional bad because of the destocking, and all the economic uncertainties will not be compensated for by the boost from government stimulus packages.

So, in short, expect feedstock-price support to weaken and for petrochemical supply to lengthen in a persistently weak demand-growth environment.

The big unanswered question is to what extent the recent price prices were also the result of speculation in China. In methanol, an incredible two-thirds of Q1 imports were for speculation on futures markets.

As Paul again points out on his blog, the volume of contracts being traded on the Dalian Commodity Exchange is nothing short of staggering (an average of 1Om tonnes a day during the first quarter!).

Has this contributed to LLDPE prices trading above LDPE over the last few weeks for the first time in two years?

How much of the chemicals and polymers that have been imported into China recently, or purchased locally, and are being held in inventory for speculation purposes? To what extent has this speculation been made easier by increased credit?

With as many as 30m migrant workers laid off in China and export-focused factories operating at only 50% of capacity, how can all this increased chemicals trade be justified by an improvement in the final demand for finished goods?

China's economic stimulus package is kicking in. Over the last few days I hear of improved sentiment in China that the worst might be over.

But given that 10-30% of China's economy (depending on who you believe) is dependent on exports, it would take a heck of an effective stimulus package to boost domestic growth sufficiently to replace all the lost export trade in the second half of this year.

We've also picked up anecdotal reports that factories are being kept running by soft loans from banks for social stability reasons.
It's unlikely that the total extra production will replace all the volumes lost through factory closures.

But at the end of certain product chains you could see China exporting deflation in H2 to relieve inventory - another reason to believe that chemicals pricing will decline in the second half.

However, it might not be in China's interests to flood oveseas markets with goods at bargain-basement prices if this triggers international tensions and a further rise in protectionism.

Overseas chemicals players seem to have benefited from the relative strength of China's market with volumes of benzene and polystyrene, for exampe, being shipped from Europe.

Large increases in polyolefin shipments from the US to China are also being reported, in the case of PE the result perhaps of comparatively cheaper ethane versus naphtha.

The word on the street, from our price-reporting team, is that nobody can really say for certain whether the recent price rises are the result of improved demand or speculation.

But add all the above factors together and it seems a sharp correction from June onwards remains very likely.

And the more uncertain that price direction remains the closer the correlation might be between oil and naphtha and chemicals pricing on a daily, weekly or perhaps even a longer-term basis.

In the absence of clear direction, crude and equities might end up as the only guides available (or perhaps chemicals might even move in the opposite direction to equities in China as a lot of traders traditionally move their money between the two - and also property - depending on where they think the next gains can be made).

For the traders in China and those who know know how to play the domestic markets extremely well, it's also a question of maximising returns from micro-price movements.

On a weekly basis, one trader estimates that domestic polyolefin prices have fluctuated by $50-100/tonne in 2009 compared with $40-50/tonne in 2007. Last year can be discounted as an exceptional year because of the inventory building and the H2 collapse so, hence the comparison with 2007.

The Dalian exchange must also be adding to this volatility.

Bear-market rallies are better than no rallies at all, of course, and we could several more rises and sudden dips in chemicals pricing before this crisis is over.

Good news, bad or indifferent? It was hard to gauge a clear picture from the Q1 macroeconomic numbers for China.

While retail sales grew at 14.7% in March compared with 11.5% in February, exports fell 20% during the first quarter.

GDP (gross domestic product) growth was 6.1% for the whole quarter, less than half of the pace at which the economy was expanding in md-2007.

Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has warned against "blind optimism" over the speed of the recovery, according to the New York Times. He cited weak overseas demand, overcapacity in some industriess, job losses and low investment in the private sector as the reasons why the foundations for recovery were not solid.

Export trade won't recover until the Western consumer starts spending again close to pre-crisis levels. Without such spending it might be reasonable to assume that China will struggle to post any further years of double-digit growth.

Overcapacity in some industries includes petrochemicals, although markets have been kept tight temporarily for reasons we've already covered in this blog.

The huge government spending programme planned for refining and petrochemicals could worsen the overhang.

China's petrochemical self-sufficiency ambitions could force all but the Middle East and a few other low cost producers out of being able to export some products to China.

I noticed in this Economist article that industrial production was sharply up in March by 8.3% and I read elsewhere that factory gate prices slipped by 6% - again in March - from 4.5% the previous month.

I've picked up anecdotal reports - again mentioned earlier on this blog - that factories are running hard in the textiles and garments sector to keep people in jobs, aided up soft banks. This conjures up an image of rows of warehouses stacked high with shirts that nobody wants to buy.

Is there a danger that in H2 China will export deflation to relieve some of its finished-goods inventory pressures? If so, what would this mean for the business of chemicals?

A sure way of telling might be a survey of purchasing managers in the West, asking whether they have been offered unusually large quantities of very cheap Chinese goods.

Jun Ma, Deutsche Bank's Chief Economist for Greater China issued a note this morning about the possibility of restrictions on the growth in loans because of poor lending practices.

This followed a warning against credit risks by Liu Mingkang, chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission, which this Wall Street Journal article has also picked up.

There are widespread anecdotal reports of commodity chemicals prices being over-inflated because easy lending has made it easier to speculate.

This speculation is across chemicals and polymers, futures exchanges for chemicals and polymers such as the Dalian Commodity Exchange and prroperty and stock markets. The same trader can often be dabbling in all the above.

One of my good contacts and friends had a "Joe Kennedy" moment last week (this refers to the famous story where the father of John F Kennedy was advised to invest in stocks by a shoe shine boy. He promptly went out and sold his shares just in time to avoid the Wall Street Crash).

The trader's moment came when he was asked by a Bangladeshi customer for ten full container loads of polyethylene (PE).

"I knew something was very wrong because there is no way demand in Bangladesh would justify this size of shipment. It was obvious this was for speculation," he said.

This followed a call from a Chinese chemicals trader who had never traded in polyolefins before asking for a cargo on behalf of a friend of a friend. "It was obvious he knew nothing about melt indices, the product or its applications. I could hear the sound of the herd stampeding towards the edge of the cliff."

So the trader liquidated all his positions late last week ahead of what he thought would be sharp price falls in polyolefins in China. It will be interesting to see if he was right.

In the longer term, as the Economist article also points out, better infrastructure - a major feature of the stimulus package - will help boost domestic growth and reduce reliance on exports.

If the government also manages to introduce a good nationwide health and social security system, domestic growth could really accelerate. I would bet that China has a much better chance of success than the US.

But China is China and if there is a way of making money out of a crisis, the famously savvy Chinese traders will find a way.

The danger is that this sends misleading signals about the true state of demand to outsiders - and at the moment, we are all desperate for any bit of good news. Has this made us a little more gullible than normal?

Speculative bubbles in property and construction - brought to an end by credit restrictions- was the start of the country's economic decline, The Economist adds.

Government policy was wrong.

If factories at the end of some chemical product chains are being kept running at high operating rates for social rather than demand reasons, this could turn out to be another flawed policy.

"Nobody can see until the end of the month - never mind into the third quarter," commented an olefins trader recently.

"The reason is that very senior managers are too busy micro-managing everything, from getting involved in trying to track commodity chemical price direction to insisting on signing off every expenditure over a few hundred dollars.

"The problem with these senior guys when they track markets is that they are so out-of-the-loop - assuming that they have ever actually been in the loop - that they don't know what they are doing."

I heard of one big company where the CEO has even insisted on signing off travel authorisation to next week's APIC conference in South Korea.

In these days of tight credit and collapsed sales, it's understandable that much tighter control on spending is essential.

And during the boom years, can we all honestly say that every single trip we made was entirely commercially justified - and that we were always sufficiently foused on the bottom line to get maximum value out of each trip? Look back at your old expenses forms and count up the number of genuine "drinks with Mr Kim" entries.

It will be interesting to see how the lessons being learnt today will be remembered when the economy has fully recovered.

But from a HR perspective, a tough sign-off regime needs to be well-communicated.

So does the senior guys tracking shifts in chemicals pricing - whether competently or incompetently - otherwise the workers on the ground are likely to become demoralised.

They are unlikely to be able to leave in this current climate, but will surely perform far worse if they feel their opinions are being ignored for no good and well-explained reasons.

Off-the-record, of course, how does your company measure up?

And did you fiddle your expenses during the good times?

The timing of when to strike the ball is everything in the wonderful sport of cricket - and also, apparently, in the American pastime of baseball.

An Australian banker is fond of reminding the English how much better his country is at playing cricket.

But his gloating doesn't extend to how well he's been timing dipping in and out of equity markets of late. Like a lot of other "cashed up" people he is suffering from the "if only" syndrome.

"A lot of money seems to be pouring into stock markets because it has nowhere else to go. I didn't expect this run to last as long," he said.

All the moving indicators are pointing upwards with crude above $55/bbl on Thursday where he thought there would be very tough resistance.

"There's so much crude in storage which has been acquired by the financial traders who perceive the economic recovery is just around the corner. This is a big risk.

"Equity markets are also responding as if a recovery is only three months away. They usually price in a recovery about a quarter ahead of when it actually happens, but I believe that the recovery - or rather the bottom of the market - is at least six months away."

And in his view, you have to be very careful how you measure "recovery" in the context of the worst economic downturn since possibly the Great Depression.

The first important measure is the effect of inventory adjustments on GDP (gross domestic product) growth.

In the US, for example, total inventory reductions subtracted $50bn from growth in the fourth quarter of last year, he said.

The first quarter adjustments will see a further $100bn or so of production cuts and the second quarter possibly in excess of $150bn.

The collapse of liquidity in Q4 2008 forced companies across all sectors to make much quicker operating-rate cuts and plant closures than occurred at the start of previous recessions.

"There was simply no re-financing available so the companies had no choice."

BASF has reduced is global production by 25%, Bayer Material Science has taken 300,000 tonne/year of polycarbonate (PC) capacity temporarily off-line and Dow Chemical's average operating in the fourth quarter was just 64%.

"I expect some inventory replenishment down many of the production chains in Q3 in the US, and probably elsewhere," he added.

"This could give the false impression that we have reached the bottom of this crisis and recovery has begun."

Inventory building in Q3 would need to be measured against consumer spending, he said.

Retail sales on big-ticket durable items such as autos and homes might take longer to bounce back in the West than in Asia. Cost consciousness could also extend for some time to clothing, food and tourism.

Individual wealth has been badly dented by the fall in stock markets relative to their peak and the collapse in housing.

"Savings rates are likely to continue increasing as a result of this loss in wealth - even more so if unemployment keeps on rising."

Recoveries in GDP growth in the third quarter of this year would also need to be measured against the same period in 2007 rather than 2008, he added.

"This will give us a measure of how far we are away from returning to the boom conditions of 2004-07."

The crisis began in the third quarter of 2008.

Any comparison between Q4 2009 and Q4 2008 would be even more misleading as the global economy ground to a virtual halt during the last quarter of last year.

Comparing 2007 with 2009 is crucial for the chemicals industry as new capacity was planned on the belief that growth would continue at levels close to the great boom years.

"Even if were still in a global boom we would still need capacity to shut down," said Paul Hodges, chairman of UK consultancy International eChem.

"In most building block products we are now faced with 20% oversupply."

It could be a very long time before the world economy enjoys another period like 2004-07.

Consumer and corporate credit is likely to remain much more restricted because of financial-sector reforms.

"You also have to look at the potential for credit-card debt going bad to undermine consumer spending and the stability of the banks," the banker added.

"The first quarter results of the Western banks were very misleading. They looked good because of a reduction in competition due to consolidations and bank failures.

(Also, the banks could hardly fail to make money as governments were practically giving money away)

"But behind the numbers you could see warnings over just how much bad debt could result from credit-card defaults.

"As much as 25% of the revenues of some commercial banks come from credit-card transactions."

Consumers who are not in danger of default will be eager to pay off their plastic debts rather than incur 20% interest charges, he said.

The other big risk is the rate of recovery on corporate debt that's gone bad. Optimists think it could be as high as 40%, whereas others are warning of returns of as low as just a few cents on the dollar.

There appears to be the risk of a least a double-dip recession - perhaps even three dips.

Commodity chemicals prices started going up before the current equity-market rally.

This followed the deep global production cuts in aromatics, olefins and derivatives and a rebound in feedstock costs.

It's a moot point whether the cuts, combined with delayed start-ups in the Middle East, created genuinely tight markets or just the perception that they were tight.

In the end, though, the result was the same - raising the age-old conundrum of whether sentiment or fundamentals are driving markets.

A danger is that rising crude prices and the stock-market rally could lead to chemicals production being ramped up (if it hasn't happened already), despite the uncertain outlook for consumption.

Confidence can be a dangerous thing.

It's a great deal easier to off-load shares when you think the market has turned than a warehouse full of polyolefins.

The current run-up in equities might go on and on - perhaps even for several years, according to economist Russell Napier.

But he warns, in this excellent video interview with FT journalist John Authers, that an extended boom in equities doesn't necessarily mean the economic fundamentals are sound.

For example,the stock market rally after the dot com bubble burst was fuelled by too-lax lending. Was this in effect a bear-market boom?

Now governments are pouring money into economies the world over to stimulate consumption.

This will lead in perhaps as long as 2-3 years time to a big inflation problem, the Chinese losing their appetite for US Treasuries, Treasury yields doubling and a cataclysmic bear market with the S&P falling to 400.

Until then, S&P could easily double from its March low, predicts Napier

Do you have the courage to stick your money in and wait?

It still feels counter-intuitive that the current run-up will last a few years given the scale of consumer and corporate debt.

But since when has logic had anything to do with anything?

This very interesting note from Jun Ma, chief economist for Greater China at Deutsche Bank (see the end of this post) offers evidence to support what this blog has been worried about for some time - the quality of China's economic rebound.

The government would presumably be less concerned about the sharp increase in loan growth if the extra money had substantially boosted domestic consumption.

Instead, a large portion of the new loans could well have ended up in the hands of speculators (helping to drive chemicals prices up), Factories also seem to have been encouraged to keep operating rates high for social reasons - and state-owned enterprises area wash with cash for industriall investments. This is crowding out borrowing by private companies.

My fellow, Paul Hodges, points out that Wal-Mart is actually reporting a decline in consumer spending at its stores in China.

Net lending falls 70%mom to RMB592bn in April

RMB net lending fell sharply to RMB592bn in April from RMB1.9tn in March, broadly consistent with our expectation. We believe this reflects the success of the window guidance (about 3 weeks ago) by PBOC and CBRC 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 RMB300-400bn per month in the remainder of this year.

As lagging indicators, the yoy growth in outstanding loans remained at 29.7% in April and M2 growth accelerated a little to 26%. Within a few months, we expect these yoy rates will begin to moderate following the decline in monthly net lending.

We see two main implications from the slowdown in net lending. First, net lending is a good leading indicator for QoQ GDP growth in China, with a lead time of about one quarter. The 70-80% fall in QoQ net lending in Q2 implies that QoQ GDP growth will likely moderate in Q3, following its peak in Q2 (at an annualized rate of 12-14%). Together with other factors such as a more visible corporate capex slowdown and a less supportive inventory cycle, it will likely result in a second phase of economic deceleration (measured on a QoQ basis) from Q3. On a YoY basis, the second down-leg of the economic cycle will likely begin in Q1 next year, as YoY growth lags QoQ growth by about two quarters. Second, net lending has a high correlation with market turnover in the A share market. The decline in net lending growth will therefore likely be associated with reduced liquidity for the A share market going forward.

Yoy inflation falls further in April

CPI inflation declined to -1.5% yoy in April, down from -1.2% in March. Producer prices are also declining, falling 6.6% yoy in April, vs a fall of 6.0% in March. Both figures are identical to our forecasts. In the CPI index, a 0.8%mom decline in food prices led the index down. Other commodity prices were essentially unchanged on the month according to the Ministry of Commerce. We expect yoy CPI inflation to remain in negative territory for another three or four months and PPI inflation to remain negative for six months. Upside risks to inflation stem from the possibility of higher wheat prices after a drought earlier in the year and the possibility of higher pork prices as farmers have slaughtered pigs in recent weeks due to the 10% drop in pork prices amid the Swine Flu outbreak (note that mainland China reported its first confirmed swine flu case today). Month-on-month PPI inflation - much more influenced by non-food raw materials prices - should recover on stronger demand due to rising gov't-led capex and inventory restocking in coming months, but these price increases may not be sustained beyond mid-Q3 when we think the QoQ increase in the number of new projects starts to fall and the inventory cycle turns less favorable.

Consensus opinion tends to swing firmly in one direction and then the other.

For example, in the good old days of 2007 you would have been pretty hard-pressed to find many in the chemicals industry who saw anything but a mildly cyclical downturn.

But the widely-held view now - that we are facing five years of incredibly tough times, the first period of this length in the history of the business - might also not come true.

"In 1992, the same was being said but then within 12 months the industry was in recovery," said an old industry hand.

"I don't know what the macroeconomic factors might be on this occasion. If I did I could make a fortune. In 1992, it was the unexpected emergence of very strong Asian demand.

"But even if the economic news keeps getting ever-gloomier, the industry itself might make yet more adjustments to bring supply much more in line with demand."

He cited the sweeping production cutbacks that have already taken place as evidence that the will to make the necessary changes exists.

"Leveraged and private-sector companies will just not sit on their hands. In the distant past, action was slow because the industry was mainly state-owned."

These included Dow Chemical reducing operating rates to a 63% average in Q4 last year, BASF shutting down 25% of capacity in Q1and Bayer Material Science idling 300,000 tonne/year of polycarbonate (PC) capacity - again in the first quarter.

The cutbacks seem to have been more extensive than in a recession of this comparable severity - the one which occurred in the early 1980s.

"Chemical companies had no choice because raising working capital through re-financing was simply impossible," says a Singapore-based banker.

Maybe if cash flow remains constrained by ever-weaker revenues - even if the financial system is repaired - companies will face no option but to permanently shut down capacity and definitively cancel projects.

The extent of the capacity closures to date suggests that markets being brought back into balance is possible far more quickly than the doom-mongers (including myself) expect.

A few major bankruptcies might make this process very rapid indeed through closure of a large amount of a capacity in one fell-sweep.

Apologies for letting this blog slip again, but have been busy trying to make a crust presenting ICIS training courses.

And so as a bonus for our army of avid readers, here are my extended thoughts on the above:

In the midst of the economic crisis it would be so easy to bury your head in the proverbial sand and forget that once the recovery does arrive, the same old feedstock-cost problems seem almost certain to re-emerge.

"The profitability of your average Asian naphtha cracker with the right level of investment in derivatives was extremely good throughout 2007. This was particularly the case if you were processing C4s into butadiene," said an industry observer.

"But in the first half of last year margins turned negative because of rising crude and naphtha costs. Every manufacturer down every product chain frantically built inventory because of the fear that oil would reach $200/bbl by the end of the year."

Of course we all know what really happened: Crude prices collapsed in Q4 resulting in the biggest inventory losses in the history of the chemicals industry. Stocks simply had to be liquidated due to the non-availability of working capital.

Governments are lavishing cash on stimulus packages in a desperate effort to return the world to business as usual.

This might on the surface seem the sensible thing to do, but unless that money is spent wisely in boosting energy conservation and renewable technologies, a return to strong growth could hasten the return of $100/bbl plus crude.

There's not much sign of smart investment in China. A surge in bank lending has been used to ramp up steel and aluminium production and provide the finance for manufacturers of finished goods to run their plants hard in order to limit job losses.

China announced a $586bn stimulus package last November and then in March disclosed plans for heavy investment in ten industrial sectors, including refining and petrochemicals.

"While the (investment) proposals may boost the economy, and thus energy demand in the short term, they could also lead to continued growth of energy-intensive industries in the medium to long term," writes the UK-based Cambridge Energy Consultants in an article on its website.

The Obama administration has also come in for some pretty fierce criticism over a cap-and-trade-bill before the House of Representatives. Lots of emissions permits would be given free under the bill, offering benefits to coal-based electricity generators and other energy-intensive industries.

Oil industry experts are queuing up to warn that the economic crisis has cut capital investment by the small independent oil companies in harder-to-get-at conventional crude reserves. The oil majors have slowed down development of unconventional sources of oil, such as the Alberta Tar Sands.

OPEC warned at its recent meeting that the fall in prices was resulting in lower investment, and the Paris-based International Energy Agency estimates that spending on oil and natural gas exploration will fall by 21% this year over 2008. This would represent $100bn less spending on building reserves.

The implications of a return of very expensive crude are obvious for Asia's petrochemical industry, which is largely naphtha-based.

The Middle East gas-based producers would once again stand to benefit due to another surge in margins as, of course, global petrochemical prices are oil-driven.

But what if everyone suffers? Could the return to crude in excess of $100/bbl re-awaken inflation, further stoked by excess liquidity resulting from government stimulus packages?

The danger is that we might repeatedly see nascent economic recoveries nipped in the bud by surging energy costs.

BASF announced last June that it was looking at making petrochemicals from biomass using its catalyst expertise, and said that it had made good progress at the laboratory stage.

Numerous companies were also looking at methanol-to-olefins technologies, including ExxonMobil and LyondellBasell.
China's coal reserves offer an opportunity to make methanol into large amounts of olefins and transportation fuels.

Let's hope that cutbacks forced on companies by the financial crisis have not included freezing research into attempting to break the crude-petrochemicals link.

Another concern is the long-term outlook for naphtha supply.

The US announced new car and truck fuel-efficiency regulations last week, which, in the short term could increase the availability of the feedstock.

By 2016, all new autos will have to meet a 39 miles per gallon standard (mpg) standard, up 42% from the current 27.5 mpg. Trucks will have to do 30 mpg versus 23 mpg today.

"Europe was already heading for an enormous gasoline surplus by 2015 even before this announcement," said Paul Hodges, chemicals consultant with the UK based International eChem.

Diesel demand in Europe has surged at the expensive of gasoline. However, the Europeans have been able to export their way out of gasoline surpluses due to shortages in the States.

But these exports were already under threat from increases in US refining capacity and the mandated steep rise in ethanol blending, added Hodges.

"The new fuel-efficiency standards will increase the pressure for European refinery closures, but in the interim there could be a disposal problem.

"This could create the opportunity for cost-advantaged naphtha supplies into the hard-pressed European and US petrochemical industries."

Eventually, though, refinery capacity will have to close because, as one Asian-based oil and gas consultant put it "there is going to be a worldwide glut of gasoline. Even on a straight-run basis before you look at more advanced processing, there will be a big surplus requiring rationalisation."

It is far too early to say whether refinery closures will lead to a net reduction in available naphtha.

Asia is adding capacity as Europe confronts the need to rationalise. In 2009-10 alone, 2.7m bbl/day of refining capacity is due to be come on stream in Asia Pacific, according to oil and gas consultancy FACTS Global Energy.

But naphtha exports from the Middle East could decline as the region looks to crack more naphtha in order to widen its petrochemical-product slate.

In Abu Dhabi, for example, a naphtha cracker complex is due to start-up by 2013.

Anyone with either access to advantaged ethane, propane and butane or with a proven technology that breaks the refinery/petrochemicals interface might be OK during the next oil shock.

The key for Asian liquids-based producers without either of the above must surely be maximising feedstock flexibility.

This flexibility could include cracking more liquefied petroleum gas (LPG).

LPG should be in abundant supply once liquefied natural gas (LNG) demand is booming again on higher oil costs and rising environmental concerns.

LNG producers either extract the gas during initial processing or leave it in the LNG to be taken out at re-gasification terminals.

Whatever are the solutions, they need to be found and found quickly if surging stock markets are proof of a quicker-than-expected economic recovery.

As I've been warning on this blog for some time, the explosion of credit in China has created a great deal of paper-bottomed optimism over the recovery.

Fitch, the ratings agency, has just raised its macro-prudential risk indicator ffor China from category 1 (safe) to category 3 (Iceland et al) because of the lending surge and public debt.

China's Banking Regulatory Commission warned last week: "The top priority at the moment is to stop explosive lending. Banks should carefully monitor the process of credit approval and allocation, and make sure that loans flow into the real economy."

And Andy Xie, the often-quoted Sino-bear, says in the same article I've linked to above from The Daily Telegraph: "Commodity speculators have been using cheap credit to play the arbitrage spread between futures and spot on the oil markets. They have even found ways to trade lumber to iron ore by sheer scale of leverage. "They've made everything open to speculation."

This is probably one of the main factors behind the boom in speculation in linear-low density polyethylene (LLDPE) futures on the Dalian Commodity Exchange. PVC futures were also recently launched on the exchange.

As my fellow blogger Paul Hodges points out on his blog, Chemicals & The Economy, China is at risk of repeating the mistakes of the West: an unsustainable rise in credit.

The obvious danger, as has been flagged up before, is a sudden collapse in chemicals demand and pricing as inventories are unwound (built up with too-easy) as tougher lending conditions are imposed. This could be an even more dramatic bursting of the current equities and commodity price bubbles if it occurs at the same time as sharp fall in crude (which seems likely if equities are hammered.

Source of picture: gilesbowkett.blogspot.com

The excellent daily energy and shipping report, The Schork Report said today that the bottom had "fallen out of the entire (energy) complex."

With the Bulls on the defensive, the authors believe that crude could retreat towards $60/bbl.

Natural gas markets are so oversupplied that prices in the region of $2/mBTU are possible, it adds.

Back in March, the report offered what I think is the best summary of the denial of fundamentals that's taken over equity and commodity markets recently:

Our concern is this: with each passing session it appears more traders are encouraged to "participate", hence, the market keeps moving higher. That happens enough times and soon you have $100 oil and Matt Simmons all over the tube alleging the Saudis are doctoring their books and that Petrobras and ExxonMobil didn't just find all of that oil in Brazil. Then, just like we saw last spring, when the price path of the market decouples from the fundamentals, perception trumps reality and high prices become the justification for higher prices. All because the
smart money [sic] doesn't want to "miss out".

Since March, August WTI prices on the NYMEX have rallied from $58.07/bbl to a $73.48/bbl high (+26½%).

Despite some recent headlines pointing to tighter oil supply (for example, more civil unrest in Nigeria and US dollar weakness) the energy-market mood has changed.

Until last week greed seemed to be chasing greed. "The market was going higher...and they (the speculators) went on a buying spree because once again, high prices justified high prices," wrote Schork on July 6.

So what began as a bear-market rally ended up as a growing consensus - which perhaps too few dared challenge - that the recovery would be V-shaped. Doesn't this sound an awful lot like the consensus views of decoupling and ever-rising energy costs which prevailed during H1 last year?

What changed last week was a fall in June US consumer confidence and a sharper-than-expected rise in unemployment. The employment-to-population ratio also fell to its worst level since 1984 and average hourly earnings have remained stagnant in two out of the last three months.

An indication of just how far we are away from a consumer-led US recovery is that US gasoline prices fell last week - for the second week in a row. This was the first consecutive weekly decline this year and occurred even though this is the peak driving season.

Chemicals pricing has increased in line with energy costs - as this chart from ICIS pricing shows. Naphtha, ethylene and polyethylene (PE) have been chosen as examples.

View image

Global production cutbacks and delays to Middle East start-ups have also helped sustain a chemicals price rally which began in February.

Efforts are being made to push through further prices rises. European PE and polypropylene producers are, for example, bidding for 10% July increments. These are aimed at recovering higher upstream costs and improving margins.

But the new capacity won't be delayed forever. China's import demand has already started to weaken on anticipation by buyers of extra volumes in H2 and resistance to price hikes.

This is bad news for the US and European producers. They have enjoyed strong exports to Asia in Q1 and during some of the second quarter, which has helped them keep domestic markets tight.

As I said last week, chemicals companies that have continued to manage inventories well during this paper-bottomed boom will be in a better position than those who have been taken in by the markets.

My last blog entry quoted a North American industry source who was concerned over the potential for physical delivery on the Dalian futures exchange to flood the real market and send prices crashing.

In my ignorance of how futures markets works, and as a typicaql semi-numerate journalist, I therefore asked a colleague with a futures/mathematical bent to help out. This will hopefully allay the above fear.

Here is his explanation (please feel free, as always, to disagree):

If you look at the English part of the website you'll see that several months before a contract expires (.e.g. in April for July delivery) there is an enormous amount of open interest (the dating system is confusing as each contract starts with 10 after which it makes sense).

They will agree in advance to cash settle before the expiry of the contract and so you if then look at a few days before a particular contract closes the open interest declines dramatically as once a contract does close and no cash settlement takes place, physical delivery has to take place. This helps to explain the very small delivered volumes also reported on the site.

See an Insight piece from my colleague Becky Zhang in our Shanghai office -. It seems as if the producers and buyers are not using the market in a big way to hedge; it's more the speculators trying to make lots of good money.

This raises an interesting separate point on the debate over whether there are large volumes of physical polyolefins in inventory.

Why would a lot of people bother renting a warehouse, taking delivery and taking all the risks associated with this when you can just go on the exchange and make money out of purely paper trading?

The other good thing about Dalian, as I understand it, is that you can get your money out straightaway - and with such incredible volatility on a daily basis you stand to make (or lose) money very quickly. This a lot quicker return than waiting to close a physical position.

This still leaves the longer-term issue of whether the market could become a de facto pricing influence. This could happen either because people believe it's important (to use another cliché again a self-fulfilling prophesy) or if the big producers and buyers start using it in a big way to hedge.

This is all work in progress so I will keep asking.

The above also doesn't explain why LLDPE demand has apparently remained resilient in the physical market, even though this is not an agricultural film-buying season.

I am also still working on the issue of the influence of availability of imports of recycled polyolefins.

Source of Picture: http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/

We have just started doing our research and so more details later - but see attached this Excel spreadsheet - lendingVDalianOI.xls

It compares the increase in lending from China's banks with the amount of open interest in the Dalian Commodity Exchange's linear-low density polyethylene (LLDPE) futures contracts.

Volume traded on the exchange has risen to mind-boggling heights this year - 99.9% of which is cash settled involving no intention by either party to provide or receive physical delivery.

As you can see from the Excel, when lending rises in one particular month the following month has seen increases in activity on the exchange.

Up to July 17, open interest on Dalian was at Yuan250bn with lending rising by Yuan1.43t trillion in June.

If July carries on its current pace Dalian activity might well exceed that in June after only Yuan664.4bn of credit was issued in May.

"An increase in available credit in China normally takes about a month to find its way into people's pockets and so there may be a correlation," a friend who reports on the financial industry told me over the weekend.

"It would be interesting to also compare the rise in credit with the response of local stock markets (up by around 80% from their November lows) and other physically and paper-traded commodities."

The other way to look at it could be to take the overall rise in credit this year to see the year-on-year influence on markets. This should also include the property sector, which, according to The Economist, has seen home purchases rise by 80% up until June.

Those who speculate on the stock market are likely to also to chance their arm on property - with some of these same gamblers also chemicals traders (so you might seeing switching of exposure between different markets, leading to dips and rises in activity that doesn't always respond in simple straight lines to increased credit; in other words keep it simple by just looking at the effect of the overall rise in lending).

Our obvious next step is also to see if any similar pattern has emerged in "physical" PE markets.

This might go someway towards answering the concern that the price recovery - which still shows no signs of faltering, according to ICIS pricing (see slides below) - involves a great deal of speculation.

PP-PEICIS20July.ppt

Source of Picture: Chinasnippets.com

Perhaps this post will help explain why a perplexed Hong Kong-based financial analyst wrote to me the other day, in response to my probably failed efforts to adequately explain rising chemicals demand in China:

"I stilll don't understand why polymer imports from PP, PE, PVC, and even SM (+15% per month avg) are up by so much this year."

One reason is a property boom that has some scary long-term implications (all the SM for EPS for insulation, for example, and PVC. Despite China's self-sufficiency in PVC local carbide plants suffered when oil prices collapsed.)

Fund manager Stephan van der Mersch, writing on the China Financial Markets blog describes a recent trip to Guiyang, the capital of Guizhou province as follows:

"I thought I'd seen insane excess in the past - 200 thousand square meter malls completely empty next to apartment complexes with 40 thousand units and 30% occupancy rates, etc. etc.

" We conservatively guesstimated that we saw US$10bn of NPLs in one afternoon. The only buildings that were occupied were six-storey towers built to accommodate the peasants who had been displaced by the construction."

Michael Pettis, author of the blog, later in the same post repeats his prediction that China could suffer a Japanese-style long period of slow growth rather than a dramatic crash - because of China's control over the banking system.

But he warns that this could be at the expense of consumer growth, as I had written about earlier on this blog, if the cost of cleaning up the banks is forced onto the public.

And he adds that the current property boom is being driven by:

*Buying sentiment returning to levels of the last boom - 2007

*Developers buying land again, resulting in land prices once more skyrocketing

*Negative real interest rates on bank deposits and, as mentioned many times before on this blog, the explosion in liquidity

*Construction industry loans being rolled over from short into long-term liabiltiies

"If a meaningful portion of Chinese household savings is in real estate that never will be occupied or won't transact for the next decade (and then transacts at a potentially lower rate 10 years out given that the building has been rotting for ten years and the construction quality sucks), are those savings really there?," he writes.

"China needs to increase domestic consumption for stable internally driven growth. You can't increase domestic consumption if you're buying real estate. So this is yet one other way that this whole liquidity injection is preventing a transition to a consumption-based economy. You really do wonder how long the Chinese will keep up this level of "pump priming". If they realize how much they're screwing themselves for the next decade, the central government might just tighten liquidity.'

If and when liquidity is tightened signifcantly in China, a major support to global chemicals pricing and demand wil have been removed.

Michael's blog is currently being blocked in China, he says.

"Bob, I think I we should give this up as I can't get a wireless connection and I couldn't be bothered to talk to anyone."
Source of Picture: Faculty.SMU.Edu

.
......and the effect on the quality of data and analysis is one of my big concerns - particularly at a time like this when petrochemical markets are becoming harder to fathom (many thanks to Andrew Keen and his excellent book, The Cult Of The Amateur).

The overwhelming volume of information on the Internet has led to the emergence of a new breed of journalist/company researcher/data gatherer.

No longer is it necessary to speak to people on the telephone and/or to interview them face-to-face.

Instead it is possible for the clever writer/researcher to compile an article from an Internet search. You can cobble together a convincing story (on the surface at least) by lifting data, analysis - and even quotes - without checking the accuracy for yourself.

The benefit of direct contact with multiple sources is that with experience and over time you get to work out who is reliable and who isn't from your assessment of character and motives etc; in other words, intuition.

There is no substitute for getting out of your comfy chair and travelling through the Chinese hinterland in search of the Holy Grail - real inventory levels (that's unless, of course, you are frightened of someone finding out that you are fraud with very little sincere knowledge of and interest in what you do).

Yahoo Messenger etc have further eroded the need for direct contact - again, taking away the human interaction which I believe is essential to get good quality information.

Now we have a generation of journalists/researchers who are spoilt - and I am sure overwhelmed also - by all the free information out there. Because you've never had to get off your proverbial rear end to tell a convincing story to your boss, you quite probably don't even know how to.

And more recently we have seen the emergence of an army of amateur and totally untrained citizen journalists, researchers and "experts" who can witness the riots in Burma from the comfort of their armchairs and nobody will be able to tell the difference (in other words, they make it up).

I was talking to a corporate relations officer of a certain International Oil Company the other week. He told me how one of his senior executives was so disgusted by the banality of the questions being asked that he gave the interviewer his business card back and said, "I think you should recycle this."

I once suggested to someone that while the Internet was of course essential (who would want to go back to parchment after William Caxton came along?), an experiment should be tried with young journalists/researchers/analysts etc.

I suggested that we should switch off the Internet, give them only a telephone, a travel budget and a list of contacts, along with some hard-copy resources, and assess whether they were able to assemble original and accurate information.

We could then offer training for those who fell below the mark. He accused me of being an "Old Fart".

But I am not sure how much of this was motivated by the fear of telling the Emperor he really had no clothes as opposed to a genuine belief that I was wrong.

Make your own mind up about the role of the Dalian Commodity Exchange linear-low density polyethylene (LLDPE) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) futures contracts from the interviews below.

The first quote is from Sinopec - from an ICIS news story.

There then follows my interviews with a major Asian producer and a consultant based in Asia.

The chart below shows the correlation between Dalian LLDPE and domestic physical market prices in China, courtesy of CBI - our joint venture partner in China.

  My next step, after what the major producer has said, is to do some research into any links between Dalian and pricing in the overall chemicals market.

Sinopec's view

"We will not take futures price as pricing references. The impact of futures prices on spot markets will remain only a reflection of market sentiment," a senior official in Sinopec's synthetic resin department."

"This is the result of the limited amount of physical deliveries taking place through the futures markets."

The Asian producer:
"
The Dalian futures market LLDPE price plays a big role in the Chinese polymer market. Although it trades only LLPE and PVC, it has become a trend setter for the entire market.

Many traders and end users also take part in the trading. Sinopec and PetroChina follow the Dalian market ."

The consultant

"The Dalian exchange has become a reference point for producers. Even though they are not trading on it (no hedging is taking place as it's also financial and chemicals traders) there is a psychological effect as it's a daily price that's very easily accessible: just log on to the screen each morning and there you go.

"In the absence of a complete picture of what's happening in China, Dalian is as good a guide as any.

"This doesn't mean that the volumes will go down necessarily - this depends on whether bank lending remains free and easy.

"I see an upside potential for pricing in Q3 because the new capacities won't have hit the market then but I see things turning bad from the fourth quarter."

Peering through the fog

On the theme of data again, in the ideal world it might be possible to send thousands of hardworking foot solders out into the field in China to chase down every warehouse of polymers and count every single pallet of polyolefins.

Not not really - don't talk nonsense; in reality, this is far too big a job for anyone.

But why not some kind of inventory survey to help pierce the gloom? If it works it could be extended to other products.

There clearly is a need as this paragraph from an excellent Insight piece on the Q2 chemicals results by Nigel Davis indicates:

"The impact of the recession has been widespread and deep. There is so much talk about the apparent end to de-stocking but inventory levels are still low. BASF said that its customers were ordering at very short notice and only in small volumes. The inventory situation is opaque. There are no reliable figures."

Source of picture: waittilnextcentury.blogspot

Back to an old theme, the Dalian Commodity Exchange, this story from ICIS news talks of how physical cargoes are being bought and then sold at a price fixed now for November delivery. At the time of writing this was realising a $169/tonne profit.

This could be old news, but I had only been really thinking about paper trade - i.e. the practice of dipping in and out on a daily basis to make a quick buck with only cash settlements taking place.

If this is widespread this is altogether different. It raises the possibility that if a lot of these types of trades take place and there is a sudden fall in the price, those left holding the contracts close to or at maturity might panic. You then could have the classic self-perpetuating downward price spiral in the market as a whole.

And if physical deals like this on the exchange increase, it would be harder to say that the market has no relevance to determining real-world pricing.

Arbitrage like this also might have the obvious effect of forcing increases in off-exchange PE prices (and posssibly all polyolefins as the exchange is apparently being watched by producers every of grade).

As any such increases in the regular market would not be the result of fundamentals, wouldn't this add to volatility?

Or alternatively I suppose, if enough physical cargoes were delivered through the exchange, supply might tighten sufficiently to maintain strong prices in the regular market!

Source of picture: 1st-commoditytrading.us

It's only one comment from one consultant, but this is what he said today about the growing role of the Zhenghou Commodity Exchange's purified terephthalic acid (PTA) futures contract.

"PTA futures have been exerting a huge impact on spot pricing starting 2H July.

" It was up to Rmb 8200-8250 middle of last week, but came off to Rmb 8000 on Friday, which has stalled forward momentum in the PET Chain (PTA/MEG/Polyester)."

Bear with me on this for a possible reason why the Zhenghou exchange could be lagging Dalian in its influence on the overall market.

Polyester producers have only recently started taking advantage of ample bank lending in order to raise operating rates.

Polyolefin off-takers have been dipping into the enormous amounts of easy cash flowing into the economy since as early as Q1.

"The polyester sector is much more heavily dependent on exports. As a result, confidence has only recently picked up with the firmer belief that the global recovery has arrived," the consultant said.

But as he points out there is NO actual stronger consumption of polyester. Rates are being increased on the assumption tha textile and garment orders for the next overseas buying season, due to start in September, will be strong.

Why not indulge in a bit of paper trading to offset any potential physical inventory losses?

And if it's not the producers involved in Zhengzhou it might be the traders. They could be taking advantage of rising uncertainty over underlying demand versus speculation and inventory levels.

Sound familiar?

Confidence along all the chemicals value chains is always a key issue because of the ability to aggressively manage inventories, according to the London-based chemicals analyst Paul Satchell.

So there's the ever-present risk of sudden and very disruptive de-stocking. The longer the current rallies in commodity prices and stock markets continue, the greater might be the risk that confidence becomes excessive and mistakes made last year are repeated.

If the events of last year have taught is anything it's that markets don't behave rationally.

Those who arrive late for the party just as the punch bowl is taken away might suffer the most - along with those who've been there for a while but don't make an exit before the bar closes.

Inventory rebuilding
There's plenty of evidence of inventory building in Asia which might not always in response to strong underlying demand. For example:

*Polyethylene (PE) inventories in China at the second and third distributor levels were at very high levels in June, according to one industry report. Polypropylene (PP) inventories were, however, at normal levels.

*Benzene, toluene and monoethylene glycol (MEG) inventories were said by several sources to be also very high in July. Hydro-dealkylation (HDA) and toluene disproportionation (TDP) operating rates were also reported to have been raised - a long with benzene production from coal-based steel plants. Strong overall reformer economics, up until the end of the first half of August, could have lead wrong decisions on production levels

Polyester operating rates were said to be on the rise from H2 July as producers tapped into ample bank lending in order to increase rates. This was on the assumption that the September buying season for textiles and garments would be strong, leading to a big improvement in exports. The next Canton Trade Fair will also be a major indicator (the textile and garments phase of the fair takes place between 31 October-4 November). But there are already signs of improvement: The textile and garment industry exported $14bn goods in June, up 13% from the previous month, said the National Development and Reform Commission. But this was still 10% down on a year ago.

A big influence on confidence will be whether China can be successful in taking the air out of its current real-estate and stock market bubbles.

Supply of new loans in July dropped to $52bn from $197.5b in June - a 77% reduction.

(China might not want to do anything more to spoil the mood of the party before the 60th anniversary of the Revolution, which takes place on the 1 October).

But this bubble has yet to reach the scale of the last one which went pop in October 2007.

At its peak so far this year the Shanghai Composite Index has traded at 3.8 times its book value, barely half the 7.2 book multiple in October 2007, according to the Financial Times newspaper.

There's also plenty of caution
The inventory building we talked about earlier only applies to China and traders in just about every commodity everywhere in the world.

Chemicals companies outside China seem to be exercising extreme caution because of the huge inventory losses incurred in Q4 last year.

"Inventories are being kept low because there is very little visibility down the value chains," said a UK-based chemicals consultant.

"The credit crunch means that it remains difficult to finance inventories.

"Chief financial officers have just spent months explaining away large inventory losses from the fourth quarter. They are unwilling from a career point of view to risk having to go through the same performance again. "

The focus is cost control with market share taking second place.

As one Asian industry source put it: "Sixty per cent of our focus used to be winning on business in a broad range of markets and 40% on cost efficiency; now these percentages have been reversed and we would rather lose sales than break our tighter budgets."

The same applies to operating rates. US and Europe have maintained deep operating rate cuts - and have idled or permanently closed many plants - with the Northeast Asians also said to be showing very good discipline at the cracker level.

Middle Eastern players were in contrast reported to be running flat out in August following production problems in H1. These prevented them from taking full advantage of strong Chinese import demand.

The main focus in polyolefins is on selecting which grades to be produced based on pure economics rather than, again, on winning or maintaining market share.

But will this type of caution be enough to prevent a sudden reversal in petrochemical pricing?

The Oil Factor
The big danger is that any retreat could be driven by an unwinding of heavy speculation in crude.

At the moment the market remains in full-carry contango, meaning the combined cost of storage and borrowing (the full-carry cost) is below the futures price.

If this changes - or quite simply storage space runs out - there could be a sudden stampede for the exit.

What seemed counter-intuitive is that oil prices were at mid-August levels when estimates of demand kept falling.

This is unless you accepted that the oil market was again being speculator-driven.
Petroleum demand would be 1.8m barrels of oil per day lower than it had forecast in June, said oil, gas and refining consultancy Purvin & Gertz.
OPEC said in a report in August that the "market remains fundamentally weak". And it noted that US consumption is "still showing a massive reduction."

Could it all happen at the same?
This big worry is that Chinese growth could fall on less economic stimulus as oil prices collapse and much-delayed new Middle East petrochemical capacity hits the markets.

China is also due to start-up several major cracker projects in the second half of this year.

But the first half of this year was far better than anyone dared to expect. There was a strong recovery in petrochemical pricing with some reasonable spreads at the polyethylene end of the chain as this chart shows (the same applied to PP)

View image

Let's just hope that the traders in all the commodities, including chemicals, don't spoil the recovery before real demand has the chance to catch up with the improved confidence.

The Canton Trade Fair

Source of picture: Blawg.lehman.com

This interesting article from Bloomberg says that while petrochemical output in China rose in August, textile production actually contracted.

We don't as yet have any breakdown for specific petrochemicals.

If the overall increase includes higher aromatics-to-synthetic fibres output then the gamble that the chain has taken on improved sales of textiles and garments will have so far failed to pay off.

As we discussed earlier on this blog, there is evidence of higher output down the entire synthetic fibres chain.

A key measure of improvement in exports to the West of textiles and garments will be the next Canton Trade Fair which takes place in October-November.

Source of picture: Wikipedia

Because benzene has so many end-uses it's widely seen as a pretty good barometer for the overall health of the industry.

As C6 led the recovery last time are recent declines a sign of another broad-based retreat?

See the slide below:

View image

Or is it more the problems we highlighted earlier in the week that are specific to the aromatics and fibre-intermediate chains?

PX and PTA have also been on the retreat of late.

Before winding up for the weekend, see this report from the New York Times.

More later......

Source of picture: rateyourmusic.com

...steal a lot and they make you a King," wrote the great Bob Dylan in A Sweetheart Like You on his great 1980s album, Infidels.

This seems appropriatea as we commemorate exactly 12 months to the day since the West's financial system imploded.

Obama is talking tough on new regulations - and I am sure he sincerely means it - but Wall Street seems to control the overall Washington agenda.

Why does it matter for the chemicals industry? Because the distortions in energy, other commodity and equity markets are creating a false impression for the industry.

As the president says: "It is neither right nor responsible after you've recovered with the help of your government to shirk your obligation to the goal of wider recovery, a more stable system and a more broadly-shared prosperity."

Hear, hear.

Forget supply and demand, just record the index cards....

Source of picture: Heatusa.com

This amateur pundit is beginning to think he got it very wrong.

"I've been thinking the same thing - I was as gloomy as you a few months ago," said an oil-and-gas consultant friend of mine this morning.

"The Singapore property market is close to its all-time highs of 1997.

"The consumer-confidence indices have seen a complete about-turn from 12 months ago.

"Could the improved sentiment itself result in this being a U rather than a W-shaped recovery?"

"Maybe the Chinese government will continue spending as much as it can to stimulate the economy as a hedge against the US dollars.

"Why buy more Treasuries when dollar weakness seems to be a long-term factor with the risk that the dollar might also be replaced as the reserve currency?

"It could well be in China's longer-term interests to keep investing heavily in moving the economy from an export to a domestic focus.

"This will need to involve winding down policies that have provided temporary relief from the global crisis (i.e. huge increases in bank lending and other stimulus policies) in favour of reforms that will boost the pace of genuine, underlying consumption growth.

"These need to include better healthcare and pension systems, financial sector liberalisation and deregulation of distribution and logistics."

"It seems amazing that only a year ago we were talking about something as bad the Great Depression of the 1930s.

"Perhaps the problem is that we've been looking too much at fundamentals - at supply and demand from oil down to finished goods.

"The focus instead should perhaps have been on international capital flows.

"We need to more carefully study how money flows between borders and between different equitiy markets, commodity futures markets and over-the-counter (OTC) trading,"

Here are my views...

Electronic trading systems have revolutionised the speed of capital flows.

The IntercontinentalExchange website, for example, says that transactions on its wide and ever-expanding range of markets each take only two milliseconds.

You have dollar and oil markets sitting on the same exchange. Movements in both markets are presented in real time.

Has this contributed to the correlation between a weaker dollar and higher crude prices -along with the rise of index funds linking the two?

Energy prices have been virtually divorced from stock levels since 2003 and so recent historic-high storage of oil, refined products and natural gas is nothing new.

The current bull-run in crude might well last until real demand catches up.

It seems unlikely that interest rates will rise before then. The US government will want to avoid banks - which are benefiting from public fundingand less competition - in trouble again.

Ironic, isn't it? Bail-out money is being used to make more bets. The bigger the bets the less the risk for a financial institution.

And maybe even the speculators have done us a favour by pricing in future tight supply now.

An issue for chemicals companies is controlling their production and stock levels to reflect the genuine needs of their customers.

The task of separating market froth real and immediate demand would surely benefit from some harder thinking.

Source of picture: Chinaenvironmentallaw.com

Talk around the water-cooler in Shanghai offices at the moment is the fall in the cost of a car-license plate in September to a lowest bid of Yuan 27,000 ($3,953) from around Yuan 36,000 in August.

"It surprised everyone because the forecast had been for the price to actually go up to Yuan 42,000," said an ex-pat based in Shanghai.

This has created one of those agonising "if only" moments as he registered his car last month.

But more importantly, the surprise reduction might be an indication of softening auto demand after months of heady growth.

Domestic sales rose by 29.18% during the first seven months of this year over the same period in 2008 to 8.33m units, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.

The monthly price for license plates is set by auction so this could be an early pointer of the effect of reduced bank lending.

Instead, though, it might be merely a lull ahead of the long Chinese national holidays, which take place on 1-8 October.

"The decline in the price happened despite new regulations making it harder to buy a cheaper plate from outside Shanghai for use in the city," the ex-pat worker added.

"There were around 13,400 bidders for 8,500 license plates this month as against 18,000 for 8,000 plates in August."

Petrochemical prices are also on the slide, according to ICIS pricing.

Fibre intermediates had fallen for four weeks in a row as of last Friday.

Raffia-grade polypropylene (PP) was at $1080-1120/tonne CFR China main port compared with $1130-1200/tonne CFR China a month earlier.

Again, though, it's hard to discern to what extent these falls are due to a pre-holiday business wind-down against something much deeper and more fundamental.

"There are a lot of official statements in the local press about how too much lending went into speculation in real estate, in stock markets and in commodity markets in general. Lending rules are getting tougher," the office worker continued.

"I think there's also a danger of China following the US by enjoying a dangerous 'wealth-effect' from rising property prices. This seems unsustainable as real-estate costs are rising much faster than incomes.

"As was with the States again, leverage is on the rise through grey loans. State-owned enterprises (SOEs) borrow from the banks at preferential rates and then re-lend to less creditworthy companies and individuals."

Even pig farmers are involved in speculation through stockpiling copper and nickel, according to this article from Bloomberg.

Should we now be searching pig sties and farmers' fields for bags of polyethylene (PE) pellets?

"China, please please do what we did and spend what you might not be able to afford..."

Source of picture: The Daily Maily

Whether or not China's pace of economic recovery will be maintained would have become an intensely boring topic of discussion if it wasn't so important for all our livelihoods.

More data specific to polymers and chemicals has emerged as to just how staggering the rebound has been: Imports of un-compounded polyvinyl chloride (PVC) were up by 100% in the year to June compared with 2008, according to International Trader Publications Inc.

Benzene, vinyl-chloride monomer (VCM), methanol and propylene imports were up by 100-550-% during the same period, the publishing company added.

"During the last recession, when prices bottomed around December 2001-February 2002 period, there were also spikes in imports of some products into China," said Jean Sudol, the company's president.

"What was different then versus now is that fewer products were involved, the spikes were nothing like the magnitude we are seeing now, and the surge only lasted 1-3 months. This time it's endured for 7-8 months."

Evidence of weaker demand has emerged over the last few weeks.

At the risk of boring you yet again (if you are not too worried about your job), is this demand-decline partly the result of too-much of inventory re-building of chemicals, polymers and of semi - and finished-goods?

All will hopefully become a little clearer after the very-long Chinese national holidays from 1-8 October. It is hard to discern to what degree recent sales dips are due to business winding down ahead of this break, overstocking and bleaker economic prospects.

On the surface, a lot of the macro-economic numbers look terrific: Retail sales grew by 16.6% in the first half of this year and by 15.4% up until the end of August.

But scratch the surface and you find that retail sales include government purchases and shipments to shopkeepers before any sales to consumers are recorded.

"This makes them a very bad proxy for consumption," writes Michael Pettis on his blog, China Financial Markets. Pettis is a professor at Peking University's Guanghua School of Management.

Retail sales-growth was in excess of the expansion in GDP (gross domestic product) over the last six years, he adds.

"Consumption (real consumption and not the retail-sales numbers) has been growing over the past several years by about 8-9% a year, while GDP has been hurtling forward by 10-12% a year," he argues

"Not surprisingly, this implies arithmetically that consumption is declining as a share of GDP."

The China Economic Quarterly (CEQ), an online research publication, agrees that the retail sales numbers aren't much use in tracking genuine consumption. Even government officials don't attach much credence to them, it adds.

But, unlike the more-pessimistic Pettis, the CEQ believes it's well within China's capability to maintain GDP growth at 8-9% in 2010 (growth is expected to easily reach 8% in 2009).

The reason is that there is still plenty of money in China's state-owned banks to support high levels of lending with equal oodles of cash around to maintain investment in public infrastructure.

As to asset bubbles which might lead to drastic government slowdown measures, the "hysteria is premature", writes the publication in its third-quarter issue.

"Price-earnings ratios are well under half their truly speculative October 2007 peaks.

"Our detailed analysis (of the housing market) suggests that the pool of prospective upgrading -and investment buyers is so large that the market can continue to rally for another year or so."

But it warns: "Continued growth at 8-9% in subsequent years will depend on whether the government uses the time it has bought through monetary stimulus to push through domestic market reforms."

"We are pretty optimistic about financial sector liberalisation; less so about service-sector reform."

China has finally created a bond market, meaning capital is being more accurately priced rather than always handed out virtually free to state-owned enterprises (SOEs).

A new stock market for small -and medium-sized enterprises will probably begin trading in Shenzhen in the fourth quarter this year.

These measures should help shift the economy away from dominance by the SOEs towards what in theory are more-efficient private companies.

Extra credit mechanisms are also being created to increase the availability of consumer finance.

"But we have yet to see much evidence of a serious effort to deregulate service sectors, notably distribution and logistics, that remain sink-holes of state-dominated inefficiency," the publication adds.

Liberalisation and deregulation are crucial in re-balancing the economy away from exports and towards a genuine growth in consumption as a share of GDP.

"Don't trust the government, any doctor or any lawyer," I was once told by a drunken tour-guide in Greece before he started reciting poetry.

In this case we have to trust the Chinese government in the hope that it can do a better job than certain White House administrations.

You could argue that wouldn't be particularly difficult.

Source of picture: zerohedge.blogspot.com

It might seem a little melodramatic (and it's a wonderfully melodramatic name), but what kind of threat do dark pools - and other off-exchange trading mechanisms - present to all our livelihoods?

You can see that the World Federation of Exchanges might have a financial motive in making their complaint to the G20 over the threat these mechanisms represent to their "macro-economic role".

But after the role that the shadow banking system played in the financial crisis you have to be worried.

The $64,000 dollar question has to be how you regulate dark pools etc.

And for the sake of melodrama: Unseen forces, unaccountable and anonymous, might start determining all our livelihoods.

Sudden and entirely unpredictable shifts in global commodity markets could push countries into financial ruin and even wars.

At least in the case of the exchanges, because pricing is transparent, you can challenge the logic of say the futures price of oil being way out of step with supply and demand fundamentals.

But the problem with these dark pools etc is that you won't have a clue on what might happen until it hits you.

SWIMMING IN OIL?

Source of Picture: fashionfunky.com

The threat posed by Iran test-firing its Shahab-3 missiles and a rally in US equities on increased M& activity in the drug and technology industries pushed crude slightly higher yesterday after last week's steep declines.

This is yet further evidence that the oil market is why out of sync with real demand for the black stuff and just about all its derivatives.

"July's Vehicle Miles Travelled (VMT) figures were released last week, with total miles driven clocking in at 263.4 billion miles, up 2.3% from July 2008," writes today's Schork Report, the daily online data and analysis service for energy and shipping markets.

"That is a solid increase but keep in mind: Gasoline prices have decreased by 38% since last year.

"Further, July 2008's VMT figure was 3.5% lower than July 2007. Therefore, this year's 'increase' was 1.3% below 2007 and 0.5% below the 2003-07 time-step, thereby continuing a steady VMT decline."

This is more evidence that we are miles away (excuse the pun) from the credit-fuelled demand levels of 2003-07 for everything from barrels of oil and gigajoules of natural gas to synthetic dog coats.

Chemicals demand in the UK might not return to pre-recession levels until as late as 2020, Oxford Economics has warned.

But don't bet against speculators pushing crude prices back up again, especially if conflict breaks out with Iran over the missile testing and the alleged development of nuclear-weapons capability.

This is despite weak demand, as the Schork Report has pointed out, and deeply oversupplied crude and crude products markets.

Such is the oversupply that even a disruption in Iranian production (Iran is the world's fourth-largest producer) might not make much of a difference, assuming that the conflict doesn't spread to elsewhere in the Middle East.

"Saudi Arabia was running just about flat out in 2007. Now it has 6m barrels a day of spare capacity," said an oil industry observer last week. 

Recent falls in gasoline mean that its pricing could be close to "meltdown", according to this report from Bloomberg.

And as my fellow blogger Paul Hodges pointed out last week, the historically high amount of oil in floating storage is now being delivered to refiners due to a narrowing of the contango.

So I am with those who believe we are heading for $45 a barrel before the end of this year. 

Still, a two-way bet might be advisable - just in case there is another rally.

.....said Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England

Source of picture: northbriton45blogspot.com

ANY excitement over US house-price figures for July - which showed the biggest monthly gain for years when they were released yesterday - has to be put into the kind of context that undermines a lot of recent positive economic numbers.

The price recovery is partly the result of the $8,000 tax credit for first-time buyers and the Federal Reserve buying mortgage-backed securities. The tax credit expires at the end of November.

Inventory of unsold homes is at its lowest level in more than two years, according to The National Association of Realtors.

But there's a "shadow inventory" of delinquent or foreclosed mortgages of some 7m houses, according to Amherst Securities.

This matters to the global chemicals industry because of the large amount of chemicals and polymers which go into your average US home.

More importantly, without the return of some kind of "wealth effect" (this still seems a long way off in real-estate as the S&P Case Shiller Index is still 30% below its 2006 peak) it's hard to see a sustained rebound in US consumer spending.

"It's the level, stupid - it's not the growth rates. It's the levels that matter here," Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, was quoted as saying last month.

Levels to be concerned about include western consumer indebtedness that is still too-high relative to income expectations and credit availability, wrote Mohamed El-Erian in the FT yesterday. He is chief executive and co-chief investment officer of Pimco.

Bank balance sheets are also still too geared for the comfort of regulators and the managers of the banks, he added.

As my colleague Nigel Davis saidthis Insight article from ICIS news, real levels of lending to businesses, especially the small -and medium-sized ones, remain constrained.

Unemployment has also risen well beyond expectations and it will take years for the jobless rate in the US to return to its natural rate, El-Erian continued.

Yesterday I quoted the excellent Schork Report which put into context some more supposedly encouraging statistics: July's Vehicle Miles Travelled (VMT) figures were released last week, showing a 2.3% increase from July 2008.

But as the authors pointed out: "The July number was still down by 3.5% compared with July 2007."

This was a year when demand for just about everything under the sun was at historic highs.

Further - the modest improvement in July 2009 happened after a 38% year-on-year fall in gasoline prices.

Growth in urban VMT was less than that for rural travel, according to the latest statistics.

Urban driving is seen a stronger indicator of overall economic health as it includes travel work.

Unemployment was therefore a threat to the "nascent recovery", added the Schork Report.

The US Conference Board's latest index of consumer confidence, which was also released yesterday, seemed to support the Schork view: The index slid to 53.1 in September from 54.5% in August.

How should chemical companies respond to these challenges?

There will be more on this, and the implications for Asia, over the coming days and weeks.

The Chinese government appears to have an important objective to achieve while promoting commodity futures trading in the country?

A report in today's Wall Street Journal says that the government is positioning its futures markets in setting world prices for metal, energy and farm commodities. Jiang Yang, chief futures industry policy maker and assistant chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission is quoted as saying that the government has a long-term goal of increasing China's influence in pricing. Yang also says that futures may assure Chinese commodity importers of 'fairer deals'.

Pic source: Xinhua

The big implications are for the oil market as China imports huge volumes every year. The Shanghai Futures Exchange is said to have plans of introducing its own contract for crude oil next year. This may not be an immediate threat to the Nymex contract but the development needs to be watched closely especially if it has the support of the Chinese government.

"Beijing believes hosting big futures markets will enhance the country's economic security by essentially advertising what the world's biggest customer for some commodities considers a fair price. For the rest of the world, the exchanges could mean less guesswork about China's buying habits, possibly reducing volatility in the global market."

The strength of Chinese buying in the physical market has for some time now guided global petrochemical prices. But with the lldPE and PVC contracts turning out to be spectacular hit this year on the Dalian Commodity Exchange will these contracts soon become a reference for global pricing?

I have been digging a little deeper into the Map Ta Phut issue and it looks like expectations of major delays to projects at the site were a little premature.

Construction has not stopped despite a ruling by Thailand's Central Administrative Court to stop work on 76 projects at the site. The ruling was directed at the government which has so far not asked companies to halt work as all the projects have received environmental clearance. The government has now appealed to the Supreme Court and Thai companies are also planning to approach the court.

Although work is ongoing companies may not receive permission to commission their projects if the issue is not resolved quickly. The first of the major projects due at Map Ta Phut is PTT Chem's 1m tonnes/year cracker. The company is still hoping to commission this at the end of the year though it is unlikely to run at full capacity until a new gas processing facility is brought onstream in first quarter of 2010. PTT Chem's plan is carry out a maintenance shutdown at one of its smaller crackers to divert feedstock to the new cracker during the commissioning period.

Pic source: Wikimedia Commons

Nobody is very clear on how quickly the government will be able to sort out the Map Ta Phut problem. I was told by one Thai analyst that anyone giving dates is surely bluffing. But he believed that it is likely to take months rather than years to work out a compromise.

The government is certainly under a great deal of pressure - investment, employment and GDP will be hit if projects at Map Ta Phut get delayed but at the same time it cannot afford to ignore the demands of the local people.

And what the people want is full implementation of Section 67 of Thailand's 2007 constitution. This guarantees Thai people the right to participate with the State in preserving the environment and stop any project or activity which may damage the environment unless it has been evaluated and approved by an independent body made up of representatives from private environmental and health organisations.

But the government has yet to form an independent body or pass a law that companies can follow while seeking environmental clearance for their projects.

It will certainly do so now which means that companies will need to carry out a Health Impact Assessment (HIA) study besides the Environmental Impact Assessment study (HIA). And this, in the words of the analyst, will not only take more time but will also be a tougher hurdle to clear.

Confused Direction

Source of picture: China Daily

A TIGHTER monetary policy is being evaluated by China's State Council, one of the country's most-powerful legislative bodies, according to numerous media reports - including this one from Reuters.

And the chairman of China's sixth-biggest lender was quoted in the Financial Times today as saying that the government should not be afraid of a "moderate slowdown" in the economy.

"Monetary policy must not neglect asset-price movements," added Qin Xiao, chairman of China Merchants Bank.

These comments follow bank loans surging by 149% in the first nine months of this year over the same period in 2008 to $1,260bn.

Economists are divided between those who think that the surge in lending will be inflationary and those who believe it will be deflationary because of new industrial capacity.

But it seems clear the government is getting worried. It faces the hard job of easing back on stimulus without causing a double-digit recession (overhasty increases in deposit rates caused a sharp and painful slowdown in 2007).

The rate at which lending is increasing has already been slowed with stricter guidelines on preventing easy money from being channelled into speculation.

Now that something bigger appears to be in the offing, when can we expect the big policy shift?

Not before next February's Chinese New Year, said Stephen Green - economist at Standard Chartered in Shanghai.

Expect chemicals markets to be blighted (or blessed if you are trader who makes the right moves) with rumours and counter-rumours about policy changes until official announcements are made.

The longer the details remain unconfirmed, the more likely it is that buying ahead of the holidays will be quieter than anyone had expected.

Even when the announcements are out there, debate could rage on the impact of the measures - making it even harder for producers and buyers to read the tea leaves.

Source of picture: www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23512037/

CHINA is making export gains at the expense of other higher-cost competitors that might not be sustainable because of reasons including rising trade protectionism and economic rebalancing.

Chemical companies need to factor in this risk - and take into account how overall demand might merely be shifting location rather than increasing.

Knit apparel is a good example where, according to this article by David Barboza in the New York Times, American imports from China jumped by 10% in July this year compared with the same months in 2008.

This was as US imports from Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador fell by 19-24%. Barboza was quoting data from Global Trade Information Services.

It is not just emerging markets that are suffering as a result of China's increasing dominance in textiles.

The beleaguered European industries are also in the firing line with the EU evaluating extending antidumping duties on imports of shoes from China and Vietnam.

"Reductions in raw-material import tariffs and increases in export-tax rebates have helped Chinese apparel producers push their prices down," said said Ying Min Ye, president of Beijing-based Chem1 Consulting at the Downstream Asia Roundtable Asia oil and gas event in Kuala Lumpur. Malaysia.

The conference, organised by the World Refining Association, took place earlier this month.

You can add to these advantages a Yuan which is now being pegged to the US dollar, resulting in steep depreciations against other Asian currencies. Between March and September, the Yuan had fallen in value by 10% against a basket of Asian currencies, said Barclays Capital.

A further huge advantage is, according to Nicholas Lardy of the Peterson Institute for International Economics (quoted in the same Barboza article), flexibility in labour markets.

This means the ability to cut wages without worrying about troublesome trade unions or restrictive employment legislation.

The biggest comparative boost of all might well be the flood of cheap lending. China has pump-primed its economy through a huge increase in bank loans.

The US removed safeguard duties against imports of several categories of Chinese clothing last December, according to a new report from Textiles Intelligence, providing China with another edge.

The EU removed similar safeguard duties in December 2007.

Both sets of duties were the result of damage caused to local industries when The Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC) came into effect on 1 January 2005

Here, therefore, could end some of the head-scratching over steep increases in fibre-intermediate pricing in 2009.

Restocking and crude oil have been important factors.

What might have also benefited the market are China's gains at the expense of others.

The country's yarn output grew by 9% in the six months to June 2009 over the same period last year, Yin added at the same event.

Fibre output rose by 10% and polyester production by 13%. Click here for a copy of his full presentation - .5 Yingmin Ye 1.pdf

It's not just in low-end clothing where China is making gains, but also in electronic goods - at the expense largely of the Japanese.

Japan has seen its share of electronic-good exports to the US fall by 18% in 1999 to 7%, added Barboza.

In the last year alone, China's market share of the US electronics goods market has doubled from 10% to 20%.

Sales of electronic materials to China were up by 15% in Q3 over the second quarter, said Andrew Liveris, CEO of Dow Chemical, when the company's third-quarter results were released last week.

Coatings and infrastructure sales rose by 16%, polyethylene (PE) 10% by and the automatic sector 5%, he added.

From a Dow perspective, if it's taking sales away from Japanese electronic chemicals companies all well and good.

But displaced demand doesn't necessarily add up to greater overall demand.

Another important point is that when all is said and done, China's exports as a whole are still down on the first half of 2008.

China exported $521 billion worth of clothes, toys, electronics, grains and other commodities in H1 2009, according Barboza.

Although lower than declines suffered by other exporters such as Japan and Germany, this figure still represented a 22% fall over the first half of last year.

Returning to the theme of winners and losers from China's boom, Australia - despite seeing its currency rise in value by 40% against the Yuan in March-September - has made big net gains through a surge in commodity exports.

It's the same story for Indonesia.

"Commodities and high-tech goods have gained [because of the recovery in China]. But anything in between, China can often produce itself, so countries in these areas are under more pressure," said Tai Hui, an economist at Standard Chartered in Singapore in this article from the Financial Times.

Malaysia and the Philippines were losing out because they competed directly with China in many export markets, he added.

"Market stability has improved, but we continue to remain cautious about the ability of some economies to sustain growth," continued Liveris when the Q3 results came out.

"This is especially true of the US and Europe, and until these economies return to 'normal', we believe global growth will be muted."

This is also especially true of China.

Last week we discussed how domestic consumption was much less than investment as a driver of January-September GDP (gross domestic product) growth.

The relatively high investment component of GDP points to several risks and concerns:

*An increase in export-based industrial capacity. Now that it's on the ground, China will be tempted and able to keep this capacity running, even in very weak market conditions

*At the moment the US seems to be more worried over China's willingness to keep on funding its huge deficits than damage to jobs caused by aggressively cheap imports. But how long will this last as unemployment climbs towards 10%? Could we see a big increase in trade protectionism?

*Bubbles in real estate and equities. Real-estate prices have risen by 73% so far this year. Confusing signals are emerging from the government over whether or not monetary tightening will occur in 2010. Leave it too late and these bubbles could get more out of hand; act too hastily and the economic rebound will be set back

*Assuming that the investment number reported for Q1-Q3 also includes money spent on stockpiling oil and other commodities, will the high levels of imports continue? Monetary tightening is a threat along with sudden dips in import demand as China starts running off inventories

*Meagre underlying growth in domestic consumption. Nominal GDP only increased by 4.7% in the first nine months of this year, indicating that deflation was behind the higher headline number of 7.7% Although a lot of people might have made theoretical and real money out of real estate and equities, this doesn't suggest a healthy state of affairs for the average worker.

A weaker currency, import tariff rebates, increases in export taxes and soft and plentiful bank loans for new capacity hardly suggest rapid economic rebalancing towards domestic growth.

Has China put in place the right policies to move quickly enough towards this rebalancing to keep the rest of the world happy?

Can it move any quicker given the country's social and economic pressures?

By Malini Hariharan (Malini is now joint blogger for Asian Chemical Connections)

It helps to have a commodity bull on your side and that's just what the Dalian Commodity Exchange (DCE) has succeeded in doing. Jim Rogers, the noted investment guru, will be a senior advisor to the exchange.

Jim Rogers is, as always, positive on the future of China and also commodities (see TV interview below).

It is not yet clear what Rogers will be doing in this new role but his appointment will help DCE realise its ambition of becoming a leading commodity exchange in the world. The Futures Industry Association (FIA) says that the DCE is the largest futures exchange in China and is ranked ninth in the world. It has the world's biggest trading market for plastics (lldpe and PVC) and the second-largest for agricultural products.

This blog has been regularly highlighting the growing volumes of lldPE and PVC transactions on the DCE. Lldpe contracts totalling 75.719m tonnes have been traded on the exchange so far this year, up 185.67% from last year. PVC contracts, which were was introduced in May, totalled 21.829m tonnes.

And the exchange could see more action in the coming months. China Daily reports growing interest from major foreign traders to participate in Chinese exchanges. They will have to work their way around government regulations but leading banks such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Barclays Bank have compelling reasons to invest in China. The paper says that the Shanghai exchange's copper futures now rivals that of the LME while DCE's soyabean volumes already exceed that of CBOT.

Source of picture: Businesweek

More evidence is emerging of the big rebound in Chinese exports resulting from government subsidies, including a Yuan now pegged to the dollar, soft and plentiful bank loans and export-tax rebates.

More than 9,000 quality control inspections of goods set for overseas shipment took place in Q3 this year - a 32% increase over the same quarter last year, said AsiaInspection, which carries out monitors these inspections.

Book and stationery inspections were up by 24%, toys 32%, shoes and fashion accessories 58% and textile apparel 63%, according to this news report on the latest AsiaInspection findings.

A further boost to China's textiles industry was the EU's removal of restrictions requiring companies to source a percentage of their textile business from within the EU in January 2009, the report added
.
But Q3 2008 saw the collapse of Lehman Bros and the virtual grinding to a halt of the global economy, so comparisons with the third quarter of this year were always likely to appear good.

Export trade has bounced back from its low point. It is widely recognised, though, that it could be a very long time before shipments to Western markets return to 2007 levels.

Still, the October Canton Trade Fair reported a 20% increase in electronics, hardware, tools, transport vehicle and building material exports orders from overseas buyers as against the April Canton Fair.

Together, these products account for around 60% of China's total exports.

And the damage done to China by the crisis is far less than elsewhere.

For example, the country's semiconductor market is expected to fall 6.5% by value to $68bn in 2009, down from $72.9bn last year, according to this report, quoting iSuppli.

This compares with a forecast 16.5% fall in the global chip industry.

Consumer electronics exports by volume are, however, expected to be down by 10% to 30% in all categories except LCD-TVs and Set-Top Boxes, where growth is expected.

What on earth does this all add up to then?

Here's what I think:

*China's exports have rebounded from their low points more quickly than other countries due to all the government support.

*Because of its ability to aggressively discount, China is gaining bigger market shares from other countries in certain export sectors - most notably textiles and garments.

*China is likely to be able to grow market share even further as it can cut costs by even more, notwithstanding a big increase in trade protectionism

But, as we have already said, demand in the West is unlikely to return to 2007 levels for a very long time and so China is only gaining bigger slices of a much smaller overall pie.

The country's export trade has also been boosted by cheaper raw materials as result of import tax cuts and lower pricing.

The dramatic increase in chemical import volumes is partly due to both the above factors - and, of course, stronger domestic demand.

Take methyl methacrylate (MMA) and polymethly methacrylate (PMMA) as examples. Pricing remains way down on its July 2008 peak, as this graph MMAPPMAPricing200809.ppt from ICIS pricing shows.

MMA imports have risen by 293% in January-September over the same month last year, according to China customs. In September, overseas shipments increased by 87% to 16,309 tonnes.

PMMA imports were up by 67% in January-September with September cargoes totalling 20,829 tonnes - a 22% increase.

By Malini Hariharan (Malini is now joint blogger for Asian Chemical Connections)

Japanese chemical majors have raised their sales and profit forecasts for the second half of the fiscal year ending 31 March 2010, but the revisions are marginal and companies are still holding a conservative outlook.

Earnings in the first half of this fiscal year have been better than expected but the stock market is not impressed. It appears investors are being guided by the cloudy outlook for H2.

A Tokyo-based analyst highlighted three major risks that Japanese companies foresee:

• Inventory adjustments in China for petrochemicals and globally in the auto and LCD sectors
• A rise in naphtha prices led by higher crude oil prices
• Rising availability of product from new petrochemical capacities in the Middle East.

Mitsui Chemicals has forecast sales of Yen1,210bn as compared to Yen1,487.6bn in 2008-09. Operating loss is expected to narrow to Yen15bn from Yen 45.5bn last year.

Sumitomo Chemical expects to post petrochemical sales of Yen500bn in 2009-10, down 9.6% from the previous year. Total sales are projected at Yen1,620bn, down 9.4%.

At an analyst meeting yesterday Sumitomo Chemical disclosed that operating rates at its joint-venture PetroRabigh complex in Saudi Arabia are still quite low, especially for polyethylene (PE). Although the situation is improving the company expects full operations only at the end of this year.

PetroRabigh has posted losses yet again. Third quarter losses had widened to Riyals844.7m from Riyals155.9m in the same period last year.

Japanese companies are continuing their efforts to widen their footprint in China. Mitsui Chemicals and Sinopec have agreed to proceed with a joint venture for production of phenol and ethylene, propylene diene terpolymer (EPT). At a recent analyst meet, Mitsui's ceo disclosed that the project would be a 50:50 joint venture. Asked if the jv would be expanded to include ethylene and propylene production, the ceo said there was no immediate plan but there was some potential.

Mitsui's ceo is also reported to have said that the company was interested in acquisitions in agro-chemicals or speciality chemicals. Among the Japanese majors, Mitsui is most exposed to commodity chemicals and is under greater pressure to diversify if product portfolio.

By Malini Hariharan (Malini is now joint blogger for Asian Chemical Connections)

It pays to have a domestic focus and Reliance Industries has shown this again in its results for the first half of fiscal 2009-10.

Its petrochemicals division delivered Rs43bn in earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT), a 23.8% growth over the same period last year. The company attributed this to higher margins on improved domestic realisation. The concentration on India helped the company maintain nearly 100% utilisation and hold inventory at low levels.

The Indian market often gets lost in the larger Asian/global picture which is very much dominated by China. But this market has been seeing steady demand growth since last year and it is one of the few markets to have expanded despite the economic crisis.

Reliance estimated PP demand growth at 28% in the last six months; PE at 15%; PVC at 36% and polyester at 15%. Packaging, infrastructure and auto sectors were the key drivers.

The company anticipated a stable margin environment in 2010 as India is expected to keep growing. It also emphasised that it would continue its 'predominantly domestic market orientation in order to sustain high operating rates' - a plan that will no doubt be helped, in the case of PP, by hefty anti dumping duties imposed on imports from Saudi Arabia, Singapore and Oman. A second investigation on PP imports from South Korea, Taiwan and the US is due to be launched soon and there have also been reports of producers asking for an investigation into PE imports.

Expanding the domestic focus will not be easy. India is oversupplied in PP and likely to remain so for another couple of years despite the high demand growth numbers. PE would also be oversupplied once Indian Oil Corp starts its new cracker complex.

IOC expects to achieve mechanical completion of the cracker by the end of this month and start commissioning activity in December. The derivative plants (PE, PP and MEG) are likely to start at end-March or early April.

This is the schedule on paper. But given the many project delays around the world, don't be too surprised if this one also slips.

By Malini Hariharan (Malini is now joint blogger for Asian Chemical Connections)

The Indian government has announced 17 November as the date for a public hearing to discuss the provisional anti dumping duties that it had imposed in June on imports of polypropylene (PP) from Saudi Arabia, Singapore and Oman.

The hearing will give a chance to all affected parties to present their case. Such hearings are usually a formality and do affect the end result which is a confirmation of the provisional duties.

But I have been told that it may be different this time as the Saudis, led by Sabic, are likely to put up a spirited defense. The Saudis have been busy pulling lots of government strings for the duties to be revoked.

Sabic and Advanced Polypropylene were hit the hardest - duties on their PP exports range from $440-$820/tonne. I was told that one of the reasons for the high level of duties was 'the lack of cooperation in sharing data' when the Indian government had sent its questionnaire earlier in the year. However, this attitude appears to have changed.

There's a lot at stake here and this is why the 17 November hearing is crucial. India is already in surplus and looks likely to be in this position for the next couple of years. So there's every reason for Indian PP producers, Reliance Industries and Haldia Petrochemicals, to check competition. On the other hand, many Indian processors are unhappy as the duties would force them to rely on local supply.

For the Saudis, and also other Middle Eastern producers, India is not such a big market for PP. But the ADD threat is a worrying global trend that they want to ensure does not take off.

Besides India, China is investigating methanol and 1,4-butanediol (BDO) imports from Saudi Arabia. And the European Union (EU) is investigating on polyethylene terephthalate (PET) imports from United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Iran.

The growing protectionist measures have provoked a long chain of protests with the most recent one being in October by the Gulf Petrochemicals and Chemicals Association (GPCA).
The GPCA Secretary General Dr. Abdulwahab Al-Sadoun has said that the association will strengthen coordination with Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Governments to ensure that exports of petrochemicals and chemicals from the Gulf region are not restricted by anti-dumping regulations and other trade restrictions
"The GCC industry and our governments will not accept the application of anti-dumping regulations against exports of petrochemicals and chemicals from the Gulf. We have seen a surge in protectionist actions brought by countries to block imports. These cases are baseless and violate international rules," he said.
The investigations may not sound fair to GCC producers but they face an uphill task in convincing the Indian and Chinese governments to ease protection to local producers. A lot will depend on what the GCC governments can offer or withhold.

By Malini Hariharan (Malini is now joint blogger for Asian Chemical Connections)

Talk of Reliance Industries acquiring LyondellBasell is once again gaining momentum. A report in today's Economic Times says that the company is close to announcing a major overseas acquisition with the target being part of the assets of LyondellBasell. The announcement is likely to be made on or before Reliance's annual general meeting on 17 November. Reliance shares rose 3.1% in morning trade.

Citing a banking industry source the report states that the transaction could be around $6bn, nearly double the estimate made by another media report in September.

One my industry sources says that something is brewing and Reliance is on a shortlist of companies that will be participating in LyondellBasell's reorganisation. The source was unable to give names of others on this shortlist.

Details about the proposed buy are still sketchy and today's media report, like the previous one, raises more questions than answers. In what form is Reliance likely to participate - will it be by acquiring an equity stake that LyondellBasell's creditors will soon get through the company's rights offer? Or will it be an outright purchase of some/all assets? Can it happen before LyondellBasell completes its reorganisation or will Reliance be participating in the reorganisation by buying assets/equity?

One analyst thinks that today's report of an imminent announcement is a little premature and a major development is likely only after LyondellBasell emerges from Chapter 11.

It is difficult to evaluate how beneficial the deal would be to Reliance without knowing much of the details. There are certainly parts of LyondellBasell that would be a good fit for Reliance - its PP assets, a global marketing and distribution network and the technology portfolio.

Reliance certainly has the cash for a big ticket acquisition. But the company is not known to be very aggressive when bidding for overseas assets and this is one of the reasons why it lost out on acquisition opportunities in the past. Will it be the same story this time?

By Malini Hariharan (Malini is now joint blogger for Asian Chemical Connections)

China's immense appetite this year for all petrochemicals has been puzzling many of us. This blog has been regularly asking questions and some answeres for the polyester and PTA markets were provided by YJ Kim of PCI Xylenes & Polyesters at the Indian Petrochem 2009 conference earlier this week.

Kim pointed out that preparatory work for the Shanghai Expo in May 2010 was a major demand driver. The budget for the Expo is twice that of the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

The Olympics is estimated to have created nearly 1m tonnes of polyester demand. So if you double the budget then surely polyester demand would be way above 1m tonnes.

If this is true for polyester I think it is also safe to assume that the Expo is also a major driver for polymer consumption.

Kim also observed that the a fall in transaction volumes at the Shaoxing textile market should not be interpreted as a decline in overall business as six more wholesale markets have sprung up in China, and there is even one in Xinjiang. The average daily trading volume at Shaoxing has fallen to 4-5m metres this year from a peak of 6m metres.

Here are a few other highlights from Kim's very good presentation.

• China's 2nd 10-Year West Development Plan will create another polyester boom. Production growth is likely to be around 7% for the next three years but will swing to double digit post 2011 once demand explodes in western China. Polyester production forecast for 2009 is 21.8m tonnes.
• Global PTA inventories are very low and the industry needs to build up stocks. In China, 18-21 days is the normal PTA stock level. But the market is currently living on less than two weeks inventory. If China rebuilds stocks by 500,000 tonnes over the next six months it could swing global operating rates by 2%.
• Firm PTA prices this year have been driven by a recovery in demand and involuntary production cuts due to shortage of paraxylene. PTA margins have been exceptionally strong this year
• China is likely to import nearly 6.5m tonnes of PTA in 2009 and would need to import around 6m tonnes annually for the next three years. The trade grid for PTA could change once China complete its antidumping investigation into PTA exports by South Korea and Thailand. A review has been completed but it appears that Korean and Thai producers are individually negotiating with the Chinese commerce ministry. If Korea is hit by antidumping duties it will be forced to look for new markets. India, the Middle East and Europe would be the likely targets. The Korea-EU free trade agreement is due to start from July 2010 which would allow for zero duty imports.