Asian Chemical Connections

Produce too little energy over the next 35 years, says the International Energy Agency in this article from the Guardian Weekly, and there will be price hikes and a financial crash; produce too much and the increased rate of global warming will also result in economic disaster. The rest of the article leaves you with the feeling that we have just gone too far, that nothing will or can be done to reverse the environmental catastrophe we seem to be heading towards. To what extent will the chemical industry be blamed for this disaster?

Please read this excellent piece from my colleague Nigel Davis, who is editor of the Insight section of ICIS news.Some further thoughts: if 46% of existing and 45% of future ethylene production is taken offline by flooding, just think of the impact on food pricing and distribution and the resulting social and economic chaos due to the shortage of food--packaging material. These estimates maybe wrong, but if Lehman Brothers are only halfway right God help us, and I don't just mean the chemicals industry. On a more immediate bottomline level, how many banks, consultants and project proponents are factoring in the increased risks of flooding into feasibility studies? Or does anyone really care enough to look beyond their next promotion or their imminent retirement? If you won't be around in 10 years' time, why bother asking awkward and potentially career-threatening questions?

Rex Tillerson, chief executive of ExxonMobil, displayed a careful balance between supporting the oil industry and expressing concern over climate change in a recent speech.Does this indicate a shift in direction at Exxon post Lee Raymond, or merely a more cuddly and warm way of presenting unchanged policy?
The reason why we are still dependent on hydrocarbons is because insufficient investment has been made into alternatives. When the US Gulf Coast refineries and petrochemical plants are under six feet of water thanks to rising sea levels, it will be too late to make the investments.

I am involved in this running email debate with the only person I know who is as stubborn and as pig-headed as myself - my old schoolmate in the UK. He is convinced that global warming is indeed a load of hogwash and has evidence to support his theory in this series of articles from the UK's Daily Telegraph. Quite frankly, if either us were to be proved wrong we would never admit it.

Global leaders from the Group of Eight rich nations plus Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa have agreed that developing countries will have to face targets for cutting emissions as well as developed countries.If these noble words are followed by action, prepare to be legislated against.
I wrote yesterday about Rex Tillerson and his belied that cutting hydrocarbons consumption could harm economies. Dr John Holdren, president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, says "nonsense".

The petrochemicals industry generally gets a bad press, but producers are unlikely to ever be charged with depriving the public of food. In fact, plastic packaging could go a long way to solving problems such as India's - where 40% of food rots before it can be delivered.
Biofuels producers, however, although they have ostensibly stronger greener credentials, are locked in a row over food versus fuel. Visit Simon Robinson's biofuels blog for some thought-provoking comments on this and other challenges facing this big boom industry.

The famous "Skeptical" environmentalist (unfortunately, the American spelling and therefore the wrong spelling), Bjorn Lomborg argues against the Kyoto Protocol in this article from the special green edition of our magazine, ICIS Chemical Business.He says, in short, that all the fuss about Kyoto is a waste of time and effort. Even if it is fully implemented, Lomborg agues that the rate of global warming will be set back by a mere five years.
And so he contends we should instead spend the huge cost of Kyoto - $150bn a year - on tackling HIV, malaria and other nasty diseases.
He is also in favour of an R&D tax equivalent to 0.5% of each country's GDP to develop renewable chemical, fuel and other technologies. Read more about Mr Lomborg's iconoclastic theories.
His approach would bring the sceptics and the greenies together, as the sceptics cannot deny that in terms of Peak Oil and energy security alone, dependence on the filthy black stuff has to be broken.

A huge amount of petrochemical capacity - some $12bn worth - is being built in Thailand, way in excess of the quantity added before the Asian financial crisis.
This is all predicated on Thailand becoming a manufacturing hub for Southeast Asia with, for example, huge ambitions to grow auto production.
But can Thailand attract the FDI it needs for this industrial growth, given lack of confidence in the government? If it fails to attract this FDI, then most of its new petrochemical capacity could end up flooding overseas markets, just as in 1997-98.
The latest blow to the credibility of the government is the potential collapse of a Thai-Japan Free Trade Agreement due to pressure from environmentalists.

An interesting debate is emerging over the growth of the recycled polymer market in China. Sinodata, the Beijing-based consultancy, estimates that 5.8m tonnes of all types of recycled polymers were imported into China last year, an 800,000 tonnes increase over 2006. Five years ago, recycled imports totalled less than 500,000 tonnes.
With domestic recycling also estimated at 7-8m tonnes/year by Sinodata, this is creating a big dent in virgin resin demand. Demand growth for polyolefins is expected to be as low as 5% this year as against more than 10% in 2002-04.
If your glass is half full you can interpret the rise in recycling as a reflection of high virgin resin prices, meaning that once resin prices fall so will recycling.
But what about China's perrenial push for resource efficiency, given further official backing by Premier Wen Jiabao in a speech this week?What about the margin pressure on the downstreamers?
And, if you've found a cheaper way of doing things, why go back to more expensive raw material?

An interesting question, and one that Def Poet Tommy Buttons, the rap artist with a difference (he has a brain) might want to address.
Click on this highly amusing link and listen to how he compares the life of a drugs dealer with that of a Nasdeq trader. Substitute Nasdeq trader for a petrochemicals trader and again the skills measure up and so, perhaps, we could tap into a new stream of talent which could benefit petchems and also improve our image. We could be seen as caring and sharing, helping to alleviate the ills of society, rather than just those nasty people who poison babies by pumping out pollution. Makes you feel good, doesn't it?

No point obviously. As this report from Deutsche Bank Download file notes, the global skills shortage is not just in the west.
In the engineering sector, and perhaps this applies to petrochemicals, Deutsche Bank claims that the huge outpouring of Indian and Chinese graduates is grossly exaggerated; and it adds that the quality of graduates from both India and China can be pretty poor, meaning a great opportunity for western Europe - particularly Germany.
It's other conclusion, that the service industry boom cannot be sustained in India because of the skills shortage, is interesting. The route that India must therefore take, it says, is lots more manufacturing.
This is potentially tremendous news for petrochemical demand, again provided there are enough workers to run the plants.
But if India does embark on a huge build-up in manufacturing capacity, God help the environment.
I am already advising my 11-week-old son to buy a house on high ground. Soon I might need to suggest the Himalayas.

The United Nations report on climate change, released last Friday, warned of 50 million made homeless as a result of global warming by as early as 2010.
Reports such as this will serve to pile even more pressure on the big polluters including, of course, China - the mothership of chemical demand growth.
Any investor who doesn't have a Plan B, factoring in a much harsher regulatory climate in China, is burying their heads in the sand.
China's government will have to introduce new legislation, and more effectively implement existing rules, because of rising international pressure.
This LA Times article provides a neat summary of the scale of the problem.

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.

Quite possibly, yes, despite my instinctiive pessimism. Perhaps emerging markets such as China and India have reached such a critical mass that no matter how much capacity is brought on stream, it will be easily absorbed.
Or maybe some disaster lies just around the corner.
Who cares if you've made your money in the most extraordinary bull run in history and have already cashed in your chips.

You maybe relieved, on the day the Chinese government introduces measures to cool stock markets resulting in sharp fall in the Shanghai Exchange, that I am going on leave for a couple of weeks.
Perhaps I'll feel the sun on my back (unlikely as I'll be visiting Scotland), come back with renewed optimism and not worry about the impact of the pork shortage on the Chinese economy. Could this be the new SARS?
Oh, and my wife has just punched me for constantly talking down our investments.
Au Revoir.

"Hello, my name is John Richardson.
I had an accident, and I woke up in 1973.
Am I mad, in a coma, or back in time?
Whatever’s happened, it’s like I’ve landed on a different planet."
Before you think I've been at the methanol again, please follow this link to the fantastic BBC TV series, Life On Mars, where a UK police officer living in 2006 is in a road accident and is transported back in time to 1973. This is definitely not a waste of polycarbonate - buy the DVD.
Like Sam Tyler of the series, it felt like I was back in time this morning when reading of the IEA report on an oil-supply crunch in five years.
It was back in 1973, if you remember, that an oil crisis triggered the US recession of 1973-75.
William Poole, president of the Reserve Bank of St Loius, argues that high oil prices this time around haven't triggered a recession because of factors such as low inflation. This is largely the result of China and the rest of the developing world driving down costs.
But how long will this continue if the IEA is right? And how will the developing world reconcile itself to not having enough raw materials to sustain the huge boom in demand for the things made, ultimately, from oil? What will be the social, political and economic implications of the looming supply crunch on ever-more wealthy populations demanding the same mass-consumption lifestyles that westerners enjoy?

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.

I think it's about time that the developing world stopped saying "you did it, so why can't we?" when the West raises concerns over rising pollution levels in China, India etc.
In the "good" old days my home country, the UK, had lots of dark, gritty and satanic mills, which were almost as ugly as our corporate headquarters. We used to make children work as chimney cleaners and down coal mines and generally life was pretty miserable.
But the point is that we, fortunately, didn't have the technologies to kill people in as greater a number as the Chinese have, and also we didn't have anywhere near as many people. Chemical and other plants are playing a large part in China's environmental tragedy - and it is no exaggeration to call this a a tragedy.
Expect more legislation from China's government, as a result of disturbing reports on China's environment such as this one by the OECD.
The legislation will make it harder and more expensive to build chemical and other plants. At the same time there are huge opportunities for those selling safer processes and for the water-treatment industry.
But will the legislation work? Probably not because it cannot be allowed to work as so much of China's growth is tied up in low quality, very cheap industrial capacity.
The end result is that China will choke a large number of its people, and its economy, to death.

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.

I am at logistics conference at the moment where the major theme is a chronically tight global container shipping market because of booming exports from China. Ports are congested, waiting times are increasing, freight rates have in some cases doubled in the last two months(for example, the Middle East-Asia route) and there is no immediate sign of new container freight capacity easing the crisis.
And across the globe there is an imbalance between rapidly growing economies such as China and exports back out of some receiving countries in the same container vessels.
This result is lots of re-positioning or backhaul i.e containers moving out of the receiving countries empty. Countries such as Russia, for example, have small manufacturing industries and therefore need to import far more than they are able to export.
So if you are a polymer producer, there are savings to be made by scouring the globe for supplies of these empty containers.
What you do is you move your polymers to the country where the empty containers are sitting and fill those containers to move back to China, India etc. The shippers are delighted because they earn guaranteed extra revenue and the exporters in China are are dead chuffed because they don't have to haggle with the shippers over re-positioning fees (compensation for moving the containers empty back to China).
Now I cannot name the company I was speaking to fear of losing a good contact, but a polyolefins producer said to me over lunch over how he could be moving his product from his plant in central Asia to St Peterburg in Russia, via rail.
And then from St Petersburg, the polyolefins might move by sea all the way to China!
This is being repeated across the industry because supply chain effiiciency is so important for overall competitiveness.
The point of my headline is this - what will happen if the regulators start clamping down on this in a bid to tackle a producer's overall emissions, from the efficiency of his plant to final delivery to the customer?
Producers may not necessarily have to stop the use of convoluted shippings. If the economics still add up, they might buy carbon credits or find other ways of offsetting their responsibility for these extra emissions.
The producer I was speaking to believes it is possible that legislation to this effect will be introduced over the next two years.

Paul Hodges, in his excellent chemicals and the economy blog, talks about the recent Shenhua Energy listing on the Shanghai stock exchange and how it shares jumped by 93% following the IPO.
Now it has ample cash to pursue its ambitions.
Shenhau is just one of numerous companies involved in coal-to-liquids projects in China which will provide transportation fuels and also methanol-to-olefins production through to polymers. Cash will not be an objective for a sector which is expected to see Yuan60bn worth of investment in 2006-10
The US is also looking at making much more use of its coal reserves to boost energy security and reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
But just how environmentally friendly are coal-to-liquids technologies? According to the non-profit organisation, the Natural Resources Defense Council, it makes more CO2 sense to refine oil - Download file
However, in the end will the solutions we seek to the peak oil crisis be driven more by energy security issues than environmental concerns?
And when the Greenland ice sheet has collapsed into the ocean, Shanghai has been submerged and hundreds of millions of people have been displaced by the global rise in sea levels, how secure will we feel?

I am having a go at the US here (see article below) - a pretty big target - but don't worry, Asia is the next in line on this blog: the opportunistic, shallow and downright unpleasant palm oil-based biodiesel industry deserves similar treatment.

As for ethanol, Rex Tillerson has a point. The CEO of ExxonMobil was quoted in a recent Forbes article as saying "we can't add anything to moonshine technology" - indicating the company's indifference to investing in the biofuel.

Now I never thought I would find myself agreeing with ExxonMobil on anything.

Hopefully, completely empty if you happen to live in China and can only afford to drink tap water.

However, it's not the environment that this is this week being viewed as the biggest threat to the economy, but rather inflation as this article from ICIS news explains.

Please read this - http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/28/world/asia/28water.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin

Don't worry, just keep concentrating on the short term - after all, all you have to do is keep your boss happy and make it through to retirement with loads of money in the bank.

Or let's assume you are worried. What can the chemicals industry do to address this crisis other than promoting PE100 pipes to move ever-tighter water resources around?

Do we have a responsibility to inhibit rather than push the growth of chemicals and how on earth would this ever fit in with any corporate strategy or individual career objective?

And from a purely selfish dollars and cents objective, as the groundswell of public opinion goes could you face more incidents like this? - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyLHwz52wsk

What kind of world is my 10-month-old son going to inherit?

Click on the link here for a virtual way of boosting your green credentials without having to recycle one actual plastic bag, being knocked into the gutter by a gargantuam-bellied white van driver while cycling to work or cancelling one flight to the other side of the world to broaden your dinner party conversation - http://www.willyoujoinus.com/energyville/index.aspx?playagain=true

I discovered that on Simon Robinson's Big Biofuels Blog - visit http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheBigBiofuelsBlog

After all the optimism, all the hype and a lot of investors' money, the industry has shot itself in the foot by failing to build demand ahead of supply.

Plus the negativity caused by food versus fuel and environmental counter-arguments to supporting this current generation of technologies is making some Asian governments hesitate on providing the support needed to bolster demand......

Asian industry leaders are playing lip service to the environmental crisis the world confronts .
George Monbiot, the excellent author and journalist, argues that what the West needs is a recession to give the planet a breather.Asia also needs a substantial economic slowdown to give policymakers and technology developers more time.

At least the US is on board, but the pact to reduce emissions by 25-40 per cent by 2020 might well not be sufficient to prevent the 1.5 centigrade rise in global temperatures that will be disastrous for the planet.

In another excellent article from George Monbiot of The Guardian, he argues that we need to "decarbonise our society" in order to achieve reductions of 95.9 percent in the UK and 98.3 per cent in the US by 2050.

Impossible? Maybe, but as the effects of climate change become more evident, pressure on the chemicals industry will mount. A great deal more investment in new technologies to reduce emissions will surely be necessary - to put more substance behind some of the right noises industry leaders are making.

The two big gaps in the US major's Asian presence (and gaping gaps they indeed are) are cracker complexes in India and China.

China could be fixed through the alliance with PIC - meaning, Dow has leverage to get a license to build a naphtha cracker complex by offering crude supply through its new jv.

Atlernatively, it could achieve te same objective by completing its methanol-to-olefins project.

But India remains blocked by Bhopal. One wonders why a company with the wisdom of Down cannot work its way through the ever-in-flux Indian system, but maybe no foreigner can without the support of a strong local partner.

This is not meant to make light of the lingering misery of one of the world's worst chemical disasters, but the motives of some of those petitioning for more money are perhaps a shade dubious.

What's certain is that the issues cannot be as simple as portrayed in this Voice of America article.

In the good or maybe the bad old days depending on your standpoint, methanol was a fairly straightforward product.

You had chemicals demand and that was more or less it. But as the extended analysis below explains, chemical producers who use methanol as feedstock have to factor in direct blending of gasoline into methanol, DME, biofuels and fuel cells as shapers of demand.

Direct blending of gasoline into methanol and the use of DME as a transportation fuel are the biggest of these two new sources of demand in China. Expect a big increase in consumption from these two applications over the next few years.

Whereas the US has opted for ethanol in order to increase energy security (and for bogus environmental reasons), China has chosen the methanol route based on its big coal reserves.

The $64,0000 question is what this wil mean for the affordability and pricing of methanol for chemical consumers.

Recent comments by An Qiyuan, chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Committee for Shaanxi, warned of the environment and social catastrophe facing the northwestern province of China because of a shortage of water.
He was referring to the diversion of water from Shaanxi to Beijing ahead of the Olympics and hydroelectricity plants which he believes should be closed down.
Water is a particularly scare resource in western China - where most of the country's coal gasification projects are located. The technology is arguably a wasteful, heavy consumer of water.
And this raises an interesting dilemma for Dow Chemical - potentially a joint investor with Shenhua Energy in a coal-to-chemicals project in Shaanxi.How do you balance economics with the environment?
Coal gasification could represent the promised land - provided you can solve the logistics problems and provided the long-running doubts over the viability of methanol-to-olefins technologies are unfounded.

Economists refer to externalities as those factors that can influence growth but that are beyond the influence of humans to determine. As ar result, the members of this esteemed profession tend to ignore externalities.

If we've left it too late on the environment, then the environment is clearly such an externality that could limit demand growth in the future.

How will China provide enough water to ensure that growth spreads from east to west?

What happens if the environment has reached a dangerous tipping point where the damage we've inflicted leads to an out-of-control acceleration into catastrophe?

Take, for example, corn-based ethanol.

William Laurance of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama writes in the 12 April issue of the New Scientist that the huge increase in corn planting in the US to feed ethanol has led to less soya being planted.

The resultant rise in soya prices has led to forest destruction in the Amazon as Brazilian farmers clear trees to plant soya. "

The Amazonian forests help to generate their own rainfall, because the dense vegetation quickly recycles moisture and returns it to the atmosphere. As deforestation proceeds, however, less water vapour is recycled, so clouds and rainfall decrease. No one knows how far the Amazon can be pushed before it collapses in rage of droughts and forest fires."

Blimey, if deforestation already accounts - as we are told - for 20% of global emissions, what would this mean for the habitability of our planet?

Never mind - I don't care. I am off to read some wonderful analysis about the endless demand-growth prospects presented by China. Who cares as long as I can get my bonusby building this analysis into a report I can present to my boss?

An overused word - tragedy - but the events of the last week justify the description.

But what a relief that the Chinese government has reacted so promptly and so efficiently, in complete contrast the callous incompetence of the thugs who run Myanmar.

Worth clicking through to ICIS connect - our chemicals industry community forum - for discussion about the disaster and what the chemicals industry can do to help.

Click here also for the latest from ICIS news on the earthquake.

The failure, and quite possibly the death, of the Doha round of trade negotiations earlier this week could create a very confusing and erratic regulatory landscape for the chemicals industry.

This excellent entry in the New Scientist environment blog by Fred Pearce, senior environment correspondent, makes the point that if the world cannot agree on further trade liberalisation, what hope for global climate-change legislation?

As Fred points out, John McCain, if elected, has made it clear that he won't accepted emissions caps if China and India do not follow suit.

Obama. however, is prepared to let the US take the lead ahead of the Asian giants. He warns, though, that if they don't agree to fall in line at some point, import tariffs could be imposed equivalent to the energy content of finished goods.

The European Union is also understood to be considering the same safeguards as it looks to extend its cap-and-trade system. Industry, including at least one of the oil-to-chemicals majors, is lobbying hard for safeguard provisions of taxes on imports if no global agreement is reached.

Chemicals and other producers would obviously shut up shop in the EU and move to countries where there was no price set on emissions or if there was no effective import-tax system or some other kind of economic disincentive.

Despite the few remaining climate-change scepticis - quite rightly derided in the same New Scientist blog - climate change as a result of human acitvity is accepted by most scientists and governments as a reality.

A global agreement on a price mechanism for carbon - whether its a cap-and-trade system and/or a tax - would be the best outcome for the chemicals industry. It would enable producers everywhere to accurately assess the cost of investment in better processes and new technologies.

They could also make reliable and predictable income through trading credits globally and from operating and licensing new technologies.

Piecemeal legislation wouldn't provide the same degree of clarity, leading to equally piecemeal strategies from company to company and region to region.

The lawyers might also make a lot of money out of disputes over carbon import taxes.

And, of course, companies might still look to move their investments elsewhere by searching for loopholes in US and EU carbon import-tariff rules.

Just look at the money being made out of "splash and dash" in the US as an example of how rules can be exploited.

As the effects of climate change accelerate, you could also see knee-jerk nonsensical regulations introduced by governments out of sheer panic. This could make life very difficult, if not impossible, for chemical producers in certain countries.

So let's hope the Doha round can be rescued - and that it serves as a confidence builder towards the much bigger job of a new global agreement on emissions.

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.

Continuing my environmental theme, I've been musing over building a new training course around helping companies help their employees to think outside the box. This is a tough task in certain companies and cultures.

As Benjamin Franklin so wisely said, "insanity is doing the same things over and over, and expecting a different result."

So employees at every level in every chemicals company need to keep up-to-date with
the rapidly shifting environmental agenda from product development to legislation.

A starting point might be reading Doris de Guzman's excellent blog, Green Chemicals. This focuses on all the renewable, or maybe less unrenewable, products out there.

But navigating the mountain of information - and of course sorting the truth from the fiction - requires a special set of skills.

You then need to put this knowledge into practice by proactively redefining your job role to take advantage of the green revolution.

Whether you are a chemicals engineer, a sales and marketing, an IT or an admin expert- whatever - every aspect of every business will be reshaped by the environmental crisis. There is career-progression to be achieved by making yourself more useful.

And if you are a CEO you need to manage this knowledge effectively - e.g. by making sure it doesn't fly to the door when your top staff get headhunted.

You, of course, also need to have the right leadership qualities to make sure strategy is both developed and implemented. Victor Newman - the knowledge activist - gives some interesting ideas on these themes.

Ultimately - and I really feel there is no turning back - it might be a case of innovate or lose your job. The old ways of doing things won't keep companies in business for much longer.

Anybody in their late 40s or older might not need to worry as retirement, or a nice fat redundancy pay-off, could arrive before the unmentionable finally hits the revolving air-cooling device.

But for those who are younger, dramatic changes in legislation - and in the way the climate is behaving - seem inevitable during their working lives.

There is also the problem of depleting oil and gas reserves and rapidly rising and competiing sources of demand. An article from Joe Kamalick highlights these issues when he examines shale gas in the US.

Watch this space for more discussion on this new training programme - and on what companies are already doing to fill the environmnental knowledge and expertise void.

It is very easy assume that Asia ex-Japan will eventually catch up with the West and become as good at "solution" chemicals as the West. I am excluding Japan because it has long been a major speciality player.

All the money that China, for example, is pouring into its state-run research institutes would seem to suggest that eventually, the country will produce a BASF - or at least a collection of companies that come close to matching the German giant's innovation.

But this report from Deutsche Bank - in a theme I will be touching on a lot over the next few weeks - points out that despite the great drift east, Europe has has held its own.World_chemicals_market_Asia_gaining_ground.pdf">

I've created a new category "Analysts' Reports" which you will hopefully find useful.

The Deutsche Bank report concludes that the West has a great opportunity - and has already made an excellent start - in the green chemistry race.

"In 2007, Europe accounted for 31% of global chemicals turnover; in 1997 the share was 32%." write its authors.

Here's another important statistic from the study: BASF's turnover in 2007 was Euro60bn - the same as the entire Indian chemicals industry.

Knowledge retention, which I talked about yesterday, will be crucial for the West if it is to maintain this lead.

Constant innovation through a willingness to fail many times before succeeding might also be important. As Winston Churchill said: "Sucess is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm."

It's going to be fascinating to see how the new Dow and Rohm & Haas entity raises its game to meet the challenge of responding to the need for clever new products that must also be sustainable.

Finally, here are a couple of examples of Western innovation, the credibility of which I cannot vouch for.

Ford claims to have developed a way of sequestering VOCs from paints for conversion into fuel for fuel cells.

The clever Germans say they have found a way of producing self-healing nanotech anti-corrosion coatings as an alternative to the toxic chromium.

These serve to illustrate one of the other points I made yesterday - the need to navigate all the information out there to keep up-to-speed with a rapidly changing chemicals world.

I'm bewildered. I don't know about you

Now this is old but not widely publicised - Jurgen Hambrecht's comments during the BASF Segment Day Chemicals event which took place in London on 8 July.

Navigate down, click on the webcast, and listen to the Q&A session after Dr Hambrecht's presentation.

You can listen yourself, of course, but here is a summary:

The first question is about BASF's search for alternative basic chemical production.

"We are not only looking at crackers but also syngas leading to olefins," he says. This would give BASF the flexibility to use oil, gas, coal and natural products - i.e. biomass - as raw materials.

The chairman and CEO talks about how the Engelhard acquisition was partly driven by how an increase in catalyst capabilities would give BASF more options on basic chemicals production.

"Catalysts are crucial for the future of the industry," says Hambrecht, adding that they will reduce energy barriers that have hithertoo blocked alternative routes to making olefins and other upstream chemicals.

And in a remarkably strong statement, he states: "This will be very substantial, it will be decisive."

A lot can happen between R&D and commercialisation, but should we read into this that BASF is set to make a breakthrough that will be challenge the dominance of the Middle East in feedstocks?

What's the timescale? "Certainly five years out," says Hambrecht.

A blink of an eye in the great scheme of this things.

But what will happen if the oil price collapses to this research project and others like it?

I couldn't let today pass without including a picture of the Olympic Stadium in Beijing where the opening ceremony is about to take place.

The purpose of this redefined blog is not to look at the short term, though. For expert commentaey on the effects of the Olympics and other macroeconomic factors on the world's chemicals industry over the next 12-18 months, see Paul Hodges' Chemicals & The Economy blog.

Instead I am going to be looking at what chemical companies have to worry about beyond the next 18 months.

In the case of China, the debate is whether the country can remain the main driver of the world economy and the chemicals industry.

The government is clearly dedicated to rebalancing the economy away from export-led growth towards higher domestic consumption.

The China Economic Quarterly believes the government will be successful - leading to lower but more sustainable GDP growth of 9% per year over the long term.

They accept inflation will be higher than in the past, but argue that it can be contained at around 5% per year.

Jurgen Hambrecht, chairman and chief executive officer of BASF, also believes in the long term strength of China - but also a major location for export-based manufacturing.

In the same BASF Segment Day Chemicals event I wrote about yesterday, he was asked whether China would remain a location for export-based low-cost manufacturing. The question related to rising transport, labour and oil costs.

Hambrecht said that increased transportation costs were a global problem and that the effect of recent cuts in subsidies to oil-product prices had yet to become entirely clear. But he pointed out that as car ownership was low in China, the cuts might not be that big a deal. A great deal of the country's energy needs are also met by coal.

Manufacturing investment was already drifting to the west, he added, and he cited Sichuan as a "great location".

Labour costs in the west are a great deal lower, but logistics costs could be an awful lot higher to get goods to western markets.

And the bigger issue that Hambrecht and the CEQ did not address is that China might not have enough natural resources to sustain growth anywhere close to levels we have become used to.

Take the water crisis as an example and this link through to the economatters blog.

I could have included thousands of similar links, but here's one more - to good or bad old Wikepedia, depending on your view.

I was driving to work this morning when I heard, for the first time, the re-broadcast of a BBC World Service from April. Reporter Mukul Devichand interviewed environmental activists in Beijing who quite understandably claimed not to understand his questions when he uttered the dreaded "D" word (democracy).

You can click on this link and read the full transcript, but unfortunately the Podcast seems to have been removed.

What struck me most of all about this programme, though, were some closing comments from the famous enviironmental campaigner, Ma Jun.

He says:

"You know when you sit there in a Western country blaming China every
day - you know the Chinese Government, Chinese court - blaming them every
day for this and that, the result will be very very limited. Legal responsibility
is on our side but it's also in the meantime, you know people in the Western
countries enjoy cheaper clothing products from China. Why? Probably you
know the cost is on our rivers. You know the rivers have been turning to you
know black, yellow and all kinds of colours sometimes several times a day. I
think you know we got to recognise you know the cheaper products have its
own impact. We recognise there are gaps in our governance, in our
enforcement structure and we try to improve that. But in the meantime, do we all want to allow this multinational companies to take advantage of the loophole?

We've pushed for strengthening the enforcement, we push for the use of market incentives to deal with our problems, but in the meantime I think all the citizens who care about the environmental issues should also think about what we can do to deal with
this problem. Otherwise when China has strengthened its enforcement, these
companies when they sit across this table, they literally say we're going to
move to Vietnam if you keep doing this."

Note the paragraphs in bold. It's easy to criticise China from a Western standpoint, but how much are western shoppers - who are used to cheap, cheap and more cheap from China - to blame for the multi-coloured rivers, poisoned water supply and unbreathable air that are causing hundreds of thousands of premature deaths a year?

And how many chemicals companies, hands on their hearts, can really say that they check the environmental standards all the way down the line to the finished-goods manufacturers in any product chain?

You can make sure your chemical plant has state-of-the-art technologies and adheres fully to Responsible Care requirements, but you will still want to build that plant where the competitive advantage lies.

So if China has become too expensive because of higher environmental and labour costs, the choice might be Vietnam.

What hope is there for a new global climate change deal when corporate interests are allowed to override the bigger picture?

Enough of a rant. I am going home to play with my 19-month-old son and make sure he doesn't suck too hard on any of his plastic toys that are made in China. (likely nearly all of them!)

Only in America, surely.

If I had made this up you wouldn't have believed me. Rocky Twyman (see picture above), Founder of the Pray For The Pump Movement, and his pals have been touring the US asking the big guy in the sky to intervene and bring down the price of gasoline.

Watch Rocky and his fellow believers in action in Washington DC - where they apparently suceeded in reducing prices from $3.99/gallon to $3.91/gallon thanks to a rousing, if a little tuneless, rendition of "We shall overcome gas prices".

What's quite clearly needed is for some divine intervention, Old Testament Style, involving perhaps a little smiting of carbon molecules, to speed up the process of creating new and easily accessible crude oil reserves - by several hundred millions of years.

Maybe Mr Twyman is right and all that there is left for us to do is pray.

Either that or stop driving disgustingly huge gas-guzzling cars, cut back on the gargantuam-portioned meals that further waste precious hydrocarbon resources (and result in very large Americans who need those bigger cars and bigger clothes - again using yet more hydrocarbons).

Heaven forbid that Americans should change their lifestyles. It's far better, surely, to tell the developing that they can't have the things that America's got and continue believing that cheap and abundant gasoline in the States is a God-given right.

Grrrrrrrrrrrr..................

China and the environment might not be only about rivers changing colour several times a day and factories belching out air pollution that kills hundreds of thousands of people prematurely every year.

Elizabeth Economy outlined the extent of China's environmental problems in her book, The River Runs Black.

In what could turn out to be the ultimate irony of ironies, the very economic system which has caused the crisis in the first place could end up resulting in China becoming the world's leader in clean technologies.

Ample evidence already exists to this effect, according to the Climate Group - a London-based non-profit organisation, the members of which include BP and Dow Chemical.

The group's latest report - China's Clean Revolution - claims that China's transition to a low carbon economy is already well underway. This is the result of supportive government policies which are driving innovation in low carbon technologies and diverting billions of dollars into energy efficiency and renewable technologies.

The huge energy that was poured into industrialisation, once Deng Xiaoping declared that getting rich was glorious, seems to have now been turned to wind, solar and other forms of renewable energy - along with conservation.

China now ranks fifth behind Germany, the US, Spain and India with six gigawatts of wind turbine capacity, says the Climate Group. Some experts believe that this could climb to 100 gigawatts by 2020.

As was the case with industrialisation, State backing might overcome that nasty burden of capitalism - the need to return short-term profits, or even any kind of profits at all.

Lending from China's big banks is still largely directed by the government and the banking system is awash with liquidity - a drastic contrast with the Western credit blight.

Incentives are in place to boost wind power, but have yet to be introduced for solar energy. China. however, is second only to Japan in the global solar photovaltaic market.

Research is taking place in to carbon capture and storage and integrated gasification combined cycle technology.

China is also introducing fuel efficiency standards for cars which are 40 per cent higher than those in the US. Twenty one million electric bicycles and 1.64 million energy efficient compact cars were sold in 2007, the report adds. Clearly, the Chinese are doing a great deal more than just praying for lower gasoline prices.

This all sounds fantastic, but the old story about China is that what works at a central government level might not necessarily be implemented evenly across the country.

Arthur Kroeber of the China Economic Quarterly, however, believes that this old tale about China is total nonsense when the central government decides to take something seriously. The environment is one problem that Beijing is taking exceptionally seriously as it tries to build a more "harmonious society", he says.

But the task remains huge. According to The New Scientist magazine, if China's emissions continue to increase at 8 per cent per year, its per capita CO2 emissions will be double those of the European Union by 2020. While China's emissions keep on rising, EU member countries are making big reductions. For example, Germany reduced its greenhouse gas output by more than 19% between 1990 and 2003.

The problem for China is that it still has to create lots of new jobs of a rapidly urbanising society, whereas many of the rich people in the EU are desperate to return to the rural life.

But, of course, the Europeans are hardly likely to return serfdom. Instead it's all about four-wheel drive gas guzzlers, centrally-heated converted barns, and conveniently located supermarkets stocked with food and booze from the four corners of the Earth.

What planet are we all really on? We rich-world people are all desperately trying to get rid of that tiresome leftover venison as we insist on Afghan melon, to quote the Big Yin.

When I looked in the fridge the other day, my wife had bought Sicilian lemon juice. For pity's sake...

Another great article in The New Scientist talks about a new system for mapping much more precisely the impact of climate change on eco-systems.

Designed by The Nature Conservancy, the system - linked with Google Maps - will enable conservationists to work out expected changes in precipitation and sea levels in areas as small as four kilometres across. Previous technology only provided forecasts for areas ranging in size from 350-600 kilometres.

Why this breakthrough could be essential is that scientists believe that the impact of global warming will create millions of micro climates. Some of these climates will be arid and others subject to heavy rainfall. Areas very close together might also either be flooded or safe from the effects of rising sea levels.

The new technology is designed to protect endangered species such as the Bangladeshi Tiger.

But as the effects of global warming become obvious - even to the most short-sighted and goldish-brained members of the chemicals community - this or similar technologies might become essential when seeking finance for a new project.

Legislators will surely also demand that a planned coastal cracker in Guangdong won't end up as a cracker off the coast and under water, thereby creating an environmental disaster.

Lehman Brothers had a first stab at assessing how much ethylene capacity might be at risk from flooding brought about by climate change in a report published early last year.

It estimated that 46% of existing and 45% of planned ethylene capacity globally was at high risk from such flooding. The bank said that the world have 173m tonne/year of ethylene capacity by 2012.

As climate change accelerates, it might even be necessary to use these technologies to identify safe land where plants can be relocated.

Believing what you want to believe (or pretending to believe in something because it's in your commercial interests) has always been a problem.

But the stakes have never been higher than in the case of climate change. To yet again refer to the excellent New Scientist magazine, their editorial from the 13 August issue says that predictions are for a modest cooling of the atmosphere over the next ten years because of natural oceanic oscillations.

Robert Watson, former head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, observed earlier this year: "Let's say there wasn't much of a warming for the next ten years. How will the public and politicians play this out?"

Watson has warned that - regardless of what happens over the next decade - the earth could heat up by 4% before the century is over, with disastrous consequences.

He was right to worry that evidence of cooling would lead to a backlash against global warming. I did a quick Google news search today and found this link.

I am not a scientist but from what I've read and studied (and, of course, I might be believing what I want to believe!) I think global warming is a reality.

Regardless of who is right or wrong it would do no harm for the chemicals industry to plan for a future shaped by either the reality of significant man-made climate change or the perception that it will happen.

As I have said before further legislation on emissions, recycling etc seems inevitable whether its country-by-country, through big multilateral agreements or a combination of both.

In the history of the planet, ten years of cooling would be an immeasuraby small fraction of a second.

And in the history of oil, the last few weeks amount to almost as small a passage of time. Still, this hasn't stopped a groundswell of opinion developing that recent price falls have also exposed another bogus theory - that the fundamentals of oil supply and demand point to tight markets for at least the next five years.

I'll be blogging on this in more detail over the next few days (as I write, prices have actually rebounded to above $119 a barrel on the East-West crisis), but the comparision with global warming is worth making here: companies might stop making the necessary investments to secure their long-term future.

In the case of oil, this might result in less interest in accessing harder-to-get-at reserves and in renewable energy.

This article, by David Strahan, author of The Last Oil Shock, says that it would take three million coconuts to power one flight from London to Amsterdam on 100% biofuels.

Some of the comments posted at the end of this excellent article, first published in the New Scientists, agree with Strahan that we have reached "Peak Aviation" - no matter what the developments in second-generation biofuels.

The first generation nonsense of corn-based ethanol (as Andrew Liveris pointed in my post yesterday) and palm-based biodiesel have been thoroughly discredited.

But what the Strahan research also contends is that even the much-touted next wave of technologies will never realistically be able to 100% replace hydrocarbon-based fuels for aviation, transportation and power generation. The argument can also easily be extended to the chemicals industry, which, of course, is so tied into the production of transportation fuels.

Strahan supports this view with another startling calculation: an area bigger than China (10 million kilometres squared) would be needed to provide enough biomass to completely replace the world's current demand for fossil fuels for all forms of transportation.

Then you need to contemplate the likelihood that we have reached, or are very close to reaching, Peak Oil. The huge growth in crude demand from developing countries is pushing us much closer to Peak Oil, if it hasn't already arrived.

In The Last Oil Shock, Strahan quotes Dick Cheney in 2001 as characterising Republican energy policy thus: "Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it cannot be the basis of sound energy policy."

But just a few years later, shortly after hurricanes Rita and Katrina had exposed the fine balance between crude supply, refinery capacity and demand, President Bush said: "We can all pitch in by being better conservers of energy."

Winston Churchill saved Britain, and the world, from the Nazis. He was, though, widely viewed as mad - even by many prominent Americans such as Joseph Kennedy - for sticking it out during the dark days of the Blitz.

The parellel here is that we need politicians and business leaders with the courage not just to react to temporary crises, as Bush did by telling people to conserve after the 2005 hurricanes.

We need the next president of the US to persuade the public to accept one-car ownership, greater use of public transport and recycling. A visionary leader has to emerge who will, in the long term, be willing to dismantle the whole structure of our current consumer economy through persuasion backed up by tough legislation.

The short election cycles in the US - when as soon as you are elected, virtually, you need to start worrying about the mid-terms and then your own re-election bid - might prevent any such leader emerging.

Equally, oil and chemical company CEOs don't last that long. Even the current generation of leaders might be well into comfortable retirement by the time our modern way of life collapses as energy runs out.

There's a marvellous line in Ian McEwan's great novel, Saturday, where the main character enjoys a shower after a game of squash and reflects that his could be last generation to enjoy luxuries such as limitless hot water.

Our supposed betters, the politicians and the business leaders, need to have the courage to tell us, to make us, consume less - and American has to take the lead (as it eventually did, albeit a little belatedly, in the Second World War). Only if America takes the lead on conversion, and on climate change, will the result of the world follow.

We need the CEO of a plastics company to, for example, to come out and say "please use less of our products, for the good of humanity". You can just imagine the reaction of his or her fellow Board members, however,

In this era of short attention spans fed by soundbites, spin, Google and YouTube - leading to erratic voters and equally erratic and fickle investors - visionaries of this nature are unlikely to emerge.

We are living on borrowed time

A full list of all those whose deaths were reported prematurely is included here in this A-Z of journalistic blunders from Wikipedia.

The same could be said of the US commodity chemicals industry. Until very recently, just about everyone was predicting that the States would fairly soon shift from a net export to a net import position due to higher gas prices, the build-up of very competitive capacity elsewhere and the constant drift of manufacturing overseas. The country's chemicals industry has lost 120,000 jobs with 3 million jobs lost in manufacturing over the last five years.

But what's changed over the last few months is gas prices which have become relatively cheap compared with crude and the weak dollar. This has created what consultants predict will be the "last hurrah" for the US styrene industry ahead of the big slew of new Middle East capacity due on stream soon.

Further consolidation is expected once the Middle East wipes out the advantage US styrene producers currently enjoy over competitors supplied by naphtha-based C2s.

From a carbon footprint point of view, it does seem ridiculous that oil is shipped from the Middle East to make benzene in South Korea and the C8s are then shipped to the US. The US combines the benzene with its competitive gas-based ethylene to make styrene which is then shipped to Europe - already a net importer of commodity chemicals.

But the carbon footprint argument, along with rising freight costs, could offer a lifeline to the US chemicals industry in general. There has been much talk of "reverse globalisation" recently. This might lead to the economic justification for building new commodity chemicals capacity in the US and elsewhere in the West.

I am afraid I do when it comes to climate change and, as a result, don't always switch off lights when I leave rooms, don't always say no to unnecesssary plastic bags when I buy anything and will happily (and this could be the worst damage of all) jet anywhere in the world either for business or pleasure.

I am feeling guilty today for accepting a 20 minute speaking engagement in Hong Kong which won't generate any direct revenue for our training business.

Of course it might create that intangible benefit of goodwill plus I can also do some other meetings while I am there.

But is this the kind of marginal trip that businesses should cut back on and if this happens, what will be the effect on bottom lines as building goodwill is so important?

Equally important in Asia are all those face-to-face meetings. Relationships can have more value than sometimes even the quality of the product you provide.

How do you decide as a company, therefore, what is essential and what is unncessary travel?

And as an individual, what about those flights at the weekend for short breaks? I've often jetted off to Phuket in Thailand because I've been tired from travelling too much for work!

I was glad to discover I am not alone about my sense of the enormity of it all, for feeling that turning the odd light bulb off is not going to make a jot of difference in the great scheme of things - and for feeling trapped by the corporate machine that so voraciously consumes carbon.

This was thanks to yet another excellent article in the New Scientist on a meeting of the American Psychological Association which took place in Boston, Massachusetts, last month.

"It's easy to feel overwhelmed and think: 'What can little me do?' ", said David Uzzel at the University of Surrey in the UK during the meeting.

Paul Stern of the US National Research Council said a key deterrent was a lack of guidance on which actions would have the greatest impact, and feeling paralysed by the size of the task.

His research paper on this subject provides more detail - and to my great relief tells me that switching light bulbs off when you leave the room doesn't do that much good.

Some impractical suggestions he quotes from the Live Earth Global Warming Handbook include composting household waste, building a bat house or if all else fails, buying a camel.

I can just imagine the reaction of my neighbours, and I am sure the authorities, if I attempted these measures in Singapore. And anyway, my balcony isn't quite big enough to accommodate a camel - although my 20-month-old son would enjoy the rides around the condo.

Enough of the fatalism. I am going to get off my backside and do something practical.

Click here for some positive thinking - Energy%20Carta%20Conference%20Executive%20Summary_general%20150808.pdf

The Asian Energy Youth Summit - organised by the non-profit organisation Energy Carta - is an example of doing something about the climate-change challenge.

Speakers at the event which takes place in Singapore on 30-31 October (please click the link at the top of this post for the full PDF) include Shai Agassi of Project Better Place and Stefan Mueller, Asia Pacific managing director of Conergy.

What's heartening is that a chemicals engineering undergraduate at the National University of Singapore is one of the founders of Energy Carta. The chemicals industry is part of the problem and can hugely reshape its image for the better by being part of the solution.

In what could be the world's first fat tax, the State Employees' Insurance Board of Alabama is to charge extra insurance premiums for employees with a body mass index over 35 from 2010.

The southern state enjoys the dubious status of being the most obese in the whole of the US, just pipping Mississippi for the top prize.

Now before you make any jokes about fat Americans, there is a serious point here.

We are consuming too much, whether its pizza with extra cheese injected into the crust - that great invention of the Americans, gasoline or plastic bags.

The world's metaphoric waistline is expanding beyond its means and maybe this type of tax is the way forward to make us consume less.

But, of course, being overweight can be genetic and is very often nothing at all to do with overeating.

The giant portions in American restaurants don't help, however. Americans must throw more food away than Africa eats each day.

Perhaps the fast-food companies should be ones penalised.

Anybody who has had the misfortune to have to listen to me ranting on about Peak Oil of late might have heard - if they managed to stay awake long enough - that I predicted crude could not fall below $100 a barrel because of the fundamentals.

I must admit my first reaction when I heard on the radio this morning that Brent crude had slipped to $99.30 a barrel was "damn".

A calmer, more measured and sensible reaction came later - that this might be good news for my battered, bruised and badly depleted shares, most of which are on Asian markets.

Weaker crude might also help us all keep our jobs. Falling oil prices are occurring as reports of project delays, or even cancellations, in the Middle East and China keep emerging - meaning that the chemicals industry might get some relief from the twin squeeze of higher feedstock costs and oversupply. I'll be dealing with these reports on this blog in the next few days.

"Here's some news for you - you're often wrong and so get used to the idea," said my wife. She's very direct, being Scottish.

But still - and here goes the rant again - I still feel that the long-term fundamentals are of a tight market as we accelerate towards Peak Oil, possibly by as early as the middle of the next decade.

Maybe a persistent bout of lower oil prices would be bad news as this would make us conserve less and lower investment in renewables (which, admittedly, are only ever likely to provide a small percentage of our total energy needs. Hence, we need to conserve!)

A very interesting report by McKinsey (you can sign up free for their online newsletter which only takes a minute) expands on the theme of reverse globalisation which I talked about last week.

The cost of shipping a standard 40-foot container has tripled since 2000 and labour cost increases have risen by average of 19% per year in China compared with just 3% in the US.

The consultancy makes the point that you have to do very thorough input-by-input calculations for each product and grade of product before making any decisions. And, of course, you need some reliable forecasts of where the economics of offshoring versus onshoring are heading - including predictions on crude-oil prices. Predicting crude, as I discussed earlier on today, is where I fall short.

You also need to take a view on the direction of environmental legislation - i.e. will there by carbon taxes and/or cap and trade systems introduced globally that penalise producers for extended global supply chains?

If history is anything to go by, McKinsey has worked out that manufacturing a "midrange" product in Asia will cost you an extra $16 today compared with the US when all landed costs are included. In 2003, Asia had a $46 advantage.

Add to this the likelihood that more petrochemical feedstock will become available in the US thanks to declining gasoline demand and perhaps, as again I talked about last week, the industry in the states might be set for a revival. It has been comparatively higher feedstock costs and the drift of downstrean customers overseas that has caused so much damage to the US industry.

For anyone who subscribes to ICIS news, you might find this artice of interest. Allen Kirkley of Shell discusses some of the new emerging feedstock options and converging economics between the West and the Middle East.

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!

Apparently it's a fallacy - ostriches don't stick their heads in the sand.

Investment bankers frequently do, though, especially all the greedy ones who only cared about their end-of-year bonuses when they knew perfectly well that the credit crisis was on its way.

I am sitting here sipping a beer and thinking "Oh my goodness, this really could be as bad as the Great Depression" now that Lehman Bros has been forced to file for bankruptcy.

But the danger is that we'll all forget about the even bigger threat to the global economy which is yes, you've guessed it, Peak Oil and climate change.

We'll all be so grateful when the credit crisis is over that we'll rush out and buy more garbage we don't need, jet around the world once again, talk excitedly about emerging-market growth, and bang - the price of crude will be close to or above $150 a barrel again (not that current levels in the historical context are anything to cheer about).

Read the last chapter of David Strahan's The Last Oil Shock to put the credit crisis in perspective (read the whole book, but the last chapter provides some practical ideas).

The survivors of the energy crisis over the next 20 years will be those who are the most energy efficient. So start growing your own vegetables, invest in energy saving in your home and for goodness sake, sell your SUV you self-indulgent idiot.

The value of your home, your shares and your pension might rebound once the credit crisis is over but in the long run, any investment in the conventional hydrocarbon-based economy seems to be fundamentally flawed.

Back in the heady days of 2006, I asked a group of five like-minded nerds what their favourite business book was.

They unanimously voted for The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century by Thomas Friedman.

I rushed out and bought a copy. It has sold by the truck load and was quoted by Mohamed Al-Mady of SABIC during his speech at the Asia Petrochemical Industry Conference in Thailand in 2006.

Back then everybody was talking about a new paradigm of growth, driven by the relentless rise of emerging market consumption. Nobody mentioned that other book, The Limits To Growth, published in 1972 by the Club of Rome, during those heady days of the economic boom.

I ploughed my way through most of The World Is Flat (it is overwritten - all the points worth making could have been made in considerably less than 488 pages) and was profoundly irritated by Friedman's relentless enthusiasm for globalisation.

At that time I must confess I hadn't heard of the Club of Rome book, nor did I give any consideration to the idea that Friedman might be dead wrong for any reason other than a gut reaction to his seemingly boundless optimism.

Now he has woken up to the fact, 36 years after The Limits To Growth was published, that indeed this might be the case with his new book Hot, Flat And Crowded.

In a review in the Financial Times, Rahul Jacob makes the point that we should have all seen the weaknesses behind Friedman's flat earth theory.

Friedman was entranced in his earlier tome by the rise of India, particularly the booming IT hub of Bangalore.

"I have lost count of the times friends or relatives in India have forwarded by email Mr Friedman's comment that, while his parents told him to finish his dinner because there were people starving in India and China, he told his daughters to finish their homework because there were people there eager and willing to take their jobs," writes Jacob in his review.

As Jacob points out, the very roads that Friedman travelled along to get to the headquarters of the IT giants point to the limits to India's particular form of middle class, elitist growth; they are pockmarked and hugely congested with ancient patched-up vehicles pumping all sorts of foul fumes into the air.

India suffers from a self-inflicted limit to how far it can grow without creating unsustainable social and environment pressures - because of a political system that has created virtual development paralysis.

How can a country with terrible infrastructure, poor irrigation and very low literacy rates ever hope to create sustainable economic growth?

According to the CIA Factbook, India's female literacy rate was only 47.8% in 2001. This compares with 86.5% in China, based on the country's 2000 census, adds the Factbook.

The speed limit on Indian and, of course, also global growth is resources - so presciently highlighted by the Club of Rome back in the 1970s.

I've only just woken up to this reality. Back in the dim and distant 2006, all I cared about was riding the global property and share boom while consuming immense amounts of carbon in pursuit of my career. This involved writing my own much-shorter tomes that encouraged others to do likewise.

Many of us became so enamoured by globalisation that we ignored the fact that there are simply not enough resources available to allow all of us to consume as much as the typical Texan, or more latterly a middle class Indian in Mumbai.

Friedman gets excited in his new book, according to Jacob, about China's potential to lead the way in solving the environment crisis.

I agree that China has potential, but some huge challenges lie ahead.

Idealistic enthusiasm (the ungenerous might use the phrase "gormless enthusiasm", which has applied to many of us over the last few years) might have its place in generating the individual energy to make a difference: Each of us need to find new ways of individual and corporate behaviour if we are to prosper in a world threatened by Peak Oil and catastrophic climate change.

This type of enthusiasm needs to result in more than just further consumption of trees through higher book sales (and when do we have the time to read books like The World is Flat? When we're flying, that well-known environmentally friendly form of travel).

We need to radically change the way we lead our lives.

It is September 2025 and the financial system has imploded due to the collapse in value of collaterised green obligations (CGOs).

So how did we end up in this sorry state? Here is a guide to how the crisis developed:

Governments (often sovereign wealth funds that had made a fortune from selling oil and gas), investment bankers, pension-fund managers and hedge funds began transferring cash from traditional hydrocarbon-based investments when Peak Oil arrived in 2015.

A further motive for the enormous capital transfer - amounting to trillions of dollars - was the gradual evolution of the global carbon tax and cap-and-trade system.

Companies that had failed to innovate (including many in the chemicals sector) went under - as did even some of the stock exchanges that had failed to evolve.

But because of woefully bad funding of and interest in science teaching (far too many undergraduates were still taking degrees in media studies), there was a widespread inability to separate the good from the bad new-technology prospects.

The global shortage of science and engineering graduates, which stretches back to the early years of this century, has therefore continued.

Ignorance about good science extended from senior government levels down to the public who poured their money into the new "green" bourses.

Charlatans made fortunes from government funding and ridiculously overpriced initial public offerings by making spurious claims about the commercial viability of their inventions.

But there were some tremendous successes, notably big breakthroughs in carbon capture and storage and a second-generation biofuel made from animal and human nose hairs.

Then, as we all know, the "Green Equities Bubble" went pop in 2018. Wall Street's Renewable Energy Index lost 1,000 points on December 3 of that year alone when investors realised that many of the new-tech companies would fail.

The Federal Reserve, desperate to prevent a recession, aggressively cut interest rates.

This forced lenders to seek higher returns through developing ever-more complex financial instruments, including the now widely discredited CGOs.

But the good news was that homeowners and companies had made a packet in 2015-2018 from trading carbon credits earned by adopting proven energy-saving measures that had been around for decades.

Energy bills were also substantially reduced and most importantly of all, we had capped atmospheric greenhouse gases at 450 parts per million.

The surge in the value of "green homes" continued post-2018 - thanks to the money left in the economy from these carbon-credit earnings and low interest rates.

A new breed of mortgage brokers emerged after the green equities bull-run ended. They made huge commissions from selling mortgages with incredibly low "teaser" interest rates to lenders who initially had to show proof of a strong carbon-credit history.

But by 2021, the greedy brokers were only asking for carbon credit self-certification.

Homeowners who had made false claims on their forms were able to afford to service their mortgages and still have spare cash to spend in the shopping malls. This was because low interest rates and surging green property values more than compensated for high energy bills and the cost of buying carbon credits.

Easy lending conditions gave them even more money to spend as they were able to refinance their homes on rising notional property values.

Mortgages lent to these unsound customers were repackaged with good lending into the now discredited CGOs.

The ratings agencies had no idea of how to value these secondary debt-instruments and so - erring on the side of their customers - gave them all triple As.

As we all know, August 2024 marked the end of the free lunch as the US property market collapsed and the inter-bank lending market gummed up on the realisation that nobody knew the real value of the CGOs.

The price of oil also rose to more than $350/bbl last December - the result of the failure to carry out proper carbon due diligence when mortgages were issued.

Energy profligate homeowners in the US, and more recently in the UK, are being hit by falling property values, higher interest rates introduced to tackle runaway inflation and tougher carbon disclosure and trading regulations.

The boom in emerging market growth has also helped to drive up the price of oil. A lot of this growth was based on exports of supposedly green products to the West.

But in the rush to cash-in on the consumer boom, lax life cycle analysis has led to many of these products being carbon inefficient.

The huge profits earned from the Western consumer bull-run has more than compensated for the need to buy carbon credits to accommodate for wasteful product-chain practices.

There have also been allegations of government officials being bribed to turn a blind eye to carbon efficiency abuses, thereby enabling companies to avoid having to buy extra credits.

Growth has also boomed in the emerging market economies themselves, where energy efficiency standards have also suffered.

Greenhouse gas emissions are on the rise again and last year hit 600 parts per million, according the majority of independent scientific research.

However, the drive to reinforce legislation is being blunted by the work of some scientific institutions. They claim that emissions are in fact falling, but a scandal erupted last year when it was discovered that many of the institutions are funded by companies with questionable carbon practices.

The economic crisis has now become global with developing nations under threat from collapsing stock markets, a lack of credit as financial institutions fail and runaway inflation. The decoupling theory has been thoroughly discredited.

Sound familiar? History repeats itself repeatedly.

But to be more accurate - and to quote the guy who first coined the phrase before I paraphrased it - Clarence Darrow (pictured above), a Defence Attorney in the US between 1857-1938, is credited as saying: "History repeats itself. That's one of the things wrong with history."

I just hope I can get in and get out at the right time and make my family's future financially secure.

As oil prices keep on falling, it might be tempting to forget the big picture. I had another frustrating conversation yesterday with a contact who believes that there's nothing to worry about on crude (it was all downs to speculators, he said) and so we could carry on as normal once the economic crisis is over.

Nonsense. If his views are prevalent in his company, his company will eventually be out of business.

Just as an example of how the nature of demand could change, see this article from the Economist about green buildings.

Formaldehyde demand could fall as could demand for the chemicals used in sealants ad adhesives.

But opportunities for increased sales of plastics could exist in "vacuum" windows.

A sustained spell of low oil prices might damage the push towards a sensible energy future.

The crisis will also make it harder to find the money for research and development of new products to provide for this future.

As delegates gather for this year's European Petrochemical Association meeting in the unreal world of Monaco (unreal for the 99.9 per cent recurring of us who don't own Ferraris), I thought it was worth summarising some of the issues discussed on this blog over the last few months.

We've dealt with:

*Oil-price volatility and the likelihood that high and volatile crude is here to stay. Crude at or around $100 a barrel seems to be a new long-term level with the strong possibility that geopolitical shocks could send costs much higher. Supply and demand balances remain tight and as soon as global economic growth recovers we will see much higher prices - meaning that the recovery could be nipped in the bud. Are we heading for a new economic climate where recoveries are constantly set back by rising energy costs? For every one barrel we are discovering, we are consuming three.

*The new credit environment that might well emerge from tougher banking regulations. No longer will it be possible for a truck driver from Iowa earning $20,000 a year to borrow at ridiculous multiples of his salary and at "teaser" interest rates. How these regulations will effect emerging markets his harder to read as Asian governments and consumers are in far better financial shape than those in the West. Many of the banks in Asia have been more prudent. But the events in the US will surely lower the appetite for risk globally - and there is no guarantee that the financial-rescue package will work. Ask your consultants or inhouse researchers you use whether their demand-growth predictions factor in the possiblility of lower growth because consumers no longer have access to as much credit.

*Innovation will be the key as the environment becomes a bigger and bigger issue for the chemicals industry. You need right technologies and the right kind of staff. As there is a possibility of a global carbon tax or carbon cap-and-trade system, do estimates of what this might cost need to be factored into feasibility studies? How feasible will it therefore be - given both high energy costs and the possibility of a price on emissions - to continue building plants long distances from major consumption markets?

*One of the big areas of innovation will be attempts to break the link between the refinery and petrochemical industries. BASF is claiming it could be as little as five years away from breakthroughs in catalyst technology that could change the industry forever, enabling highly competitive petchems to be produced from biogass, natural gas or coal.

And finally, other theme I haven't blogged on yet but will do are plant and energy efficiency. Some very interesting research projects are taking place at the National University of Singapore chemical engineering department into monitoring the exact output of plants in differennt climate conditions and a model that might enable producers to much more accurately predict changes in yields from switching feedstocks. Much more later...

Meanwhile, have a great meeting - and let's hope the economic conditions improve.

As if the problems confronting China's polyolefin markets were not enough, sales have apparently been further hit by the tainted food scares which began with baby's milk.

A wide range of products are now affected with Cadbury becoming the latest global confectionary brand to withdraw some of its products.

The China market was already facing the potential for negative or even flat polyethylene and polypropylene growth in 2008 because of the collapse in export trade to the West due to the global financial crisis.

The problem now, according to a leading Western PE producer, is that just about every exported Chinese food product is being subject to closer scrutiny by regulatory authorities - along with the negative impact on sales of all the product withdrawals. This is making China's converters even less willing to buy resin.

Long term, lower growth in China means it will of course take longer to absorb the new capacities.

The Chinese government also faces the task of rebuilding confidence in its food industries - not only for the sake of export trade but to also tackle local anger. Civil unrest over health concerns surrounding air and water pollution is already a major threat to social stability.

But for those focusing on immediate prospects, the good news is that there are strong rumours of substantial delays to the start-up of two major PE plant sin the Middle East.

The longer that late equipment delivery and technical (or maybe market?) issues push back start-up, the more likely it is that the global economic downturn will at least have reached the bottom of the trough before the big flood of volumes hits supply.

The industry has been very lucky. First came the Iranian delays, which in effect mount to the cancellation of 3-4 crackers all due on stream in 2010-12.

Then we have seen up to three crackers in Qatar delayed to beyond 2012.

And for those projects where building work is almost complete, continued technical and equipment delivery issues have left buyers with the same feeling that Manchester Utd fans had during the 1980s and early 1990s, which was: "Maybe we'll win the championship next year." Sadly, or rather tragically, things changed.

This year was supposed to mark the big ramp-up in PP production, but it hasn't happened.

I've just returned from a wonderful few days in Perth, Western Australia, where the motorists don't as a rule try to kill you (unlike in most of Asia) and if you are a tourist at least, you can come away with the false impression that the cork-hatted people have got the balance between work and other things that matter more sorted out.

Anyway, to the point after that ridiculously long sentence. I failed the Koala Bear test in the gift shop in Yanchep National Park .

On sale was a stuffed Koala Bear toy made in Australia at $11.80 in Australian dollars. You could also opt for an "Inspired in Australia" version (I tried to establish what this meant with the shopkeeper, but she hadn't a clue. What Koala Bear is not inspired by the Antipodese, for goodness sake?) at $5.50.

Or you could for the Chinese version at a staggeringly cheap - and no doubt nasty in some horribly chemically polluting and toxic way - $2.50.

We all might want to save the planet by lessening our carbon footprint (blah, blah, blah) but in these straitened times with my investments plummeting in value, I went for the Chinese version on the grounds that my 21-month-old son would very quicky lose the thing anyway (sorry, another long sentence).

Ten minutes out of the shop Mr Koala Bear ended up face down in a puddle.

This was the wisest investment decision I've made for the last two years.

Unbelievable, incredible - what prehistoric planet do these people live on?

Please see below for a rant from a-soon-to-be-extinct species of business leader - the US chemicals executive against Barack Obama.

I have my doubts about Obama, but at least he has a brain bigger than a shrivelled pea (unlike certain other holders of the most important job in the world) - and he gets it.

The point is it's not business as usual, it's not regulation (Democrat) versus anti-regulation (Republican).

The world has changed forever, and this happened long before the financial crisis.

I don't know about you, but I want to be able to tell my son that I did something in the battle to save the world from the energy and environmental crises - even if it's just the odd small thing like recycling my plastic bags annd vicariously (I can't vote in the US election, of course) supporting politicians such as Obama who get it.

03 November 2008 21:04 [Source: ICIS news]

WASHINGTON (ICIS news)--The US appears poised to elect what one chemical industry leader on Monday termed "the most anti-business federal government" in recent history and one that is likely to raise tax and regulatory burdens.

On the eve of the US national elections being held on Tuesday, a wide range of public opinion polls give the Democratic presidential candidate, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, a perhaps decisive edge over his Republican opponent, Senator John McCain of Arizona.

Perhaps more significantly, according to industry and business observers, the outcome of Tuesday's congressional elections is likely to give Democrats even greater majority control in both the US House of Representatives and the Senate.

Democrats are expected to gain as many as 30 seats in the House, which would boost their grip on that chamber to a 60% majority with 263 Democrats against 172 Republicans in the 435-member body.

More critical, say business sources, is the real prospect that Democrats could secure 60 seats in the 100-member US Senate where they have held only a slim 51-seat majority since the 2006 mid-term elections.

If the Democrats hold a 60-seat majority in the Senate, they would be able to override minority attempts to block legislation and even force some bills into law despite a presidential veto.

"I think we are looking at what will be the most anti-business federal government in many years," said Chris Jahn, president of the National Association of Chemical Distributors (NACD).

Jahn, who served as a senior staff advisor in the US Senate before returning to the private sector, said his gloomy view of the elections likely outcome is not partisan.

"Whether Obama or McCain wins the White House, I think federal policies over the next several years will be very anti-business," he said, "because there will be a much larger, anti-business majority in Congress and no one at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue [the White House] to act as a check on the pent-up ambitions in Congress."

Jahn expects that a stronger Democratic majority in Congress beginning next year will mean passage of more stringent anti-terrorism chemical security legislation that will include a federal mandate for inherently safer technology (IST) as a security requirement.

In environmental matters, he worries that the new Congress will take the opportunity to reshape the 30-year-old US chemicals regulatory law, the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), as a US version of Reach, the EU's programme for registration, evaluation and authorisation of chemicals.

"Certainly there will be far more regulations coming across the board," Jahn said of what is expected to be a more Democrat-controlled Congress.

In addition, he expects higher taxes on businesses and greater energy costs if, as seems likely, Congress and the new president move to implement a cap-and-trade climate control law.

"If you want to paint a picture of gloom," Jahn said, "put increased regulations and higher taxes on top of an economy that is already struggling."

In anticipation of a new Congress more willing to impose regulations and taxes on business, Jahn said NACD is going to beef-up its advocacy team and work to raise more grass-roots involvement in federal policymaking by the association's member companies.

To discuss issues facing the chemical industry go to ICIS connect

By: Joe Kamalick
+1 713 525 2653

The dinosaurs are back......

The new "green team" appointed by president-elect Barack Obama might, after all, turn out to be a dream team for the US chemicals industry. This is despite what some of the old disonaurs within the industry seem to think.

A US energy policy needs to place a genuine long-term cost on gasoline, thereby encouraging, belatedly, the kind of innovation that might just save the domestic auto industry and provide a huge boost to chemicals. Higher gasoline taxes need not be political suicide if they are accompanied by explanations of potential tax cuts, or even credits, for energy-positive steps such as, for example, installing solar panels.

Greater conservation - one that's not just driven by the economic crisis - might reduce a huge defence bill that's created global political instability, increased terrorism and created an untold number of deaths and misery for millions. A lower defence bill would mean huge tax savings.

It would be good if some of those in the oil and gas industry could move away from their long-term obsession with drilling. The obsession reached it's trivial low-point with Sarah Palin's campaign slogan, "Drill bay,drill".

Drilling alone will do little to reduce the US dependence on imported oil unless it goes along with greater conservation.

And anyway, you can make a strong argument that wrecking the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge will make very little long term difference to US energy vulnerablity, while creating a legacy of the loss of yet another beautiful wilderness for future generations.

There also needs to be a gradual movement away from conventional hydrocarbons to unconventional ones (provided the environnmental impact can be neutralised through heavy investment in carbon capture and storage, which will probably need big initial government backing to get the economics off the ground ) and to renewables.

Trendwatching.com, an Amsterdam-based consumer trends analysing service, has included something called Econcierge in its outlook for 2009.

This involves a new breed of less conspicuous consumers, straitened by the credit crisis or maybe feeling guilty for the wallops of cash that they made during the boom, who will now be searching for value - and for a conscience-salve in everything that they buy.

What will this mean for chemicals next year? People taking a closer look on the claims on the proverbial tin, expecting whatever they buy to last longer, to be cheaper, and to be made from recycled material - or from chemicals that are proven to be les harmful to the environment, perhaps.

This might be more of a phenomena in the developed rather than the developing world, where wealth affords the luxury of greater concern about the future.

How on earth do you measure this in losses per tonne of sales of good-old bulk commodity chemicals - assuming that these trendspotters are correct?

Do you have a plan, assuming you think you need one?

To quote Woody Allen, "More than any time in history mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly."

It's refreshing that this was written by an American, given the widely held perception that most of the nation's citizens lack a sense of irony.

As we enter the New Year, gallows humour seems very appropriate as the bad news multiplies from the cancellation of the K-Dow deal to the possibility of LyondellBasell filing for Chapter 11.

My good friend and colleague Paul Hodges makes the following comment on his blog, Chemicals & the Economy: "Petrochemicals has always been a highly cyclical industry. A typical seven-year cycle involves two years of stunning profitability as demand recovers after a downturn, three years of average returns as supply and demand rebalance and two years of horrendous losses."

If you take the start of the upswing as 2003 therefore, the Lyondell and Basell merger in December 2007 was a big risk. Perhaps those who negotiated the $20bn deal believed that cyclicality was dead.

What has, of course, made highly leveraged companies very vulnerable in this downturn is the severity of the credit crisis.

The way forward? Bring in the restructuring consultants, cut, cut and make more cuts and focus on making chemicals as cheaply as possible. The difficulty will be balancing this need with retaining sufficient R&D investment to cope with the inevitable increase in environmental legislation.

It's easy to take pot shots at the boss, and everyone of course feels they have been underpromoted and could do the job better themselves. Andrew Liveris is just the latest in a long line of CEOs to experience both envy - and at the moment perhaps a little pleasure at their failures. The gloating reaches extroardinary heights in the comments posted on this Wall Street Journal blog entry.

Sure, he should have seen the crisis coming and not agreed to pay such a high price for Rohm & Haas.

And sure, a man being paid such massive sums of money perhaps should have had sources inside Kuwait who would have forewarned him that the commodities merger was going to collapse.

Perhaps we should also expect him to secure world peace, reverse global warming and prevent Manchester Utd from ever winning a Premiership championship again.

One of the new skills being learnt in this current crisis is how to run plants efficiently at low operating rates.

"It's funny that for years now, we've worried about how to scale up profitably. Now industry is faced with just the opposite, how to scale down profitably," says Mark Matzopoulos, chief operating officer at UK-based Process Systems Enterprise in this article in ICIS Chemical Business.

A friend of mine has just graduated from university with a very good degree in chemicals engineering and has managed to land a job with an engineering company. His fellow graduates have not been as lucky in their search for jobs with chemical companies.

At least somebody is making money out of this crisis

Source of Picture: The Earth Institute at Columbia University

I was speaking to a Singapore-based trader this morning over the reasons behind the polyolefin price rally.

PPPEPrices2006-Aug09.ppt

Here are his views:

"A maor factor has been a lack of availability of recycled material. This is because people in the West are buying less durable consumer good, for example electronics, which arrive wrapped in plastic.

"Last year was also very good for selling fillers to make virgin polymer go further. For example, I was able to sell lots of calcium carbonate at $900-1,300/tonne. This year I haven't sold a single tonne."

Very interesting stuff - especially when you consider that in the last few years imports of scrap plastic have taken around 4-5 percentage points of China's polyolefin demand growth.

"Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated," Mark Twain once famously said after his obituary was published before he had died.

Similarly, the US polypropylene (PP) industry had been virtually written off late last year after a calamitous collapse in pricing resulted in inventory losses totalling a staggering $700m in November alone.

But the day of reckoning has been postponed by numerous project delays and a big recovery in Chinese demand.

US PP exports to China more than tripled in the first five months of this year compared with January-May 2008, according to the US Department of Commerce.

Of the extra 2.77m tonnes/year of Middle East capacity due on stream by now, only around 1m tonnes/year has hit the market.

"What also happened from mid-November was that buyers globally, and particularly in China, recognised that prices had hit rock bottom," says Joe Congdon, a consultant with Townsend Solutions.

"And then you had the Chinese stimulus package boosting confidence with the recovery in oil prices from around February, adding extra momentum."

Other export markets were far weaker, however, for US producers - their shipments to Mexico were down by 20% and to Canada by 25%.

Not surprisingly, sales to Brazil tumbled by 43% as a result of a 350,000 tonne/year plant that started up there last year.

Total US PP exports in January-May of this year were 4% lower, and, as the accompanying chart from the American Chemistry Council (ACC) shows, production was substantially down during the whole of the first half of 2009.

View image

But without the surge in shipments to China, which perhaps bought more time for some tough decisions, the overall picture might have been a lot worse.

Nobody had the luxury of time late last year when announcements were made about closing 500,000 tonnes/year of capacity in the first half of 2009. Some of the plants being shut down are part of integrated complexes that are not necessarily entirely loss-making.

Oversupply is still big. Consumption totalled just above 7.4m tonnes in 2008, which was 8% lower than the previous year, with capacity still at 9.4m tonnes.

No further announcements about capacity closures have been made so far this year.

"What needs to happen to bring supply more in line with demand is further closure announcements. Another 500,000 tonnes/year of shutdowns would bring capacity utilisation to 85%, Congdon added.

Townsend Solutions is currently forecasting North American rates at less than 80% for the next five years.

"We are predicting global growth of 3.7%/year in 2008-13 compared with last year's forecast of 4.9% for 2007-12. The future of PP has changed dramatically in just one year," Congdon added.

The US domestic market looks likely to be difficult. Exports will also be hit much harder as a result of the new capacity.

And as for the more immediate prospects, current exports were characterised as "lousy" by a US industry source - the result of the high cost of feedstock.

Monomer supply has been reduced by refinery operation rate cutbacks due to weak gasoline demand. Fluid catalytic crackers (FCCs) are running at around 85%.

But if PP export opportunities existed, enough propylene could be found, according to market sources.

"The market will pay maybe 47-48 cents/lb for bagged homopolymer free on board (FOB) exported from Houston," said a trader.

"But with a potential 4-cent spike in monomer contracts this month, PP producers are looking 53-54 cents/lb FOB Houston in a bag."

The US PP industry has become more heavily dependent on refineries for feedstock supply. Naphtha cracking has suffered as a result of the fall in natural gas prices relative to crude, and ethane cracking is now far more economic.

"Around 70% of C3s are being sourced from refineries and 30% from crackers. The split used to be 50/50," said a US PP producer.

Gasoline demand isn't expected to improve due to the weak US economy.

Another factor behind the weak PP export trade is a steep fall in buying interest in anticipation of the further new volumes.

These include the recent start-up of a 350,000 tonne/year line by PetroRabigh in Saudi Arabia, which is supplied by propylene from a deep catalytic cracker.

Output from Saudi Arabia's new propane dehydrogenation (PDH)-to-PP complexes is also expected to increase, with several start-ups set to take place in China during the second half of the year.

Mark Twain was twice feared dead before he finally passed away of a heart attack in 1910.

And, of course, the US PP industry isn't going to really expire. This is a huge market with very sophisticated distribution and marketing networks.

A lot of acquisition interest seems likely to emerge very soon.

David Barry contributed to this article.

The US back-to-school buying season

Source of Picture: theglobeandmail.com

As regular readers will remember, last Friday I linked through to this article from the New York Times on the likelihood of a disappointing back-to-school sales season in the US.

I had promised some more thoughts on this article and so here goes....

......This is a sign of the belt-tightening in the US and Europe resulting from the long-term shift in consumer behaviour - as discussed before on this blog - which will lead to:

*Greater dominance of low-priced retailers such as Wal-Mart, which has started selling a Toshiba laptop for just $348. More outsourcing to the developing world seems inevitable as cost pressures increase. The squeeze will work its way up to marginally cost-efficient chemical and polymer producers

*A rise in protectionism: Western manufacturers are likely to respond with more anti-dumping petitions - and perhaps an increase in ex-WTO measures such as complaints over labour and environmental standards. If a cap-and-trade bill is passed in the US we could also see carbon-import taxes for imports from those countries with no comparable systems. Such measures can be politically popular

And what does a 17-inch laptop for $348 mean for innovation in the chemicals industry? Are companies going to bother with expensive R&D?

But to cut back on R&D would show a lack of vision by any company that cannot compete in pure commodities.

More rather than less differentiation is likely to be the key for survival as chemicals and polymers with marginal "added value" will face tougher scrutiny from buyers.

....what do these environmental issues mean for Thailand as an investment destination?

The Map Ta Phut refinery-petrochemicals complex

Source of picture: Pattaya News

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

Here's yet another unexpected project delay that could prop up markets in the fourth quarter.

The Thai Central Administrative Court decided to halt construction of 76 projects at Map Ta Phut on environmental grounds last week.

The long list of projects includes new crackers and derivative projects by PTT and Siam Cement/Dow Chemical.

PTT was due to have started commissioning a new 1m tonne/year cracker complex in the fourth quarter, while Siam Cement and Dow Chemical's 900,000 tonne/year cracker and downstream plants were scheduled to commence operations next year.

Both of the Thai companies have issued statements that the projects are likely to be delayed, and PTT has even decided to delay a maintenance shutdown at one of its crackers from October to January 2010.

Thailand is already a net exporter of PE and PP and the new projects would have increased the country's export burden.

One local newspaper report said that projects could be delayed by a year, although the two companies have not yet declared revised start-up dates for their projects.

PTT issued a statement that it was working closely with government authorities to resolve the crisis and that it had submitted a petition to a higher court. The prime minister has already asked the industry ministry to appeal against the ruling.

The Bangkok Post reported that the appeal would be made in two parts.

The first section would ask for court permission to allow industrial projects that have no impact on the environment to continue, while the second would seek a temporary halt to projects that had problems with environmental impact assessment (EIA) studies. 

The story did not identify projects that had EIA problems.

There is no doubt that the government will have to act fast. But it faces a tough task of balancing public opinion and expectations while protecting the interests of local and foreign investors.

Public opinion - seen in some of the comments that the Bangkok Post report has drawn - will be difficult to ignore.

It might be even harder to address growing concerns about Map Ta Phut as an investment destination in Southeast Asia.

This latest crisis in Thailand is also a fresh reminder of the growing power of the people in many parts of Asia to influence chemical-project activity.

Protests against construction of mega projects on environmental grounds are getting louder and louder.

The Thai Supreme Court's decision to uphold a September injunction halting development of $12bn of petrochemical and power projects could affect the on-schedule start-up of capacities of a large amount of petrochemicals capacity.

Note the word could because, despite the court ruling supporting claims by environmentalists about the impact of pollution at the site, PTT claims that most of its 25 petrochemicals projects will be unaffected by the verdict. The reason it gives is that the projects were granted environmental clearance before 2007 - when constitutional changes altered health and environmental rules.

Further - media reports say that former prime minister Anand Panyarachun will review the court ruling and make recommendations in the first quarter of next year.

In all, according to the reports, only 11 out of 76 projects at the site have been given the go-ahead by The Supreme Court.

The petchem start-ups that might be affected are as follows:

*PTT Polyethylene's 1m tonne/year ethane gas cracker, which was due onstream by the end of this year, according to a Thai industry contact who spoke to this blog. Downstream of the cracker will be 400,000 tonne/year of linear-low density polyethylene (LLDPE), 300,000 tonne/year of low-density polyethylene (LDPE) and 400,000 tonne/year of high-density polyethylene (HDPE), according to ICIS Plants & Projects

*The new Siam Cement/Dow Chemical complex centred on a cracker that will produce 900,000 tonne/year of ethylene and 450,000 tonne/year of propylene (the cracker will also produce 200,000 tonne/year of benzene). Also at the site will be a big new metathesis unit downstream of which will be a PP unit (currently checking the capacity). In addition, there will be a propylene oxide (PO) unit with a capacity of 390,000 tonne/year using Dow's proprietary hydrogen peroxide route to PO. This will be the first plant of its kind in the world and will not produce any styrene co-product. Start-up of the cracker, metathesis and PP units is due in Q2 next year and the PO unit in 2011, says ICIS Plants & Projects

*The PTT and LyondellBassel joint venture, HMC Polymer, which comprises a 310,000 tonne/year propane dehydrogenation (PDH) unit and a 300,000 tonne/year polypropylene (PP) plant. This plant had been due to start-up by August this year, the blog was told.

*The PTT/Asahi Kasei Chemicals joint-venture 250,000 tonne/year acrylonitrile project, due on-stream in Q4 next year, according to ICIS Plants & Projects. This will involve Asahi Kasei's propane route to PP. This would be the first commercial plant in the world to use propane rather than propylene as feedstock

News reports list chlor-alkali and vnyl chloride monomer (VCM) projects by Vinythai and a polyvinyl chloride (PVC) project by Thail Plastic & Chemicals as also being delayed. We are checking the details.  

According to The Nation newspaper, these are the 11 projects which were given permission to continue by the Supreme Court:

. Clean energy and product quality enhancement/Rayong Refinery
2. Gas recycling enhancement/HMC Polymers
3. Clean energy, oil vapour controlling unit installation/Star Petroleum Refining
4. Oil vapour controlling unit installation/PTT Aromatics and Refining
5. Air pollution improvement/Indorama Petroleum
6. Wastewater treatment improvement/PTT
7. Chlorine vaporiser and wet scrubber installation/Aditya Berla Chemicals (Thailand)
8. Tank relocation/Map t Tank Terminal
9. LPG/Brutene Depot-Wharf/PTT Chemical
10. Loading Arm Installation/Star Petroleum Refining
11. Petrochemical Depot-Wharf/Map Ta Phut Tank Terminal

Money to be made, or saved, again?.....

Source of picture: www.evworld.com

After last week's estimates, a big producer (who wishes to remain anonymous) has given us his forecasts for the strength of 2009 growth in demand for polyolefins in China - see full details in the article below.

Interestingly, he saw the dip in recycling as a big factor in this year's extraordinary recovery. 

We all know about the strength of China's economic rebound - sustainable or otherwise - but it could be that keeping a much-closer track on the recycling industry will also be a key factor in 2010.

With the delta between recycled and virgin material recently close to the minimum $400/tonne and if this trend continues, it will be interesting to see whether next year sees some reverse substitution.

A lot will depend on government regulations that have made it harder to ship scrap to China, and how many traders are prepared to take the plunge again. As long as there is a danger of a sharp correction in crude, trading in scrap could remain too-risky a business for many. In Q4 last year, a lot of the traders in recycled plastic went bust during the big oil-price correction.

A lot will, of course, also depend on the outlook for new virgin-resin supply - which we covered earlier today.

By John Richardson

China's polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP) virgin resin demand will rise by 20-35% in 2009 over last year on a lack of recycled material, strong domestic demand and speculation, estimates a leading exporter to China.

High-density polyethylene (HDPE) demand will grow by 35% to around 7m tonnes, linear-low density polyethylene (LLDPE) by 19-20% to 4.5m tonnes and low-density polyethylene (LDPE) by approximately 20% to 3.3m tonnes, said the exporter

PP demand would grow by 20% to 12m, he added.

This follows either dips in demand during 2008 or modest increases, depending on which grade of polyolefin. LDPE fell by 7% and PP by 1% with LDPE rising by 3%, he said.

"A factor behind the strong recovery is the lack of availability of scrap material, forcing converters to switch back to using virgin product," said a Shanghai-based markets observer.

A drop exports of finished goods - delivered wrapped in plastic film which is shipped back to China for recycling - was behind the reduced availability, he added.

"Some traders who had dealt in scrap have also switched to virgin resin, boosting the amount of trading activity in new material."

Many traders in recycled material also went bust in Q4 last year when scrap prices fell below  the cost of virgin resin - placing further strain on the distribution network.

A further factor has been tougher government regulations restricting scrap imports on environmental reasons.

Virgin resin prices had also remained too low to justify converters using scrap material for most of this year, said a Shanghai-based source with a major polyolefin producer.

"In September, though, the delta or gap between recycled and virgin material - which has to be a minimum of $400/tonne to make recycling economic - was almost reached," he continued.

"This was the result of very tight supply of virgin product and the cost-push from higher crude oil."

Domestic polyolefin demand had surged on huge government economic stimulus, including a rise in bank lending, he said.

"This has led to a steep rise in automobile and real-estate sales with the resulting rise in property prices triggering a construction boom."

Government vouchers providing discounts of the price of white goods such as washing machines and refrigerators were also behind the recovery in polyolefins, he said.

The big rise in bank lending had also fuelled speculation, he added.

"Non-traditional traders entered the market who only wanted to get their hands on polyolefins in order to use the 90 days' credit for something else."

They would take the credit and use it to speculate on say equities. Sometimes they made such big profits out of the stock market that they were willing to sell PE and PP at a loss."

This is trend apparent across other chemicals and polymers, adding to price volatility.

A real head scratcher......

Source of picture: www/http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com

By John Richardson

Confused? Sorry, but so far we cannot be of much help bringing any precision to what the implications of Thailand's Supreme Court ruling will mean for the timing of petrochemical start-ups.

If you remember, last Friday we wrote about how the Supreme Court had backed the verdict of a lower court which had halted development of $12bn of petrochemical and power projects at the Map Ta Phut site (or should it be Mab Ta Phut?).

Note the word could because, despite the court ruling supporting claims by environmentalists about the impact of pollution at the site, PTT claimed that most of its 25 petrochemicals projects would be unaffected by the verdict.

The reason it gave was that the projects were granted environmental clearance before 2007 - when constitutional changes altered health and environmental rules.

Media reports said that former prime minister Anand Panyarachun would review the court ruling and make recommendations in the first quarter of next year.

That seemed clear as watered-down mud can be.

But then later the same day - last Friday again - PTT provided us with a list of 65 projects formally under suspension.

These include more projects than we had earlier listed - for example, bisphenol-A (BPA),  and polycarbonate (PC) expansions by PTT and Bayer respectively and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and vinyl chloride monomer (VCM) expansions by Thai Plastic and Chemicals.

What remained unanswered was whether progress on the Siam Cement/Dow Chemical complex had been halted.

The complex includes 900,000 tonne/year of ethylene and 450,000 tonne/year of propylene (the cracker will also produce 200,000 tonne/year of benzene).

Also at the site will be a big new metathesis unit downstream of which will be a polypropylene (PP) unit (currently checking the capacity).

In addition, there will be a propylene oxide (PO) unit with a capacity of 390,000 tonne/year using Dow's proprietary hydrogen peroxide route to PO. This will be the first plant of its kind in the world and will not produce any styrene co-product. Start-up of the cracker, metathesis and PP units is due in Q2 next year and the PO unit in 2011, says ICIS Plants & Projects.

So we asked Dow to put the record straight.

Sadly, this was their statement today: "We are currently assessing the impact of the Court's decision. We are in full compliance with existing regulatory requirements and remain highly committed to ensuring that all of our projects fully comply with government regulations."

Perhaps nobody knows, in which case I am sure everyone would welcome a great deal more clarity.

By Malini Hariharan

I have been trying to get some clarity on what is happening at Map Ta Phut and what companies are planning to do.

Construction activity has not yet stopped despite the Supreme Court ruling last week which suspended 65 projects, says a PTT source. The government has yet to issue a notice to the companies. So it looks like prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has not acted on his plan to inform companies about the court order.

The situation is complicated. Most of the projects have received EIA approval and complied with all existing rules and regulations. Article 67 of the constitution asks for a health impact assessment (HIA) study to be evaluated by an independent body but that body has yet to be formed. A government panel, led by former Thai prime minister Anand Panyarachun, has been given the task of drafting new regulations and set up an independent body. The panel is now trying to accelerate the process and is likely to complete its task by the beginning of next year.

PTT's biggest concern is its No6 gas separation project which would provide feedstock to PTT Chem's new cracker. The cracker is not on the list of affected projects and can start at the end of the year. PTT Chem's plan is to carry out a turnaround at an existing cracker to divert feedstock to the new plant. PTT is also working on a plan to supply ethane from its No2 and No3 gas recovery plants where the company is due to complete a modification project by the end of the year. This project is not the list of 65 projects.

But the new cracker is unlikely to run at 100% until the No6 gas separation plant is commissioned.

PTT is also busy working out a strategy to ensure commissioning of this project in Q1 2010. One alternative being evaluated is asking the Central Administrative Court for a waiver as the project had already received EIA approval. This appeal could well be rejected as HIA is now needed. So PTT has also started preparing a HIA report which can be put up for approval once an independent body has been set up.

I was also told that another alternative under preliminary evaluation by PTT and Siam Cement is suing the government agency responsible for sanctioning their projects. "That is because the companies have done everything to comply with the rules; they have not done anything wrong," says the source.

It can be a dirty business....

Source of picture: www.China-environmental-news-blogspot.com

By John Richardson

THE sharp drop in plastics recycling in China has added 8-10 percentage points to virgin polyolefin demand growth in 2009, estimates a major Asian producer.

"It's a much bigger than we had anticipated and we're of course evaluating whether recycling will remain at the same depressed level next year," the producer added.

This appears to further confirm the impact of the recycling dip which we first recognised as important to the China growth story back in July.

Polyethylene (PE) demand is expected to grow by 31.5% in 2009 with polypropylene (PP) rising by 24%, according to Shanghai-based commodity information service CBI.

A second producer gives the following four explanations for the dip in recycling:

1.) Tougher regulations governing imports. "Legislation was made more rigorous because of environmental protests over water supply being polluted during the scrap cleaning processes," said this second producer. But interestingly, he added: "The central government faces the problem that tougher regulations are threatening the livelihood of millions of people. For example, in one inland province some 500,000 were employed in the re-processing industries, earning 4,000-5,000 Yuan a month compared with just a few hundred Yuan before the growth of recycling. Beijing is under a lot of pressure from local authorities to relax the rules." Clearly, this is a situation that needs to be monitored

2.) Less availability of scrap-plastic imports as a result of reduced exports of finished goods from China. During the global economic boom years, huge quantities of refrigerators, TVs etc were shipped to the West from China wrapped in plastic which was then returned to China

3.) The bankruptcy of a lot of traders in Q4 last year who dealt in scrap plastic and a reluctance of those still in the business to take the plunge again. Credit in China has also been so abundant that it's been very easy to borrow money to buy cargoes of freshly-manufactured resin

4.) The Delta between recycled and virgin material not being wide enough for most of this year to justify using the second-hand stuff (it has to be at least $400/tonne)

By John Richardson

ExxonMobil's purchase of XTO Energy for US$41bn seems to support the widely-held view that natural gas is the fuel for the future.

XTO specialises in the technology necessary to exploit shale gas and other hard-to-get-at unconventional gas reserves, including the large amounts of shale gas in the US - one of the reasons why the States has gone from natural gas feast to famine.

ExxonMobil will establish a separate division to manage production of both oil and gas from unconventional reserves.

This suggests, perhaps, that the focus and incentives created by setting up such a division will lead to XTO Energy and other breakthrough technologies being employed throughout the world.

Europe has unconventional reserves, which perhaps if successfully exploited could provide an alternative - a long with liquefied natural gas (LNG) - to sometimes politically-fraught pipeline reserves.

Easy-to-get-at gas in the Gulf Cooperation Council region of the Middle East is also becoming increasingly scarce, leading to evaluation of exploiting shale and tight gas.

The energy of the future argument rests both on concerns over Peak Oil and gas's lower carbon footprint.

The International Energy Authority (IEA), in its World Energy Outlook 2009 report launched last month, described natural gas as a "bridging fuel" until even greener alternatives become viable.

By Malini Hariharan

Companies executing projects at Map Ta Phut in Thailand have finally received a notice from the government to stop construction work. The notice comes after the Thai Supreme court's ruling in early December to suspend 65 projects on environmental concerns.

Mitsubishi Rayon has confirmed it has stopped work at its 90,000 tonnes/year methyl methacrylate (MMA) joint venture project with the Siam Cement Group. A company source says the plant is almost 'built up' and they are still hoping for start up to take place as scheduled in the second quarter of 2010. But he admitted that there was no information on when work can restart.

PTT says that construction work at its No6 gas separation plant is nearly over and it is still discussing with government agencies on whether this project can be exempted.

The Thai prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva reiterated yesterday that he would like to have new environmental rules by the end of the year. The deputy prime minister has also been assigned to work with the four-party panel, headed by former Thai prime minister Anand Panyarachun, in speeding up the resolution of complex legal issues.

The Bangkok Post reports that the panel has been asked to prepare its recommendations this week and forward them to the cabinet for consideration next week.

But not everyone is convinced in the government's ability to find a quick solution.

Chainoi Puankosoom, ceo and president of PTT Aromatics and Refining is reported to have expressed concern that "legal clarity will not be seen within the next twelve months due to the lengthy process involved". He would instead like a special framework that would allow affected companies to proceed with their projects

He said construction of most of the 65 suspended projects was 50-100% complete and also pointed out that suspension of construction work would not ease the pollution problem.

"It is going to take a lot more time to solve than people think," says a Bangkok-based industry analyst.

But how much more time is still not clear.

Meanwhile, I heard that the head of the four-party panel was confronted with an unpleasant smell on his recent visit to the Map Ta Phut industrial estate. He is now fully sympathetic to the plight of local residents.

By Malini Hariharan

There is some good news for chemical companies affected by the Map Ta Phut crisis. The Thai cabinet will ask the Administrative Court to remove 19 projects from the list of 65 projects that had been ordered to stop work.

PTT's No 6 gas separation project and PTT Chemical's phenol and polyethylene projects are among the lucky 19. A full list is available here.

In another major development yesterday, the Central Administrative Court has allowed construction to resume on a steel plant as the environmental impact assessment report for this project had been approved before the 2007 Thai constitution came into effect on 24 August 2007. It had also received an operating license prior to this date.

Abhisit Vejjajiva, the Thai prime minister, has said that five or six more may be given the go ahead as they fall in the same category. And he has also reiterated the government's commitment to find an early solution.

But Map Ta Phut is just the start of a bigger movement.

In this blog report, Srisuwan Janya, a lawyer fighting on behalf of Map Ta Phut residents, disclosed that he was investigating as many 181 projects all over Thailand.

Pic source: Nation Multimedia

"The whole country will have to change," he said. "From now on, industry will have to worry about the environment and take care of the people. The government will have to also be much stricter about this."

Stop complaining - it's actually colder inside!

Source of picture: www.gulfnews.com

By John Richardson

As northern China shivers from the coldest temperatures in decades, one Western ex-pat based in the country vented his spleen on cultural impediments which cause huge energy wastage - and prevent everyone from keeping a little bit warmer.

"My colleagues keep their coats on while at their desks so they can open windows to circulate fresh air.

"Our cleaners and security guards do exactly the same - they open windows in corridors no matter how many times you tell them not to.

"For a long time there's been a lot of talk about 'American Exceptionalism', the concept of how we view our way of life as distinct and unique and one that shouldn't be messed with or criticised.

"I think this increasingly applies to China and the attitude towards energy conservation is one small example."

Also at the heart of the problem is very low electricity costs compared with the developed world, the ex-pat continues.

And buildings are 6-10 times less well-insulated than those in America, he adds, creating a huge demand-growth opportunity for the polymers used in the insulation - including polystyrene (PS), polyurethane (PU) and phenolic resins.

But, sadly, the nature of building construction in China seems to be holding back progress: Typical apartments are mass-manufactured as concrete and solid-walled boxes with therefore no cavities in which insulation material can be inserted, he says.

The other extreme is in summer where, if you have the misfortune to be wearing a suit and tie working in an office in China, it can be akin to a visit to the sauna - again because of insufficient use of insulating materials and poor ventilation.

So if you visit northern China while this cold spell continues make sure you pack a thick coat, scarves and gloves etc - to wear in as well as outside the office.

We should have originally written 'integrated low-density polyethylene (LDPE) in paragraphsix, but instead wrote linear-low density PE (LLDPE). It's now been corrected and apologies for the error - we will be buying some better glasses (less of this "we" - it's actually "me"!)

By John Richardson

The rise in ethylene prices to what ICIS pricing says is a 17-month-high has created the widest spread between naphtha and ethylene since 2007.

As of last Friday (29 January), the spread was $620/tonne, based on ethylene at $1,310/tonne FOB Korea -and naphtha at $690/tonne CFR Japan. This compares with a spread of $627/tonne on 17 August 2007 and a tremendous $667/tonne on 5 January of the same year.

In 2007, the world was vastly different as it was in the midst of the highest economic growth in a generation.

Interestingly, despite the inevitable complaints of squeezed margins by PE producers - and anecdotal reports of market-driven rate cuts and plant-idling - the latest weekly ICIS pricing margin reports tell a more nuanced story.

"Naphtha-based ethylene margins in Northeast Asia rose by $37/tonne due to weaker naphtha prices," said The Ethylene Asia Margin report for 29 January.

Naphtha costs had fallen by 4.8%, offsetting a 4.6% dip in co-product values, the report continued.

Integrated low density PE (LDPE) and high-density PE (HDPE) margins also increased - by $30/tonne and $39/tonne respectively - said The Weekly Margin - PE Asia report.

And so the incentive for integrated producers to increase ethylene sales at the expense of PE didn't seem to be that strong as of last week, despite reports to the contrary.

On a non-integrated basis, however, standalone LDPE margins fell to their lowest level since July 2008, the report continued.

Average January HDPE margins were the worst since way back in September 2004, it added.

I would strongly suspect that converters, who, like the standalone PE producers, lack market muscle because of their scale, are also being squeezed; the few who I have spoken to since the start of the year certainly claim this.

Ethylene-PE margins have been strong because of temporary supply issues.

"Some ethylene traders have a sense that C2 prices will decline from March because of increased supply," said an industry source today.

"For example, a large amount of ethylene is expected to hit the market when the 800,000 tonne/year Shell cracker in Singapore starts up."

Shell is expected to have 180,000-200,000 tonne/year of ethylene to export when its cracker is commissioned in Q1.

The remaining surplus from its cracker (it's only associated plant is the 750,000 tonne/year Shell monoethylene glycol plant which came on-stream late last year) will be sold to other producers on Jurong Island, say market sources. How this will affect the market's net balance is uncertain.

"Another factor to consider is that Shell has actually been buying ethylene in order to run its MEG plant. So you have a buyer who helped tighten the market becoming a significant seller of ethylene," the source continued.

A further reason for the ethylene rally has apparently been tight supply from Iran as a result of unconfirmed cracker outages.

 Polyolefin supply has also been immensely tight since December on a host of production problems.

 Recent supply issues seem likely to be resolved over the next few months with a great deal of new capacity yet to come on-stream.

 The other reason to be bearish is the potential for weaker economic growth in China, concerns over which have led to a sharp correction in oil and other commodity prices during the past few weeks (higher crude has, of course, also underpinned the olefin-polyolefin price rallies).

 "The big factor to assess post-Chinese New Year will be the influence of China's tightening of lending conditions," the source continued.

 "The big monster in the room is China's property market and whether that might collapse. This is very worrying, indeed."

 As we said before, this is a very different world economy than in 2007.

 China's huge - and now apparently inflationary - economic stimulus has perhaps provided temporary protection from a great deal of lost export trade to the West.

 Because of deep-seated economic problems in the West, this trade is unlikely to be regained anytime soon.

By Malini Hariharan

Penchom Saetang of Ecological Alert and Recovery - Thailand (Earth) is not a typical activist vociferously denouncing companies for their environmental misdeeds. She is soft spoken and rational in her criticism of the state of affairs at Map Ta Phut, Thailand's premier industrial zone and a major petrochemicals hub.

After spending over ten years studying and documenting the pollution problems at Map Ta Phut she was not surprised to see the local population take legal action last year to block implementation of new projects at the industrial estate.

She is hopeful of a compromise that will enable completion of projects already underway but warns of an anti-industrialisation wave that is spreading across Thailand, especially in the southern provinces where the government would like to create a new industrial zone.

"People of every province have networked to resist investments; now it is almost too late to recover. People are opposing any king of factories, even power plants, as they fear pollution and loss of livelihood; the feeling is very deep," she warns.

And she admits that even she has problems discussing the matter rationally with the local people.

"It is not easy to communicate; if my group acts neutral we will be resisted. It is a very sensitive issue," she says.

The roots of this crisis can be traced to the mistakes made by the government and companies over the years at Map Ta Phut which has generated bad feelings and an antagonistic stance towards industry, says Penchom.

"Map Ta Phut is a modern industrial estate but some local communities don't have supply of clean water; they have stopped using rain water because of contamination

"There was a big incidence of air pollution in 1997 when thousands of students were taken to the hospital. But no one from the factories walked out to acknowledge their fault. The following year there was another incident.

"Local people set up their own smelling group to use their nose to walk around Map Ta phut to detect the source of air pollution. They found 7 factories responsible and requested for a temporary closure.

"Every year since 1998 there has been lots of illegal dumping; the erosion of the coastal area is still going on. The local people have demanded several times to stop expansions but this voice was ignored by the Industrial Estate Authority of Thailand, "she says.

Pic Source: Bangkok Post

The first proposal to declare Map Ta Phut as a pollution zone was made in 2003-04 but this was rejected a couple of times.

There was a conflict of interest as some government officials held positions in companies with operations at Map Ta Phut, points out Penchom.

Today Map Ta Phut is in urgent need of a big environmental cleanup and the government needs to focus on this rather that talking of further expansions, she advises.

Penchom also dismisses claims of Bangkok city being more polluted than Map Ta Phut and Thailand having better environmental standards than some developed countries.

"There is a difference in the air pollution cocktail; benzene content is high in Bangkok in areas of traffic congestion but the air does not have as many compounds as Map Ta Phut," she points out.

As for environmental standards, it is only on some parameters that Thailand is better, she says.

"The big problem is VOC and Thailand did not have any regulation before 2009".

But Penchom has a positive attitude and would like to work towards solving the environmental problems.

"It is not easy to change but we want to let them [the government and companies] know that civil society is keeping a watch on them," she warns.

By Malini Hariharan

The blog has recently written about gas availability in the Middle East and upcoming changes to pricing which have big implications for the petrochemicals business.

But the global gas market is seeing wider changes and these have been excellently summarised by The Economist.

The key development has been the rise of shale gas in the US which now meets about half of the country's demand.

The fall in gas prices has already improved the competitiveness of US petrochemical producers. And analysts are predicting that this advantage will continue.

There is plenty of shale gas around the world. According to the Economist article, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has estimated the global total to be 921 tcf ,more than five times proven conventional reserves. But a clearer picture will emerge only after exploration and drilling starts.

Source: The Economist

Meanwhile, rising production in the US coupled with a drop in demand, as a result of the economic slowdown, has already resulted in a global gas glut. And the situation has been exacerbated by greater availability of liquefied natural gas (LNG).

The rise of shale gas has implications for countries like Qatar that has developed its LNG industry to meet US demand.

"That now looks like a blunder. America is still taking some of this LNG, but the exporters' bonanza is over before it ever really began," says The Economist.

LNG prices are likely to come under downward pressure as new projects scheduled to come on stream this year would add another 80m tonnes to annual supply, almost 50% more than in 2008.

Qatar would still make money because of its low production costs but there are many others who would not as they are extracting gas from remote fields.

A question worth asking is whether Qatar turn to petrochemicals if returns on LNG diminish?

The developments in the US market also has implications for Canada. The ceo of Nova Chemicals recently said that the growth of US natural gas capacity may make natural gas production in Canada less economical, which in turn could lead to a feedstock shortage for Canadian petrochemicals producers.

"We are clearly seeing some degree of decline in the west [Canada], and as a result of that, overall ethane supply is down. There is definitely a real structural concern for producers and consumers over the short-to-medium term," he said.

NOVA has expressed its concerns to the Alberta government authorities and is seeking additional incentives for investments in ethane extraction.

The Economist says that while an age of plenty appears to be on its way there are two factors that could reverse the picture.

The first is the uncertainty about how the success of shale gas exploration outside North America. And the second is the concerns voiced by environmentalists about spoiling landscapes and contaminating water supplies.

The US government recently announced that it would begin a two-year study to determine if hydraulic fracturing, a technique used to produce shale gas, threatens water quality and water health.

There are differing views on how long the surplus situation will continue.

Companies that have invested in LNG believe that there is room for both shale gas and LNG in the US market.

Sceptics point out that shale gas is expensive to produce. With gas futures prices stuck below $5/MMBtu - and breakeven prices anywhere from $3-6/MMBtu - they are questioning how long shale producers will run rigs.

The Economist quotes predictions by experts that the LNG glut is likely to ease by 2014 as low prices would force some projects to be abandoned. France's Total is of the opinion that demand recovery would require more LNG projects while the Energy Information Administration (EIA) predicts decades of relatively weak prices.

A complicated picture but certainly one that needs to be unravelled.

A Velozzi plug-in hybrid

Source of picture: www.zerauto.nl.blog

By John Richardson

Doom-mongers are claiming the end is nigh with the world heading for a double-dip recession.

This is happening at the same as the optimists are talking of the world entering a new sunny upland of sustained exceptionally strong emerging-market growth, which will more-than compensate for lingering problems in the West.

At ground level in the chemicals industry the view is equally divided with specific commodity polymer markets showing significant stress, such as a polyolefins in China where the reasons behind price corrections point to problems with the sustainable-boom story.

You can contrast this with strong year-on-year and, more significantly, sequential improvements in financial results, and bullish statements about the medium and long-term outlook from companies such as Dow Chemical.

The truth might be between the two extremes with the confusing picture in the West reflecting a shift in the sources of demand-growth now that economies can no longer be driven by the credit-fuelled consumerism of most of the last decade.

Innovation seems to be the key for chemicals companies to prosper in this changed environment.

As for the emerging world, short-term bubbles aside, it is becoming harder to argue why the rise of China etc will not continue, leading to far greater consumption of both commodity and higher-value chemicals and polymers.

Patrick Thomas, CEO of Bayer Material Science (BMS), in an interview last week, described the nuanced nature of the moderate recovery in the US when he said: "There are two parts to the stimulus programme - the first paying-down debt in the financial system and getting the financial system working again through quantitative easing etc; the second investment in energy efficiency.

"While fiscal stimulus might have to be withdrawn from the financial system, energy-efficiency initiatives continue, which include better-insulating 400,000 government buildings. This is an opportunity for our methyl di-p-phenylene isocyanate (MDI)-based polyurethanes (PU) going into rigid-foam applications for insulation."

He accepted that the collapse in home starts - and negative equity that's preventing people from moving house - were significant problems for toluene diisocyanate (TDI)-based PU used for flexible foams in mattresses, furniture and chairs etc.

"We have seen somewhat of a recovery, though, thanks to people who are not moving home upgrading their existing properties.

"This has helped boost the sales of, for example, composite wood panels - using BMS PU adhesives - which are used to help build home extensions.

"On the polycarbonate (PC) side, we have benefited from an increase in sales in office automation machines.

"These machines, which are replacing people, combine functions such as photocopying, faxing and emailing into one unit - and the casing for these units is made from BMS acrylontrile butadiene styrene (ABS)/PC composite."

But he added that "people who are unemployed staying unemployed" would obviously hinder the recovery.

BMS is also working with Velozzi, the US, California-based new technology car company, which is developing a plug-in hybrid SUV-sized vehicle.

"In the US, people like to drive their giant SUVs and so one challenge is to make big all-electric cars with energy efficiency boosted by increasing use of light-weight plastics. The fuel-efficiency theory, through the use of these light-weight plastics, also applies to gasoline and diesel vehicles.

"The Velozzi car will use our PC glazing material and our open-cell carbon fibres with a PU skin which is moulded into body-work components."

As for China, he repeated the well-known, but still startling, statistic that China produced more cars in 2009 than the US.

"In the future, most of the new cars China produces will stay there as domestic growth accelerates - and these autos are of great value.

"I was picked up from Shanghai airport in a really good family car recently, that didn't rattle or anything, costing just 8,000 Euros."

China's auto manufacturers face far fewer regulations than their European counterparts, who have to comply with a plethora of rules governing, for example, the geometry of vehicles and minimum amounts of illumination, he added.

Lack of red tape is encouraging greater substitution of natural materials by plastics in China.

"The Chinese industry is also much more open to replacing steel and glass with plastics and composites made from plastics because there isn't the legacy issue of existing capacity you get in the US and Europe.

"In the West, a bigger amount of auto components are steel and glass-based as the attitude is "we have the production so we might as well make use of it' ".

But he qualified this by saying that higher EU emissions standards were encouraging greater use of PC glazing.

In China, too, he sees a big opportunity for use for rigid PU foams in insulation, where office buildings tend to heat the outdoors in winter and cool it down in summer as employees either shiver or sweat inside.

As with the other chemicals majors focusing on innovation, Thomas talked of the big global trends driving future growth. These include ageing populations, food and water.

BMS has developed PU-based lubricious coatings for use in catheters and other medical products.

"Globally, 50% of all the food produced is wasted and so there is a huge opportunity for rigid foams used in insulation for refrigeration in food transportation, storage in shops and finally in refrigerators in homes," he added.

"Thirty per cent of water in old cities leaks because of faulty piping. We have a PU material which you can spray inside a ruptured ceramic or metal pipe without having to dig the pipe up. This forms a whole new pipe within the old one."

It seems clear that the growth story is not straightforward - and not one that can be told only by looking at key economic indicators and relating these back to chemicals.

New sources of value for the chemicals industry will continue to develop, requiring a great deal of R&D investment, talent - and failures as well as successes.

BMS spent Euro207m on R&D in 2009, not including joint development activities with customers. This was from sales of Euro7,520m.

"Forty per cent of our products didn't exist five years ago. Some of this involves minor modifications along with new products," said Thomas.

In the final analysis, and in a nutshell: Anybody without overwhelming feedstock-cost advantages - or support from non-profit motivated state ownership - has little choice but to go down this route.

Source of picture: www.sierraclubgreenhome.com

By John Richardson

WHEN the bisphenol-A (BPA) health scare erupted a couple of years ago I rushed out and changed all my baby boy's milk bottles to ones made from polypropylene (PP).

"Did you know that there are concerns now being expressed in Europe about the plasticisers used in your PP bottles?" a senior industry source informed me the other week.

Oops, or as we say in Britain (please re-watch that old movie, Notting Hill to hear this phrase in action), oops-a-daisy.

There are also claims that epoxy resins used to coat cans of baby milk-powder - which you will obviously need to use whether you have stuck to polycarbonate bottles made via BPA or have switched to PP - leach a fair amount of BPA.

Environmentalists once characterised chlorine as the "Devil's Molecule", partly over concerns about the dioxin levels released during incineration of PVC waste.

"Crematoria are a bigger source of dioxin emissions," claimed the same industry source and so perhaps we should all make a big push for more burials.

Death rates would have been a great deal higher in the developing world if it had not been for PVC pipes providing uncontaminated water.

There are many other arguments over the benefits outweighing the risks of chemicals and plastics.

One should obviously be sceptical for any positive claims that come from a company producing a particular chemical or polymer.

Nevertheless, as a journalist who used to work for the tabloid (sensationalist) national press in the UK , I am well-aware of how some reporters rarely let the facts get in the way of a good story. These are complicated, important and serious issues and worthy of a serious debate that's unlikely to take place when the focus is on a good headline or sound bite.

And talking about a serious debate, what about the BP (or if you are American, "British Petroleum") Gulf of Mexico disaster?

Once this story has dropped out of the 24-hour news cycle - as we've said before on the blog - will the public be willing to support much more stringent regulations on energy exploration and production if it means gasoline at more than $4 a gallon?

By Malini Hariharan

The Thai government is doing all it can to quickly resolve the Map Ta Phut crisis but full operations at PTT Chem's new cracker is likely only in early 2011.

Feedstock ethane for the 1m tonnes/year cracker will be supplied from PTT's No6 gas separation plant commissioning of which has been held since last year.

A PTT source told the blog that a health impact assessment (HIA) report is being prepared and will be submitted to a government-nominated independent committee for evaluation by September.

Meanwhile, the company is also waiting for the prime minister to announce a list of Map Ta Phut projects that are harmful to the environment and would require HIA.

"As the gas separation plant is not on this list we can appeal to the central court for a waiver of the HIA report once the prime minister that made the announcement," he added.

But when asked to give a precise date for completion of the formalities, he would only said that since it is beyond the company's control they could only target full operations by early 2011.

However, PTT should be able to supply some additional volumes of ethane once revamping of the No2 and No3 gas separation plants is completed this month.

PTT Chem commissioned its cracker last year but has been running it at around 60% because of a shortfall of ethane.

And start of commercial operations at PTT Chem's new 300,000 tonnes/year low-density polyethylene (ldPE) plant has once again been delayed, this time to September due to technical problems.

The Indo-Pacific Humpback Dolphin

Source of picture: townsvilledolphins.org

By John Richardson

AS Singapore forges ahead with its petrochemicals-expansion ambitions (it would be unwise for us to share rumours about potential new investors in cracker complexes on Jurong Island), spare a thought for the embattled Taiwanese industry.

The environmental controversy surrounding the Formosa Plastics Group following two fires at its Mailiao complex in three weeks, has resulted in the government delaying issuing a permit for the company's planned refinery, ethylene and downstream expansions.

Even before the fires, Formosa was ordered to launch a second environmental impact assessment study into the proposed investments, delaying the start of construction by six months until the end of this year.

And the already-tormented Kuokuang Petrochemical Technology Co refinery and cracker project at Changhua could face even more scrutiny.

Chinese Petroleum Corp (CPC), one of the shareholders in Koukuang, aims to construct a new refinery and a 1.2m tonne/year cracker which would replace an old refinery and cracker at Kaohsiung.

The project is seen as vital for CPC and small downstream companies as they seek to boost their competitive position versus the all-powerful Formosa.

But even before the Formosa fires, more than 300 academics had opposed the project as they claimed it would endanger coastal wetlands.

It has already been relocated from Yunlin in Taiwan because of a row over water consumption.

The cost of the project has also risen due to the need to provide an eco-corridor around the site for the highly endangered Indo-Pacific Humpback Dolphin.

A rather confusing Bloomberg report says that the project will be scrapped if environmental approval is not granted by 17 November.

Petrochemical producers need to run ever-faster to stand still if they are to remain globally competitive - i.e. they need to be constantly examining new investments in order to maintain economies of scale.

The Taiwanese industry, which has long faced environmental pressures, may now find it virtually impossible to expand at home thanks to even greater public hostility.

Is this therefore the right time to intensify lobbying efforts aimed at persuading the government to lift the ban on building crackers on the mainland?

By Malini Hariharan

Companies with projects at Thailand's Map Ta Phut must have heaved a sigh of relief last week after the Administrative court ruled that 74 out of 76 suspended projects could move ahead after completing health impact assessment studies and obtaining necessary approvals. The court's decision was based on a list of 11 harmful industries identified by the government that

But Map Ta Phut residents are unwilling to give up their fight to curb new investments at the country's premier industrial estate and there are signs that the conflict will continue in one form or the other.

Srisuwan Janya, a lawyer fighting on behalf of Map Ta Phut residents, has vowed to appeal the court ruling. He believes the court has wrongly applied the list retrospectively and complained that the Map Ta Phut projects had been let "off the hook".

And the four party panel, led by Thailand's former prime minister Anand Panyarachun, has questioned the government's decision to trim the list of harmful industries from 11 from the 18 that it had suggested.

Source: Bangkok Post

Anand said that while it was the government's prerogative to disagree with the list, it needed to offer the public a credible explanation as to why certain types of activities were not included.

A rally has been planned for 30 September by Map Ta Phut residents to protest against the new list.

But even as the people and politicians fight it out companies are preparing to resume project activity.

PTT Chemical is scheduled to soon start test runs at its expanded high-density polyethylene (hdPE) plant. Trial production is expected to start in October with commercial production by early 2011.

And PTT expects to start its No 6 gas separation plant in the fourth quarter. Once this is up and running PTT Chemical will be able to secure sufficient ethane to raise operating rates at its new cracker.

Cloth nappies?....you have to be kidding

Source of picture: babygavin.com

By John Richardson

IT IS the biggest transformation that the global economy has probably ever undergone, resulting in numerous opportunities and challenges for the chemicals industry as emerging markets continue to boom.

The obvious opportunity is for those who can meet voracious demand growth. But where will the supply of affordable commodity chemicals and plastics come from to prevent this remarkable transformation from stalling?

Innovation will be the key at the higher end of the business, as resource constraints create the need for new technologies.

Breakthroughs will be needed, for example, to raise energy efficiency and provide clean and safe water for the tens of millions of people who every year are migrating to ever-more overcrowded cities.

But while the long-term upward trajectory seems assured as the developing world displaces the West as the main global economic driver, medium and short-term dangers abound; the most obvious one right now is a currency war.

"Look at India, China, Indonesia and Vietnam alone. Together they account for about 40% of the global population. At no previous point in history has such a large proportion of the world's population been entering the consumer economy," said a Singapore-based oil and gas consultant.

"Traditional spreadsheet-based methods of measuring growth are no longer good enough by themselves. Some amazing disruptions are taking place that you need to be aware of in order for your old models to be thrown out so you can start again."

Take India as a good example, where the local polyolefin industry is working on persuading India's railways to switch from using cotton or linen sheets and pillowcases in overnight sleeper carriages to bedding made from non-woven polypropylene (PP).

Arguments being used include reducing what must be the enormous laundry bill incurred by the state-owned Indian Railways. And as the non-woven PP sheets and pillowcases are disposed of after one use, passengers would be guaranteed a clean bed.

Furthermore, it makes it very economically viable to recycle PP-made bed clothes, as there is only one collection point: The train's terminus.

An estimated 6bn people travel in India by rail every year. Nobody has calculated how much extra PP demand this could amount to.

But it has been estimated that if India switched entirely from sacks made of jute, a natural material, to those made from raffia-grade PP, this would create the need for an extra 1m tonnes/year of the polymer.

End-users in India and other emerging markets are incredibly cost-sensitive, however.
And in many cases, these disruptive changes are not about sophisticated polymers, as in the case above with efforts to replace sacks made from jute.

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries in the Middle East will not supply the huge new volumes required because of a shift in strategy and feedstock availability.

Producers in India, such as Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), and those in China are in a great position to meet the demand. Sometimes they have both location and feedstock cost advantages.

In the case of RIL, it has a strong raw materials position thanks to its huge refinery capacity at Jamnagar, in India's Gujarat state.

As for China, "the focus has swung back from refinery-based petrochemicals to adding more coal-to-olefins and also coal-to-monoethylene glycol (MEG) capacity, due to the recovery in oil prices", according to a senior source with a US polyolefins major.

"We are spending a lot of time studying the economics of our coal-to-olefins process, while also evaluating the efficiency of competitors."

It might not be too far a stretch to suggest that the US might see expansions to meet the demand for commodity plastics, thanks to shale gas.

But 45-degree straight-line growth was never going to happen.

"In Singapore, Hong Kong and across Asia, the rich investors with money to spare have been pouring too much money into property and equities," continued the above source. "They have been followed by those who are now highly leveraged, who have borrowed at extremely low interest rates."

Property-market restrictions in Singapore and China have already slowed price rises, with some early signs of reductions in China.

Inflation, however, was still a big problem in Asia, the source added.

"Official inflation rates don't always reflect what's really happening because baskets of goods included in measures of inflation haven't been adapted to reflect changes in economies.

"Governments across Asia might have to raise interest rates and if they get the timing and scale of the rate rises wrong, this could cause investor panic. Other policy decisions are possible and these carry equal risk.

"The temptation may instead be to carry on with ultra-loose monetary policy in order to prevent currencies from rising too much, as everyone struggles to deal with the weak US dollar. This will cause bubbles to inflate even more.

"A full-scale currency war is my biggest fear, accompanied by increased trade protectionism - for instance, the recent US House of Representatives vote on the Yuan. This vote sends an important signal, even if it doesn't get past the Senate or a veto by the president."

The dreaded double-dip recession might be almost upon us, unless we are lucky enough to escape for now thanks to an exceptional amount of inter-governmental coordination and compromise.

Whatever the number and the extent of the dips in growth over the coming decades, though, the overall dynamics seem irreversible.

One Singapore-based PP sales executive put it very neatly when he said: "Once you've got used to using stuff made from chemicals and plastics, you are not going to turn back, no matter what your economic problems.

"If you have young children, why on earth would you want to switch back to using cloth diapers from disposal diapers?"

By Malini Hariharan

A surprise court order in India earlier this month has put pressure on plastic packaging and has raised the risk of restrictions on its use in a very popular segment - cheap sachets or pouches that are used to pack a wide variety of consumer products ranging from shampoo to tobacco.

The Supreme Court has ordered a ban on the sale of gutkha, a mix of tobacco, betel nut and other ingredients, packed in plastic sachets from March 2011 and has asked manufacturers to explore and decide by March on an alternative packaging material.

Pic source: www.thehindu.com

It has also asked the government to conduct a survey on the ill effects of these tobacco products and examine the effect of packaging these products in plastics pouches on human health.

The next hearing is scheduled for 9 March 2011.

Gutkha is a major health risk for millions of Indians addicted to it and a ban on its use makes sense. But what has upset the plastics industry is the court's move to link its ban to packaging. And the worry is that these restrictions might slowly extend to other products packed in plastic sachets (multilayer structures made of polyethylene and metallised polyester).

The order has taken the plastics industry by surprise as the instead of banning gutkha the court has restrained the use of plastic sachets.

"Today it is gutkha; but there are hundreds of products packed in pouches. Tomorrow an NGO can give reference to this case and say shampoos should not be packed in pouches," says an industry source.

For now the court has focused on sachets, which, thanks to the convenience factor, have boosted sales of gutkha.

Sachets are also cheap - products packed in them are usually priced at only a few cents. And they have grown to overtake other forms of packaging in many product segments.

Market research firm AC Nielsen estimates that sachets accounted for 74.5% of the Indian shampoo market of 104,000 kiloliters in 2008, up from 71% in 2006 and 73% in 2007

But sachets are part of a bigger waste management problem that India needs to urgently tackle. The court has already directed the Indian government to finalise and enforce within eight weeks Plastic Management and Disposal Rules that were framed in 2009.

Switching to an alternate form of packaging would pose a greater burden on the environment though this is not easily visible, points out the industry source.

Plastics are the most environmental friendly packaging method in terms of energy savings and emission reductions during production, he adds.

The industry needs to act fast to communicate this message to a wider audience and ensure that new regulations do not adversely affect use of plastics in India. As for the proposed gutkha ban, they need to ensure that the final Court ruling does not carry any negative reference to plastic packaging.

By Malini Hariharan

...is a debate that has starting moving out of the US. A desire for energy independence has seen countries like Poland to embrace shale gas with the government welcoming US companies to quickly develop the country's reserves, estimated at 5.3 trillion cubic metres.

This would be enough to meet Poland's annual gas consumption of 14 billion cubic metres for decades to come and put an end to its need to import 70% of its required gas from Russia, said the Polish economy ministry.

"Let's not be afraid, let's just do our own thing," said the country's foreign minister referring to the environmental issues related to shale gas.

"We just have to keep explaining to environmentalists and local people what it's about. From what I know, the technology keeps improving," he added.

Global majors have lined up to accept the government's open invitation. Total has signed up with ExxonMobil to acquire an interest in the exploration of shale gas while Chevron will be working on its own. And the Polish refining, chemicals and petrochemicals group PKN Orlen has plans to launch its own oil and gas extraction and energy production units in 2012.

But while Poland is moving aggressively France is likely to become the first country to ban development of shale gas.

The country's lower house of Parliament approved a bill earlier this month to ban drilling due to environmental concerns and cancelled exploration rights given to companies. The Senate will consider the bill in June.

A principal area of concern in France and also in the US is the fracking or fracturing process which involves blasting huge amounts of water, sand and chemicals to break shale rocks to release the gas trapped in them.

Environmentalists claim that the chemicals used in fracking cause contamination of ground water. They recently received a big boost in their campaign against shale gas after the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection fined Chesapeake Energy $900,000 for contaminating water supplies in Bradford County, a busy drilling area in the Marcellus shale gas formation.

The agency concluded that contamination was caused by improper well casing and cementing, allowing seepage from non-shale shallow gas formations.

A second area of concern is methane leaks from drilling sites also contaminating drinking water.

Researchers at Duke University concluded after a recent study that methane contamination has taken place at sites in Pennsylvania and New York.

Methane was found in 85 percent of the samples, and at sites within a kilometer (0.6 mile) of active hydraulic-fracturing operations, levels were 17 times higher than in wells far from such operations, said the study.

Some residents have sounded an alarm about running faucets that ignite if a flame is placed nearby. These and other environmental issues have been superbly captured in this very hip rap song (special thanks to the blog's colleague Nel for discovering this).

Shale gas has given the US petrochemical industry a new life but with the green lobby getting stronger the industry may soon have to dance to a new tune. 

By Malini Hariharan

Is the International Energy Agency (IEA) being extremely bullish in predicting a 'golden age' for natural gas over the next 25 years?

In a recently released report (available here) the IEA forecasts a 55% growth in global demand to 5.1 trillion cubic metre (tcm) in 2035 driven mainly by China, India and also the Middle East. The share of natural gas in the global energy mix is expected to rise to 25%, from the current 21%, during the same period pushing coal's share down to 22%.

Where will the gas come from? Eastern Europe led by Russia is expected to remain the largest supplier followed by the Middle East and North America.

The agency is confident that production in the Middle East, despite political issues in Iran and Iraq, and a gas moratorium in Qatar, will more than double by 2035. But it admits that "an important factor influencing new gas development in the region will be whether domestic gas prices are permitted to rise to a level that stimulates investment".

This is crucial as new reserves, which are not associated with crude oil, are likely to be more expensive to develop.

Interestingly, the IEA also expects China to tap unconventional sources of gas such as coal bed methane (CBM) and shale gas to emerge as a major producer pumping out nearly 300 billion cubic metres (bcm) in 2035, up from 80bcm in 2008.

But the country will still remain a large importer as local production is likely to meet only half of domestic demand which is expected to match that of the entire European Union in 2035.

There are probably not too many questions on the projected demand growth for especially for power generation after Japan's nuclear crisis. The power sector is expected to remain the largest consumer accounting for 24% of total gas demand in 2035.

But perhaps the IEA's predictions on the rise of unconventional sources of gas, which it describes as "key to expanding the long-term role of as in global enery mix" are a little premature. The agency expects the share of unconventional sources to rise to 24% in 2035 from 12% in 2008.

"We project the share of shale gas in global gas production reaches 11% in 2035 while that of CBM reaches 7% and tight gas 6%. Unconventional gas production is currently concentrated in the US and Canada. By the end of the Outlook period, unconventional gas also reaches a significant scale in China (CBM and shale), Russia (tight gas), India (shale) and Australia (CBM)," says the IEA.

The agency is also confident that gas from unconventional sources can be produced at costs similar to those in North America ($3-7/mmbtu). This is debatable as costs are likely to be higher in some location which will have major implications on projected production volumes.

Also the shale gas revolution has yet to take root outside the US. China has only recently opened its doors while in India exploration has yet to start.

The IEA acknowledges the environmental issues surrounding the fracking technique used to get to shale gas but expects these to be resolved once regulatory frameworks are set up.

However, as reported by the blog earlier, the concerns are getting louder and some European countries like France have already taken action to place restricting shale gas drilling.

The world, including the petrochemicals industry, certainly needs more unconventional gas but gaining public acceptance is unlikely to be easy.

By Malini Hariharan

Asian petrochemical markets continue to face downward pressure on concerns about the health of the global economy. Market sentiment for most products remains poor with buyers in no rush to resume purchases.

Polyolefin markets closed last week on a weak note. Prices of low-density polyethylene (LDPE) and polypropylene (PP) dropped $10-40/tonne last week across the region, reports ICIS pricing. Linear-low density PE (LLDPE) and high-density PE (HDPE) prices were stable but buying sentiment for the products was weak.

There was little support coming from ethylene and propylene markets. Propylene prices were assessed higher for the week on tight regional supply but buyers stepped back on Friday after a sharp fall in equities and crude oil. Ethylene dropped $10-40/tonne in Southeast Asia with buyers unwilling to enter markets at a time of great uncertainty.

Benzene and styrene markets were also similarly affected with prices of both proudcts sliding $20-40/tonne.

The only exceptions to the trend were paraxylene (PX) and purified terephthalic acid (PTA) as news of an impending shutdown of Fujia Dahua's 700,000 tonnes/year PX plant spread in the market. The company is at the centre of widespread public protests after a typhoon hit a wall at the plant site. This raised fears of a PX spill prompting local residents to demand closure and relocation of the plant.

However, the strength in the PX and PTA markets is under question given the global economic uncertainty. The news today from the Asian stocks markets is bleak with declines recorded at all major bourses today. Brent crude dropped by more than $3/bbl on news of Libyan rebels capturing Tripoli raising hopes of an end to the country's civil war and a resumption of Libyan oil exports.

If the trend continues, optimism will be a scarce commodity in petchem markets this week.

By John Richardson

"IF we build polymer capacity in India the demand will come," a very senior industry executive told the blog last year. He amplified this statement by explaining that greater availability of plastics would always stimulate strong demand growth for low-end packaging materials etc in emerging markets in general, as the poor became a little less poor.

Back in May 2010, when he made this statement, India, China and other developing countries such as Indonesia and Vietnam were enjoying soar-away growth. "Decoupling" from troubled Western economies was once again in fashion.

Confidence was high at last May's Asia Petrochemical Industry Conference (APIC) in Mumbai as many of the delegates talked about tight markets by 2014-15.

The search for new locations for new capacity was already on to serve this voracious emerging-market growth, given that Middle East ethane supply is so severely constrained.

The momentum continued into late 2010 as JP Morgan published its famous SuperCycle theory, claiming that it didn't matter what happened in the US and other Western markets. Incremental polyethylene (PE) demand growth would be so strong in China that a decline in US consumption wouldn't even matter on a global basis, the bank claimed.

Investors in commodities and equities etc quite often have very short-term perspectives and so don't really care whether theories, such as the one above, turn out to be true over a period of years. All that matters to these investors is that enough people believe a particular idea over a millisecond (in the case of the high-frequency traders), an hour, a day, a week, a month or a quarter.

But it is the job of senior chemicals industry planners to see through all of this.

Right up until this May's APIC, in Fukuoka, Japan, there was still talk of a peak in the cycle by 2014-15 and the need for lots of new polymer and other plants.

Denial continues in some quarters.

"Even though chemical and industrial stocks have been hammered, 2012 profit estimates still show 20%+ gains across the board for the group. Even second half 2011 estimates show double-digit earnings growth," said an industry observer yesterday.

Emerging markets cannot by themselves provide enough momentum to save the world from a new recession - and quite likely a new Great Depression.

As we highlighted on Wednesday, China faces a debt crisis that could destabilise its financial system and across the developing world, inflation threatens growth.

And as we also point out in Chapter 4 of our e-book, Boom Gloom and the New Normal, what it means to be "middle class" in China and India is radically different from the West.

Low-end packaging sales might benefit from the poor becoming slightly less poor in India and China and other emerging markets.

But average income levels are way below those in the West, meaning that "decoupling' was always a fallacy for manufacturers of mid-range and high-end consumer goods. It will take several decades for emerging-market average earnings to catch up with those in the US and Europe.

Even the alleviation of rural poverty is now under threat, putting into question the argument made by the senior executive we quoted at the beginning of this post - that if polymer capacity is built in countries such as India, demand will come.

The latest issue of the World Bank's Food Price Watch shows that global food prices in July were 33% higher than a year earlier.

Maize was up by 84%, wheat by 50% and live hog prices in China were 50% higher.

In India, the wholesale prices of rice and wheat were 9% higher in the first week of August from the same period last year, says the Australian Financial Review.

Food-price inflation is also a problem in Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia.

In 2008, during the last big run-up in global food prices, the World Bank estimated that 105 million people were pushed into its definition of extreme poverty. A further 44 million people are now faced with being pushed into extreme poverty, it adds.

Fundamentals are thought to be mainly the cause of this latest rally in food prices, as opposed to the speculators who were blamed for what happened in 2008.

The fundamentals include poor harvests caused by bad weather - and changing diets in the developing world as the relatively small but super-rich upper-classes eat a lot more meat. This is taking land away from cereal production for food, as is the rise in the use of biofuels.

A further problem is that the supply of arable land in China has been reduced due to the surge in real-estate construction since 2008, enabled by the country's huge economic stimulus package.

In the longer-term, how does the world properly feed itself when you also take into account water shortages and climate change, if you believe that climate change is real?

Later chapters in the book will look at megatrends such as food and water. We will discuss the opportunities, as well as the challenges, that these megatrends represent for chemicals companies.

All the problems we now face are highly complex, global in nature and constantly evolving -and so this is very much work in constant and difficult progress.

But what is already crystal clear is that there is no going back to the old approach of simply building a plant on the assumption that demand will inevitably expand to consume its capacity.

By John Richardson

IT was interesting to read late last week about how certain chemicals analysts still believe that the big slump in the sector's share prices might merely be a rough patch, possibly just a correction.

In this same excellent piece from my colleague Nigel Davis, Citi US chemicals analyst PJ Jukevar talks about how "battled tested" chemicals companies" have learnt since 2008/2008 to put "value over volume". In other words, capacity will again be quickly shut down to bring markets back into balance if we do end up in a protracted downturn.

There is also a lot of discussion about two classes of chemicals companies. This comprises those more exposed to the cycle because they make highly commoditised stuff where there is lots of competition, against products where there are fewer players and so more of an ability to exercise market discipline (plus more "value-added" differentiation).

This latter group might get through the rough patch relatively unscathed, argue some chemicals analysts.

Regular readers of the blog will hardly be surprised to discover that we don't agree with any of this.

In our view it was Federal Reserve liquidity that was a substantial factor behind driving share prices, in general, higher during 2008/09. The chemicals sector rode on the back of this and also benefited from cost savings, the operating discipline Citi talks about - and China's economic stimulus package.

Fed liquidity did not mean that on a global basis demand was back where it was before the crisis during the 2009/2010 recovery, even though emerging markets were booming.

The rise in share prices was substantially because investors - faced with record-low interest rates in the US - were chasing higher returns in equities, oil prices and other commodities. The oil price remains in demand destruction territory thanks to the speculators.

The signs are that the Fed might not be able to extend its ultra-loose liquidity policy much beyond keeping interest rates very-low for the next two years - because of resistance within the Fed.

Plus, of course, there is global aversion to risk - benefiting government bonds, gold etc at the expense other commodities and equities. There will be mini-recoveries in the appetite for risk, sure, over the next weeks and months, but this will not mean a return to a bull market.

The reason is the macro-economic problems. No matter where you turn they are mounting, evolving and together represent a once-in-a-generation shift to a New Normal.

Take the Eurozone and the bitter divisions over how to solve the crisis as just one example.

Germany's Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble has rejected International Monetary Fund (IMF) calls for a softening of the European austerity drive.

"Pursuit of debt reduction by deflation only - in a world whose savings rate is already at a record high - means the Euroland recession could well be prolonged and deepen into a recession next year," Charles Dumas from Lombard Street Research told yesterday's Australian Financial Review.

Two years on from the start of the Eurozone crisis, we still seem to be some way from broad agreement on how to solve the crisis. This does not bode well.

India has now raised interest rates 11 times since March of last year and food-price inflation has been above 9 per cent for five weeks in a row.

A new global food crisis - driven by fundamental changes in the demand and supply of food - threatens emerging-market growth in general. This raises questions about existing emerging-market growth models.

China continues to struggle with the harmful side effects of its stimulus package.

Attempts continue to cool inflation without preventing a collapse in property prices that would leave the country with a potentially destabilising non-performing loans crisis. As we discussed earlier this week, the latest attempt to rein in liquidity - a change in how bank-reserve requirements are calculated - has further reduced the ability of chemical traders and buyers to source credit.

China's 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015) involves perhaps the biggest overhaul in economic policy for a generation. This looks likely to set the economic direction for the next decade or more, not just the next five years.

Policy changes are going to have a big, disruptive effect on chemicals demand.

Take the auto sector as one example.

Government policymakers are leaning towards more limits on the rise in car ownership in order to address China's steeply rising dependence on imported oil, its traffic jams, air pollution and shortages of land in many areas for more road construction.

This is despite strong industry pressure to reinstate reduced sales taxes and subsidies for rural purchases. The incentives resulted in a 33% surge in sales in January-July 2010 over the same period in 2009. After the incentives were removed, January-July 2011 sales were up by just 5 per cent.

Individual cities, such as Beijing, have also introduced restrictions on new vehicle registrations in order to deal with chronic traffic congestion and dreadful air quality.

The government is considering raising minimum kilometres per litre, or miles per gallon, requirements for new vehicles - and introducing new subsidies to promote the production and sales of fuel-efficient and battery-powered cars.

For the numerous foreign and auto makers who are building-up capacity in China - perhaps on the assumption that the old growth model still applies - these are worrying times. Annual auto production capacity is expected to rise from 17 million vehicles in 2010 to 31 million vehicles by 2013, according to consultants JD Power & Associates.

All chemical companies fall into one category - those dependent on demand.

There are fewer producers of polyurethanes (PU) than say polyethylene (PE), and so the PU producers might be able to react more effectively in the short term to declines in demand.

But the scale of the global economic changes we are undergoing at the moment - as we enter the New Normal - are so great that nobody can possibly be immune.

And this is not merely a rough patch or a correction.

By John Richardson

THE big difference in the mood at the ground level of certain parts of the petrochemicals industry compared with that of company board members and investors was thrown into further stark relief earlier this week.

As we discussed on Tuesday, the big polyolefins sector of this industry continues to struggle in China. Growth forecasts for 2011 have proved way off-the-mark as it becomes more and more apparent that demand was, in effect, brought forward by China's huge economic stimulus package. Bringing demand forward amounted to speculation in lots of stuff - from polyethylene (PE) down to finished goods - which is sitting in warehouses unsold, dragging down fresh consumption.

Contrast this with a Credit Suisse client note released on Monday, based on presentations at the bank's Global Chemical and Agricultural Science Conference in New York last week.

"Demand is resilient across most markets; order books and activity levels are resilient, except in construction and southern Europe," wrote Credit Suisse.

Most companies were quietly confident that current demand levels would be sustained throughout the second half of this year - and customer inventories were reported to be lower than in 2008/2009, continued the bank.

My colleague Nigel Davis took this Credit Suisse note as evidence that companies focused on innovation are in a much better place than those which are in pure commodities.

"Time was when the innovation had more to do with process technology (hence costs) than product technology," he wrote in this Insight article. 

"The world has turned, however, and today a constant flow of product improvements, made alongside the process technology changes, are the true drivers of differentiated corporate growth."

Companies that fall into this innovation category include BASF, Dow Chemical, DuPont and Bayer Material Science.

These companies seem well-attuned to the megatrends that will shape global chemicals growth over the next few decades, which we discuss in our e-book Boom, Gloom & the New Normal. The trends include ageing populations in the West, climate change everywhere and water shortages and food security in emerging markets.

And maybe also the companies are well down the track in tailoring their product portfolios to meet the biggest change in China's economic direction in at least a generation.

The central government, as part of its 12th Five-Year-Plan (2011-2015), is focusing on energy efficiency, renewable technologies and environmental protection as it appears to have recognised that the quality of growth is as important as the quantity.

Whether these policies will be effectively implemented is the big question that we will examine in Chapter 6 of our book, which is released in early October. But evidence of Beijing's resolve has already emerged in the auto market, where calls for the re-instatement of the old subsidy system have so far been ignored. 

Further reasons for the dramatic difference in mood between those at ground level - and board members of and investors in these differentiated companies - might include:

1.) The fact that sales and marketing executives of pure commodity companies were probably set unrealistic targets in late 2010, as it wasn't fully understood that demand had been brought forward in China. One of these executives told us last week how he was receiving only one or two calls a day with orders from converters and traders. Last year, his phone virtually never stopped ringing
2.) Traders who made a lot of money during the great China credit binge in 2008-2010 are now either struggling or in bankruptcy

BUT even predominantly speciality chemical companies such as BASF, BMS etc cannot escape the fact that all chemical businesses depend on one very important factor: DEMAND.

Specialities might not feel the pain as immediately as commodities from a renewed global recession, but will eventually have to suffer.

And so the blog is still a bit confused by the confidence of companies, expressed during the Credit Suisse conference in New York last week.

Wouldn't it have been more prudent to fully own-up to the scale of the economic risks ahead?

MOST chemical companies now believe it is inevitable that China and India will reach developed economy status. Many even believe that their strong growth will mean "the end of economic cycles".

But as we discuss in Chapter 6 of 'Boom, Gloom and the New Normal', the new ICIS/ International eChem/ICIS eBook, there are three major risks to this rosy scenario, which are:

China's demographic timebomb. Its one-child policy was introduced in 1978 to counter fears of over-population and famine. By China's own accounting, about 400m births were prevented between 1979 and 2010.This has reduced today's 25-to-35-year-old age group by 75%. As demographer Kenneth Gronbach notes, "the 30-somethings will have to do the majority of China's production, consumption and taxpaying, and when you have a 75% reduction in the group that is chiefly responsible for those activities, you've got a real problem".

Lower incomes. China and India's "middle class" have incomes that are only a tenth of those in developed markets, as we discussed in Chapter 4. This has major implications for the nature of consumption in China and India - and for the type of products that companies will need to make to prosper.

The transition is not guaranteed. It takes 50 consecutive years of 7% annual growth for a country to boost per capita income from $500 to $20,000, says Nobel Prize-winning economist Michael Spence. China's per capita GDP was only $4382 at end-2010, and India's $1371, according to the International Monetary Fund. So both countries still have a long way to go.

Recent growth in China and India has also come at a price: Poor air quality, chronic water shortages and deforestation. Equally, China needs to rebalance its economy away from its over-reliance on exports.

India must improve its atrocious infrastructure, and reform the harmful government subsidies that are holding back the agricultural sector. It is also often forgotten that India is home to a third of the world's poor people, with 37% of its population (410 million) classified as poor by the World Bank. Its overall literacy rate is only 61% - and just 47.8% for women.

The new chapter therefore argues that China and India will require quite different products and services from those sold in the West. It also warns that their growth should not be taken for granted. Companies need to develop robust scenarios to manage the uncertainty this will create.

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THE global economy is moving into a difficult period, as it transitions to the New Normal. Debt levels are high, and incomes are under pressure, particularly for the large numbers of people moving into retirement.

Cost must be the key criteria when examining the opportunities for new product development and research. Chapter 8 of our free 'Boom, Gloom and the New Normal' ebook examines the application of this philosophy to the four megatrends that we have identified as being key to the future of the chemical industry, which are:

• Improving water availability
• Improving food production
• Increasing life expectancy
• Reducing carbon footprint

It suggests that the key need is to be practical. Companies should focus:

• In the fields of water/food, on reducing the amount of waste, and the output that is lost when product is moving to market
• In developing new products and services for the over 55s, on core needs such as food, water, health, shelter and mobility
•In turn, this will enable them to 'do more with less'. Carbon footprint will be reduced, and products will be more affordable

This philosophy is quite different from that seen during the 1982 - 2007 economic SuperCycle. Then, companies competed for the middle ground, as we saw in chapter 7. They added features, and pursued the concept of adding value in order to boost profits. Over time, they focused more and more on the wealthier parts of the global population, and became increasingly disinterested in those outside this privileged group.

Today, however, it is no longer viable to focus in this way.

The Western BabyBoomers are joining the New Old generation of those aged 55+, and they face the prospect of much lower incomes as they transition from salaries to pensions.

Similarly, incomes in emerging economies are dramatically lower than those in the West. It is wishful thinking to imagine that these regions can therefore somehow replace the demand for added value products that is disappearing in the West.

Doing more with less is therefore our motto for future success. The chapter contains, as always, a wide range of practical examples to help stimulate ideas within your own business. We are convinced that those who accept its challenges will benefit for many years to come.

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By John Richardson

Access to cheap feedstock, access to cheap feedstock and access to cheap feedstock might seem like the three most-important elements to any petrochemicals strategy.

Thus, for many in the US, adding capacity based on abundant and therefore low-cost ethane, thanks to the shale-gas revolution, adds up. US ethylene capacity could be increased by as much as 29 percent by 2017.

But, assuming that a fairly high percentage of ethylene derivatives capacity will have to be exported, another equally important consideration, next to low-cost raw material, has to be whether overseas markets will be able to absorb these volumes.

Petrochemicals capacity in emerging countries can be added for strategic and nation-building reasons, rather than for profit, and so proposed new US capacity has to also be evaluated on this basis.

Coal-to-chemicals is strategic in China, as it will boost the country's energy independence, even though the process is expensive and causes significant damage to the environment. Thus, many of the China coal-based projects detailed here, in this article from ICIS Chemical Business, could still go ahead even though they may not stack-up in terms of dollars and cents. Sinopec, the state-owned energy, refining and chemicals major, is now also involved in coal-to-chemicals, which suggests an acceleration in investment.

Further, we believe that the global economy, in its transition to the New Normal, is undergoing major changes. The type of growth we saw during the early 1990s to 2007 "golden era" can no longer be re-assured.

And turning our focus to the US economy, a multi-year plan is needed to revive US manufacturing in order to create the domestic demand sufficient to absorb all of these new local crackers and downstream plants.

But, as Jeffrey Sachs, in his excellent book, The Price of Civilisation, points out, the US is in the midst of a 30-year revolt against taxes and government. There is a great deal of pressure for lower taxes, especially for the rich, and for less government spending - in the belief that these measures will, by themselves, by sufficient to bring the budget deficit under control.

Where, however, are the jobs going to come from for America's working and middle classes - the 99 percent represented by the Occupy Wall Street movement - without more government involvement in the economy?

Manufacturing industry need to be reconfigured to supply "the products of the future" for the following three customer groups:

*The increasing size of the New Old 55+ generation in the West.
*The number of young Westerners struggling with higher unemployment.
*The increasing number of people moving out of poverty in the developing world.

Peter Spitz, who founded the consultancy ChemSystems, and who worked in the chemicals industry in research and engineering roles, warns, in this excellent blog post, that the US is falling behind on innovation.

Apart from shale gas and shale oil technologies, which have created a significant number of new jobs, Spitz warns that there are "no comparable 'breakthroughs' in other areas of domestic manufacture, as far as I can tell, and a lot of concern continues to be expressed about the loss of manufacturing jobs to countries in the developing world."

He uses as an example from history, where US innovation helped to create jobs, when he writes:

"Innovations in the application of car paints and finishes were made in the US, as well as in Europe, in response to the need to reduce or eliminate the smog-producing solvents used for spraying paint resins on cars.

This led to the development of powder coatings that could be applied electro-statically and then cured under heat to form a 'skin' that is tougher than conventional paint.

This technology is now used worldwide, undoubtedly including the manufacture of Buicks by General Motors in China and by VW in Mexico. But Honda, BMW, Volkswagen, Toyota and other 'foreign' firms are also using it to build cars in the U.S. That's how the system works."

Spitz stresses that the US still has huge potential in manufacturing because of its history of innovation and good intellectual property-right protection.

These are all themes we explore in more detail in chapter 8 of our e-book, Boom, Gloom & The New Normal, and the forthcoming chapters 9 and 10.

US petrochemical companies, as they eye all that abundant shale-gas based ethane, might well have a long-term outlook for US employment prospects that puts some of these doubts to rest. It would be fascinating to hear the details.....

The New Normal involves three major transformations in the nature of consumer markets, which are:

• The increasing size of the New Old 55+ age group in the West.

• Too many young people struggling with higher unemployment.

• Large number of people moving out of poverty in the developing world.

These are the great opportunities for future growth, if our economy can be adapted to serve their needs. Chapter 9 of our new 'Boom, Gloom and the New Normal' e-book looks at the implications for chemical manufacturing.

Today, and in the future, we need to focus on the megatrends which will drive future demand growth.

In the fields of water and food, we should focus on reducing the amount of waste, and the output that is lost when product is moving to market.

In developing new products and services for the over 55s, we should focus on core needs, such as food, water, health, shelter and mobility.

This will enable us to 'do more with less'. We will reduce carbon footprint, and enable output to be afforded by the maximum number of people.

These changes in market drivers will have a profound impact on how, and where, products are manufactured.

Manufacturing processes will need to change in many companies as we transition to the New Normal. Quality will matter more and more as we move away from the 'throwaway society' of the past couple of decades.

So will approaches such as Process Intensification. This involves reducing the size of chemical and plant equipment, and can often enable companies to lower capital and operating costs whilst reducing waste.

The chemical industry has long been an enthusiastic champion of the importance of Quality management. It was one of the first to appreciate the importance of the concept of the 'learning organisation' that was originally brought to the West from Japan.

But in the early 2000s, the Quality movement seemed to stall. Many of the people who had launched this revolution retired. More worryingly, some companies began to forget that Quality was a process, and had to be reinforced by senior management at every possible opportunity.

Now, we need to relearn that having the right corporate philosophy is the critical starting point. This includes a focus on benefiting wider society, good leadership, and on rooting out inefficiencies through getting everybody involved in processes and problem solving.

Chapter 9 will hopefully help companies to ensure that manufacturing delivers the competitive advantage that is required as we transition to the New Normal.

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By Malini Hariharan

Work on commercialising a green route to paraxylene (PX) purified terphthalic acid (PTA) and other aromatics is speeding up.

US companies are at the forefront of recent developments. Virent is looking to produce a sugar-based ­aromatics stream containing benzene, toluene and xylenes using traditional chemical ­catalytic processing, writes fellow blogger Doris de Guzman in the latest issue of ICIS Chemical Business.

The company expects to have its first ­commercial-scale bio-PX plant on line by 2015.

Gevo plans to produce bio-based PX by converting fermentation-derived isobutanol to PX and is targeting commercial production by 2014. The company has already tied-up with Coca-Cola and Toray Industries, which claimed in November last year that it was able to develop the world's first 100% bio-PET fiber in a laboratory scale using Gevo's bio-PX.

Another US company, Avantium, is developing a new sugar-based monomer called furan dicarboxylic acid (FDCA), which can be reacted with monoethylene glycol (MEG) to make polyethylene furanoate (PEF), an alternative to PET resin.

Even SABIC is not ignoring the green wave, and has filed a patent claiming PX production via use of terpenes such as limonene found in citrus fruits.

However, the new routes come with many disadvantages and work still needs to be done on oensuring commercial viability.

Eric Bober of Nexant ChemSystems points out that capital expenditures for the initial commercial plants will be high, as these are first-of-a-kind plants as opposed to the 'nth' plant status of petrochemical facilities. A world-scale conventional PX plant is now 1m tonnes/year and likely four times as large as a bio-PX line.

Bio-derived products will likely locate near the available renewable feedstocks, which could increase logistics costs relative to the conventional supply chain.

Despite these issues, the enthusiasm for these new routes is still strong given the support from consumer product companies that are willing to pay a premium for these 'green' products. But will this continue in the changing economic climate where the focus is clearly on cutting costs?

By Malini Hariharan

The energy landscape in North America is rapidly changing. After shale gas the focus has shifted to rising oil production from various unconventional sources, which has prompted some commentators to predict that the region will regain its status as a major global producer.

In a new report, analysts at Citibank confidently predict that North America is becoming the new Middle East.

"The United States has become the fastest-growing oil and gas producer in the world, and it is likely to remain so for the rest of this decade and into the 2020s. Add to this output the steadily growing Canadian production, and a likely reversal of Mexico's recent production decline and theoretically, total oil production from the three countries could rise by 11.2m bbls/day by 2020, or to 26.6m bbls/day from around 15.4m at the end of 2011," says Ed Morse of Citibank in The Wall Street Journal.

Five sources of oil could make North America the largest source of new supply in the next decade: oil sands production in Canada, deepwater in the US and Mexico (focused on the Gulf of Mexico), oil from shale and tight sands, natural-gas liquids (NGLs) associated with the production of natural gas, and biofuels.

Morse points out that North America has become an important marginal source of oil and gas globally. Crude-oil imports by the US have been falling after hitting a peak in 2005-06, while exports touched 1.2m bbls/day at the end of 2011.

The US is also expected to become a big exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG), competing with Qatar and other traditional players.

Citibank's analysts conclude that rising energy production will trigger a revival of manufacturing and jobs in the US.

Employment in the oil and gas sector will be boosted by some 500,000,

Around 2.2 million-2.3 million jobs will be created by economic stimulus and by the new hydrocarbon production, they estimate.

The renaissance of the US energy industry also figured high on the agenda at the recent annual meeting of the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM).

"The nation needs to hear that we are energy-rich, not energy-poor," stressed Charles Drevna, president of AFPM at the meeting.

The potential of increased production cannot be ignored, but environmental issues associated with these unconventional sources of oil and gas need to be kept in mind.

New regulations related to the fracking technique used in shale gas and oil production are still being worked out. Industry players have already expressed fears that new government policies will hinder progress.

The new chapter of our free 'Boom, Gloom and the New Normal' ebook sets out a road map to success for companies in the New Normal. It also identifies 5 key areas where major change is already underway.

Demand-driven. Markets have essentially been supply-driven in recent decades, with growth being forecast on the basis of ratios to expected GDP growth. Companies have focused on increasing their efficiency via a 'one size fits all' business model. As we transition to the New Normal, they will need to refocus on being effective. Innovative strategies, flexible implementation planning, plus a commitment to local techno-commercial support and long-term R&D will be required

Market focus. New worldscale plants will still be needed during the transition. But companies operating in the West will also need to reposition their businesses to focus on the needs of the ageing 55+ New Old generation, if they wish to drive future growth. Those operating in the emerging countries will need to develop mechanisms to sustain growth in the domestic economy, particularly in the rural areas.

Affordability. Consumers have less money to spend, and so the highly profitable middle ground of the past couple of decades is disappearing. Instead, the focus will be on the megatrends of food, water, shelter, mobility and health. These products must be affordable, as they must meet basic 'needs' rather than supplying mere 'wants'.

Shared Value. Consumer values are changing quite dramatically, away from the materialism of the recent past. Concerns about sustainability and carbon footprint are rising up the agenda. Social stability is also becoming an important concern for governments. Companies who continue to operate on purely financial metrics will find the environment ever-harder to understand.

The VUCA environment. The transition to the New Normal is a sea-change for the global economy. Its full impact will take years, if not decades, to become clear. Meanwhile, the world will face much greater uncertainty, as conflicting views of the world play out on a day-to-day basis. Companies therefore need to plan for a VUCA environment: Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity will be the order of the day.

This VUCA landscape is creating winners and losers. No longer will the rising tide of affluent Boomers provide an effortless route to increased sales and revenues. Instead, companies need to create their own VUCA as they develop strategies and implementation plans. Vision, Understanding, Clarity and Agility will be their road map to success.

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By John Richardson

THE blog has been attending the 25th World Gas Conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, this week where one of the themes repeated on numerous occasions has been the wonderful environment benefits of natural gas.

Poor old coal and crude-oil have received short shrift as presentation after presentation has stressed how gas is cleaner-burning.

But it occurred to us that:

*The age of natural gas abundance, thanks to shale gas, tight gas, coal-bed methane and improved technologies for accessing remote conventional reserves, such as in the arctic circle, might not be good news for the most effective means of lowering emissions: Conservation. There is now some 250 years worth of global natural gas reserves. Might not this tempt countries to guzzle their way through their reserves? This could especially be so in the US if it enjoys a manufacturing and therefore economic revival, given its history of energy profligacy.

*A typical shale gas field, we were told, contains more than 100 individual wells. As the shale gas revolution sweeps across the world, is it realistic to expect high production standards at every one of these many thousands of wells? If standards slip, which seems quite possible, we could see a big increase in the release of methane during natural-gas extraction and, of course, methane is a far more potent global-warming gas than carbon dioxide.

*The gas industry dismisses claims that fracking causes groundwater pollution. Nobody disputes, however, that the fracking process consumes a lot of water. If shale gas takes off in water-stressed countries such as China, the environmental consequence could be very severe.

*As the liquefied natural gas (LNG) trade expands, so will the emissions from moving these giant ships around the world, plus, of course, all the other energy required to refrigerate, regassify and distribute the gas.

Environmentalists are already going after the shale gas industry in a big way.

If the issues we have listed above are not convincingly addressed, one can imagine increasing pressure from environmentalists on the gas industry as a whole, which would also be applied to petrochemicals capacity downstream of gas production.

By John Richardson

SOME commodity chemicals companies still assume that, if they build new supply, demand will always eventually catch up with supply.

The risks of not building new capacities, at times of easy financing and feedstock availability, are also viewed as too great. These include deteriorating economies of scale and loss of market share.

Thus in the US, for instance, the American Chemistry Council estimates that around $25bn (€20bn) is being invested in about 30 expanded or new US production facilities.

Companies are often also at the mercy of events because of their failure to predict major shifts in supply and demand dynamics. For instance, the current global tightness in butadiene appears to have caught producers by surprise.

A lot of money can be made or lost through sheer luck, therefore. To again use butadiene as an example, $10bn in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) were transferred from the world's butadiene consumers to its suppliers during 2011, estimates Rafael Cayuela, butadiene commercial manager for Styron, the global plastics, latex and rubber producer.

Because the industry has always been run in this way and because, as the example above illustrates, this reactive approach can deliver outstanding profitability, the risk of inertia is substantial.

Speciality chemicals companies such as BASF and Bayer Material Science (BMS) are very different. For several years, they have been developing new processes and products to serve what they predict will be the major demand drivers over the next 30 years or more.

These new demand drivers are the megatrends: ensuring there is enough food and water to sustain global growth, the impact on economies and societies of changing demographics, such as ageing populations in the West and the impact of China's one-child policy, and the need to reduce carbon footprints.

Commodity chemicals companies argue that this only applies to the likes of BASF and BMS because they are "innovation" companies and so must constantly develop new products for new markets.

BASF and BMS also benefit from the somewhat more patient and longer-term approach of European investors compared with those in the US.

Further, neither of these two European majors have access to low-cost feedstock. Basic commodities, therefore, make no strategic sense for them and for other speciality players in a similar position.

And unlike the constant innovation that is taking place in specialities, the last commodity polymer to be invented was linear low-density PE (LLDPE) in the late 1950s (LLDPE didn't gain widespread commercial acceptance until the early 1980s). Old, well-established products encourage adherence to old and well-established ways of running businesses.

But the megatrends are reshaping the global economy and so have huge implications for chemicals companies in both the commodity and speciality sectors.

For example, 272m Westerners are now over 55 years (29 percent of the population), according to UN population data. Further GDP growth will be limited by reduced spending as people save for their retirements.

And the one-child policy in China will result in the ratio of workers to retirees (presuming workers continue to retire at 60) dropping from roughly 5:1 today to just 2:1 over the next 20 years, says Wang Feng, director of the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy in Beijing. Between 15-25 percent of the country's 1980-2010 GDP growth was the result of a favourable age structure, he adds.

Commodity chemicals companies need to accept that building capacity on the assumption that demand will always catch up with supply no longer works.

In our Monday blog post we will discuss these megatrends further and provide examples of how companies can proactively develop new markets using polymers that were invented many decades ago. New applications do not necessarily require new products.

Instead of being reactive to market fluctuations in demand beyond their control, companies will thus be able to create and virtually dictate levels of demand.

Source of picture: BBC

By John Richardson

By 2050, the world's 10 biggest river basins by population are expected to produce a quarter of global GDP, according to a report commissioned by HSBC, which was released in June.

The figure is greater than the combined future economies of the US, Japan and Germany - and would a be sharp increase from a current contribution of a tenth,

Seven in 10 of these river basins face significant or severe water scarcity by 2050 without a considerable improvement in water resource management, the reports adds.

Respondents to the World Economic Forum's latest Global Risks Survey consider a water supply crisis to be the most likely and most severe societal risk for the next ten years. Governments are increasingly acknowledging that unsustainable water usage constrains economic growth.

And In China, the World Bank estimates that water-related inefficiencies may already be curtailing GDP growth by over 2 percent.

As we discussed on Friday, guaranteeing sufficient water supply to maintain the health of the global economy is just one of several megatrends that present an opportunity, as well as a threat, for the chemicals industry.

The other megatrends are ensuring sufficient supply of food to maintain growth, the impact on economies and societies of changing demographics, such as ageing populations in the West and the impact of China's one-child policy, and the need to reduce carbon footprints.

Commodity as well as speciality chemicals companies have an opportunity to tap into these megatrends and thus virtually dictate demand growth.

The alternative is to sit back and hope in vain for the world economy to return to where it was before the Babyboomers started to retire in record number, and before the growth in emerging markets, such as China, became a great deal more uncertain.

The companies need to also proactively develop new markets, often using chemicals and polymers that were invented many decades ago. New applications do not necessarily require new products.

In the case of water, cotton production alone accounts for more than 3 percent of all agricultural water use. Traditional cultivation processes such as field flooding are obvious targets for reducing water use.

This challenge has led to the development of a programme organised by the Better Cotton Initiative and including companies such as Levi Strauss, to provide technical know-how to Indian farmers.

Over three years, this has enabled a 32 percent drop in the use of water and pesticides. The farmers' profits are 20 percent higher as a result, thus also helping to stimulate economic development.

The key is to use drip irrigation systems, essentially plastic veins that can direct water to each plant's root system.

This not only spreads water and fertilisers more evenly than traditional pumping, but also means less water is available to encourage weed growth around the plants.

In addition, electricity consumption is reduced, as drip irrigation requires less pumping.

These plastic pipes, the demand for which could be huge, are made out of good old fashioned polyethylene (PE).

The second of our series of blog posts on China's economic challenges over the next 12-18 months focuses on deflation.

By John Richardson

DEFLATION has now become a major concern for the Chinese economy following the release of official data earlier this week that showed a 2.1 percent decline in producer prices in June compared with the same month last year. Month-on-month, producer prices fell 0.7 percent.

And June consumer prices were 0.6 percent lower over May, the largest month-on-month decline in two years.

"This reflects what our customers in China have been telling us for several months now," said a source with a global PE (see our foot note on current PE pricing trends).

"While they have seen their costs increase as a result of higher wages and, until recently, more expensive fuel costs, they have been losing pricing power because demand is weak as plastic-product markets are oversupplied."

This article in the New York Times points out that deflation:

*Makes it much harder for businesses to sell enough goods to repay loans that they took out, usually on the expectation of rising prices, potentially making worse the bad-debt crisis we discussed yesterday.

*Falling prices also discourage investment, which has also slowed sharply over the last few months, and give consumers an incentive to delay purchases until prices fall further.

Deflation has raised the hope that the Chinese government might launch further economic stimulus.

But Wen Jiabao reiterated at the weekend that controls on the property market will stay in place, and could even be stepped up. The government cannot afford to allow the gap between the super-rich, and the rest of China, to continue to widen.

In addition, a big new stimulus package could easily result in a return to inflation. The big worry is a resumption of food-price inflation in a country that remains very poor by Western standards.

In an excellent post earlier this week, fellow blogger Paul Hodges makes some very valid points about the long-term implications of rising China auto exports.

More immediately, as China's auto and other manufacturers struggle with deflation, the temptation will be to increasingly export their surpluses at aggressively low prices. This could result in an increase in international trade tensions.

Another article in the New York Times (see above chart) says that China's auto exports rose by 21 percent in the first five months of this year over the same period in 2011. May year-on-year exports rose 43 percnet. 

Asian PE Prices

Last week, we said that Asian PE prices could be on the rise. This was confirmed by ICIS, which assessed pricing for the week ending 6 July at $10-60/tonne higher. (polypropylene prices were also $20-50/tonne higher).

"I doubt if this will last as this is mainly a result of stronger inter-trade buying," added the source with the global PE producer.

And, indeed, yesterday the important gauge of short-term sentiment, the Dalian Commodity Exchange's futures contract in linear low-density PE (LLDPE) fell by 1.05 percent.

The blog, sadly, remains of the view that PE demand growth in China will likely be in minus territory this year. What applies to PE applies to many other chemicals and polymers.

By John Richardson

THE collapse in Japanese auto sales in China, a result of the East China Island dispute, is just the first phase in what could be a very damaging economic war, the blog understands.

Phase two could be the imposition of trade barriers against Japan by an increasingly hard line Chinese leadership eager to divert attention from economic problems at home.

"China may make Japan an economic victim by keeping the Yen high. It has warned in the press that it might inflict another 20 years of economic hardship on Japan," said a chemicals industry source.

China has always sought primacy in the region, the blog understands. Its refusal to devalue the Yuan from 1994 onwards, when everyone was pressing for a devaluation, was meant to dethrone Japan.

And as long as the dispute continues, the risk of military conflict remains.

There is a further very worrying consequence: Hardliners in China are thought to be using the dispute to cement their position ahead of the upcoming Politburo leadership transition.

Hardliners are more than likely to be conservatives, anxious to prevent economic reform.

If economic reforms fail, the prospects for long-term growth do not look good.

By John Richardson

THE above chart, from a new Research Note released by fellow blogger Paul Hodges, exposes the fallacy that BRICS and emerging-market growth can by themselves rescue the global economy.

And, as we have highlighted before on this blog, there are no long-term guarantees that China, the big driver of BRICS growth, will continue to prosper.

Even if China and the other BRICS countries continue to boom, it will decades, not years, for them to catch up with the West.

The painful reality is that the West faces a demographic crisis that has to be addressed. If not, we face political and social - as well as, of course, economic - disaster. This is no exaggeration.

As the Research Note points out:

The G7 countries alone saw births rise 15% between 1946-70, compared to the previous 25 years. They added 33 million babies to their population - the equivalent of another Canada, itself a G7 member, and whose $1.7tn economy is a similar size to India's.

As these babies grew up, and the Western economy prospered, it therefore became almost inevitable that they would spark a growth SuperCycle on reaching the Wealth Creator 25- 54 age group, typically the period of peak consumption. They were, after all, the largest and richest generation that the world has ever seen.

But now, the Boomers are ageing fast. The oldest Boomers began to join the New Old 55+ generation in 2001, and it now contains 272 million Westerners. They are 29% of the population, and their numbers are rising all the time.

Growth will inevitably be very much slower than in the 1982-2007 SuperCycle years.

The reasons are:

* When people are young, they need to buy new things.

*And the Western BabyBoomers had lots of money to spend, particularly during the credit boom.

*But now the kids have left home, and the Boomers don't need many new things.

*Instead, they mainly buy replacement products, and only when these wear out.

Demographics are not only a problem - they are a huge opportunity. Chemicals and other companies need to focus on manufacturing the products of the future that will serve the 55+ generation.

Don't follow the herd... 

By John Richardson

ISN'T it amazing how we keep getting caught out by the unexpected, from the global financial crisis to  China is entering a period of much-lower growth?

No, not really. As long as we keep being driven by the short attention-span of financial markets and the demands of quarterly financial reporting, we will keep being shocked by supposedly unexpected events. If we gave ourselves the freedom to think outside the box, we could make more accurate predictions.

The other problem is the understandable desire to run with the herd.

For example, "in those early days (in 2010) almost no one wanted to hear about problems with the shale gas boom - the need for enormous amounts of water for fracking, the high climate impacts from fugitive methane, the threats to groundwater from bad well casings or leaking containment ponds, as well as the unrealistic supply and price forecasts being issued by the industry," writes Richard Heinberg, in this article from oilprice.com.

"I recall attempting to describe the situation at the 2010 Aspen Environment Forum, in a session on the future of natural gas. I might as well have been claiming that Martians speak to me via my tooth fillings. After all, the Authorities were all in agreement: The game has changed! Natural gas will be cheap and abundant from now on! Gas is better than coal! End of story!"

It is far from being the end of the story as Heinberg neatly outlines.

Innovation in shale gas only happened because US natural-gas prices were at historic highs.

The recent collapse in prices to record lows led Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil, to commen recently: We are all losing our shirts today. . . . We're making no money. It's all in the red."

Natural-gas producers do not operate as charities. They are already consolidating, and further consolidation is inevitable, which will drive prices higher.

The shale gas process has also proved to be a lot more expensive process than people realised, requiring lots of holes to be drilled to reach the gas "sweet spots".

As Heinberg adds: "No, shale gas won't entirely go away anytime soon. But expectations of continuing low prices (which drive business plans in the power generation industry and climate strategies in mainstream environmental organisations) are about to be dashed. And notions that the US will become a major gas exporter, or that we will convert millions of cars and trucks to run on gas, now ring hollow.

"One matter remains unclear: what's the energy return on the energy invested (EROEI) in producing "fracked" shale gas? There's still no reliable study. If the figure turns out to be anything like that of tight "fracked" oil from the North Dakota Bakken (6:1 or less, according to one estimate), then shale gas production will continue only as long as it can be subsidised by higher-EROEI conventional gas and oil."

The blog therefore thinks that quite a few of the US shale gas-based petrochemicals projects should not happen. This is the result of not only the uncertain economics of shale gas, but also because of the demand outlook.

But at least the financial sector, as the New York Times points out, has made a fortune from hyping up the shale-gas Ponzi scheme.

Now isn't that a nice thought to warm our hearts as we approach the weekend?

Wen Jiabao - stepping down

Source of picture: KeystoneUSA-ZUMA/Rex Features 

In the last of our series of posts on China's leadership handover, which begins today as the 18th Party Congress meets, we look at intellectua property rights protection.  

By John Richardson

WHY bother innovating in China when a state-owned, or state-backed, company is able to steal your innovative technologies and set up next door with access to low-cost finance and friendly judges who will keep the law on their side?

This is the question being asked by a growing number of private-sector entrepreneurs in China, who, according to a chemicals industry executive, are "voting with their feet by leaving China with their money and their families".

This is one of the reasons, why, according to the New York Times, the middle classes are leaving China in record numbers.

"In 2010, the last year for which complete statistics are available, 508,000 Chinese left for the 34 developed countries that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. That is a 45% increase over 2000," writes the newspaper.

For foreign investors, the long-standing issue of poor intellectual property rights protection was perhaps less of a concern when China was moving in a clear economic direction. OK, you might, as speciality chemicals producer, lose the odd process or product that might be about to move off-patent anyway, but if growth was roaring ahead, you would benefit overall.

But now, with China entering an extended period of what we believe will be 5-7%, or even lower, GDP growth per year, the risk/reward ratio has shifted.

Plus, as China tries to escape the "middle-income trap", the desire of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to acquire overseas expertise has surely increased. Both the EU Chamber of Commerce and the American Chamber of Commerce recently released reports that complain about intellectual property theft and inadequate market access.

Will the new leadership be willing or able to reform the legal system?

And will they be willing or able to tackle the other problems we have outlined this week, and many other difficulties that we haven't addressed, including environmental degradation - the result of over-investment in industrial capacity and infrastructure?

Pollution is another factor behind the migration of the middle classes, according to the NYT article we linked to above.

The risk of failure has to be built into every range of estimates for chemicals demand growth over the next decade when the new leaders are in office, and into every company's strategic options.

As the consultancy, Stratfor, warns - and this goes to the very heart of the matter: "China's new leaders will inherit a political system that is, in many ways, structurally incapable of changing itself."

By John Richardson

ALL of yesterday's excitement about the US overtaking Saudi Arabia and Russia by 2017 to become the world's biggest oil producer - and exceeding Russia to become the world's biggest gas producer by 2015 - needs to be taken with a very large pinch of salt.

The release of the International Energy Agency (IEA) report, which made the above predictions, made fantastic headlines. But, as Fatih Birhol, the IEA's chief economist concedes, the geology of shale and tight oil and gas in the US is "poorly known".

Further, the American Petroleum Institute is careful to talk about the "opportunity" that hydraulic fracturing represents for America, rather that it being a sure thing.

Perception is crucial and so science can sometimes not matter. So, even if there is no significant risk to aquifers from the fracking process, as gas-industry experts have assured the blog, fears about pollution could still lead to regulation that holds-back production.

The large volumes of water consumed in the process might also lead to restrictions, even though, as we have also been assured, the problem can be resolved through investment in water purification and recycling.

Another unknown is how other energy producers might respond to the possible loss of their market influence.

Russia, if it can get its act together, has the reserves to prevent the US from becoming the world's biggest gas producer.

Saudi Arabia might also (but this is as big a stretch as Russia tackling its corruption issues) find a solution to its electricity-generation conundrum. Exports of crude are forecast to decline on the increasing demand for fuel oil for power stations.

Cheap electricity is crucial for social stability in the Kingdom, hence soaring demand, poor conservation and therefore the predictions of declining crude shipments.

But Saudi Arabia has plenty of non-associated inland gas fields, and Saudi Aramco is heavily focused at the moment on raising gas production for power plants - although these gas reserves are sour and, as a result, will be expensive to process.

Perhaps Saudi Arabia could also end up importing liquefied natural gas (LNG), from countries including the US, given that supply is forecast to be abundant.

The Middle East, and many other regins of the world, might also successfully exploit their own shale-gas reserves. 

To return to the issue of shale gas in the US, it has turned out to be a giant Ponzi scheme, as we discussed earlier this month 

As Birhol said, the geology is unknown, leading to higher-than-anticipated production costs.

But as production costs have soared, so has output from the shale-gas fields, leading to US gas prices falling to a record low - thanks to the investment frenzy.

There is sure to be a consolidation in the US shale-gas industry, driving up long-term prices.

The US petrochemicals industry, despite all of these uncertainties, is surging ahead with new cracker investments. US-based vinyls producer Georgia Gulf is the latest producer to express interest in adding ethylene capacity.

The biggest other uncertainty is the health of the global economy. Where exactly, will all this new US resin and mono-ethylene glycol (MEG) be sold?

The IEA, in the same report that was released yesterday, made a confident prediction over one of the global economic uncertainties - China's economic future.

"The report assumes a huge expansion in the Chinese economy, which it saw overtaking the US in purchasing power parity soon after 2015 and by 2020 using market exchange rates," writes Reuters.

"Chinese real gross domestic product is expected to increase by 5.7% annually between 2011 and 2035."

This assumption needs to be rigorously challenged in the scenario-planning process.

By John Richardson

CHINA's polyethylene (PE) demand growth was up just 4% in January-October of this year compared with the same period in 2010, as the chart above from Global Trade Information Services (GTIS) indicates.

And yet in January, many of the people the blog spoke to were confidently predicting double-digit demand growth for 2012.

What has gone wrong?

Few people recognised the painful transition process that China is undergoing. We can expect low petrochemicals demand growth in general for several years to come as this process plays out.

Meanwhile, further evidence has emerged that China's economic "recovery" might amount to little more than a temporary, unsustainable dose of government stimulus designed to make the leadership transition easier. Total exports were up by just 2.9% in November, compared with analysts' expectations of a 9% increase.

Source: The Economist

By John Richardson

ONE of the blog's Indian friends said last week, as he worries about his country's political failings: "I sometimes wish were more like China, where, when the Politburo says 'do this' it is done.

"Here we, perhaps, have an excess of democracy. If we want to get a bridge or a power plant built it can take decades."

But the blog is beginning to think that this might not be that straightforward a comparison.

During the supercycle, when all the economic stars were aligned in China's favour, the various actors in China's political system maybe found that it was in their interests to pull in the same direction.

Local governments, for instance, made a fortune from acquiring land for free or for next to nothing from rural residents, as state-owned enterprises (SOEs) made equally big piles of cash from strengthening their hold over the economy.

Now, though, China is at a crossroads as it seeks to reform its economy.

The problem is that the "vested interests" have strong motives to keep things as they are; and because of an opaque and complex political system, they could have a great ability to do so.

"Central ministries rank equal to provincial governments. So do many large SOEs, a fact which, according to a study by America's Congressional Research Service, leads to vast regulatory difficulties," writes The Economist in this article.

"SOEs, it said, sometimes outrank party and state leaders in their locales, and so are not bound by their orders. China's five largest banks have comparable rank to the banking regulator, allowing them to resist oversight."

(See the above chart explaining the power relationships between various different levels of government).

Local authorities may, therefore, be able to continue to build wasteful and inefficient infrastructure, while continuing to seize land to sell to property developers.

And the SOEs might add more wasteful industrial capacity, while continuing to channel money to companies set up on the side. SOE officials routinely carry several business cards, one for their official jobs and the others for their private businesses.

All of these scenarios seem likely to persist if Beijing, as it did in May-September, launches more economic stimulus packages because of worries about growth slowing due to economic reforms.

Meanwhile, China's big state-owned banks, as we discussed yesterday and last week, may successfully resist efforts to reign-in financial speculation. This could substantially add to China's bad-debt problems.

Much of the focus during the leadership handover was about which faction within the Politburo would gain the greatest control, as this was thought to be an important indication of China's economic direction.

Was this the wrong focus?

By John Richardson

AT LEAST one global polyolefins producer is rumoured to be shipping increased volumes of resin from the US to Europe in response to the shale gas-derived shift in competitiveness.

"Dow Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris is making a call on the global economy - one of multi-year slow growth - and adjusting the company's approach to maximise competitiveness in this environment," wrote my colleague Joseph Chang in this article.

"But with six world-scale crackers scheduled to come on line in the US in the 2016-2017 timeframe, the economy better grow out of its funk by then.

"Liveris expects global GDP growth of around 2.5% in 2013, with China growing at a 6-7% clip and the US at about 2.2%. All figures are below historical norms.

"It is still years away, but the prospect of massive amounts of US ethylene and derivatives capacity coming on in a slow-growth global environment is not something to be relished. Much of that derivatives production will be targeted for exports."

Dow is pushing ahead with heavy investments in the US, while also announcing the closure of 29 plants - many in Europe. This involves an 8% reduction in its workforce.

Ethylene contract margins, however, still remain in positive territory, as the chart below shows from the latest ICIS pricing European Weekly Ethylene Margin Report.

But it seems logical to us that there will be increasing pressure from downstream industries in Europe for more discounts. Europe is in the midst of a multi-year economic crisis, the resolution of which rests on policymakers recognising that demographics drive demand. Mark Garrett, COE of Borealis, has said that Europe has entered a "ten-year stagnation period". 

How much longer can Europe carry on running its crackers at what blogger Paul Hodges describes as recession level operating rates? As the second chart below shows, Q3 rates remained at 80%. 

It seems reasonable, therefore, to assume that more boardroom discussions are taking place about restructuring the European industry.

Unless, that is, European producers are betting on a substantial reduction in the US feedstock advantage.

By John Richardson

SOME 1.5m tonnes of new polyethylene (PE) supply will arrive in the Asian market during 2013 at a time of very uncertain and fragile demand, a source with a global producer has told the blog.

A large amount of new polypropylene (PP) supply is also expected to enter the market.

"Even if there is a moderate recovery in demand, the challenge will be for the market to absorb all of this capacity," said the source.

"It is quite likely we will see continued downward pressure on pricing unless there is significant restocking in China, which I worry will not happen, and there are a substantial number of technical problems with start-ups."

As the blog reported earlier this week, and last month, sentiment has improved in China. Traders appear to have made good money, with at least one producer reporting strong Q4 2012 sales.

But much of the recovery is due to temporary short supply that will ease significantly when the current Middle East turnaround season comes to an end.

And, in addition to the new capacities we listed earlier this week, here are some more PP plants scheduled to start-up in 2013, based on our ICIS Plants & Projects data base (We will provide more information as events develop):

* Coal Shaanxi Yulin Energy & Chemical at Shannxi in China - 300,000 tonnes/year.

* Pucheng Clean Energy Company Pucheng at Weinan in Shaanxi - 400,000 tonnes/year.

*Guangzhou Petrochemical General Works, Guangzhou, Guangdong - 200,000 tonnes/year.

New supply of both PE and PP is expected to start disrupting the market from Q2.

It wasn't supposed to be like this. Demand was supposed to strong-enough to absorb all the new capacities as he headed towards the next peak in petrochemicals demand and margins.

Picture: HAP/Quirky China News/Rex Features

By John Richardson

THE toxic smog that enveloped Beijing over the weekend is another example of why China's new leaders simply have to change the economic growth model.

At its worst point on Saturday night, the level of harmful particulates in the air reached as much as 36 times that which is recommended as safe by the World Health Organisation.

"China has strict environmental and emission laws, but also has the worst environmental pollution on earth thanks to lack of enforcement and subordination of environmental concerns to the imperative for officials to register economic growth," wrote the Financial Times, in this article.

At one hospital on the edge of Beijing, a nurse told the FT that a respiratory ward was overflowing at the weekend, even though the unit was doubled in size last year.

Some 300,000 people die every year from outdoor pollution alone in China.

China's environmental protection ministry published a report in November 2010 which showed that about a third of 113 cities surveyed failed to meet national air standards last year.

According to the World Bank 16 of the world's 20 cities with the worst air are in China. According to Chinese government sources, about a fifth of urban Chinese breath heavily polluted air. Only a third of the 340 Chinese cities that are monitored meet China's own pollution standards.

Government policy towards environmental problems in general has been to suppress public dissent, while seeking to cover up the extent of the damage caused by China's economic growth model, claim many criticis.

For example, in July 2009, as the New York Times points out, a Chinese Foreign Ministry official told US diplomats to halt a Twitter feed from the US embassy in Beijing, which highlighted the atrocious air quality.

The official told US diplomats that the Twitter feed was "not only confusing but also insulting," according to a State Department cable obtained by WikiLeaks.

But the good news is that the Chinese government now includes fine particles called PM2.5, considered to be especially harmful to human health, in its measurements of pollution. Further, the recording of air quality 36 times worse than the WHO limit was made by the government.

State newspapers have also run highly critical articles saying more needs to be done to tackle the problem at its source, said The Guardian newspaper.

"How can we get out of this suffocating siege of pollution?" the People's Daily, the official Communist party newspaper, asked in a front-page editorial.

"Let us clearly view managing environmental pollution with a sense of urgency."

China's new Politburo, as we discussed yesterday, have made it clear that the old growth model - where the focus was entirely on growth rather than the quality of growth - has to change.

In the case of the environment, if there is no change:

*The number and the intensity of public protests could escalate to the point where they become socially and politically destabilising.

*Healthcare costs, already rising because of the one-child policy, may become unsustainable.

*Expat workers, especially those with young children, will increasingly refuse to be relocated to China's big cities, slowing down the technology and expertise-transfer process as China attempts to escape the middle-income trap.

The great news is that China's new leaders recognise the problem by allowing state-run media to join the debate in favour of reform.

And for the chemicals industry, the opportunity is huge to help China clean up its environment.

By John Richardson

LAST week we highlighted how a Boston Consulting Group study has reached many of the same conclusions as our e-book, Boom, Gloom & The New Normal, on the fault lines in the global economy.

Similarly, many of the ten solutions suggested in the study are in line with what we think needs to be done.

The problem is short-termism from companies which are only concerned about the next few quarterly financial reports.

Politicians are in a similar dilemma as Jean-Claude Juncker, prime minister of Luxembourg and president of the Euro Group highlighted in November, when he said: "We all know what to do, we just don't know how to get re-elected after we have done it."

But as we go over the edge of the demographic cliff, a new consensus must emerge if we are to avoid a repeat of the 1930s social and political environment in Europe.

Right, now, though we are in limbo because of increased policy uncertainty, illustrated by the above BCG slide. Uncertainty over policy reflects a wider uncertainty among all of us over whether we are on the right path to recovery, which feeds through to greater volatility in oil and petrochemicals pricing.

The BCG study recommends that we need to:

1. Deal with the debt overhang. The critical starting point is to accept the fact that many of today's debts will never be repaid and to embrace debt restructuring and defaults. Current policies, designed to avoid that outcome, only postpone the ultimate resolution of the crisis and will result in even bigger losses down the road. Better to move quickly and act now, despite the likelihood of considerable near-term pain.

2. Reduce unfunded liabilities. Once debt restructuring is under way and the broader public sees that wealthy owners of financial assets are contributing to the necessary cleanup, it should be easier for politicians to take another painful step: addressing openly and directly the trillions in unfunded liabilities, including OECD pensions, that are weighing down budgets and balance sheets across the developed world. It will require a combination of several measures to bring these unfunded liabilities under control. This will require raising the retirement age, reducing social-insurance payments and making healthcare provision more efficient.

3. Increase the efficiency of government. A smaller government sector does not necessarily mean a weaker government. By defining the right "rules of the road" for society and business, governments can set the tone and priorities for development in a more effective as well as a more efficient way.

4. Prepare for labour scarcity. People will have to work longer, the elderly will need to become a bigger component of the labour force, participation of women in the workforce will have to increase and birth rates in developed economies must be increased.

5. Develop smart immigration policy. With the oldest native population and an immigrant population close to zero, Japan faces the most severe challenge. But Germany also struggles to attract well-educated immigrants because of the language barrier. US immigration policy has become far more regressive post 9/11, but there is now a growing consensus that reform is needed.

6. Invest in education. Education has to play a significant role in the future growth potential of the developed economies. Quality education will be the decisive factor in protecting and increasing GDP per capita. It is also the foundation of social mobility and a precondition to fully utilising the innovative capabilities and entrepreneurial talent of a society's members. For both reasons, it needs to be another key target of social investment.

7. Reinvest in the asset base. For more than a decade, the developed economies have reduced investments in public infrastructure and productive assets. World-class infrastructure is an important precondition for economic development and national competitiveness. Over the past few decades, Western multinationals have used their free cash flow mainly to invest in developing economies. Now that these investments are paying off, it is time for them to reinvest in the efficiency of production sites in their home markets and work off the investment backlog. Governments need to encourage private investment.

8. Increase raw-material efficiency. Pursue alternative-energy technologies. Although almost half of new power capacity added worldwide in 2011 was in renewables, fossil fuels still contribute around 80% to the total power generated.55 And with the discovery of new techniques for exploiting fossil fuels--take, for example, the shale-gas boom, which may turn the US into a net exporter of energy--it will be tempting to slow the transition to renewables. But such solutions will only be temporary.

9. Cooperate on a global basis. There is a risk of descending into vicious circle of beggar-thy-neighbour economic policies leading to much lower growth and slower improvement of living conditions worldwide.

This will involve supporting economic restructuring in the developed world. The creditors have to help the debtors pay back their debts. This will require the deficit countries to run a trade surplus and the former surplus countries to run a deficit. The emerging economies need to adjust their business model, focusing less on export-based growth and more on domestic consumption. These countries might also support economic adjustment in the developed economies by participating in efforts to reduce the debt overhang in an orderly way through restructurings and redemption funds.

10. Boost innovation. It must be made easier for a growing and highly productive workforce and for engineers and technologists to innovate, and for entrepreneurs to start new businesses.

A woman wearing a mask looks across the Pudong on 16 January this year

Source of picure: Zuma/Rex Features

By John Richardson

A DISPUTE between state-owned refiners Sinopec and PetroChina and environmental regulators serves as a good example of the difficulties China faces in reforming its growth model.

The debate about the environment is at the top of the political and economic agenda as a result of Beijing's smog crisis.

China's new leaders have to get this right.

"Heavily regulated fuel prices have discouraged Chinese refiners from producing cleaner diesel, as the higher costs can't be passed on to consumers," writes the Wall Street Journal.

"Meanwhile, trucks account for almost one quarter of China's vehicles but contribute a disproportionate share, almost 80%, of vehicle particulate matter.

"In one example, the Finance Ministry and Chinese refiners are deadlocked in negotiations over subsidies to help offset the higher costs of upgrading and operating refineries that produce cleaner diesel fuel, according to Gong Huiming, transportation director at the Energy Foundation, a nonprofit that focuses on U.S.-China energy issues."

If fuel prices were completely liberalised, thus motivating Sinopec and PetroChina to produce cleaner diesel, any reduction in public anger over the environment could be wiped out by increasing protests over more expensive fuel.

The majority of Chinese citizens earn less than $10 a day and when you are poor, you spend a higher proportion of your income on fuel and food then when you are rich.

And so, while China might make its middle class netizens a great deal happier if it tackles environmental problems, it could anger its much bigger constituency of low income earners if fuel costs increase.

Also, can Beijing successfully force the state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in general to clean up their environmental act? (it is unfair to just single out the refiners. They strong argue, by the way, that they have spent a lot of money upgrading their refineries to meet higher fuel standards.)

The SOEs are powerful political constituency because of their overarching role in the economy.

Thus, what they say will continue to count and they are likely to strongly resist implementation of better environmental standards.

"Handling China's state-owned companies big and small will be a challenge to any effort by the new Chinese leadership under Xi Jinping to reform the economy," continues the Wall Street Journal.

"While they compete for capital and resources with the private sector, they are also major employers with politically connected leaders and often function as an instrument of Beijing's policy goals, giving them tremendous political sway."

By John Richardson

THE overall HSBC flash purchasing managers' index for January, which was released yesterday, was at a two-year high (see the above chart), with the sub-index of production at a 22-month high.

This is great news for equity values and commodity prices, including petrochemicals. We might well see a rally in petrochemicals prices at the end of this week as more traders take a punt.

But this very thought provoking article from Business Insider, by Dr John Lee, associate professor at the Centre for International Security Studies at Sydney University, underlines once again that official government data is politics in China.

Could it be that manufacturers are ramping-up production on the basis of flawed official data?

Dr Lee argues that GDP growth numbers are collected in such a hurry in China that accuracy is all but impossible, and that the data from each province is then centralised and "revised" by politicians.

"County-level officials have massive career and personal incentives to tell Beijing what it wants to hear as regards hitting central targets - whether this be higher growth, an 'engineered' slowdown, or the drivers of growth such as fixed investment or consumption. It is the basis for their praise and promotion," he writes.

"While the upside for dishonesty is obvious, there is usually little downside, as it's unlikely they will be caught, let alone punished, for fudging figures.

"Bear in mind that Beijing also has strong political incentives for wanting to spread some optimism around at the moment. The new leadership under incoming President Xi Jinping and incoming Premier Li Keqiang will not be formally confirmed until March. The interregnum period until then is not the time to release bad news.

"The point is that we cannot know whether China really arrested seven consecutive quarters of declining growth, just as we cannot know whether the figures for the last seven quarters really were. No one has done any substantive and independent investigation of it."

He also argues that the "recovery" has been driven by increased fixed-asset investment, which makes the task of economic rebalancing even harder.

But what about all the evidence of stronger retail sales, including a recovery in auto sales?

"We are told that car sales improved on the September 2012 quarter and grew 6.9% in the December quarter," continues Lee.

"The problem is that a significant part of the sub-data used by the National Bureau of Statistics considers an item to be purchased (consumed) when it enters the showroom, not when it is driven away by a customer.

"China's dealerships had 2.2 million unsold cars in their showrooms in June 2012, rising from 900,000 in December 2011. The figure of unsold cars in showrooms could now be as high as 2.5 million.

"Yet, manufacturing capacity is rising, suggesting that car manufacturers are jumping into the Chinese market with their eyes closed.

"According to KPMG's Global Automotive Executive Survey 2012, China had an estimated 6 million units of unused manufacturing capacity, more than twice the size of the entire car market in Germany. This figure is expected to rise to 9 million units of unused manufacturing capacity by 2016.

"Some of these unsold cars are counted as having been consumed. The same problem applies to many other retail items. Although we cannot know the true figure, it is highly unlikely that domestic consumption exceeded fixed-investment [as has been claimed] as the major driver of GDP growth in the December quarter."

Sorry for the corny headline; we couldn't resist it.

By John Richardson

THE argument that the switch to natural gas from coal and oil is good for the environment has been further undermined by reports earlier this week of the big increase in the amount of gas-flaring in the US.

When the blog visited the World Gas Conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, last June it felt very suspicious of the "isn't gas wonderful for reducing global warming" hype that dominated the event. We raised the concern over the rise in fugitive methane emissions as natural gas production continued to climb.

The focus has now switched specifically to the US and the 50% increase in flaring at the giant Bakken field North Dakota that occurred last year compared with 2011.

"Flaring in North Dakota increases by about 20% the greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the state's oil production, refining and transport compared with the US average," said the Financial Times in this article.

The volume of gas flared in the US as a whole has tripled in just five years and is now the fifth highest in the world, behind Russia, Nigeria, Iran and Iraq, according to World Bank estimates.

The photo at the top of this post, taken by NASA's Suomi NPP satellite, shows the glow being emitted from hundreds of flares at the Bakken formation.

The picture compares the Bakken glow from space with those from Chicago and the twin cities of Minneapolis-St Paul.

(Apologies for the blurriness of the picture. Anybody reading the post in Bakken is likely to find the image even more blurry than the rest of us, as the smoke could well be in their eyes.) 

The reason for increased flaring at Bakken and other fields is the shale gas Ponzi scheme, which has reduced gas prices to record lows.

Because gas is so cheap, producers are being forced to waste hydrocarbons.

From a national perspective this seems an almost criminal waste of resources.

"Oil companies at the heart of the US shale oil boom are burning off enough gas to power all the homes in Chicago and Washington," adds the FT. 

As long as gas prices remain where they are now, investment in extra storage and pipelines needed to reduce flaring is unlikely to occur.

What does this mean for the petrochemicals business?

Longer term, gas prices seem likely to go up as the financially under pressure US shale gas industry consolidates.

The glas flaring row could more immediately exert further environmental pressure on gas producers and petrochemicals companies.

Ultimately though, milllions more jobs will be created by the US energy boom, provided it is combined with education and immigration reform, and investment in better roads, rail and other infrastructure

Another key element for the success of re-shoring will be manufacturing new types of finished goods, and adapting existing products, for an ageing population.

We therefore think that the US general public is likely to accept the overall environmental cost of the shift towards energy independence.

Source of picture: Imaginechina/Rex Feature

By John Richardson

ONE can interpret last week's release of January purchasing manager's indices for January just about any way you like.

Thus, Reuters wrote on 2 February: "China's official PMI released by the government's statistics bureau showed factories grew slower-than-expected in January, with a reading of 50.4, easing from December's 50.6 and below forecasts for a nine-month high of 50.9.

"The official PMI has been above the 50-point level demarcating growth or contraction from the previous month since August 2012, though its failure to break above 51 indicates that the economic expansion it signals is only moderate.

"A private sector PMI released by HSBC, on the other hand, rose to a two-year high of 52.3 {This was the HSBC final PMI for January following the release of a preliminary reading a couple of weeks ago}."

"Trade prospects in China, the world's biggest exporter, appeared darker than those elsewhere," continued Reuters.

"The twin Chinese PMIs showed export orders either grew marginally or shrank in January as shoppers in the United States and Europe, the two biggest buyers of Chinese goods, cut back spending."

Contrast this with Bloomberg, which said on 3 February: "China's services industries grew at the fastest pace since August as gains in retailing and construction aid government efforts to drive a recovery in the world's second-biggest economy.

"The non-manufacturing PMI rose to 56.2 in January from 56.1 in December, the Beijing-based National Bureau of Statistics and China Federation of Logistics & Purchasing said in a statement yesterday {this is the official government PMI).

"The Shanghai Composite Index last week posted the biggest weekly gain since October 2011 on optimism that Communist Party leader Xi Jinping can sustain the nation's expansion and control the risk that inflation will accelerate in the second half.

"Strength in services may assist a shift to a consumption-driven economy as the government targets more sustainable growth and factory output contributes to record pollution."

Regular readers of the blog will hardly be surprised to discover that this latter news article has led us to be a little sceptical.

The official PMI tends to focus more on big state-owned enterprises rather than private companies as opposed to the HSBC alternative, which looks more at private-sector companies.

Thus, to what extent does the apparent growth in services genuinely represent economic rebalancing compared with more gains by monopolistic, inefficient state-owned giants?

And, as Sydney University's Dr John Lee points out, China's retail statistics lump unsold goods in warehouses together with sales to the final consumers.

Further, the growth in construction, highlighted by Bloomberg, has largely been driven by the economic stimulus package in May-October of last year, which was designed to shore up popular support ahead of the leadership handover.

The package has poured more money into inefficient construction projects and has re-inflated the property sector, according to another Reuters article, published on 20 January.

"China's average annual urban disposable income in 2012 was 24,565 yuan. Home prices meanwhile averaged 20,700 yuan per square metre in Beijing last year," said the article, which indicates that China's recovery has made the already difficult job of economic rebalancing a lot harder.

In addition, although December's retail sales rose by 15.2%, which was an eight-month high, UBS argues that the strong figure was largely the result of an increase in property transactions and spending on furniture and household goods {never mind the distorting effect of unsold goods in warehouses}.

HSBC adds that investment growth is making the biggest contribution to growth since 2009 - the year that China injected $640bn into the economy to compensate for the global financial crisis.

The 2 February Reuters article also says: "Price pressures were shown to be building in China, with both surveys indicating input prices at their highest since mid-2011."

We still think this "recovery" might have some more legs as money from last year's stimulus package continues to slosh around the economy.

But inflationary pressures, as Reuters and others have argued, are building. This suggests higher interest rates and the withdrawal of stimulus in H2.

Plus, Beijing continues to give every indication of a strong commitment to economically disruptive restructuring efforts, now that its new leaders are in place.

For instance, it is setting a target of growth in industrial production at just 10% for 2013, compared with an actual increase of 13.9% in 2011.

Even this 10% target would be difficult to achieve because of weak external demand and constraints on domestic demand growth, a government official told the China Daily on 24 January.

By John Richardson

THE US petrochemicals industry is battling hard to block an explosion in liquefied natural gas (LNG) investments that they fear would result in a rise in ethane, propane and butane feedstock costs.

Andrew Liveris, CEO of Dow Chemical, raised this issue in December, but the pressure from the industry on legislators responsible for approving LNG projects now appears to have been stepped up. Peter Huntsman, CEO of Huntsman, has now joined the fray.

Overall gas markets could tighten if a substantial number of US LNG projects go ahead, thus pushing up the cost of raw materials for steam cracking, the petrochemical industry argues.

In addition, LNG exporters might find value in leaving ethane in shipments in order to increase calorific values. Some customers, such as those in Japan, have a preference for "wet" LNG, which contains a small percentage of ethane.

Petrochemical companies are very concerned about protecting margins that have soared thanks to the shale-gas dividend.

For instance, Dow Chemical has reported a $413m (€306m) decrease in purchased energy and feedstock costs in Q4 last year, compared with the same quarter in2011, thanks to the shale-gas boom.

ExxonMobil saw a 76% increase in Q4 2012 chemicals profits, largely thanks to higher margins on cheaper raw materials.

LyondellBasell's Q4 profits were 68% higher for the same reason.

But how likely is it the US will see a flood of LNG investments that will tighten the gas market?

Some 246m tonnes/year of LNG capacity is being planned in the US, 152.8m tonnes/year of which have firm start-up dates, according to ICIS data.

Peter Voser, CEO of Shell, thinks that only around 50m tonnes/year of  LNG capacity is likely to built in the States. 

And Toledo Ohio-based Teo Consultancy, in this article in the Oil & Gas Journal, contends that the viability of many of the LNG projects is very much up in the air.
The above chart rates several of the US projects based on structural and financial advantages or disadvantages.

And the consultancy also writes: "The projected financial performance of proposed US LNG export plants supports the building and commissioning of at least a few of them. The proposed plants, however, face large risks. Potential supply-demand shifts in both the US and destination markets could result in price shifts much greater than the 10% used in this article's sensitivity analysis.

"Competitors can also act to damage the financial viability of proposed US LNG plants by, for instance, changing their pricing approach so that US exports will no longer be attractive. The success of such defensive strategies will depend in part on growth in global demand for natural gas in comparison with growth in supply outside the US.

"The extent to which China and India shift from coal towards natural gas will play a large role in determining the future supply-demand balance. China depends on coal for about 70% of its energy requirements, and India on coal for more than 50% of its. In contrast, natural gas only meets about "4% of China's energy requirements and 11% of India's, according to the International Energy Agency's 2012 World Energy Outlook.

"Neither country is likely to implement energy policies that will put economic growth at risk, making a shift away from coal towards natural gas likely only once an adequate supply of gas is economically available. Any major shift from coal towards natural gas therefore will be a reaction to, not a driver of, the supply-demand balance.

"Proposed US LNG plants also face currency-driven risks. A major appreciation of the US dollar would damage prospects for the proposed plants, especially with respect to the other major countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Europe's ongoing financial crisis increases the likelihood the euro will depreciate against the US dollar.

"Japan would prefer the yen also depreciate against the dollar, given the structural challenges that country faces in light of an ageing and shrinking population (our italics and emphasis) and continued dependence on exports. By contrast, however, the US dollar will likely depreciate against the major non-OECD currencies, including the Chinese yuan, as these economies continue to develop."

And what goes for LNG projects goes to what we fear could be a headlong rush into an excessive amount of petrochemical investments in the US: The global economic consequences an ageing and shrinking population.

By John Richardson

THERE has been a lot of interest in China's coals-to-olefins (CTO) industry, with arguments that it is a very economically viable method of production.

On paper, there is even more capacity due on-stream than in the US as it forges ahead with its shale gas-based expansions.

But, according to new study by HSBC, of the 6m tonnes/year of ethylene capacity scheduled to be added through the coal-to-methanol and then on to olefins process in China over the 2013-17 timeframe, less than 20% - 1.2m tonnes/year - is viable.

As a result, HSBC hasn't even included the capacities in its supply and demand balances.

Reasons given include logistics.

"The logic of having projects in these regions, instead of in Eastern China (where the bulk of the plastics producers are located) is fairly straight forward, and stems from the advantage achieved by locating CTO projects close to coal-producing regions, namely better access to coal and lower coal prices," writes HSBC.

"However, the location of projects in Central-to-Western China, leads to its own set of challenges and constraints. The Chinese plastic converters are concentrated in Eastern China, with the top four provinces (Guangdong, Zhejiang, Guangxi, Shandong) accounting for c50% of the production of plastic products in China, while c85% of the existing Chinese ethylene capacity, for example, is located in the Eastern region.

"The mismatch between the plastic producing regions of Eastern China and the CTO projects in Central-to-Western China leads to the issue of transporting the CTO-produced olefins/polyolefins and co-products to Eastern China.

"Although the transportation cost of polymers is high, it is still less than the cost of transporting the equivalent amount of coal in the opposite direction, given that it takes c6.2 tonnes of coal to make one tonne of olefins.

"The co-products, on the other hand, are a different story. The main co-products include fuel gas, heavier olefins and gasoline, and are produced in much smaller in quantities than the olefins - total co-product yields for the MTO/MTP processes are only 7% and 11% while olefins yields are 33% and 28%, respectively.

"The smaller quantities of the co-products produced, coupled with the far-off location of the coal-to-chemicals plants, makes it difficult for these products to be sold at their normal market prices.

"The co-products, as a result, are either sold at a discount to market prices or are consumed internally as fuel, realising their fuel-linked value only."

HSBC says that Eastern coastal MTO projects, which would be based on imported methanol, are unviable because of the amount of methanol that would have to be acquired.

"A 600,000 tonnes/year MTO/methanol to-propylene (MTO) project requires 1.8m-2.16m tonnes/year of methanol, respectively, which is significant in size compared to average annual Chinese methanol imports of c5.3m tonnes/;year since 2009," the study adds.

Well-documented environmental challenges are also a major barrier to investment.

For instance, 15-20 tonnes of fresh water is required to produce each tonne of olefins.

"Per capita water resources and water resources per sq m in China's key coal producing provinces, such as Inner Mongolia, Shanxi and Shaanxi [where many of the CTO projects are located], is only 1/10th of the national average, according to research published by Greenpeace and the Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources under the Chinese Academy of Sciences in August 2012.

"To put this in perspective, refining uses 0.80 to 2.17 tonnes of water for each tonne of crude oil processed.

"High carbon dioxide emissions are another concern (see above chart).

"While the Chinese Government is supportive of the move towards greater self sufficiency in polymer production, it is also keen to avoid a repeat of the excessive investment in subscale capacity as witnessed earlier within the coal to basic chemicals space," says HSBC.

"To this end, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) has oversight of all project approvals and has set minimum scale guidelines in order to ensure viability.

"Under the new rules announced in the 12th Five Year Plan for coal to chemicals in 2012, a coal-based olefins plant must have a minimum capacity of 500,000 tonnes/year while 1m tonnes/year has been set as the bar for coal-to-methanol and coal-to-liquids facilities."

Only three of the 23 CTO projects listed have won approval from the NDRC, says the study, supporting the notion that all the fuss about the industry, might, in the immediate term at least, turn out to be a storm in a teacup.

"We see projects that do not have NDRC approvals as running the risks of closure - similar to what happened with the teapot refiners or small-sized coal mines in China," adds HSBC (apologies for the pun).

By John Richardson

BEIJING is clearly getting worried that its politically motivated 2012 economic stimulus programme has damaged the economy.

"Just when the world had bought into a Chinese economic recovery, along comes the government throwing proverbial spanners in the works," writes James Gruber, former fund manager and journalist in his latest Asia Confidential weekly financial newsletter.

"Actually, they're more like grenades. According to Bloomberg, China's central bank has drained Rmb910 billion (US$145 billion) from the banking system this week [last week as you read this], a record high weekly net drain.

"Reducing liquidity after Chinese New Year is normal, as is increasing liquidity prior to this holiday. But the extent of the liquidity reduction dwarfed the Rmb 662 billion added before the New Year.

"To put this in some context, the People's Bank of China has now drained a net Rmb548 billion from the banking system this year. This compares with a net injection of Rmb1.44 trillion last year."

"On top of this news came calls from outgoing Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao for local governments to impose home price restrictions and 'decisively' curb housing market speculation. He described house price gains as 'excessively fast' and also ordered major municipalities to publish annual price control targets."

This helps to explain a week of two halves in Asia's polyethylene (PE) market.

In the first half of last week there was quite a lot of activity as some end-users restocked, the blog was told.

But from Thursday, we also heard that buyers backed away on the liquidity drain, the expected renewed clampdown on the housing market and the realisation that PE supply will lengthen from March onwards.

The above chart illustrates why Beijing has been forced to act on credit.

As you can see, total credit as a percentage of nominal GDP was at an all-time high last year, when both Total Loans (formal lending via the state-owned banks) and Social Financing (the sale of Wealth Management Products by the state-owned banks and lending by privately-owned credit agencies - the shadow-banking system) were added together.

Last year's surge in credit was substantially down to the rise in poorly regulated, highly speculative Social Financing, say some economists, who add that the sector represents a systemic risk.

Formal bank lending now accounts for just 55% of total credit compared with what used to be 92%, according to Peking University finance professor Michael Pettis.

Further reductions in liquidity- especially within the Social Financing sector - seem probable, therefore, as the government attempts to restore some balance.

An increase in interest rates might also be necessary to bring inflation under control.

We warned on 6 February that China's PE history would repeat itself, at the expense of China's small and medium-sized enterprises.

It now appears that we were right.

China's National People's Congress

Source of picture: Rex Features

By John Richardson

The focus of next week's National People's Congress (NPC) meeting in China - the country's annual "parliamentary" meeting - is likely to be on the quality rather than the quantity of growth.

This is reflected in the fact that almost half of China's provinces are setting lower growth targets for 2013, according to this Bloomberg article.

"Fourteen provinces have set lower targets for GDP expansion this year than in 2012 and the other 17 left their goals unchanged," added Bloomberg, quoting research from Nomura.

Interestingly, a new generation of local political leaders with different objectives appears to be emerging.

"The [provincial] GDP targets may damp previous optimism that China's economic growth would get a boost this year thanks to the traditional rush of new projects from officials appointed as regional leaders," added Bloomberg.

"Instead, rising political stars including Hu Chunhua in Guangdong and Sun Zhengcai in Chongqing have set lower goals, supporting incoming President Xi Jinping's focus on 'quality and efficiency' of growth."

Local leaders were previously measured on how rapidly they could raise growth, regardless of the potential longer term social, environmental and economic damage. The focus was on "jobs, jobs and more jobs"in the dash for export-focused expansion.

China's shifting demographics, its rising income levels that have changed public expectations, and the end of the babyboomer-driven growth dividend in the West make a new approach essential.

The NPC, which begins on 5 March, will comprise an equal proportion of deputies from urban and rural areas, with more delegates from farming regions and fewer from big cities like Beijing or Shanghai, said the Xinhua wire service report.

The delegate list shows a 'marked increase' in the number of front-line workers, migrant workers, farmers, professional and technical personnel and women, added the official government news service.

More ethnic minorities and younger delegates, in their 20s and 30s, as well as fewer party and government officials would be present, continued Xinhua.

The presence at the NPC of more rural residents reflects the major policy agenda of improving the lot of rural residents.

"Reforming rural land laws to better protect farmers' rights and changing the draconian system of urban residence to give migrants better access to social services are both high on the policy agenda," said The Wall Street Journal in this article.

"Changes promise to raise households' share of national income - a crucial component of rebalancing China's economy toward stronger consumption.

"The reforms will be costly. The State Council's Development Research Centre estimates turning one rural migrant into an urban citizen, with access to education and subsidised housing, has an upfront cost of 24,000 yuan ($US3857). With about 260 million migrants, the initial price tag for turning just 10 per cent of them into urbanites is 630 billion yuan ($100bn) - equivalent to 1.2% of 2012 gross domestic product.

"At the same time, stronger protection for farmers will make it more difficult for local governments to seize and sell land - a key source of revenue. Land transfers generated 2.7 trillion yuan of revenue for local governments last year, or about a quarter of their total income."

Another big priority is tackling nothing short of horrific environmental problems that are causing a rising wave of Internet-fuelled public anger. Embarrassingly for the new leaders, the air quality in Beijing once again became chronically bad immediately ahead of the NPC.

The NPC is also expected to underline efforts to tackle a rising bad-debt problem, which is connected to an out-of-control shadow-banking system.

"The Chinese shadow banking system - credit flows beyond traditional bank loans - has quadrupled in size since 2008 to about Rmb20tn ($3.2tn), or 40% of economic output. These flows were crucial in reviving the country's growth last year," said the Financial Times, in this article.

The parliamentary meeting is also likely to emphasise the need to, once again, deflate the property bubble.

"China's property market is rife with speculation - both about rising house prices and about what the new government may do to curb them once it takes office next week," said Reuters in this article. {The new government formally takes office during the NPC meeting.]

"Asset prices have whipsawed as investors first bet that government-mandated infrastructure spending would boost real estate prices, only to then fret about new measures to cool a market that has seen double-digit annual price rises in cities like Beijing and Shenzhen.

"Markets appear more nervous than the government about the pace of price rises revealed by official January housing data issued last week, and economists at influential state-run think-tanks reckon investors are right to be worried that the new government is preparing to widen a pilot property tax as part of a broader reform of land and fiscal policies."

All of this points to a major and irreversible policy shift, starting from now.

We have long argued that rebalancing would mean lower growth in the short and medium-term.

By John Richardson

POLYETHYLENE (PE) prices in China fell by $5-10/tonne for the week ending 1 March, according to ICIS pricing.

"It is increasingly clear that Chinese growth will slow from the second quarter onwards and this will limit potential recovery for Asia," say analysts at Credit Agricole.

The Shanghai Composite Index dropped 3.7% on Monday, its biggest daily loss since November 2010, as a result of efforts to rein-in surging property prices and data released on Sunday that showed the country's service sector expanded at its slowest pace for five months.

This followed disappointing HSBC purchasing managers' index for February

We have consistently warned over the last few monthhs that the Chinese recovery, if it can be even called a recovery, would not be sustained.

 Source of picture: China Daily

By John Richardson

The famous investor, Jim Chanos, warned three years years ago that the West places an inordinate amount of trust in "nine guys in a room" (i.e. China's Politburo Standing Committee) getting it right. Since last year's leadership transition that trust now needs to be placed in just seven guys in a room.

It is ironic that a great deal of plain vanilla analysis from chemicals companies and their investors continues to assume that these men will get it right, whilst both groups are very willing to criticise the shortcomings of Western politicians.

The blog hopes that this plain vanilla analysis is only for the sake of maintaining good relations with China, of giving the country's leaders adequate "face".

We would like to believe that at hidden, deeper levels, the chemicals companies have research departments carrying out immensely complex studies necessary to prepare for  many different outcomes over the next few decades.

If this is so, we have the right to access to this resarch if we are continue to place our trust in certain companies. 

One of the mantras that the blog has heard chanted by many companies over the last 16 years, as it has has shuffled from one conference presentation and press conference to another, is "urbanisation" - as if the word in itself, by itself, guarantees continued prosperity.

But what has urbanisation really amounted to since China's "economic miracle" began?

China's urbanisation rate is said to have reached 51% in 2011, but if you strip away migrant workers without hukou (residency permits) and homes, the real urbanisation ratio is closer to 36%, according to Bank of America's Ting Lu, who is quoted in this Business Inside article.

As China nears the Lewis Curve turning point, Ting adds that it is therefore "absolutely right" that China's leaders are focusing on how to unlock much greater real urbanisation during this year's National People's Congress meeting.

"Speeding up urbanisation could boost demand and improve efficiency and social harmony," adds Ting.

"China [has] experienced rapid industrialisation but rather slow urbanisation in the past decade, resulting in 150 million migrant workers living in urban areas without having urban residency permits," he adds.

"Most of those migrant workers cram in factory dorms, are excluded from urban public services and social welfare systems, and leave a total of around 58 million of their children in rural areas.

"It is true that for many small cities migrant workers can get urban residency permits by buying homes there, but it is hard for most migrant workers to accumulate enough wealth to do so.

"{This is] partially because they cannot sell (or capitalise) their cultivated land and residential land, and partially because home prices have risen too much as a result of limited supply," writes Ting.

"Surging home prices in China in the past decade are to a large extent due to the under-supply of residential housing, which in turn is the consequence of under-supply of land for property development."

He sees the solution as increasing supply of land for homes.

"Close to 200 million migrant workers don't live in their rural homes except during the Chinese New Year holiday.

"Urban residential land [totals only} 11,000km2, whilst residential land in the rural area is estimated at 92,000km2."

He therefore argues that the focus of land reform should be expanding the urban area from the current level of 39,000km2, "which is only 0.4% of {the} total national {land] area, versus 2.6% in the US and 4.0% in Japan."

China, as a result, needs to get rid of collective land ownership - one of the foundations of its political system. Did simple, eh?

And what about food security? Given China's history, this is surely hugely sensitive.

"Vested interests" have made a fortune out of rising property prices and millions of hard-pressed middle income people have overstretched themselves to buy homes.

Badly engineer this expansion of residential building to the extent that you end up with a property-price collapse and you, thus, end up with a lot of angry people.

Further, the health of a huge amount of speculative bank lending is tied-up in maintaining property prices where they are now.

The benefit, though, of giving millions of migrants the freedom to get rid of their hukou status would be that they would have access to health care services, pensions and free education.

But can China afford to give migrants this freedom, given rising social costs resulting from its one-child policy?

 Source of picture: http://whyfiles.org/ 

By John Richardson

MY colleague Nigel Davis has written an excellent Insight article which highlights how some chemicals companies are seeking to respond to changing patterns.

As we have discussed before, Bayer Material Science is adapting its portfolio of products in response to the megatrends - demographics, energy conservation, climate change and the challenges of providing enough food and water to sustain emerging-markets growth.

"There are many ways you can grow in chemicals but achieving anything like the growth rates of the past has become increasingly difficult," writes Nigel.

"In the short term {and in the long term, we think], chemical companies face the prospect of slower demand from China, lacklustre growth in the US and extreme weakness in Europe."

He uses the example of BASF and how the Germany-headquartered chemicals giant is working with Harvard University, MIT (the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and the University of Massachusetts (UMass) Amherst.

The aim is to jointly develop new materials for the automotive, building and construction, and energy industries.

The research collaboration will involve chemists, physicists, biologists and engineers with know-how in different industries, BASF says. The trick will be to turn academic research into technically feasible products and processes.

"Topics already identified include micro- and nano-structured polymers with new properties, as well as biomimetic materials that emulate nature," BASF said.

"The scientists are working on lightweight construction materials for wind turbines and automotive construction and on new colour effects for cosmetic applications," it added.

"We need the creative spirit of the widest possible range of sciences to develop solutions to meet the needs of a growing world population for clean drinking water, secure energy supply and improved quality of life," president of BASF's Advanced Materials and Systems Research, Christian Fischer, said.

Such creative spirits will only prosper in companies that have top-line executives who both understand that the "rising tide lifts all boats" growth model of the past is over for good, and crucially, are prepared to act on that understanding.

Close collaboration with countries and local companies, as growth models evolve, is essential if companies are to adapt to the New Normal - as, of course, is the willingness to invest in R&D that will not always reap immediate share-market and quarterly profits-boosting results.

Carefully nurtured relationships with customers will also be a key ingredient for success.

"I have watched my customers grow for more than 10 years now, and as a result, have been able to grow with them," said a source with a global polyolefins producer.

"Many of my customers in China have gone from being commodity converters of standard-grade polyethylene (PE) to highly sophisticated producers of value-added film with, for example, high moisture protection."

If you haven't done the groundwork already, it is going be extremely difficult to play catch-up.

BASF, for instance, is already collaborating with 600 research institutions.

There is no more time left to lose.

Source of picture: Luxepost.com 

By John Richardson

CHINA'S industrial output has had the weakest start to a year since 2009 and retail sales growth has slowed, according to this article from Bloomberg.

New local-currency loans for February were also lower than the estimates of 27 out of 28 analysts in a Bloomberg News survey.

China's leaders are trying to undo the damage of 2012 by reducing liquidity in the financial system - hence, last month's lower-than-expected new lending.

Industrial output is likely down because credit is tighter - and because demand has been weakened by rising inflationary pressures.

And as for weaker retail sales growth this, of course, also reflects higher inflation.

Standard Chartered estimates inflation will average 4% this year, above the government's target of 3.5%. This suggests that more credit tightening is on the way, with an interest rate rise now expected in Q4 (we think possibly earlier).

Weaker retail sales growth is also probably the result of a dip in demand for luxury goods.

Luxury goods sales are down because China's new leadership is anxious to show that it is serious about dealing with government officials showing-off their ill-gotten wealth.

One wonders how many sales-growth estimates have been based on the assumption that China's elite would be able to carry on buying huge volumes of luxury handbags and Kweichow Moutai Co (600519) white spirit etc.

We think that that the clampdown on corruption - part of which is the pressure on government officials to cut back on "bling" - is here to stay.

Why? Because it will help make the majority of Chinese who still earn less than $10 a day a little happier.

Plus, it gives the new Politburo Standing Committee a chance to visibly take on the "vested interests" who are keen to maintain the old growth model, as these have been the people benefiting from graft whilst stocking-up on luxury goods.

Equally likely is that the air around major cities, such as Beijing and Shanghai, will be cleaned-up by closing-down highly-polluting chemicals and other factories (perhaps this is already also a factor in lower industrial output?) and limiting the growth in car ownership.

A healthier environment will help make China's middle-income netizens more content.

The renewed battle against inflation, the corruption crackdown and efforts to deal with air pollution are just three of the many reasons why 2013 will play out very much like 2012: Another year where the commodity end of the chemicals industry will have to deal with demand growth lower than during the previous decade's "economic miracle".

But innovative chemicals companies are a different matter entirely. They could see growth rates at healthy multiples over increases in GDP as they help China deal with water shortages, wasteful use of energy and pollution.

Being part of China's solution is infinitely better than being part of its problem.

By John Richardson

XI Jinping, who formally became China's president last week during the National People's Congress meeting, faces enormous challenges.

Life is, for example, pretty grim for hundreds of millions of people in China.

Many have lost out on the country's "economic miracle" because a hugely disproportionate share of the country's wealth has ended up in the hands of a poor, often corrupt, elite at the top of Chinese society.

Thus, supported by demographics that have swung in their favour, factory workers are no longer prepared to accept poor wages and bad working conditions. They are now much more willing to down tools.

As for the middle class, life, whilst economically a lot better, is blighted by food and air pollution (and, of course, this applies to the poor as well!).

Just imagine bringing up your kids in a world where you worry every day that they might be breathing in noxious air and eating contaminated food. OK, your apartment might have tripled in value since the early 2000s, but what's the point of money when you cannot guarantee the safety of your children?

As countries get richer it always happens that the quality of life becomes as important as material wealth.

What is different in China is the size of its middle class, or more accurately the middle income proportion of its population, and the presence of the Internet. The Internet enables public dissent to spread far more quickly than in the past.

Maybe the biggest of all of China's problems is the end of the demographic dividend, which we have already referred to above.

The slide at the top of this post neatly summarises the economically dangerous consequences of China's one-child policy. As you can see, China falls into the same category as only one other country, Russia, in being both poor and old at the same time.

The great news is that Xi shows every sign of recognising all the difficulties. We wish him, and his colleagues, every success.

China has done it before - i.e. the economic transformation achieved by Deng Xiaoping, which lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. This was a colossal achievement.

Let's hope it can do it again.

By John Richardson

THERE will, of course, be bright spots in petrochemicals markets as a result of factors independent of China's new economic direction.

For example, as an aromatics trader points out, there are huge paraxylene (PX) capacity additions in Asia that will provide a great deal of support to reformer economics. In 2010-2013, he estimates that the region's capacity will double from 12m tonnes/year to 24m tonnes/year.

And buyers of polyolefins will be in a very strong position over the next few months as new capacity is ramped-up in China and Singapore.

But the rest of this year will still be primarily about the new economic direction.

Demand growth is likely to remain depressed for the rest of 2013, and into next year which, we think, most petrochemicals markets participants are now coming to terms with.

Markets have, however, yet to factor into what we think, along with fellow blogger Paul Hodges, will be further measures designed to tackle the property-market bubble, corruption, over-investment and the environmental crisis. Such measures would further depress growth.

The above chart, from Paul's blog, illustrates the impact of the new policy direction to date. Electricity consumption has slowed down on reduced economic stimulus, including bank lending.

There will be occasional bouts of restocking, as occurred towards the end of last year in polyethylene (PE), when chemicals and polymer buyers in China find their inventories exhausted and/or regain their confidence in a strong economic recovery. These won't last long.

Watch out, though, for a sudden change of mood amongst China's leaders. If the West suffers another major economic crisis aka Lehman Bros, or the cumulative impact of slower Western growth shows up in a dramatic reduction in exports, China might once again panic and throw stimulus money at the problem.

Such a dramatic change of direction would be great short-term good news for traders and producers.

In the long run, however the net effect would be harmful as rebalancing would take even longer and would be even more economically disruptive than is the case today.

Source of picture: Wikispaces.

By John Richardson

CHINA has as many as 400 "cancer villages", with many of the cancer clusters being blamed on the chemicals industry.

Much of the nation's countryside - the source of China's food supply - is contaminated with toxic chemicals, it is claimed.

Experts estimate that there has been an 80% increase in cancer rates compared with 30 years ago, when the country's economic reforms began.

People are becoming ever-more angry about pollution, as we discussed during our recent trip to China.

The anger we focused on was over contaminated food, water and air in Beijing and Shanghai.

But there is plenty of evidence that the anger also extends into the countryside where incomes are also on the rise, as China tries to narrow the gap between its wealthier urban and poorer rural areas.

The old bargain of "we will give you jobs and lift you out of poverty, and so accept a bad environment as the price that needs to be paid" no longer seems to be working across many regions of China.

Hence, Li Keqiang, in his first speech as prime minister, said on 17 March that he was "depressed" by the noxious pollution shrouding Beijing.

Amazingly, (can you really imagine any Chinese leader saying this ten year or even five years ago?) he encouraged the news media and the public to hold him accountable should his government fail to clean up China's contaminated water and food supply.

"Poverty and backwardness in the midst of clear waters and verdant mountains is no good," he said, "nor is it [good] to have prosperity and wealth while the environment deteriorates."

And in February, the environment ministry for the first time admitted the existence of cancer villages.

The ministry said that widespread production and consumption of harmful chemicals forbidden in many developed nations were still found in China, according to the BBC. 

"The toxic chemicals have caused many environmental emergencies linked to water and air pollution," the ministry was quoted saying in a report.

The ministry went on to acknowledge that such chemicals could pose a long-term risk to human health, making a direct link to the so-called cancer villages.

"There are even some serious cases of health and social problems like the emergence of cancer villages in individual regions," the report continued.

An accountant friend of the blog says that environmental balance sheets are not a real concept, just a nice woolly theory.

Maybe they should become a firm concept, bolted into law, for domestic chemicals companies and overseas chemicals companies that export to China.

Pro-actively accepting responsibility now, rather than waiting for Beijing to legislate companies out of chemicals markets in China, is surely the right approach.

And, as we have discussed before, chemicals companies have a huge opportunity to be part of the solution, rather than the problem, by helping China clean up its water, food and air.

By John Richardson

ONE of Sinopec's subsidiaries, Shanghai Petrochemical, has weighed-in to the debate over US shale gas by warning that cheap petrochemicals imports from the States could erode the whole of China's competitiveness.

"We can't tell how severe the blow will be, but it will pose a serious challenge, and the entire industry will need to brace itself for the hit," said Shanghai Petrochemical vice-chairman Wang Zhiqing, in the South China Morning Post earlier this month.

"We need to reduce costs and differentiate our products by adding more value," he added.

We once again return to our favourite triangle (see above), which was created fellow blogger Paul Hodges. Sinopec has traditionally not been about making money, but instead has been tasked by Beijing with supplying cheap petrochemical raw materials to China's vast manufacturing industry.

The focus was on creating jobs in order to lift hundreds of millions of low-income Chinese out of poverty, rather than on a strong bottom line for Sinopec.

But we think the Sinopec business model has now changed because:

• Beijing wants a more sophisticated manufacturing industry as China attempts to escape the "middle income trap". This involves less protection of state-owned companies from intenational markets.

• Demographics mean that, at least in the developed eastern and southern coastal provinces, job creation is no longer the priority. Instead, it is about the quality rather than the quantity of growth, which is connected to the technological upgrades vital for escaping the middle-income trap.

Thus, perhaps Sinopec will have to take cheap US exports on the chin and get on with becoming more of a higher-value internationally competitive company, as Wang's comments perhaps indicate.

We are not suggesting that Sinopec will have to close-down petrochemicals capacity in the face of increased volumes of very competitive imports. That wouldn't make any sense because the company's refineries need a home for naphtha in order to make gasoline etc.

But it could be that the opportunities for further capacity growth in basic petrochemicals are more limited.

The blog also wonders how Sinopec is going to absorb the extra costs of upgrading all of its refineries to meet higher-fuel standards.

Sinopec chairman Fu Chengu ended up in hot water with the Shanghai Daily in February when he claimed that it was lax government fuel standards, rather than refiners seeking to save costs, which were the main cause of Beijing's dreadful smog crisis and growing wider concerns over pollution.

As the Shanghai Daily wrote: "Much of China still uses the National III vehicle emissions standard, which are similar to the Euro III standard - allowing the sulphur content in gasoline to be as high as 150 parts per million.

"The Euro V standard caps the sulphur content at below 10 ppm.

"Shanghai and some relatively developed regions like Jiangsu and Guangdong use the National IV standard.

"Sinopec is not violating any rule or law in supplying most of China with National III standard fuel. But it does benefit from relatively low fuel-quality standards."

In response to the bad publicity, Sinopec said that it would upgrade desulphurisation facilities at 12 subsidiaries by the end of this year, and would start selling cleaner gasoline that met the National IV standard from next year.

This has triggered concerns about rising fuel prices.

There is already upward pressure on fuel prices because the subsidy system for pricing gasoline etc has twice been reformed since 2009, with the latest change taking place in March this year.

But the positive news is that these reforms have allowed Sinopec to enjoy a stronger stand-alone bottom line, as it can more accurately reflect the fluctuations in the costs of imported oil in the prices it charges for gasoline and diesel etc. It is also better able to plan production to prevent fuel shortages.

The new market-oriented system for pricing fuel was a factor behind Sinopec's 25% improvement in first quarter 2013 net profit.  

Perhaps we have answered our own question here as to how Sinopec will pay for upgrading its refineries. The adjustments in the fuel-price mechanisms might well be partly designed to give it the revenue to make the necessary changes.

And if Sinopec follows through on its pledge to help clean-up China's foul air, it might be better able to attract and retain the talent necessary for it to move up the petrochemicals value chain!

China's educated middle classes, who can afford to get out of the country, are increasingly doing so because of concerns over pollution and food safety, the blog heard during its recent visit to China.

Attracting and keeping expatriates is also becoming much harder, as the New York Times wrote in this very worrying article. 

If you can't guarantee the safety of your children, what's the point of a big salary?

By John Richardson

EVIDENCE that China is no longer acting as the growth engine of the world, because it is too busy dealing with internal adjustments, is mounting.

For example, on Tuesday of this week Taiwan announced that its year-on-year Q1 2013 GDP growth had fallen to just 1.5%. This was less than half of the 3.7% growth recorded in the previous quarter and well below forecasts of 3.1%.

As this Beyondbrics blog post points out: "By global standards, Taiwan is a smallish economy. But with its trade links to the rest of the world, it serves as a useful harbinger. And this is not good news.

"Taiwan's economy is heavily reliant on trade, particularly of electronic goods, leading many economists to worry about the impact of recent disappointing growth in China, where economic growth slowed to 7.7% [again in the first quarter].

"Taiwan's first quarter stumble follows weaker-than-expected production and export figures that show demand for Asia's exported goods is unsteady. Taiwan's export orders, which include orders for goods to be exported from Taiwanese-owned factories in mainland China, fell 6.6% in March."

The chart above illustrates how Taiwan's export-vulnerable economy serves as a very good indicator of changes in global economic growth patterns.

Yesterday, we discussed Southeast Asia. Despite the economic boom in that region, some of its heavily trade-exposed economies, such as Singapore's, are likely suffering from the slowdown in China.

What worries the blog is that many chemicals companies may have assumed much-higher growth rates this year for demand, based on misplaced confidence in China's willingness to sustain its Q4 2012 rebound in growth.

The 2013 Asia Petrochemical Industry Conference (APIC) takes place in Taipei on 9-10 May next week. We will be there and will be keen to observe if a more realistic view of the world now prevails.

Realism isn't the same as pessimism. In the long term, the opportunities in China remain enormous for chemicals companies with the right strategies.

Just an anomaly?

Source: American Chemistry Council

By John Richardson

FEEDSTOCK advantage is, of course, crucially important, but so is demand.

And yet the only subject that most people wanted to talk about in any depth at last week's Asia Petrochemical Industry Conference (APIC) appeared to be how to achieve feedstock advantage.

Why? Probably because discussing the shale gas revolution in the US, how to transfer that revolution to Asia and other means of gaining competitive advantage, such as perhaps coal-to-chemicals in China and better refinery/petrochemicals integration, lie within the industry's comfort zone.

Just because a subject is difficult shouldn't lead to it being almost entirely sidelined - especially, of course, the subject of demand! Sadly, though, this is what it felt like was happening last week.

What worried the blog was that instead of in-depth discussions about scenarios for growth, delegates appeared to assume that while operating rates would be low this year and in 2014, everything would be back to normal by 2015. We have been waiting for everything to return to normal ever since 2008, but it hasn't happened yet.

The idea that China might suffer an economic collapse wasn't contemplated, or even that the headline 7.7% growth in Q1 might be a misleadingly bullish indicator of real economic activity.

Delegates also seemed to assume that Europe would somehow muddle through and that, obviously, it was Morning in America again.