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Asian Chemical Connections
Carbon and plastic waste: sorting workable solutions from the confusion and complexity
By John Richardson THE GREAT NEWS, as I discussed last month, is that the more 100 countries, including the US, are thought to favour a treaty being proposed at the next UN Environment Assembly that would set targets for reducing plastic waste in the environment. A date in has now been set for the meeting […]
China To Now Raise Ethylene Capacity By 84% As Self-Sufficiency Drive Accelerates
By John Richardson SINCE my last update on 18 September, our ICIS China team have discovered a further 2.4m tonnes/year of ethylene capacity being planned in China via the steam cracker process (see the updated table above, with the changes from September indicated in red). There will also of course be more propylene via steam […]
Reassessing China Petchem Projects
By John Richardson Methanol-to-olefins (MTO) projects in China are subject to more disagreement over viability than any other group of petrochemicals investments, said HSBC in a report released last month. HSBC, for example, takes a pretty negative view of the economics of MTO projects. This applies both to planned investments based on locally-sourced coal – […]
Feedstock Assumptions A Risk
By John Richardson THE feedstock landscape can change very rapidly as the shale-gas revolution amply demonstrates. But the assumption, right now, is that the landscape will not undergo any further radical changes. As a result, as much as 7.65m tonne/year could be added to US ethylene capacity by 2017. That would represent a 29 percent […]
Butadiene Oversupply Threat
By John Richardson THERE is a lot of talk at the moment about on-purpose butadiene, via the butane dehydrogenation process, because of the recent extreme market tightness . The tightness is the result of a shift to lighter cracker feedstocks and reduced operating rates at naphtha crackers in Europe. Future feedstock patterns are also not […]
China Coal-to-Chems Challenges
By John Richardson CHINA’s coal reserves will last only another 38 years at their present rate of extraction, according to Kai Pflug, CEO of Shanghai-based consultancy, Management Consulting – Chemicals, in this article from ICIS Chemical Business. This suggests that the current enthusiasm for coal-based chemicals, as coal supplies become constrained, might wane among China’s […]
China looks for LPG
By Malini Hariharan The blog has been trying to get more information on what’s driving Chinese interest in liquefied petroleum gas (LPG)-based petrochemical projects. Plans for eight propane dehydrogenation (PDH) plants have already been announced and more could be in the pipeline as Chinese companies believe the country’s propylene deficit will expand in the coming […]
Polymers start the year on a robust note, but how long will it last?
By Malini Hariharan and John Richardson Expect the unexpected and you probably stand a good chance of making money in the polymer market. Defying expectations of a slowdown in demand ahead of the Chinese new year in February markets have started 2010 with a bang – material is short and prices are steadily moving up. […]
Shell plans for the long-term
See below for an extended interview with Shell Chemicals vice president, Ben van Beurden, who talks of the search for new feedstock sources. He raises the possiblity of using syngas from the Pearl GTL project in Qatar to make methanol and then olefins. Or perhaps the high paraffinic naphtha and ethane from the same project […]