By John Richardson SAVING money through energy efficiency, along with innovation, will be two of the keys to success in the New Normal because demand-growth patterns will be very different than during the Supercycle. The suspension, which guaranteed success for everybody, has gone. We are therefore going to see some creative destruction amongst chemicals and […]
Asian Chemical Connections
China’s Rough Ride To Sustainable Growth
By John Richardson IT makes no sense whatsoever to think that the transition to another type of growth in China will inevitably be so smooth that there is hardly any disruption to the global economy, and, with it, of course, the chemicals industry. The issues facing China are too complex and too myriad for the […]
Australia: Nice Work If You Were Able To Get It
By John Richardson BACK in the late 1990s, the blog held a discussion with an Australian petrochemicals industry executive. He described his country’s approach to free trade, or rather the lack of it, as “to put it politely, naïve, and to put is less politely, plain stupid.” He was referring to how Australia had aggressively […]
Come On Mr Abbott, Please
By John Richardson TONY Abbott, in his victory speech on Saturday following the Coalition victory in the Australian Federal Election, renewed his pledge to scrap the carbon tax, stop the boat people and bring the budget back into surplus. Come on Mr Abbott, please. The blog has to admit, in this time of nonsensical sound-bite politics, […]
US Energy Supply: Morning In America
Source: ICIS Chemical Business By John Richardson SEVEN grassroots crackers are now being planned in the US, along with numerous ethylene derivatives facilities (see the above table). The mood at last month’s the 38th American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) International Petrochemical meeting (IPC) in San Antonio, Texas, was incredibly buoyant on record current […]
Multiple Energy Options In China
Source of table: The Economist By John Richardson WHEN you are an energy giant such as Shell you can afford to explore multiple avenues in an effort to profit from China’s long-term energy needs. Thus Shell re-affirmed last week that it plans to invest $1bn in a year in exploiting the country’s vast shale-gas […]
SABIC And Sinopec’s Trinidad Partnership
By Malini Hariharan More news has emerged on the Trinidad methanol and methanol-to-olefins (MTO) project covered by the blog last week. Chinese major Sinopec is likely to be SABIC’s partner for the $5.3bn project. The two companies are in negotiations with the Trinidad government, said SABIC. With Sinopec as a partner, SABIC would gain access […]
Methanol moves
By Malini Hariharan Recent moves by methanol majors to boost their capacities have caught the blog’s attention. Sabic’s chief financial officer Mutlaq al-Morished disclosed at a press conference yesterday in Dubai that the company is in talks for a methanol project in Trinidad and Tobago. Morished declined to provide details as the talks were being […]
Constant Search For Feedstock Advantage
By John Richardson AROUND $6bn worth of proposed petrochemical investments in Kazakhstan – the giant central Asian country with abundant oil and gas reserves – once again confirms the three most important factors for success: Feedstock, feedstock and feedstock. “The gas that will supply these projects is sufficiently advantaged to overcome major construction and logistics […]
Banking on gas
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 […]
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