Guest blogger today is again Ajay Parmar in the third of his posts. He is a chemical engineering professional with 5 years of industrial experience in oil refining, primarily in a process engineering capacity. He joined ICIS in 2018 as a Senior Analyst and currently works on developing a price forecasting model for crude oil and […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Oil Prices, Chemicals Markets Face Steep Declines
By John Richardson THERE are three things you need to know about today’s global chemicals markets: Oil prices are now retreating back to quite probably below $30/bbl, and so of course there will be a chemicals destocking process. But the good news, if you can call it that, is that the destocking process won’t be […]
Oil Prices: Beware Return Of The Financial Bears
By John Richardson THE above chart shows the extent to which this year’s oil-price rally has been led by futures markets. What is significant, though, is that futures activity seems to have plateaued. Sure, futures activity could easily go the other way again, driving prices significantly above the $50/bbl level. But barring a decision by […]
US Shale Oil Was Never Going To Stand Still
By John Richardson TECHNOLOGY doesn’t stand still. That’s the whole point about technology as any oil, gas or chemicals engineer will tell you. The above chart is a fantastic example of this. It shows how the efficiency of US oil rigs, thanks to improvements in the fracking process, has improved by leaps and bounds from […]
China Is The World’s New Swing Petchems Producer
By John Richardson CHINA is the new “swing producer” in some global petrochemicals markets, as is the case with US shale oil producers in the global oil market. Let’s start with US shale oil. Here, the Catch 22 situation is that every time global oil prices edge up, the US shale industry will boost production. Breakeven […]
Oil Prices: Why We Are Where We Are Today
By John Richardson TWO months ago, when I was delivering a training course, people responded with deep scepticism when I suggested that oil-price stability at around $65 a barrel wouldn’t be sustained during the second half of the year. And when I suggested the price would soon fall to below $50 a barrel, the […]
The US: Worrying About What Really Matters
By John Richardson I WAS involved in a debate recently over how a glut of propane in storage in the US had led to propane prices in the States being so low that propane-fed crackers in the US had become more competitive than those in the Middle East. This was just about the first time that […]
Shallow Discussions Versus Complex Oil Price, Economic Realities
By John Richardson IT has been a very good year so far for European and Asian naphtha cracker operators, as the chart above illustrates. As you can see, in the case of high-density polyethylene (HDPE), naphtha-based integrated margins in 2015 are turning out to be a better so far this year than those in 2013 […]
Oil Price Rally Built On Very Fragile Ground
By John Richardson OIL prices rallied yesterday on an unexpected fall in inventories at Cushing in the US to 61.7 million barrels for the week ending 24 April (see the above chart). This was a decline of 514,000 barrels over the previous week, which compared with forecasts of an increase of 400,000 barrels. So does […]
Rising US Oil Supply And How Innovation Never Stands Still
By John Richardson NECESSITY is the mother of new inventions, and also of innovations that make improvements on old inventions. When, for example, oil and gas prices were sky-high in the US, this prompted the late and great George Mitchell (see right) to persist with research that led to modern hydraulic fracturing techniques. Now we […]
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