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Asian Chemical Connections

PE margins turn negative as economic risks build

By John Richardson CASH margins for Asian linear-low density polyethylene (LLDPE) for naphtha-based producers have turned negative for the first time since Q1 2015, according to an industry contact. And this is of course before the flood of new US LLDPE production arrives in Asia. No matter how you crunch the numbers, the likely increase […]

US Economic Rescue Fails On Missing Human Factor

By John Richardson THE US Federal Reserve thought it understood how the world worked, thanks to its FRB/US (Ferbus) computer model. “Assuming that the FRB/US model does a good job of capturing the macroeconomic implications of declining house prices, such an event does not pose a particularly difficult challenge for monetary policy,” John Williams, then […]

Butadiene An Extreme Example

By John Richardson BUTADIENE is an extreme example of what my fellow blogger Paul Hodges described yesterday as happening across several major petrochemicals markets. Panicky buyers have, just as they did last year, “bought forward” in the hope that by so doing they will hedge against even higher feedstock costs in the future. But this […]

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