The casual observer might be forgiven for imagining that the US ethylene industry should be seeing its biggest export boom of recent decades. Its ethane feedstock cost is back at its normal 25c-30c/gal range of a decade ago, whilst its oil-based competitors have seen their prices quadruple as oil moved to $100/bbl. But as the chart shows for […]
Chemicals and the Economy
US housing starts stumble as rental demand weakens
US housing is core to the US economy. And as the US economy is 22% of the global economy, developments in housing matter to all of us. We learnt this during the subprime Crisis, when the blog’s warnings that the supposed boom was an illusion were ignored until too late. Now the same problem is developing again. Thus […]
US PVC exports stall, despite shale gas cost advantage
You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make her drink. That seems to be the critical message from the current state of US PVC export demand. This should be booming, based on the cost advantage provided by shale gas. But reality is different, as the chart based on Global Trade Information Services […]
European cracker operating rates drop below 80%
Q1 was another miserable quarter for EU olefin producers. As the chart shows, based on APPE data, ethylene production at 4.7MT was at the lowest level in the past 10 years, with the exception of 2009. In fact, one has to go back to 1997 to find a lower figure: • Operating rates were thus […]
EU chloralkali markets weaken in H2
Chlorine and caustic soda production are a key indicator of economic growth. They have been produced in large volumes for over a century, and have a extremely wide range of uses from pharmaceutical and aluminium production to detergents and disinfection. The blog’s mid-year review of European data from Eurochlor showed worrying signs of a slowdown, […]
EU faces US competition in PVC export markets
The blog continues this week’s special series on chloralkali and PVC markets by looking at EU developments on PVC. Historically the EU has had strong export positions into markets such as Turkey and Russia, which lack major local production. More recently, as in the USA, strong export demand for caustic soda and weak domestic demand […]
Shale gas supports US PVC exports
Yesterday the blog discussed caustic soda, and the recent importance of China’s metal demand. Today it focuses on chlorine and PVC. PVC is the largest end-use for chlorine. It is also critical for chloralkali producers when caustic demand is strong, as recently. Chlorine itself cannot be safely stored in large volumes, and so instead they […]
Russia’s chemical production continues to grow
Russia has been the great exception in regional chemical markets. Normally, production growth starts at a high level, often 15% a year or more, and then slows as markets become more mature. But in Russia, output collapsed with the Berlin Wall after 1989, and growth was actually negative until the mid-2000s. Since then, there has […]
Ethylene derivative imports threaten European markets
The chart above is a flashing amber light for European cracker operators. Based on ICIS Pricing data, it shows the delta between (a) European and US ethylene contract prices (blue line), and (b) Europe and the North East Asian spot price (red line). Usually, these deltas range between -$50/t and $100/t. H2 2008 was clearly […]
China’s futures markets give mixed messages
China’s Dalian futures market has been attracting world headlines recently, with its status as China’s leading market for chemical futures being confirmed. As such, one would expect its pricing for the two major polymers traded, LLDPE (linear low density polyethylene) and PVC, to follow similar patterns. But this seems not to be the case. The […]
Jump to page: