February 2008 Archives

First bottles, now bags. The UK’s mass-circulation conservative Daily Mail newspaper has today launched a “Banish the Bags” campaign to rid the country of plastic bags.

The front cover of the paper has a photo of a photogenic family laden down with orange carrier bags after a supermarket shop, followed by an equally large photo of a sea turtle drowning after swallowing a plastic bag.

It looks like the Mail missed last week’s anti plastic bottle campaign, and is running fast to catch up. The Blog is on holiday, but has been shaken awake by the crashing noise of bandwagons being jumped on.

I saw this great chemical pun in a gallery in Bristol at the weekend. It's from a series of amusing drawings by Simon Drew, who works in pen and ink with an emphasis on wildlife and everyday subjects.

For our Tex-Mex chemical friends in Houston, there is a tequila-themed drawing too.

Another fabulous polycarbonate roof goes on display today with the opening of the new Beijing airport, designed by Norman Foster.
"The largest building in the world opens ahead of schedule and in time for the 2008 Olympics", according to an article today in Building.

Click here for more Blog pix of PC roofs.

Lucy Craymer has looked into the future, and sees.....self-healing rubber stockings.

While I like the idea of stockings that don’t ladder (she writes) I’m not sure I’m so keen on this self repairing rubber that has been taking up space in the press over the last week.

Heralded as a future solution to chipped paint, shattered glass and torn clothing the supramolecular rubber is said to re-bond when pressed together as its molecular structure seeks to build bridges.

Although made from vegetable oil and other natural substances the idea of something being able to repair itself gives me the heeby jeebies - mind you this could be because self healing rubber seems a little too “Terminator” for me.

It was a stellar night for petrochemicals at the Oscars.
Daniel Day-Lewis won Best Actor for “There Will Be Blood”, a film about a ruthless oil prospector and first reviewed here on the Blog in November.
“No Country for Old Men”, set in the wide open spaces of oil-rich Texas, swept the board with four Oscars.
And in Oscar fashion news, Tilda Swinton, winner of Best Supporting Actress in “Michael Clayton”, where she plays the general counsel of an evil fertilizer company, turned up for the Oscars ceremony “like an otter rising from an oil slick” according to one fashion columnist, and "wearing a plastic bin bag" according to another.

A new oil novel has just been published in the UK. “Rigged: The True Story of an Ivy League Kid Who Changed the World of Oil, from Wall Street to Dubai” by Ben Mezrich has some very mixed reviews on amazon.com, but on the author’s own website he writes that Kevin Spacey has taken out an option to make a movie of it.

Click here for more blog book reviews with tenuous chemicals connections.

It’s Day One of the ICIS Base Oils conference in London, and this is one mega-conference. It’s grown from 100 to 400 delegates, out-growing its various homes along the way and now filling the grand ballroom at the Hilton on Park Lane.

What I specially like about this crowd is that they make no secret of the fact that they want to spend these two days doing some heavy networking, and although they might drop in to the papers they really want to hear, they are happier to hang out in the coffee areas together. When the conference used to be at the Millenium Hotel, the noise of the networking used to intrude into the conference itself – sounding like there was a riot going on outside. Here too, there was a mid-morning noise surge from the rear of the hall where the networking was already getting a bit out of hand.

But the guys who are sitting through the conference sessions are keen. At the Q+A sessions there’s a real sea of hands, although some of those questions are quite incomprehensible, leaving the speakers looking at each other in bafflement. Still, I’ve sat through enough conferences where the chairman’s request for questions resulted in just an embarrassing silence, so all questions are very welcome.

You can also weigh up a conference by the fidget factor, and these guys are sitting stock still, even in the tricky pre-lunch slot. I thought their patience would be tested by the introductory ONE HOUR paper, but they were real pros.

You can read news articles from the “12th World Base Oils and Lubricants Conference” on ICIS news. Click here to read Shelley’s article on base oils supply issues. And Anu’s article on Asian base oils production cuts.

Petrobras kicked off IP Week on Sunday at the Mandarin Oriental in London (writes our party-going Baseoils editor, Shelley Kerr). Much fun was had by all and after a few Caiparinhas, guests were following the 10-piece Samba band and dancers around the hotel.

Inspired by my eco-daughter and her impoverished student friends, my husband and I declined the kind offer of the waiter at my birthday dinner this week to partake of a variety of exotically bottled mineral waters and demanded a jug of tap water. And very delicious it was too.

Across Europe, restaurant diners are baulking at the exorbitant and unnecessary expense of bottled water. Office workers have tap water filtered through water coolers. And Friends of the Earth tells us that the single most effective act that individuals can do to improve the environment is to stop drinking bottled water.

In an article in the Times on Saturday, the UK Environment Minister was quoted as saying that “it borders on being morally unacceptable.” Columnist and restaurant critic Giles Coren writes: “In 2008 drinkers of bottled water are the new smokers.”

What will this mean for the petrochemical industry, where polyethylene and PET bottles are significant drivers of demand?

It seems that this is National Nest Box Week in the UK, and today BBC Radio had top architect Will Alsop revealing his new designer nest box made of polycarbonate.

There was also this multi-coloured cone-shaped birdbox made from acrylic.

If you ever thought that in choosing cotton over polyester you were opting for a natural fabric, read this review from Saturday’s Times of a new and harrowing book about the cotton industry: “Fugitive Denim A Moving Story of People and Pants” (I was sure this must be a misprint, but it really is the title.)

“Though cotton makes up only about 3 per cent of our global agricultural land, it consumes nearly a quarter of the world's insecticides and 10 per cent of the world's pesticides - more than any other crop. The average pair of jeans carries three quarters of a pound of chemicals.”
It’s certainly something to bear in mind when talking about product substitution.

This is the first in a new and undoubtedly short series of adorable chemical advertisements. Plasticisers and a newborn baby – you gotta love it.

I read at the weekend that BP is selling off former chairman Lord Browne’s Gulfstream executive jet, under “new broom sweeps clean” chairman Tony “Hairshirt” Hayward. This reminds me that at last week’s ICIS methanol lunch, trader Dieter told me that he was just back from a business trip in his chairman’s corporate jet. He’d been thrilled to be invited, but was grilled throughout the whole flight on every aspect of his trading so that he couldn’t enjoy one moment of the trip. If there’s no such thing as a free lunch, as they say, you can be sure there’s no such thing as a free trip on a corporate jet.

The Blog is captivated by this great online interactive graphic brought to us by the New Scientist Short Sharp Science Blog, which shows how connected each of the US candidates is to the oil industry. So far, the top runners in the oily candidates' league table don't seem to be doing too well.

The Blog is excited to hear from new brokers Excalibur that they intend to inject a little fun into their work, through their Valentine's Special.

"We are offering free Valentine’s day chocolates for everyone who does a deal with us until 14 February," broker Kent Hurst told our aromatics reporter, Peter Salisbury, adding that a number of boxes had already been dispatched.

You can read Peter's full article about the new brokerage on ICIS news.

The oil movie, There Will Be Blood, opens in Europe this week and has set us wondering what the Top Ten Chemical Movie Scenes of all time would be. Particular thanks to Nigel, who is always quoting the line from The Graduate, and to John Baker and Andy Price on ICB who clearly spent their formative years watching black-and-white British comedies.

1 "I want to say one word to you... Plastics.... There's a great future in plastics," - advice given to Dustin Hoffman by his father's friend in The Graduate.

2 Crop spraying scene - as Cary Grant is pursued by a cropduster plane in North by Northwest.

3 The Joker in Batman gets his face ripped off with acid.

4 Making soap from human body fat in Fight Club.

5 Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - where Jekyll takes the potion

6 Local Hero - Scottish fishing village versus Houston oil barons

7 The Wages of Fear - all about the transportation of a batch of nitroglycerine explosive

8 The James Cagney movie White Heat, where he ends up on top of an LNG sphere (according to John Baker)

9 Erin Brockovich - Julia Roberts fights a ground water pollution legal case in a succession of revealing outfits.

10 The Alec Guinness Ealing comedy, The Man in the White Suit - about a northern chemist who invents an indestructible and stay-clean fibre! (John Baker)

I see the debate about plastics in fashion is hotting up. After the gorgeous and revealing Yves Saint Laurent acrylic cocktail outfit profiled here on the Blog, I find an inspiring article from our own correspondent in New York, John Hoffman, extolling the virtues of plastic shoes and synthetic coats over leather Oxfords and traditional wool winter coats.

"Walk down any street in America....(everyone is wearing)..sneakers, running shoes, casual shoes.. that are virtually all plastic....(and) wearing plastic coats," he writes admiringly in ICIS Chemical Business magazine. Quite so, but looking around the well-dressed guests at last week's ICIS industry lunch in London, I think he'll have a long way to go in persuading the European petrochemical crowd to wear their own products.

If the outdoor cigarette break is now a regular feature of your corporate life, you can look forward to the new "snack size" compact cigarette which tobacco giant Philip Morris is about to launch. According to this Sunday Times article, the Marlboro Intense cigarette which is 7.2 cm long, compared to the normal 8.5 cm, will be tested in Turkey but with a view to selling in more than 50 countries which now have bans on smoking in public places.

Are you tired of chatting with business contacts on yahoo? Wouldn't you rather spend your time in deeper, more meaningful conversations or even productive work? According to the New Scientist blog, you can now create your own Cybertwin who will chat to your friends and customers on your behalf.