In a surprise move which rates very highly in the realms of Blog gossip and has set all the yahoo messenger screens buzzing, petrochemical trader Trammochem announced today that Ashok Kishore - well-known trader in aromatics - would "assume the responsibility of Trammochem's worldwide trading activities".
Click here for the full ICIS news article.
Dry-cleaners across the
A hedge-fund manager told
Congress is considering introducing measures to limit futures speculation, although the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) insists it's nothing to do with the traders and purely a supply/demand issue.
US Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson is in
Peter Salisbury in Bangkok on the trail of Asian aromatics sends his "Letter from Bangkok"...Call me cliched, but Thailand is a great place to hold a conference on the petrochemical industry in Asia.
A fantastic mix of the ultra-modern and the ancient, Land Cruisers glide past tuk-tuk taxis, and a multitude of street vendors sell delicious snacks outside gigantic shopping complexes spilling over to the brim with the latest in consumer electronics.
We are in Bangkok for the 4th Asian Aromatics and Derivatives conference, chaired by old ICIS friends, International Echem's John and Paul, with the former enthusiastically taking to cultural integration on our first night, joining in with some Thai dancers (by invitation, I hasten to add) at dinner.
A quick trip to one of the night markets the next evening with ICIS Singapore's Mahua and Roland shows that whatever talk there may be of economic downturn, commerce in the Thai capital is alive and well.
I also find out where a hefty proportion of the country's plastics production must go, as we are innundated with offers of the latest CDs and DVDs, many suspiciously not even out in the shops in the UK.
The conference itself has been just as lively, with a number of attendees bullish on the future of the petchem industry in Asia. And with good reason, it seems. "Even if GDP in China fell from plus 10% to 5%, as much as a disaster as it would be, the number would still be enviable in the West," I am told over and over again.
Amongst a really great line-up, standout performances go to Reliance's Rajen Udeshi for his masterful summary of the PTA market and the surprising role that biodiesel now has to play in its growth, and Daniel de Blocq van Scheltinga who tells us that all is not lost for producers seeking finance.
Other high points have been meeting Mahua and Roland, champion barterers and lovely people to boot, and the generally kind and gentle nature of everyone in Thailand.
There is much more to say than this of course, and I will add some more to the Blog on Monday, but for now I will bid you goodbye. If you want to see more of what has been said at the conference, go to ICIS news for write-ups of Rajen and Daniel's papers and an interview with International eChem's Paul Hodges.
Oh, and if you are game for a laugh, check out the podcasts from the World Phenol Acetone Conference in Budapest earlier this month. Amongst some really strong presentations is one member of the ICIS Pricing Team singularly failing to crack jokes about Nicolas Anelka and what bears do in woods...
Shelley Kerr, our European baseoils senior editor sends her thoughts from the conference in Kuala Lumpur ...
Base oil industry participants met in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia last week (she writes) to discuss the issues currently facing the market at the 2nd ICIS Asian Base Oils and Lubricants conference.
The Asian focus of the event was indicative of recent shifts in the market, where Asia has not only become the driving force behind growth in the base oils market, but is also swiftly becoming a major producing region. While the busy agenda and pre-conference training kept delegates busy during the day, the delightful Mandarin Oriental and next door KLCC had plenty to offer in terms of entertainment and networking opportunities.
Meanwhile, after two nights in the shadow of the Petronas towers, European base oils editor Shelley Kerr snuck off to KL's Bangsar suburb to sample some local culinary delights before dancing the night away at Velvet with some high stamina base oil traders.
Click here for one of Shelley's thought-provoking news articles from the conference.
The highlight of the Lisbon European Petrochemical Luncheon (EPL) was the spectacular party thrown by Peninsula and Lakeview at a ruined monastery on Friday evening.
With lots of wives and partners over for the weekend, there were more than 100 guests dining under the stars, quaffing wines from the Douro, listening to fado singers and dancing till 4.00 am.
Aside from the party and some rather good lunches down by the harbour, not to mention a very good venue in the Tiara Park Atlantic Hotel - a significant improvement on the usual Brussels location - EPL-goers agreed that the mood of the event had been rather sombre and dominated by fears of further crude hikes.
Click here for news articles filed from the EPL by ICIS senior editors Nel Weddle and Jane Massingham.
Here is another sure-fire money-making idea from the fertile business brain that brought you The Solvent Calendar, and now "The Soundtrack to Paradise". It's going to be a strong seller along the lines of whale song recordings, which are supposed to be very popular with pregnant mums.
This one will be popular with office workers. It's a vivid two-minute recording on a mobile phone of surf crashing repeatedly on a distant sandy shore as palm fronds wave softly in the moonlight, the thin smoke from braziers on the beach wafts across your line of vision and (optional extra) a voice in your ear murmurs, "Can I top that up for you ma'am?"
Play it on headphones from your PC while you are working through lunch to get an Excel spreadsheet to add up.
This masterplan to enhance the corporate workspace follows on the original plan hatched with management training guru Paul Streeter some years ago in Singapore to improve the working environment in the ICIS London office.
We planned to take my photo of the view from the ICIS Singapore office at Millennia Tower, out over the South China Sea with ships plying their trade, tiny islands on the horizon, endless misty equatorial blue - and paste a giant life-size photo of this over the windows of the London office.
Months later Paul turned up to enjoy the new view but was sadly disappointed to see that the plan had not, and still has not been implemented.
It fitted perfectly with his worldly wisdom which he shares at the end of his training courses. If you don't write it down and do it straight away, you will never do it.
OK this is it.
I'm standing on Regent's Road, Edinburgh, looking downhill to the start line, 26.2 miles before me.
Over 16 weeks of training has gone into this.
I need the toilet, my legs ache and feel heavy, and I think I'm getting a cold. Focus!
Are you worried about the smell of your new shower curtain? Or how about the smell of your new car? Now that I mention it, perhaps you had been feeling nervous about the "lurking menace in the bathroom... quietly off-gassing a cruel industrial bouquet of death vapours". I am indebted to Nel for spotting this interesting and amusingly cynical blog called "Lamentations on Chemistry".
Click here for the posting: Good Stink, Bad Stink and Weird Stink.
The younger members of the Blog's family are unimpressed by the photo of my sandy toes framing a view of palm trees and turquoise seas, which I thoughtfully but unsuccessfully tried to text them to celebrate the end of their university exams. Nor do they think much of my plan for a Blog photo-diary of toes framing well-known chemical scenes - the Shell-Mex building in
I'm thinking that this project would make a good fund-raising calendar for a chemically-themed charity. Maybe I will suggest it to my friend Terry at the Solvents Industry Association (SIA, now in conjunction with the CBA) for when they are next raising funds for the solvents abuse charity Re-Solv. It is a pairing of industry-and-charity which some might think teeters precariously on the edge of good taste.
I'm sure it wasn't only on my table at one distant SIA dinner that some drunken jokester suggested that the industry should be encouraging more solvents abuse rather than less. Not such a laugh.
Fine sand is trickling between my toes but my brain is tick-tick-ticking like a biological clock. It was only this morning on this island paradise that I witnessed a scene that made my blood run cold. Through an open door in the lobby, I caught a glimpse of a long table set with pads of paper for a meeting, and a flipchart ready for the day's first presentation. Yes even here at the ends of the earth, the world of corporate meetings is hidden behind only the flimsiest of doors.
Louis Macneice famously wrote in his "Snow" about cruel juxtapositions - the bowl of roses while outside the snow. He knew too well that you can run, but you can't hide from the real world.
I hear today that senior trader Jeroen Baaima has left Interchem to set up a European chemical desk at Vitol in London, which will be handling benzene, toluene, xylenes and pygas. He starts on 1 August and is on leave until then.
One Interchem insider told me today, "I like him very much and I will miss him. He was a man of European culture." Talking of culture - Chris, Paul and I remember fondly a fabulous dinner which he threw at Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum on the occasion of the 5th European Aromatics Conference in 2006.
Also trading places is styrene and solvents trader Roy Denneman who has left Vinmar in the Netherlands. We only heard this today, but there's no news yet on where he is headed.
"The overall energy complex has risen in price, and as a result this has pressured feedstock costs through the entire petrochemical chain," says John Waggoner news editor of Americas at ICIS News, which tracks spot pricing in chemical markets. "It's run up against a soft U.S. economy, so at every step of the production chain you have compression in margins."
Plastics contracts have traded on the London Metals Exchange since 2005. In June of 2005, a ton of polypropylene traded at $951.09; the June 2008 contract traded recently at $1685 per ton. Such a market doesn't exist in the U.S. yet, making it difficult for plastics buyers to hedge themselves, Mr. Waggoner says (they may opt to do so using natural gas, crude oil or propane futures). Polypropylene is a product used in many plastics applications, including packaging, carpeting and lab equipment."
Click here for the full article.
As the summer temperatures rise, Italian energy company ENI SpA announced that this year they will be encouraging employees to dress down for summer, allowing them to reduce air conditioning in their offices by 1 degree and reduce their carbon footprint.
A newspaper leader on "The Arithmetic of Crude Oil" made the Blog smile when it cited Rockefeller's famous recipe for growing rich - "Get up early, work late, and strike oil".
There were also two other good pieces on "Garbage in, petrol out" and "Diesel from algae".
And a piece about worried oil traders, whose part in the global oil price hike is now under scrutiny: "Oil Traders fear for London's position".
While the Blog has been away on holiday (of which, more later), it seems that the mainstream press has been full of items of interest to chemical folk.
UK supermarkets are now selling milk in recyclable plastic pouches, with a plastic jug, or "revolutionary eco-friendly milk container" to store in the fridge, according this article in the Times. 
ExxonMobil started a series of full page ads in the The Daily Telegraph (p7 on 9 June) on "The Global Energy Challenge".
Lucy Kellaway in the FT puts her finger on the button as to why people aren't happy in their corporate jobs. They don't get to spend enough time doing what they consider to be their real job. Beauticians, hairdressers and soldiers, by contrast, spend their working lives doing the work they have chosen to do, and have been trained to do, and are top of the happiness charts.
"The rest of us are dissatisfied because only a tiny amount of the day is spent actually doing what we are supposed to do. The rest is frittered away in meetings, sending pointless e-mails, and in aimless acts of office pettiness, leaving one grumpy and drained."
Paul, who writes the popular "Chemicals and the Economy" blog on www.icis.com, will be co-chairing the conference in Bangkok, along with his partner at International e-Chem, John Keeley (himself just returned from the ICIS Phenol conference in Budapest). I bet Paul will find it's a stark transition from the wilds of Cambodia to the heaving metropolis of Bangkok.
The Blog's colleagues Peter and Julia have returned from this week's ICIS 5th World Phenol/Acetone Conference in Budapest with a shocking tale about a midnight encounter at the 5-star luxury Kempinski Hotel.
Blonde, petite Julia, famed throughout the industry for her daring exploits on petrochemical cooling towers (click here for link), obligingly informed the reception desk at the conference hotel that her colleague Peter would be arriving on a late flight from London.
Hours later, Peter arrived at the hotel, weary from the journey and looking forward to a good night's sleep in advance of his conference debut, where he would be presenting a paper on the benzene market. With his limited Hungarian language skills, he told the hotel receptionist that Julia had informed them of his late arrival and eventually he managed to check in.
Finally crashing in to his room in the dead of night, Peter found to his amazement that he had been given the key to Julia's room and that she was fast asleep in the bed. She says that she was quite surprised too when he burst in to the room.
The hi-tech bras of the future containing "adaptive polymers" will bring welcome support to well-endowed women, according to a paper given at this week's American College of Sports Medicine conference and given full coverage in this posting on New Scientist's Short Sharp Science blog: "When boobs are uncomfortably bouncy".
The blog posting says that the paper was given by "Breast mechanic researcher, Joanna Scurr", which makes me wonder about how she explains that to people at parties. Explaining price reporting on petrochemicals is pretty easy by comparison.
My colleague Nigel Davis is bemused by the new advertising campaign from Evonik.
We're not certain in the ICIS London office (he writes) - and neither is our correspondent in Frankfurt for that matter - whether the latest copy from Evonik's advertising agency, created to announce the CVC stock purchase, is a joke.
It shows a locust with a smile. The caption is "Freuschrecke, Hopperus investorus". It's a pun on the German word Heuschrecke (locust/grasshopper), and freuen (happy).
The message at the foot of the ad is: "We are looking forward to a successful future with our new partner CVC".
It'll be interesting to see how this translates into English if they want to place the advert in magazines like ICIS Chemical Business, our German correspondent says.
For Nigel's full article on ICIS news on the Evonik IPO, click here.
The Blog has received a nice calling card in this morning's emails from Kevin, Marcelo and Gerry in New York who are announcing the set-up of their new outfit, Blue Ocean Brokerage. The three ex-Starsupply brokers will be based in their offices on Fifth Avenue, New York.
After the departure in September 2007 of Starsupply's European aromatics brokers, it looks like Star will be a bit short on the aromatics side for the near future.
The Blog wonders whether they will be using the acronym BOB ...
Frequent flyers in Europe's petrochemical heartland of the Benelux will be interested to read that the Dutch airline KLM has announced an agreement with Algae-Link to procure algae oil to be blended with its conventional jet fuel.
Testing will begin in autumn 2008, with a view to fuelling 50 planes with algae-based kerosene by 2010.
Not surprisingly, this new film release hasn't got much to say about chemicals, since it is an occult thriller inspired by the life of the mystic, Aleister Crowley. Written by Bruce Dickinson, front man of the legendary Iron Maiden, and Julian Doyle (Time Bandits, Life of Brian), and released in the UK on 30 May, it has received uniformly poor reviews and a rather mean 2-star rating (out of 5) from The Times, whose reviewer says:
The Blog has refrained on this occasion from adding the link to the trailer, which does indeed contain all of the above, but curious readers will be able to google it easily enough.
