Source: ICIS Chemical Business By John Richardson SEVEN grassroots crackers are now being planned in the US, along with numerous ethylene derivatives facilities (see the above table). The mood at last month's the 38th American Fuel & Petrochemical...
Source of table: The Economist By John Richardson WHEN you are an energy giant such as Shell you can afford to explore multiple avenues in an effort to profit from China's long-term energy needs. Thus Shell re-affirmed last...
By Malini Hariharan More news has emerged on the Trinidad methanol and methanol-to-olefins (MTO) project covered by the blog last week. Chinese major Sinopec is likely to be SABIC's partner for the $5.3bn project. The two companies are in negotiations...
By Malini Hariharan Recent moves by methanol majors to boost their capacities have caught the blog's attention. Sabic's chief financial officer Mutlaq al-Morished disclosed at a press conference yesterday in Dubai that the company is in talks for a methanol...
By John Richardson AROUND $6bn worth of proposed petrochemical investments in Kazakhstan - the giant central Asian country with abundant oil and gas reserves - once again confirms the three most important factors for success: Feedstock, feedstock and feedstock. "The...
By Malini Hariharan Is the International Energy Agency (IEA) being extremely bullish in predicting a 'golden age' for natural gas over the next 25 years? In a recently released report (available here) the IEA forecasts a 55% growth in global...
By John Richardson THE extent of the weakness in China 's polyolefins market has become more apparent as a result of reports that a much-anticipated increase in Middle East production hasn't happened. Back in February, oil production in Saudi...
Source of picture: robertsamsterdam By John Richardson IT will only be a question of making a large rather than a huge amount of money if you only take into account the relatively minor increases being forecast for Saudi...
Here is another article on the liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) market, a subject we have covererd several times on the blog over the last few months. Below we discuss how the temporary supply constraints that have kept LPG tight this...
By John Richardson In theory there should be an additional 20-30m tonne/year of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) coming on-stream between 2008-2012, according to Petrochemical Corp of Singapore (PCS) - the Singapore Jurong Island-based cracker operator. This could lead to 5-10m...
Deepwater disaster expected to impact shale gas Source of picture: Minnpost.com By John Richardson THE booming shale-gas industry could either benefit or suffer from the BP Gulf of Mexico oil-well disaster, with the end-result determined by the effect...
By John Richardson ExxonMobil's purchase of XTO Energy for US$41bn seems to support the widely-held view that natural gas is the fuel for the future. XTO specialises in the technology necessary to exploit shale gas and other hard-to-get-at unconventional...
Source of picture: gilesbowkett.blogspot.com The excellent daily energy and shipping report, The Schork Report said today that the bottom had "fallen out of the entire (energy) complex." With the Bulls on the defensive, the authors believe that crude could...
As delegates gather for this year's European Petrochemical Association meeting in the unreal world of Monaco (unreal for the 99.9 per cent recurring of us who don't own Ferraris), I thought it was worth summarising some of the issues...
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