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Asian Chemical Connections

China to invest in Iran petrochemical projects?

By Malini Hariharan The recent sanctions are making business operations difficult for Iranian petrochemical producers. And just when questions were being raised about the prospects of the country’s numerous projects, news has emerged that Iran and China are on the verge of finalizing a pact which will see China invest money in Iranian petchems. The […]

Diminishing Returns From Middle East Projects

Downtown Riyadh     By John Richardson As my fellow blogger Malini Hariharan wrote last week “the projects environment in the Middle East has irrevocably changed” and with it the rather glib and outdated assumption still being frequently made that building capacity in the region represents a licence to print money. First of all, as […]

The Unexpected Bonus For Polyolefins – In Summary

Every dark cloud has a silver lining… By John Richardson GLOBAL polyolefins markets are being kept very tight be a collection of what might seem like only temporary factors. But in the case of the butene-1 shortage, for example, (see below) this has been restricting linear-low density polyethylene (LLDPE) for more than a year. And many […]

US Polyolefins Confront Tough H2

Source of picture: www.usaembassy.com     By John Richardson THE US poyolefins industry has enjoyed a remarkable recovery since the depths of the financial crisis thanks to major feedstock advantages in polyethylene (PE) and the rebound in the domestic economy. Booming demand from China also attracted substantial imports of PE and polypropylene (PP) from the […]

Adapting to a new environment

By Malini Hariharan The blog has been regularly highlighting the changes to the Middle East petrochemical environment where feedstock issues have been clouding prospects for new cracker projects and also affecting operations at existing plants. “We are trying to figure out at what price to offer gas or naphtha to ensure a project is viable […]

Dolphins And Taiwan Petrochemicals

  The Indo-Pacific Humpback Dolphin Source of picture: townsvilledolphins.org     By John Richardson AS Singapore forges ahead with its petrochemicals-expansion ambitions (it would be unwise for us to share rumours about potential new investors in cracker complexes on Jurong Island), spare a thought for the embattled Taiwanese industry. The environmental controversy surrounding the Formosa […]

Indian PP producers benefit from strong growth

By Malini Hariharan Indian polypropylene (PP) demand continues to remain strong with most end-use sectors showing good growth and it is local producers who are catering to the additional requirement. Polypropylene (PP) demand is estimated to have expanded by 13% to 809,000 tonnes during April-July, reports my colleague Prema Viswanathan on ICIS news. But import […]

Polyethylene And Alice In Wonderland

  Source of picture: the-office.com     By John Richardson A FURTHER illustration of the Alice in Wonderland world of financial investors versus the fundamentals of real demand was provided by the Dalian Commodity Exchange earlier this week. “Some investment funds started snapping up linear low density PE (LLDPE) futures in anticipation of improvement in […]

Polyethylene Price Recovery Built On House Of Cards

  Source of picture: keplarllp.com   By John Richardson It always seemed as if the Asian polyethylene (PE) price rebound was built on a house of cards. The Chinese economy is slowing down, the country’s domestic production has greatly increased and new capacity in the Middle East – though still plagued by start-up and operating […]

Map Ta Phut issue drags on

By Malini Hariharan The Thai government is doing all it can to quickly resolve the Map Ta Phut crisis but full operations at PTT Chem’s new cracker is likely only in early 2011. Feedstock ethane for the 1m tonnes/year cracker will be supplied from PTT’s No6 gas separation plant commissioning of which has been held […]

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