By John Richardson HERE are some observations, from several discussions with market participants this week, about what is happening in China’s key polyethylene (PE) market: If the oil price stays at $40-50 a barrel then payment collection from local customers, who kept going into the market to buy resin when they thought the crude market […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Chemical Sales, Capital Spending In A Weaker Oil-Price World
By John Richardson THE above chart shows the top 23 of the latest ICIS Top 100 ranking of global chemicals companies by sales in US dollars for 2013. When the 2014 numbers have been fully compiled and released later this year, some targets sales growth might well be missed. “We never imagined that the oil […]
Indonesia: Seize The Day
By John Richardson IT WAS criminally wrong. Yes, criminally wrong. Financial speculators drove up the price oil to $100 a barrel and more, which forced developing countries to waste many billions of dollars on fuel subsidies. This was money that should and could have been spent on better infrastructure, education, healthcare and sanitation. The irony […]
This Is No Way To Run Companies In The Future
By John Richardson WHEN the history of 2015 is eventually written, there will no doubt be some petrochemicals industry executives who will say, “I simply didn’t see this coming”. This will to some extent be disingenuous as for share price reasons it is better to stick with the consensus view even if you hold private […]
How To Get Through 2015 In One Piece (More Or Less)
By John Richardson EVERY time the oil price stabilises for just a few days there is pretty widespread talk of the market having found a bottom and that a rebound is about to begin. A case in point was last week, when, before the oil price fell below $50 a barrel, two days of relative […]
Oil Markets In One Word: China
By John Richardson A COMMENT I have heard so many times over the last two months is that once oil prices settle down, China’s petrochemicals buyers will have to come back in large numbers in order to replenish what must be, by now, very low inventory levels. For example, last month I was told: “If […]
China Petrochemicals In 2015: Five More Predictions
By John Richardson HERE are five more predictions for China’s petrochemicals markets during 2015: 1.) Polyethylene, polypropylene (PP), phenol, purified terephthalic acid (PTA) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) will be just some of the products that will see declines in imports on rising self-sufficiency and a further slowdown in the local economy. As an example, the […]
US Petrochemicals: Three Predictions For 2015
By John Richardson AS you can see from the table below, there are no less than 12 US ethane-based cracker projects being planned with lots of associated downstream capacity. Theoretically, this represents: 14.8m tonnes/year of new ethylene capacity at these 12 proposed facilities. There are also eight planned expansions of existing plants, adding up to […]
Europe: Three Very Easy Predictions For 2015
By John Richardson HERE are some alarming facts about Europe: If you include all the people who have become disheartened and so have dropped out of the labour force, the Spanish employment rate fell from 66% in 2007 to just 56% in 2014. In Greece, employment has fallen to below 50% since 2007. “Chancellor Angela […]
China Polyethylene: Three Predictions For 2015
By John Richardson THE chart below serves as an excellent illustration of the big shift in consensus thinking about China’s overall economy, as it shows that: PE imports surged in January on the belief that China would “blink” – and they remained, on the whole, strong until October. The resilience in imports persisted despite evidence […]
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