By John Richardson I HAVE spent the last two weeks travelling in the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia and during that time, I didn’t meet one senior petrochemicals industry executive who talked in detail about demand. Instead, the focus of just about everything they wanted to discuss was supply. The big question on […]
Asian Chemical Connections
China Is The World’s New Swing Petchems Producer
By John Richardson CHINA is the new “swing producer” in some global petrochemicals markets, as is the case with US shale oil producers in the global oil market. Let’s start with US shale oil. Here, the Catch 22 situation is that every time global oil prices edge up, the US shale industry will boost production. Breakeven […]
Oil Prices: How To Avoid “Rear-View Mirror” Thinking
By John Richardson EARLIER this year I said that crude prices in the region of $30 a barrel were perfectly possible. Now, rather belatedly I feel, Goldman Sachs and other some other analysts are waking up to this possibility, with Goldman even going as far as saying $2o a barrrel is possible. Chemicals companies cannot […]
China: New Catch Phrase Backs Up Old Data
By John Richardson OLD data doesn’t always go away. What instead sometimes happens is that people slightly adapt their old growth forecasts to suit changing events. “The rapid growth of China’s service sector and its consumer-led economy” has thus become the new catch phrase used to justify numbers that look only slightly different from those […]
China’s Chemicals Strategy: More Complexity
By John Richardson THE more that things change to some extent the more they stay the same in China. This is adding another layer of complexity to forecasting where the country’s chemicals industry is heading. Take this article from the New York Times as a great example, where an astonishing 155 coal-fired power plant projects […]
China Polyethylene: Please Tread Very Carefully
By John Richardson HAND on heart, how many of you saw the above slide coming? As you can see, China’s polypropylene (PP) self—sufficiency will have risen from 69% in 2010 to 82% in 2015. And by 2020, we forecast it will be at 88%, leaving very little room for imports. The widespread assumption is that […]
China Reforms Stay On Track With 8% Credit Fall
By John Richardson THE above chart shows the moving average growth of total social financing (TSF) in China since 2009 in US dollars. You can see the surge in the growth of TSF from 2009 until 2013 and its subsequent decline. This decline has followed the crucial 3rd Plenum Meeting in November 2013, when China […]
Deflation, Customer Cost Cutting And Polyolefins
By John Richardson MOST of the world’s top ten chemicals producers reported lower sales for Q3 2015, but saw their profits improve on lower oil prices. Sticking to the sector which I follow closely, which is polyolefins, this is down to a “lag effect”. The collapse of oil and so naphtha costs has not being […]
Latest US Jobs Report Means Oil At $100 In Early 2017
By John Richardson THE US economy is well and truly back is the conclusion you will reach if you read just the front page newspaper articles following the release of last Friday’s October jobs report. “Friday’s numbers are a vindication of Fed chair Janet Yellen,” was, for example, what the Financial Times wrote on the front […]
CEOs Need To Get Rid Of The “Fear Factor”
It now makes sense to reduce my number of blog posts to three a week – on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays – as the “argument” stage of the New Normal is much closer to being over. Far more people than was the case just 12 months ago recognise that our view of the world stacks […]
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