By John Richardson JUST as hundreds of millions of people in the developing world went straight to mobile phones, bypassing landlines, so looks set to be the case for Internet sales in China’s second and third tier cities. This is one of the insights I have gained from my latest trip to China. More to […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Saudi Arabia, Refining And The Battle for Crude Market Share
By John Richardson SAUDI ARABIA is determined to win its battle for greater market share of the global oil market, and at the same add value downstream to its hydrocarbon reserves. This is the consistent message I have picked over the last 18 months. And so a report in the Financial Times that Saudi Aramco […]
Why US Natural Gas Will Stay Very Cheap
By John Richardson CONVENTIONAL thinking about US natural gas prices is that they will start to edge up over the next few years. Reasons include major shale gas investment cutbacks resulting from the recent collapse in US natural gas pricing. Gas availability is also widely expected to tighten as a result of cutbacks in US […]
US Shale Oil Was Never Going To Stand Still
By John Richardson TECHNOLOGY doesn’t stand still. That’s the whole point about technology as any oil, gas or chemicals engineer will tell you. The above chart is a fantastic example of this. It shows how the efficiency of US oil rigs, thanks to improvements in the fracking process, has improved by leaps and bounds from […]
China: Defining The Real, Future Profit Motive
By John Richardson IF you picked up the phone and talked to the right people, or sat down with them face to face, it was possible to in the past come away with the impression that creating and maintaining jobs in China always came first. A distant second priority felt as if it was the […]
US Ethane Shipments And The Broader Picture
By John Richardson THE first shipment of ethane from the US to Europe, which is set to arrive on Wednesday to feed the INEOS cracker at Rafnes in Norway, will be widely interpreted as meaningonly one thing: That nothing in petrochemicals has essentially changed , as most of what we do to be successful is […]
Seven Risks Of Choosing Specialties Over Commodites
By John Richardson CHEMICALS analysts love to talk with great enthusiasm about the specialty end of this business because margins per tonne can be a great deal higher than in boring old plain vanilla commodities. Specialties is an exciting story to spin to investors, as it contains “buzz” phrases such as “value addition” and “innovation”. […]
How To Grow Sales In A Deflationary World
By John Richardson CHINA hugely increased its propylene and derivatives capacity to the point where by 2011, it became the first region or country where downstream propylene consumption surpassed that of ethylene. This didn’t mean booming actual demand for propylene and what it is used to make. Instead, it meant that lots of “empty factories” […]
Oil Price Recovery: Please Remember 2015
By John Richardson EVEN if oil prices should go down right now, based on supply and demand fundamentals, the financial players will not let that happen. This is the view of several analysts who point to the closure of numerous short positions, in favour of opening long positions, over the last few weeks. In time-honoured […]
China: Ignore Misleading Analysis On Reform Reversal
By John Richardson A GREAT deal of misleading analysis has been written about this year’s National People’s Congress (NPC) – China’s annual parliamentary meeting – which always takes place every March. Much of this misleading analysis has been centred on Prime Minister Li Keqiang’s (see picture on the left) announcement during the NPC that a […]