By Malini Hariharan I have been trying to get some clarity on what is happening at Map Ta Phut and what companies are planning to do. Construction activity has not yet stopped despite the Supreme Court ruling last week which suspended 65 projects, says a PTT source. The government has yet to issue a notice […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Thai Start-ups: What A Muddle
A real head scratcher…… Source of picture: www/http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com By John Richardson Confused? Sorry, but so far we cannot be of much help bringing any precision to what the implications of Thailand’s Supreme Court ruling will mean for the timing of petrochemical start-ups. If you remember, last Friday we wrote about how the Supreme Court […]
China PE To Grow By 35% – Latest ’09 Forecast
Money to be made, or saved, again?….. Source of picture: www.evworld.com After last week’s estimates, a big producer (who wishes to remain anonymous) has given us his forecasts for the strength of 2009 growth in demand for polyolefins in China – see full details in the article below. Interestingly, he saw the dip in […]
Polyolefins And Football: An Historic Parallel?
Is history about to repeat itself? Source of picture: www.vietbao.vn The last year for polyolefins has been a bit like the wonderful 1980s and early 1990s for genuine football fans – when the often-repeated phrase of Manchester Utd supporters was “next year, definitely” when they were talking about their prospects for winning the […]
Thai Start-up Delays On Court Ruling: The Details
The Thai Supreme Court’s decision to uphold a September injunction halting development of $12bn of petrochemical and power projects could affect the on-schedule start-up of capacities of a large amount of petrochemicals capacity. Note the word could because, despite the court ruling supporting claims by environmentalists about the impact of pollution at the site, PTT […]
China PE Growth All-Time High
Source of picture: www.americanprogress.org By John Richardson China’s high-density polyethylene (HDPE) demand is expected to grow by 38% to around 7m tonnes forecasts CBI China, the Shanghai-based commodity information service. Linear-low density (LLDPE) is expected to rise by 30% to 4.6m tonnes and low-density polyethylene (LDPE) will increase by 20% to 3.4m tonnes, […]
The Immediate Dubai Impact
On A Very Sticky Wicket www.theage.com.au By John Richardson As one my colleagues said – it’s a good job the US stock markets were closed for Thanksgiving. Lots of efforts are being made to talk the Dubai World crisis and down – and despite drops in Middle East market equities – Asian markets rallied […]
Reading The Minds of China’s Leadership
By John Richardson A lot of the projects which have pushed the world into severe overcapacity were based on the assumption that China would remain in big deficits for many basic commodity chemicals and polymers. It was thought that the world’s most-important market would remain a sink for surpluses for a very long time […]
China Polyolefin Demand Set To Rise By 30%
By John Richardson in Shanghai and Malini Hariharan China is set to see polyolefins demand growth of 30% or more this year, depending on the which particular grade, according to preliminary estimates prepared by companies and market analysts. Even if you take into account last year’s relatively low growth rates (I say relative because despite […]
Anxiety Builds Over China Growth
Will growth spread quickly enough? Source of picture: www.oraclemarketplace.co.uk By John Richardson Global chemicals production had returned to 2006 levels by October of this year, according to this slide ACCProduction09Versus06.ppt from the American Chemistry Council (ACC). Worldwide chemicals growth rates might not return to 2008 levels until 2012, Jurgen Hambrecht, CEO of BASF, warned […]
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