By Malini Hariharan The Wednesday post on this blog highlighted some of the unexpected turns that the Asian polyolefins market has been taking. There have been more developments over the last two days that are likely to influence markets in the short term. • ICIS news reports that Sabic will significantly cut its January and […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Cash Will Remain King in 2010
Still too crowded… Source of picture:www.tripadvisor.com By John Richardson Dear Readers – Welcome Back. Having spent the last two weeks lying on Western Australian beaches, drinking beer and reading books on European history – while also building sand castles etc with my three-year-old son – I have given little thought to chemicals. But […]
ExxonMobil Gas Buy Supports “Fuel Of The Future” Argument
By John Richardson ExxonMobil’s purchase of XTO Energy for US$41bn seems to support the widely-held view that natural gas is the fuel for the future. XTO specialises in the technology necessary to exploit shale gas and other hard-to-get-at unconventional gas reserves, including the large amounts of shale gas in the US – one of […]
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 […]
Update 1: Reliance said to be offering $10-12bn
Reliance Industries – which is attempting to buy LyondellBasell – is offering $10-12bn, according to this report from Reuters quoting two sources with direct knowledge of the deal. This would be one of the biggest-ever acquisitions by an Indian company. In 2007, Tata Steel bought Corus for $13bn. Reliance raised $660m through a share sale in September. […]
Reliance Bid For LyondellBasell Confirmed
Reliance Industries has made an offer for LyondellBasell says an official statement released yesterday on the LyondellBasell website: “LyondellBasell has received a preliminary non-binding offer from Reliance Industries Limited to acquire for cash a controlling interest in the company contemporaneously with the company’s emergence from Chapter 11 reorganization. “This offer is in addition to the […]
A Chilling Chinese Export Rumour
“They are so cheap, I might even buy one as a hedge against global warming” Source of picture: www.formalwilderness.blogspot.com This blog has spent a lot of time tormenting itself over the sustainability of China’s extraordinary economic rebound during 2009. “Just where are all those imports of chemicals and polymers (polymers up 50% year-to-date) going?” […]
Crude, Demand Destruction & Irresponsible Bankers
Source of picture: www.walletpop.com By John Richardson In his own words Paul Hodges of International e-Chem – and also a fellow blogger – puts in a nutshell some of the dangers confronting the chemicals industry as we approach the New Year, with a few interspersed further thoughts from this blog: “If crude […]
More Questionable Chinese Data Clouds The Picture
It seems as if Lex of the Financial Times is finally catching up with this blog by questioning the validity of some of the official data coming out of China. We take this as a compliment. In today’s column it talks about how the total for first-half Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth numbers for China’s 31 provinces […]
A fight to the finish
By Malini Hariharan (Malini is now joint blogger for Asian Chemical Connections) The Indian government has announced 17 November as the date for a public hearing to discuss the provisional anti dumping duties that it had imposed in June on imports of polypropylene (PP) from Saudi Arabia, Singapore and Oman. The hearing will give a […]
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