By Malini Hariharan With Indian polyester demand growing steadily at 10%/year Reliance Industries has renewed its focus on expansions along the chain. Projects that were put on hold after the 2008 economic crisis have been revived and deadlines set. The company’s plans include two new worldscale purified terephthalic acid (PTA) plants and investments in paraxylene […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Capitalising on the cotton crisis
By Malini Hariharan Cotton prices have hit a 140-year high on the ICE futures in the US creating room for further price hikes across the polyester chain. Prices of paraxylene (PX), purified terephthalic acid (PTA), monoethylene glycol (MEG) and polyester fibre and yarn have escalated sharply in the last few months as a supply […]
The slow trek downstream
By Malini Hariharan Nearly two years after SABIC and ExxonMobil signed an agreement for a multi-billion dollar 50:50 joint-venture elastomers complex iin Saudi Arabia, the two majors have yet to take a final decision on the project. At last year’s GPCA forum in December, Mohamed Al-Mady, SABIC’s CEO, had indicated that the two companies were waiting […]
Petchem markets on a bull run
By Malini Hariharan The Chinese are back from their holidays and they are buying. This coupled with supply constraints and firm crude prices is fuelling a surge in petrochemical prices. Paraxylene (PX) prices hit a 2-year high this week on speculative activity and production problems at a couple of Chinese plants, reports ICIS news. Spot […]
Saudi Arabia: The Implications Of Going Downstream
An example of how Lexan solar control IR sheets (made by SABIC Innovative Plastics) can be put to use Source of picture: SABIC By John Richardson SAUDI ARABIA is busy reshaping its petrochemical industry to reflect a drastic shift in priorities. Such is the change in the kingdom that commentators are going so as […]
Singapore’s aromatics binge
By Malini Hariharan Jurong Aromatics Corp (JAC), part of a rare breed of standalone aromatics projects, is finally seeing some progress. At a time when most new aromatic projects are integrated with refinery operations, JAC plans to build a condensate splitter and an aromatics facility to produce 800,000 tonnes/year of paraxylene (PX), 450,000 tonnes/year of […]
Diminishing Returns From Middle East Projects
Downtown Riyadh By John Richardson As my fellow blogger Malini Hariharan wrote last week “the projects environment in the Middle East has irrevocably changed” and with it the rather glib and outdated assumption still being frequently made that building capacity in the region represents a licence to print money. First of all, as […]
Saudi Feedstock Problems Worsen
SABIC headquarters in Riyadh Source of picture: france24.com By John Richardson The days when the price of future ethane supply in Saudi Arabia – at the time called an advantaged feedstock because nobody knew what else to do with it – was based only on the cost of separation and distribution have long […]
China’s coal chemical projects take shape
By Malini Hariharan The first of China’s major coal-based chemical projects has finally started trial operations. ICIS news reports that methanol has been fed at Shenhua Baotou’s 600,000 tonnes/year methanol-to-olefins (MTO) plant at Baotou, in inner Mongolia. The unit can produce 300,000 tonnes/year each of ethylene and propylene. But the downstream polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene […]
ExxonMobil Formally Out Of Qatar C2s – Report
Qatar Builds Its Future Source of picture: The New York Times By John Richardson EXXONMOBIL and Qatar Petroleum have formally ended their agreement to build a $6bn petrochemical complex in Qatar, says a report by the Middle East Economic Digest. This follows the earlier MEED report that discussions to break-up the JV had […]
Jump to page: