By John Richardson THE above chart should tell you a great deal of what you need to know about Saudi Aramco’s interest in buying the LyondellBasell Industries (LBI) refinery that’s located in the Houston Ship Canal in the US: Between January 2007 and October of this year, the Eagle Ford shale-oil field in Texas will have seen the efficiency […]
Asian Chemical Connections
China And Iran: Reshaping Global Polyester Trade
By John Richardson IN TODAY’S world you have to start with political, social and macroeconomic factors to help build your map of global chemicals trade flows over the next ten years. You next need to consider the old standard measures of feedstock availability, access to technology and logistics costs etc. Why are these traditional ways of […]
Saudi Aramco In A Low Oil Price World
By John Richardson NEWS of plans to list 5% of Saudi Aramco is obviously some four months old. There is thus a danger that in the welter of other later events, the long term significance of this decision ends up being overlooked. That would be a bad mistake in your scenario planning. Funding from the IPO could be […]
China’s One Belt, One Road: What It Means For PP and PVC
By John Richardson MONDAY’S blog post on China’s One Belt, One Road initiative has produced a very strong response. I thus thought it was important to discuss in detail what what One Belt, One Road could mean for two major polymers – polypropylene (PP) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC). One Belt, One Road is happening because of huge social, political and economic changes taking […]
How To Battle For Value In Oversupplied Markets
By John Richardson FOR the moment all is good, as the chart above illustrates, which details the premiums that C6 metallocene-grade linear-low density (LLDPE) have enjoyed over standard commodity grade C4 LLDPE in the key China market. The October 2010 start date in the chart is when we began our C6 assessment (we don’t assess […]
China And A Breakdown In Free Trade: Scenarios For Petrochemicals
By John Richardson MY blog post last Friday, on the threat to the petrochemicals industry of a retreat in global free trade, has gained a great deal of interest. This is good as this is an essential debate. Today I am therefore going to take this important debate further by considering in more detail how […]
China’s Oil Markets: One Example Of A World Turned On Its Head
By John Richardson The more oil that China imported the more it was becoming a middle class country by Western standards, was the old argument. All of us should now understand that the China middle class story was nothing more than a myth. This helps explain the collapse of oil prices since September 2014. Fortunately, […]
Oil Prices, Chemicals Markets Face Steep Declines
By John Richardson THERE are three things you need to know about today’s global chemicals markets: Oil prices are now retreating back to quite probably below $30/bbl, and so of course there will be a chemicals destocking process. But the good news, if you can call it that, is that the destocking process won’t be […]
Britain’s EU Exit Vote Reflects Lack of Trust In Expert Opinion
By John Richardson MOST politicians, central bank governors, economists and business leaders told everyone that there was no way that the US housing market could drag the world into a global financial crisis. Then we were told that China’s economy could not possibly slow down, and that its vast investment in manufacturing capacity during […]
China PP Import Decline Challenges Global Markets
By John Richardson THE latest data on China’s polypropylene (PP) imports should set alarm bells ringing in polyolefin company board rooms: China’s PP production was up by 14% in January-April 2016 versus the same four months last year, with imports falling by 20% on the same year-on-year basis. January-April imports in 2016 were at their […]
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