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 […]
Asian Chemical Connections
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 […]
Demand: The New Direction for Profit
By John Richardson WE were right about China’s change of economic direction, which we identified in November 2013. We were then right about the collapse in oil prices from August 2014 onwards. And we also made the right call when we pointed out that these two events are inextricably linked. Being right in the past is, […]
China: Wrong Questions Will Give You The Wrong Answers
By John Richardson IF you start with the wrong questions about China, you are obviously going to end up with the wrong answers. In the case of China’s polyolefins industry, too many people are still asking themselves this wrong question: How can inland coal-to-polyolefins plants survive, never mind run at high operating rates, because of […]
Oil Prices: The Denial Persists
By John Richardson THERE is a tentative and rather fragile belief out there that oil prices have on this occasion finally bottomed in the mid-$35/bbl range. This is partly based on the production freeze announced by Saudi Arabia and Russia in mid-February. The US Energy Information Administration also announced that US shale oil production […]
Manage Demand And Keep Control Of Your Business
By John Richardson CHEMICALS companies don’t always disappear when things turn bad. Ownership can instead just change hands. Reasons for this include the fact that private investors are of course always seeking to make money from any crisis. Why not buy perfectly good assets for just a few cents on each dollar of debt of […]
The Risks Ahead For Polyethylene
By John Richardson TOO many people will look at the chart on the left and think, “Crisis? What crisis?” But glance to the right for what it is like in another petrochemicals value chain. What is happening on the right could sooner than you think be happening on the left: The polyethylene (PE) value chain […]
Oil Prices: Same As 200 Apples And Googles Going Bust
By John Richardson NO less than $119 trillion (or $119,000 billion) has been wiped off the value of the world’s proven oil reserves. YES, that’s right, if you look at the data on proven oil reserves in the CIA factbook, as John Mauldin did to verify calculations originally made by David Aron Levine, this is […]
This Is Not Just Another Economic Downcycle
By John Richardson ECONOMIC upcycles come and go, but in the end, the fundamentals don’t change. This is the message I have picked up from conversations with senior industry executives over the last two weeks. “All we have to do is cut costs, wait this one out, and everything will be fine in 12-18 months. […]
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