By John Richardson IT has been a fantastic few months for the integrated Asian polyethylene (PE) producers as the above chart illustrates. You can see that the average price for naphtha was $533/tonne CFR Japan in April. This compared with an average high-density PE (HDPE) price of $1,271/tonne CFR Northeast Asia and an average low-density […]
Asian Chemical Connections
More Evidence That US Shale Oil Is The New “Swing Producer”
By John Richardson SICK today with a bad cold – hence this very short post. Will, hopefully, be back in full action, though, later today or tomorow Meanwhile, here is some more background reading, which underlines myy argument that shale oil has become the new “swing producer”. It is also all good see the constant […]
Your Seven-Point Guide To H2 2015 Oil Prices
By John Richardson BEFORE you get carried away with the wholly misguided notion that we have entered into a “new normal” of oil prices in the region of $60-80 a barrel for the rest of this year, see below for a further and updated guide to why this kind of thinking is very, very dangerous. […]
US Fed Reinvents 19th Century Boom And Boost Oil Markets
By John Richardson ONE way of looking at the world is that central bankers know exactly what they are doing as they are Masters of the Universe. These bankers have excellent degrees and doctorates from top universities bursting out their CVs, along with fantastic track records of rescuing the global economy, I have often been […]
Why The New Belief In Oil-Price Stability Is Wrong
By John Richardson THE new consensus view on oil prices, based on my discussions with many delegate on the side lines of this year’s Asia Petrochemical Industry Conference (APIC) in Seoul, South Korea, seems to run roughly as follows: OK, most of us completely missed the H2 2014 collapse of crude, but never mind, we now […]
How 3D Printing Means No Repeat Of China’s Growth Story
By John Richardson AS you can see from the above chart, China’s percentage share of the global polypropylene (PP) market has risen from 15% of consumption in 2000 to 33% in 2014. During the same period, however, India’s share of worldwide consumption only rose from 7% to 9%. This kind of chart is used as […]
China To Stop Importing Chemicals As It Exports New Technologies
By John Richardson LAST Friday I discussed how, even without the impact of demographics on demand, it is mathematically impossible to fit one two billion into two billion. Now bear with me for a few minutes. The themes I discussed on Friday are so critically important to how the global chemicals industry measures growth that […]
Oil Price Rally Built On Very Fragile Ground
By John Richardson OIL prices rallied yesterday on an unexpected fall in inventories at Cushing in the US to 61.7 million barrels for the week ending 24 April (see the above chart). This was a decline of 514,000 barrels over the previous week, which compared with forecasts of an increase of 400,000 barrels. So does […]
China 19% PP Production Increase Should Be No Surprise
By John Richardson THE chart above should come as no surprise whatsoever to anybody in the global polypropylene (PP) business. Here is why: Many of China’s new PP plants are coal-based and so are located in inland provinces where job creation is more important than how much money these plants will actually make per tonne […]
The Chemicals “Recovery”: Seeing Through The Flawed Logic
By John Richardson AROUND 90% or more of the price movements in most chemicals and polymers are tied to crude oil. Add to that the pick-ups in buying than can occur from time to time, based on supply and demand factors specific to particular chemicals markets, and you end up with a devilishly difficult job […]
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