This was the warning from Bob Bauman of Nexant ChemSystems at last week’s 25th Annual Petrochemical Conference in Houston, Texas. Read below for some rather gloomy predictions of where markets could be heading in 2011-12
Asian Chemical Connections
How clean are coal-to-liquids? Does it really matter?
Paul Hodges, in his excellent chemicals and the economy blog, talks about the recent Shenhua Energy listing on the Shanghai stock exchange and how it shares jumped by 93% following the IPO. Now it has ample cash to pursue its ambitions. Shenhau is just one of numerous companies involved in coal-to-liquids projects in China which […]
Is the elephant about to fall off the bike?
As Paul Hodges notes in his Chemicals and the Economy blog https://www.icis.com/blogs/chemicals%2Dand%2Dthe%2Deconomy/, China’s Finance Minister quit this morning – either over his role in a sex scandal or because inflation and the stock markets are out of control. Petrochemical demand growth has been booming in China because, as a bureaucrat put it shortly after WTO […]
The global credit crisis is going to last
The collective sigh of relief was almost audible late last week when the Fed cut its discount rate – the rate banks charge each other for lending. Action from other central banks, including the European Central Bank, could follow this week. Analysts also rate the likelihood of the Fed cutting its formal interest rate at […]
Construction crisis? What crisis? China leads the way
As the Middle East struggles to find labour and raw material supply with contractors’ order books bursting at the seams, the Chinese seem to have no difficulty in executing their projects. See below for detailed analysis of what’s happening with the current wave of Chinese crackers. Suffice to say here that nearly all of China’s […]
The fallout for petrochemicals from Iraq
As everyone focuses on when the next downturn might arrive, macro issues such as the implications of a likely US withdrawal from Iraq are rarely publicly discussed. But if I were on the board of any company making investment decisions, I’d be worried. If the US withdrawal from Iraq is well managed then fears such […]
China attempts to move up the value chain
Petrochemical markets are being badly ruffled by two recent Chinese government decisions. In late June, there was the decision to change the VAT export rebate system for yuan-priced product. And then this week there was a widening of the deposit rules governing import duty and VAT rebates on petchem imports priced in US dollars. But […]
China’s crackers are on track. Is this bad news?
The consultants, traders and producers I spoke to last week insist that the current wave of new Chinese ethylene capacity due on stream in the current Five-Year Plan (2006-10), Download file is more or less on track to be completed on schedule. Also see on these slides the ICIS insight Asia list of crackers after […]
Is this the death of cycles?
Quite possibly, yes, despite my instinctiive pessimism. Perhaps emerging markets such as China and India have reached such a critical mass that no matter how much capacity is brought on stream, it will be easily absorbed. Or maybe some disaster lies just around the corner. Who cares if you’ve made your money in the most […]
Life gets more complicated in the Middle East
In the old days all you had to do was propose an ethane cracker with PE and MEG downstream and you were away. But these days if you want to get feedstock, especially in Saudi, you need to offer something a bit different because of the drive to diversify to create jobs. This is a […]
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