Because companies in all manufacturing and service sectors haven’t been adequately charged for the natural resources they use, and the damage they cause to the environment, we face the risks of catastrophic climate change and more plastic in the oceans than fish.
Asian Chemical Connections
Global chemicals: What I believe our industry must do in response to a deep and complex crisis
I WORRY that we face a crisis deeper and more complex than any of us have seen before because of the confluence of geopolitics, demographics, the changing nature of the Chinese economy as Common Prosperity reforms accelerate, China’s rising chemicals and polymers self-sufficiency, the high levels of global inflation with all its causes, and, last but certainly not least, climate change.
China petrochemicals spreads data: until or unless it recovers, growth will remain weak
IF THERE IS no return to the historic patterns of spreads between China’s petrochemicals prices and feedstock costs, there will be no economic recovery.
Europe’s gas crisis: the implications for global chemicals
GEOPOLITICS IS, I believe, just one aspect of a crisis facing the chemicals industry that is deeper and more complex than anything we have faced before.
Front mind right now in geopolitics is Ukraine-Russia and the gas-supply crisis facing Europe,
Chemicals companies face an unprecedented demand and supply crisis
THE GLOBAL CHEMICALS industry is, I believe, facing a demand and supply crisis on a scale and on a level of complexity that nobody has experienced before. This is a huge subjects requiring a series of posts. Let me start by looking at China’s role in this crisis. In later posts.
China’s ethylene equivalent demand growth in 2022 could be as high as plus 9% or as low as minus 3%
Scenario 1, the ICIS Base Case, for China’s ethylene equivalent demand, sees growth at 9% in 2022 over last year. Scenario 2 involves 4.5% and Scenario 3, minus 3%.
China zero-COVID: 2022 impact on local and global demand for nine major polymers
Instead of demand for the nine polymers growing by 7m tonnes in 2022 under our base cases, my downsides see consumption falling by 6m tonnes.
Europe PE and PP imports: How, with the right analysis, you could more than make up for China weakness
IT WILL NOT be easy to estimate what could be higher-than-expected levels of European petrochemicals imports during the rest of 2022. But in the context of a China that might even be in recession, the extra effort necessary to figure calculate shifts in European trade flows is very, very worthwhile.
China polyolefins: several years of history pass in just one week
LAST WEEK I challenged whether the longstanding “put option” for petrochemicals companies and investors would still apply to China 2022.
The put option rests on the well-proven notion that the worst things get in the short term, the better the immediate outlook because Beijing always rides to the rescue with big economic stimulus.
The challenge I posed to the put option was that China might only tinker around the edges of its Common Prosperity economic reforms.
Ukraine: Oil prices, lost petrochemicals demand, changing trade flows and the impact of the four megatrends
By John Richardson IF WE ARE involved in a new protracted Cold War, this will change just about everything for the petrochemicals industry. Or, of course, we could go back to the Old Normal. Corporate planners must therefore press on with drawing up short, medium and long-term scenarios and then apply these scenarios to tactics […]