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 […]
Asian Chemical Connections
China will choke itself to death
I think it’s about time that the developing world stopped saying “you did it, so why can’t we?” when the West raises concerns over rising pollution levels in China, India etc. In the “good” old days my home country, the UK, had lots of dark, gritty and satanic mills, which were almost as ugly as […]
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 […]
Are coal-to-chemicals projects in China a load of nonsense?
Maybe, if the mystery blogger at the excellent http://www.theoildrum.com/ site knows what he is talking about. I’ve pasted in his arguments below. You need to register at this site, which takes only a few minutes, if you want to get into the wider debate about how energy issues will have a critical bearing on all […]
Bringing the sceptics and the greenies together
The famous “Skeptical” environmentalist (unfortunately, the American spelling and therefore the wrong spelling), Bjorn Lomborg argues against the Kyoto Protocol in this article from the special green edition of our magazine, ICIS Chemical Business.He says, in short, that all the fuss about Kyoto is a waste of time and effort. Even if it is fully […]
The weird and not so wonderful world of biofuels
The petrochemicals industry generally gets a bad press, but producers are unlikely to ever be charged with depriving the public of food. In fact, plastic packaging could go a long way to solving problems such as India’s – where 40% of food rots before it can be delivered. Biofuels producers, however, although they have ostensibly […]
ExxonMobil turns a light shade of green
Rex Tillerson, chief executive of ExxonMobil, displayed a careful balance between supporting the oil industry and expressing concern over climate change in a recent speech.Does this indicate a shift in direction at Exxon post Lee Raymond, or merely a more cuddly and warm way of presenting unchanged policy? The reason why we are still dependent […]
Global Warming And The Impact On Ethylene
Please read this excellent piece from my colleague Nigel Davis, who is editor of the Insight section of ICIS news.Some further thoughts: if 46% of existing and 45% of future ethylene production is taken offline by flooding, just think of the impact on food pricing and distribution and the resulting social and economic chaos due […]
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