By John Richardson SEE THE END section of this blog post for a dystopian version of our environmental future. In a follow-up post – which I will publish on Thursday, 1 July – I will offer some suggestions about how we can avoid an outcome that nobody of course wants. Both posts are meant to […]
Asian Chemical Connections
The climate challenge can only be met if there is a global price on carbon
By John Richardson DEVELOPED WORLD oil and gas majors who faced rising investor pressure on greenhouse gas emissions accounted for just 15% of global energy production, said Jason Bordoff, co-founding Dean of the Columbia Climate School in this important article in Foreign Policy. The rest lay with the state-owned energy giants who were under far […]
Global polyethylene demand boom likely, increasing the sustainability challenge
By John Richardson IT FEELS LIKE several lifetimes ago. If you recall, way back in November-December 2019 Asian variable cost integrated naphtha-based polyethylene (PE) margins turned negative because of the increase in US capacity. Then in January the following year, deep Asian and Middle East operating rate cuts returned some order to the market. Then, […]
The pandemic, climate change, plastic waste and the great divide: the world in 2025
By John Richardson NOBODY SHOULD be surprised that the developing world has fallen behind in the battle to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as the region is a long way from recovering from the pandemic. Evidence to this effect emerged last week in comments made by Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA). […]
Inflation pressures build on prolonged supply chain disruptions
By John Richardson OK, I MAY have got this wrong. Inflation could be a bigger problem than I envisaged only three weeks ago. But if so, I would at least be in exalted company. A meeting of the US Federal Reserve concluded that generalised inflation was not a concern, and that “finished goods have not […]
Boom in petrochemicals demand guaranteed but we must grow sustainably
By John Richardson ONE OF THE GREATEST achievements of the last 30 years has been the fall in the number of people living in extreme poverty. In 1999, 1.9bn of the world’s population were living on less than $1.90, the Word Bank’s definition of extreme poverty. Despite setbacks caused by the pandemic, this had […]
We can solve the plastic waste crisis but we don’t have much time
Here is another personal plea about the scale of the plastic waste challenge our industry confronts. We need to act urgently to solve disposal problems in the developing world. By John Richardson IN 2015, a global agreement was reached that 8m tonnes a year of plastic waste entering the oceans was unacceptable, according to […]
Demographics are reshaping petrochemicals trade flows, investment patterns and demand
By John Richardson TEN YEARS AGO, fellow blogger Paul Hodges and I first highlighted the leading role that changing demographics would play in reshaping petrochemicals supply and demand. We have been emphasising the importance of demographics ever since. Demographics have, of course, always been a critical shaper of economies throughout human history. But during […]
We need a global agreement that sets targets for reducing plastic waste
What follows is an entirely personal take on the challenge of plastic waste and does not represent the views of ICIS or any other expert opinion I have sought out. The views are put forward in the spirit of debate as we move forward, as an industry, to solve the crisis of plastic waste. By […]
Middle East and Asia petchems need reinvention because of rising China self-sufficiency
By John Richardson MIDDLE EAST, southeast Asian (SEA) and northeast Asia (NEA) ex-China petrochemicals producers need to transform themselves because of China’s rising self-sufficiency. In polypropylene, styrene monomer (SM), ethylene glycols, paraxylene and methanol, China has the potential to by itself reach complete self-sufficiency over the next two-to-five years from its position today of being […]