By John Richardson The greater frequency of extreme weather events presents a huge challenge for chemicals companies. Take Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma as the most obvious current examples. Weather forecasting service AccuWeather writes in this article: This is the first time in the history of record keeping that two Category 4 or higher hurricanes, […]
Asian Chemical Connections
US Polyethylene Industry: Scenarios For 2017-2020
By John Richardson IT has been a remarkably strong few years for the US polyethylene (PE) business. The shale gas revolution has sent ethane costs plummeting, resulting in the kind of margins that you can see in the above chart. Lower oil prices have made naphtha cracking a lot more competitive of late, but the […]
Southeast Asia: Confronting The Real Downside Potential
By John Richardson SOUTHEAST ASIA’S (SEA) economies can be divided into two main categories. These are the heavily export-exposed economies of Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Singapore and the two countries with the biggest internal demand drivers – Indonesia and the Philippines. Next come the smaller emerging SEA economies with tremendous longer-term potential, such as Myanmar […]
Economic And Geopolitical Chaos In 2017
By John Richardson MOST of the experts believed that Remain was going to win the vote on whether or not Britain would stay in the EU. Such was the strength of the consensus that even Nigel Farage, then leader of UKIP, seemed ready to concede defeat on the night of the vote. And well into […]
OPEC Cutbacks: The Case Against Any Major Impact
By John Richardson OPEC’s decision to cut production could well turn out to have no significant impact on the direction of oil markets in 2017 and beyond. I believe that everything still points to weaker, rather than stronger, crude prices, barring a major geopolitical crisis. We are very likely heading for is a global recession in […]
Chemicals Companies Must Be The Solution And Not The Problem
By John Richardson MORE than 40 years after the launch of the first universal recycling symbol, only 14% of plastic packaging is collected for recycling. When additional value losses in sorting and reprocessing are factored in, only 5% of material value is retained for a subsequent use. Plastics that do get recycled are mostly recycled […]
China Becomes Dominant Superpower: Implications For Petchems
By John Richardson CHINA can become the world’s No1 Superpower, replacing the US, if it can rise to challenges such as these: Asia needs US$8trn of investment in the decade to 2020 to deal with its infrastructure deficit. As countries with urban populations expand, demand for transport, logistics and utilities will place a major burden […]
Trumponomics And A Global Recession
By John Richardson FIRST of all there was no chance he would win the nomination. No chance at all. Then nearly all the election pundits said it was almost impossible that he could beat Hillary Clinton because he had such a narrow Electoral College path to the White House. Now we are being told that […]
What Exclusion From China’s One Belt, One Road Looks Like
By John Richardson IS the whole world really turning again free trade? No, if you consider the potential improvement in trade flows between the 65 mainly developing countries which make up China’s One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative. What we could instead see is the creation of the world’s biggest free-trade bloc, accounting for 40% […]
China And A Breakdown In Free Trade: Scenarios For Petrochemicals
By John Richardson MY blog post last Friday, on the threat to the petrochemicals industry of a retreat in global free trade, has gained a great deal of interest. This is good as this is an essential debate. Today I am therefore going to take this important debate further by considering in more detail how […]
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