By Malini Hariharan Indian polypropylene (PP) demand continues to remain strong with most end-use sectors showing good growth and it is local producers who are catering to the additional requirement. Polypropylene (PP) demand is estimated to have expanded by 13% to 809,000 tonnes during April-July, reports my colleague Prema Viswanathan on ICIS news. But import […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Polyethylene And Alice In Wonderland
Source of picture: the-office.com By John Richardson A FURTHER illustration of the Alice in Wonderland world of financial investors versus the fundamentals of real demand was provided by the Dalian Commodity Exchange earlier this week. “Some investment funds started snapping up linear low density PE (LLDPE) futures in anticipation of improvement in […]
Polyethylene Price Recovery Built On House Of Cards
Source of picture: keplarllp.com By John Richardson It always seemed as if the Asian polyethylene (PE) price rebound was built on a house of cards. The Chinese economy is slowing down, the country’s domestic production has greatly increased and new capacity in the Middle East – though still plagued by start-up and operating […]
Map Ta Phut issue drags on
By Malini Hariharan The Thai government is doing all it can to quickly resolve the Map Ta Phut crisis but full operations at PTT Chem’s new cracker is likely only in early 2011. Feedstock ethane for the 1m tonnes/year cracker will be supplied from PTT’s No6 gas separation plant commissioning of which has been held […]
Fingers Crossed For No Double-Dip Recession
The Risk Of Exhausted Optimism Source of picture: http://www.thedigeratilife.com/blog/double-dip-recession/ By John Richardson Global polyethylene (PE) oversupply will be “challenging but manageable” over the next year-and-a-half provided there is no double-dip economic downturn, said Joe Duffy, consultant with DeWitt & Co. “My analysis suggests that if economic growth continues into 2011 at the […]
China’s Unstoppable Consumption Juggernaut?
The major long-term shift in US refinery economics and C3s Source of picture: blueplanetgreenliving.com By John Richardson CHINA will account for around one-third of global polypropylene (PP) consumption by the middle of this decade, up from the current 25%, as domestic demand continues to grow at more than 10% a […]
Saudi PP producers react; put pressure on India
By Malini Hariharan The Gulf Petrochemical and Chemicals Association (GPCA) is speaking up on behalf of Saudi producers who are worried about the Indian government’s recent ruling on dumping of polypropylene (PP). The Indian position, outlined in a disclosure statement, was that the Saudi price formula for propane gave local PP producers an ‘unfair advantage’. […]
Saudi Feedstock Problems Worsen
SABIC headquarters in Riyadh Source of picture: france24.com By John Richardson The days when the price of future ethane supply in Saudi Arabia – at the time called an advantaged feedstock because nobody knew what else to do with it – was based only on the cost of separation and distribution have long […]
ExxonMobil Says Qatar C2s Still On
By John Richardson EXXONMOBIL is insisting that its cracker and derivatives project with Qatar Petroleum is still on despite a media report to the contrary. It certainly seems as if there are several suitors for this particular bride – perhaps the last major feedstock parcel available for petrochemicals in Qatar for some time. The economics […]
China’s coal chemical projects take shape
By Malini Hariharan The first of China’s major coal-based chemical projects has finally started trial operations. ICIS news reports that methanol has been fed at Shenhua Baotou’s 600,000 tonnes/year methanol-to-olefins (MTO) plant at Baotou, in inner Mongolia. The unit can produce 300,000 tonnes/year each of ethylene and propylene. But the downstream polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene […]
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