By John Richardson WE hate to say we told you so but the 15 per cent fall in oil prices last week – the steepest one-week decline in two-and-a-half years – was evidence of growing concern over the health of the global economy. And as we predicted on 12 April, last week saw a broad sell-off […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Cotton Support For Fibre Intermediates Declines
By John Richardson RISING cotton prices might well have been the single-biggest factor on the strength in the synthetic textiles chain for the last year. Other major factors have obviously been the surge in crude and supply constraints in both paraxylene (PX) and purified terephthalic acid (PTA) – but certainly not in mono-ethylene glycol (MEG)! […]
Dow’s Liveris On The Mark On China?
By John Richardson Dow Chemical’s CEO, Andrew Liveris, was reassuringly upbeat about the state of demand in China last week when he described it as “quite robust” during an analysts’ call on the release of the company’s Q1 results And very significantly, given that we can trust that his comments were based on plenty of […]
China Inflation Impact On Chemicals
By John Richardson POLYETHYLENE (PE) prices were assessed stable-to-weaker by my colleagues at ICIS pricing late last week as Sinopec was reported to be evaluating a 10% reduction in operating rates. Sinopec hardly ever cuts production on market conditions as its main objective is not to make a profit, but rather serve local manufacturing industry […]
China’s Inflation Struggle
By John Richardson LIKE the boy who cried Wolf the blog might not be believed as we once again warn about the risks ahead for China’s economy. We have been worried for a long time that eventually China’s huge economic stimulus package, in response to the threat of social unrest, would cause some major problems. […]
Broad Commodities Sell-off Beckons
By John Richardson THE blog remains extremely worried that there is about to be a major sell-off of commodities in general, including petrochemicals, as conditions right now feel very similar to those in 2008. Whether we will face a systemic shock to the system, a black swan, on the scale of Lehman Bros is of […]
Growing Uncertainties Cloud Chemicals Outlook
By John Richardson THE global growth outlook grows ever murkier as a result of credit tightening in China (or is the problem instead continued strong growth in lending?), inflation problems throughout Asia, possible monetary tightening in the West, the direction of oil prices and the Japanese tsunami-earthquake. We feel that this is making the rest […]
Was NPRA Off The Mark On China?
By John Richardson I HAVE been speaking to my colleagues who attended this week’s NPRA conference in San Antonio, Texas, and it didn’t appear from discussions during the event that a potential slowdown in China was high on anyone’s radar screen. In fact, for many of the delegates it didn’t seem to be blinking on […]
China Quiet Market Persists
By John Richardson LACK of credit and inflation are becoming even greater problems in China, which is reflected in polyolefin markets that remain very quiet indeed. “It is ice cold out there with very little activity. Importers are waiting and hoping for some kind of improvement,” a Singapore-based polyolefin trader told the blog today. A […]
China PE Re-exported To Europe
By John Richardson CHINA’S polyethylene (PE) market is in such a bad state that re-exports are now being considered to Europe. The wide disparity between a flat China market and strong pricing in European has created this exceptionally rare arbitrage opportunity, which, according to an industry observer “has happened before, many moons ago, but not […]
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