By John Richardson THE END of the oil age is arriving. Sooner than many people think, demand for oil in transportation will collapse. And as the environmental benefits of switching to electric vehicles become more and more apparent, we will look back and wonder “Why on earth did we use oil?”, just as we already […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Sustainability means reducing carbon emissions as well as plastic waste
By John Richardson THIS IS VERY much a personal plea to our industry about what I see as the biggest challenge we face in 2021 and beyond: carbon and other greenhouse gases. “We need to rebrand climate change as the climate crisis,” a source who works for an oil, gas and petrochemical company has been […]
Sustainability, the pandemic, demographics and geopolitics – how petchem companies respond will define their success
Just to stress again that this blog represents my personal views and not those if ICIS. By John Richardson YOU WILL NEED to constantly debate the details of the megatrends as they will very often change entirely. And whilst today’s four megatrends – sustainability, the pandemic, demographics and geopolitics – will remain unchanged, their relative […]
Why the long term price of oil could be lower than many people expect
By John Richardson I HAVE LONG been intrigued by the theory in quantum physics that electrons behave differently when they are observed as opposed to when they are not being observed. Data is quite similar in that it can be made to behave differently through conscious or unconscious confirmation bias. Two people can look at […]
The polymers industry, climate change and a call to action
By John Richardson MUCH OF the debate about plastics and the environment is, I fear, missing the bigger picture. The focus is heavily on what some of those in the industry say is the debatable science behind studies into the harmful effects of plastics. Polymer executives argue that questionable science doesn’t take account the carbon […]
Asian copolymer polyproplyene used as a sink for growing oversupply of ethylene
By John Richardson A SURE sign that the Asian ethylene-to-polyethylene (PE) markets are distressed comes from the above chart on the left which shows declines in block copolymer polypropylene (PP) premiums over homo-polymer raffia-grade PP since June of this year. In October in Southeast Asia (SEA), the price for the normally higher value block copolymer […]
Holding petchem CEOs to account: tackling societal needs the route to success
By John Richardson IF WE all had a dollar for every time we’d heard the phrase, “the growth of the Asian middle classes”, as just about the only justification by CEOs for petrochemicals and polymers investments, then the Principality of Monaco would by a very crowded place. There wouldn’t be enough room in the harbour […]
Internal combustion engines, car ownership to quickly head the way of horses and carts
By John Richardson THE PICTURE on the left shows the Easter Day Parade in New York in 1900. As you can see, the parade is almost entirely made up of horse-drawn vehicles, bar the red-circled auto. In that year there was a horse manure crisis in the world’s major cities with the attendant problems of […]
Complacency, LLDPE and plastic waste: A collapse in demand
By John Richardson THE TECHNICAL people, those with PHDs in polymer science who have also spent years in application development work, will tell you it is simply impossible to find other materials that perform as well as LLDPE. Multi-layer LLDPE films are vital in applications such as wrapping food, they argue, thanks to excellent barrier properties. […]
Why China Will Rapidly Become Paraxylene Self-Sufficient
By John Richardson WOW, what an opportunity. That might be your reaction to the two above charts. On the left, you can see a quite breath taking rise in China’s paraxylene (PX) net imports (imports minus exports). In 2007, China’s net imports were around 2.6m tonnes of PX with last year’s total reaching 14.4m tonnes. […]