By John Richardson NO SMOKE without fire? Perhaps, as there more and more reports that China will buy into next year’s Saudi Aramco IPO.. This would further cement already strong economic and geopolitical ties between China and Saudi Arabia. It was Reuters that first reported back in April that China was interested in buying into Aramco […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Climate Change, Extreme Weather: Implications For Chemicals Companies
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, […]
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 […]
Tomorrow’s Economic Supercycle: Only If We Build A lot More Toilets
By John Richardson AFTER my presentation yesterday during the 4th ICIS Asian Polyolefins Conference in Bangkok, someone asked me a very good question: “Where is the next Economic Supercycle going to come from?” My answer was as follows: Quite possibly from the developing world. But countries that have more mobile phones than toilets will only be able to […]
Tackling Gender Inequality, Climate Change Etc Key To Future Chemicals Growth
By John Richardson IF you think that progress towards tackling issues such as gender inequality in sub-Saharan Africa has nothing to do with forecasting chemicals and polymers demand growth, then you are going to face some severe difficulties over the next ten years. Sub-Saharan Africa loses around $95bn a year due to gender inequality, jeopardising the […]
Climate Change: Taking Out An Insurance Policy
By John Richardson WOULD you get on board a plane without taking out travel insurance to protect your family? Of course not, even though the chances of you being involved in a plane crash are one in 9 million. And would you step into an ocean where dangerous sharks swim, especially if you live where […]
Serving The Needs Of The Vulnerable Poor Majority
By John Richardson HERE is another way of looking at the important new Pew Research study, which I first wrote about last Friday: Just 16% of the world’s population live on incomes that would take them safely above the poverty line in the US in 2011 – the latest year for which all the global […]
Oil, Gas,Chemicals: A Trove Of Financially Toxic Assets
By John Richardson OIL and gas companies might very well find themselves holding on to what Izabella Kaminska of the FT has aptly called “a trove of financially toxic assets” as a result of the growing, and irreversible, consensus that climate change is man-made. She was basing her phrase on the work of the consultancy, […]
Burying Your Head In The Sand Is Not The Answer
By John Richardson YOU are a US polyethylene (PE) producer or any other chemicals producer in a country that remains on the wrong side of the new consensus about climate change. Sure, you can choose to bury your head in the sand and pretend that this shift in this consensus isn’t permanent. But with your head […]
Pricing Climate Change Into Import Tariffs
By John Richardson SO, following on from my blog post yesterday, how might developing countries calculate import tariffs on petrochemicals in response to the rising social, political and economic costs of climate change? One good starting point in just a few years’ time, when these tariffs are sure to be under serious evaluation, might be […]
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