By John Richardson TIME AND again people get oil markets wrong because they entirely focus on the physical supply and demand of the black stuff whilst ignoring the pivotal role that financial speculators play in driving prices higher or lower. Since 2000, futures speculation has greatly increased because of regulatory liberalisation, as I wrote in […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Scenario 1 inevitable? Are you really, really, hand on heart, that sure?
ICIS and the UK–based chemicals company International eChem had the privilege of making a presentation during the Knowledge Sharing Partners event at last month’s GPCA Forum in Dubai. The conference was organised by our excellent ICIS Conferences team. Please click this link for a copy of our slides: ICISConsultingPresentationGPCA2018 If you would like to further discuss […]
Negative Asian polyolefins margins show need for recession planning
ASIAN PE and PP spreads turned negative in October this year for the first time since the same month five years earlier. As spreads turned negative it seems certain that margins would have been in deeper negative territory as spreads don’t account for the full costs of production. Back in October 2014 the sharp fall […]
Global recession approaches as chems data weakens, debt problems build
THE CHEMICALS industry is the “industry of industries” – upstream of all the manufacturing chains. This is why what is happening in chemicals serves as such an important early indicator. Take a look at the above chart – the latest from the American Chemistry Council. It shows that during September, capacity utilisation in the global […]
China’s PE market in 2019 at risk of lower growth
By John Richardson THIS MIGHT turn out to be another good year for Chinese PE demand growth as the preliminary estimate from our China team is that 2018 consumption growth will be 7% compared with last year. This compares with the forecast in our Supply & Demand database of a 5.4% increase. The above […]
Mike Pence’s key China speech highlights Cold War risks for petchems
By John Richardson US VICE president Mike Pence made a barely reported speech on 4 October in which his big theory was that Bill Clinton, George W Bush and Barack Obama misread China. Mr Pence said that the nation they embraced as a partner was instead a competitor. It is important that you read the […]
China polymer growth at risk of 8.6m tonne decline on trade war
By John Richardson THERE is no other country or even region in the world that comes anywhere close to being as important to the global polymers industry as China, as the above chart reminds us. From end-2017 until the end of 2021 in seven of the major synthetic resins – PE, PP, PS, EPS, ABS, […]
Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene trade war disruptions
By John Richardson BECAUSE CHINA is such a dominant player in finished goods manufacturing, US tariffs on Chinese imports as part of the trade war will have major negative effects upstream across a wide range of petrochemicals and polymers and across a wide range of countries. The reason is of course that petrochemicals are needed […]
US styrene another petchems sector at risk from trade war
By John Richardson THE US decision to pick a fight with China over trade and geopolitical influence could backfire very badly from the perspective of new US investments in petrochemicals capacity – most notably polyethylene (PE) and ethylene glycols (EG). The data tell is that many billions of dollars of investments in new plants will […]
Middle East, India, SEA petchems winners in new trading blocs
By John Richardson JACK MA, the founder of Alibaba, said of the US/China trade war, “It’s going to last a long time, maybe 20 years. It’s going to be a mess. It’s not a trade war, it’s about competition between two countries.” I believe that the world is set to be split into two trading blocs, […]