By John Richardson JAPAN has seen two decades of deflation and rising debts. Everyone should now recognise that Abenomics have failed to resolve this crisis. Abenomics were always going to fail because you cannot print babies. What a pity that Western central bank chiefs didn’t take a long hard look at Japan years ago. Instead […]
Asian Chemical Connections
The Risks Ahead For Polyethylene
By John Richardson TOO many people will look at the chart on the left and think, “Crisis? What crisis?” But glance to the right for what it is like in another petrochemicals value chain. What is happening on the right could sooner than you think be happening on the left: The polyethylene (PE) value chain […]
Anchors Aweigh: $26 Oil As Your New Starting Point
By John Richardson IF not these six months then it will be the second half of this year and if not H2 then definitely, without a doubt, sometime in 2017. So goes the constantly shifting thinking of some oil, gas and chemicals companies, and some of the independent analysts, on when oil markets will rebalance […]
Acceptance Followed By A Return To Profit
By John Richardson I HAVE long admired the work of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, who studied how people adjust to death and set out her analysis in the ground-breaking book, On Death and Dying. In this, she identified how people usually go through five different stages of response to death – Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and finally […]
Another Distracting Myth: Cheaper Oil Good For Growth
By John Richardson AS PEOPLE have frantically repositioned themselves over the last few months, one of the counter-arguments to the New Normal is that cheaper oil is a good thing for the global economy. The rationale behind this claim is that the drop in crude will boost consumer spending through cheaper gasoline and diesel etc. […]
A Message To Davos: Why Populism Is On The Rise
By John Richardson POLITICAL populism, or perhaps more accurately demagoguery, is a major concern amongst the great and good who are gathered for this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. They are worried, according to the Financial Times, about the “US building a wall to keep out immigrants, Britain leaving the EU or anybody […]
Oil In Free Fall: What It Means For Petchems
By John Richardson AS crude heads to perhaps as little as $10-15/bbl, you have evaluate the immediate, or first order, effects on the petrochemicals industry and then move to stage two – what it means in the longer term. Right now, you have to worry about the potential for raw material inventory losses up and […]
Global Polyethylene Priced Off US Ethane. Why Not?
By John Richardson WHEN you have spent several billion dollars building a brand new US steam cracker complex, you will of course do everything to maximise operating rates to pay back your debts, even if it means pricing off your advantaged raw-material supply. So why not new US polyethylene (PE) supply priced-off ethane, rather than […]
Collapsing Crude: What To Do Next
This is business critical now, as the new global economic crisis, centred on China and other emerging markets, gathers momentum. Putting aside the specific monumental problems represented by China, as the Financial Times pointed on Monday, the last decade has seen total emerging market debt rise from $5.4n to $24.4tn. This is equivalent to 90% […]
Saudi Aramco Share Sale: What This Tells US About Oil Prices
By John Richardson SAUDI Arabia’s widely-reported interest in selling a stake in Saudi Aramco is, as the Financial Times quite rightly pointed out last week, may well be the result of oil prices: Any move to proceed with a sell-off could indicate that Saudi Arabia is preparing for a period of low crude oil prices […]
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