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Asian Chemical Connections

The Murkiest Of Outlooks

By John Richardson LACK OF visibility over what the New Year will bring for the global chemicals industry is a key feature of just about every conversation held with industry executives at the moment. Perfect forecasting is, of course, always impossible, but with the Eurozone in deep crisis and even China potentially facing its own bad-debt crisis, […]

Everywhere You Turn…..

By John Richardson It really is unrelentingly depressing, even though we hear that a few investors in chemicals stocks are clinging-on to the hope that provided everyone maintains tight production, demand will recover very strongly in Q1 of next year. We wish they were right, but sadly they are not. Everywhere you turn it looks […]

Broad Commodities Retreat Hurts Chemicals

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 […]

Petchems Confront Another Lehman Bros

  By John Richardson THE main issue facing Asian cracker operators a couple of weeks ago was how long co-product credits would continue to compensate for a moribund China polyethylene (PE) market. Feedstock cost is now the biggest immediate worry. A hike in naphtha saw integrated low-density PE (LDPE) margins plummet by $172/tonne, according to the […]

Polyolefin Producers Maintain Their Control

Source of picture: Dallhouse University, Canada   By John Richardson THE incredibly smart way in which polyolefin producers have managed production since the great collapse of September 2008 continues to defy what appear to remain some very uncertain, and some cases weak, macro-economic fundamentals. As we discussed on Wednesday, China faces a significant demand-growth gap […]

Disneyland Economics And Planning For 2011

Please stop taking the Mickey.. Source of picture: China Daily   By John Richardson ECONOMIC bubbles have been given their name for a good reason: They behave exactly the same as the soap bubbles that were prevalent at Hong Kong’s Disneyland, where I paid with my three-year-old son yesterday. So when the momentum of rising […]

Abandon Fear And Plan For The New Utopia

Michael Corleone once told his fiancee, “The old way of doing things is over – even my father knows that. In ten years time, the Corleone family will be entirely legitimitate” and ten years later he was still killing lots of people. So beware of what follows… Source of picture: www.i-italy.com   By John Richardson […]

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