By John Richardson SECURITY OF SUPPLY is a critical concern for European polyolefins producers and buyers because of the risks of interrupted Russian oil and gas supplies. You cannot, of course, run polyolefins plants without sufficient energy supplies. So, in order to support European readers of the blog, let me start with some headline energy […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Tackling the plastic waste crisis must remain a priority because of growing legislative pressure
By John Richardson WE NOW HAVE an agreement amongst 175 countries, reached in Nairobi in Kenya last week, to develop a legally binding treaty to deal with plastic waste. This was something I called for last year. At the time I said we needed global limits on plastic waste that would be as important for […]
Ukraine: Oil prices, lost petrochemicals demand, changing trade flows and the impact of the four megatrends
By John Richardson IF WE ARE involved in a new protracted Cold War, this will change just about everything for the petrochemicals industry. Or, of course, we could go back to the Old Normal. Corporate planners must therefore press on with drawing up short, medium and long-term scenarios and then apply these scenarios to tactics […]
Ukraine-Russia: Assessing petrochemical demand losses
To follow all the breaking news on the crisis and the implications for petrochemicals and energy markets, please click here for the ICIS subscription topic page. If you need a trial of ICIS news, please let me know. By John Richardson NOW THAT an invasion has started, the critical issue for petrochemicals companies is whether they can […]
Petrochemicals transition to Net Zero to result in new margin and cost curve drivers
The petrochemicals or chemicals (depending what you prefer) transition to Net Zero is both connected and different from the energy transition for reasons I’ll detail in a series of blog posts, starting today with a few headline thoughts on how global margin and cost curve positions my change over the next few years – and […]
New scenarios for 2022 US PE exports as volatility and uncertainty increase even further
By John Richardson CONFUSED? If so, you are fully across what’s happening in the global polyethylene (PE) market. Anyone who isn’t confused is likely taking a vacation on Mars with no means of communicating with Planet Earth. The chart below is a case in point. What you can see from the data are actual US […]
China’s LLDPE market: final review for 2021 and further outlook for this year
China’s LLDPE demand grew by just 1% last year, below market expectations, with further 2022 downward pressure likely on Common Prosperity and Zero COVID
European and US LLDPE margins may in 2022 sink towards northeast Asian levels
By John Richardson A GOOD FRIEND and contact messaged me this week to say, “Wow, this is complicated”. Yes, I am afraid so. These are the most difficult-to-read polyolefins markets I can recall in my 25 years of following the industry. I don’t see forecasting outcomes for this year becoming any easier. But, using linear […]
China 2021 polyethylene demand could be 1.9m tonnes lower than last year
By John Richardson WE NOW HAVE enough data to make some firm conclusions about what the Chinese polyethylene (PE) market will have looked like in 2021. We can also make some early estimates about the shape of the market in 2022. The slide below details what the ICIS apparent demand data for January-October 2021 (our […]
Global polypropylene could also move from inflation to deflation in Q1 next year
By John Richardson WE ALL NEED TO ASK ourselves whether the global patterns in polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP) pricing and margins that we have seen over the last year represent a long-term divergence in global markets or something temporary. As discussed on Monday, when I examined linear low-density PE (LLDPE) market (and the same […]