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Asian Chemical Connections

China’s Evolving Autos Market: What It Means For PP

By John Richardson THE tide of credit that lifted all boats in China meant that chemicals company CEOs could get away with clichés such as “the rise of the middle classes” and “increasing urbanisation” and later point to strong sales figures as support for their arguments. But now the CEOs are going to have to […]

SABIC’S Al-Mady Issues Europe Warning

By John Richardson MOHAMED Al-Mady, the CEO of SABIC, told the Financial Times yesterday that he worries about Europe losing out on petrochemical investments because of its reluctance to embrace shale gas. “Some European companies already made the decision to go into shale gas, so naturally when they do not there will not be development,” he […]

Asian Operating Cuts Not Enough

By John Richardson ASIAN naphtha cracker operators have cut production in response to the exceptionally weak China market, according to ICIS. Yeochun Naphtha Cracker Centre (YNCC) has, for instance, lowered operating rates to 90 percent from 100 percent at its three crackers in Yeosu. South Korea, from the end of May. The total capacity of its […]

PX Goes Green

By Malini Hariharan Work on commercialising a green route to paraxylene (PX) purified terphthalic acid (PTA) and other aromatics is speeding up. US companies are at the forefront of recent developments. Virent is looking to produce a sugar-based ­aromatics stream containing benzene, toluene and xylenes using traditional chemical ­catalytic processing, writes fellow blogger Doris de […]

Formosa Confirms US Cracker Plans

By Malini Hariharan One more US cracker and propane dehydrogenation (PDH) project has been confirmed. After months of speculation Formosa Plastics has announced that plans to build a 800,000 tonnes/year ethane cracker, a 600,000 tonnes/year PDH plant and a 300,000 tonnes/year low density polyethylene (LDPE) plant at Point Comfort, Texas. The $1.7bn investment is due […]

SABIC And Sinopec’s Trinidad Partnership

By Malini Hariharan More news has emerged on the Trinidad methanol and methanol-to-olefins (MTO) project covered by the blog last week. Chinese major Sinopec is likely to be SABIC’s partner for the $5.3bn project. The two companies are in negotiations with the Trinidad government, said SABIC. With Sinopec as a partner, SABIC would gain access […]

Methanol moves

By Malini Hariharan Recent moves by methanol majors to boost their capacities have caught the blog’s attention. Sabic’s chief financial officer Mutlaq al-Morished disclosed at a press conference yesterday in Dubai that the company is in talks for a methanol project in Trinidad and Tobago. Morished declined to provide details as the talks were being […]

Weak margins hit earnings

By Malini Hariharan It is the results season and numbers posted so far confirm that the last quarter has been rough with depressed demand, weak product prices and firm feedstock costs affecting earnings. Siam Cement Group’s EBITDA for the chemicals division dropped 25% in Q4 from the previous quarter, while sales revenue declined by 5%. […]

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