Capacity exceeding demand is forecast to reach 218m tonnes this year from a 1990-2022 annual average of 76m tonnes.
Asian Chemical Connections
Asian Petchems Profits Could Test Historic Lows In 2018
By John Richardson THE ASIAN steam cracker business has struggled to pass on higher oil prices as the above chart further underlines. As you can see, high-density polyethylene (LLDPE) injection grade spreads including selected co-products have slipped over the last few months. Spreads are a rough but still useful measure of profitability, and so tell […]
Asian Naphtha-PE Spreads Collapse By 80% As 2018 Challenges Build
By John Richardson ASIAN naphtha-to-polyethylene (PE) spreads collapsed by 80% in the first week of January compared with December last year because of the failure to pass on the rise in naphtha feedstock costs resulting from higher oil prices. In an update of the chart I’ve been running since late last year, what you see […]
More Than Just Absence Of “Animal Spirits”
By John Richardson THE blog held a full day of discussions with our ICIS China price reporting team in Shanghai (we will provide a lot more details next week) and the story was consistent: *Government policy to rein-in liquidity, most notably new restrictions on the housing market, has driven demand down. *Traders expected a post-Chinese […]
Beware Of Excessive Optimism
By John Richardson CHEMICALS and polymer markets have enjoyed a very strong recovery in Asia since November/December, according to many of the traders we have spoken to. “We are getting $150-200/tonne more for benzene and toluene in January compared with early November. There has been a strong recovery in confidences,” said a Dubai-based trader. […]
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 […]
China set for aromatics expansion
By Malini Hariharan China is preparing to bring onstream huge capacities for aromatics this year. Nearly 1.7m tonnes/year of toluene capacity is due to be added, writes Dolly Wu in the latest issue of ICIS Chemical Business. The major projects to keep an eye on are Dragon Aromatics (350kta), Jilin Petrochemical (350kt), PetroChina Sichuan Petrochemical […]
Asia awash with aromatics
By Malini Hariharan Excess availability of product continues to trouble Asian aromatics markets. Commissioning of new plants and reluctance to cut operating rates has resulted in a steady build up of stocks over the last few months. Take the case of paraxylene (PX). The spread between naphtha and PX prices has been running below $250-300/tonne, […]
Aromatics get complicated
By Malini Hariharan Asian aromatics markets are getting increasingly hard to read not merely because of volatile crude prices. Demand, usually strong at this time of the year, has so far failed to materialise. The US gasoline season has started on a slow note. In Asia, benzene demand has been hit by maintenance shutdowns and […]
Jump to page: