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Chemicals and the Economy

Gazprom moves further into petchems

Gazprom is becoming a player to watch in petchems. For decades, observers have speculated that Russia might increase its petchem activity. A recent comment by Gazprom deputy CEO, Valery Golubev, seemed to bring this concept closer to reality. He said that Gazprom aimed to increase its ethylene production by 350% to 7.66 million tonnes (MT) […]

Arctic oil reserves

How thick is the ice cap at the North Pole? Will it melt within our lifetime, or will it take a century? Will its major oil and gas reserves become available for exploitation? These are the questions which may be answered by the Vanco Arctic survey, due to take place between February – June next […]

The US$ just keeps on falling

A recent Financial Times article commented on the 93% correlation this year between changes in the ¥ / € rate and global stock market movements. It showed that during 2007, whenever the euro has risen against the yen, stocks have also risen, and vice versa. This could be interesting background info for anyone who dabbles […]

5 risks to 2008 budgets

The consensus viewpoint is an easy way of keeping up to speed on a variety of issues outside one’s daily experience. But the signs are that the consensus may be leading to complacency, when it comes to the assumptions being used to finalise 2008 budgets. There are a number of areas where some new thinking […]

China worries over US$ fall

Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier, spent his trip to Singapore yesterday expressing concern over the fall in the US$. ‘“We have never been experiencing such big pressure. We are worried about how to preserve the value of our reserves,’ he said. In a separate interview, Mr Wen then went further, stating ‘We will increase the […]

Beggar my neighbour

English children have a card game called ‘Beggar my Neighbour’, where the aim is to win all the cards from your opponents. Central bankers seem to be learning its rules, and applying them to currency trading. OPEC’s weekend summit showed it is clearly worried that it will have a losing hand if oil remains priced […]

Uncertainty rules

Our annual European conference, organised with ICIS, always provides an excellent opportunity to gain a snapshot of industry views as we move into a new year. At this week’s event in Antwerp, Belgium, the prevailing mood was uncertainty, for the first time since 2002: • Oil prices are high, and volatile. This makes it difficult […]

The subprime black hole

Black holes are an apparently empty region of space, with the power to destroy anything that comes too close. The US subprime crisis seems to be turning into their financial equivalent. It never seems to get resolved. It just gets worse. The last few days have demonstrated this key learning once again. One might have […]

US autos/housing worsen

1 in every 196 US households was in receipt of a foreclosure filing at the end of September, according to Bloomberg. This is a scary number for anyone who owns a house. And Quarter 4 is likely to be worse. Latest figures from the Realtors Association show September’s existing home sales down 19.1% from a […]

TOTAL’s new CEO warns on oil supplies

Christophe de Margerie, the new TOTAL CEO, has burst the bubble of complacency that has surrounded discussion of future oil supply. The ‘business as usual’ forecasts of both the International Energy Agency and the US government assume that the world will be producing c120m bbls/day by 2030. But de Margerie said he wished to ‘speak […]

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