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Chemicals and the Economy

Chemicals feel the wind of change

Three major themes ( ICIS Jun08.pdf ) emerged from our Asian Conference last week, co-organised with ICIS: • Change. The world is clearly changing very rapidly. Feedstock prices are rising. At the same time, major new capacity is starting to come on-stream in the Middle East, and in Asia. • Complexity. There are many more […]

Gazprom challenges OPEC

Alexei Miller, CEO of Gazprom, believes ‘that OPEC doesn’t have any real influence on the global oil market nowadays’. Interviewed by the Financial Times, he claimed that ‘not a single decision has been passed of late that would really influence the global oil market’. And he repeated his suggestion that oil could reach $250/bbl, noting […]

A commodities ‘Super Cycle’

Oil prices at $140/bbl caused plenty of debate in Bangkok this week at our Asian conference (jointly organised with ICIS). Delegates also heard from Reliance’s President of Fibre Intermediates, Rajen Udeshi, on the potential for a new commodities ‘Super Cycle’ to be underway. Discussing the above chart, he pointed out that the industrialisation of China […]

P&G reviews its supply chain model

Higher oil prices will change the way that Procter & Gamble operates its supply chain. The world’s largest consumer products company describes its current operations as being ‘upside down’. ‘They were implemented in the 1980s and 1990s, when oil was 10 bucks a barrel’, according to Keith Harrison, P&G’s head of global supply.

Israel’s training exercise worries oil markets

The US has now confirmed what oil traders have been suspecting – that Israel is preparing for a bombing raid on Iran’s alleged nuclear facilities. According to Bloomberg and the New York Times, around 100 Israeli aircraft took part in a full-scale training exercise in early June. The distance it involved, 900 miles, is apparently […]

Agriculture – the new focus for chemical demand

A first visit to Cambodia. I’m here en route to our Asian Conference in Bangkok, and the picture shows the famous line of Buddhas at Angkor Wat. But the main topic of conversation when talking to local people is the high cost of food and energy. With wages averaging $30 – $35 a week, these […]

China drills for oil off Florida coast

John McCain, Republican Presidential candidate, is making waves in the US political scene with his suggestion that the ban on offshore drilling for oil might need to be lifted. Barron’s, however, notes rather ironically that in fact, drilling is already underway off the Florida coast. It points out that ‘Cuba is allowing Chinese energy companies […]

‘Roll-through’ pricing reappears

Linda Naylor, ICIS’s polymers guru, has just written a market analysis that took me straight back to 1980. She described how current feedstock prices meant that ‘many of Europe’s cracker operators were losing money’, and noted that Dow was being ‘very firm’ in trying to recoup these losses via higher polymer prices. However, her research […]

Monday, Monday

Monday, Monday, can’t trust that day Monday, Monday, sometimes it just turns out that way Oh Monday morning, you gave me no warning of what was to be These ‘Mamas and Papas’ lyrics certainly sum up Monday this week: • Oil prices went to another record high, just under $140/bbl, as traders worried about the […]

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