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Chemicals and the Economy

Chemical Industry & Employment Outlook webinar

The blog is pleased to have been invited by the American Chemical Society (ACS) to join its online panel discussion on “Chemical Industry & Employment Outlook: Trends 2010 and Beyond”, taking place via webinar on Tuesday 2 November. Its co-panellists will be Pat Confalone, Vice-President, Global R&D, Du Pont; and Susan Butts, Senior Director of […]

Saudi Aramco to extend shale gas search

The summer has seen several reports of reductions in ethane availability to Saudi petchem plants. This seems to have been due to two causes: • Saudi has cut back oil production by a third (4mbd) in order to comply with its 8.3mbd OPEC quota at a time of reduced global demand. This has also reduced […]

Washington and Bahrain dates for the blog

The blog is delighted to have been invited to address two important industry events in coming months: Washington DC. It will be presenting a Global Outlook to the Coatings Summit, alongside CEOs including Andrew Liveris of Dow Chemical; Christopher Connor of Sherwin Williams; Hans Wijers, AkzoNobel; Kenji Sakai of Nippon Paint, as well as senior […]

Aromatics Conference ‘Early Bird’ discount till next week

Registrations are already building for our 9th European Aromatics and Derivatives Conference, to be held in Berlin on 23-24 November. Co-organised as always with ICIS, it features a strong line-up of industry speakers including: • Shell Chemicals, Sven Royall, VP Intermediates on ‘What next for Aromatics’? • Ralf Kuhlmann (former Business Director, ExxonMobil Chemicals and […]

Strong speaker line-up for European Aromatics conference

Our 9th European Aromatics and Derivatives Conference will be held in Berlin on 23-24 November. Co-organised as always with ICIS, it features a strong line-up of industry speakers including: • Shell Chemicals, Sven Royall, VP Intermediates on ‘What next for Aromatics’? • Ralf Kuhlmann (former Business Director, ExxonMobil Chemicals and APPE Chairman) on ‘European petrochemicals: […]

TOTAL moves forward on methanol to olefins

Coal was the original source of most chemicals. It was then replaced in the 1960’s by oil-based feedstocks. Their lower cost of manufacturing led to the boom in applications and volumes seen over the past 50 years. More recently, biomass’ potential is now being explored. At the same time, major companies such as BASF, Dow, […]

Dow focuses on Performance, Market-Driven businesses

10 years ago, Dow was in the middle of completing its $12bn Union Carbide acquisition. This made it the world’s second largest chemical company, and a leading player in Basic petchems and polymers. More recently, however, higher oil prices have made life increasingly difficult for chemical businesses that lack upstream integration. Dow’s response, born of […]

Dow puts debt problems behind it

A year ago, the Dow Chemical stock price was below $6, giving the company a total market capitalisation of just c$7bn. Since then, Dow has regained the initiative in a very focused way. First, it sold Morton Salt for $1.7bn, then it sold $2.25bn of new equity and refinanced $4.65bn of long-term debt. Next, it […]

CEOs remain cautious over 2010 Outlook

The blog’s quarterly survey of company Outlook statements shows CEOs remain very cautious. There has been a rebound after the destocking disaster of Q4 2008 – Q1 2009. But there seems little confidence that we will quickly return to the levels of demand and margin seen in the 2003-7 Boom period. China’s stimulus and loan […]

Opportunities for the New Decade

Over the past century, many parts of the world have seen an extraordinary increase in living standards and life expectancy. As the Financial Times notes, we used to marry at c15 years, become grandparents at c30 and die at c45. Yet whilst 15 – 30 – 45 is still the demographic cycle in the poorest […]

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