ICIS Petrochemical Index (IPEX) Methodology


A capacity-weighted measure of average price changes for 12 key petrochemical grades, updated weekly or monthly

IPEX Methodology

The ICIS Petrochemical Index (IPEX) provides a capacity-weighted measure of the average change in global or regional petrochemical prices over time.

Dating back to 1 January 2000, historical ICIS prices for a basket of 12 essential petrochemical products in the US, western European and Asian markets are weighted by regional nameplate capacity to generate a monthly index value.

In the global IPEX, each of the 36 global prices are averaged according the share of total nameplate capacity which they represent.

As of October 2020, the baseline has been updated to 1 January 2000. The monthly IPEX takes all settled contract prices available at the time of publication. Any changes in the following month are retrospectively taken into account in the next publication. In deriving each month’s index:

Contract prices are those applicable to the previous calendar month

Domestic and spot prices are an average of ICIS pricing’s weekly published prices for the previous calendar month (four or five weeks accordingly).

This continues the principle of utilising most recent data averages to drive the IPEX. Where ICIS price quotations are not available for individual weeks because of public holidays, then previous week data is carried forward. This form of data interpolation is inferring some limited data points that may not be market derived and customers should be aware of this assumption.

IPEX values are calculated in a live environment and where the price of a commodity is not available, the latest available price is used to calculate the index.

The IPEX is only available to subscribers. For more information, please speak to Sales.

Product components

Prices and regional plant capacities for the following 12 petrochemical grades are included in the index calculation.

Ethylene

US Gulf
NE Asia
NW Europe

Propylene

US Gulf
NE Asia
NW Europe

Benzene

US Gulf
NE Asia
NW Europe

Toluene

US Gulf
NE Asia
NW Europe

Paraxylene

US Gulf
NE Asia
NW Europe

Styrene

US Gulf
NE Asia
NW Europe

Butadiene

US Gulf
NE Asia
NW Europe

Methanol

US Gulf
NE Asia
NW Europe

Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC)

US Gulf
NE Asia
NW Europe

Polyethylene (PE)

US Gulf
NE Asia
NW Europe

Polypropylene (PP)

US Gulf
NE Asia
NW Europe

Polystyrene

US Gulf
NE Asia
NW Europe

Regional plant capacities

Product prices are weighted using up-to-date regional capacities from the ICIS Supply & Demand Database.


Regional definitions:

The US Gulf region includes all facilities in each component grade in the US.

The northwest European region includes facilities in northwest Europe, including Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the UK.

The northeast Asian region includes all facilities in northeast and southeast Asian countries, plus India, Pakistan, Australia and New Zealand.