Helping you navigate the new normal
US ethylene spot prices are tumbling as the major new shale gas expansions come on line, as the chart based on ICIS pricing data confirms: They began the year at $617/t, but have since more than halved to $270/t on Friday They are only around 10% higher than their all-time low of $240/t in September […]
The post US ethylene prices near all-time lows as over-capacity arrives appeared first on Chemicals & The Economy.
“By Monday, the third straight day of flooding, the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey had left much of the region underwater, and the city of Houston looked like a sea dotted by small islands. ’This event is unprecedented,’ the National Weather Service tweeted. ‘All impacts are unknown and beyond anything experienced.’” This summary from the New […]
Imagine your government decided to shutdown most of the industry in two major cities for 2 weeks or more? Say Detroit and Chicago in the US, or Milan and Turin in Italy, or Leeds and Manchester in the UK. Now you will have some idea of the scale of the shutdowns being mandated in China […]
I was kindly invited last week to give a keynote address at the annual ME-TECH conference in Dubai. Naturally, there was intense interest in my argument that oil prices were most unlikely to recover to the $100/bbl level. Instead, I suggested they would likely return to their long-term historical average of $33/bbl (in $2014). And I argued that this would be good news […]
There are 2 ways to improve operating rates in an industry. One is to increase volumes, the other is to reduce capacity. The latest APPE data covering H1 2014 for European olefin capacity highlights how the European petrochemical industry has successfully used both mechanisms over the past year to improve its position: Ethylene volume increased to 9.8MT, versus […]
When the world changes, companies either change with it or go out of business. The market for stagecoaches was never the same once cars came along. And not many students use slide rules today, now calculators are available. Usually, of course, these market changes are slow-moving. So companies often fail to respond in the hope the old world […]
Recovery has been delayed, again. That is the clear message from the blog’s extensive discussions with key executives in global and regional markets over the past 2 weeks. In summary as this ICIS video interview suggests, the picture is as follows: Base chemical demand has broadly fallen from peak levels in Q3 Most chemical buyers built inventory in […]
Almost unnoticed, an important shift is underway in propylene markets.
Propylene (C3) is the second largest olefin after ethylene, with production around 75 million tonnes in recent years. Its main sources are steam crackers and refineries – neither …
The latest EU olefin operating rates (OR%) were very disappointing, even though they were not a surprise. As the chart shows, ethylene rates were just 81% (based on APPE data). They were far below the 90%+ rates that were normal before the crisis beg…
There seems little doubt that the global economy is now entering a new downturn. Pessimists may worry that it has already begun in Q3. Optimists might hope it will be delayed till Q4, or even Q1.
But almost all major indicators are pointing in the …