Daily Chemical Reaction
Higher Crude, Asia Outages & Rubber Limits – The Three Amigos Taunting US Production; Other Items
Key Points:
- Asia Butadiene (BD) values reflect a five-year low relative to naphtha and BD derivative values reflect little sign of improvement – Asia ethylene is surging higher and this suggests to us that naphtha cracker operating rate issues beyond planned outages in Asia and Europe have not been resolved.
- We add to our commentary on the US polyethylene (PE) market yesterday and discuss the spike higher in China acetone prices.
- Other items of note today range from oil-and-gas commentary, to rising PET prices in China, to a 2020-22 period targeting self-sufficiency (vs. trade).
See PDF below for all charts