Yesterday, I talked about the usual downturn in LPG offtake at this time of year in South America. There is typically pressure on imports to countries like Chile and Brazil due to less demand for LPG heating fuel. This year,
Naphtha’s price surge in May and June has made LPG more cost effective for petrochemical crackers that are able to switch feedstocks. LPG prices moved only slightly higher during the naphtha rally, and especially so in producing regions such as
Petrochemical cracker outages can impact olefin supply and feedstock demand in the ports where they reside, but mixed results from a few recent events may be more of an indication of things to come. Naphtha offtake in East Asia so
July finished with additional signs that the LPG markets are coming back into favor, with overall offtake increasing 14% from June. Higher discharges took place in parts of Asia, where Japanese and South Korean imports each grew 24%, to 324,000
Tension between the United States and China has ratcheted up in recent weeks amid increasingly hostile rhetoric. The global spread of the coronavirus has further hurt relations between Beijing and Washington, stoking the possibility of a new trade war amid
Olefin and feedstock offtake plummeted in February in regions that are being impacted by the coronavirus, such as East Asia (See Vol. 1, Issue 1), but Latin America has nearly been completely spared. Discharges of propylene and naphtha in the
Government initiatives to encourage India’s LPG use by households has given a steady boost to demand, and recently improved economic data should encourage that growth to continue.
We last addressed OPEC LPG shipments back in August (see Vol. 5, Issue 33), highlighting how they appeared to be diverging from the OPEC oil production cut deal and increasing instead.
Higher demand for propane-fueled crop-drying helped push US prices up nearly 40%. The effect of the price gain was amplified in Northwest Europe and the Far East, where propane nearly doubled since early September.
East Africa’s LPG offtake could set up for a strong demand period in coming months. LPG offtake in the region soared to 48,000 bpd in July and has averaged 14,000 in the five months since. However, the beginning of the
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