Episode 540: US Gulf Coast storm outages risk global supply crunch

The US Gulf Coast storm impact could be worse than Hurricane Harvey, and cause a global supply crunch for major chemical product groups.
- Polar storm impact could be worse than Hurricane Harvey
- 100% of US capacity knocked out for major commodities
- Polar storm on top of shipping container, semi-conductor disruption
- Supply was already tight in some value chains
- Middle East and South Korea may replace lost US supplies
- Big question over real demand in China
- Globally, pandemic-related stockpiling may mask underlying poor demand
- Global supply chains not fit for purpose
- Brexit disruption will get worse when UK starts to enforce border controls
- Expect big drop in China 2021 net imports of polypropylene (PP), ethylene glycols (EG), paraxylene (PX), styrene
- China self-sufficiency means producers elsewhere may have to close capacity