Daily Chemical Reaction
Laura Impacts Limited & Risk Falls, But US (& Global) Chemical Markets Still Far From Normal
Key Points:
- Our concerns with the impact of Hurricane Laura fell notably overnight with Westlake reporting limited physical damage to its Lake Charles sites and incoming reports of restarts in the surrounding areas of the storm path – we will be surprised if all restarts go smoothly but our comfort levels have risen.
- The potential supply issues with Hurricane Laura would have only added stress to an already imbalanced chemical supply chain network that will face greater global supply into 2021, spurred further price strength in some areas that is already supported more by regional uncertainty/urgency rather than global cost curves and occurred in an opaque COVID demand setting that’s mixed (strong packaging, weak aerospace, etc.) but still facing headwinds.
- We flag two upstream chemical industry charts to close the week, note multiple note multiple corporate news items (e.g. Celanese, Evonik, Lanxess, KIK, OCI, Sinopec, Westlake, etc.) and discuss USGC port re-openings.
See PDF below for all charts