The Weekly Catalyst
Global Chemical Update – Lay Down Sally
Key Points:
- USGC storm Sally is targeting East Louisiana/West Mississippi this week, and we see notable production risk in chlor-vinyls. Given offline capacity at Westlake in Lake Charles after Laura, an open US vinyl-chain export window to Asia (Ex. 1, 43) and healthy demand, we foresee price strength in US PVC.
- We reiterate our view that recent windfall profits following Hurricane Laura will only work to spur global production of both PE and PP – we flag that US PE and PP values reflect spot premiums relative to Asia currently.
- Other items of note range from the global decline in naphtha values WoW, to the modest fall in US spot ethylene relative to an uptick in propylene WoW, to USGC natural gas weakness outpacing US spot methanol declines WoW.
See PDF below for all charts and tables