Baby It’s Cold Outside: Volatility Trims Inventories; Supports Monomers, Tests Polymers

Key Findings

General Thoughts: USGC outages reduce inventories, support monomer prices, and heighten volatility, favoring near-term monomer uplift over polymers ahead of a potentially heavier 1H26 turnaround season.
Supply Chain/Commodities: Short USGC freeze-led outages curb excess monomer inventories, amplify near-term volatility, and provide pricing support for base chemicals in 1H26 despite global oversupply.
Energy/Upstream: Weather-driven gas volatility and power constraints reshape chemical cost curves, favoring operators that build feedstock flexibility, resilience, and logistics optionality globally in 2026.
Sustainability/Energy Transition: US ethanol margins recovered into positive territory as corn relief offsets softer fuel spreads, with relative CI scores poised to increasingly differentiate producer competitiveness.
Downstream/Other Chemicals: Global freight normalization hides constraints that are lifting reliability costs, supporting chemical price floors, shaping arbitrage discipline, and favoring integrated global operators.