General Thoughts: Ammonia’s fertilizer-anchored cycle diverges from most chemicals, signaling tight supply and investment incentives, while petrochemicals face surplus-driven signals discouraging growth capital.
Supply Chain/Commodities:
General Thoughts: Natural gas volatility now translates into risk, as export integration, consolidation, and midstream optionality reprice feedstock economics, slow marginal investment, and lift risk
General Thoughts: Global chemical restructuring optimizes footprints, shrinks effective supply, and embeds optionality, positioning low-cost, low-carbon assets like Dow’s Path2Zero to lift returns in the
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
General Thoughts: Weather-driven global natural gas inflation supports higher chemical prices despite relative cost positions holding, with chemical margins compressing absent structural supply cuts.
Supply
General Thoughts: Early 2026 chemical sector updates signal margin defense over volume, as pricing, self-help, and restructuring offset weak demand, policy uncertainty persists, and capacity
General Thoughts: Early-2026 cost-curve shifts amid persistent chemical market oversupply are forcing restructuring, with clear evidence likely emerging in 4Q25 results and more decisive 2026
General Thoughts: Global chemical downturn into 2026 will force ownership change and capital discipline, restructuring across Europe and Asia ex-China, while redefining low-cost integration as
General Thoughts: Ammonia markets hinge on reliability, not recovery, keeping prices elevated as supply additions lag volatility, farmer demand flexes, and integrated low-cost producers outperform
Polyethylene – December Monthly Price Expectation Report
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