Propylene breaks through Euro1,000 per ton

As the propylene market in Western Europe hit a new price peak of over euro1,000 per ton CFR spot North West Europe the spotlight is turned onto the current shortage of this basic chemical building block. The propylene market has been tightening progressively for several years as consumption growth, principally from production of polypropylene, exceeds the growth in supply from steam crackers and fluid catalytic crackers. The response from producers has been investment in direct routes to propylene rather than relying on the traditional co-product routes. Production of propylene from direct routes, such as propane dehydrogenation and the metathesis of ethylene and butylenes, currently provide just over three million tons per year, only about five percent of global supply. The latest market dynamics report from ChemSystems, published in September, examines the propylene and propylene derivatives markets and forecasts that capacity to produce propylene from on-purpose routes will grow to over ten million tons per year by 2015, about ten percent of global production capacity.

The report analyses the global propylene markets for both refinery grade and chemical/polymer grade propylene with projections forward to 2020. The report also analyses the propylene derivatives: polypropylene, propylene oxide, acrylonitrile, cumene/phenol, oxo-alcohols, isopropanol and acrylic acid.

The report “Propylene and Derivatives Market Dynamics” is available from the Petroleum and Petrochemical Economics program.