People in the petrochemical industry.. chime in. (Houston: price, statistics)

[kkamakasi]

I am putting together a short ppt for foreign visitors to our company to give them an idea of the US petrochem industry.

I have been searching the internet for days and have not been able to come up with the following statistics:

1. US propylene production capacity
2. US butadiene production capacity
3. US HDPE production capacity and import/export ratio
4. US PP production capacity and import/export ratio
5. US PVC production capacity and import/export ratio
6. US PET production capacity and import/export ratio
7. US SBR production capacity and import/export ratio
8. US phenol production capacity and import/export ratio

Anyone have a good source (book, article, website) where I may be able to find these information?

[HoustonRonnie]

Start here and work your way forward.

NPRA | Statistics

Fractionation capacities and outputs are hard to track.

Ronnie

[kkamakasi]

Originally Posted by HoustonRonnie

Start here and work your way forward.

NPRA | Statistics

Fractionation capacities and outputs are hard to track.

Ronnie

Already tried that site and extracted all I needed from the statistics page and the annual reports...

Thanks for the post though.

[HoustonRonnie]

Here's the thing that's difficult, and then I'll shut up about it. Trying to measure capacity and utilization is a moving target. If you set up to produce, say, propylene because the price is right, then plants reconfigure to produce more, thus "capacity" goes up. Then if there's a glut in that market, the plant is reconfigured to produce another (hopefully more profitable) extraction thus sending capacities in another direct. Overall US production capacity for any given petrochemical is, thus, a moving target.

I'll shut up now.

Ronnie

[kkamakasi]

Originally Posted by HoustonRonnie

Here's the thing that's difficult, and then I'll shut up about it. Trying to measure capacity and utilization is a moving target. If you set up to produce, say, propylene because the price is right, then plants reconfigure to produce more, thus "capacity" goes up. Then if there's a glut in that market, the plant is reconfigured to produce another (hopefully more profitable) extraction thus sending capacities in another direct. Overall US production capacity for any given petrochemical is, thus, a moving target.

I'll shut up now.

Ronnie

No, I definitely understand your point and appreciate you chiming in.

I don't need an exact figure for any of those. It can be rounded to the nearest 1000 MT..

I came across an article on c&en that seems to have some values I'm looking for so I guess I'll just go with those.

Also, I came across USITC's "dataweb" database where I can look-up import/export values for anything given I know the HTS code for the trade item. This will be tedious but I don't think I have any other choice.

In any case, thanks again for the comment!

[Oildog]

energy information agency