Tag: Demand

The refining industry, the source of half of the world’s elemental sulphur, continues to face major structural changes from changing feedstock and product slates and increasing regulatory burdens.

After a poor 2019, when global demand contracted by nearly 2.5%, phosphate markets are expected to rebound in 2020. Saudi Arabia and Morocco dominate new capacity additions while India and Brazil continue to be the key importers. US and Chinese production is in slow decline, meanwhile.

Floor prices in nitrogen markets are set by marginal producers high on the cost curve, usually using higher cost feedstocks. Recently, lower coal prices in China and the cost of imported LNG have begun to change the dynamic between producers on the margins.

‘Green’ methanol means many things to different people. It encompasses low carbon emissions methanol manufacture at scale, recovery of material through waste gasification and conversion to methanol and power to liquid (e-fuel) methanol via electrochemistry and sometimes a combination of all of the above. Each route has a place in reducing the overall carbon footprint of production and subsequent use of methanol, driven by both governmental incentives or societal demand. In this article Andrew Fenwick of Johnson Matthey reviews the various routes to manufacture.

Brazil is the main centre for new nitrogen demand in Latin America, but in spite of major oil and gas discoveries in the 2000s, has failed to develop a downstream nitrogen fertilizer industry.

Andy Hemphill , senior editor for potash at ICIS Fertilizers, takes a deep dive into the potash market. Potash producers are praying that tight capacity control and resurgent demand will curb the current bearish price trend.

We look ahead at fertilizer industry prospects for the next 12 months, including supply and demand growth, and explore the key agricultural, macroeconomic and geopolitical drivers likely to shape the market during 2020.

James Byrd of JESA Technologies (Worley, formerly Jacobs), Florida, looks at upcoming innovations in di-hydrate (DH) phosphoric acid plants for the 2020s.