Butadiene: Europe

摘要

European spot butadiene prices continued to decline this week toward the contract price equivalent as spot buy interest remained muted. Despite the recent cracker outages, consumers said that they had sufficient material in stock due to pre-buying in December 2009. Although some producers who had suffered from unscheduled cracker shutdowns in December said that they are tight and would only offer material close to the Eur1,000/mt level some net consumers said that they would only pay close to the first quarter contract price level of Eur950/mt FD NWE. One consumer said that it had purchased a 1,200 mt parcel at Eur950/mt but details could not be fully confirmed with the seller. “There were few problems sourcing material.