Low oil prices challenge coal-based chemicals.

摘要

The past few years of sustained high oil prices have seen considerable investment in coal-based petrochemicals in China, but oil's recent plunge has made these production methods and other alternatives to conventional steam cracking less profitable. "Although the CTO [coal-to-olefins] margin is still positive, the return on new CTO investment will be challenging if the low oil price persists," said IHS Chemical VP and head/China Paul Pang. "The economics for coal-to-EG [ethylene glycol], methanol-to-olefins [MTO] and propane dehydrogenation [PDH] are also depressed under the current low oil price."