Natural gas liquids (NGLs), particularly ethane and propane, have had a tremendous advantage over oil-derived naphtha as a feedstock for ethylene crackers in the past three years, but the collapse in oil prices has cut into that benefit, said Dave Witte, senior vice president and general manager of IHS Chemical. Naphtha-fed crackers in Europe and the Mideast are competing on a near if not equal basis to those in the US that get their fuel and feedstock from shale gas resources, Witte said at the recent IHS World Petrochemical Conference.
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