Surfactant raw material outlook for the eighties

Abstract

AbstractOver the next decade, the surfactant industry should be able to secure an adequate supply of the raw materials necessary to provide its need for surfactant intermediates. Since the U.S. will continue to rely on foreign imports for marginal crude supplies, periodic disruptions in raw material supply are likely to occur. World crude prices are expected to rise more rapidly than the general U.S. inflation rate and surfactant feedstocks are expected to track world crude prices as a whole. Over the next few years, ethylene prices should increase faster than other surfactant feedstocks. This should occur as a result of natural gas price decontrol and improved ethylene profit margins. Otherwise, in the long term, the major driving force for all three synthetic feedstocks should be the price of world crude. Of course, short term perturbations, e.g., plant shutdowns and over‐supply situations, may cause one feedstock or the other to increase at somewhat higher or somewhat lower rates for short periods of time. Natural oils may represent an interesting alternative to crude‐oil‐based alcohols. Longer term, average prices for natural oils should increase at lower rates than world crude oil. However, natural oil prices have historically been much more cyclic than crude prices and “natural” alcohol producers run the risk of being noncompetitive during tight supply/demand periods.