By ICIS pricing
Houston (ICIS news) – The ICIS Petrochemical Index (IPEX) for November plummeted by a record 13% to 288.01 from October’s reading of 331.83 on a combination of global economic woes and declining energy values.
The previous record percentage month-on-month decline was a 10.4% fall in October.
All 12 products in the IPEX portfolio declined in November, led by a 29% nosedive in benzene.
The plunge in benzene was led by Europe, where values crashed 63%.
Propylene tumbled by 23% on a global basis, reacting to oil prices that dropped by about 35% in October.
Percentage falls in seven other commodity chemicals reached double digits.
Among the chemicals posting relatively smaller declines, styrene dropped by only 1.3%, saved from a bigger drop by inertia in contract settlements due to benzene’s collapse.
Other relatively resilient values were for polystyrene (PS), down by 6.5%, and methanol, down by 5.3%.
Published at the beginning of each month, the IPEX provides an independent indicator of average change in world petrochemical prices.
Dating back to January 1993, historical ICIS prices for a basket of 12 essential petrochemical grades in the US, Western Europe, and the northeast Asian markets have been weighted by regional nameplate capacity to generate a monthly index value.
The IPEX product basket comprises ethylene, propylene, benzene, toluene, paraxylene, styrene, methanol, butadiene, PVC, polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), and polystyrene.
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