Americas target petrochemicals

The region is playing a more prominent role in global petrochemical capital investments

The global petrochemical sector continues to expand exponentially as developing nations' demand for petrochemical/chemical products continues to increase. In its Oil 2018 report, the International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasts that approximately 25pc of the increase in oil consumption to 2023—nearly 1.7mn bl/d—will be from demand for petrochemical feedstocks. Growing demand centres in the Asia-Pacific region will be met by billions of dollars of new petrochemical production capacity in Asia, the Middle East and—crucially—North America. These three regions are investing heavily to boost petrochemical processing capacity to satisfy demand, and the US and the Middle East will export products to