The global situation is changing rapidly, affecting the chemical location structure formed in the past century. As the largest consumer market in the world, China is gradually undertaking the important task of chemical transformation. The European chemical industry continues to develop towards high-end chemical industry. The North American chemical industry is triggering the “anti globalization” of chemical trade. The chemical industry in the Middle East and Eastern Europe is gradually expanding its industrial chain, improving the utilization capacity of raw materials and global competitiveness. The chemical industry around the world is taking advantage of its own advantages to accelerate its development, and the pattern of the global chemical industry may change significantly in the future.
The development trend of global chemical industry is summarized as follows:
The “double carbon” trend may change the strategic positioning of many petrochemical enterprises
Many countries in the world have announced that “double carbon” China will reach its peak in 2030 and be carbon neutral in 2060. Although the current situation of “dual carbon” is limited, in general, “dual carbon” is still a global measure to deal with climate warming.
As the petrochemical industry accounts for a large proportion of carbon emissions, it is an industry that needs to make major adjustments under the dual carbon trend. The strategic adjustment of petrochemical enterprises in response to the dual carbon trend has always been the focus of the industry.
Under the dual carbon trend, the strategic adjustment direction of European and American international oil giants is basically the same. Among them, American oil giants will focus on the development of carbon capture and carbon sealing related technologies, and vigorously develop biomass energy. European and other international oil giants have shifted their focus to renewable energy, clean electricity and other directions.
In the future, under the overall development trend of “dual carbon”, the global chemical industry may undergo tremendous changes. Some international oil giants may evolve from original oil service providers to new energy service providers, changing the corporate positioning of the past century.
Global chemical enterprises will continue to accelerate structural adjustment
With the development of the global industry, the industrial upgrading and consumption upgrading brought by the terminal market have promoted the new high-end chemical market and a new round of adjustment and upgrading of the global chemical industry structure.
For the direction of upgrading the global industrial structure, on the one hand, it is the upgrading of biomass energy and new energy; On the other hand, new materials, functional materials, electronic chemicals, film materials, new catalysts, etc. Under the leadership of international petrochemical giants, the upgrading direction of these global chemical industries will focus on new materials, life sciences and environmental sciences.
The lightness of chemical raw materials brings about the global transformation of chemical product structure
With the growth of shale oil supply in the United States, the United States has changed from an initial net importer of crude oil to a current net exporter of crude oil, which has not only brought great changes to the energy structure of the United States, but also had a profound impact on the global energy structure. US shale oil is a kind of light crude oil, and the increase of US shale oil supply correspondingly increases the global light crude oil supply.
However, as far as China is concerned, China is a global crude oil consumer. Many oil refining and chemical integration projects under construction are mainly based on fulldistillation range crude oil processing, requiring not only light crude oil but also heavy crude oil.

From the perspective of supply and demand, it is expected that the global price difference between light and heavy crude oil will gradually narrow, bringing the following impacts to the global chemical industry:
First of all, the contraction of arbitrage between light and heavy crude oil due to the narrowing of the oil price difference between light and heavy crude oil has affected the speculation with oil price arbitrage as the main business model, which is conducive to the stable operation of the global crude oil market.
Secondly, with the increase of light oil supply and the decline of price, it is expected to increase the global consumption of light oil and increase the production scale of naphtha. However, under the trend of global light cracking feedstock, the consumption of naphtha is expected to decrease, which may lead to the escalation of the contradiction between naphtha supply and consumption, thus reducing the value expectation of naphtha.
Third, the growth of light oil supply will reduce the output of downstream heavy products using full range petroleum as raw materials, such as aromatic products, diesel oil, petroleum coke, etc. This development trend is also in line with the expectation that light cracking feedstock will lead to the reduction of aromatics products, which may increase the market speculation atmosphere of related products.
Fourth, the narrowing of the oil price difference between light and heavy raw materials may increase the raw material cost of integrated refining enterprises, thus reducing the profit expectation of integrated refining projects. Under this trend, it will also promote the development of refined rate of integrated refining enterprises.
The global chemical industry may promote more mergers and acquisitions
Under the background of “double carbon”, “energy structure transformation” and “anti globalization”, the competitive environment of SMEs will become more and more severe, and their disadvantages such as scale, cost, capital, technology and environmental protection will seriously affect SMEs.
In contrast, international petrochemical giants are conducting comprehensive business integration and optimization. On the one hand, they will gradually eliminate the traditional petrochemical business with high energy consumption, low added value and high pollution. On the other hand, in order to achieve the focus of global business, petrochemical giants will pay more and more attention to mergers and acquisitions. The performance scale and quantity of M&A and reorganization are also important basis for evaluating the cycle of local chemical industry. Of course, as far as emerging economies are concerned, they still take self construction as the main development model and achieve rapid and large-scale expansion by seeking funds.
It is expected that the chemical industry merger and reorganization will mainly focus on developed countries such as Europe and the United States, and emerging economies represented by China may participate moderately.
The medium and long-term strategic direction of chemical giants may be more concentrated in the future
It is a conservative strategy to follow the strategic development direction of global chemical giants, but it has certain reference significance.
Throughout the measures taken by petrochemical giants, many of them started from a certain professional field, and then began to spread and expand. The overall development logic has a certain periodicity, convergence divergence convergence re divergence… At present and for some time in the future, giants may be in a convergence cycle, with more branches, stronger alliances and more concentrated strategic direction. For example, BASF will be an important strategic development direction in coatings, catalysts, functional materials and other fields, and Huntsman will continue to develop its polyurethane business in the future.