"Once we get out of that down cycle, maybe sometime in the early 2030s, it will be a situation where the crackers start to ramp back up again. And at that point, I think we have to question whether there's enough seaborne supply of naphtha to really supply all these crackers," said FGE's Armaan Ashraf at APIC.
Naphtha imports into the Asia Pacific market for petrochemical cracking are estimated to hit nearly 85 million mt by 2032, up from the current level of 50 million mt, according to FGE data.
Meanwhile, global PDH capacity is projected to shrink in the second half of this decade as FGE expects the growth of new facilities in China to drop from more than 5 million mt per year to less than 1 million mt annually by 2030.
"You start having a bit of a slowdown in terms of that pull of propane into PDHs as a result," said Ashraf.
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