MOSCOW (MRC) -- U.S. manufacturers and freight haulers were hit last year by the sharpest slowdown since the 2008/09 recession and it filtered through into a noticeable dip in energy consumption, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.
Use of electricity, natural gas and diesel by industrial customers all showed large declines, or at least sharp slowdowns, in the nine months ending in September 2019. In July to September, industrial users’ total energy consumption fell 1% compared with the same period a year earlier, according to statistics from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
That was the biggest decline since the mid-cycle manufacturing slowdown in 2015/16 and before that the recession of 2008/09 (“Monthly energy review”, EIA, Dec. 23).
Within the total, industrial consumers’ electricity consumption fell by almost 5% in the third quarter from a year earlier, easily the biggest decline since the recession. Power consumption exhibits a lot of short-term variability based on both the weather (which affects heating and cooling demand) and the state of the economy, so the data must be interpreted with care.
But industrial users’ consumption showed a much more pronounced third-quarter slowdown than for residential customers, which suggests most of the weakness was economic rather than weather-related.
In contrast to electricity, industrial users’ gas consumption continued to grow, mostly because of the strong increase in demand from petrochemical producers.
Even so, gas consumption rose by just 0.75% in July-September compared with a year earlier, down from a growth rate of 7% year on year in early 2018.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,904,410 tonnes in the first eleven months of 2019, up by 6% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. PE shipments increased from both domestic producers and foreign suppliers. The PP consumption in the Russian market was 1,161,830 tonnes in January-November 2019, up by 7% year on year. Deliveries of all grades of propylene polymers increased, with the homopolymer PP segment accounting for the largest increase.
MRC