Chemicals Consulting

Challenge

Butadiene is a monomer used in the production of a wide range of polymers, copolymers as well as many intermediate chemicals. The largest single use of butadiene is in the production of styrene butadiene rubber used primarily in the manufacture of tires. Alternative bio-based production routes are underway to meet the high demand for butadiene. The client wanted to explore novel ways to make butadiene from bio-based routes and approached Chemical Consulting for support.

Solution

S&P Global Consulting completed a detailed process engineering design review for producing 1,3 butadiene via a bio-based route. We also compared production economics for producing 1,3 butadiene via a bio-based route compared to conventional petrochemical routes.

Results

The resulting information enabled the client to understand the competitive landscape for this alternative process and informed the company's strategic plan.

Challenge

The use of specialty chemicals in oil and gas exploration, development and production is highly complex as a result of the number of different types of chemistries involved and the varied technical and economic aspects of their uses in different oil and gas formations around the world. In addition, booming demand in a number of oil and gas applications has made it difficult to separate market trends from a realistic, longer-term growth outlook. A client engaged Chemical Consulting to help them make sense of conflicting market information after an acquisition, in order to facilitate their planning, market and product strategies at both the end-user and the chemical manufacturers' level.

Solution

S&P Global performed a bottom-up analysis of present and forecast oil field chemical supply and demand, tailored to the client's product portfolio, both from the perspective of the broad applications by segments (such as emulsifiers in oil-based drilling muds) and chemistries by uses (such as guar gum viscosifiers in hydraulic fracturing).

Results

Our analysis enabled the client to develop a much more insightful marketing plan and strategy based on a realistic outlook for the market and the client's position within it.

Challenge

An industry leader in supplying essential crop protection products was seeking to understand the cumulative carbon footprint for producing chloropicrin.

Solution

S&P Global Consulting drew up a list of assumptions about the supply chain from the natural gas liquids facility to the chloropicrin produced at the client's facility. With the help of a carbon footprint tool that we have developed for making this type of analysis, we were able to estimate the cumulative carbon footprint as tons of CO2 per ton of chloropicrin.

Results

Our analysis delivered the carbon footprint to support the client's funding initiative.

Challenge

A major oil and gas producer in South America was interested in defining attractive downstream investments in the petrochemical area. The objective was to define petroleum-based and renewable chemicals that consumed the existing feedstock base while maximizing growth potential.

Solution

Our consultants used S&P Global extensive chemical database containing information on product supply, demand, consumption, trade, economic outlook as well as critical process economic information, to generate a list of 50 potential petrochemical products and 30 renewable products, ranking the attractiveness of each. Workshops with the client served to narrow and rank the list. For the Top 5 product chains we developed bankable feasibility analyses.

Results

From this strategic ranking of over 80 potentially attractive chemical products based on critical market and company-specific criteria, we generated a "road map" for the company to use in their strategic investment planning.