EFFECTS OF THE SHALE BOOM ON ETHYLENE AND PROPYLENE PRICES

摘要

The rise of shale resources in the United States is changing the global energy and petrochemical industries.The shale boom has not only seen exploration and production(E&P)companies in the United States extract more resources but has also allowed petrochemical manufacturers to utilize abundant and cheap hydrocarbons.Having already impacted the electricity,heating and transportation sectors,this boom is now arriving at the petrochemical sector with the advent of new sources of natural gas liquids(NGLs)and hydro liquid gases(HGLs),which serve as feedstocks used to yield petrochemical products.Despite such a momentous change,economic investigation in academia is not keeping pace with the expanding impact of shale gas boom,with discussions so far confined within the engineering field,due to the lack of publicly available data and the complexity of supply chains in econometric modeling.Therefore,to measure the economic effects of shale gas price and identify the determinants of ethylene and propylene prices,this study analyzes price transmission in supply structures.Flow diagrams of the targeted petrochemical markets are configured,contributions of pricing factors are estimated,and the significance of shale gas in the United States is compared with that in Japan,the largest petrochemical producer in Asia.The analyzed period is from 2009 to 2018,and monthly data are used for analysis.