DeWitt: Economic Services Team

DeWitt & Company Incorporated is pleased to announce updates to its multi-client service defining the cost of producing basic petrochemicals and their derivatives on a global basis. Economic Services - Petrochemicals or ESP is designed to meet the petrochemical industries' need for a unique approach to manufacturing economics, new technology evaluation, and global benchmarking. This approach features a presentation of economics throughout the petrochemical industry developed within an internally consistent framework of world regional economies, the basic cost of energy and feedstocks, by-product credits, variable and fixed costs, and investment costs.

In developing this service, DeWitt has combined in house industry experience, technology assessment, and first-hand gathered definition of marketplace factors. The results have been field tested throughout our vast array of global industry contacts to fine tune regional specific costs and operating rates as well as market dispositions of by-products.

The ESP quarterly report will provide a global economic and energy update that will serve to support underlying factors that affect petrochemical markets outside of day-to-day operations. The report will include a section on refinery utilization and margins by taking a look at the different aromatic feedstocks such as naphtha, reformate, pygas, and condensate. The report will also include the price tables that will be used by the models and will provide a short term forecast for forward analysis. A section dedicated to aromatic margins will compare cash costs across regions and will highlight areas with fundamental competitive advantage. Production process cost models will be included to summarize material balance and cash cost structures and estimate yearly average costs, margins and other financial indicators such as return on investment (ROI) and project payout. The sensitivity analysis section of the report will focus on comparing the three basic cost items for producing aromatics among regions; fixed, variable, and raw material costs. Finally, a conclusions section will wrap up the findings and major topics of interest analyzed in the report.

The “Global Aromatics Economics Update” will be published four times a year by the end of the month following the end of each calendar quarter or April 30th, July 31st, October 31st, and January 31st. Costs and margin analysis graphs and data tables will be updated monthly and will only be accessible through DeWitt’s Petrochemical Portal.

For more information about the “Global Aromatics Economics Update” please contact Steve Weber at sweber@dewittworld.com or at +1 713-360-7504.

Vice President, BTX Economics Projects

With more than 30 years experience in the petrochemical and refining industries, Steve Weber joins DeWitt from Solomon Associates, where he served as Project Manager, Refining and Chemical Business. Prior to joining Solomon, Mr. Weber served in a variety of petrochemical and refining commercial and manufacturing roles for Total Petrochemicals USA, Inc. and its predecessors Atofina and Fina.

Mr. Weber holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering and an MBA from the University or Texas at Austin. At DeWitt, Mr. Weber will lead single client and multi-client studies for Aromatics clients.