Post by Francesca Landini

"It's like being on the Titanic — you can't stay in denial. You must go and find a lifeboat". This is how #Eni's Head of Industrial Transformation Giuseppe Ricci describes the current struggle for survival of the Europe's #chemical industry to Reuters. A string of announcements of future plants' closure by #Dow, #Exxon, #TotalEnergies and others is indicating the risks of a new dependency for the European industrial system. This is impacting in particular primary #petrochemical materials including #ethylene and #propylene, which are the building blocks for plastics, pharmaceuticals and countless industrial goods. Thanks to Wood Mackenzie's Robert Gilfillan, SDA Bocconi's Enzo Baglieri, Citi's Sebastian Satz, China National Chemical Information Centre's Huang Yinguo, ADI Analytics for helping me and colleagues Pietro Lombardi, Mohi Narayan and Arathy Somasekhar write this story.