Saturday, May 22, 2010

Clark Inciarte's legacy in Pequiven

Clark Inciarte was designated as Pequiven's CEO in august 2009.
And by a recent Chavez decision he is no longer the head of Pequiven.

To be able to assess his legacy the following assumptions were made:

The CEO's has a tight control with the Public Relations office of the company.
By taking a look at the news from august 2008 to august 2009 we will obtaine Ameliach's Pequiven, and from august 2009 to today, we will have Inciarte's vision of Pequiven.

The result of the news survey is:



The different colors correspond either to Ameliach or Inciarte, and the height of the bars correspond to a measure of how many newspaper published (M. P.) the same information. Therefore if 8 different newspaper published an increase in fertilizant output the bar will be higher than if only 2 newspaper did it.

By taking a look at the graph you can notice that Inciarte came in the worst moment for the projects, and didn't have it easy either with the labor unions.

It is important to notice that Ameliach didn't suffer any energy cuts, while at the beginning of this year, Pequiven had to save up to 20% of energy

The international donations of Petrocasas also stopped with Inciarte. The fertilizing business was more important, or at least it received more attention from the press. Concerning social responsability, it seems that Ameliach performed better. Corruption is bad for both administrations

Apparently, Inciarte's reality went different as Chavez's reality, as the social responsability and Petrocasas investment indicates, and this could be a more plausible cause than to act by himself without the government permission.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Pequiven and Petrocasas: some facts and figures


Image source


This is a translation of a previous post.

The Petrocasas' project has always caught my attention. Most people in Venezuela, with some entrepreneurship flame in their hearts, think about building houses. There are around 2,500,000 families without a house simply because they aren´t any available.

The questions I want to answer in this post are:

- How much PVC does the Petrocasa project consumes?
- How much percentage is this consumption compared with total PVC production?

These are the facts:

A Petrocasa factory consumes about 3 tons of material per house.
It can consume around 400 kg/hour of raw materials.
Venezuela produces around 180 mty of PVC

If all Venezuelan PVC production is used to build Petrocasas you can build 60.000 houses.

The project goal is to built 15.000 houses/year, consuming around 30 - 45 mty of PVC. Consequently an 20% of national PVC production!!!.

As an ending note, if PVC production does not increase, the Petrocasas project can be compromised.

Monday, May 3, 2010

They are not random news, its a trend



Image source
Petrochemicals project all around the world are being reconsidered or cancelled.

We hear that in Saudi Arabia project in Ras Tanura is being downsized and possible changed to a different location.

We also hear that in Qatar the Honam quits a 2.63 bln project planned. The excuse? Global financial crisis.

So, my thoughts about it... The same as latest SABIC Europe CEO, in its last speech before leaving the company: "The chemical business is a cyclical one, everybody knows it, but yet it strikes me how many people still don´t understand this situation and act according to it".