ABSTRACT
The petrochemical sector is very important for the contemporary economies of the United States, Western Europe and Japan, accounting for nearly 10 per cent, on a value-added basis, of all industrial output in Western Europe in 1976 and for 12.5 per cent of Western Europe’s annual oil and gas consumption. Production of petrochemicals began, on a very small scale, in the United States between the wars as an off-shoot of the natural gas industry. Stimulated by wartime shortages of such raw materials as rubber, the petrochemical sector gained momentum rapidly, and experienced a sensational boom worldwide in the 1960s. Table 9.1 which shows the role of petrochemicals in organic chemical production, tells only one side of the story-the other is an equally dramatic growth in demand for the four major categories of products manufactured from organic chemicals: plastics, synthetic fibres, synthetic rubber and detergents.
