News of the Week
OIL CUTBACK PUTS SQUEEZE ON CHEMICALS Fears of crude oil shortages—real or imagined—as a result of the oil cutoff by Iran and higher prices charged by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries are creating turmoil in European chemical markets and, subsequently, in markets in the U.S. European buyers seem to be flocking to the U.S. to obtain chemicals to keep their own plants running, thus creating shortages in the U.S. A number of petrochemicals in the U.S. apparently are running tight. Among these are polyesters, benzene, toluene, butadiene, polyvinyl chloride, maleic anhydride, and phthalic anhydride. Producers say that PVC supply is so short that if the market gets much tighter, allocation may be next. The chemical purchases by European buyers have fueled the export trade and sent this trade in chemicals to unprecedented levels. January's export volume for chemicals climbed 20% over December 1978, and February is expected to be even higher. However, the aggressive buying by Europeans may be caused in part by uncertainty over future supplies, rather than by real shortages now. The situation also is having a direct effect on chemical prices in the U.S. Richard J. Hughes, senior vice president of Union Carbide, says that his company and other chemical producers will need significant price increases to offset sharp and uncontrollable increases in raw material prices and other costs. Carbide thus has raised prices for a number of products, including ethanol, n -butyl alcohol, n -propyl alcohol, anhydrous isopropyl alcohol, ethylene oxide, ethylene glycol, diethylene glycol, triethylene glycol, polyethylene glycols, glycol ethers, and nonphenol surfactants. The price increases range from 3.6% for anhydrous isopropyl alcohol to more than 15% for n -butyl alcohol. More increases are expected. Hughes also says that the foreign crude situation is having a threefold impact on U.S. chemical suppliers and customers. It is placing severe upward pressure on imported feedstock prices. Some foreign manufacturers are cutting back on production resulting in greater demand on U.S. producers from both foreign and U.S. customers. And foreign buyers are 4
C&EN March 5, 1979
Hughes: need price increase
entering the U.S. market with price offers substantially higher than prevailing domestic prices. For instance, Hughes says, European prices range from 25 to 50% higher than U.S. prices for some major products such as ethylene, propylene, polyethylene, and ethylene glycol.
Hughes says that the world spot market price for foreign-produced naphtha has jumped 55% since December 1978 to $280 per metric ton. This is an increase of 150% since January a year ago. U.S. price of naphtha has not increased as much, but it has gone up substantially, says Hughes. The Carbide executive says that chemical raw material costs have increased unevenly. Ethylene prices have risen only slightly in the U.S., but have jumped as much as 60% in Europe since fourth-quarter 1978. Other raw materials that have not increased thus far can be expected to do so as demand, supply, and cost pressures spread. According to Hughes, chemical producers have been plagued by a cost-price squeeze in recent years because market conditions and customer resistance have prevented producers from raising prices in line with increasing costs. These costs are now increasing to a point where producers must insist on price increases. He also says that the tightening supply-demand situation now makes it feasible for producers to recover their increased costs. •
Immunity stimulants beg i clinical trials Thymus gland hormone stimulants of the immune system have shown promising initial results in human clinical trials on patients with various forms of cancer, immunity deficiency conditions, and diseases in which persons become immune to certain of their own tissue types. These findings by a group led by Dr. Allan Goldstein at George Washington University's school of medicine, in Washington, D.C., may lead to agents to treat diseases and complications that cause or are caused by depressed immune functions. The findings were disclosed at a New York Academy of Sciences conference on subcellular factors in immunity. At the same meeting, Dr. Bosco Shang Wang, of Peter Bent Brigham Hospital and Harvard University's medical school, Boston, described improved survival rates of mice inoculated first with cancer cells, then with ribonucleic acid (RNA)
from guinea pig lymphocyte blood cells immunized against that cancer cell type. Experiments of Wang and his coworkers someday may result in the manipulation of cancer patients' immune systems to ward off recurrence of disease after surgery. Thymosin tested by Goldstein was so-called fraction five from calf thymus glands, extracted for these trials by Hoffmann-La Roche. Fraction five contains a dozen peptides of molecular weight 1000 to 15,000 that mediate differentiation of precursor blood cells into T-cells in the thymus. T-cells may kill foreign cells or enhance or suppress immune functions of the body's own lymphocytes. Immune function was assayed by the E-rosette technique and incidence of antigen skin test reactions. In the E-rosette test, lymphocytes are incubated with sheep red blood cells. The number of cells that appear as clusters (rosettes) of red cells bound
to T-cells is counted as a per cent of total lymphocytes. Among 15 cancer patients, rosettes increased to 40.1% from 33.1% after seven days of intramuscular thymosin injections, compared with an increase to 59.8% from 55.8% for 52 normal persons. Positive skin tests against such antigens as mumps, streptokinase-streptodornase, and purified protein derivative increased from 33 to 46 in 10 cancer patients after 21 days of thymosin therapy. Immune RNA for Wang's work was obtained by injecting homogenates of B16 melanoma cells into guinea pig footpads and isolating RNA from lymphoid tissue after two weeks. Whole tumor cells were injected into mouse hind limbs, which were amputated after about 17 days. Of mice inoculated with B16 melanoma and treated with lymphocytes incubated with anti-Bl6 RNA, 11 of 21 survived 100 days after amputation compared with only two of 24 in which a control RNA was used. Wang concludes that immune RNA combined with surgery may prevent recurrence of cancer. •
Peterson leaves OTA; says job is finished Should the Office of Technology Assessment continue to exist? This was one of many questions raised after Russell Peterson announced he was resigning after barely a year as OTA's director. He leaves March 31 to head the National Audubon Society, a spot, he says, which has been his lifelong ambition. The reaction in Washington among those few familiar with the OTA initials was one of surprise and unhappiness. For some there was a hint of a responsibility betrayed. Peterson was hired to bring stability and a sense of purpose to an agency whose charter directs it to provide detached advice to Congress about the implications of technology. The feeling is that though he reorganized OTA, he never followed through on what he began. Now the big question is what happens next. Chairman of the OTA board is Rep. Morris K. Udall (D.Ariz.), and people are wondering whether Udall has enough concern for OTA to invest the energy needed to find a new director. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D.-Mass.), OTA's godfather, was OTA's chairman during the past session of Congress and the question is whether he will mount a strong effort to save the agency. Most of Congress is indifferent to OTA's continued existence. Peterson expresses some satisfac-
Peterson: accomplished his goals
tion that in only a year he accomplished exactly what he was hired to carry out. His major aims were to end the royal court politics that pervaded the agency by getting power from the board to hire and fire. His other goal was to establish a "holistic" perspective to technology assessment by focusing more on long-term impacts. He succeeded in the first. But he left too soon to demonstrate success in the other. Holism remained a mere rhetorical tool in Peterson's administrative kit. Some, in fact, say that his method of administering by hierarchical levels of management worked against any process of holistic staff cross-cutting. "He may have reduced the Congressional politics at OTA, but he substituted it with administrative politics," says one internal critic. There was little effort, some say, to preserve and protect an intellectual core of staff who really understood technology assessment. Whatever the criticism, Peterson did bring some light to OTA, and some hope that a sense of continuity will carry the agency through the inevitably difficult seas. But, even now, higher levels of Congress are discussing its dismemberment. •
Oxirane continues European expansion Oxirane is making a concerted drive to boost its activities in Western Europe, the east bloc countries, Africa, and the Middle East. The company is expanding capacity at Botlek, near Rotterdam, the Netherlands. And in England, staff members shortly will move into a new European headquarters center.
Between now and 1982, Oxirane will invest some $30 million at Botlek. This will raise the company's total expenditure there to $70 million. A unit for making tert -butyl hydroperoxide is nearing completion. Output of tert -butyl alcohol and propylene oxide is being expanded. And, a feasibility study is under way for production of methyl methacrylate. Formed in 1966, Oxirane is a joint venture of Atlantic Richfield and Halcon International. Headquartered in Princeton, N.J., annual sales worldwide are about $700 million. The company was formed to exploit novel technology for propylene oxide production. Its major facilities are at Bayport and Channelview, Tex. At Botlek, Oxirane's new 6.6 million lb-per-year tert -butyl hydroperoxide unit is the first of its kind in Europe. Output from the unit will replace material now shipped from Bayport. The chemical is an intermediate for production of catalyst initiators used for making bulk polymers. "The market looks very attractive," comments Dr. Donald W. Wood, Oxirane Europe's president. tert -Butyl alcohol, a coproduct of propylene oxide manufacture, is another chemical with a high demand potential. Used to raise the octane rating of gasoline, demand is expected to grow as more West European countries adopt laws to cut back levels of lead antiknock compounds. Present capacity of 264 million lb annually at Botlek is being increased to more than 770 million lb. A new process Oxirane has under development to make the alcohol without coproduction of propylene oxide "is looking very attractive," Wood notes. "It would fit well into the picture as the market for octane improvers evolves." •
Molybdoinsulin models nitrogenase closely There is keen interest in how nitrogenase enzyme from such bacteria as Azotobacter uinelandii fixes atmospheric nitrogen, forming ammonia, to the benefit of plants whose root nodules harbor the organisms. Research by Dr. Gerhard N. Schrauser, at the University of California, San Diego, points to molybdenum as the sole catalytic site [J. Am. Chem. Soc, 101,917,925(1979)]. Nitrogenase contains molybdenum, iron, and sulfur. Clusters of all three elements have been thought needed for nitrogen reduction. Isolation of an iron-molybdenum cofactor from nitrogenase with 8% of the catalytic activity of that enzyme seems March 5, 1979 C&EN
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