World's 10 largest petrochemicals companies

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It is highly likely that the CEO’s of most petrochemical companies will be pleased to see the back of 2009. This year has been a true annus horribilis for a sector ravaged by a huge drop in demand for its products due to the global economic slowdown that has happened over the past 12 months.

However, most of the big players are still making a profit, just not as big as the profits they made over the past two or three boom years. Other positive factors include lower oil prices meaning lower feedstock prices and the drop in the cost of raw materials has meant that many companies have been able to trim billions of dollars from major projects.

So with the positives rather than the negatives in mind ArabianOilandGas.com brings you the top 10 world’s largest petrochemicals companies.

Compiling the list has proved to be difficult on occasion due to many chemicals companies being so diversified as to making it impossible to separate the petrochemicals side from the rest.

For that reason a few major companies within the sector have either failed to make the list, apologies to Bayer and Mitsubishi Chemical, or who have been relegated down the list despite having larger 2008 revenues than others further up, DuPont.

The list is based on the 2008 revenues and therefore excludes any companies owned outright by governments. Sites used to source information included all of the company websites and annual reports.

If you agree with the list or think we've left acomapny out, please leave a comment below.

1. BASF (Germany)
2. Dow Chemical (USA)
3. ExxonMobil Chemical (USA)
4. LyondellBasell Industries (Netherlands)
5. INEOS (UK)
6. Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (Saudi Arabia)
7. Formosa Plastics Corporation (Taiwan)
8. Sumitomo Chemical (Japan)
9. DuPont (USA)
10. Chevron Phillips (USA)

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1. BASF
(Germany - $62.30 billion)

Anyone who has ever owned a cassette recorder will be familiar with the name, but the company abandoned it’s consumer products in the 1990’s. The move has obviously paid dividends because the German company is now the world’s largest producer of chemicals.

Employing over 96,000 people worldwide, it has over 160 subsidiaries and joint ventures with customers in almost 200 countries. Not bad going for a company founded in 1885 to produce dyes.

The company itself says that its petrochemicals division is the backbone of BASF’s value-adding chain. Products such as ethylene, propylene, butadiene and benzene are produced in steam crackers from naphtha or natural gas at facility’s the company has built around the world.

Covering a wide range of industries across the petrochemicals sector BASF also has interests in oil and gas through Wintershall Holdings AG and Russian energy company Gazprom.