LyondellBasell Posts Growing $1 Billion Profit

Houston chemicals maker LyondellBasell posted a nearly $1.1 billion quarterly profit that jumped 11 percent from last year.

The petrochemical giant dealt with a mixed bag from Hurricane Harvey, shutting down much of its Texas Gulf Coast operations temporarily, but benefiting from higher chemicals profit margins as global supplies shrunk after the storm. LyondellBasell's expanded ethylene cracker facility in La Porte was damaged during Harvey but came back online Friday, although it will take a little while to ramp back up to full operating capacity.

For a period of time, Harvey knocked out more than half of the nation's capacity to churn out ethylene, which is the primary building block of most plastics. LyondellBasell lost about $220 million in sales from Harvey, CEO Bob Patel said, but partially offset those losses through stronger profit margins.

The company's biggest sales jump came from its plants in Europe and Asia that could enjoy better global sales margins without dealing with the storm disruption.

Patel said the industry could actually benefit from Harvey slowing down some of the Gulf Coast's expansions of ethylene production. A surge of new supplies next year now and through next year were expected to cause prices to drop.

"As the industry works to rebuild inventories during the fourth quarter, we expect global markets will remain tight to balanced for the remainder of 2017 and the industry will be better positioned to absorb capacity additions during 2018," Patel said.

LyondellBasell also reported more than $8.5 billion in quarterly revenues that spiked nearly 16 percent from last year.