US "Hydrocarbon Processing" reported that the ethylene industry is an important part of the petrochemical industry. Ethylene is the main raw material for downstream petrochemical products, which can produce polyethylene, ethylene oxide, ethylene dichloride, ethylbenzene, linear alcohol and vinyl acetate. Adhesives, chemicals, coatings, packaging, building materials, textiles, rubber and plastics also use ethylene as the basic raw material.

The boom cycle of the petrochemical market is directly related to the supply and demand of ethylene. The ethylene market is oriented by user demand, and this basic economic concept determines the cyclical nature of the ethylene market. When supply exceeds demand, profits in the petrochemical industry decline, producers reduce project plans and capital expenditures, inefficient refineries are shut down, and global ethylene production capacity drops. When supply falls short of demand, companies actively build new installations and expand production.

From the 1960s to the 1970s, the growth rate of ethylene production capacity reached double digits. The supply of ethylene grew steadily in the 1970s. From the mid-1980s to the end of the 1980s, the growth rate of ethylene demand remained at 3% to 4%. Due to the rapid growth of plastic and resin consumption, many companies built a batch of ethylene projects in the 1990s. From the last century to the mid-1990s, more than 50% of new ethylene capacity came from the Asia-Pacific region. At the end of the 1990s, the global ethylene production capacity increased to 92 million tons per year.

Since 2000, advances in materials and technology have made it possible to design and build larger ethylene plants. As of the end of 2010, the global ethylene production capacity reached 140 million tons per year, and the newly increased production capacity was mainly concentrated in the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region. The Middle East ethylene industry has benefited from low-cost natural gas feedstocks, which has increased ethylene production capacity and supported global trade for European and Asian markets. China's petrochemical industry has also experienced incredible growth.

At present, the ethylene market is showing a trend of undersupply, and new projects will dominate the petrochemical market in the future. It is estimated that by 2016, the global ethylene production capacity will increase by 17%, exceeding 170 million tons/year. Most of the new ethylene capacity will be concentrated in the Asia-Pacific and Middle East regions. At the same time, ethylene production capacity in the Middle East has doubled in the past five years to 26 million tons per year. Compared with the Asia-Pacific ethylene plant using naphtha as raw material, the Middle East has the advantage of cheap ethane raw materials and close proximity to Asian and European export markets. This situation will change in the short term with the emergence of cheap ethane feedstocks in other regions. Intensified competition and sharp rise in production costs may force Middle Eastern countries to set higher prices for petrochemical raw materials. Although the investment attractiveness of the Middle East has diminished, the economics of new projects in the region are still considerable.

The increasing demand for olefins and the availability of large amounts of cheap ethane are changing the prospects of the US petrochemical industry. By 2017, new installations, bottlenecks, capacity expansion, and device restarts will increase the U.S. ethylene capacity by nearly 30% to 30 million tons per year. Newly-added U.S. projects will form a competitive landscape with the Middle East in the next ten years.