Prospecting the future

The paper describes the European Industrial Forecasting system for monitoring and predicting world-wide process plant contracting and engineering. The complete system covers oil and gas production, oil refining, gas processing, basic chemicals, downstream chemicals, power generation, pulp and paper, and mineral mining and processing but the published paper focuses only on oil refining, gas processing and petrochemicals/plastics. With regard to world-wide monitoring for contracting and engineering, there are said to be five basic issues and these are discussed in turn. They are (i) confidentiality, (ii) cyclical fluctuations, (iii) diverse information sources, (iv) separating price and volume effects and (v) need for continuous appraisal. Statistical data are given on investment on plant and equipment, capacity of gas turbine and combined cycle plant, trends in GDP and plant capacity, and revenue associated with refining, petrochemical/plastic and gas processing. (UK)