化学工业增长，但面临能源，监管，劳动力问题

The industry experienced very strong export performance last year, extending into this year, notes Kevin Swift, chief economist for the Washington, D.C.-basedAmerican Chemistry Council (ACC,www.americanchemistry.com）.“There was roughly a $4.6 billion [trade] surplus last year. Exports have surged so much that they’ve offset the deficit in pharmaceutical chemicals.”

ACC在其2010年12月的“ 2010年年终情况和前景报告”中指出，药品化学品的贸易平衡持续存在。ACC预测药品化学药品赤字将在2011年继续下降，从2010年下降5％，估计为428亿美元。但是，理事会还预计除农业化学品以外的所有其他细分市场，2011年增加了约10％。斯威夫特说：“我们预计激增将持续到今年，也许更长。”

ACC还预测，随着全球经济的发展，化学品的贸易将继续扩大。ACC在“ 2010年终年状况和前景报告中的ACC指出：“随着美元较低，新兴市场的持续增长以及更有利的石油与天然气价格比率更高，化学出口的前景是好的。”透明

How good is the outlook? “Exports will grow 9.7 percent to $186.4 billion in 2011 before growing 8.6 percent to $202.5 billion in 2012. Imports are expected to grow by 7.8 percent to $179.2 billion before growing by 10 percent to $197.1 billion in 2012, held back by relatively modest growth in the U.S,” the report says. As a result, the trade surplus in chemicals will continue to expand in 2011 to $7.2 billion before slipping back to $5.4 billion in 2012 on higher import growth, the ACC predicts.

钻，钻

斯威夫特建议，来自阿巴拉契亚盆地的马塞洛斯页岩的天然气帮助了当前的激增。但是，限制和短缺原油原料无济于事。“ [墨西哥的海湾]许可证正在流失，但是探索和生产远不及以前的事物。能源密集型制造商需要获得可靠且负担得起的能源供应，” ACC能源政策高级总监Owen Kean宣布。“我们需要正常的生产才能在海湾恢复，我们需要政策才能公开进入大陆货架的其他地区，奥巴马总统计划在2017年持续禁止限制。”

The U.S. federal government policies and implementation of its regulatory process also frustrates the industry. In March 9, 2011, Congressional testimony, Michael P. Walls, ACC vice president for regulatory and technical affairs, said, “The process of Federal regulatory impact analysis can be improved significantly by regularly and comprehensively assessing cumulative regulatory impacts and employment impacts. Unfortunately, current practice relegates both of these elements to minor roles in impact analyses, if they are even acknowledged.” Further, he noted, “the type and quality of the jobs created or affected by a proposed regulatory action need to be identified.”

Workforce attrition remains an issue. To tackle this, last year, the International Society of Automation (ISA), Research Triangle Park, N.C., launched a new committee—ISA106: Procedural Automation for Continuous Process Automation. “It’s happening because of the brain-drain from people with 20 to 30 years experience leaving,” comments Larry O’Brien, former research director withARC Advisory Group Inc.(www.arcweb.com）, Dedham, Mass. O’Brien, who recently left ARC to accept another position, believes a draft technical report may be coming in June.

“每个人都面临着老龄化的劳动力，”总部位于加利福尼亚湖森林的Tobias Scheele回应了自动化供应商Invensys运营管理高级申请副总裁（iom.invensys.com）。他强调，这个问题涵盖了整个植物。“今天的运营商应有权做出业务影响的决策，这一切都在可靠的安全信封内。”他建议，建模将提供促进明智决策的能力。“我们有几个原型。一个是看上去的模型。一个是决策支持模型，它可以成为工作流程的一部分。”

Companies also face aging infrastructures. In its 2010 year-end report, the ACC forecasts that industry global capital spending will increase in 2011 by 13.5 percent to $280 billion. And domestic capital spending will grow by about 10 percent from 2010 levels to approximately $27 billion.

In of all this, the process automation market is improving, O’Brien remarks. “It looks like the market grew by more than 2.5 percent from 2009 to 2010. That’s better than I’d expected; I thought it would be fairly flat or about 1 percent.”

O’Brien is optimistic about 2011. “Many modernization projects were put off during the recession. I believe we’ll see an uptick in modernization later in 2011 and then in 2012,” he says. That will make production more efficient—and boost the growing upsurge that’s ahead.”

C. Kenna Amos,ckamosjr@earthlink.net, is an Automation World Contributing Editor.

American Chemistry Council
ACC，www.americanchemistry.com

ARC Advisory Group Inc.
www.arcweb.com

September 2009, Related Primer – Chemical Industry Must Adopt Higher Automation Levels
To read the feature article, visitwww.myenum.com/primers-5920

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