Management at global petrochemical giant Dow Chemical Co. said Thursday that manufacturing sites with access to shale natural gas resources enjoyed a favorable position during the first quarter of 2022.

dow feedstocks

“Natural gas has been stubbornly high,” said CEO Jim Fitterland during Dow’s earnings call for the first quarter of 2022. “It was higher than last year before the Russia-Ukraine incident and then, obviously, then that drove it quite a bit higher.”

But in spite of rising raw material and energy costs, Dow “effectively leveraged our…feedstock and derivative flexibility in a very dynamic environment,” he said. “And higher operating rates compared to the impact of Winter Storm Uri in the year-ago period enabled us to capture better end market demand.”

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