[thackney]

If you steam crack naptha(a liquid) you get ethylene, propylene, and other compounds.

Isn't the gasoline naphtha is used for more valuable as it is than spending additional money for create ethylene, propylene?

I'm asking, I don't know.

[Ben Ficklin]

I'm no expert on this and am relying on what I read somewhere. But I think that polyethylene is much more expensive than gasoline. What is the weight and cost of milk jug versus that same weight of gasoline. Or of a polyethylene canoe.

And as far as you chart on price, that is actual price but that doesn't reflect what those who were in the know expected would happen on price.

Nobody expected oil/gasoline to do what it did. The world market stabilizes prices, but in this case, it didn't. But otoh, everybody did expect natural gas to rise because as more and more electricity was generated with nat gas, the US would have to begin importing, and nat gas prices would be higher. And those two price spikes in 2001 and 2005 were warning signals of that fact.

But as it turned, the shale gas changed all that.