If you’ve ever waited for a can of aerosol to spray or opened a jar of liquid rubber to seal a broken window, you’ve used something made from isobutylene—and I’ve spent the last 12 years supplying that isobutylene to manufacturers just like yours. Over that time, I’ve seen more price swings in raw materials than I care to count, and none have a bigger, more immediate impact on my ability to deliver consistent, reliable isobutylene than the cost of the raw materials we use to make it. Today, I want to pull back the curtain on that link—what it looks like day-to-day for someone on my side of the supply chain, how it shapes every decision we make, and what that means for anyone counting on isobutylene for their business. Isobutylene
First, let’s keep this simple. Isobutylene isn’t mined out of the ground like coal or iron. It’s a petrochemical product, made almost exclusively from two raw materials: crude oil and natural gas. That’s not a random fact—crude oil is cracked (heated and split) to produce naphtha and lighter hydrocarbon streams, one of which is isobutylene itself, while natural gas is processed to extract ethane, propane, and butane, which also break down into the building blocks for isobutylene. For decades, the balance between these two feedstocks has shifted with energy markets, and when their prices rise or fall, isobutylene production doesn’t just get more or less profitable—it changes, sometimes overnight.
Let’s start with the biggest piece of the puzzle: crude oil. For the first 10 years of my career, when oil traded between $50 and $80 a barrel, isobutylene production was pretty predictable. We knew that if crude went up $10 a barrel, we’d have to adjust our per-gallon price by roughly 3–4 cents, and that was manageable—we could plan 30 to 60 days in advance, lock in long-term supply contracts for some feedstock, and pass a small portion of that cost to our customers without upsetting their budgets. Then 2020 hit, and oil briefly traded negative for the first time in history. That crash didn’t just mess up our numbers—it almost broke our production lines. When oil prices plummeted, refineries cut their output of lighter hydrocarbon streams (including the ones we need for isobutylene) because they were making more money selling heavier fuels like diesel. Suddenly, we were short on raw materials, even though oil was cheap. We had to scramble to secure alternative feedstock from overseas suppliers at double the typical cost, and for three weeks, we couldn’t fulfill a single bulk order to our regular customers. That’s the thing most people don’t see: raw material costs don’t just hit our bottom line—they impact availability, too. When oil prices stay low long enough, refineries shift their product mix, and the feedstock we rely on becomes a byproduct, not a core product, so its supply shrinks.
Then there’s natural gas, the other half of our isobutylene equation. A lot of people don’t realize how big a role natural gas plays, especially in places like the U.S. where shale gas production has exploded over the last 15 years. Shale gas extraction produces large amounts of natural gas liquids (NGLs)—ethane, propane, and butane—and butane is a key feedstock for isobutylene. When natural gas prices are low, NGL production spikes, which keeps butane costs down, and isobutylene production ramps up to meet demand. But when natural gas prices rise? Watch out. Last winter, for example, a cold snap across the U.S. Northeast froze natural gas pipelines, and wholesale natural gas prices jumped from $3 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) to over $6 in a single week. That pushed butane prices up by 40% in 10 days. For us, that meant we had to raise our isobutylene prices by 18% almost overnight. We didn’t want to do it—our customers include small aerosol manufacturers and large automotive parts makers alike, many of whom have fixed-price contracts for their own products. But we couldn’t keep producing isobutylene at a loss. A typical 10,000-gallon batch of isobutylene uses roughly 8,000 gallons of butane, so that 40% jump in butane cost added almost $16,000 to every batch. For a small supplier like me, that’s not a number we can absorb. We had to call every customer, explain the situation, and work out temporary payment plans or small order cuts to keep our operations running.
But it’s not just the price of crude and natural gas—there are hidden costs that come with those raw material prices, too. When feedstock costs are volatile, we have to spend more on inventory management. If we buy too much butane when prices are low, we pay for storage, which adds to our overhead. If we buy too little, we risk production delays when prices spike. During the 2022 European energy crisis, natural gas prices there jumped to over $30 per MMBtu, making isobutylene production in Europe almost impossible. We ended up shipping some of our isobutylene from Texas to Europe via cargo ships, paying for refrigerated transport to keep it from degrading, just to make up for the gap in local supply. Those transport costs? They were tied directly to the cost of fuel for the ships, which is another raw material—diesel, which is made from crude oil. So the high cost of natural gas in Europe pushed up our production costs, which pushed up our shipping costs, all because the raw material markets were unstable.
Another hidden factor is regulatory costs, which are directly tied to raw material prices. When crude oil or natural gas prices are high, governments often impose extra taxes or tariffs on energy companies to offset windfall profits. That extra cost gets passed down the line to feedstock suppliers, then to us, then to our customers. In 2022, for example, the U.S. implemented a 10% excise tax on certain petrochemical feedstocks to fund renewable energy projects. That tax only applies when feedstock prices exceed $100 per barrel for oil or $6 per MMBtu for natural gas, which is exactly when our costs are already the highest. It’s like being charged extra for a meal when you’re already paying premium prices for the ingredients. We didn’t get to opt out—we had to raise our isobutylene prices again to cover that tax, which made some of our long-time customers go to competitors with lower overhead, at least temporarily.
Here’s what I want every isobutylene user to know: we’re not just a middleman marking up prices when raw materials go up. We’re sitting in the middle of a market that’s constantly shifting, making decisions every single day to keep our operations running and our customers supplied. Last year, we invested $2 million in a flexible production line that can switch between two types of feedstock—one based on crude oil, one based on natural gas—so that when one feedstock gets too expensive, we can switch to the other without halting production. That investment was a direct response to the raw material price swings we saw in 2020 and 2021, and it’s let us keep prices more stable for our customers over the last two years. But even that can only do so much. If crude oil jumps another $20 a barrel and natural gas jumps $3, no amount of flexible production will keep our costs from rising.
I’ve heard a lot of customers complain that isobutylene prices are “too volatile” or that suppliers “charge more when they can.” But I’ve never met a supplier who wants to raise prices. We make our money by selling consistent, high-quality isobutylene, not by charging customers extra. When raw material costs are high, we’re the ones holding the bag—we’re the ones who have to work extra hours to secure alternative feedstock, who have to explain price hikes to frustrated customers, who have to balance our budget while keeping people employed and our plants running.
If you’re a manufacturer that uses isobutylene—whether for automotive seals, aerosol propellants, rubber products, or anything else—you know how critical it is to have a reliable supplier. You can’t afford to have production lines shut down because your isobutylene was delayed or the price doubled overnight. That’s why it’s so important to work with a supplier who understands the raw material markets, who has a plan to manage cost volatility, and who will be transparent with you when things get tough. We’re that supplier. We don’t have a huge corporate office making decisions from thousands of miles away—we’re on the ground, checking feedstock prices every morning, calling refineries to lock in supply, and working with our customers to find solutions when costs get out of hand.
If you’re looking for a isobutylene supplier that will be honest about how raw material costs impact your orders, that will work with you on flexible pricing when markets are unstable, and that will never leave you hanging when you need isobutylene to keep your production running, reach out to us. We’d love to sit down with you (or hop on a call) to talk about your specific needs, show you how we manage raw material costs, and build a long-term partnership that works for both of us.
Isooctene References
- "Isobutylene: Production, Applications, and Market Dynamics." Chemical Market Analytics, 2023.
- U.S. Energy Information Administration. "Natural Gas Prices and Feedstock Costs for Petrochemical Production," 2022.
- International Energy Agency. "The Impact of Volatile Crude Oil Prices on Global Petrochemical Supply Chains," 2021.
- American Chemistry Council. "Feedstock Cost Volatility and Its Effects on U.S. Isobutylene Producers," 2022.
Heze Sirloong Chemical Co., Ltd.
Heze Sirloong Chemical Co., Ltd. is well-known as one of the leading isobutylene manufacturers and suppliers in China, featured by high purity products and competitive price. Please feel free to buy bulk high quality isobutylene from our factory. For more cheap products, contact us now.
Address: Building 7, Wanxiang Square , Zhonghua Road , Heze City , Shandong Province, China
E-mail: sirloong@sirloong.com
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