Butadiene: Correlation
Prices it moves with, and why
Butadiene is extracted from the C4 stream of naphtha crackers, so supply depends on how much naphtha is cracked rather than on its own demand. Tyre and synthetic rubber demand sets the price, which is among the most volatile petrochemicals.
Proxy US PPI: petrochemical manufacturing index (BLS base period) · monthly, Jan 2006 to Sep 2026There is no free public price for butadiene itself, so this tab uses the closest public series as a stand-in. Read the numbers as an indication, not as the price of this exact item.
What its price moves with
Selected linkButadiene and Crude oil
Monthly changes 0.52 moderate correlation 12-month changes 0.89 strong correlation Last 5 years 0.33 monthly changes Lead or lag +1 mo Crude oil tends to lead by 1 month (r 0.72) Price function, Jan 2006 to Sep 2026 Butadiene ≈ 7.55 × (Crude oil)0.71 R² 0.82 On this fit, a 10% higher crude oil price goes with a 7.0% higher butadiene price over the long run. Units: index (BLS base period) and $/bbl.Chart: Butadiene and Crude oil prices rebased to 100 at Jan 2006, log scale
Both prices rebased to 100 at Jan 2006, on a log scale so equal percentage moves look the same size.Chart: Butadiene price against Crude oil price, monthly, log scales, with fitted line
Each dot is one month; paler dots are older (2006), darker dots recent (2026); the ringed dot is the latest month. The dashed line is the fitted price function. Both axes are logarithmic.Butadiene comes mainly from naphtha cracking, and a shift to lighter ethane feed cuts supply. Oil therefore sets both its cost and its availability; the proxy index correlates with Brent at 0.52 monthly and 0.89 yearly.
moderate co-movement month to month · 249 months Show chartsButadiene is a by-product of making ethylene, so cracker run rates decided by ethylene economics set butadiene supply, whatever rubber makers want. Both sit in the same proxy index here, so no separate statistics are shown.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Styrene-butadiene rubber for tyres is the largest use of butadiene, and rubber makers pass monomer costs through. The synthetic rubber index moves with the proxy at 0.36 monthly and 0.66 yearly, and more closely lately at 0.56 over five years.
weak co-movement month to month · 249 months Show chartsNatural rubber competes with synthetic rubber in tyres, so dear butadiene shifts blends towards natural rubber and the reverse. The TSR20 price correlates with the proxy at 0.43 monthly and 0.69 yearly, partly through shared oil and car demand.
moderate co-movement month to month · 249 months Show chartsVehicle output and tyre replacement drive most butadiene use. Yet the vehicle price proxy barely moves with the petrochemical proxy, -0.06 monthly, because car prices are set by model cycles and competition, not by monthly input costs.
little or none co-movement month to month · 249 months Show chartsHow to read these numbers
Correlation of monthly changes (the number in the coloured pill) compares how much each price moved, month by month, since 2006 or the first month both series exist. It runs from −1 to +1: near +1 the two usually rise and fall in the same months, near 0 there is no link, and a negative number means they tend to move in opposite directions. Above 0.7 is strong, 0.4 to 0.7 moderate, 0.2 to 0.4 weak.
12-month changes compare year-on-year moves, which shows whether two prices share the same cycles even when the month-to-month noise differs.
Price function is a straight-line fit of the two prices on logarithmic scales: price ≈ k × (partner price)β. β is how much this price moves, in per cent, for a 1% move in the partner over the whole period, and R² is the share of the variation the fit explains. Two prices that both drift up with inflation can fit well without any real link, so read it together with the monthly correlation.
Lead or lag checks whether the monthly correlation is clearly higher when one price is shifted by 1 to 6 months.
Correlation is not cause. The reasons on each card explain the economic link; the numbers show how strongly it has shown up in prices. Proxy series are US producer price indexes or related prices and can blur the real link.
Data: World Bank Commodity Price Data (Pink Sheet), October 2026; US Bureau of Labor Statistics producer price indexes, IMF primary commodity prices and US EIA prices via FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, retrieved November 2026. Calculations by this site.