Sulfur: Correlation
Prices it moves with, and why
Most sulphur is a by-product of cleaning sour natural gas and crude oil, so supply follows refining and gas processing, not sulphur demand. Most is burned to make sulphuric acid for phosphate fertiliser, with metal leaching a growing user.
Proxy US producer price index: sulfuric acid index, BLS base period · monthly, Jan 2006 to Sep 2026There is no free public price for sulfur 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 linkSulfur and Refining and reforming
Monthly changes 0.28 weak correlation 12-month changes 0.57 moderate correlation Last 5 years 0.23 monthly changes Lead or lag none No clear lead or lag Price function, Jan 2006 to Sep 2026 Sulfur ≈ 11.0 × (Refining and reforming)0.48 R² 0.31 On this fit, a 10% higher refining and reforming price goes with a 4.7% higher sulfur price over the long run. Units: index, BLS base period and index.Chart: Sulfur and Refining and reforming 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: Sulfur price against Refining and reforming 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.Refineries strip sulphur from fuels to meet clean-fuel rules, so sulphur output rises with refinery runs whatever its price. Against the US refinery index the acid proxy correlates at 0.28 monthly and 0.57 yearly, a weak tie because refining sets sulphur supply, not demand.
weak co-movement month to month · 225 months Show chartsSour gas fields in the Gulf, Central Asia and Canada yield large amounts of sulphur when the gas is cleaned. European gas prices hardly move monthly with the acid proxy (0.06), though yearly changes correlate at 0.78, largely through the 2022 energy shock.
little or none co-movement month to month · 225 months Show chartsBurning sulphur makes sulphuric acid, one of the most produced industrial chemicals, so the two are closely linked markets. This site uses the US sulphuric acid index as the sulphur proxy, so they share one series and no statistics are shown.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Phosphate fertiliser plants are the largest buyers of sulphur, which they burn to acid to dissolve phosphate rock. DAP prices correlate with the acid proxy at 0.26 monthly and 0.66 yearly, as fertiliser demand swings move both.
weak co-movement month to month · 225 months Show chartsCopper and zinc smelters capture sulphur dioxide and sell sulphuric acid, so smelter output competes with burned sulphur, while copper leaching consumes acid. The two effects partly cancel, and correlation is low: 0.12 monthly and 0.21 yearly.
little or none co-movement month to month · 225 months Show chartsIndonesian high-pressure acid leach plants use large volumes of sulphuric acid to extract nickel for batteries, making them a fast-growing sulphur buyer. That is too recent and too far from the US acid index to show: monthly moves correlate at -0.05.
little or none co-movement month to month · 225 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.