There are structural changes happening, absolutely, and one of them, of course, is the emergence of the Chinese and Indian markets. From a chemical point of view, growth of chemicals is roughly 3% a year globally. There is a growth pattern notwithstanding the recession, but the growth in China is something like 12% a year, with huge demands, so therefore there's a tendency for investment to flow from multinational companies to China in order to capture that demand. In terms of scarce capital, that capital is flowing to China and India.
The second structural thing is that the Middle East is now becoming a huge player because feedstock--as you know, it's oil or natural gas--is a huge proportion of the cost of our products, and their feedstock costs are 20% or 30% of ours. They have no trouble figuring out that they need to diversify their economies, so the Middle East is now building huge manufacturing facilities for chemicals. In fact, you may have noticed recently that NOVA was purchased by a Middle Eastern company. As well, Dow was trying to make a deal with a Middle Eastern company. There are definitely some structural shifts happening.
Overall in the longer term, the people who analyze the chemical industry see that more production will come from offshore to North America, which will displace some of the production in North America. However, the U.S. chemical industry is a $600 billion industry. Ours is about $25 billion to $28 billion. We will remain a part of that North American industry, and in some regions and in some areas we are very competitive. Our productivity level, thanks to John Margeson over there at Industry Canada, is about 30% to 50% higher than that of equivalent American plants. We're quite well positioned to capture a large market share of the North American economy, particularly in Alberta, where we have probably some of the most efficient plants in the world.
So the answer is kind of complicated. Yes, there's a structural change. It's going to be very competitive. We're going to get undercut in terms of price by some Middle East production. On the other hand, we can, with the right conditions, still grow the Canadian chemical industry. We would say that we could probably double it in 20 years with the right pipelines, the right feedstock, and the right economic conditions. Also, North America will always be a major consumer of chemicals, so therefore, being right here, there are certainly advantages to supplying that market.