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1. The BASF Ludwigshafen fire ??? ??On October 17, 2016, at around 11:30 a.m. German time, an explosion occurred at a chemical plant belonging to BASF, the world’s largest chemical company, located in the northern part of the western German city of Ludwigshafen. The explosion was extremely loud, accompanied by towering flames and thick smoke. The fire resulted in two deaths, six serious injuries, and several minor injuries. According to the investigation results, on the day of the accident, an explosion occurred during pipeline construction by the employees, which subsequently led to a fire. The burned pipe galleries included pipes containing ethylene and propylene products. Ethylene and propylene are both important basic materials in the chemical industry. Ethylene can be used to produce products such as insulation materials and solvents; propylene is used to manufacture products like automotive coatings, dispersions, and adhesives. Before the accident, someone used a tool similar to a circular saw to cut a pipeline that carried flammable residual oil. This residual oil is mainly used to produce various solvents and plasticizers. ? The production capacities of some of the products manufactured at BASF’s plants are as follows: 190,000 tons of BDO, 300,000 tons of TDI, and 450,000 tons from steam cracking (yielding products such as ethylene, propylene, butadiene, benzene, toluene, and xylene). The sharp rise in domestic TDI prices in the second half of the year is closely related to this incident; it can be said that the fire at BASF was one of the factors that triggered the increase in prices in the domestic TDI market