Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from Steve Sherman of Lafayette Research. Please proceed.
Steve Sherman - Lafayette Research
Good morning, everyone. I’ve noticed a number of additional hydrogen products announced. Are you expecting another uptake in catalyst demand maybe later in ’09, maybe early 2010?
John Steitz
Well, the new catalyst, yes, that’s an important question, Steve, and you know a lot of it, I think, depends on the economic outlook. The current view is that a lot of these major refineries in the Middle East, India will be operational at the end of 2010, sometime early 2011. I really don’t have any clear line of site on that at this point. We’re hopeful that those projects will remain on track, but I think, in part, it depends on how things develop in 2009 and early 2010.
Steve Sherman - Lafayette Research
I guess the other piece would be that in 2010, there are some additional requirements for off-road diesel. I know it’s a smaller market than gasoline and diesel, regular on-road diesel, but are you expecting a little bit of a rate increase just due to that?
John Steitz
Oh, well, absolutely. I mean, the need for additional diesel globally is an important driver for our FCC business, and a lot of that, of course, plays into ultra low-sulfured diesel requirements and increasingly stringent sulfur requirements. So, it also impacts HPC. But overall, that trend is a very positive one for us in the industry, absolutely.
Stephen Shuman - Lafayette Research
I guess the last piece is on currency. It was a help, it looked like, in the last quarter, but currencies have since moved. What are you expecting here going forward for the fourth?
Richard Diemer
Well, let me tell you about currency from two different viewpoints. Steve, this is Rich. Certainly to the extent we have foreign profits that get translated back into U.S. dollars, the way we report, there will be a headwind. There’s been extreme volatility in currencies and certainly the tailwind we had in terms of our diverse operations in getting that translated back into dollars has turned into a headwind.
So, that’s one way I’d talk about it. The other way is in terms of the foreign currency losses that I cited as part of my part of the call. That’s accounting, so let me tell you it actually really involves no cash outflows outside of Albemarle, and what it is is in a couple cases we have, say, dollar items in a euro company or we have dollar items in a real company in terms of Brazil, and it’s been cited and people have noted that our other income has benefited from that over the course of the last couple years. Okay?
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