King of chemicals: Sulfuric acid dominates the industrial world

Posted: June 29, 2026

Sulfuric acid: it’s called the “King of Chemicals.” Just about every industrial process depends on its power as a solvent, electrolyte, and catalyst. It’s key to the production of fertilizers, critical minerals like copper, nickel, cobalt and neodymium, car batteries, anodized aluminum, nylon, paper, sugar, high-octane gasoline, chemotherapy medicines, and a slew of other products.  

To make sulfuric acid, you need sulfur, the bright yellow element that must be refined out of sour crude oil. And now the price of sulfur is soaring.

After decades during which sulfur sold at consistently low prices as the unwanted byproduct of refining sour crude, its price has skyrocketed 420% in the last two years. The disruption of Middle East oil and gas production has contributed to the price hike, but it’s also precipitated by factors that predate the current oil supply shock and promise to outlast it as well. 

How sulfuric acid production changed over time 

Since the 1970s, almost all sulfur has been produced as a byproduct of oil and gas production. Environmental regulations required refiners to remove sulfur from sour crude and natural gas to combat acid rain. That left them with piles of bright yellow sulfur they were only too happy to sell off to sulfuric acid producers. 

Over 85% of sulfur recovered from oil and gas goes into making the sulfuric acid that so many industries depend on. Copper and zinc smelters also produce sulfuric acid directly as a byproduct, but most sulfuric acid consumers—fertilizer, metals, and chemicals companies—make their own sulfuric acid on site out of sulfur they source from oil and gas companies. There is a small market for merchant sulfuric acid, but because the acid is so corrosive, it’s easier to ship sulfur itself as dry bulk. 

Before the 1970s, elemental sulfur was extracted directly from the ground using Frasch mining, in which superheated steam forces sulfur to the surface. The process had low recovery rates, consumed lots of water and was tough on equipment. Some sulfur Frasch mining still takes place today in Poland, but it’s otherwise defunct. 

Meeting sulfur demand is not a simple trick of going back to mining. Sulfur recovery engineer Angie Slavins tells Chemistry World, “Maximum Frasch mined sulfur was something like 10 million tonnes a year [at its height in the 1970s] … [so] there’s no possible way you could meet demand by mining sulfur.” Yearly production today is 72-80 million tonnes, and demand is rising. As the refining of heavy sour crude decreases, the world is having trouble meeting that demand. 

The 2026 sulfur shortage 

Even before the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the global sulfur market had hit a structural deficit by March of this year. 

“2025 was a turning point for the sulfur market already prior to the war,” says Meena Chauhan, Senior Manager for Sulphur and Sulphuric Acid at Argus Media, the energy and commodities intelligence firm. She told the HC Commodities podcast that demand outstripped supply for several reasons. 

China had invested heavily in the Indonesian nickel industry, which started importing over 5 million tons of sulfur a year to make sulfuric acid for nickel leaching—nearly 13% of all globally traded sulfur. On top of that huge spike in demand, Russia imposed an export ban on sulfur in November, which restricted supply. As a result, prices spiked significantly. 

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz just exacerbated an already stressed sulfur market. 

About half of the 40 MT of sulfur that’s traded on the global market annually comes from the sulfur-rich sour crude processed by countries that export via the Strait of Hormuz. So a sulfur market already in a structural deficit lost half its supply with the strait closure. 

In response, sulfur prices have shot up even further since February. Countries are bracing for potential shortages of fertilizer, critical minerals, and the other industrial products that depend on sulfur and sulfuric acid. In addition to the pre-existing Russian export ban, Türkiye issued an export ban in April, and India, with a large fertilizer industry that relies on Middle East sulfur, is considering one as well. China, which already uses all its own elemental sulfur production domestically—but has been the largest supplier of merchant sulfuric acid—has now issued a ban on sulfuric acid exports, which will impact the copper industry of its leading trading partner, Chile.  

In response to both price hikes and export bans, major fertilizer, copper and nickel producers have already announced production curtailments. Only time will tell how the supply crunch from these commodities will affect the decarbonized energy industries that depend on these metals, not to mention the global food supply. 

As Chauhan says, “There is extreme concern about the current situation, about the next six months, about the next 18 months, two years, really, of the sulfur market and how it's going to be addressed. [There’s] very little that can be done. It's a byproduct.”

Where will industry get sulfur as it decarbonizes?  

Even if the Strait of Hormuz were to open tomorrow and sulfur production soon returned more or less to normal, the world will still need to wrestle with how to manage this perhaps too under-appreciated linchpin of the global industrial supply chain. 

Sulfur production cannot respond elastically to price surges because—like many other essential industrial inputs—it’s largely a byproduct of the lucrative petroleum industry. As the world decarbonizes, sulfur is one of the essential petroleum derivatives that commodities markets will have to rethink. 

One solution may be to start stocking sulfur reserves now. Canada already has built impressively large pyramids of sulfur recovered from tar sands oil in Alberta, amounting to nearly 10 million tonnes. 

Other countries are not so fortunate. The shale oil that now dominates U.S. oil production is typically “sweet” rather than sour: it has very little sulfur content. If countries continue holding on to their sulfur production, countries without a domestic supply of sour crude could be in a bad spot.  

As the global economy continues to decarbonize, even regions with domestic sources of sour crude will have to rethink how they’ll produce sulfuric acid.