David Fuller and Eoin Treacy's Comment of the Day
Category - Energy

    Platinum price gets $6 billion shot in the arm

    This article by Frik Els for Mining.com may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    Korean carmaker Hyundai on Tuesday announced a $6.7 billion program to raise production of fuel cells 200-fold going from 3,000 this year to 700,000 per annum by 2030.

    The hydrogen society is probably further into the future than its promoters want you to believe, and detractors are plentiful 

    Toyota was the first to back the technology for passenger vehicles, launching its Mirai – "future" in Japanese – back in 2015. Honda is bringing the Clarity back to its line-up and Hyundai’s Nexo SUV is launching in North America next year. Hyundai also inked a collaboration on fuel cells with Volkswagen in June.

    The hydrogen society is probably further into the future than its promoters want you to believe, and detractors are plentiful. (Elon Musk was not only talking his book when he called fuel cell cars "extremely silly".)

    Alongside Hyundai's announcement, the Korean government also made a commitment to roll out a fuel cell fleet and charging stations. But Canada, for example, got its first and so far only public hydrogen fuelling station only in August and California’s years long backing for fuel cell cars have hardly moved the needle on consumer and business uptake.

    Nevertheless, the impact on platinum could be enormous.

    There’s a simple reason – today's fuel cell cars need a full ounce of platinum versus a 2 – 4 grams PGM loading for your average gasoline (primarily palladium) or diesel vehicle.

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    Uranium price: best performer of 2018 set for more gains

    This article by Frik Els for Mining.com may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section: 

    Struggling French nuclear giant Areva (rebranded as Orano this year) slashed production more than a year ago. In August Paladin put its Langer Heinrich mine in Namibia on care and maintenance, although this week the Sydney-based miner said it's working on a possible restart of operations with vanadium as a byproduct (vanadium is trading at record highs and the only metal outperforming uranium).

    In a research note on Kazatomprom, BMO Capital Markets says the production discipline from top miners will break the trend of rising global uranium inventories following the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in 2011 and prompt the first production deficit in more than a decade.

    And

    China has 42 operating nuclear reactors, 16 reactors under construction and a further 43 planned. At the end of November, the country's national uranium corporation bought control of the Rossing uranium mine in Namibia. China is also behind the only sizeable uranium mine to come into production in the past few years, the Husab mine in Namibia, although ramp there has been slow.

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    The U.S. Just Became a Net Oil Exporter for the First Time in 75 Years

    This article by Javier Blas for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    The shift to net exports is the dramatic result of an unprecedented boom in American oil production, with thousands of wells pumping from the Permian region of Texas and New Mexico to the Bakken in North Dakota to the Marcellus in Pennsylvania.

    While the country has been heading in that direction for years, this week’s dramatic shift came as data showed a sharp drop in imports and a jump in exports to a record high. Given the volatility in weekly data, the U.S. will likely remain a small net importer most of the time.

    “We are becoming the dominant energy power in the world,” said Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy & Economic Research. “But, because the change is gradual over time, I don’t think it’s going to cause a huge revolution, but you do have to think that OPEC is going to have to take that into account when they think about cutting.”

     

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    Riding in Waymo One, The Google Spinoff's First Self-Driving Taxi Service

    This article by Andrew Hawkins for the Verge may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    Over the course of three separate trips in Chandler, the trained drivers in my Waymo vehicles never take control. I’ve ridden in a Waymo vehicle without a human being in the driver’s seat once before, but it was not on public roads. I was fully prepared to experience a fully driverless ride while in Chandler, but, alas, Waymo rejected my request.

    The rides are uneventful, but it is exciting to experience the little flourishes that have been added for ride-hailing customers. The minivans still smell new, or at least recently cleaned. The screen on the back of the driver’s headrest features a large blue “start” button that I could press to initiate the ride. (There’s also a physical button in the headliner of the vehicle that performs the same task.) After pressing the button, a musical chime sounds and a robotic-sounding woman’s voice says, “Here we go.”

    As I said, I’m an experienced Waymo rider — three trips and counting — but this one feels more mature. Before, it felt like you were being driven by your half-blind grandmother, but now, riding feels… mostly normal. The car slows down for speed bumps, accelerates for lane changes, and handles a number of difficult maneuvers like unprotected left turns. And it even surprises me a couple of times, like when it ended up braking too far into the crosswalk at an intersection, and then reversed back a few inches to make room for pedestrians. Of course, it probably shouldn’t have stopped so abruptly in the first place, but it is still comforting to see the car correct its mistakes in real time.

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    Oil Jumps Most Since June on Saudi-Russian Pact, Trade War

    This article by Alex Nussbaum for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    “There’s going to be a cut, I think it’s going to be more than people expected, and I think the market realized that today,” said Bob Iaccino, chief market strategist at Chicago-based Path Trading Partners.

    For a time, oil pared gains on Monday after an OPEC advisory panel was said to make no recommendation for action and people familiar with negotiations said Russia and the Saudis still haven’t agreed on details of a cut. Iranian OPEC Governor Hossein Kazempour Ardebili, meanwhile, raised doubts about whether producers can reach unanimity in Vienna.

     

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    BP Starts Production at Massive North Sea Oil Development

    This article Sarah Kent for the Wall Street Journal may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    Clair Ridge is expected to reach a production plateau at a peak of 120,000 barrels of oil a day and is designed to run for 40 years. The companies are currently evaluating the potential for a third project within the field to expand output even further.

    It’s BP’s sixth new project to start production this year, the latest marker of the company’s return to growth after years of retrenchment in the wake of its fatal blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. To pay for the 2010 disaster, which killed 11 people and caused the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history, BP was forced to sell off billions of dollars of assets, shrinking its production.

    But a string of new developments that started up over the past two years is reversing that trend, and BP is closing in on its ambition to regain its former size. The company’s production averaged 3.6 million barrels a day in the first nine months of the year, up nearly 3% compared with the same period in 2017. Output will receive a further boost from its recent $10.5 billion acquisition of BHP Billiton Ltd’s shale assets.

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    Japan's Inflation Stalls at 1% as Risks to Price Gains Gather

    This article by Yuko Takeo for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section: 

    Slow but steady improvement in Japan’s core inflation gauge has come to a halt as a host of forces gather that could see price gains begin to slow.

    Consumer prices excluding fresh food rose 1 percent in October from a year earlier, as expected by economists. That’s just half way to the Bank of Japan’s 2 percent target with the prospect of falling energy costs and lower charges from mobile-phone carriers pointing to weaker price growth ahead.

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    Oil Legend Andy Hall Weighs Crude's Chance of Recovery on OPEC

    This article by Aaron Clark for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

     

    “The balance of risk at this point favors some sort of recovery,” the trader once known as ‘God’ in the industry due to his lucrative trades, said in a phone interview Friday. “It’s quite likely OPEC will come through with some sort of cut in the next month or two.”

    Demand has taken a downturn probably because of a stronger dollar against emerging market currencies, or on concern the trade war between the U.S. and China is beginning to curb economic growth, according to Hall. West Texas Intermediate crude is in a bear market after plunging from a four-year high in October and is trading near $57 a barrel following the biggest gain in U.S. stockpiles in 21 months.

    “When you know you’ve got prices in 2020 and beyond for WTI down below $60 a barrel, almost down to the mid-$50s further along the curve, I think that is essentially at the bottom,” said Hall.

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