Chinese steel juggernaut slows but not fast enough: Andy Home
An employee guides a crane as it transports a roll of steel sheet, at a factory in Handan, Hebei province August 13, 2014. Chinese steel output fell by 1.3 percent in the first half of the year. This is self-evidently not good news for the iron ore market, given China is the single biggest buyer of seaborne ore. A surge in supply on the back of expansions by the world’s largest producers was always going to pose hard questions of the iron ore price. The adjustment process gets a whole lot messier if demand from Chinese steel-mills is contracting exactly at the same time as new supply is looking to find a home. Which is why the iron ore price, as assessed by The Steel Index, is struggling to stay above the $50-per-tonne level, just shy of the all-time low of $44.10 registered at the start of this month. […]
Hillary Clinton Lays Out Climate Change Plan
Photo Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday toured a Des Moines Area Regional Transit Authority station with Elizabeth Presutti, general manager, and Keith Welch, building superintendent. Credit Charlie Neibergall/Associated Press DES MOINES — Setting ambitious goals for producing energy from the sun, wind and other renewable sources, Hillary Rodham Clinton seized on an issue Monday that increasingly resonates with Democratic voters and sets up a stark contrast with the Republican presidential field. With many Republican candidates saying they do not believe that climate change is a threat or requires government intervention, Mrs. Clinton assailed their logic, saying, “The reality of climate change is unforgiving no matter what the deniers say.” She set a goal to produce 33 percent of the nation’s electricity from renewable sources by 2027, up from 7 percent today — a higher goal than the 20 percent that President Obama has called for by 2030. Mrs. Clinton’s […]
Prefab Nuclear Plants Prove Just as Expensive
Building nuclear reactors out of factory-produced modules was supposed to make their construction swifter and cheaper, leading to a new boom in nuclear energy. But two U.S. sites where nuclear reactors are under construction have been hit with costly delays that have shaken faith in the new construction method and created problems concerning who will bear the added expense. “Modular construction has not worked out to be the solution that the utilities promised,” said Robert B. Baker, an energy lawyer at Freeman Mathis & Gary LLP in Atlanta and former member of the Georgia Public Service Commission, the state utility authority. The new building technique calls for fabricating big sections of plants in factories and then hauling them by rail to power-plant sites for final assembly. The method was supposed to prevent a repeat of the notorious delays and cost overruns that marred the last nuclear construction cycle in […]
Cnooc Oil-Sands Spill Worsens Outlook for Canada Pipeline Plans
Crews clean an oil spill at Nexen Energy’s Long Lake facility near Fort McMurray on July 22, 2015. Photographer: Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press via AP It’s becoming increasingly difficult to get oil-sands pipeline projects off the ground, and Alberta’s worst spill since 1980 will probably make it tougher. A rupture in a line operated by Nexen, a unit of China’s Cnooc Ltd., spewed 31,500 barrels of bitumen, waste water and sand into the bog-like muskeg of the province’s north this month, igniting outrage from communities along pipeline routes. The crude in the slurry would be enough to make gasoline to fill up about 15,000 cars. The leak is bolstering opposition that has stalled every major crude export project from Canada in recent years and may lead to more stringent regulations. The delays to multibillion-dollar pipelines such as TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL are threatening output growth and have led producers […]
Exxon Mobil donates $5 million to North Dakota housing fund
A Exxon Mobil gas station is seen in Encinitas, California October 28, 2014. A subsidiary of Exxon Mobil Corp donated $5 million on Monday to a North Dakota government housing fund that subsidizes construction of low-cost apartments for teachers and emergency personnel in the state’s oil patch. XTO Energy will receive a 100 percent tax write-off for its donation to the North Dakota Housing Incentive Fund, which will be used to construct more than 75 apartment units in Kildeer, Watford City and Williston, towns at the center of the state’s oil hub. North Dakota has had a hard time attracting teachers, police officers and firefighters into such towns due to the high cost of housing. The fund seeks to help alleviate that. "These are the communities our employees live in and we want to respect those communities," Tim McIlwain, XTO’s head of operations, told a news conference. The donation […]
North Dakota crude breakeven prices as low as $24/b: state agency
US crude prices would still need to drop significantly before falling below breakeven prices in North Dakota’s four most prolific counties, according to data released by the state Department of Mineral Resources Monday. Breakeven prices for rigs in North Dakota’s Dunn, McKenzie, Mountrail and Williams counties range from $24/b in Dunn to $41/b in Mountrail, according to the data. Those four counties accounted for 63 of the state’s 68 oil rigs on Monday, according to the data. The breakeven prices ranged from $28/b to $42/b in the four counties when the DMR published its last such data in October 2014. At the same time, breakeven prices have fallen dramatically in counties with far less drilling activity, the data shows. The breakeven price is $62/b in Divide County, which has three working rigs. Previously, the breakeven price in Divide was seen to be $85/b, when the county had eight working […]
Hillary Clinton Sidesteps Keystone in Climate Plan Rollout
DES MOINES – Hillary Clinton pledged to make combating climate change a central focus of the 2016 presidential campaign, saying Monday that she would not allow “deniers” to thwart progress or prevent the U.S. from leading on the issue. While Mrs. Clinton cast herself as a crusader for clean energy, she declined to weigh in on a key environmental debate, taking no position on whether to build the Keystone XL pipeline. At an event in Iowa touting her climate plan, Mrs. Clinton said that as secretary of state, she set in motion the review evaluating the pipeline and now would allow her successor, John Kerry , and President Barack Obama to make the final decision. “I will refrain from commenting because I had a leading role in getting that process started,” Mrs. Clinton said. “And I think that we have to let it run its course.” Many Republicans have […]
Gain in U.S. Equipment Orders Points to Investment Rebound
American factories received more orders for capital goods such as machinery and fabricated metals in June, a sign business investment is poised to recover from an early-year malaise. Bookings for non-military equipment excluding planes climbed 0.9 percent, just the second gain this year, after decreasing 0.4 percent in May, data from the Commerce Department showed Monday in Washington. Orders for all durable goods — items meant to last at least three years — increased 3.4 percent, led by a rebound in commercial aircraft demand. The worst of the weakness for manufacturers may be over after the energy industry promptly adjusted to lower oil prices and other U.S. companies look to expand. Resilient consumer spending, particularly on automobiles, is helping make up for weaker overseas demand as a stronger dollar makes American-built goods more expensive. “We’re seeing domestic activity continue to push through, despite the headwinds of sluggish global growth […]
Warming Planet May Double Odds of New York Flooding, Study Says
New York’s odds of being flooded by a one-two punch of extreme rain and surging seas have more than doubled in the past 80 years, a change scientists say may be linked to global warming. The number of so-called compound flooding events — combining heavy precipitation and a high storm surge — have “increased significantly” for much of the coastal U.S., affecting cities from New York and San Francisco to Boston and Galveston, Texas, researchers said in a paper published Monday by the journal Nature Climate Change. Researchers found an increased connection between storm surges and high precipitation, phenomena that forecasters and urban planners often treat as independent events when preparing for storms , said lead author Thomas Wahl. How much of the change is due to global warming or natural variation is unclear, but the data suggest policy makers should reconsider where they build infrastructure and how flood […]