2024-10-01 22:58

Oil prices rise on fears over Middle East supply disruptions Iran fires over 180 missiles on Israel, says attack is over Israel and the U.S. vow retaliation against Tehran OPEC+ panel meets later on Wednesday LONDON, Oct 2 (Reuters) - Oil prices climbed more than 3% on Wednesday as Israel and the United States vowed retribution over Iran's biggest ever direct attack on its regional adversary, firing more than 180 ballistic missiles. With Israel also ordering more soldiers into Lebanon to battle Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah, the conflict has rapidly intensified with little sign of de-escalation despite international pleas. That has sent oil prices surging, with Brent futures up $1.94, or 2.6%, to $75.50 a barrel. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude jumped $2.02, or 2.9%, to $71.85 at 1256 GMT. Both crude benchmarks on Tuesday surged more than 5% before closing around 2.5% higher. Iran said early on Wednesday that its missile attack on Israel was over barring further provocation. Israeli and U.S. retaliation "could include damaging or obliterating Iran's oil facilities," said Tamas Varga of oil broker PVM. Tehran said any Israeli response to the attack would be met with vast destruction. Varga noted Iran's or its allies' retaliation could strike Saudi oil facilities like in 2019 or see the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. "Any of these events would irretrievably send oil prices considerably higher," he said. In another escalation of the conflict, the Israeli military on Wednesday sent regular infantry and armoured units to join ground operations in southern Lebanon against Iran-backed Hezbollah. The United Nations Security Council scheduled a meeting about the Middle East for Wednesday, and the European Union called for an immediate ceasefire. Iran's oil output rose to a six-year high of 3.7 million barrels per day (bpd) in August, ANZ analysts said. "A major escalation by Iran risks bringing the U.S. into the war," Capital Economics said in a note. "Iran accounts for about 4% of global oil output, but an important consideration will be whether Saudi Arabia increases production if Iranian supplies were disrupted." A panel of ministers from OPEC+, which includes Russia, meets later on Wednesday to review the market, with no policy change expected. The group is set to raise output by 180,000 bpd each month from December. "Any suggestion that production hikes will proceed could offset concerns of supply disruptions in the Middle East," ANZ analysts said. However, Saudi Arabia's oil minister said that oil prices could drop to as low as $50 per barrel if OPEC+ members do not stick to agreed-upon production limits, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday citing delegates from the oil producers group. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/oil-prices-rise-more-than-1-escalating-tensions-middle-east-2024-10-01/

2024-10-01 22:56

Analysts say Trump politicizes disaster, visit is unusual for candidates not currently holding office Biden and Harris plan visits to Helene-affected areas, federal aid ongoing Trump visits storm-hit Georgia, criticizes Biden's response WASHINGTON, Oct 1 (Reuters) - Donald Trump is using the destruction of Hurricane Helene to boost his presidential bid against Kamala Harris, political analysts said on Tuesday, after the Republican candidate spread falsehoods about the federal response during a visit to a storm-hit city. Trump is leveraging the potential political danger of the hurricane to the presidential campaign of Democrat Harris, his 2024 White House rival, the analysts said. Trump visited the city of Valdosta in the battleground state of Georgia on Monday and falsely stated that Democratic President Joe Biden had been unresponsive to the hurricane's destruction. Harris is also Biden's vice president. Trump said he brought "truckloads of things" to Georgia, including oil, water and equipment, and that he partnered with evangelical Christian leader Franklin Graham's relief organization to deliver them. Natural disasters have damaged U.S. administrations in the past and Trump is trying to tie Harris to this hurricane, which tore through the U.S. Southeast including the battleground states of Georgia and North Carolina, said Andrew Reeves, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis who has studied how natural disasters affect U.S. politics. "If there is a massive screw-up in the response, it could come back to bite her," Reeves said. "Trump is trying to look presidential and trying to create a media story around his attention to the crisis." Georgia and North Carolina will play a key role in the outcome of the Nov. 5 election between Trump and Harris. North Carolina’s hardest-hit area, Buncombe County, voted for Biden in 2020, while most of the other counties in the western part of the state went to Trump. Georgia’s Lowndes County, where Valdosta is located, voted for Trump in 2020. But even a few thousand votes in each state could decide which presidential candidate wins those states and potentially determine the outcome of the White House race. More than 3,500 federal workers are involved with response efforts in affected states, according to the White House. Analysts said it was unusual for a presidential candidate who is not in office to visit a disaster area. Natural disasters, especially hurricanes, have shaped U.S. politics in recent years and could alter the course of the race this year as well, said Stuart Rothenberg, a nonpartisan political analyst. "It gives Donald Trump an opportunity to ride into the rescue as the savior," he said. It is not the first time Trump has sought to use a disaster for political gain. While visiting the site of a toxic train derailment in Ohio in 2023, Trump criticized the Biden administration's response as a "betrayal." Presidents and presidential candidates usually do not visit a storm-hit region immediately because of fears they will distract from rescue efforts and drain resources from local law enforcement officials and emergency responders. Biden said he would visit North Carolina on Wednesday and Georgia and Florida soon after. He may also ask Congress to return to Washington for a special session to pass supplemental aid funding. Harris plans a visit to Augusta, Georgia, on Wednesday and a trip to North Carolina in the coming days, the White House said. She spoke with local leaders by phone and cut short a West Coast campaign swing to participate in a hastily-arranged briefing at Federal Emergency Management Agency headquarters on Monday. There, she grimaced and shook her head when a reporter asked whether the crisis was being politicized. The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. "While Biden and Harris abandon Americans in times of crisis, President Trump leads," Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. The storm killed more than 100 people across North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee and Virginia, and the death toll is expected to rise. Survivors will be eligible for federal disaster aid, but Trump has also authorized a GoFundMe fundraising campaign "as an official response for MAGA supporters." The campaign has raised over $2 million so far. "MAGA" refers to Trump's "Make America Great Again" campaign slogan. Leavitt declined to say how the funds will be spent. In 2019 a New York state judge ordered Trump to pay $2 million for misusing his namesake charitable foundation, resulting in funds being used to advance his 2016 presidential campaign. Trump defended the charity at the time, saying the foundation was an "incredibly effective philanthropy" that had made "some small technical violations." In Georgia, Trump falsely claimed that Brian Kemp, Georgia's Republican governor, "was having a hard time" getting Biden on the phone. Kemp told reporters that Biden had called him the evening before and said he was grateful for the federal assistance Biden had offered. Biden said Trump had been lying. Reeves' research has found that sitting presidents received a modest bump of half a percentage point when they approved disaster aid close to their reelection. During Trump's 2017 visit to San Juan, Puerto Rico, after Hurricane Maria, the then-president threw rolls of paper towels into a crowd of local residents impacted by the storm. The move drew criticism from some local officials. While campaigning for reelection in 2012, President Barack Obama joined Republican Governor Chris Christie to tour parts of New Jersey that were affected by superstorm Sandy. Christie was at the time a top defender of Obama's Republican rival, Mitt Romney. Republican President George W. Bush's approval ratings fell after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005 and never recovered. Republican pollster Whit Ayres said disasters can be make-or-break events for officeholders, but not necessarily for candidates. "Candidates have no responsibility for handling major disasters," he said. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/wake-hurricane-trump-seeks-boost-his-presidential-bid-2024-10-01/

2024-10-01 21:47

Oct 2 (Reuters) - A look at the day ahead in Asian markets. The final quarter of the year is under way, and the sense of caution that characterized its open on Tuesday could not be further removed from the ebullience and optimism that marked the end of the third quarter 24 hours earlier. Investors fled risky assets like stocks for the safety of U.S. Treasuries, gold and the dollar as Iran fired a salvo of ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday in retaliation for Israel's campaign against Tehran's Hezbollah allies in Lebanon. The S&P 500 and global stocks had their worst day in a month, the 10-year U.S. bond yield registered its steepest fall in a month, and oil rose 3%, after being up 5% at one stage. On top of the escalation of tensions between Israel and Iran, the sense of gloom hanging over markets on Tuesday was heightened by the steep decline in a closely-watched tracking model estimate of U.S. GDP growth. The Atlanta Fed's GDPNow model estimate for third quarter U.S. GDP growth on Tuesday was cut to 2.5% from 3.1% last week. The fall of six-tenths of one percent was the biggest decline since the Q3 tracking estimates was launched in late July. This will set the tone on Wednesday for markets across Asia. Chinese markets are closed for Golden Week, and the major economic releases will be inflation and manufacturing purchasing managers index data from South Korea, and consumer confidence from Japan. Although oil spiked sharply on Tuesday, the deeply negative year-on-year price of oil is a major reason why inflation around the world is cooling, and much faster than many economists and policymakers had expected. In many cases, like the euro zone, inflation is already at or even below the 2% target that many central banks aim for. Figures on Wednesday from Seoul are expected to show that annual consumer inflation in South Korea eased to 1.9% in September from 2.0% in August. That would be the lowest, and also the first time below that 2% threshold, since March 2021. Japan's markets should be a little calmer on Wednesday, even though Nikkei futures point to a fall of more than 1% at the open, as the dust begins to settle on the major political upheaval of recent days. Investors are getting used to what they might expect from new Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, once considered a monetary policy hawk who now appears to have softened his stance. He said on Tuesday that he hoped the Bank of Japan would maintain loose monetary policy "as a trend", and that his administration will carry over the economic policy of former Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and "ensure Japan fully emerges from deflation." Here are key developments that could provide more direction to Asian markets on Wednesday: - South Korea inflation (September) - South Korea manufacturing PMI (September) - Japan consumer confidence (September) Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/markets/global-markets-view-asia-graphic-pix-2024-10-01/

2024-10-01 21:41

Oct 1 (Reuters) - Over 1.4 million homes and businesses were still without power in the U.S. Southeast and Midwest on Monday after Helene slammed into the Florida Panhandle as a major hurricane on Sept. 26, according to data from PowerOutage.us. Those outages were down from around 2.0 million on Monday afternoon as utilities continued to restore power. In total, the storm knocked out service to around 5.5 million customers. Helene's winds, rain and storm surge killed over 100 people, according to a Reuters tally of state and local officials. The utility with the most outages was U.S. energy company Duke Energy (DUK.N) , opens new tab in the Carolinas with about 360,599 customers still out in South Carolina and 269,157 out in North Carolina, according to PowerOutage.us. Duke said on Monday it had restored power to around 1.35 million customers in the Carolinas and expected to restore the majority of remaining outages by Friday night. Southern Co's (SO.N) , opens new tab Georgia Power has restored power to over 1 million customers, about 80% of all those affected by the storm across the state, the company said in a statement on Tuesday. Here are the major outages by state: Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/over-17-million-us-customers-still-without-power-hurricane-helene-2024-10-01/

2024-10-01 21:30

Oct 1 (Reuters) - The U.S. Commerce Department on Tuesday announced anti-subsidy countervailing duties on solar cells imported by companies in Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia and Thailand that were lower than some expected for several major Chinese producers. The announcement is the first of two preliminary decisions expected by the Commerce Department this year in a trade case brought by South Korea's Hanwha Qcells (000880.KS) , opens new tab, Arizona-based First Solar (FSLR.O) , opens new tab and several smaller companies seeking to protect billions of dollars in investments in U.S. solar manufacturing. The group, called the American Alliance for Solar Manufacturing Trade Committee, accused Chinese companies with factories in the four Southeast Asian countries of flooding the U.S. market with panels priced below their cost of production and of receiving unfair subsidies that make American products uncompetitive. Others in the solar industry say those low-priced imports are critical for both clean-energy project developers competing with fossil fuels and for domestic solar factories that use overseas-made cells in panels assembled on U.S. soil. According to a fact sheet posted on the Commerce Department's website, the agency calculated general subsidy rates of 9.13% for imports from Malaysia, 8.25% for imports from Cambodia, 23.06% for imports from Thailand and 2.85% for imports from Vietnam. Overall, the rates were lower than expected, according to Roth Capital Partners solar industry analyst Philip Shen, who said in a client note that he had been expecting duties of around 15%. Large manufacturers have their own separate duty rates, and several big China-based producers received far lower rates than Hanwha Qcells, a global producer that brought the trade case to protect its large investment in U.S. solar factories in Georgia. The Commerce Department calculated a subsidy rate of 14.72% for Hanwha Qcells products produced in Malaysia, based in part on government loans and below-market land provisions to the company in that country. In comparison, a large Chinese-owned rival operating in Malaysia, Jinko Solar (688223.SS) , opens new tab, received a subsidy rate of 3.47%. China's Trina Solar (688599.SS) , opens new tab received a duty rate of just 0.14% for products it makes in Thailand. In Vietnam, Chinese companies Boviet Solar and JA Solar (002459.SZ) , opens new tab received rates of 0.81% and 2.85%, respectively. Hanwha Qcells would not comment on the department's finding. Representatives for Jinko, Trina, Boviet and JA Solar were not immediately available for comment. All four companies either have or are in the process of setting up U.S. factories. Some of the duties for companies in Vietnam and Thailand will apply retroactively for 90 days because the Commerce Department found some companies increased shipments to the United States to get ahead of potential duties. The retroactive duties do not apply to shipments by Trina, Boviet or JA Solar, according to an agency document. An attorney for the American Alliance for Solar Manufacturing Trade Committee, which includes Hanwha Qcells, said the department's findings were in line with expectations and that the final decision could yield different duties. "Some of the margins definitely do not yet reflect the full extent of government subsidies that are occurring in the industry," Tim Brightbill, an attorney with Wiley Rein in Washington, said on a call with reporters. A final order will be issued next April. The Solar Energy Industries Association, a large U.S. trade group, said tariffs will not solve the industry's challenging market conditions. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-sets-preliminary-new-duties-solar-imports-southeast-asia-2024-10-01/

2024-10-01 21:15

Oct 1 (Reuters) - Tropical Storm Kirk has strengthened into a hurricane, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said on Tuesday. Hurricane Kirk was located about 1,070 miles (1,720 km) West of Cabo Verde Islands, with maximum sustained winds of 75 mph (120 kph), the Miami based forecaster said. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/kirk-strengthens-into-hurricane-nhc-says-2024-10-01/