2024-01-09 22:33
HOUSTON, Jan 9 (Reuters) - Portugal oil and gas firm Galp has asked U.S. regulators to allow it to join BP (BP.L) and Shell's (SHEL.L) formal complaints against U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) exporter Venture Global LNG, a filing showed on Tuesday. Shell and BP have asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to require Venture Global to disclose plant commissioning data to determine why commercial operation at Venture Global's Calcasieu Pass terminal is stalled. Galp Trading (GALP.LS), a unit of Galp Energia, said "no other party can adequately represent or protect its interests," in the dispute. It missed a FERC filing deadline and asked to join the two other European firms in petitioning for more details. Venture Global's Calcasieu Pass export facility has been producing and selling LNG for more than 21 months while telling Galp, Shell, BP and others it cannot provide them with term-contract cargoes while the plant is in commissioning. The customers have complained that this lack of access has cost them billions of dollars in lost sales. Galp did not become aware of the FERC proceeding due to what it called administrative oversight, and was unable to file its intervention prior to the Jan. 2, documents show. Venture Global LNG's contract customers Shell, BP, Edison SpA (EDNn.MI), Polish state energy firm Orlen and Spain's Repsol (REP.MC) have each filed contract arbitration claims against the Herndon, Virginia, exporter. Venture Global LNG did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It has previously said the letters to FERC by Shell and BP sought to bring a commercial dispute into the political arena. "This unseemly behavior reflects BP and Shell’s increasing lack of confidence in their contractual positions, and their complete disrespect for the U.S. regulatory process," spokesperson Shaylyn Hynes said at the time. Venture Global LNG has become a major U.S. exporter of the superchilled gas since it started processing at its Calcasieu Pass, Louisiana, plant early in 2022. It has sold more than 200 cargoes of the gas under its own accounts without supplying BP and other long-term contract customers. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/portugals-galp-seeks-join-formal-complaint-against-us-lng-exporter-2024-01-09/
2024-01-09 22:30
NEW YORK, Jan 9 (Reuters) - BlackRock (BLK.N), the world's largest asset manager, on Tuesday said it will cut about 3% of its current workforce, though it expects to have a larger headcount by the end of 2024. The job cuts would amount to roughly 600 positions based on BlackRock's workforce of 19,800 at the end of December 2022, the last time its employee numbers were updated. No single team will be the focus of the cuts, according to a source at the firm. Shares of the asset manager are up about 5% over the last 12 months, well behind the roughly 22% gain in the benchmark S&P 500. Chief Executive Larry Fink in October signaled that the company is on the lookout for acquisition targets in order to increase its growth trajectory. It ended the third quarter of 2023 with $9.1 trillion in assets under management, down from the second-quarter total of $9.4 trillion. "For the first time in nearly two decades, clients are earning a real return in cash and can wait for more policy and market certainty before re-risking. This dynamic weighed on the industry and BlackRock's third-quarter flows," Fink said in a statement at the time. BlackRock is expected to announce its fourth-quarter results on Friday. Shares of the company were down 0.5% in afternoon trading on Tuesday. https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/blackrock-announces-cuts-roughly-600-jobs-2024-01-09/
2024-01-09 22:11
COLON, Panama, Jan 9 (Reuters) - About 500 people on Tuesday protested at First Quantum's (FM.TO) copper mine in Panama to pressure the Canadian miner and authorities to follow through on plans to close the site, weeks after the Supreme Court declared its contract unconstitutional. Even days before the Supreme Court's November ruling over the contract to operate the lucrative Cobre Panama mine, the site had already effectively been shuttered after protesters blocked access to the port that serves it. The Canadian miner's local unit last week said it was "deeply concerned" after one union warned of plans to "invade" the Cobre Panama mine this week. But by noon on Tuesday the protest, which was peaceful, had dispersed. Many protesters waved Panamanian flags while others held banners that read: "Panama is worth more without mining." In the following weeks after the court's decision, First Quantum said it was seeking formal talks with the Panamanian government to proceed with the safe and orderly closure of the facility. The company still has equipment and workers at the site. Protesters on the site on Tuesday said they had achieved the "symbolic closure" of the mine. "The people spoke loud and clear: we want a Panama free of mining," said 51-year-old teacher Fernando Abrego at the entrance to the mine, which remained closed and guarded by private agents. "The fight didn't end with the ruling of unconstitutionality," he added. Protesters have argued that the terms of the contract - originally agreed in October before being overruled - were too generous for First Quantum and allege corruption played a part in its approval. The company denies these claims. The closure of the mine led Panama to drastically cut its economic growth forecasts for 2024. The Cobre Panama mine represented around 5% of Panamanian GDP. "We are here because we want to know the plan that the government has for the end of the mine, a lot of time has passed and we do not see clarity in what they are going to do," said teacher leader Juan de Dios Camano. https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/hundreds-protest-first-quantums-panama-copper-mine-2024-01-09/
2024-01-09 22:10
KLIMOVSK, Russia, Jan 9 (Reuters) - Russian investigators said on Tuesday they had arrested three people over heating outages south of Moscow that have sent regional officials scrambling to restore services and drawn scrutiny from the Kremlin. Authorities blamed the breakdown on failures at a boiler plant owned by a private ammunition factory. The heads of the heating plant and the factory were arrested on suspicion of providing unsafe services, investigators said in a statement. The deputy head of the local administration was also detained on suspicion of certifying the heating plant as adequate for winter despite allegedly knowing about defects that needed to be fixed. The situation is embarrassing for authorities at a time when President Vladimir Putin is embarking on a campaign to be re-elected in March and voters are looking for assurances that the state can maintain decent living standards and public services despite the costs of the war in Ukraine. Putin's victory is not in doubt, but supporters of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny say the campaign offers a chance for them to connect with voters and highlight problems in the country that they blame on his 24-year rule. The Kremlin said Putin had discussed the situation late on Monday with Moscow regional governor Andrei Vorobyov and other officials, and "titanic" efforts were being made to resolve the situation. Residents gathered in a local sports centre on Tuesday to escape their freezing homes. Larisa, a financial manager, said the temperature in her apartment was about 4 Celsius (39 Fahrenheit). "There has been no heating for six days already. Tomorrow will be a week," she said, adding that the electricity supply was too erratic to turn on a TV or a fridge. Another woman, Valentina, said the authorities had promised that everything would be fixed in the course of the day "but we don't know whether to believe it or not". Governor Vorobyov posted a stream of updates on social media and said the boiler plant in question was being taken over by local authorities and would be modernised and restaffed. It was not immediately clear if the Klimovsk Specialised Cartridge Plant, the factory that owned the heating plant, was being nationalised. State arms corporation Rostec said it was "vital" to proceed with the nationalisation of the factory. "An appeal to this effect to the president is already being prepared," Rostec said in a statement. "This will allow for all tasks to be fulfilled for production and social needs, both for the plant and in overall terms, and for order to be restored." Rostec, it said, was prepared to take over the plant as it already had a stake in it and currently brought together about 90% of arms-producing plants in the country. Moscow and the surrounding region have suffered an unusually harsh winter. The temperature in Klimovsk was -8 Celsius on Tuesday, mild by the standard of recent weeks. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/three-arrested-over-heating-outages-south-moscow-2024-01-09/
2024-01-09 21:50
Jan 10 (Reuters) - A look at the day ahead in Asian markets. Australian inflation tops the Asian-Pacific economic calendar on Wednesday with the latest Chinese lending figures potentially due for release too, as investors also grapple with mixed news from the Asian tech sector. Wall Street's lackluster performance on Tuesday is unlikely to provide much impetus - the Nasdaq closed flat while the Dow and S&P 500 slipped into the red - so perhaps the key regional indicators will give markets some early direction. Australia's weighted annual consumer price inflation rate is expected to have fallen sharply in November to 4.4% from 4.9%. This would be the lowest in almost two years, and would follow an even steeper fall the month before to 4.9% from 5.6%. Aussie swaps markets are indicating around 50 basis points of rate cuts from the central bank this year, with the first quarter-point cut coming by August. A weaker-than-expected CPI report could well increase these policy easing expectations. New bank loans in China, meanwhile, likely rose in December, bringing 2023 lending to a new record high as the central bank keeps policy accommodative to support a shaky economic recovery. Figures this week are expected to show that Chinese banks issued 1.40 trillion yuan in net new yuan loans last month, up from 1.09 trillion yuan in November. If these numbers are borne out, total new lending in 2023 would hit 22.98 trillion yuan, beating the previous record of 21.31 trillion yuan in 2022. But China's economy and markets are still underperforming and struggling to convince foreign investors that 2024 will witness a meaningful recovery. Rising tensions with Taiwan, which goes to the polls on Saturday, won't help either. Taiwan on Tuesday reported a stronger-than-expected rise in exports in December thanks to a near 50% surge in sales to the United States. But China remained a weak spot - Taiwan's exports to China fell 6.4%. Later on Wednesday Taiwan's TSMC, the world's largest chipmaker, unveils its latest monthly sales figures. Asian tech has got off to a particularly rocky start this year, with the MSCI Asia IT index down 4.5% since the turn of the year and the Asia ex-Japan equivalent down 5%. That compares to the Nasdaq's 1% year-to-date slip. Sentiment will have been dented further by Samsung, which reported a likely 35% drop in fourth-quarter operating profit on Tuesday, much worse than analysts expected. If there has been little New Year cheer across major U.S. and global stock markets, it has been in even shorter supply in Asia. The MSCI Asia & Pacific ex-Japan share is down 3.5% so far this year, compared with a decline of around 1% for the MSCI World index and S&P 500. Here are key developments that could provide more direction to markets on Wednesday: - South Korea unemployment (December) - Australia CPI inflation (November) - China lending (December) https://www.reuters.com/markets/asia/global-markets-view-asia-graphic-2024-01-09/
2024-01-09 21:00
WASHINGTON, Jan 9 (Reuters) - The U.S. is seeking bids from contractors to help establish a domestic supply of a uranium fuel enriched to higher levels for use in a next generation of reactors, a fuel currently only available in commercial levels from Russia, the Department of Energy said on Tuesday. The DOE is seeking contracts for a maximum of 10 years from enrichment service companies to produce so-called high assay low enriched, or HALEU, uranium fuel that is enriched up to 20%, compared with traditional uranium fuel used in today's reactors of about 5%. The department has about $500 million in funding for HALEU production from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, and sought proposals late last year for additional HALEU production services. The program could be expanded in coming years, depending on congressional appropriations. HALEU is expected to be needed for a planned generation of reactors in the works by companies including X-energy and TerraPower, but output has been delayed as the reactors are not yet built. "It's a chicken-or-egg sort of process," Jon Carmack, the department's deputy assistant secretary for nuclear fuel cycle, said in an interview. Carmack said the government needs to invest enough money to show initial demand for producers, so they will build capacity, apply for licenses and get HALEU plant design and construction projects underway. President Joe Biden's administration sees the new reactors and maintaining the current fleet of nuclear plants as critical for its climate change agenda. Ali Zaidi, Biden's national climate adviser, said boosting domestic uranium supply will increase energy security, generate high-paying union jobs, and boost economic competitiveness. Nuclear proliferation experts warn that an increased dependency on HALEU around the world could increase proliferation risks because the fuel is closer to fissile material for nuclear weapons than traditional fuel. The only company currently selling commercial shipments of HALEU is TENEX, part of Russia's state-owned energy company Rosatom. Centrus Energy (LEU.A), the only U.S. company with a license to produce HALEU, and which is supplying the DOE with a small amount of the fuel for demonstration purposes, was encouraged that the request for proposals could lead to more production at its plant in Ohio. Centrus "looks forward to the opportunity to compete for the funding necessary to expand our production," said spokesperson Lindsey Geisler. European uranium enrichment company Urenco could also eventually produce U.S. HALEU but does not yet have a license to do so. Urenco did not immediately respond to a request for comment. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-seeks-jump-start-production-higher-energy-uranium-now-made-russia-2024-01-09/
