2024-08-14 20:45
Aug 14 (Reuters) - Norway's Equinor (EQNR.OL) , opens new tab and U.S. power company Dominion (D.N) , opens new tab were the winning bidders in a U.S. government offshore wind auction of two areas off the coasts of Delaware, Maryland and Virginia, the U.S. Interior Department said on Wednesday. The offshore wind lease sale generated less than $93 million in winning bids, making it among the least lucrative of those held by the Biden administration. U.S. President Joe Biden has put the development of offshore wind at the forefront of his climate change agenda, but the industry has stumbled in the last year due to soaring costs and supply chain disruptions. Equinor bid $75 million for a 101,443-acre lease 26 miles (42 km) from Delaware Bay. Dominion's Virginia Electric and Power Co won a 176,505-acre lease 35 miles from Chesapeake Bay for $17.65 million. Six companies participated in the auction, the Interior Department said. Both Equinor and Dominion are already developing offshore wind projects in U.S. waters. "Offshore wind is critical to our all-of-the-above approach to meet the unprecedented growth of our customer electric demand over the next decade," Dominion CEO Robert Blue said in a statement. "Winning this lease area gives us another low-cost option to meet that growing demand while providing our customers with reliable, affordable and increasing clean energy." Equinor said its newest U.S. lease would not produce power until after 2035. "We will take a disciplined approach to minimize risk and mature a robust project in our portfolio," Pal Eitrheim, executive vice president of Equinor Renewables, said in a statement. Last month, the Interior Department's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management canceled a planned sale of offshore wind leases in the Gulf of Mexico due to a lack of industry interest. An auction held there last year resulted in the sale of just one of three offered leases for $5.6 million. The Interior Department plans to hold offshore wind auctions later this year for areas off the coast of Oregon and in the Gulf of Maine. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/equinor-dominion-are-winners-us-central-atlantic-offshore-wind-auction-2024-08-14/
2024-08-14 20:40
Aug 14 (Reuters) - Global oil trader Vitol SA has agreed to pay $500,000 to settle civil charges from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission the firm violated position limits for certain exchange-traded oil and cattle contracts, the regulator said on Wednesday. Traders face limits to the scale of the speculative positions they can hold for certain commodities contracts. Vitol's Houston affiliate and the Geneva-based firm violated those limits a handful of times during 2022, the CFTC said. The settlement marks the first time the CFTC has brought an action enforcing position limits held across multiple exchanges, the agency said in a statement. A spokesperson for Vitol, which did not admit or deny the CFTC's findings, said the firm is pleased to have the matter resolved. On four occasions in May and June 2022, Vitol held positions over the federal speculative limit in NYMEX and ICE Futures Energy Division futures and options contracts for crude oil, CFTC said in its order. In December 2022, Vitol held positions over the limit for CME Live Cattle Futures, the order said. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/us-cftc-settles-position-limit-violation-charges-against-vitol-2024-08-14/
2024-08-14 20:36
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico, Aug 14 (Reuters) - About half of all homes and businesses on Puerto Rico were without power on Wednesday as Hurricane Ernesto churned north into the warm waters of the Atlantic after dumping torrential rain on the U.S. territory. More than 725,000 homes and businesses on the island were without electric service out of a total of about 1.5 million customers, according to LUMA Energy, the Caribbean island's main power supplier. Juan Saca, LUMA's president and chief executive, said he was unable to specify the extent of the damage to the system or how much time it would take to restore power. He said more than 1,500 Saca employees were working in the field. "We are on the road to reestablish service," Saca said. "We have to evaluate what needs to be done to be able to resolve it." Puerto Rico's power grid is notoriously fragile. In 2022, Hurricane Fiona knocked out power for about 80% of the island's homes and businesses for as long as a month. Five years earlier, Hurricanes Irma and Maria destroyed the island's power grid and caused outages in some areas that lasted nearly a year. Since Fiona, the U.S. Congress has approved $1 billion in funds to modernize and stabilize the grid in Puerto Rico. As of Wednesday afternoon, Ernesto, which strengthened from a tropical storm to a Category 1 hurricane earlier in the day, was about 225 miles (365 km) northwest of the Puerto Rican capital of San Juan as it crawled to the northwest, packing winds of about 75 miles per hour (120 kph), the National Hurricane Center said. The fifth named Atlantic storm of the season, Ernesto should approach the British island territory of Bermuda, about 665 miles (1,093 km) east of North Carolina, by Saturday, with rainfall beginning as early as Thursday, the NHC said. Ernesto could become a major hurricane in about 48 hours, it said. A storm is considered a hurricane when its sustained winds reach 74 miles mph (119 kph). A major hurricane - a Category 3 or higher - has a sustained wind speed of at least 111 mph (179 kph). Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport in Puerto Rico resumed operations on Wednesday afternoon after canceling 145 flights over the last two days. Before the effects of Ernesto fully pass, the U.S. Virgin Islands - to the east of Puerto Rico - may get a total of up to 6 inches (15.2 cm) of rain, while rainfall totals of up to 10 inches (25.4 cm) were expected for southeastern Puerto Rico. Tropical storm warnings for the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and nearby islands were discontinued on Wednesday afternoon, but Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands can expect gusty winds through the rest of the day. Although there was no official damage report yet, Puerto Rico's agriculture may have taken a hard hit. Agriculture Secretary Ramón González Beiró said there was damage caused by flooding in banana and plantain farms in some areas, while losses were also expected in coffee and most vegetable crops. Ernesto is the second named Atlantic storm in a week during what is expected to be an intense hurricane season. Slow-moving Debby hit Florida's Gulf Coast as a Category 1 hurricane last week before soaking some parts of the Carolinas with up to 2 feet (60 cm) of rain. Hurricane Beryl, the first of the season, was the earliest Category 5 storm on record in the Atlantic when it swept through the Caribbean and the Texas Gulf Coast last month, killing dozens of people and costing an estimated $6 billion in damages. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/ernesto-expected-become-hurricane-after-drenching-puerto-rico-virgin-islands-2024-08-14/
2024-08-14 19:45
Aug 14 (Reuters) - Russian forces attacked port infrastructure in Ukraine's southern city of Odesa on Wednesday evening, injuring at least two people, Ukrainian officials said. A port employee and a grain carrier driver were injured in the strike, the Prosecutor's General office said on Telegram. Russian forces used a ballistic missile, regional governor Oleh Kiper added. Ukraine's port infrastructure has suffered frequent Russian attacks since Russia withdrew last summer from a U.N.-brokered deal that had guaranteed safe shipments of Ukrainian grain. Kyiv has since established its own maritime corridor for shipments. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-says-russia-strikes-missile-port-infrastructure-odesa-2024-08-14/
2024-08-14 19:38
SANTIAGO/ANTOFAGASTA, Aug 14 (Reuters) - A striking union at BHP's (BHP.AX) , opens new tab huge Escondida copper mine in Chile has rejected a company request to pause its action and come back to the negotiation table, with workers digging in as they seek a larger slice of profits in contract talks. The union began a strike on Tuesday at Escondida, the world's largest copper mine, after contract negotiations collapsed, a move which could affect production at the mine and global prices if no quick resolution is found. BHP and the union held a preliminary meeting on Wednesday to try to close the gap between the two sides and get back to formal talks, but the attempt failed, both sides said. "The company suggested to the union the option to pause its strike until 8pm today, to resume talks," BHP said in a statement, indicating it was open to boosting its offer. "The union did not agree to the temporary suspension of the strike." The union in its own statement accused the company of "anti-union" practices by replacing workers and said that BHP had imposed too many conditions on restarting talks. "The demands and conditions of the company made it impossible to open talks," it said, citing a tight deadline from the company which didn't give enough time to consult its members. The union added that the strike was keeping the Los Colorados concentration and electrowinning plants fully offline. BHP said the mine continued operating under a contingency plan. "The strike is only effective for workers who are part of the collective bargaining payroll, not workers from other groups, unions, collaborating companies and minimum services approved by the authority," it said. A few hundred workers began building an encampment at Puerto Coloso in the northern city of Antofagasta on Wednesday, BHP's exclusive port for shipments, which also houses its desalination plants, according to a Reuters witness. A report by BTG Pactual, a Brazilian investment bank, said that BHP could lose between $25 million and $30 million a day if the strike goes on like the 2017 strike that lasted 44 days. It added that the strike hurt Chile's GDP. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/bhp-striking-union-escondida-mine-discuss-moving-positions-closer-source-says-2024-08-14/
2024-08-14 19:14
NEW YORK, Aug 14 (Reuters) - Wall Street’s most-watched gauge of investor anxiety is continuing its speedy retreat from panic levels, suggesting that investors may be returning to strategies that bank on low stock volatility despite a near-meltdown in equities early this month. The Cboe Volatility Index (.VIX) , opens new tab slipped to 16.31 on Wednesday, its lowest level since the beginning of the month. The index hit 65 on Aug. 5 and closed at a four-year high of 38.57 on that day as investors roiled markets by unwinding several massive positions such as the yen-funded carry trade. If the index's level holds into the close, the seven trading sessions it took the VIX to return to its long-term median of 17.6 will be the index’s quickest ever drop from 35, a level associated with a high degree of fear. Similar reversions in the so-called fear gauge have, on average, taken 170 sessions to play out, according to a Reuters analysis. Some options mavens believe the rapid retreat in the so-called fear gauge signals investors have returned to strategies that bank on markets remaining calm to deliver profits. Among those is the dispersion trade, in which investors seek to take advantage of the difference between index-level volatility and volatility in single stock options, analysts said. "What we saw (on Aug. 5) was a unique confluence of events," said Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers. "I think it's also quite remarkable how quickly everyone reverted to the same playbook that has been working for them once it was established that those events appear to be temporary." The S&P 500 has risen 5% from its Aug. 5 closing level while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite is up 6% from that day’s close. Both indexes are up about 14% on the year. The sharp retreat in the VIX also backs the idea that last week's record jump was fueled by technical factors rather than longer-term angst over global growth, analysts said. The VIX, which is calculated from S&P 500 options quotes in real time, may have been driven up excessively due to lower liquidity in pre-market hours on Aug. 5, according to market participants. The sudden break from months of stock market calm may have also jolted some investors who had piled into various options-based bets on continued market calm to rush to exit those positions, further amplifying the VIX surge. "It was much more about market structure issues ... it was about short volatility traders being forced to close out when things had gone up against them, and it really wasn't about a real fundamental shock," said Michael Purves, head of Tallbacken Capital Advisors. "If we had a fundamentally driven VIX spike because something really bad was happening in the economy or world, then you wouldn't see this type of plunge in the VIX from that high level," Purves said. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/wall-street-fear-gauge-record-retreat-after-last-weeks-massive-spike-2024-08-14/
