U.S. copper projects gain steam thanks to electric vehicle trend
Ernest Scheyder, Reuters, January 23, 2019
Once seen as a laggard in the global mining industry, U.S. copper deposits have quietly drawn more than $1.1 billion in investments from small and large miners alike as Tesla and other electric carmakers scramble for more of the red metal.
Our Take: Morning Logic: The world needs copper; Pebble Mine has copper; The world needs the Pebble Project
The transit system of the future in the Fairbanks North Star Borough will be run on compressed natural gas, if the assembly approves the idea today. Administrators at the borough want to build a compressed natural gas distribution system as part of a new transit garage, which is in the design phase, and begin phasing in buses that run on CNG starting next year. Officials are pondering a system in which they could offer the fuel to paying customers. It would be the first large-scale compressed natural gas distribution system for vehicles to be constructed in Fairbanks, and it would serve as an anchor customer for the borough-owned Interior Gas Utility, said Glenn Miller, transportation director at the borough.
U.S. Oil Prices Get Boost from Venezuelan Political Crisis
Dan Molinski and Christopher Aless, The Wall Street Journal, January 24, 2019
- S. oil prices rose Thursday as a political crisis in Venezuela and possibly more U.S. sanctions threatened to cut the OPEC-member’s oil exports, which are used extensively by some refiners in the U.S.
- West Texas Intermediate futures, the U.S. oil standard, were up 0.7% at $53.00 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
- Brent crude, the global benchmark, was down 0.3% at $60.94 a barrel on London’s Intercontinental Exchange.
Russia’s Wealth Fund: Oil Price War with U.S. Would Hurt Russian Economy
Tsvetana Parasakova, January 23, 2019
Russia shouldn’t try to bring U.S. shale production down with an oil price war, because Moscow would also be hurt in such an event, according to Kirill Dmitriev, chief executive at the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) and the first Russian official to publicly hint three years ago that there might be an alliance with OPEC to lift oil prices. “For U.S. shale production to go down, you need oil prices at $40 per barrel and below. That is not healthy for the Russian economy,” Reuters quoted Dmitriev as saying at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday. “We should not take competitive action to destroy U.S. shale production,” the head of the Russian wealth fund said.
