Commodities Focus

S&P Global Platts senior natural gas writer Harry Weber and S&P Global Market Intelligence midstream finance reporter Allison Good preview with natural gas managing editor Joe Fisher the upcoming second-quarter earnings season for midstream companies.  Investors are eager to know the status of...

Amid the US energy transition toward increasing volumes of renewable energy and distributed energy resources like microgrids and demand response, global power sector engineering company Black & Veatch recently restructured its power business to focus more on these shifting market...

Refineries worldwide have been consuming more light sweet crude oil, resulting in an oversupply of light distillates products market. In the second quarter, naphtha was the worst performer across the barrel in Asia. The Asian naphtha crack against ICE Brent crude fell close to an 11-year low to...

US corn futures have been soaring since May, as persistent rains have pummeled the Midwest.  Now, the impact of the rains are being felt not just for corn, but for ethanol as well. Platts agriculture editors Sergio Alvarado, Nicolle Monteiro de Castro and Wes Swift discuss how the weather is...

Severe weather this year in the US Midwest has kept farmers from planting crops, cutting regional diesel demand. Even with prices at multimonth lows, the market is unlikely to quickly reverse course due not only to high stocks of diesel and jet fuel, but because farmers will be unable to plant as...

Markets are now gearing up for the implementation of the International Maritime Organization's new sulfur cap regulation, which takes effect on January 1, 2020. Shipowners are increasingly taking compliant fuel for sea trials, while traders are lapping up any and all low sulfur components within...

Last summer, ERCOT saw record power demand, while California power prices reached an all-time high. With another summer coming up, S&P Global Platts senior pricing specialists Kassia Micek, Kelli Ainsworth and Jeff Zhou discuss ISO summer load and resource expectations and July and August...

As China will restrict imports of aluminum scrap from July, the global scrap industry is preparing for the material flow change by the world's biggest scrap-consuming nation. The outlook, whether near or longer term, is uncertain as no one is sure yet how much scrap China will be importing...

Global crude oil prices have fallen to two-month lows in recent days amid concerns that the ongoing trade dispute between the US and China could slow global demand growth. US President Donald Trump said this week that he was not rushing to reach a trade agreement with China, increasing uncertainty...

At its 50th year, Houston's Offshore Technology Conference highlighted panels that showed a global deepwater that has become increasingly robust, with several countries tendering for the first time in years and oil and gas operators busy planning deep and often remote wells around the world. Some...

The US-China trade dispute has widened in recent days, with China announcing increased tariffs on $60 billion of US goods, including LNG, just days after the US raised tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods, with the possibility of tariffs on all other Chinese imports. The trade tensions...

S&P Global Platts editors Seth Clare and Kristian Tialios unpack first-quarter earnings from the US refining sector and discuss the causes for the industry's lackluster margins. OPEC+ production cuts, sanctions on Venezuela and Iran, and new supply curtailments in Canada all made the...

The Offshore Technology Conference promises to be a special event this year -- not only is it the 50th anniversary of the well-attended Houston event, but offshore exploration globally is heating up in a big way. Project tenders are estimated to nearly double this year what they were in 2018, Latin...

S&P Global Platts senior natural gas writer Harry Weber and S&P Global Market Intelligence midstream finance reporter Allison Good preview with natural gas managing editor Joe Fisher the upcoming first-quarter earnings season for midstream companies, which starts April 17 with Kinder...

Though aluminum scrap sources in the US and Asia have noticed an uptick in zorba prices in the past month, prices of other scrap items have only inched upwards in the same time frame. Alloy prices, meanwhile, have been stagnant if not down slightly. Mayumi Watanabe, senior editor out of Tokyo, and...

The new sulfur cap set by the International Maritime Organization will be implemented in January 2020. As the sulfur cut is so drastic, from 3.5% to 0.5%, uncertainty continues to grip the industry, which does not seem to have a clear picture on how the market will become after 2020. In this...

S&P Global Platts oil market editors Seth Clare, Laura Huchzermeyer, Maria Eugenia Garcia and Daron Jones discuss the most talked about themes they heard while attending the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers' Annual Meeting in San Antonio, one of the largest energy industry events...

Increasing renewable integration is poised to transform the California power grid in the coming years. Steve Berberich, CEO and president of the California Independent System Operator, talks with Kassia Micek and Kelli Ainsworth, senior pricing specialists on the S&P Global Platts' North...

US Gulf of Mexico Lease Sale 252 saw the largest number of total high bids in two years and four auctions. The 30 oil company participants were willing to spend on more acreage to replenish their inventories and prop up production, although mostly around existing fields. Does this mean that more...

S&P Global Platts editors Su Ling Teo and Andrew Khaw examine how the weakness in the dry bulk market, particularly following the dam collapse at a Vale mine dam in Brazil, which in turn stoked concerns over a severe drop in tonne mile demand, has affected the sentiment and demand in China's...

Kristen Hays, senior petrochemicals editor, sits down with Josh Pedrick, managing editor for Americas aromatics, to talk about the growing headaches for the Houston Ship Channel. A number of container ships heading to Houston have created delays for liquids ship movements. Hays unpacks the...

S&P Global Platts senior gas writer J. Robinson talks with Platts Analytics senior oil and gas analyst Taylor Cavey about some of the biggest trends in upstream production for 2019, with a look at Permian Basin supply growth and constraints, Bakken flaring, and the looming slowdown in drilling...

S&P Global Platts senior natural gas writer Harry Weber, senior power editor Mark Watson, associate markets editor Kassia Micek and coal managing editor Andrew Moore discuss with natural gas managing editor Joe Fisher key topics across their sectors that were addressed this week at the annual...

Natural gas prices at the Sumas hub in the Pacific Northwest reached a record high on March 1. On the same day, power prices at Mid-Columbia hub in the Northwest soared to an 18-year high. In this podcast, senior natural gas pricing specialist Veda Chowdhury and senior power pricing specialist...

S&P Global Platts senior natural gas writer Harry Weber and natural gas managing editor Joe Fisher in Houston talk with LNG editor Luke Stobbart in London about trade-flow trends that have seen Europe become a favored destination for Atlantic Basin LNG export cargoes in recent months. The trend...