Faber News Flow

Trafigura's  main  competitors  are: Gunvor Group, Glencore, Louis Dreyfus Company, Mitsui & Co. 

Small scale nuclear companies are picking up pace, following the example of bigger nuclear firms looking for their place in future of renewables, as nuclear power finally makes a comeback following years of criticism and fear of power stations. Two companies in Poland, KGHM and Synthos, are looking to get small-scale modular SMR nuclear reactors up and running in a bid to stake their claim to the future of Europe's nuclear power. To date, over 70 companies around the world are involved in SMR nuclear reactor projects, with the popularity of small-scale nuclear business quickly expanding.  Both KGHM and Synthos are planning to work with American companies familiar with the SMR technology to advance their independent projects in Poland, in line with European Union expectations for net-zero carbon emissions within the next few decades.  Critics of the small-scale projects suggest that opponents of nuclear energy will use the same arguments as those of larger nuclear projects, that bec...

Congested ports. Clogged supply chains. Capacity shortages. Much of Hapag-Lloyd CEO Rolf Habben Jansen's third-quarter overview had a familiar refrain, one likely to be heard again after the fourth quarter.  But there were two topics Habben Jansen did not expound upon: the buckets of money the ocean carrier likely raked in during the third quarter and the recent investment in a German port. Hapag-Lloyd is scheduled to release its third-quarter figures Nov. 12, and Habben Jansen did not open the ledger during a virtual chat with the media last week. His only reference to Q3 financials came when addressing supply chain bottlenecks.  "Once the data come out for the third quarter of 2021, I do not think that we will see massive growth compared to [Q2 year-over-year] simply because the supply chains at the moment are so much clogged up and we have so many ships waiting outside of the ports," he said.  Hapag-Lloyd did experience massive second-quarter growth year-over-year. Q2 ...

The energy crisis that is rippling through Asia and Europe could unleash electricity shortages and blackouts in the U.S., according to  Bloomberg .  Ernie Thrasher, CEO of Xcoal Energy & Resources LLC., told energy research firm IHS Markit that U.S. utilities quickly turn to more coal because of soaring natural gas prices.  " We've actually had discussions with power utilities who are concerned that they simply will have to  implement blackouts this winter ,"  Thrasher warned. He said, "They  don't see where the fuel is coming from to meet demand ," adding that  23% of utilities are switching away from gas this fall/winter to burn more coal.  With natgas, coal, and oil prices all soaring is a clear signal the green energy transition will take decades, not years. Walking back fossil fuels for unreliable clean energy has been a disaster in Asia and Europe. These power-hungry continents are scrambling for fossil fuel...

The European Gas Crisis keeps hitting new high after new high as gas prices around the world go ballistic.   While this isn’t just a European problem, if you read the MSM, that’s all they seem to care about.   You know, it snows in Japan as well folks, and China. Prices keep skyrocketing in Europe because there is no shortage of idiocy at the top of the European power structure.  The confluence of the pressurizing of Nordstream 2 with the release of the “Pandora Papers” and the beginnings of German coalition talks just after the beginning of Q4 should have everyone’s Spidey-Sense shutting down like your adrenals do after a long period of self-inflicted stress. And honestly, whose adrenals aren’t on the verge of collapse after eighteen months of ‘flatten the curve,’ ‘follow the science,’ and ‘just roll over to the Communism, already, you disgusting plebe!’ that we’ve been going through. I guess that’s yet another thing we have to try and factor into our analysis of what co...

  The era of abundance was only a short-lived artifact of the initial boost phase of globalization and financialization. Global corporations didn't go to all the effort to establish quasi-monopolies and cartels for our convenience--they did it to ensure reliably large profits from control and scarcity.  Not all scarcities are artificial, i.e. the result of cartels limiting supply to keep prices high; many scarcities are real, and many of these scarcities can be traced back to the stripping out of redundancy / multiple suppliers of industrial essentials to streamline efficiency and eliminate competition. Recall that competition and abundance are anathema to profits.  Wide open competition and structural abundance are the least conducive setting for generating reliably ample profits, while quasi-monopolies and cartels that control scarce supplies are the ideal profit-generating machines. The incentives to expand the number of suppliers, i.e. increase competition, are effect...

The energy crisis in Europe exposed the complexity of a transition to green energy: it is not happening overnight, and it cannot be done successfully with the old tricks.   Energy systems, markets, and grids globally need fundamental changes to legislation, regulation, and oversight in order to accommodate 100-percent zero-emission sources. And even in that case, power systems need flexibility and backups in order to avert similar crises down the road as many parts of the world commit to net-zero emissions by 2050 or 2060. The current crisis in the UK is a cautionary tale about how not to rush to green energy, Rochelle Toplensky of The Wall Street Journal   notes . Net-zero electricity systems need an entirely new set of rules in all areas of the energy systems and power markets, as well as enough flexibility to offset environmental factors such as low wind speeds, which happened in the UK last month. The UK has cut its reliance on coal dramatically over the past decade. But i...

The energy crisis in Europe exposed the complexity of a transition to green energy: it is not happening overnight, and it cannot be done successfully with the old tricks.  Energy systems, markets, and grids globally need fundamental changes to legislation, regulation, and oversight in order to accommodate 100-percent zero-emission sources. And even in that case, power systems need flexibility and backups in order to avert similar crises down the road as many parts of the world commit to net-zero emissions by 2050 or 2060. The current crisis in the UK is a cautionary tale about how not to rush to green energy, Rochelle Toplensky of The Wall Street Journal   notes . Net-zero electricity systems need an entirely new set of rules in all areas of the energy systems and power markets, as well as enough flexibility to offset environmental factors such as low wind speeds, which happened in the UK last month. The UK has cut its reliance on coal dramatically over the past decade. But its power s...

The ECB has not even started tapering and it's already preparing for the next QE. According to Bloomberg, the European Central Bank is studying a  new  bond-buying program "to prevent any market turmoil when emergency purchases get phased out next year." The plan, according to Bloomberg sources, "would both replace the existing crisis tool and complement an older, open-ended quantitative-easing scheme that's currently acquiring 20 billion euros ($23.1 billion) in debt every month." The reason for setting up a brand new QE Such an initiative would act as an insurance measure in case the scheduled end in March of the 1.85 trillion-euro so-called Pandemic Emergency Purchase Program, known as PEPP, prompts a market selloff of bonds from highly indebted countries such as Italy, according to the officials. The reason for the new QE is simple:  once the old "emergency" QE ends and market "turmoil" emerges, the ECB will have to buy even more debt...