Energy

Bloomberg A key environmental council approved a permit, clearing the way for Samarco Mineracao SA to resume operations at its iron-ore mine in second half of 2020. Ten of the 12 members of Minas Gerais state environmental council, known as Copam, voted in favor of an operational corrective license for the mine. Executives at Vale SA, which has a 50% ...

Bloomberg Oil fell as Russia sounded a cautious note on whether Opec and its partners may cut production further, while industry data showed US crude inventories were expanding. Futures fell as much as 1.3% in New York, erasing some of Tuesday’s gains as Russia’s Energy Minister Alexander Novak said no countries in the Opec+ coalition had proposed changing the current ...

Bloomberg Ghana will no longer have access to $190 million in grants from the Millennium Challenge Corp. after terminating a private consortium’s contract to operate the country’s electricity distribution network. Ghana annulled agreement reached under US agency’s aid program as it questioned legitimacy of payment guarantees supplied by Power Distribution Services Ltd. to secure assets of Electricity Co. of Ghana ...

Bloomberg An auction next month of oilfields in Brazil may be the priciest ever held, raising at least $50 billion in licensing fees and compensation, according to people familiar with government estimates. Exxon Mobil Corp., Royal Dutch Shell Plc and other energy giants are set to vie for deep-sea deposits that could hold 15 billion barrels of oil, almost twice ...

Bloomberg Construction of coal-fired power plants in Southeast Asia has slowed significantly since 2016, with only Indonesia starting any new stations in the first half of this year, according to a report by Global Energy Monitor. The region, which has been targeted as a growth center in coming years for coal-fired power, saw 1,500 megawatts of capacity enter construction in ...

Bloomberg Royal Dutch Shell Plc abandoned two oil projects off Kazakhstan after stubbornly high costs made them uneconomic. Shell has exited the Khazar field, while North Caspian Operating Co. — a joint venture including Shell — has quit the Kalamkas-Sea project, according to TOO PSA, an entity run by the Kazakh Energy Ministry. The retreat from the fields — both ...

Bloomberg Anti-government protests that have shaken the world’s largest copper producing nation Chile for the past three days have spread to the mining sector as unions call for stoppages. Workers at BHP Ltd.’s Escondida mine will hold a “warning stoppage” for 10 hours in solidarity with protests. The stoppage risks disrupting copper supply from the world’s largest producer, with ports ...

Bloomberg Nothing right now is stopping a surge in oil tanker rates that’s given owners of the vessels one of the biggest boosts in years. Rates have rallied so high that a secondhand supertanker could theoretically pay for itself in a couple of voyages, according to estimates from Clarkson Platou Securities AS. A normal payback period would often be about ...

Bloomberg South Africa’s debt-laden power utility ended controlled blackouts as power supplies improve, though it says shortages gripping Africa’s most industrialised economy may not be over yet. Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd., which provides about 95% of South Africa’s electricity, said it wouldn’t be implementing load shedding, a local term for rolling power blackouts, on Sunday. That comes after almost a ...

Bloomberg Barrick Gold Corp. agreed to pay over $300 million to the Tanzanian government to end a long-running dispute that it says destroyed the value of its subsidiary Acacia Mining Plc’s assets. As part of the deal, which still must be approved by Tanzania’s attorney general, the government will be given a 16% stake in a renamed company known as ...