January, 2023

• 14 January

  Drax fined for charging extreme energy prices

    Bloomberg K power firm Drax Group Plc agreed to pay a £6.1 million ($7.5 million) fine for breaching its license, after charging the grid operator excessive prices to reduce its generation. The penalty comes as regulator Ofgem reviews the rules for Britain’s balancing market, where the grid fine-tunes electricity supply and demand. Ofgem is looking to reduce record balancing ...

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• 14 January

  Eskom fails to get approval to raise power tariff by a third

  

  Bloomberg Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd., South Africa’s indebted power utility, failed to get approval from the nation’s energy regulator to increase tariffs by about a third, an amount it said was needed to help limit worsening electricity outages. The utility applied for a price increase of 32% for the 2024 financial year to pay for more purchases from independent producers ...

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• 13 January

  Nigeria LNG scraps gas shipments

    Bloomberg Nigeria LNG Ltd. cancelled several liquefied natural gas shipments after vandalism on pipelines from gas fields disrupted production, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter. The company declared an additional force majeure on LNG cargoes for export, and cancelled loading of at least two scheduled for January delivery from the Bonny Island facility, according to two ...

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• 13 January

  Exxon Mobil to sell Thai refinery, retail unit to Bangchak

  

    Bloomberg Exxon Mobil Corp will sell its controlling stake in Esso (Thailand) Pcl, which runs a local refinery and retailing business, to rival Bangchak Corp. as the largest US oil company focuses on its home market and the production of lower-emission fuels. Bangchak will acquire 66%, or 2.28 billion shares, of Esso at a price to be determined later, ...

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• 13 January

  Britain may avoid a recession for now as consumers spend

  

  Bloomberg The UK economy may avoid tumbling into recession until later this year as consumers kept spending through the worst cost-of-living squeeze in memory. Gross domestic product unexpectedly rose 0.1% in November, the Office for National Statistics said Friday. Economists had expected a small decline after growth in October. November’s figures mean the UK economy probably avoided a recession in ...

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• 13 January

  Britain’s trade deficit narrows with jump in car, aircraft exports

  

    Bloomberg Britain’s trade deficit narrowed sharply after a slump in natural gas prices reduced import costs and a flurry of exports of aircraft and cars. The deficit in goods and services trade fell by £6.5 billion to £20.2 billion in the three months to November. Exports to the European Union were hit again in the wake of Britain’s exit ...

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• 13 January

  US reshoring of supply chain to be limited by costs, studies say

  

    Bloomberg A mass exodus out of East Asia seems unlikely for US manufacturers in 2023, with any decision to diversify supply chains away from the region dictated by costs, as well as logistics considerations, according to separate reports. “The ultimate extent of how much production will be reshored or moved closer to home remains an open issue and will ...

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• 13 January

  Swedish inflation hits three-decade high

    Bloomberg Sweden’s inflation rate reached double digits for the first time in more than three decades in December, as price increases show little sign of abating despite the central bank’s efforts. The CPIF measure of inflation that’s tracked by the Riksbank rose by 10.2% from a year earlier, according to Statistics Sweden. That’s more than the 9.8% expected by ...

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• 13 January

  German recession fears ease on surprise year-end stagnation

  

    Bloomberg Germany’s economy probably stagnated in the final quarter of 2022, defying analyst expectations for a contraction and easing fears of a recession triggered by the war in Ukraine and soaring inflation. For the year as a whole, output increased 1.9% — down from 2.6% in 2021 and just ahead of the 1.8% estimate in a Bloomberg survey, the ...

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• 13 January

  Russia claims Donbas town but Ukraine says it’s in control

  

    Bloomberg Russia claimed Moscow’s troops had taken Soledar, a small town in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, in one of their first victories in months. Kyiv rejected the claim. A salt mining town with a population of 10,000 before Russia launched its invasion in February 2022, Soledar has limited strategic value but has been the site of weeks of ...

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