Baltic Dry Index. 1209 +09 Brent Crude 52.09
"Any nation
which gives up its freedom in pursuit of economic advantage deserves to lose
both."
Thomas Jefferson, US President 1801-1809.
With President Trump
fully occupied with a Texas flood of Biblical proportions, and headed there
later today, the North Korean mice came out, if not to play, to fire a
ballistic missile over Japan’s north island. Needless to say, it unsettled
stock markets, bonds, and caused some defensive buying of gold, even if judging
by the missiles track, NK did their best to minimise the overflight.
President Trump and
Japanese Prime Minister Abe, are expected to again huff and puff up a good
storm of words, but not blow down Pyongyang’s house of cards. In the words of
Bryan Goh, as reported by Rupert Murdoch’s Marketwatch, markets won’t react
much unless the U.S. reacts with more than words, said Bryan Goh, chief
investment officer for Swiss private bank Bordier & Cie in Singapore. Given the realities on the ground on the
Korean peninsula, no one expects President Trump to open up a new Korean war.
Still with the
volatile, unpredictable President Trump in the White House, and an
unpredictable, unstable, Kim Jong un in Pyongyang, this game of bluff is only
an error away from starting an all too real war.
August 28, 2017 / 10:22 PM
North Korea's 'reckless' missile launch over Japan sharply escalates tensions
TOKYO/SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea fired a ballistic missile over
Japan’s northern Hokkaido island into the sea early on Tuesday, prompting
warnings for residents to take cover while provoking a sharp reaction from
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and other leaders.
The test, one of the most provocative ever from the reclusive state,
appeared to have been of a recently developed intermediate-range Hwasong-12
missile, experts said. It came as U.S. and South Korean forces conduct annual
military drills on the peninsula, to which North Korea strenuously objects.
Earlier this month, North Korea threatened to fire four Hwasong-12
missiles into the sea near the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam after U.S.
President Donald Trump warned Pyongyang would face “fire and fury” if it
threatened the United States.
North Korea has conducted dozens of ballistic missile tests under young
leader Kim Jong Un, the most recent on Saturday, but firing projectiles over
mainland Japan is rare.
“North Korea’s reckless action is an unprecedented, serious and a grave
threat to our nation,” Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters.
Abe said he spoke to Trump on Tuesday and they agreed to increase
pressure on North Korea. Trump also said the United States was “100 percent
with Japan”, Abe told reporters.
More
Asian markets jolted by North Korean missile test over Japan
Published: Aug 28, 2017 10:24 p.m. ET
Nikkei largely recovers from early plunge, yen retreats some after initial gains
Investors sought out havens, boosting assets such as the Japanese yen, gold and U.S. Treasurys, after North Korea fired a ballistic missile over Japan for the first time since 2009.The launch represented an “unprecedented, grave and serious threat” to Japan, said chief government spokesman Yoshihide Suga.
Asian stocks were lower across the board in early trading, led by declines in South Korea and Australia.
The launch jolted a market that was largely listless around the world on Monday, aside from energy-related futures, as Tropical Storm Harvey battered oil-hub Texas.
Read: Dow futures fall following North Korean missile test
The yen rose nearly 1% versus the dollar JPYUSD, +0.414495% in the first several hours after the launch, with the greenback briefly falling to around ¥108.35. It was recently around ¥108.70.
Meanwhile, gold futures GCZ7, +0.50% gained 0.5% in Asian trading on Tuesday after having jumped more than 1% Monday to an 11-month settlement high.
And 10-year Treasury yields were recently down to 2.13% from 2.16% late Monday in New York. If maintained through Tuesday’s global trading day, the bond issue would log its lowest yield of 2017.
While “North Korea continues to test the resolve of the U.S. and...the relationship between China and the U.S.,” markets won’t react much unless the U.S. reacts with more than words, said Bryan Goh, chief investment officer for Swiss private bank Bordier & Cie in Singapore.
More
Traders Hunker Down as Stock Futures Slip on Korea Missile
By Elena Popina and Lu WangSeptember contracts dropped 0.6 percent as of 11:15 a.m. in Hong Kong, paring a decline of as much as 0.9 percent. The missile landed about 1,200 kilometers (745 miles) off Hokkaido in the Pacific Ocean, Japan Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters, adding there were no reports of damage.
Asian stocks fell, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 retreating 0.7 percent as traders braced for an escalation of tensions that have previously been capable of piercing the calm in global equities. South Korea’s Kospi Index slid as much as 1.6 percent, the most in more than two weeks.
Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that he agreed with Trump to increase pressure on North Korea following a 40-minute phone call on Tuesday morning. He urged China and Russia to join in taking action against Kim Jong Un’s regime. South Korea conducted bomb-dropping drills after President Moon Jae-in ordered a show of force against the provocation.
“Things
could spin out of control,” Erick Ormsby, chief investment officer of Alcosta
Capital Management in San Ramon, California, said by phone. “Investors are
worried that Trump will do something to cause an attack on North Korea. If that
happens, you’d have a lot of uncertainty.”
More
We close for the day
with the asylum known as the EUSSR. Out of the frying pan and into the freezer
for France? Still, if one has to be cold in the coming winter, St Tropez to
Monaco, is the place to be.
As France's Heatwave Melts Away, Another Weather Crisis Brews
By Anna Shiryaevskaya and Kelly GilblomNatural gas that should be going into storage is being used to cool people down, meaning the nation may not have enough fuel to warm everyone up come winter. Storage levels are near a five-year low, while an infrastructure bottleneck that propelled the country’s gas prices to the highest in the world last winter hasn’t been resolved.
To make matters worse, the nuclear fleet, France’s main source of electricity for heating, is mired in uncertainty and will be subject to inspections that could halt reactors for indefinite periods. Earlier this year, unexpected nuclear closures caused gas demand to skyrocket, creating shortages. While the government this summer requested grid operator GRTgaz SA to intervene and buy fuel to replenish supply, the uncertainty is roiling trading.
“French gas storage levels remain dangerously low,” said Elchin Mammadov, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence in London. “We are likely to see major gas price volatility, particularly in the southern hub area” that lacks interconnecting links.
To meet increased summer demand, traders are bringing in more liquefied natural gas. Supplies from two import terminals near Marseille reached the highest level for the July 1- Aug. 15 period since 2011, according to cargo-tracker PanEurasian Enterprises Inc.
But gas in a storage site that serves the south, which last winter became almost half-empty even before a cold snap squeezed supplies in January, is still below a five-year average. Storage facilities across France were 66 percent full as of Aug. 23, the lowest for that date since 2013, Gas Infrastructure Europe data show.
A bottleneck is highly likely in the southeast when LNG supply at the two Fos terminals is low, grid operators GRTgaz and Transport et Infrastructures Gaz France SA said in a winter outlook in May. In the event of a 10-day cold spell not anticipated by the market, French consumers will suffer shortages without quick deliveries of LNG, potentially “in volumes never seen before,” the operators said.
More
“Europe exemplifies
a situation unfavourable to a common currency. It is composed of separate
nations, speaking different languages, with different customs, and having
citizens feeling far greater loyalty and attachment to their own country than
to a common market or to the idea of Europe".
Professor Milton Friedman, The Times 19 November
1997.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.
No crooks and scoundrels today just more on tropical storm Harvey,
possibly the worst natural disaster to hit the USA in its short history.
Re-Energized Harvey to Turn Wrath Again on Texas, Louisiana
By Joe Carroll and Thomas Black
It keeps getting deeper for Houston, the epicenter of the U.S. oil
industry.
As floods inundated the nation’s fourth-largest city Monday, with an
estimated 20 inches of rain still to come, predictions of damage ranged as high
as $100 billion. Wall Street and Washington braced for the repercussions of the
costliest U.S. natural disaster since Hurricane Sandy in 2012.
Tropical Storm Harvey, which made landfall as a category 4 hurricane, drifted into the Gulf of Mexico, poised to recharge before crashing ashore again Wednesday on the Texas-Louisiana border. As much as 30 percent of the nation’s refining power was imperiled, according to analysts at Tudor Pickering Holt & Co.
Houston was born from the wreckage of a cataclysmic storm in 1900, and in the decades since has weathered not only water and wind but the gyrating fortunes of the oil industry. The sprawling megalopolis, which takes a perverse pride in its booms and busts, will endure Harvey as well, said Patrick Jankowski, senior vice president of research for the Greater Houston Partnership.
“If $26 oil didn’t destroy Houston, Hurricane Harvey is not going to destroy Houston,” he said.
Read more: Harvey Costs Seen at Catastrophic Levels With Many Uninsured
The storm has been blamed for six deaths in Harris County since Sunday, according to county officials. Houston television station KHOU reported Monday that another six, members of one family, were believed to have drowned when floods swept away their van.
More than 30,000 residents will be displaced, a number sure to climb now that the Army Corps of Engineers has begun to release water from two dams, a relief tactic that will flood additional neighborhoods. More than 450,000 residents will require assistance, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which said it will be at work in Houston for years.
---- The storm promises to test the resilience of the biggest city in a state that’s home to almost 1 in 12 U.S. workers. Greater Houston, which includes eight counties, covers 8,778 square miles, an area larger than New Jersey. The metro area of 6.8 million is loosely organized with multiple centers of commerce, defined by vast and looping highways, strip malls and subdivisions.
---- Houston is the site of 18 Fortune 500 companies and the world’s biggest medical complex, but it’s synonymous with the Gulf Coast’s oil sector, an industry suddenly hobbled.
---- Ports along a 250-mile stretch of Texas coast were closed to tankers. Twenty-two vessels laden with a combined 15.3 million barrels of crude from as far afield as Brazil and Colombia were drifting off the coastline, waiting for the all clear.
Ten of the state’s 25 refineries are shut down, accounting for about
half the 6 million barrels per day of capacity, said Christi Craddick, chairman
of the three-member Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates the industry.
Companies will have to wait for floods to recede before they can evaluate
damage, she said.
“Hopefully within the next week to two weeks, we’ll see refineries back
on line,” Craddick said.
More
Refineries, plants shut amid Hurricane Harvey rains, floods
28 August 2017 03:49 Source:ICIS News
HOUSTON (ICIS)--Severe weather, heavy rain and flooding from Hurricane
Harvey are now major concerns for the US Gulf Coast, the nation's hub
for refineries and petrochemical plants. Several more companies have shut down plants as precautionary measures to Harvey impacts or have had production issues as a result of severe weather and flooding:
-Ascend declares force majeure on Chocolate Bayou acrylonitrile (ACN), hydrogen cyanide (HCN) and disodium iminodiacetate (DSIDA)
-American Acryl Bayport shuts acrylic acid
-Celanese shuts Pasadena methanol
-Chevron Phillips Chemical (CP Chem) shuts Cedar Bayou olefins and derivatives
-ExxonMobil shuts Baytown refinery and chemicals plant
-Flint Hills Resources flares at Houston propane dehydrogentation (PDH)
-Indorama unit trips at Clear Lake ethylene oxide
-INEOS has upset at Chocolate Bayou olefins 1 and 2
-Petrobras shuts Pasadena refinery
-Phillips 66 shuts Sweeny refinery
-Phillips 66 shuts Pasadena refined products terminal
-Shell shuts Deer Park refinery and chemicals plant
-TPC boilers trip at Houston butadiene (BD) site
Previously, the port of Corpus Christi closed on Friday in preparation for the storm. The US Coast Guard (USCG) reported several ports along the Texas coast as closed.
Phillips 66 suspended operations at its Freeport terminal - which includes it new liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) export terminal - as a result of Port Freeport closing, although its other US Gulf assets continue to operate normally while implementing hurricane preparation plans.
Other refineries and chemical plants have shut down in preparation for Harvey:
-Braskem Seadrift polypropylene (PP)
-Citgo Corpus Christi refinery
-Enterprise Shoup gas processing plant and fractionator
-Dow Seadrift operations
-Flint Hills Corpus Christi refinery east and west
-Formosa Plastics Point Comfort olefins 1 and olefins 2
-INEOS Green Lake acrylonitrile
-INVISTA Victoria nylon intermediates
-Javelina Corpus Christi gas processing plant
-OxyChem Ingleside ethylene and chlor-alkali
-Valero Corpus Christi refineries
-Valero Three Rivers refinery
Meanwhile:
-LyondellBasell is conducting preparations at its Corpus Christi olefins plant. Sources said the producer has scaled back operations at its Houston refinery.
-DuPont is down at its Victoria site for a previously planned outage. It will commence start-up activities when the weather improves.
-INEOS discovered a heat exchanger tube leak at its Pasadena site. Repairs are unable to commence until weather risks pass.
-Liquefied natural gas (LNG) export construction sites are also on alert.
To view an interactive map of petrochemical plants in Texas, click here. Use the drop-down menu to see
plants by products, and zoom in to see more details.
https://www.icis.com/resources/news/2017/08/28/10137268/refineries-plants-shut-amid-hurricane-harvey-rains-floods/
Technology Update.
With events happening
fast in the development of solar power and graphene, I’ve added this section.
Updates as they get reported. Is converting sunlight to usable cheap AC or DC
energy mankind’s future from the 21st century onwards?
Renewable energy generates enough power to run 70% of Australian homes
Renewable Energy Index shows sector will generate power to run 90% of homes once wind and solar projects being built in 2016-17 are completed
Sunday 27 August 2017 19.09 BST
Australia’s renewable energy sector is within striking distance of matching national household power consumption, cranking out enough electricity to run 70% of homes last financial year, new figures show.
The first Australian Renewable Energy Index, produced by Green Energy Markets, finds the sector will generate enough power to run 90% of homes once wind and solar projects under construction in 2016-17 are completed.
The index, funded by GetUp through supporter donations, underlines the advance of renewables, despite Australia’s electricity markets still leaning heavily on carbon-emitting coal and gas-fired generation.
Renewables, which made up just 7% of national electricity output a decade ago, accounted for 17.2% last financial year. This jumped to 18.8% last month.
This is saving the power sector from carbon pollution equivalent to taking more than half of all cars in Australia off the road, according to Green Energy Markets.
The biggest single source of renewable power remained hydro-electricity (40%), followed by wind (31%) and rooftop solar (18%), the index found.
Less than 2% came from large solar farms, suggesting the best is yet to come from this arm of the renewables industry which has an array of large-scale projects underway.
Green Energy Markets analyst Tristan Edis said the emergence of renewables, in particular wind and solar, as a “significant source of power” had ushered in a “construction jobs and investment boom”.
----Edis said the renewables sector was on track to meet the federal government’s renewable energy target of 20% of total generation by 2020 over a year early, by the end of 2018.
However, the renewable jobs boom underpinned by the RET could “soon turn to bust”, he said.
Renewable investment beyond the RET risked collapsing without the Turnbull government moving forward on chief scientist Alan Finkel’s recommendation for a future “clean energy target”, he said.
At least 46 large-scale energy projects under construction by the end of June were providing enough work to employ 8,868 people full-time for a year. This figure had surged to 10,000 by July. Most jobs were in NSW (3,018), thanks largely to wind farms, while Queensland (2,625) was next, with 70% of its jobs coming from solar farms.
Rooftop solar installations supported a further 3,769 full-time jobs
across Australia in 2016-17.
With most projects underway in Queensland, large solar farms still
generated less than 2% of renewable energy in 2016-17, the index found.
Generation from rooftop solar, which was “back in 2008 little more than
a rounding error”, had “grown spectacularly”, Edis said.
More than 150,000 systems installed in the last year alone would produce
enough energy for 226,000
homes, he said.
“Meanwhile these solar systems will also save consumers $1.5 billion off
their electricity bills over the next 10 years.”
More
With
apologies to John Maynard Keynes.
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished July
DJIA: 21,891 +207 Up. NASDAQ: 6,348 +250 Up. SP500: 2,470 +171 Up.
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