Chile’s copper industry will double the use of seawater in industrial processes over the next 10 years, Cochilco said on Tuesday. Chile is the world’s largest copper producer in the face of increasing water shortages.

LONDON, Jan. 8 (Reuters) – Aluminum prices fell on Tuesday as bullish speculators continued to put more pressure on them, while other basic metals did not perform well until the end of Sino-US trade negotiations.

Aluminum has performed poorest on the London Metal Exchange (LME) in the past two months because of concerns about oversupply. After the United States announced that it would lift sanctions on Russia’s aluminium industry, concerns about oversupply rose.

“I’ve been quite pessimistic about the aluminium market for some time, and I expect to see further declines in the coming months,” said Ross Strachan, senior macrocommodity analyst at Kaishou.

Aluminum closed down 0.8% at $1,864.50 a tonne in the final open call, reversing some of the gains recorded last week after hitting a minimum of about $1,785.50 a year.

Steven Winberg, a member of the U.S. trade delegation, said Tuesday that trade negotiations between the United States and China would continue on Wednesday. At present, the two largest economies in the world are seeking to resolve their fierce trade disputes.

This uncertainty leads to a weakening of market activity, Strachan said. “I think people are hesitating before we get any information about trade negotiations or the closure of the U.S. government,” he said. The news has been working behind the scenes.

LME copper fell 0.3% to $5,906 a tonne.

Zinc fell 0.5% to $2,485.

Nickel rose 0.4% to $11,190.

Tin rose 1% to $19,940.

Lead rose 0.8% to $1,969.

In the past 2018, no matter how successful the fertilizer enterprises are, whether happy or sad, they also turn to 2019, a brand new beginning, a new year about price competition. It can be said that the price of ammonium chloride Market in 2018 is good, the price level is at a high level, but under the current off-season, it is also difficult to escape the “wolf” situation of oversupply and weak demand, and manufacturers can only compromise and then come to a bleak end.

Previously Xiaobian highly admired one of the industry’s predecessors said: “Price can solve the problem is not a problem”, after listening to it, I really agree, and indeed, ammonium chloride is in a state of no market value, not just by adjusting prices can solve the dilemma. Now the ammonium chloride market is in a low ebb, pending orders are generally executed, new orders are light or even stagnated, and the downstream forward order delivery progress is slow. It is known that the mainstream ex-factory quotation of wet ammonium in East China is about 620-650 yuan/ton, while that of dry ammonium is about 750 yuan/ton. The actual turnover is lower than that. Under the dual pressure of gas limitation and environmental protection in Southwest China, some ammonium chloride enterprises still limit or stop production, and there is still a large plant planning to stop and repair next month, although this is also in the process of price reduction, the mainstream ex-factory quotation of dry ammonium is about 700-740 yuan/ton. Transactions are negotiable, especially the outward price is very low; the selling price of dry ammonium in the Bayuquan Harbor is 830-850 yuan/ton or a little low, and the futures price is relatively low; the detailed prices of other regions are invited to the members of China Chemical Fertilizer Network, as soon as you know.

The hot spot of market concern is where will ammonium chloride go next? That depends on how the favorable and negative factors will play in this “battle” without smoke of gunpowder.

First of all, although there are good, but the expectations are not high. According to the statistics of China Chemical Fertilizer Network, the overall industry start-up rate of the joint alkali enterprises is 66.9%. Some of the joint alkali enterprises are still in the stage of production restriction due to environmental protection inspection. In addition, a few joint alkali enterprises in southwest China stop production or production restriction due to the limited supply of natural gas, and some manufacturers plan to stop production next month, which means that there is still a gap in the supply of liquid ammonia in the market near the Spring Festival. Small and medium-sized compound fertilizer enterprises or extruded granular ammonium chloride enterprises may stop production later, but from the point of view of large enterprises, the stock pressure of ammonium chloride manufacturers will be alleviated relatively in advance, and the export tariff will be boosted. Although the tariff of ammonium chloride for fertilizer has been abolished last year, the export tariff of ternary compound fertilizer will be abolished this year. The consumption of the supporting material, ammonium chloride, may increase.

Next, Likong frequently interferes with the ammonium chloride market. Considering the production cost, most ammonium chloride enterprises should continue to maintain the high-load production level, excluding the ammonium chloride enterprises that are ready to resume production but have been delayed again and again. The overall start-up rate of other enterprises should be maintained at about 6-70%, and after the Spring Festival, the ammonium chloride plant of a factory in Dalian and Henan is facing re-production, which will be in the market at that time. There will be big waves on the market, and the supply of raw materials will increase; the new orders of ammonium chloride production enterprises are light, even no actual transaction recently, which leads to the increasing inventory; according to statistics, the overall starting rate of compound fertilizer enterprises is less than 40%, and the sales of finished products are not good, the inventory pressure is low, and the enthusiasm of raw material fertilizer procurement is low; TRADERS’buying attitude is not rising or falling. Especially far away from all kinds of “hot potato” operation mode, keeping a cautious look at ammonium chloride, the pre-purchased supply is also stepping up shipments, and the price of concessional sales; the urea market is constantly low and continue to be short-sighted, so the support for ammonium chloride is not too much to expect; according to the understanding of a southern port, ammonium chloride supply is sufficient, and the port stays in time. The length and slow export speed have delayed the sales progress and intensified the sales pressure in the domestic market.

Finally, overall, the high price level of ammonium chloride is gratifying, but the current market is light and the turnover is not much, which leads to the gradual lack of confidence of manufacturers; the difficulties faced are that there are not many orders to be issued, the actual turnover is small, the inventory pressure is rising constantly, and under the overall starting level of about 70%, the supply will also be “nowhere to put”, even if the price reduction is difficult to solve. The reality of poor demand is that it is hard to recover. But after all, when the Spring Festival is approaching, some downstream compound fertilizer enterprises will reserve appropriate amount of raw material fertilizer during the Spring Festival, or to some extent, alleviate the pressure of ammonium chloride enterprises’shipment and inventory, but the price should not be too expected, and there is room for decline, which should be mainly a slow downward trend.

New York, October 19 news, COMEX copper prices rebounded on Friday, after the Chinese Vice Premier Liu He and the leaders of the two delegations concentrated their calls to soothe the market anxiety.

COMEX October copper futures contract rose 0.0305 US dollars, or 1.1%, to close at 2.7680 US dollars per pound, ending the five-day decline.

The most active December contract rose $0.0315 to close at $2.7780 per pound.

Concerns about the weakening demand for raw materials commonly used in construction and manufacturing around China’s economic slowdown and trade disputes have dragged down copper prices by more than 16% from the four-year highs mentioned in June.

China’s National Bureau of Statistics announced on Friday that China’s GDP in the third quarter increased by 6.5% year-on-year, the growth rate fell to a nine-and-a-half-year low, and the industry weakened. The investment in infrastructure and manufacturing industries dragged down the growth rate of overall fixed asset investment, and consumption did not show any significant improvement.

Chinese Vice Premier Liu He said on Friday that the recent stock market volatility and decline were caused by many factors. The bubble has been greatly reduced. It can be said that the adjustment and clearing of the stock market is creating good investment opportunities for long-term healthy development. Meanwhile, China The government will deepen reform and opening up and there is no reason not to have full confidence in the broad prospects for China’s economic development.

China’s “one line and two meetings” high-level attitudes have eased market tensions. The central bank governor Yi Gang said that the recent stock market volatility is mainly affected by investor expectations and sentiment. Overall, the current stock market valuation has been at a historically low level, which is in contrast to China’s stable economic fundamentals. The central bank is also studying the introduction of targeted measures to alleviate corporate financing difficulties.

Liu Shiyu, Chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, and Guo Shuqing, Chairman of the China Insurance Regulatory Commission, will continue to express a number of measures to stabilize stock market confidence in the morning, including the CSRC’s encouragement of local governments to manage various funds, qualified private equity funds, and brokerage products, respectively. The new fund will help listed companies with development prospects but temporarily fall into operational difficulties to solve the stock pledge dilemma; the China Insurance Regulatory Commission will allow insurance products to set up special products to participate in the liquidity risk of listed companies’ stock pledge.

Benefiting from the Chinese Vice Premier Liu He and the leaders of the two delegations, the stock market uneasiness eased slightly. The Shanghai Composite Index closed up 2.6% on Friday, the biggest one-day gain in nearly two and a half months. The Shanghai and Shenzhen 300 Index rose 2.97%.

The base metals market has also been boosted.

A senior analyst at Macquarie Bank said that infrastructure construction data and strong construction start-ups are positive for the market.

Copper prices are often fluctuated by the market’s impact on China’s economic growth, with China accounting for about 50% of global copper demand. Copper prices were dominated by macro market volatility this week.

Investors have become increasingly uneasy in recent weeks due to factors such as rising US Treasury yields, trade war concerns and global economic growth.

Analysts at Commerzbank said in a report that the slowdown in China’s economic growth reflects that “trade disputes with the United States may begin to have an impact.”

According to BP statistics, as of the end of 2017, Libya has proven oil reserves of approximately 48.4 billion barrels, making it the world’s tenth largest oil reserve.

Since 2013, there have been no new oil reserves in the country. Based on production in August 2018, the country’s storage-to-production ratio is about 137 years.

Looking at the history of oil production in Libya, it can be found that its oil production is often fluctuated by external factors. In the 1960s, Libya entered the golden decade due to the release of oil exports, and its output reached a historical peak in 1970, with an average daily production of 3.32 million barrels. Libya joined OPEC in 1962.

The blazing period of the development of the Libyan oil industry is also accompanied by frequent wars in the Middle East. In 1973, the fourth war broke out in the Middle East, and Libyan oil production plummeted to half a million to 1.52 million barrels per day. Subsequently, Libyan oil production entered a relatively stable period.

In 2011, Libya’s civil war broke out, and oil production fell from nearly 1.6 million barrels per day at the end of 2010 to 100,000 barrels per day in September 2011, a cumulative decline of nearly 94%, and production activities almost all stopped. With the fall of Gaddafi and the calming of the civil war, Libya’s oil industry has a short-lived breathing opportunity, and production has quickly returned to pre-war levels. However, due to the unstable political situation in the country and social unrest, oil production fell sharply again in 2013. .

Up to now, although the overall oil production in Libya has improved significantly, the internal disturbances continue to interfere intermittently with production activities. From 2017 to 2018, the peak output is basically at the level of 1 million barrels per day.

In view of the social unrest in Libya and the complex and unstable political situation, OPEC did not restrict Libyan oil production in the production reduction agreement reached at the end of 2016. The exempted countries that reduced production also include Nigeria. By the end of 2017, with the recovery of Libya’s output, OPEC unanimously decided to call on Libya and Nigeria to control the total output below 2.8 million barrels per day, including 1 million barrels per day in Libya and 1.8 million barrels per day in Nigeria, but not made hard limit.

B resource reserves are huge

Libya’s current distribution of petroleum resources can be broadly divided into east and west regions. The eastern area is located in the inland area south of the Sirte Bay. The overall characteristics are east-west distribution. The oil fields are mainly concentrated in the three provinces of Ajdabiya, Jufra and Sirte; the western part is distributed in the north-south direction, and the oil fields are mainly concentrated in Obari and Gaelyan provinces.

In addition, in addition to the onshore oilfield, Libya has two offshore oil producing areas in the offshore waters of the northwest, namely Al Jurf and Bouri. The oil produced in the above two producing areas is mainly medium quality, of which Bouri has a high sulfur content of about 1.79%; Al Jurf has a low sulfur content of about 0.19%. Al Jurf, which is also a medium crude oil, is lighter than Bouri and has a lower sulfur content, so it is also higher in value than Bouri.

In general, the quality of oil produced in the onshore oilfield is better than that of offshore offshore oilfields. Except for the petroleum produced by Messla, which is light sulfur, the rest of the oil produced is light and low sulfur, and the API degree is between 36.1 and 60. The sulfur content is between 0.04 and 0.4, including ultra-light Mellitah condensate.

Among the major oil fields in Libya, except for the Nakhla and As Sarah fields, which are operated by BASF’s subsidiary Wintershall, the remaining oil fields are managed by the Libyan National Oil Company (NOC). The Saari, Messla and Hamad fields in the west are fully managed by AGOCO. AGOCO is a wholly-owned subsidiary of NOC, and Waha, Harouje, Akakus, Mellitah, and Mabruk are joint venture subsidiaries of NOC. The El Sharara field is the largest single oil field in Libya with a capacity of approximately 300,000 barrels per day.

There are mainly seven key oil export ports in Libya, the largest of which is Es-Sider, with a daily export capacity of 337,000 barrels, followed by Ras Lanuf, Zawiya and Zueita, with an average daily throughput of 220,000 barrels and 200,000 respectively. Bucket, 200,000 barrels.

C export volume is highly correlated with production activity

Libya’s domestic demand for oil is relatively small, and it is basically self-sufficient and therefore a net exporting country.

According to EIA data, the peak domestic demand appeared in 2009, with an average daily consumption of about 310,000 barrels. As of 2014, Libyan oil consumption was about 260,000 barrels per day, most of which was used in refinery raw materials. There are 5 refineries in Libya, all of which are state-run, with a total disposable processing capacity of 378,000 barrels per day. The El Brega refinery in the eastern part of Ras Lanuf has been shut down since April 2017 due to technical problems with the distillation tower. The repair time has not yet been determined.

Libya’s tiny domestic demand means that most of the production needs to be digested through exports. At the same time, the oil industry is the country’s largest pillar of GDP. According to OPEC data, the industry accounts for about 60% of the national GDP and is 80% of the source of export revenue.

Libya’s oil exports are highly correlated with its production activities. With the recovery of production, the country’s oil exports have increased significantly since 2016. The average daily export volume in 2017 was 725,000 barrels, an increase of 425,000 barrels per year, 2018. The average daily export volume is 890,000 barrels, an increase of 165,000 barrels.

By region, Europe is undoubtedly the most important export market in Libya. In 2018, Europe imported an average of 620,000 barrels of oil per day from Libya. Among them, southern Europe and Northwest Europe imported the most, with an average daily import of 466,000 barrels and 144,000 barrels. Asia is the second largest market, with an average daily import of 215,000 barrels, including an average daily import of 150,000 barrels in East Asia. In addition to Europe and Asia, the markets of North Africa, Latin America and North America are all traces of Zambian oil.

According to the country, Italy, Spain, China and France are the top four buyers of Libyan oil. Since 2018, they have imported 300,000 barrels per day, 126,000 barrels per day, 124,000 barrels per day, and 96,000 barrels per day. On the day, the proportion was 33.7%, 14.2%, 13.9%, and 10.7%, respectively. Italy has a certain degree of participation in the Libyan oil industry, and Eni Energy Group in the country has signed a production sharing agreement (PSA) in El Feel and Bouri to obtain a share of the oil supply of the above two fields. In addition, the group and Libya jointly built a submarine pipeline connecting the northwestern coast of Libya with Sicily, Italy, but this pipeline is only responsible for natural gas transportation.

Most of the oil exported from Libya is high-quality light and low-sulfur crude oil produced from onshore oil fields, and the remaining oil exports average only 64,000 barrels per day. Among them, medium-quality oils are mainly exported to Italy and Spain. China imports light crude oil from Libya, of which light high-sulfur crude oil accounts for only 1.9%, and the rest are all light and low-sulfur crude oil. Sinochem, Sinopec and PetroChina are major buyers, and CNOOC has a small amount of purchases.

D is less likely to increase steadily

Since the civil war in 2011, Libya has not achieved the peace in its own country. In fact, its political situation has become more complicated than ever. Not only have the domestic government split into two major factions, but also a large number of anti-government armed forces have emerged. These armed forces are also divided into various factions, each representing their own interests and goals, plus the horror of invasion from the southwest. The forces of the country have caused the country’s oil to fall into an extremely harsh production environment. Although it has nearly 50 billion barrels of natural oil resources, it is difficult to put into production in a planned and effective manner.

Due to the small amount of domestic consumption, most of the oil produced is exported to overseas for consumption, and oil exports have become the first pillar of the Libyan economy. Infrastructure, including pipelines and ports, has been able to meet the current industrial needs of nearly 1 million barrels per day. The most significant problem is the disruption or destruction of facilities caused by armed conflict.

Libya’s oil supply is mainly for the European market, so the impact of sudden factors on the price of Brent crude oil is more obvious. Under the influence of these factors, the price of WTI crude oil in the west is mainly due to the reasonable price difference between the arbitrage mechanism and Brent crude oil. In addition, since the country’s oil exports are mainly light, low-sulfur crude oil, when the supply is reduced or interrupted, the availability of related oils in the physical market is reduced, and the corresponding price will also rise.

In the short-term, due to the harsh production environment, Libya’s oil production is unlikely to increase steadily. Intermittent supply will be blocked. Superimposed OPEC limits on production, and its chances of continuing downward pressure on international oil prices are small. Fluctuation is the main line.