Market Expertise: M. Holland offers a host of resources to clients, prospects and suppliers across nine strategic markets.
Supply
Oil futures fell over 3% Thursday to a one-week low, led by expectations for weaker global demand. Futures are headed for their third weekly decline.
U.S. natural gas fell as much as 9% Thursday after major railroads secured a tentative contract deal with unions, averting the chance that a walkout would boost demand for gas by threatening coal supplies to power plants.
In mid-day trading today, WTI futures were up 0.3% at $85.37/bbl, Brent was up 0.7% at $91.44/bbl, and U.S. natural gas was down 5.2% at $7.89/MMBtu.
U.S. utilities added a larger-than-expected 77 billion cubic feet of natural gas to storage last week as gas output is expected to hit a monthly record in September. More gas rigs are now operating than before the pandemic:
Oil demand in China could climb if the nation approves broad requests from refiners to boost export quotas for fuels, which are currently 39% lower than last year.
More oil news related to the war in Europe:
European gas prices swung wildly Thursday, at one point surging 12% as traders weighed whether the bloc’s market intervention would be enough to stave off rationing this winter.
Russia’s largest oil producer Rosneft posted a 13% increase in first-half net income despite sanctions by Western governments.
Shell’s chief executive stepped down Thursday, paving the way for the director of renewables to ramp up the firm’s strategy to achieve net-zero operations by 2050.
Supply Chain
Major U.S. railroads and unions secured a tentative deal after 20 hours of intense talks brokered by the White House to avert a rail shutdown that could have hit food and fuel supplies across the nation. Leaders of 12 unions involved in the talks must now sell the agreements to members, who will vote to ratify or reject them over the next several weeks. U.S. passenger rail services are resuming operations preemptively shut down earlier this week.
On Thursday, the Shanghai region’s ports began to reopen, airports resumed passenger flights and train services were restored as the city dropped its typhoon alert to the lowest level. Typhoon Muifa has weakened into a tropical storm as it heads north to Shandong province.
Tropical Storm Fiona has formed in the Atlantic, becoming the sixth named storm of the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season and triggering storm watches in the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.
Northern California’s Mosquito Fire has grown to 63,000 acres since sparking on Sept. 6, now the state’s largest wildfire of the year.
Worse-than-expected quarterly revenue at FedEx will prompt the shipper to close offices and park aircraft amid declining package volumes worldwide. The firm’s shares fell almost 20% in late trading Thursday.
Air cargo volumes fell 5% year over year in August, extending a months-long streak of reduced demand. Volumes were down a sharp 17% in Europe in July.
The biggest names in U.S. heavy industry, including U.S. Steel, Alcoa and Nucor, have warned that demand for metals used in everything from automobiles to iPhones is slumping quicker than expected, while rising costs for energy and raw materials continue to weigh on margins.
Officials with the EU’s executive arm raised concerns with the U.S. that its tax incentives for domestically made electric cars could violate WTO rules.
At least 800 U.S. school districts are using four-day weeks this year in a bid to entice more people into the pandemic-hit teaching profession.
U.S. factory production rose slightly by 0.1% in August as resilient business investment offset a pullback in the output of consumer goods.
U.S. import prices fell for a second month in August, weighed down 1% by declining costs for petroleum products and a strong dollar.
U.S. business inventories rose 0.6% month over month and 18.4% year over year in July, a considerably slower pace from prior months as cooling demand forces companies to be cautious.
Nearly 50% of Manhattan office workers are expected to return by the end of this year as efforts by large firms to reduce remote work gain traction.
Bank of America is starting a paid sabbatical program to reward long-term employees, one of many large firms offering new ways to reduce burnout and retain talent amid labor shortages.
The median monthly mortgage payment in the U.S. was almost 1.5 times as much as the median asking rent in the second quarter, the largest differential in records going back to 2009.
Boeing’s chief executive says there is still a chance that U.S. regulators could approve the long-stalled 737 MAX 10 before the end of the year when a new safety standard on cockpit alerts takes effect.
Adobe Inc. agreed to acquire cloud-based designer platform Figma for $20 billion, sparking investor concerns that led to a 17% drop in the Photoshop-maker’s stock price on Thursday. The move reflects an accelerated demand for remote tech tools.
There were 180 labor strikes in the U.S. in the first six months of 2022, up from 102 a year ago as workers across a range of industries sought pay raises to catch up with inflation.
China’s economy showed modest signs of improvement in August as infrastructure investment picked up, but consumer spending and property prices remained weak.
Growth in the French economy will slow sharply to just 0.5% next year due to Europe’s energy crisis, the Bank of France said.
Argentina’s central bank hiked the country’s benchmark interest rate by 5.5 percentage points to 75% on Thursday, a day after inflation overshot forecasts.
Inflation dipped to 4.6% in Israel last month, easing from a 14-year high in July.
Canada’s housing market is showing signs of stabilizing, with home resale prices falling 3.9% from a year ago in August.
Ryanair is canceling hundreds of flights today due to an air traffic control strike in France that will limit overflights and more than halve Air France’s regional services.
Scandinavian airline SAS was cleared for a $700 million financing package as part of a plan to emerge from Chapter 11 restructuring after pilots went on strike in August.
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