Glencore JV Buys Into Giant Oil Storage Site With Surplus Ahead
Aquarius Energy said Wednesday it had finalized a deal to acquire a 37% stake in the massive South African facility. The transaction — for Oiltanking's share in MOGS Saldanha OTMS — was first announced last year, but is being completed as oil trading firms begin positioning for an anticipated surplus.
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Forbes
2 minutes ago
- Forbes
Trump Must End Dodd-Frank's Backdoor Tariffs Blocking Critical Minerals & Impoverishing Congo
Amid controversies over tariffs and their effects, one particularly destructive barrier to trade has gone overlooked: restrictions on 'conflict minerals' that exacerbate poverty in the developing world, undermine U.S. access to rare earth metals and critical minerals, and hand a competitive edge to China in control of the global supply of these critical minerals. Ironically, this trade barrier was not erected by President Donald Trump. It came from legislation hailed by many Democrats now critical of Trump tariffs. Nor did it come from legislation particularly geared to trade. Rather, this obstruction of trade was a last-minute insertion into the Dodd-Frank financial regulation overhaul signed by President Barack Obama 15 years ago in July 2010. Dodd-Frank's Section 1502 targets the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which has recently been a focus of the Trump's administration's strategic plans to access rare earths and other critical minerals to ensure a steady supply not reliant on China. The DRC has one of the richest mineral supplies in the world but is plagued by violence from warlords and militias, including a July 27 attack on a Catholic church that left at least 49 worshipers dead. The Trump administration's African diplomatic team has made headway in striking a deal with the nation in which the U.S. would provide security assistance to the DRC government in its fight against warlords in return for U.S. access to critical minerals within the country. But any such deal would likely be threatened by Section 1502, effectively a prohibitive backdoor tariff on many U.S. companies trying to access the DRC's resources. This Dodd-Frank provision forces publicly traded companies in the U.S. to disclose if any of their products contain 'conflict minerals' mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and nine adjoining African nations. Under the law, firms listed on U.S. stock exchanges must audit their supply chains and disclose if their products contain even traces of four designated minerals—gold, tantalum, tin and tungsten—that might have been mined in areas controlled by warlords. The provision was sold as a way to protect Congolese residents from warlords who profited from the mining and sale of these minerals, with little effect on U.S. consumers and producers. Yet the rule has ended up increasing poverty and violence in the DRC while depriving the U.S supply chain of access to critical minerals needed for everything from smartphones and laptops to medical equipment. The big problem is that companies often face insurmountable difficulties when trying to trace the origins of tiny components of their products. As the Wall Street Journal reported, manufacturers spent about $709 million and more than six million man-hours attempting to trace their supply chains for conflict minerals in 2014. After all this expense, 90% of those companies still couldn't confirm their products were conflict-free. As a result of these burdens in auditing the supply chain, many companies simply left the DRC and Congo region altogether and sourced materials elsewhere. As David Aronson, an acclaimed journalist who has written about the region for more than three decades, put it in testimony to Congress, 'the law imposed a de facto embargo on mineral production that impoverished the region's million or so artisanal miners.' Among the lingering effects of the de facto embargo are reductions in education, health care, and food supply. These woes stem both from the sharp increase in unemployment of the region's miners and – as noted by Aronson in his testimony and in a New York Times op-ed he wrote -- the sharp reduction in mining company planes that also brought food and medicine to the region that occurred after U.S firms left. A study in the Journal of Law and Economics in 2016 found that the mandate from the Dodd-Frank provision increased infant mortality in the affected Congo regions by at least 143 percent. And the warlord situation didn't improve and in fact may have worsened because of the Dodd-Frank provision. An October report to Congress from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found 'no empirical evidence that the rule has decreased the occurrence or level of violence in the eastern DRC, where many mines and armed groups are located.' The GAO also found that 'the rule was associated with a spread of violence, particularly around informal, small-scale gold mining sites, … since gold is more portable and less traceable than the other three minerals.' The poverty and violence that soared due to Dodd-Frank's effects also gave China the perfect entry point into the Congo region. With limited options, the DRC government agreed to China's offers over the past 15 years of building infrastructure in return for granting China access to its minerals. Now, as China has failed to deliver promised infrastructure improvements, the DRC is looking for a new deal with the U.S that will focus on boosted security and trade rather than aid. But any such deal will likely fail as long as Dodd-Frank's burdens on U.S. companies accessing the minerals continue. As the GAO notes, the rule's near-insurmountable burden – that 'many mines are located in remote, potentially insecure areas, and coordinating teams to visit and inspect them is difficult' – remains standing as a trade barrier. Fortunately, the Dodd-Frank provision allows the president to waive its mandate for two years if he deems such a waiver to be in the interest of national security. President Trump, as part of his goal of U.S. resurgence, must make use of this waiver to reduce China's influence and increase U.S. access to the region's minerals. Then, he should call on Congress to end this trade barrier by repealing Dodd-Frank's Section 1502. It's time for the president and Congress to remove this backdoor tariff from Dodd-Frank that puts China first and the U.S. and DRC last. John Berlau is Senior Fellow & Director of Finance Policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and author of the book George Washington, Entrepreneur: How Our Founding Father's Private Business Pursuits Changed America and the World.
Forbes
an hour ago
- Forbes
Storage Now Vital Part Of Grid Architecture
It has become, in electric terms, the elephant in the room. That metaphor dates back to 1814, but serves well today when looking at the constrained future of the U.S. electricity supply: the emergence of storage as an essential part of the grid infrastructure. Storage, largely pump storage, has been around since the 19th century. Now with batteries, storage has become an essential player in supporting the grid during normal operations and in times of stress. Notably both the CEO of ERCOT, Pablo Vegas, and the CEO of CAISO, Elliot Mainzer, have said their systems got through the winter of 2022-2023 because of the amount of storage in both systems. Storage Is The New Essentiality The growing importance of storage, indeed its essentiality, is covered in a major article — more of a white paper, really -- authored by three energy attorneys at the world's largest law firm, Dentons: Clinton Vince, Jennifer Morrisey and Andrew Mina. It appears in the August issue of Financier Worldwide, a monthly publication for executives. The article traces the history of battery storage from its acceptance as a potential contributor to a low-carbon grid, playing a role in firming up intermittent resources, to its growing importance in grid stability. Historically, pump storage was the most cost-effective and reliable storage system with long drawdown times. But, as the Dentons attorneys point out in their article, it is difficult to build and new sites are limited. Ninety percent of new storage is from batteries, they say. You might say that utility scale battery storage has come of age. The article states: 'The essential role of storage and the variety of benefits it offers to the grid are quickly becoming more broadly appreciated.' The authors portray the grid as becoming more stressed, suffering from years of under investment, increasingly turbulent weather, and a rapidly increasing demand for power. 'Last year the U.S. electric grid saw additions of new generation capacity of more than 70 percent over the previous year, a trend that is expected to repeat this year. 'This is a significant increase, but it pales in comparison to the expected threefold increase in demand over the next few years, driven by artificial intelligence and data center growth, and the electrification of transportation and industrial operations,' they write. The workhorse in batteries is lithium ion which has done so much to support the changing face of the modern world, from cellphones to electric vehicles, drones to toys, personal computers to spacecraft. But for utilities, the future may have other strong players, including iron-air and flow batteries. Even old-fashioned and proven lead-acid devices may have a future in the utility space. While iron-air batteries, as offered by Form Energy based in Somerville, Massachusetts, have the advantage of drawdown times of several days, they are less adept at load following. John Howes, principal at Redland Energy Group and an aficionado of batteries of all kinds, points out that energy-hungry data centers aren't waiting. They are deploying batteries in their data centers now. Howes told me, 'Energy storage systems, which have been part of the nation's power infrastructure for more than 150 years, now must assume a role of greater importance to ensure that the physical infrastructure will perform seamlessly. 'Batteries already are deployed in every data center.' He added that batteries serve the nation's growing artificial intelligence capability. Howes said batteries not only back up other power generators in emergencies but can also achieve 'black starts' in a complete blackout situation. Their day-to-day work is to store low-cost energy for discharge in peak demand times. To accomplish these functions in a cost-effective manner, Howes said, batteries will have to use better performance materials and advanced designs, and be made with state-of-the-art processes. Complexity Of Valuing Battery Resource The Dentons article explains these challenges this way: 'Valuing a battery resource is a more complex exercise than for other resources. The cost of a battery resource is deeply intertwined with the engineering operations of the grid, and the arbitrage functions of battery storage complicates the determination of the market value of the resource. 'Moreover, battery storage provides a variety of values to the electric system. The cost will vary depending on which service is needed at any given time to optimize which market, and will affect how battery storage is bid into the market and at what level of charge. This sets battery storage apart from other distributed resources.' In 2024, according to the Energy Information Administration, utility-scale battery storage exceeded 26 gigawatts, with operators adding 10.4 GW of new battery storage capacity, making it the second-largest generating capacity addition after solar. The EIA expects a record-breaking increase in 2025, with 19.6 GW of utility-scale battery storage planned to be added to the grid. The elephant is stirring, maybe getting to its feet.
News24
2 hours ago
- News24
Bruce Whitfield's Business Week: SAB's booze problem, Carol Paton on trade — and the South African who runs the Edinburgh Fringe
This is Bruce Whitfield's Business Week, a weekly News24 podcast that respects your time and intelligence. This week, he discusses SA's US trade crisis with News24 journalist Carol Paton, who has the inside scoop on the current state of play. He also speaks to SA Breweries CEO Richard Rivett-Carnac who warns that booze in SA may be facing the same crisis as the big cigarette makers. And then, Bruce speaks to the South African who is the new CEO of the Edinburgh Fringe — one of the most important arts festivals in the world. Certified financial planner Warren Ingram shares practical tips on building wealth. The podcast is sponsored by Capitec.
