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[[{“value”:”

The European Commission has warned three Chinese electric vehicle makers that they have not supplied sufficient information for its anti-subsidy investigation, according to two people familiar with the case.

If the Commission concludes that the provided information from sampled companies BYD, SAIC and Geely is insufficient, it could use evidence available elsewhere to compute tariffs, a move that can inflate them.

Warnings of this kind occur frequently in EU trade defence cases. Indeed, for all 10 past anti-subsidy cases against China for which measures are still in place, the Commission used such “facts available” to fill in certain gaps.

The companies have been given the right to respond to the warning, the people said.

SAIC said it had “fully cooperated” with the Commission and provided all necessary information in accordance with World Trade Organization and EU rules.

“It is worth pointing out that commercially sensitive information – such as battery formulation – should not belong to this category,” it said in a WeChat message.

The company declined to comment when asked if Brussels had asked for battery formulation information.

Geely declined to comment. BYD did not respond to a request for comment late on a public holiday.

The China Chamber of Commerce to the EU said the reported allegations of non-cooperation were unfounded and that the companies had participated in multiple rounds of questionnaires and facilitated on-site inspections.

It added the companies viewed some of the EU’s demands as excessive, including tight deadlines for detailed paperwork, demands going beyond the companies’ capacity to provide evidence and requests for business-sensitive supplier information.

The Commission, which oversees trade policy in the 27-nation European Union, launched an investigation in October into whether battery electric vehicles manufactured in China were receiving distortive subsidies and warranted extra tariffs.

The China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Machinery and Electronic Products (CCCME) said earlier this month that the investigation was stacked against Chinese manufacturers.

Among its complaints was the vast amount of information the Commission has demanded from the sampled Chinese producers.

“It cannot be precluded that the Commission may resort to what is called ‘facts available’ in trade defence parlance in order to inflate the subsidy margins,” CCCME vice president Shi Yonghong said then.

The investigation, officially launched on 4 October, can last up to 13 months. The Commission can impose provisional anti-subsidy duties nine months after the start of the probe.

Read more with Euractiv

“}]] 

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But the regulations angered mining companies and Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who said they provided a loophole for Chinese companies to benefit from the electric vehicle incentives.

The post Biden’s EV tax credit rule offers big concession for automakers appeared first on E&E News by POLITICO.

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Such an investigation would “achieve nothing,” the Swedish Foreign Ministry told the agency

The post Sweden rules out international Nord Stream probe – RIA appeared first on Energy News Beat.

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Weekly Daily Standup Top Stories

Biden Administration Finalizes Power Plant Rule

Highlights of the Podcast

00:00 – Intro

01:02 – Biden Administration Finalizes Power Plant Rule

09:27 – China calls for ‘international investigation’ into Nord Stream attack

11:25 – Tesla Partners with Baidu for Full Self-Driving Rollout in China

14:33 – Kimmeridge Releases Presentation Outlining the Urgent Need for Board Change at SilverBow

18:09 – U.S. produces the energy everyone is looking for: 900 MW at the largest plant in the world

20:14 – When Worlds Collide – U.S. Gulf Coast Refiners Face Challenges To Accessing Heavier Crude Oil

25:57 – Outro

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Video Transcription edited for grammar. We disavow any errors unless they make us look better or smarter.

Michael Tanner: [00:00:15] What’s going on, everybody? Welcome into a special edition of the Daily Energy News Beat stand up here on this gorgeous Saturday, May 4th, 2024. For our special weekly recap. It’s been a long week, folks. We did a bunch of solo shows. Stu and I are going to be back full time together in the chair next week, so appreciate everybody hanging in. Who’s a busy, busy week guys. I had an opportunity to rant for a few shows, lots of earnings calls, lots of interesting stuff going on in the LNG side. So I’m just going to go ahead and turn it over to the weekly recap and the team to cue us up right now. As always, guys, the news and analysis you’re about to hear, brought to you by the world’s greatest website, www.EnergyNewsBeat.com The best place for all your energy and oil and gas news. Go ahead and check out the description below, all the links to the articles, everything you’ll need to know. But with that, I’m going to turn it over the weekly recap we’ll see on Monday. Folks. [00:01:02][47.0]

Stuart Turley: [00:01:02] Biden administration finalizes power plant rule. This one. I’ve got several things for mass producer, to bring up as I talk about these things, there are five key takeaways. I have to, take a look at this. The and the EPA is finalized its power plant rule, which, forces existing coal and new natural gas gas plants to use technology that is either neither economic nor commercial to reduce carbon dioxide, emissions, or to shatter the EPA. Number two will define the requirements for existing natural gas plants. Later. The author of this story feels that it may most likely be after November election. This is to pacify the green movement. Don’t kid yourself. Number three, since natural gas and coal supply about 60% of the U.S electricity and backup intermittent weather driven wind and solar units, the rule calls into question the survival and reliability of the electric grid. I kid you not, this is not good. If you’re going to take out the coal plants in a very expedient manner, we cannot get the regulatory process, done for nuclear fast enough. This is a recipe for disaster, and the only thing that’s going to solve it is rolling blackouts or using even less energy. Tell that to the AI in the data center, folks. The number for the rule is drawn by, some bipartisan criticism for its potential impact on the grid, which groups are concerned with the importance of reliable and affordable electricity? The rule will increase electricity prices and decrease reliability and raise the potential for economic disruption in the United States. The author has all five of these key takeaways. Wonderfully. The changes include, need to start capturing 90% of their carbon dioxide emissions by 2032, rather than 2030 as originally proposed. So what, they’re still not going to be able to do it. And is carbon capture and sequestration technology is neither commercially available nor economically. We’re already be industrializing the United States, just like Germany and Germany is now. The EU is gone. And so when you sit back and take a look at the GDP growth for the EU and the economic people are going hungry, this is a significant issue. And, pacification of the, the left or the greenies that are out there, I’m all about let’s save the environment. Let’s save, the planet, let’s not pollute. But let’s have a discussion on this. Let’s also go into your fossil fuel plants that are not retrofitted with carbon capture systems. Must exit the grid by January 2039, instead of January 2040 as originally proposed. This is even more of an issue, because it’s just not going to be there. They’re making it fiscally, unsound for, power plants to keep their power on line. And solar is not going to be there. Wind is not going to be their facilities. That broke ground after the proposal came out last year and will run frequently, must capture 90% of their emissions or prevent that amount from emissions in some other way or close down. This is absolutely right. Mr. Producer, if you could bring up, the first video and let’s take a look at this video. The video is CO2, methane and generated around the world. I want to bring this up just from a standpoint as as we kind of watch this video go around. We start we’re looking at Spain, and you’re seeing that you can even see the this methane map and CO2 is picking up, a where the shipping and air and you take a look at China. Holy smokes. That is where most of the population and pollution is happening right now is India and China. Miss producer, can you go ahead and bring up the second video? The second video is a China coal power plant. And as I watch this, you take a look at the smog. This is one power plant. And we’re going to go through some of these other numbers here in a second. This is an eye opener for me. There’s an article that just came out yesterday. And it says that China is now putting out more CO2 than the rest of the Western. So as, as a western, civilized countries combined. Period. And so when you look at this video as we’re watching this video, you can understand why. Now, Mr. Producer, can you bring up the next global, coal plants globally, slide and you’ll take a look at that slide. It is amazing. Take a look at all of the coal plants in the U.S. and, and then, there’s, I have to take a look. There’s 6500 or so, and there’s 2000 some on in the U.S.. So. Thank you, Miss Producer. Let’s go to this other slide. U.S. power, generation capacity under development with construction, kickoff scheduling between 2024 and 2028. This graph really takes a good look at, in the southeast southwest and how the plants are all aligning out in the megawatt usage. I don’t have time to go through it now, but it is in the article. Take a look at it. And there is absolutely no way that we can get by without natural gas or coal. Now, if we just got rid of coal, I’m all in on getting rid of coal in an orderly fashion. But I did not know this in Miss Producer, in. Can you bring up the natural gas plants of the U.S. and of the natural gas plants in the U.S.? I did not know how many were in, California there. There are a significant number of natural gas plants in California. This is huge. Now, there is, coal plant in, Nevada. And I’m looking at how much in California is the largest energy importer in the U.S. they import coal, electricity from Nevada. I’m trying to get the numbers of how much they import, but they do use coal as it’s imported from Nevada. Pretty interesting information there. So when we take a look at the takeaways of the new EPA, regulatory issues going on right now, we take a look at natural gas, coal and the whole mix. We need a balanced diet of power, and we need a we need it all wind, solar I don’t care, but you’re not going to regulate yourself into net zero. Cannot be done. What’s going to happen? People are going to, have serious feeling issues. [00:09:27][504.2]

Stuart Turley: [00:09:27] China calls for international investigation into Nord Stream attack. China’s deputy envoy to the UN has called for an international probe into the bombing of the Nord Stream, gas pipelines. This is a very interesting, especially since we had, Secretary Blinken meeting with president G. Yesterday, two days ago. This is actually very interesting because now China does not mince words. You can even go take a look at what plants they had in the meeting with Blinken. There’s a lot of hidden undertones in the backdrop and in the poisonous plants that were. On that table. They don’t like him. And that was very evident. If you take a look and you understand the Chinese methodology of subtle hints in meetings, and it is there. Now let’s take a look at Nord Stream one and Nord Stream two. Those were four pipelines. Three of the four were destroyed, allegedly by the US with help from Norway. Allegedly, I don’t know, but boy, Putin sure said why would I blow up my own pipeline? I don’t know EMEA. All I do is go flip a switch on the generators, on the turbines on them, one end of it, and he could shut it down so he doesn’t really need to turn it off. Now. Why are they calling? Why is China calling for this? Now, this is important because this has been going on since it was blown up, since, President Biden said there will be no Nord Stream, and then all of a sudden that happens. Was that, unbelievable? Funny story. I just had to just put it out here for you to take a look. [00:11:25][117.1]

Michael Tanner: [00:11:25] Tesla partners with BYoD for full self-driving rollout in China. I’m reading straight from the article here. First, bullet point. Tesla’s full Self-Driving, what they call FSD system, has been approved for use in China. They went ahead and partnered with the aforementioned Chinese tech giant, by Uber mapping and navigation software to support the full Self-Driving within China. This approval within China is seen as a major boost for the company, which has been facing multiple challenges due to the worsening EV price war and high interest rate. It’s actually caused Tesla shares to drop, jump in the pre-market trading after it was reported in Bloomberg that Beijing Beijing had went ahead and give that green light to roll out its full self-driving. You know, in a separate report by the Wall Street Journal, it a backtracked a little bit. You know, Beijing has tentatively approved the company’s plan to launch full Self-Driving. This does come, as I’m reading straight from the article here. Come one day after Elon Musk unexpectedly visited Beijing on Sunday and met with Premier Lin Cao, who was Communist Party chief in Shanghai when Tesla was setting up its automobile manufacturing plant. They all go on to say that, Musk also met with Robin Zhang, chairman of Tesla battery supplier contemporary Amperex technology, which is in Beijing. Analysts are out in full force, Wedbush Securities senior analyst told Bloomberg. Quote, this is a watershed moment. This could open up full self-driving in China. This is his quote, which I view as unlocking what could be a golden opportunity for them. And again, they read this earlier in the article, but I think it comes down to the inevitable price war again, as China does what they do, everything is going to be a race to the bottom on price. So Elon Musk and Tesla’s trying to figure out exactly how are they going to compete in China. If they’re going to be charging a premium price? Well, they means they probably got to have self-driving, because if you don’t have self-driving and you’re charging $80,000 per car, it’s going to hard to compete with another EV that’s got better battery life, longer range for a lot cheaper because it’s manufactured in Chinese. It’s exactly what you know why we buy Chinese products all the time? Because they are able to offer the lowest price. So I think this I agree with the analysis here in terms of this is a boon for Tesla. And then it’s clear and their stock ran a little bit today mainly off that back. So great. For right now. You have to remember there was a lot of security concerns that they had to I you know this is a I were reading straight from the article. Sources say Tesla will partner with the BI you to support the navigation and mapping. Here we go. Okay, here’s the real quote here, folks. Tesla also has multiple data security and privacy requirements that satisfy the country’s regulators. That’s a one sentence. It’s very ominous. I’d love to see the source code behind that Tesla. Hey, how do you know this? Are they sharing this data with the Chinese communist regime? Who knows? I think that’s an interesting question. Is anytime you’re in a Tesla, at least the United States, we don’t. They’re recording you in the test suite. If you’re driving around a Tesla, I don’t think they have cameras looking at you in the car. You’re an idiot. But that being said, what do they do with that information in China? Do they have to share that with the Chinese Communist Party? Interesting note that I love how they just one little sentence in there. Obviously, you know, they’re trying to make Tesla look good. Yeah. We you know, we they’re you I’m with you Tesla is great but could be interesting to see what their their data privacy stuff is on that. So we will make sure to follow up with that. I’d be interested to know what stu knows about that. [00:14:33][187.5]

Michael Tanner: [00:14:33] Let’s quickly close here with Kimmeridge. They released a presentation outlining urgent need for board change at Silver Bow. This is round four. You know, ding ding ding ding ding. We can get a little live. What’d you wanna call it? A little boxing ring going here. Kimmeridge is has, you know, holding about 12.9% of Silver Bow shares has basically fired back round for, you know, really the biggest you know, we’ve talked about this at like Silver Bow is trying to hold off a corporate takeover by Kimmeridge. They say they’re trying to basically launch a takeover proxy war with the company. So that Silver Bow would buy Texas Kimmeridge Gas, which is formerly Laredo, at a valuation that they don’t think is right. They think that, they’re over that, Kimmeridge is overvaluing ATG and wants to merge with Silver Bow and basically take over Silver Bow so that they can use silver bows balance sheet to buy Texas Kimmeridge Gas, which they believe is overvalued. They walk through for claims here quickly for Silver bow. This is Kimmeridge’s rebuttal to what? Came out to me. Do you ever follow the song, guys? I think we need to do a deal. Spotlight on this person gets a lot of crazy stuff going on with this. Here’s the first no claims that Kimmeridge locks a proxy fight to facilitate a path to change. This is silver bows. Claims Kimmeridge launched a proxy fight to facilitate a path to change control of the company without paying a premium to silver shareholders. Kimmeridge then kind of fires back and says they haven’t bought shares in over six 650 days. They were engaged with them for over two years and asked for a specific thing. Silver bow then says Kimmeridge directors that they nominated because remember, in this proxy battle, Kimmeridge is trying to nominate new board members. Silver bow claims these Cambridge directors are conflicted with and would not look out for shareholders in the best interest, Kimmeridge or Kimmeridge back, she said. They’re highly qualified, independent. And in the third quote, that, Silver Bow claims is that Super Bowl strategy has proven to be resilient through market cycles. This is where the fireworks Kimmeridge fires back says that quote specifically they go silver was generally negative for TSR since CEO Sean Wolverton tenure and 2.6 annualized TSR over a year and Warriors lengthy tenures. Ooh hit him with a cheap company, trades at the lowest valuation multiple out of its peers at on a five year basis. Espo has stock has underperformed the blended commodity group by 58% highlighting the lack of alpha generated from leadership. Ooh. So the rebuttal from Kimmeridge goes at the three key points that round three silver bow claimed in their, you know, the future of silver bow.com or whatever website they put out. So they’re going right at it. Where do I stand on this? We’ve talked about this much. I think there’s, you know, there’s there’s room in the middle. Is Kimmeridge overvalued? Kimmeridge is probably what does any company who owns something will do that? I’ve been part of numerous organizations who you ask what we you know, internally, they much more value their asset than what they do on the street. The reason why they do that is because they so own that. Because if somebody valued that more than you do, you would transact with them. So there’s there’s a reason for that. So too, I think they’re trying to force it. You also agree the fact that Silver Bow has underperformed relative. Absolutely. I mean that’s you know, common I mean everybody knows that it’s something that hounded Silver Bow for years Kimmeridge just trying to step on an opportunity. It’s interesting that there’s this claim that they that you know, six months ago they couldn’t get financing silver Bow fired back in one of their rounds. That hey, you had a we had an agreement, but you couldn’t find financing. And they were using that to say, oh, watch, because you was a bad investment. I don’t quite know if I know that for sure, but I do think, it it’s it’s it’s pretty obvious that silver bow management has underperformed relative to the market. So it’s going to be interesting to see where this thing goes. I’m sure they’ll be around five guys, but we’re gonna we’re gonna go and leave it there. [00:18:08][215.3]

Stuart Turley: [00:18:09] U.S. producers, produces the energy everyone is looking for. This is a 900 megawatt geothermal power plant. This is pretty cool. Geothermal. And, you know, the potential technology I am seeing a lot of people talking about. Geo power is almost 27 times expansion by, 2050, reaching approximately 100,000,000MW. According to the doe e g e a geothermal energy association, in the form of moderate expansion. But it anticipates broader scale of 21,000MW of geothermal capacity by 2050. The exciting thing about geothermal is geothermal can take advantage of the ENP oilfield service and everything else to try to help get that technology so that we can use some of the abandoned wells so we can use, take advantage of the ESG and get rid of orphan wells and turn them into, geothermal, energy. This one, the newest Geo, is undergoing 900MW in the LA area and the Imperial Valley in California. The only time I’m really, really proud of California, they’re doing something like this. This is pretty darn cool. So geo thermal. I am a huge fan, and I want to give a shout out to Doug Sandridge today. I’m wearing his shirt that he gave me. I signed the oil and gas executives for nuclear. I am a huge nuclear fan and, we have got to have, the low impact, environment and long, low cost, energy to all consumers.  [00:20:12][123.5]

Michael Tanner: [00:20:14] Let’s move to the next one here. When worlds collide U.S. Gulf Coast refiners faces challenges to assessing heavier crude. This is a little bit of in the weeds, but since I’ve got the solo show today, I’ve got the keys to the Kingdom. I wanted to bring this up. We’ve talked a lot on the show about refining margins, and I talk about that relative to when the EIA releases all their I, I, I, I like to look at the supply. We bring it up every once in a while in terms of what’s going in and out of the refineries from a utilization standpoint. But there also is something to refining these refineries, being able to handle a certain type of crude, specifically heavier crude. Obviously, you can have an idea. West Texas Intermediate, which is the standard oil price oil composition that people base everything off of. We’ve heard of that. You can imagine that is almost green looking. It’s a vial. It’s very easily pouring in. It’s definitely a little bit see through if you only have a little bit of to. That’s that light, sweet, crude. What comes up from Mexico, what comes up from Venezuela. What comes from Russia is really a heavy crude, which is almost could be considered more of a paste. Now heavier crude has a lot of impurities in it which cause it to. Trade at a, discount relative to the light sweet crew. But what it also requires is different retrofitting on the refineries. And because of some of the stuff that’s happened in Mexico, specifically over their future forecasted supply of oil, it’s it’s kind of thrown some of these refineries into into whack here. So I’m going to go ahead and read a few, a couple paragraphs out of here. The prospect of decreased crude oil supplies from Mexico, the top international supplier, to the US Gulf Coast, is creating uncertainty among heavy crude focused refineries, Mexico’s state owned country, Pemex or Petro. Pemex instructed its trainee use unit to cancel 436,000 barrels a day of crude exports for April and decided, and to supposedly focus on producing domestic oil at its new or processing the domestic oil at its new 340,000 barrels per day. Does Baucus refinery and or existing plants, while this refinery startup is not nearly as imminent as Pemex says, the cancellation of Mexican crude imports could be problematic for U.S. refiners with plants built to run heavy crude a necessary ingredient reading to optimize operations and yield. Adding to this complexity of the situation is the upcoming start of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion and recent reinstatement of U.S. sanctions on Venezuelan crude. And this is from, you know, they go on to examine sort of the potential fallout from this decision from Pemex in terms of where those heavy crudes were going. Specifically, the heavy crude is going to be less and less available. So they the really great overview. I’d recommend going to energy Newsbeat and reading this. Andy, if you can go ahead here and pull up. Figure one the typical qualities of Pemex crude oil. You’re going to see the different grades there Olmec es mas, Maya and Altair. You’ll notice that Maya is their, flagship grade. Basically, it’s the majority of their, exports are specifically coming in that Maya flagship blend. The interesting part is that that Maya crude blend does definitely have a little bit of a smaller gravity. You see, the API gravity of the Altamira is a little bit lower sitting at 15.5, whereas the Maya is about 2021 to 20. With this restriction in Mexico now sending their a lot of their domestic heavy crude to within with all of this crude from Mexico now and Pemex staying within Mexico, it goes to wonder where are these U.S. Gulf Coast refineries going to find their heavy crude? We also know Venezuela is this. The sanctions are ramping back up. People of you know, we we drew a little bit of oil. There was a few loads coming out of Venezuela, but now the prospects per se of a lot more oil coming out of Venezuela is not going to happen. So a lot of what these Gulf Coast refineries are dealing with right now, what this analysis shows is it tries to plant out where exactly are these going to come from. And the big the big, big answer, specifically in this article, as I mentioned, was that Trans Mountain pipeline, which flows from Edmonton all the way down to British Columbia and the Puget Sound system, where there are a bunch of refineries. Canada also has a decent amount of heavy crude. So if we have to now shift ourselves and buying it from Canada, those differentials are a little bit different. You pay a little bit more of a premium for the Canadian heavy crude than you would the Mexican heavy crude. So all of a sudden now the spreads on what a refinery can make or not, it could go down. And specifically if you’re talking about, you know, the margin that makes up the refining basis, it could get very interesting here. I love this breakdown. You know, via RB, RB and energy. We do a lot of that stuff. You know, it’s a $25 billion investment that Trans Mountain pipeline. So whether or not that’s going to be able to completely take over or not it’s going to be interesting. You know, the this article goes on to say the extent to which an individual refinery can lighten up its crude slate by very, varies by, say, switching to lighter crudes would increase cost given that light crude is more expensive than heavy goods. However, the light heavy crude differential continues to narrow and may narrow further on the US. On the U.S Gulf Coast, as measured by West Texas Intermediate, spread to Houston. You know, these these narrower differentials are expected to incentivize some Gulf Coast refiners to shift towards lighter crude slates. Further, we expect the minimal impact of crude runs, an increase in Latin America imports. or they they see minimal impact to overall crude runs in some increases to Latin American imports, to the United States Gulf, excluding Venezuela. So it looks like they’re thinking a lot of this is going to come from, from, Latin America, Canada and be able to fill the gap. But very interesting what Mexico, has decided to do. And it kind of gives you a little bit of behind the scenes on a lot of what these, refineries are dealing with on the back end. [00:20:14][0.0][1194.5]

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New all-time highs: Construction, Professional & Business Services, Healthcare, Wholesale trade. Layoffs whack Information.

By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.

Earlier today, we discussed the overall labor market. But each industry faces its own unique labor market. In some industries, employment has been trucking from all-time high to all-time high, while in other industries, the outlook is darker, usually due to structural changes. So we’ll look at a decade of employment trends in each major industry, based on today’s employment data by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The industry categories are by work location. The surveys are sent to employer facilities. The primary activity at that facility determines the industry category. For example, a worker at an Amazon fulfillment center would be under “transportation and warehousing.” It’s not the company that matters, but the work being done at that specific location.

And we use three-month moving averages (3MMA) to iron out the drama of the monthly squiggles.

Construction (all types, from single-family housing to highways).

Total employment: 8.22 million, new all-time high
3MMA growth: +24,000

Manufacturing: After a huge surge out of the pandemic, employment has plateaued for over a year but with a mild upward trend, interrupted by a dip during the auto industry strikes in October. The past five months have all been in a very narrow range around 12.96 million, the highest since before the Great Recession. Manufacturing has continued to automate, requiring fewer but higher-skilled workers, including engineers.

Total employment: 12.96 million
3MMA: -2,000

Professional and business services. One of the largest industries by employment, it includes facilities whose employees work primarily in Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services; Management of Companies and Enterprises; Administrative and Support, and Waste Management and Remediation Services. It includes facilities of some tech and social media companies.

The helter-skelter employment growth coming out of the pandemic has definitely slowed, but continues at a subdued pace at nosebleed-high employment levels:

Total employment: 22.94 million (record)
3MMA growth: +4,000

Healthcare and social assistance:

Total employment: 22.32 million, new high
3MMA: +88,000

Leisure and hospitality – restaurants, lodging, resorts, etc.

Total employment: 16.9 million, back at the pre-pandemic high.
3MMA growth: +28,000

Retail trade counts workers at brick-and-mortar retail stores, such as malls, auto dealers, grocery stores, gas stations, etc., and other retail locations such as markets. It does not include the tech-related jobs of ecommerce operations, drivers, and warehouse employees.

A big portion of this sector has been under heavy pressure from ecommerce operations, and dozens of major retailers have been liquidated in bankruptcy court in recent years, with a total loss of employment, which we have documented in our Brick-and-Mortar Meltdown series. The retailers that are doing well are those that are selling groceries, auto dealers, gas stations, and others that are not under total pressure from ecommerce.

Total employment: 15.7 million
3MMA growth: +20,000

Wholesale Trade:

Total employment: 6.17 million, new all-time high
3MMA: +6,000

Financial activities (finance and insurance plus real estate renting, leasing, buying, selling, and management). Employment has plateaued at very high levels, as the mortgage industry got decimated after the refinance boom collapsed amid surging mortgage rates in 2021.

Total employment: 9.23 million
3-MMA growth: 1,000

Transportation and Warehousing: Employment surged with the pandemic boom in durable goods, and when that faded as consumers switched back to spending on services, employment began to decline. But in recent months, it began to tick up again:

Total employment: 6.58 million
3MMA growth: +20,000

“Information” includes facilities where people primarily work on web search portals, data processing, data transmission, information services, software publishing, motion picture and sound recording, broadcasting including over the Internet, and telecommunications. This includes some work sites by tech and social media companies. You can see the effects of the layoffs.

Total employment: 3.01 million
3MMA growth: -2,000

Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation includes spectator sports, performing arts, amusement, gambling, recreation, museums, historical sites, and similar:

Total employment: 2.64 million
3MMA growth: +8,000

Mining, oil & gas extraction, logging: Major technological advances have impacted employment in this industry, from autonomous mining trucks to the equipment and technologies used in fracking and in logging.

And over these years, the US has become the world’s largest oil producer and largest natural gas producer.

Total employment: 641,000
3MMA growth: unchanged

Jobs at federal, state, and local governments. About 12.8% of all civilian government employees work for the federal government. About 87.2% work for state and local governments, many of them in public education, from grade schools to universities.

As the economy and the labor market has grown over the past 15 years, government employment has also grown, but at a slower pace than overall employment, and so the percentage of government workers to overall workers has dropped and reached a multidecade low of 14.5% at the end of 2022. Since then, the percentage has ticked up to 14.7%

So this is total civilian employment at all levels of government:

Total employment: 23.27 million
3MMA growth: +45,000.

And this is total government employment as a percent of total nonfarm employment. The big spikes are during the Census taken every 10 years, which in 2020 fell on the pandemic, when overall employment had plunged, and so the percentage of government employment to total nonfarm employment spiked more than normal:

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By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.

In April, employers added 175,000 payroll jobs – excluding farm workers and the self-employed – a slower pace from the upwardly revised March estimate of 315,000 additions, which had been huge. Over the past 12 months, the range has been between 165,000 and 315,000.

Over the past three months on average, employers added 242,000 jobs per month. This three-month average – which includes the revisions and irons out the artificial drama of the monthly squiggles – is high for normal times. Over the past 12 months, 2.8 million jobs were added. All according to the survey of employers — the “Establishment survey” by the Bureau of Labor Statistics today.

We can quibble with some of the details of the jobs report, and we’ll get to them, but overall, it was a solid picture of a strong labor market, with some factors normalizing from the pandemic distortions. It’s what you’d expect from an economy that’s plugging along at a pace that is faster than the normal pace over the past 15 years.

The total number of payroll jobs rose to a record 158.3 million:

Average hourly earnings rose in March at an annualized rate of 2.4%, the smallest increase in three years, also according to the “Establishment” survey data. Compared to a year ago, wages were up 4.0%:

Household survey data and mass immigration.

The BLS bases its employment and unemployment figures on the household survey data, which uses the population data from the Census Bureau. But an issue has been dogging the  data for the past two or so years: The Census Bureau has massively underestimated population growth in its model by failing to account for the huge wave of mass-immigration in 2022 and 2023.

The Congressional Budget Office, however, has picked up on the surge of immigration and therefore the big population growth in 2022 and 2023. We discussed this and how it messes up the BLS household employment data. These are the two diverging population growth estimates:

The BLS, by applying its household survey data to the underestimated population count from the Census Bureau, understates total employment and the labor force which then distort all the other data.

Overall employment, which includes farm workers and the self-employed, and is based on the survey of households, had been rising roughly in parallel with payroll jobs from the employer survey (above). In the years before the pandemic, total employment was about 6.5 million higher than payroll jobs.

But since the vast undercount of immigration and therefore population growth from 2022 on, the difference has shrunk to just 3 million, from over 6 million.

The total number of workers per the household survey rose to 161.5 million. The three-month average rose to 161.3 million (red), which is just 3 million higher than the 158.3 million payroll jobs (blue).

And the difference between the two has shrunk to just 3 million as the employer data picks up the new workers, but the household data is applied to the underestimated population data. The Census Bureau needs to revise its population data to account for the big wave of immigration, which would fix this issue here:

The number of full-time workers jumped by 949,000 in April to 133.9 million.

Remember the undercount of the population? If counted correctly, this number would be much higher. This is one of the many charts that show the bizarre effects of the population undercount:

Part-time workers fell by 914,000 to 27.7 million. The three-month average fell to 28.1 million. As a percent of all workers, part-time workers dipped to 17.4%:

The labor force rose by 87,000 to 168.0 million. The labor force consists of people who are working and those who are not working but actively looking for work. It is also massively understated by the population undercount over the past two years.

That the labor force has dropped in prior months, despite the huge influx of immigrants looking for work or already working, demonstrates the impact on the Census Bureau’s undercount of immigration:

The prime-age labor participation rate – people between 24 and 54 – has returned to the multi-decade-high of 83.5%:

The number of unemployed rose to 6.49 million (blue). The three-month average rose to 6.46 million, where it had been in April 2018 (red).

The unemployment rates ranged from 1.3% for U-1, the narrowest definition, to 7.4% for U-6, the broadest definition.

U-3 is the headline unemployment rate (red in the chart below). It ticked up to 3.9% in April, same as in February. Overall, the rates have been edging higher but remain low compared to prepandemic years:

U-1: 1.3% (persons unemployed 15 weeks or longer, % of civilian labor force)
U-2: 1.9% (job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs, % of civilian labor force)
U-3: 3.9% (total unemployed, % of civilian labor force; official unemployment rate)
U-4: 4.1% (total unemployed plus discouraged workers, % of civilian labor force plus discouraged workers)
U-5: 4.8% (total unemployed, plus discouraged workers, plus all other marginally attached workers, % of civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers)
U-6: 7.3% (total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, % of civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers).

Multiple jobholders as percentage of total workers have been just below 5.2% for five months in a row (three-month moving average), having returned to the normal range over the past 15 years. Before 2009, the rate was much higher.

Who are multiple jobholders? They include: corporate employees with a side gig, such as consultant or being a landlord with some housing units (small landlords with 1-9 rentals own 11 million single-family houses for rent, so this is a biggie); university educators who also work as consultants; engineers with a startup side gig; restaurant workers with revenue-producing YouTube channels; restaurant workers working shifts at different restaurants; cops working off-duty as security; people working from home doing two full-time tech jobs before they get laid off by one of them; executives who also serve as paid member of the board at other companies…. We all know some of them. Multiple job holders span the spectrum.

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Hundreds of small and regional banks across the U.S. are feeling stressed.

“You could see some banks either fail or at least, you know, dip below their minimum capital requirements,” Christopher Wolfe, managing director and head of North American banks at Fitch Ratings, told CNBC.

Consulting firm Klaros Group analyzed about 4,000 U.S. banks and found 282 banks face the dual threat of commercial real estate loans and potential losses tied to higher interest rates.

“Most of these banks aren’t insolvent or even close to insolvent. They’re just stressed,” Brian Graham, co-founder and partner at Klaros Group, told CNBC. “That means there’ll be fewer bank failures. But it doesn’t mean that communities and customers don’t get hurt by that stress.”

Graham noted that communities would likely be affected in ways that are more subtle than closures or failures, but by the banks choosing not to invest in such things as new branches, technological innovations or new staff.

For individuals, the consequences of small bank failures are more indirect.

“Directly, it’s no consequence if they’re below the insured deposit limits, which are quite high now [at] $250,000,” Sheila Bair, former chair of the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., told CNBC.

The post Why hundreds of U.S. banks may be at risk of failure appeared first on Energy News Beat.

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Anglo American’s board unanimously rejected BHP’s unsolicited all-share takeover offer.
Anglo American cited significant undervaluation and an unattractive structure as reasons for rejecting the proposal.
Industry insiders believe BHP’s interest in Anglo American is primarily driven by its copper assets.

Metal Miner

Metals markets recently saw UK metal and mining multinational Anglo American reject a £31.1 billion ($38.8 billion) takeover bid from Australia’s BHP. Meanwhile, shareholders in the latter company continue to urge an increase in the offer price.

On April 26, London- and Johannesburg-listed Anglo American’s board of directors unanimously rejected BHP’s unsolicited, all-share offer made the previous day. Under the offer, Anglo American would demerge all its shareholdings in Anglo American Platinum Limited and Kumba Iron Ore Limited in South Africa. Anglo American also stated that the offers and the demergers would be inter-conditional.

Anglo American Board Deems Proposal ‘Highly Unattractive’”

“The board has considered the proposal with its advisers and concluded that the proposal significantly undervalues Anglo American and its future prospects,” Anglo said on April 26. “In addition, the proposal contemplates a structure which the board believes is highly unattractive for Anglo American’s shareholders, given the uncertainty and complexity inherent in the proposal and significant execution risks,” the group added.

In their statement, Anglo American noted that copper comprises up to 30% of its portfolio. “With the benefit of well-sequenced and value-accretive growth options in copper and other structurally attractive products, the Board believes that Anglo American’s shareholders stand to benefit from what we expect to be significant value appreciation as the full impact of those trends materializes,” the company noted.

Insiders From Metals Markets Feel the Buy Was All About Copper

In terms of metals markets, copper’s three-month closing price on the London Metal Exchange reached a record-high of $10,135.50 per metric tonne on April 29. This represents an increase of almost 25% from the low of $8,169 seen on February 9. One analyst was unsurprised that BHP would need to raise its offer and noted that this normally occurs in mergers and acquisitions.

The source also believes that the Australian company was eyeing Anglo American for its copper assets, and that acquiring them would make BHP the world’s largest single producer of copper, at about 10% of the global total. “Copper is already tight. No one is building any new mines,” that source noted.

“It is also less expensive to acquire active copper mines, rather than to develop a new one,” the source added. That fact, plus expectations of higher demand, continues to push up copper prices. Besides the refusal by Anglo American’s board, the source warned that other difficulties could lie in the reaction by the South African and Chilean governments.

Source: Oilprice.com

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OPEC convened a workshop today to address oil overproduction issues and devise comprehensive compensation plans to make up for previous overages, according to an official OPEC press release.

The push for production cut compliance comes as the price of Brent crude is trading down roughly $6 per barrel over the last 30 days.

The workshop brought together technical experts from Iraq and Kazakhstan, along with industry professionals from secondary sources, and was prompted by the recent mandates outlined in the 35th OPEC and non-OPEC Ministerial Meeting held in June 2023, emphasizing the crucial adherence to production quotas and the principle of compensation. Per the directives of the 53rd Meeting of the Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC) held on April 3, 2024, countries with outstanding overproduced volumes were required to submit detailed compensation plans by April 30, 2024.

Iraq and Kazakhstan were key participants in today’s workshop. Iraq reported overproduced volumes totaling approximately 602,000 bpd, while Kazakhstan accounted for 389,000 bpd in January, February, and March 2024. Both nations presented plans that would ensure full compensation of overproduced volumes by the end of the year. Additionally, any excess production in April 2024 will be accommodated within the respective compensation frameworks throughout the remainder of the year.

This collaborative effort follows recent commitments made by Kazakhstan to compensate for January’s overproduction, aligning with the collective efforts of OPEC+ to maintain equilibrium in oil supply.

The workshop builds upon previous initiatives aimed at enhancing compliance with production cuts and fostering transparency within the industry.

As the global energy landscape continues to evolve, OPEC remains steadfast in its commitment to ensuring market stability and sustainable oil production practices.

In February, OPEC’s second-largest producer, Iraq, said it was committed to its voluntary production cut that capped its oil production at no more than 4 million bpd.

The bloc has been under increased pressure over this last month to showcase its ability to maintain the previously agreed-upon production cuts as oil prices have trailed off.

Source: Oilprice.com

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The post OPEC Resolves Compensation Plans for Overproducing Members appeared first on Energy News Beat.

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(WO) — Enverus Intelligence Research (EIR), a subsidiary of Enverus, has released a new report highlighting the organization’s view that it does not expect global oil demand to peak or plateau by the end of the decade.

The post Global oil demand to grow to 108 MMbpd by 2030 despite “peak oil” outlook, Enverus reports appeared first on Energy News Beat.