Commodities

By Leith van Onselen The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) today released Mineral & Petroleum Exploration data for the September quarter, which revealed a modest fall mineral exploration expenditure and a sharper decline in petroleum exploration expenditure. Nationally, expenditure on minerals exploration fell by a seasonally-adjusted $6.3 million (-1%) over September quarter.

Find below the iron ore price table for November 29, 2013: Stable again.

Yesterday’s iron ore price rose 0.3% to $US136.40 per tonne.

Yesterday’s iron ore price rose slightly to $136, 12 month swaps fell slightly to  $116.94: Rebar average rose a bit to 3536: Not much news but I wanted to quickly observe just how long and spooky this period of calm pricing has bee.

The iron ore spot price fell yesterday 0.4% to $135.90.

FTAlphaville offers a solid lineup of political economy analysis of the five powers/Iran deal today.

No change in the spot price yesterday with it still at $136.50.

The iron ore price table for November 22, 2013 is below: The spooky stability of spot continues and you may have noted as well that 12 month swaps a re drifting up towards $120.

Not new but worth repeating.

The iron ore prices for 19th November included a 0.5% fall in spot to $136.50.

From the AFR this arvo a few insights into mining costs: New Hope chief executive Rob Neale said the downturn in the coal industry had yet to bottom out, saying the tough conditions were expected to remain for the next few years.

Find below the iron ore price table for November 18, 2013: In news today, Reuters explores Dalian futures: China is making its third attempt in two years to have a bigger say in pricing iron ore.

From the AFR: Downer EDI has been awarded a four and a half year contract worth $500 million with Roy Hill Iron Ore for early mining services at the open cut mine in the Pilbara, Western Australia.

Find below the iron ore price table for November 15, 2013: And the charts: Rebar is rolling over.

Funny how the world works.

Credit Suisse has an update on Chinese steel production today that underlines just what a banner year this has been for Chinese steel: …the NBS total of 65 Mt for October crude steel production confirmed CISA’s earlier estimate.

The twelve month swap was unchanged yesterday at $116.69.

China October import data showed a decent fall in iron ore.