Commodities Focus

Demand destruction from shutdowns designed to slow the spread of the coronavirus pandemic has put PVC, a construction staple, through the ringer in recent months. S&P Global Platts editors Kristen Hays, Ora Lazic and Fumiko Dobashi take a look at the situation in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

Battery technology for electric vehicles and energy storage will play an important part of the broader energy transition. Key topics include understanding cost trends and competitivenes of these technologies and challenges ahead for alternative storage technologies. Roman Kramarchuk, head of energy scenarios, policy and technolgy analytics at S&P Global Platts, talks with Christina Lampe-Onnerud, founder and CEO of Cadenza Innovation.

Will commodity markets ever be the same again? Global investor Jim Rogers, chairman of Beeland Interests Inc., talks to Sambit Mohanty, S&P Global Platts senior editor, to discuss what lies ahead for commodity markets, where the silver linings are as the coronavirus pandemic continues to trample markets, and the pains of recession.

It's been a chaotic couple of months for the global commodities markets, and the oil sector has been on the firing line of the price and demand collapse resulting from the coronavirus pandemic. Within days of lockdowns, expanding from Asia into Europe and the US, capex cuts were announced by oil and gas producers as they rapidly adjusted their spending plans to shore up budgets as prices slumped. The majority of oil majors have reported their first-quarter earnings, showing a partial snapshot of the pandemic's impact on commodity markets.

S&P Global Platts senior natural gas writer Harry Weber and S&P Global Platts Analytics head of gas and power Ira Joseph discuss the latest developments in the global LNG market as the weak price environment continues and project developers face challenges securing long-term contracts to finance new terminals. Amid supply and demand disruptions, decisions on new projects are being deferred to 2021 and perhaps beyond.

US natural gas prices have long been primarily determined by domestic supply and demand dynamics; however, with the rise of associated gas production in prolific basins like the Permian and the buildout of substantial LNG export capacity, the US natural gas market is experiencing unprecedented exposure to global market dynamics. S&P Global Platts senior natural gas pricing specialists Eric Janssen, Veda Chowdhury, and Kelsey Hallahan discuss the dynamics currently at play, with an eye to what’s to come.

S&P Global Platts experts interviewed Matthew Chamberlain, CEO of the London Metal Exchange, and the youngest one in history. The key topics of discussion revolved around the temporary switch away from traditional open outcry trade in the face of the coronavirus pandemic and how things will evolve from an environment standpoint once the world restarts.

Europe is slowly coming out of lockdown and steel mills in Southern Europe can gradually ramp up production again. The steel market is however still far away from a healthy supply and demand balance - with prices dipping and production cuts remaining in place across most of Europe's steelmakers. Laura Varriale talks to Annalisa Villa, Viral Shah and Amanda Flint about how the steel industry is reacting to dropping demand and what that means for steel and scrap prices during these unprecedented times.

Supply and demand in the global vegetable oils markets have both shifted in response to the coronavirus crisis, resulting in increasingly complex and unpredictable price trends. Robert Beaman talks to George Duke and Piero Carello about how production and consumption have changed in Asia, while Rowan Staden-Coats looks at how this has combined with trends in the European biofuels sector to influence the market for used cooking oil.

Pandemic oil demand destruction has converted clean products tankers into offshore storage containers as onshore storage is approaching tank top. Forced floating storage as a result of discharge problems has the products tanker markets buzzing arguably at a faster pace at present than their larger sisters on the crude side. Barbara Troner, Marieke Alsguth and Chris To of the S&P Global Platts shipping team put their heads together with Platts’ Beth Brown to explore the dynamics of current products forward pricing structures and floating storage opportunities.