Glencore said on Tuesday it has suspended nearly $1 billion of planned investments at Horne Smelter, Canada's largest copper metal-producing operation, after failing to secure regulatory certainty from the provincial government of Quebec. Glencore was planning to close the facility due to environmental issues and expansive investments needed by the London-listed miner, Reuters reported in November last year. Investments at its Montreal facility will also be scaled back over the medium [Read more]

The Kremlin said on Tuesday it had heard no statements from India about halting purchases of Russian oil after U.S. President Donald Trump said New Delhi had agreed to stop such purchases as part of a trade accord with Washington. U.S. President Donald Trump announced a trade deal on Monday with India that slashes U.S. tariffs on Indian goods to 18% from 50% in exchange for India halting Russian oil purchases and lowering trade barriers. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia was [Read more]

Oil prices held steady on Tuesday as market participants weighed the possibility of a de-escalation in U.S.-Iran tensions, with a firmer dollar limiting the upside. Brent crude futures were up 6 cents, or 0.1%, at $66.36 per barrel at 0102 GMT. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude was at $62.24 per barrel, up 0.2%. Oil prices fell more than 4% on Monday after U.S. President Donald Trump said Iran was "seriously talking" with Washington, signaling a de-escalation of tensions with the OPEC [Read more]

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday that Mexico would stop sending oil to Cuba as he ramped up a pressure campaign on the Caribbean nation. "Mexico is gonna cease sending them oil," Trump told reporters in the White House Oval Office. He did not elaborate on why he believed this to be the case. Mexican authorities did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Mexico is the single-largest supplier of oil to Cuba, which regularly suffers from energy shortages and mass [Read more]

The discount on Western Canada Select crude oil to North American benchmark West Texas Intermediate futures widened on Monday. WCS for March delivery in Hardisty, Alberta, settled at $14.60 a barrel below the U.S. benchmark WTI, according to brokerage CalRock, compared with $14.25 a barrel on Friday. * Monday was the start of the Canadian crude market's trade cycle, which runs from the first of each month until the day before pipeline nominations are due, and in which the bulk of the trading [Read more]

President Donald Trump’s push to channel U.S. and Venezuelan crude oil into India as part of a broad trade deal will run up against the hard reality of global oil economics. The U.S. president and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday announced the trade deal following lengthy and often tense negotiations, though details remain limited. Under the deal, the U.S. cut its tariff on imports of Indian goods to 18% from 25% while Modi committed to buy more than $500 billion-worth of U.S. [Read more]

Crude oil producers in the United States continued bringing oil wells back online on Monday, with only around 0.7% of national output still halted in the aftermath of a winter storm that ravaged production last month. Some 100,000 barrels per day of crude output remained shut, according to consultancy Energy Aspects, with outages in the Anadarko accounting for the bulk of the losses, followed by the Appalachia. "It looks like production is fully restored in the Permian," said Energy [Read more]