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Mining firms and oil producers reel from another downward lurch in prices
Dec 12th 2015 | SIERRA GORDA
COMMODITY busts have left more of a mark on the barren mining region of
northern Chile than the booms that preceded them. On the road to Sierra Gorda,
a ramshackle copper-mining village in the middle of the Atacama Desert, dusty
adobe cemeteries hold the remains of hundreds who died in penury after exports
of potassium nitrate, or saltpetre, collapsed in the decade after the first
world war.
Sierra Gorda itself looks like it is heading toward a similar decrepitude,
despite huge copper mines carved into the hills around it. Chile, the world s
biggest copper producer, was a big beneficiary of the China-led commodities
boom, yet the only hints of the past decade of high copper prices are newly
installed streetlights. The sole open business on a recent afternoon was a
woman selling empa adas from a tatty tent by the roadside.
From Chile to China the sense that another once-in-a-generation raw-materials
boom has come to a definitive end is haunting global commodities markets. On
December 9th shares of mining and oil companies took a fresh battering as
iron-ore prices sank below $40 a tonne for the first time in a decade, and
Brent crude, the global benchmark, briefly dipped below $40 a barrel, its
lowest level since early 2009. On the same day Anglo-American, a mining
conglomerate, said it would shed up to 85,000 jobs, almost two-thirds of its
global workforce; shrink its business by 60%; and suspend the dividend at least
until the end of 2016.
The biggest question hanging over the commodities markets is when, or indeed
whether, Chinese demand will recover. This week a report showing a slump in
China s imports and exports in November was read differently by bulls and
bears; though the value of imports of commodities fell year on year, the
volumes of copper, iron ore and oil rose slightly compared with the previous
month, according to Capital Economics, a consultancy. But with stocks of most
commodities at unusually high levels, even a mixed message from China is mostly
a reason to fret.
The supply situation is more clear-cut, but no less worrying. OPEC, the oil
producers group, helped trigger the latest sell-off of crude by scrapping its
already generous production quotas altogether at its annual meeting, which
ended on December 4th. Likewise the world s biggest miners, BHP Billiton and
Rio Tinto, have stuck to plans to dig up more iron ore and other metals,
shovelling more pain onto weaker rivals such as Anglo.
This glut is apparent throughout the supply chain. The steelmaking industry
provides a striking example. Analysts at UBS, a Swiss bank, estimate the world
has roughly a third more capacity than it needs. China produces roughly half of
the global annual output of 1.6 billion tonnes a year. On one estimate, its
hundred biggest steel firms lost some $11 billion during the first ten months
of this year, an amount roughly double the profits earned last year. Unwanted
products are finding their way onto global markets, even at a loss. Official
data released this week confirm that China has, in the year through November,
exported over 100m tonnes of steel for the first time. That is more than the
total steel production of any country save Japan.
Excess supply on this scale will not disappear overnight. For places like
Sierra Gorda and the firms that operate in them, the dust has not yet settled.