Australia, the world’s largest producer of coking coal, remains at the forefront of new coal developments. AME forecasts that Australia will supply 200Mt of metallurgical coal bound to the global export market in 2020.

Australia's Hunter Valley Coal Chain (HVCC) is the largest coal export operation in the world. It consists of coal producers, rail services, coal loading and portside services.

Shandong Province has been China's predominant oil refining region for decades, surviving multiple government crackdowns and stiff competition from larger state-run refiners, to establish a niche in the global oil market.

Battery chemistry has once again come into the spotlight, largely thanks to Tesla, which has dramatically pivoted from its position of removing cobalt from its batteries, to becoming one of Glencore’s largest cobalt customers, signing a long term agreement to source 6,000t of cobalt per year from the miner.

In the pre-Covid world, global steel overcapacity and increasingly protectionist trade policies led to an increase in the dumping of marginally costed steel onto global export markets. In a post-Covid world, with the associated demand side shock in OECD economies, this situation is likely to worsen.

In our second article on the Indian Gold market, we will look at how this key market is embracing Internet Investment Gold, something that is becoming increasingly relevant in a Covid-19 world.

Turkish President Erdogan announced on 21 August that Turkey had discovered 320Bcm of natural gas, the biggest-ever natural gas reserve in the Black Sea. The discovery is worth US$8bn in line with current price trends, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Much like their record run of steel production this year, China has displayed a voracious appetite for iron ore imports at the same time that many producing regions are struggling to maintain output in the face of a raging pandemic.

With a focus on the environmental impacts of aluminium smelting front of mind these days, all focus is currently on the carbon emissions from the anode, and the source of power for the smelter. However, this is not the only source of environmental harm from aluminium smelting; there are other concerns, such as particulates and fluorine emissions. However, this month we will turn our attention to spent potlining.

Touted as one of the world’s largest natural gas development projects, Alaska LNG is expected to receive all project authorisations by the end of 2020. In August, the US Department of Energy (DoE) issued final approval for LNG exports from the Alaska LNG project to all countries for a term of 30 years, including those without US Free Trade Agreements (FTA).