If you guessed Apple, you'd be wrong. The iPhone maker came in second with a profit of $59.53 billion. The most profitable company was Saudi Aramco, the national petrochemical company of Saudi Arabia. Rory Jones and Summer Said report for The Wall Street Journal:  The oil firm’s 2018 net income shot up from 284 billion riyals, or the equivalent of $75.9 billion, in 2017. By comparison, Apple Inc.’s equivalent profit was roughly $60 billion in its last full year; Amazon.com Inc. was $10 billion and Exxon MobilCorp. was $21 billion. The three years of financial information contained in the … [Read more...]

For decades chicken growers have been working to speed up the rate at which a chicken grows from chick to roaster size. To reach the target weight of 6.3 pounds today takes 47 days, as opposed to double that 50 years ago. But the acceleration in chicken growth hasn't come without its own problems. The Wall Street Journal's Jacob Bunge reports on what has become known as "spaghetti meat." He writes: Chicken companies spent decades breeding birds to grow rapidly and develop large breast muscles. Now the industry is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to deal with the consequences ranging … [Read more...]

Big oil companies like Exxon and Chevron came late to the party in the Permian basin, but are now heavily invested in the oil play. Faced with certain difficulties ahead, they are looking to "change the game." Ed Crooks reports for The Financial Times: The Permian’s oil output has already shown prodigious growth in recent years: it has doubled since the summer of 2016, to 4m barrels a day, or roughly a third of total US daily production. The announcements from Exxon and Chevron were a signal that the boom would continue. “It is quite a stunning development, in terms of the scale and the … [Read more...]

Shortages of pipeline capacity in the U.S. oil patch could put upward pressure on global oil prices as the main source of growth in world oil supply is curtailed. John Kemp reports for Reuters: U.S. oil production is running into capacity constraints, which are starting to have a material impact on the global availability of crude, causing the market to tighten and putting upward pressure on prices. The biggest problem is the lack of sufficient pipeline capacity to move oil from shale wells in western Texas and eastern New Mexico to refineries in the Midwest and export terminals on the … [Read more...]

Alcoa CEO Roy Harvey has sounded the alarm bell on global aluminum demand. Aluminum is widely considered an indicator of global economic health. The FT's Ed Crooks reports: Global demand for aluminium is likely to grow this year at its slowest pace since the global recession of 2009, according to Alcoa of the US, in the latest sign of a worldwide economic slowdown. Roy Harvey, Alcoa’s chief executive, said in a presentation to analysts that the company expected worldwide demand to grow by 3-4 per cent this year, which would be the slowest rate since the world market shrank during the … [Read more...]

Newmont Mining Corp. is buying Goldcorp Inc. to form the world's largest gold miner, report Bloomberg's Thomas Biesheuvel and Elena Mazneva. This deal and the recent acquisition of Randgold by Barrick will be followed by numerous smaller deals in response as both giants sell certain assets. Bloomberg reports: The deal will create a company that runs mines in the Americas, Australia and Ghana and exceeds Barrick-Randgold in scale, producing about 7.9 million ounces of gold a year. It also rivals Barrick’s purchase of Placer Dome Inc. as the gold-industry’s biggest takeover. That deal had a … [Read more...]

Copper prices have been sliding as the Chinese economy has weakened. The question is, can copper recover even if the Chinese economy has not? Christopher Alessi and Amrith Ramkumar examine at the copper industry for The Wall Street Journal: Growth worries have recently focused on China, which is the world’s largest consumer of copper, accounting for about half of global demand, and is in engulfed in a tariff fight with the U.S. Apple cited weak Chinese demand in cutting its revenue target, a move that came following tepid Chinese manufacturing figures that showed a commonly-referenced … [Read more...]

In 2018 crude oil prices fell 44.1% from peak to trough, a roller coaster ride for producers and investors for sure. But another oil price has also been plummeting. Coconut oil prices fell 58.2% from a recent peak in January of 2017 to $759.66/metric ton (Philippines Bulk, CIF Rotterdam, Average of Period) in November of 2018. Lucy Cramer, writing in The Wall Street Journal explains how some negative attention from doctors put downward pressure on coconut oil, which had been rapidly gaining popularity. She writes: Consumption of virgin coconut oil—a pure form of the commodity that is … [Read more...]

When OPEC and non-OPEC oil producers met in Vienna recently, there was one major player missing, the United States. America has become one of the world's largest producers, even recently becoming a net exporter of petroleum products. The IEA says American influence over world oil markets will only grow. CNBC's Holly Ellyatt reports: On the day OPEC ministers sat down to talk in Vienna last Thursday, the IEA noted that an important piece of data was published, noting that "according to the (U.S.) Energy Information Administration, in the week to 30 November the U.S. was a net exporter of crude … [Read more...]