David Stanway News

Canada's The Metals Company (TMC) aims to apply next year for a licence to start mining in the Pacific Ocean, with production expected to get underway by as early as the fourth quarter of 2025, it said in a statement.TMC has been at the forefront of efforts to begin extracting polymetallic nodules from the ocean floor, a nascent industry that could boost supplies of metals considered vital to the global energy transition, including nickel and cobalt.Environmental campaigners warn…

China has launched a crackdown on illegal sand mining operations on the Yangtze river, which have made large parts of central China more vulnerable to drought.Excessive sand mining on the Yangtze, which provides water for a third of the Chinese population, is believed to be responsible for the abnormally low levels of water during the winter drought season in recent years.Sand mining in the river and its connecting lakes and tributaries has also affected shipping routes and made it harder for authorities to control summer floods.According to a notice issued by the water…

China will construct a “Polar Silk Road” and actively participate in the development of Arctic and Antarctic regions, it said in its new 2021-2025 “five-year plan” published on Friday.The plan said China would “participate in pragmatic cooperation in the North Pole” and “raise its ability to participate in the protection and utilization of the South Pole”.China has been eyeing lucrative mineral resources as well as potential new shipping routes in Arctic regions, as ice caps recede…

U.S. President Joe Biden on Wednesday announced America's return to the international Paris Agreement to fight climate change, the centerpiece of a raft of day-one executive orders aimed at restoring U.S. leadership in combating global warming.The announcements also included a sweeping order to review all of former President Donald Trump's actions weakening climate change protections, the revocation of a vital permit for TC Energy's Keystone XL oil pipeline project from Canada…

China’s military tailed a U.S. warship as it passed through the sensitive Taiwan Strait on Saturday, the Chinese military said, denouncing such missions as sending “flirtatious glances” to supporters of Taiwan independence.China, which claims democratically-run Taiwan as its own territory, has been angered by stepped-up U.S. support for the island, including arms sales and sailing warships through the Taiwan Strait, further souring Beijing-Washington relations.The U.S. Navy said the guided missile destroyer USS Mustin had conducted “a routine Taiwan Strait transit (on) Dec.

China will shut down more outdated steel plants and bring total capacity to less than 1 billion tonnes by 2025, the president of the country's steel industry association said, adding that national demand for the metal is set to decline gradually. With more than three quarters of firms suffering losses as a result of a price-sapping capacity surplus, China vowed in early 2016 to shut 150-150 million tonnes of annual production in five years in a bid to raise profitability and utilisation rates in the sector. Its capacity then was estimated at 1.2 billion tonnes.

A U.S. Navy destroyer this week sailed near the Scarborough Shoal, a disputed lagoon claimed by China in the South China Sea, U.S. officials said on Saturday, and Beijing vowed to take “necessary measures” to protect what it said was its sovereignty. China’s foreign ministry said USS Hopper missile destroyer came within 12 nautical miles off Huangyan island, better known as the Scarborough Shoal and subject to a rival claim by the Philippines, a historic ally of the United States. It was the latest U.S.

China's imports of crude oil rose 7.6 percent in April from a year ago, customs data showed on Sunday, lifted by continued strong demand from domestic private refiners. The high April inflows were a result of the strong appetite of small domestic independent "teapot" refineries. Beijing has granted licenses to more than 20 of them since last year to import crude for the first time. China imported 32.58 million tonnes of crude oil in April, data from the General Administration of Customs showed, missing a Reuters forecast. Thomson Reuters Oil Research and Forecasts had predicted that the total crude arrivals for April into China would reach 33.14 million tonnes, up from a March reading of 32.61 million tonnes.

Legislators have approved amendments to China's 15-year-old air pollution law that grant the state new powers to punish offenders and create a legal framework to cap coal consumption, the Asian giant's biggest source of smog. The draft amendments were passed by 154 votes to 4, with five abstentions, Zhong Xuequan, spokesman for the National People's Congress (NPC), China's parliament, told a media briefing on Saturday. The ruling Communist Party has acknowledged the damage that decades of untrammelled economic growth have done to China's skies, rivers and soil. It is now trying to equip its environmental inspection offices with greater powers and more resources to tackle persistent polluters and the local governments that protect them.

China's power output, a bellwether for economic activity, posted its first annual decline in more than four years in August, adding to evidence that the world's second-largest economy is losing momentum after a brief rebound in the second quarter. Power output in the world's top consumer fell 2.2 percent to 495.9 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) in August from a year earlier, data showed on Saturday. While the annual fall was in part due to the high reading last summer, when many cities were struck by a record heat wave, overall electricity production also posted its first fall in three months - a sign of slackening demand from major industrial users.

IBM Corp has signed an agreement with the city of Beijing to use advanced weather forecasting and cloud compting technologies to help tackle the Chinese capital's persistent smog. After a series of pollution scares and scandals, China's central government has promised to reverse some of the damage done to the nation's sky, rivers and soil by more than three decades of growth. ButChina has first had to improve data collection, monitoring and forecasting capabilities before it can work on cutting smog and pollution. Beijing city already uses an alerting system based on data from 35 monitoring stations, allowing it to shut schools and factories and cut traffic three days in advance, but residents still complain that not enough is being done.

China has stopped issuing permits for imports of distillers dried grains (DDGs) from top exporter the United States on concerns they might contain an unapproved genetically-modified organism (GMO), traders said, sending U.S. prices tumbling. Quarantine authorities have also asked buyers to re-export earlier shipments that contained MIR 162, a GMO strain developed by Syngenta AG that has not been approved for import by China's agriculture ministry. Qingdao, China's largest port for DDGs, stopped issuing new permits for shipments last month to any buyers who had still not shipped out any cargoes previously denied entry by quarantine authorities. "Now it is countrywide. Quarantine authorities stopped issuing import permits last Friday," said one trading manager with a major buyer.

Amendments to China's 1989 environmental protection law that will mean stiffer punishments for polluters have been submitted to the country's parliament for deliberation, official news agency Xinhua reported late on Monday. The National People's Congress (NPC), China's legislature, will consider the amendments during its latest bimonthly session, which runs until Thursday this week, Xinhua said. The first change to the legislation in 25 years will give legal backing to Beijing's newly declared war on pollution and formalise a pledge made last year to abandon a decades-old growth-at-all-costs economic model that has spoiled much of China's water, skies and soil.

Royal Dutch Shell and the China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) have signed a deal to boost cooperation in sectors like deep sea exploration as well as liquefied natural gas (LNG) and unconventional gas sources like shale, CNPC said on Wednesday. The two companies had agreed to join forces in the development of both upstream and downstream energy businesses, CNPC said on its website. Ben van Beurden, in his first overseas visit since becoming Shell's chief executive, told CNPC Chairman Zhou Jiping that both sides have set up deep and wide-ranging ties and have huge room for further cooperation. The Anglo-Dutch firm is already one of the biggest overseas investors in China's energy sector…

China will close 1,725 small-scale mines with a total capacity of 117.48 million metric tons in 2014 as part of its program to phase out low-quality coal production, its energy administration said on Friday. Smog-hit China has been desperate to reduce coal consumption, a major source of pollutants, including hazardous airborne particulate matter in the country's cities. Beijing hopes to close old and depleting mines in the east and consolidate output in a series of "coal energy bases" in remote parts of the country, including the vast northwestern regions of Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang. The National Energy Administration said in a notice…

Reuters - Brazil's Vale SA will launch in March the first phase of its iron ore storage and distribution center in Malaysia that will improve its access to China, its biggest customer, a company official said on Tuesday. The world's top iron ore miner, whose huge Valemax vessels are banned from Chinese ports, built the Malaysian terminal to better compete with Australian rivals Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton. The 400,000-deadweight metric ton (dwt) vessels, the world's biggest bulk carriers…