Two events have the attention of the ethanol market: the drone attack on the Saudi oil fields and the expected announcement from the Administration on the 2020 required volume obligation (RVO) to offset the exempted fuels under the small refinery waivers. First, the Saudi situation. Over the weekend, the second largest oil field in Saudi Arabia was attacked by drones, widely suspected by the Saudis and the U.S. to have been at the hands of Iran. The facilities affected account for up to 10 million barrels per day of crude oil production and the resulting shut down could idle about half of that production. WTI crude was up 11.5 percent today and Brent crude was up 12 percent, after a trading session high of 18 percent. Industry estimates a...
Communicating importance of value-added products
Facing increasing pressure to quantify the value of export promotion efforts to investors, a U.S. industry organization retained WPI to develop a quantitative model that better communicated the importance of exports. The resulting model concluded that value-added meat exports contributed $0.45 cents per bushel to the price of corn, increasing support for that sector’s financial support of WPI’s client. In addition to serving the red meat industry with this type of analysis, WPI has generated similar deliverables for the U.S. soybean and poultry/egg industries.
Key Market Insights The broad market is locked in on this week’s Trump-Xi meeting in Beijing, but this is no longer just a trade summit. Increasingly, the meeting is becoming tied directly to Iran, energy security, and the growing global economic fallout from disruptions through the Strai...