The Overnight Telex
CRUDE & PRODUCTS Brent dropped to $94.81 a barrel, down from $117.64, a 19.4% slide that dragged the whole products complex with it. RBOB gasoline fell 17.4% to 976 USD/t and U…
Newsroom notes
The Kigali Letter
3 November 2026 To the desk, First, Washington has found a new lever on Kigali On 2 November the Trump administration told Congress and the Rwandan government it intends to strip R…
The Afternoon Wire
Abuja got a new balance sheet this week. Afreximbank and the African Petroleum Producers' Organisation have formally launched the Africa Energy Bank, inaugurated 31 October with fi…
Three Things That Matter, 1 November
Three things worth your attention this morning, and a strip of what else moved. 1. Congo's quotas are working, and the market still isn't rewarding it Glencore's cobalt output near…
Desk Log, 29 October
Desk Log, 29 October Cobalt piles up in solution Glencore's cobalt output has sunk 52% under DRC quotas, with the miner now holding battery metal in solution rather than finishing…
Field Notes, 28 October
Risk comes off the oil and grain book A ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine was reported to have taken effect at 4am Moscow time on 27 October, and by Wednesday's settle the energ…
Ask The Desk, 27 October
Ask The Desk, 27 October A Tuesday that rewarded direct questions more than narrative. What's paying for the insurgency in eastern Congo? Gold, mostly. A new report finds the Allie…
The Manifest, 26 October
The Manifest, 26 October COPPER, Highland Valley, British Columbia Teck Resources confirmed its workers walked out at the Highland Valley Copper mine on Monday, the union pressing…
Katanga Clears Its Books
Katanga Clears Its Books, 25 October A quiet Sunday on the wire, which in this business usually means the real movement happened in a meeting room rather than a port. Today it did,…
The Saturday Letter
The Saturday Letter Dear desk, Congo's biggest open question is closer to an answer. The US-backed consortium Orion CMC says its purchase of 40% of Glencore's majority interests in…
The Wire, 24 October
Kinshasa's power float SNEL, Congo's state power utility, now spends 60% of its revenue servicing debt, leaving 15% for operations, maintenance and new capacity. Its director gener…
Three Things That Matter, 22 October
Three Things That Matter, 22 October Kolwezi is not calm. Despite a provincial governor insisting otherwise, the ground truth in Lualaba on Thursday was artisanal miners in the str…
The Docket, 21 October
Five files open on the desk this morning, running from a copperbelt flashpoint to a continent-wide code patch. FILE: KOLWEZI A Tuesday-night lull in Lualaba did not hold. By Wednes…
Questions From the Copperbelt, 19 October
Questions From the Copperbelt What shut down half of Kolwezi this morning? Artisanal diggers, not soldiers, for once. Monday saw protests spread across Kasulo, Kanina, Musonoie, Ka…
The Dateline, 18 October
LUSAKA Zambia opens its 2026 Mining and Investment Insaka in Lusaka on Monday, and the guest list tells its own story: the Democratic Republic of Congo and Botswana are both sendin…
The Manifest, 17 October
The Manifest, 17 October Sulphur Squeeze Mosaic has temporarily idled its South Fort Meade phosphate rock operation in Florida, and a further report puts the toll at 199 jobs cut a…
By the Numbers, 16 October
12,000 tonnes That is the volume of Congolese copper Mercuria has now delivered to Project Vault, the United States' new stockpiling programme for critical minerals. The handover l…
The Telex, 15 October
The Telex, 15 October Four lines off the wire today, in no particular order of drama. SULPHUR Chinese sulphur fell 6.9% to 998 USD/t (6,669 CNY/t) as of Wednesday's print, and the…
The Ledger, 14 October
The Ledger, 14 October RECEIVABLE Kinshasa's Treasury went looking for 60 million dollars on Monday and came back with 76.8 million, a 128% cover ratio on two-year dollar bonds car…
Three Things That Matter, 13 October
Three Things That Matter, 13 October The money RDC can't find Kinshasa's central bank governor put a number on something traders in the Congolese copperbelt have long suspected: th…
The Wire Brief, 12 October
GOMA, A NEW FRONT A new politico-military movement, the Front pour la refondation de la Nation, was formally unveiled in Goma on Monday with former president Joseph Kabila as its h…
The Sunday Q&A
The Sunday Q&A What broke first on the sugar desk? Rain. Heavy falls across Brazil's Centre-South have slowed the cane harvest enough that the International Sugar Organisation'…
The Actor File, 10 October
The Actor File KAZADI DRC's deputy prime minister Peter Kazadi told reporters in Kinshasa that Joseph Kabila is poised to take the head of a branch of the rebellion, and that the g…
The Friday Letter, 9 October
The Friday Letter, 9 October Four things landed on the desk worth setting down before the ink dries. First. Kamoa-Kakula is back on form. Ivanhoe Mines reported that quarterly copp…
The Numerals, 8 October
Thursday's book, told in the figures that moved it. 412.6 MILLION DOLLARS That is what the Congolese coalition Le Congo n'est pas à vendre says Kinshasa has forgone since 2024 unde…
The Plain Statement, 7 October
Wednesday's board: copper up 2.5%, gasoline down 6.5%, diesel up 3.5%, and one ammonia plant in the Caribbean switching the lights off for an indefinite period. Point Lisas has sto…
The Morning Log, 6 October
One desk, one morning, in the order the prints landed. Times are East African. 06:05 Kinshasa put eight aircraft in the air over its own geology. The Programme de cartographie géop…
The Dateline Run, 5 October
Potash moves a long way today: one cargo into Louisiana, one orebody in Gabon, both aimed at the same sanctioned supply gap. Everything else is datelined below. NEW ORLEANS The fir…
Five Questions, 4 October
Six questions would have been greedy. Answers below carry Saturday's prints. Why did diesel fall eight per cent on a day crude barely moved? ULSD settled at 4.501 USD per gallon, d…
The Ledger, 3 October
Saturday, 3 October 2026. Prints as of the Friday close. CREDIT: whoever is long the FAO basket World food prices have reached their highest level since November 2022 on the UN's i…