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The Indian government has cut the windfall tax on petroleum crude to 5,200 Indian rupees ($62.33) per metric ton from 5,700rupees, effective on June 1, according to a notification issued on Friday. The tax, which is revised every fortnight, remains unchanged at zero for diesel and aviation turbine fuel. The Indian government on May 16 had reduced the windfall tax on petroleum to 5,700 rupees per metric ton from 8,400 rupees. India started taxing crude oil production and exports of gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel in July 2022 to regulate ...

Rainfall will likely be below normal in the western part of Argentina’s agricultural heartland over the next three months, the country’s National Weather Service said on Friday, forecasting normal to below-normal rainfall for the rest of the Pampas region. The decrease in precipitation will occur during the closing of Argentina’s 2023/24 soybean and corn harvest, and wheat planting for the new 2024/25 season. Below-normal rainfall will be beneficial for Argentine farmers finishing the delayed soybean and corn harvest, and will allow wheat planting to move forward at a steady pace. ...

Speculators increased their bullish bets in futures of arabica coffee on ICE U.S. in the week to May 28, while slightly reducing their large short position in raw sugar, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said on Friday. Funds added 2,410 lots to their net long position in arabica coffee, taking it to 43,787 contracts. They cut their net short position in raw sugar by 1,362 lots to 68,128. Funds’ net long position in cocoa futures increased by 1,703 lots to 10,371. For speculators’ position on robusta coffee, London cocoa ...

There are several buy tenders open this week, with companies including Uruguay’s ANCAP, Indonesia’s Pertamina, and India’s HPCL and IOC, in the market for crude oil, a trader said on Friday. HPCL has scored two cargoes of West African crude as part of its tender – a cargo apiece of Nigerian Agbami and Angolan Girassol, the trader said. It is unclear when the tenders are set to close. Premiums for West African crude grades have been under pressure in recent weeks, on ample supply and weak gasoline margins. There’s just ...

Chicago Board of Trade wheat futures Wv1 turned lower for a second session on Friday, as news of potentially beneficial rain in Russia dented prices and traders sought profits after a rally earlier in the week, market analysts said. Traders spent the day less concerned about how much relief the well-timed rains might bring to Russia’s crop, which has been battered by cold and frost, analysts said. The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Friday reported export sales of old-crop wheat in the week ended May 23 at 381,700 metric tons, ...

Chicago Board of Trade soybeans fell for a fourth session on pressure from South American supplies and a flurry of technical trading on Friday, as market participants adjusted their positions at the end of the month, analysts said. The U.S. soybean crush likely dropped in April to a seven-month low of 5.265 million short tons, or 175.5 million bushels, according to analysts surveyed by Reuters ahead of a monthly U.S. Department of Agriculture report due on Monday. Rains are forecast for soybean growing areas of the U.S. from the weekend ...

Production at ArcelorMittal Mexico’s principal steel mill in Lazaro Cardenas, Michoacan, has been halted by a blockade at its entrance by members of the miners union, a company source said May 31. “There is no production, and this situation hampered both markets: flat and long steel; however we had enough inventories to deliver May orders without problems,” the source said. ArcelorMittal, in a May 30 statement, said the union blockade was “illegal” and warned it could not guarantee the maintenance of the mill’s necessary equipment, including the blast furnace, which ...

Traffic along a rail route in Russia’s far eastern Amur region was restored on Saturday, a day after being halted by the derailment of 29 railcars loaded with coal, the railway in the region said. The railway said that around 200 metres of damaged rails had been repaired. Passenger trains, including on the route of the one-week Trans-Siberian journey from Moscow to Vladivostok, were again moving after delays of up to 8 hours, it said. Source: Reuters (Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin, Editing by Peter Graff)

Brazil’s center-south sugarcane crushing totaled 44.75 million metric tons in the first half of May, data from industry group UNICA showed on Friday, up 0.43% from a year ago and slightly below market expectations. UNICA said in a report that sugar production in the period was seen at 2.57 million tons, up 0.97% year-on-year, while ethanol output rose 2.14% to 1.99 billion liters. Markets had been expecting sugarcane crushing to hit 44.86 million metric tons in the first half of May, while sugar output was forecast to reach 2.70 million ...

Chicago wheat and corn futures fell on Friday as news of beneficial rain in Russia and profit-taking dented wheat prices, leading to corn selling as well. Forecasts for a smaller Russian wheat harvest due to persistent drought and frost pushed prices to a 10-month high of $7.20 a bushel this week. But by Friday, traders were less concerned about how much relief the well-timed rains might give the country’s crop, analysts said. “The Russian wheat story is running its course, and we’re going to have to see a new element ...

Chicago Board of Trade corn futures turned lower for a fourth trading day on Friday, as weakness in the wheat markets weighed on prices and corn traders adjusted their positions at the end of the month, analysts said. CBOT July corn CN24 settled down 2.5 cents to close at $4.46-1/4 per bushel. For the week, the most-active corn futures contract on a continuous chart Cv1 ended the week down 3.98%. Showers and thunderstorms will move into U.S. corn growing areas from the weekend to early next week, delaying late seeding ...

Standard & Poor’s (S&P) decision to downgrade its rating on France’s sovereign debt should in the short term deliver more political sting than pain in financial markets. Days ahead of a June 9 EU parliamentary election, S&P cut France’s long-term sovereign debt rating on Friday to “AA-” from “AA”, citing expectations that higher than expected deficits would push up debt in the euro zone’s second-biggest economy. WHAT MARKET REACTION CAN BE EXPECTED? Citigroup analysts said in a note on Wednesday that a downgrade could push the spread between French and ...

MSCI’s global equities index staged an afternoon rebound on Friday as investors repositioned for month-end, while the dollar fell with Treasury yields as data showed a modest rise in U.S. inflation in April. After spending most of the session in the red, the MSCI All Country World Price Index turned positive ahead of a rebalance of the index. When Wall Street trading ended, the global index was up 0.57% at 785.54 after falling as low as 776.86 earlier. “When you get an upside reversal it’s always a good sign if ...

The rate of U.S. failed trades stood at 1.90% on Wednesday, a big test day for the recently implemented faster settlement cycle, roughly stable from Friday’s number, Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) showed this morning. The average fail rate in May for the period prior to the faster settlement was 2.01%, DTCC said in a statement. Market participants were expecting it to increase to 4.1% after T+1 implementation, from 2.9%, according to research firm ValueExchange. The affirmation rate, another indicator the industry closely watches to show trades participants have ...

Northwest European gasoline refining margins fell sharply to about $15 a barrel on Friday as data showed sharp stocks in inventories in the Atlantic basin. Around 6,000 metric tons of Eurobob E10 traded, with BP selling to Varo. That compared with 10,000 tons that traded in the previous session. Another 6,000 tons of Eurobob E5 traded in the Argus window, with TotalEnergies and Shell selling to ExxonMobil, Gunvor and Varo. Gasoline stocks held in independent storage in the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp (ARA) refining and storage hub rose by nearly 10% during the ...