Find below the iron ore price table for November 29, 2013:
Stable again. Charts:
The interesting news on the week’s data is again about port inventories, which climbed another 2 million tonnes to 84.15 million tonnes:
The recent up trend is starting to look impressive. Mills days of inventory are stuck at around 30 days but there is a restock going on somewhere in the Chinese iron ore supply chain. As I said last week, this is likely to be supportive of prices through the end of the year but longer term it will provide an opportunity for mills to crash the price, as they did in 2012.
In news, Australia’s mining overlord today finds the boot on the other foot. From The Australian:
THE Abbott government has backed a major Chinese company with a decision out of Canberra that sidelines political rival Clive Palmer and thwarts his attempts to prevent valuable iron ore concentrate being shipped to China from the Pilbara region of Western Australia.
The high-level decision to give the green light to the first loading of a Chinese vessel with concentrate from Mr Palmer’s tenements means West Australian Premier Colin Barnett will today mark the occasion with Chinese dignitaries at Cape Preston, near Karratha, just hours before Mr Palmer’s maiden speech in federal parliament.
I’m not sure of the legalities on this. Given Palmer’s case over the Cape Preston port, where Sino ships from, is still pending in court. It may be a case of shoot first and find an excuse later for the Government which is actually reversing a previous decision that acknowledged Palmer’s ownership of the Cape Preston port to allow shipments to proceed.
