Gold Prices Mixed On Firmer Dollar
Gold prices were mixed Friday morning in Asia, with gold, silver and copper trading lower while platinum making gains.
Gold futures for June delivery on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange was down $3.5, or 0.27%, to $1,298 a troy ounce by 11:45PM ET (03:45 GMT).
As Italian political subsided, markets saw weaker demand for safe-haven assets such as gold. The country has been unable to form a government since an election in early March, but the euroskeptic populists and pro-EU establishment lawmakers renewed efforts to build a coalition rather than force new election.
The U.S. dollar index that tracks the greenback against a basket of six major currencies added 0.16% to 94.11. The greenback oscillated around the 94 value on Friday morning.
Dollar-denominated assets such as gold are sensitive to moves in the dollar – a gain in the dollar makes gold more expensive for holders of foreign currency and thus decreases demand for the precious metal.
Oil Prices Continue Slide as Brent, WTI diverge
Oil prices continued to dip slightly in morning trade in Asia Friday, after a reported rise in inventories in the U.S. and while investors worked to understand the implications of a divergence in the price of London-traded Brent crude and U.S.-traded WTI, the two major oil-price benchmarks.
Crude Oil WTI Futures for July delivery were trading down 0.15% at $66.94 a barrel at 9:50PM ET (01:50 GMT).
Brent crude futures for August delivery, traded in London, were down 0.26% at $77.53 per barrel.
A rise of 1 million barrels in U.S. crude inventories in the week to May 25 to 434.9 million barrels reported by the American Petroleum Institute on Wednesday surprised traders and sent prices down.
U.S. crude production has been rising relentlessly, increasing by more than a quarter in the last two years, to 10.73 million bpd, inching ever closer to top producer Russia’s output of around 11 million bpd.
New Zealand push on clean power comes with high political, economic risks
New Zealand has set out to burnish its clean, green image by becoming Asia Pacific’s first developed economy to stop using fossil fuels to generate power, although the pitfalls encountered by a Maori iwi, or tribe, may signal trouble ahead.
The 3,000-member Ngaati Kea Ngaati Tuara iwi in Rotorua, when switching to renewables, found local geothermal sources were not hot enough to generate electricity.
So, the tribe set up small hydro units for its meeting ground and dairy farm, but the units struggle to operate during floods and to produce enough power at peak demand, said project manager Eugene Berryman-Kamp. A battery could store energy for periods of high use, but there is currently “no appetite” to invest the more than $10,000 needed, he said.
New Zealand, in its push to be free of power fired by coal and natural gas, would likely face similar problems scaled to national size and potentially billions of dollars in costs.
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