Saw this story on another thread and thought it would be of great interest to Moly shareholders (including Lion and Nicolelee!!) seeing as the company is now exporting 1.0M tonnes of Iron Ore a year for the next 4 years!!!
Looks like my retirement date just got a lot closer !!!
SINGAPORE Jan 12 (Reuters) - Asian spot iron ore prices were expected to climb to fresh eight-month peaks on Wednesday on mounting supply worries after a major Indian state said it was considering banning exports of the steelmaking ingredient.
Orissa, India's top producer of iron ore, was looking at banning iron ore exports to meet demand for the raw material from the domestic steel industry.
India is the world's third-largest iron ore supplier and exports about half of its annual output of around 200 million tonnes.
Supplies from India had already been tight after the southern state of Karnataka banned exports from last July and a similar move by Orissa could drive prices even higher as it forces top buyer China to rely more on supplies from Australia and Brazil, the two biggest exporters.
"Chinese steel mills will definitely buy more from Australia and Brazil if India continues reducing exports, but other smaller suppliers like Iran, Indonesia and Venezuela will also take advantage to boost their presence in China," said Hu Kai, an iron ore analyst with Umetal.com.
Indian ore with 63.5 percent iron content remained quoted above $180 a tonne, including freight, as key indexes rose to levels last seen in May.
The Platts 62 percent iron ore index IODBZ00-PLT ticked up 25 cents to $175.75 a tonne on Tuesday, and The Steel Index 62 percent benchmark .IO62-CNI=SI rose $1.20 to $174.60.
Metal Bulletin's 62 percent gauge .IO62-CNO=MB gained 68 cents to $172.34. (Reporting by Manolo Serapio Jr. and Ruby Lian in Shanghai; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
