The leaders of 18 environmental and civic groups have joined a push for U.S. Steel to face tougher penalties over a spill of hazardous substances from a northwestern Indiana plant into Lake Michigan.
The groups, which include the Alliance for the Great Lakes, Save the Dunes and the Hoosier Environmental Council, submitted a letter to a federal judge in Hammond arguing the fine of about $600,000 included in a proposed settlement with the U.S. Justice Department is inadequate.
”The proposed civil penalty ... does not reflect the seriousness, duration or magnitude of egregious (pollution) permit violations” at U.S. Steel’s Midwest Plant in Portage, Indiana, said the letter dated Dec. 18.
Federal officials reached the settlement with U.S. Steel last year in response to an April 2017 spill at the plant into the Burns Waterway, a Lake Michigan tributary about 30 miles east of Chicago. That spill involved the release of 902 pounds of hexavalent chromium, a toxic heavy metal that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has said might be carcinogenic if ingested, while the plant was permitted to discharge about a half pound per day, according to court documents.
The spill prompted the temporary closure of several beaches in and around the Indiana Dunes National Park and a water treatment plant at nearby Ogden Dunes temporarily stopped drawing water from from the lake as a precaution.
The Justice Department in November asked U.S. District Court Judge Theresa Springmann to move ahead with approving the settlement, saying it included “stringent and detailed requirements related to the operation and maintenance of the facility.”
The deal also includes U.S. Steel reimbursing the EPA $350,000 for its response costs and the National Park Service more than $250,000 for its response costs and damages. U.S. Steel promised to take steps to improve its wastewater processing monitoring system to resolve alleged violations of the Clean Water Act and Indiana law.
The city of Chicago and the Surfrider Foundation environmental group, which have sued U.S. Steel over the spill, also have objected to the deal. Chicago’s lawyers argue in a recent court filing that the fine is “actually too low to deter additional violations,” including smaller spills that have happened at the plant since the settlement was announced in April 2018.
Springmann hasn’t set a date for deciding whether to approve the settlement.
The protesting environmental groups also want the company to face specific requirements for notifying the public about any future spills and more robust monitoring of hazardous substances released from the plant.
“It is of grave concern that this revised Consent Decree will not deter another spill into Lake Michigan or bring U.S. Steel into compliance,” their letter to the judge said.
Looking down on a tightly wrapped coil of zinc-coated steel.Photograph by Sean Gallup/Getty Images
ArcelorMittal, the largest steel producer in the world, ran into some trouble at one of its U.S. facilities recently. KeyBanc analyst Philip Gibbs said a furnace at a plant in Indiana, a former Bethlehem Steel mill, was damaged. The accident could have implications for the struggling U.S. steel industry.
“ArcelorMittal USA’s basic oxygen furnace (BOF) at its Indiana Harbor Number 4 operations experienced fire damage [this past] Friday,” Gibbs wrote in a Tuesday research report. He estimates the furnace can produce about 3 million tons of steel a year, which works out to about 3% of U.S. steelmaking capacity.
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ArcelorMittal (ticker: MT) wasn’t immediately available for comment on the status of the facility.
An oxygen furnace is a downstream process from a blast furnace, which makes pig iron from iron ore and coal. The oxygen furnace blows oxygen through carbon-rich pig iron to produce steel.
The unexpected outage might support further upside for the price of hot-rolled steel—a benchmark product for the industry. The price bottomed in October around $510 a ton. Now January steel futures are trading around $590. Gibbs thinks prices could hit $625 a ton early in the new year.
Prices, of course, are key to steel earnings. In fact, commodity prices matter more than what a company predicts about its earnings, which often reflect what has happened with steel prices.
Nucor (NUE), for instance, offered fourth-quarter guidance in December, more than two-thirds of the way through the quarter. Earnings are expected to be about 27 cents a share, below the 90 cents earned in the third quarter and below what Wall Street analysts were predicting. Still, Nucor stock is about flat in December and up more than 10% over the past three months. Gains in the price of steel have trumped company guidance.
Nucor is the largest U.S. steel producer. Mittal is the largest steel producer in the world, with more than 100 million tons of steelmaking capacity, about four times the size of Nucor. The industry, however, is fragmented. Mittal has only about 5% of global steelmaking capacity. And the top five global steel producers control less than 20% of global output.
The largest producers, apart from Mittal, are all in Asia. That makes sense. China produces about half of the world’s 1.8 billion tons of steel annually. Nucor ranks 12th. United States Steel (X), once the largest steel company in the world, ranks 26th.
Steel stocks, for the most part, have reacted to higher pricing, staging an impressive rally from summer lows. Still, the sector has its struggles with slower U.S. industrial production and imports. For investors, rallies resulting from outages represent trading opportunities, not reasons to jump back in for the long term. Mittal has other facilities and will fix Indiana Harbor. But an outage, assuming no one was hurt, is a bit of good news for a volatile sector of the stock market.
Mittal stock is down almost 14% year to date, trailing far behind gains of the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average. But shares are up more than 20% over the past three months. A volatile sector, indeed.
MACKINAW CITY, Mich. — Enbridge Inc. said Monday that it retrieved a 45-foot steel rod that was resting against an underwater oil pipeline where lakes Michigan and Huron converge.
The debris had been at the bottom of the Straits of Mackinac since September, when a borehole collapsed during geotechnical work in advance of the construction of a tunnel to surround the Line 5 pipes. Enbridge deployed a remote-operated vehicle to remove the rod on Saturday night, said spokesman Ryan Duffy.
“Favorable weather conditions at the Straits in recent weeks prevented the water from icing over, providing Enbridge a window of opportunity to complete this work,” he said.
The rod had moved from its original position near the pipeline and was found resting on the west leg. It never posed a safety or environmental risk to Line 5, the water or ship traffic, Duffy said.
HAMMOND, Ind. – The leaders of 18 environmental and civic groups have joined a push for U.S. Steel to face tougher penalties over a spill of hazardous substances from a northwestern Indiana plant into Lake Michigan.
The groups, which include the Alliance for the Great Lakes, Save the Dunes and the Hoosier Environmental Council, submitted a letter to a federal judge in Hammond arguing that the fine of about $600,000 included in a proposed settlement with the U.S. Justice Department is inadequate.
“The proposed civil penalty ... does not reflect the seriousness, duration or magnitude of egregious (pollution) permit violations” at U.S. Steel’s Midwest Plant in Portage, Indiana, said the letter dated Dec. 18.
Federal officials reached the settlement with U.S. Steel last year in response to an April 2017 spill at the plant into the Burns Waterway, a Lake Michigan tributary about 30 miles (48 kilometers) east of Chicago. That spill involved the release of 902 pounds of hexavalent chromium, a toxic heavy metal that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has said might be carcinogenic if ingested, while the plants was permitted to discharge about a half pound per day, according to court documents.
The spill prompted the temporary closure of several beaches in and around the Indiana Dunes National Park and a water treatment plant at nearby Ogden Dunes temporarily stopped drawing water from from the lake as a precaution.
The Justice Department in November asked U.S. District Court Judge Theresa Springmann to move ahead with approving the settlement, saying that it included “stringent and detailed requirements related to the operation and maintenance of the facility.”
The deal also includes U.S. Steel reimbursing the EPA $350,000 for its response costs and the National Park Service more than $250,000 for its response costs and damages. U.S. Steel promised to take steps to improve its wastewater processing monitoring system to resolve alleged violations of the Clean Water Act and Indiana law.
The city of Chicago and the Surfrider Foundation environmental group, which have sued U.S. Steel over the spill, also have objected to the deal. Chicago’s lawyers argue in a recent court filing that the fine is “actually too low to deter additional violations,” including smaller spills that have happened at the plant since the settlement was announced in April 2018.
Springmann hasn’t set a date for deciding whether to approve the settlement.
The protesting environmental groups also want the company to face specific requirements for notifying the public about any future spills and more robust monitoring of hazardous substances released from the plant.
“It is of grave concern that this revised Consent Decree will not deter another spill into Lake Michigan or bring U.S. Steel into compliance,” their letter to the judge said.
Monnet Ispat & Energy - acquired by AION and JSW Steel through the insolvency process - is looking to start integrated steel operations, in the wake of a pick-up in steel demand.
JSW Steel's joint managing director and group chief financial officer, Seshagiri Rao, said, "We have completed expansion of pellet plant to 2.4 million tonnes and we are also starting the integrated steel operations next month. So things should look better for Monnet."
Currently, integrated operations is completely shut. Monnet, which owed banks Rs 11,000 crore, was one of the 12 non-performing assets (NPAs) mandated for resolution under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC). A Rs 2,875 crore resolution plan, submitted by AION and JSW Steel (minority partner), was approved by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) towards the end of July 2018.
JSW's second quarter results presentation mentioned that steel making operations were impacted by earlier announced maintenance shutdown and repairs.
In October, Monnet informed the stock exchanges that it would undertake modification of plant and machinery for manufacturing special steel products. The period of shutdown of the plant, other than pellet plant and DRI, with effect from June 21, had been further extended and it would restart its integrated operations on completion of the modification which was expected to be in Q4 of financial year 2019-2020, it had said then.
Post-acquisition of management control, operations of the Raigarh pellet plant was started in October and production was ramped up to around 90 per cent of the installed capacity.
Then in February, Monnet started integrated steel production through a blast furnace (for iron making), an electric arc furnace (steel making), ladle refining, continuous casting and bar mill rolling.
Consequently, revenues moved up from Rs 493.82 crore in December 2018 to Rs 660.44 crore in September 2019. In June 2019, it was even higher at Rs 777.09 crore.
However, towards the end of last year, the steel market started showing signs of weakness.
Steel prices had peaked in November 2018 at Rs 46,000 a tonne but then started moving downwards with realisations at around Rs 32,500 till recently.
The growth in finished steel consumption has moderated significantly; from 10.3 per cent in Q2FY2019 to 3.1 per cent in Q2FY2020 on a year-on-year basis.
However, the last two months, prices have moved up The recovery is fuelled by the infrastructure and construction sectors as well as retail. In October and November, companies hiked prices by about Rs 1,000 a tonne.
Monnet has a capacity of 1.2-1.3 million tonnes. There is however land available for expansion up to 3 million tonnes.
Monnet is eyeing a turnaround next year. That would also be about two years since it got acquired.
* Dalian iron ore on track for around 140% gain in 2019
* China’s industrial profits may improve in 2020 - ING
* Increased supply may keep prices under pressure next year
By Enrico Dela Cruz
MANILA, Dec 30 (Reuters) - Benchmark Dalian iron ore futures rose on Monday, extending last week’s gains, as some steel mills resumed restocking activities after China’s top steelmaking city of Tangshan lifted anti-pollution restrictions.
However, with the year-end holiday season prompting participants to remain on the sidelines, trading this week is likely to slow down, keeping any gains in check.
The Dalian Commodity Exchange’s most-traded iron ore contract, with May 2020 expiry, gained as much as 1.6% to 651.50 yuan ($93.13) a tonne, the highest since Dec. 16. By 0245 GMT, the contract was up just 0.1%.
On the Singapore Exchange, the front-month January contract rose 0.6% to $90.60 a tonne.
Early gains in steel futures also helped sustain interest in iron ore, buoyed after data last week showed that industrial profits in China grew at the fastest pace in eight months in November.
Ferrous metal miners posted a 170.7% year-on-year increase in profit growth in the 11-month period to November, according to ING analysts.
“Because of the two growth engines in 2020 — infrastructure projects and 5G — industrial profits are expected to enjoy positive growth (next year),” they said in a note.
Prices for spot cargoes of benchmark iron ore with 62% iron content for delivery to China SH-CCN-IRNOR62 settled at $92 a tonne on Friday, from $93 a week ago, data from SteelHome consultancy showed.
The steelmaking raw material’s prices have pulled back after hitting a peak of $126.50 in July this year, based on SteelHome data.
Shipments into top steel producer China picked up in recent months, though iron ore prices are still on track to post an annual gain of around 140%, the commodity’s best performance in three years.
“Expect further pressure on iron ore prices in 2020,” ING analysts said in a separate note. “More supplies from Brazil and higher shipments from Australia mean we’re expecting a softening to $75/tonne by the end of next year.”
FUNDAMENTALS
* The most-traded construction steel rebar on the Shanghai Futures Exchange edged up 0.1%, but hot-rolled steel coil, used in cars and home appliances, was virtually flat after it surrendered early gains.
* Dalian coking coal advanced 0.7%, while Dalian coke was almost steady.
* Shanghai stainless steel futures were up 0.4%.
$1 = 6.9954 yuan Reporting by Enrico dela Cruz; editing by Uttaresh.V
If you're at all serious about your cooking, eventually you're going to need a knife set. And not the one that got handed down to you by your parents, but a real chef's set that will make you notice the difference in every cut.
With that in mind, it's worth considering a set that will distinguish themselves before you even use them. And believe us, people who haven't seen Damascus steel before will definitely take notice of this set of 4 Damascus Steak Knives.
In a nutshell, Damascus steel was a legendary form of metal and metalworking that produced some of the most feared weapons in the Eastern hemisphere. While the source metal of wootz is lost to the ages, modern blacksmiths have learned how to replicate the process — with time and care.
The result is the watery pattern on the blades of these chef knives, a side effect of their hardness and ability to keep a keen edge. Each one is 8 1/2 inches and augmented with pakkawood, rosewood and walnut wood handles.
Pick up your set of four Damascus Steak Knives, currently on sale at 44% off retail but available for 20% off that final price by using the discount code 20SAVE20.
British Steel’s Chinese buyer is struggling to agree new contracts with suppliers, according to people with knowledge of the situation.
A rescue deal for the collapsed steelmaker was struck last month with Jingye Group paying about £50m and saving 4,000 jobs, mostly at British Steel’s Scunthorpe plant in northern England.
Executives from the Chinese conglomerate have been meeting major suppliers including Associated British Ports, BOC and Tarmac to secure new contract terms but have hit “a brick wall”, said one person familiar with the situation.
“It has not yet been possible to secure new terms with major suppliers,” the person said. “The companies are being pretty inflexible . . . [BOC] have been making so much money out of those contracts.”
BOC, which is owned by Linde of Germany, supplies industrial gases to British Steel while Tarmac has a deal to buy slag waste from the smelting process.
Two areas of discussion are payment terms and contract prices. British Steel’s suppliers were on 90-day payment terms before it fell into insolvency in May. They subsequently demanded shorter times to reduce the risk of dealing with the company, said another person with knowledge of the discussions, who added that suppliers were keen to stick to these terms.
Talks have become bogged down with ABP, which handles imports of raw materials such as iron ore and coke, and exports finished steel through Immingham on the Humber. Executives from Jingye met ABP in London last week.
“Negotiations are going on but they are currently frustrated over detail. We want the deal to work and are trying to be co-operative,” said one person involved in the process.
About 140 jobs at ABP, which took over the terminal from British Steel in 2018, depend on the steelmaker.
One supplier said Jingye had changed its demands. They said the Chinese group has struggled to understand British politics and the importance of winning government support prior to the general election, when the Conservative party was trying to win votes in areas where British Steel is a big employer.
Questions have been raised about the purchase of some of the UK’s biggest steelworks by a Chinese company, given past cases of Chinese steelmakers dumping underpriced products into the EU.
British Steel’s factory in France has been put up for sale as a contingency measure in case the Jingye deal falls through.
Andrea Leadsom, business secretary, recently met officials from Jingye, including chairman Li Ganpo, to discuss the takeover. “It was a highly productive meeting and I remain optimistic about progress!” she said in a tweet.
The major suppliers previously refused to agree price cuts in discussions with Turkey’s Ataer Holdings, which failed to seal a takeover deal this year.
“Jingye group and the relevant authorities continue to make progress in securing the necessary approvals to complete the transaction and remain confident that these will be achieved in the new year,” the company said.
To cap off the year, Corum this month has released two new additions to its Lab 01 collection, which was first unveiled as an experimental series in the brand’s eclectic lineup. The two new models upon first glance seem very similar to their two predecessors (covered here), but are now distinguished by their use of Damascus steel — a material very uncommon in watchmaking.
Damascus steel, for those unfamiliar, is a wavy-patterned, high-carbon steel which is exceptionally popular today among knife and sword markers for its beauty, hardness, and resistance to shattering. The use of this material, which dates back to as early as the 4th century, hearkens to an overarching ethos that Corum is working to establish in the Lab 01 collection, i.e. creating “a dialogue between the past and the future” by melding traditional and contemporary mechanical watchmaking and, in the case of these newest watches, marrying ancient and modern materials.
Like the previous Lab 01 models, the two new editions use a 39.89 x 55-mm tonneau-shaped case with rubber inserts on its side as well as an integrated rubber bracelet. The case, as mentioned, uses a blackened, DLC-treated Damascus steel, and features a crown at 6 o’clock made of the same material. The skeletonized grey dial of the watch is available with either blue or green accents, featuring applied Arabic numerals at each 15-minute mark, an off-center Corum logo, and rhodium-coated, baton-style hour and minute hands. Powering the watch, and visible through the openworked dial, is the Corum caliber CO 410, a barrel-shaped movement capable of a 50-hour power reserve, specifically designed to fit within the unique case shape of the Lab 01 models. This automatic movement uses a spiral-accented microrotor visible through the face of the model on the upper right-hand corner of the dial, and features côtes de Genève finishing throughout.
The two new watches will be limited to 99 pieces each, and will be available at Corum boutiques worldwide, with pricing beginning at $16,800.
BHUBANESWAR: Rourkela Steel Plant (RSP) has supplied 30.5 tonne of maraging steel to be used in the upcoming 'Gaganyaan project, the first indigenous manned mission of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to space, a company statement said.
Gautam Banerjee, ED (Works) of RSP, a unit of SAIL flagged off the plates in a function organised at Plate Mill department on Saturday. The plates rolled from 14 slabs were the first lot of the total order quantity, the RSP statement said.
Maraging steel is a special quality steel containing nickel, cobalt, molybdenum, titanium and aluminium and is manufactured through vacuum melting process. Rolling of maraging steel requires very stringent process parameters, it said.
Generally any steel with higher strength will have low ductility and vice versa. But the significance of maraging steel is that it has got very high strength (to the tune of 5 -6 times of mild steel) along with good ductility.
Maraging steel is being used for the launch vehicle rocket motor casing and for other different defence applications. These maraging steel plates rolled in RSP were also used in the recently launched Chandrayan-II, it said.
Stating that the Plate Mill of RSP has been regularly rolling wide plates of maraging steel under a long term contract with Mishra Dhatu Nigam (Midhani), Hyderabad, the statement said these steels are used in PSLV and GSLV programmes of ISRO.
The mill has so far rolled 2200 tonne of maraging steel and supplied to Midhani for the above purpose.
Stringent process parameters were followed and representatives from Midhani, Hyderabad and scientists from ISRO were present during the rolling of the first phase plates at plate mill, the statement added.
