nickel metal
The price of nickel on the London Stock Exchange rose 3.1% during trading today, Tuesday, to 25,095 dollars per ton, its highest level since August 2011.
Global concerns are growing that supplies from Russia, a major producer of the mineral, will be disrupted due to tensions in Ukraine.
And Bloomberg News indicated that nickel, which is used to make stainless steel and rechargeable batteries, is the best-performing metal on the London Metal Exchange this year.
At the same time, nickel stocks on the London Metal Exchange fell to their lowest levels since 2019 due to higher prices for spot contracts than for futures contracts, which indicates a shortage of supplies. At the same time, nickel stocks on the London Metal Exchange fell to their lowest levels since 2019 due to higher prices for spot contracts than for futures contracts, which indicates a shortage of supplies.
This comes as Indonesia, one of the world’s major producers of nickel, has been expanding smelters to turn ore into a value-added product since it decided to ban its export as ore in 2020.
The price of nickel is rising in light of expectations that supplies will fail to meet the rapid growth in demand from the electric car industry.
Dealers in the European oil market said that they expect the continuation of Russian oil purchases from Europe without significant damage from the developments of the Ukrainian crisis, because Europe cannot dispense with Russian oil supplies.
And the Bloomberg news agency quoted four market participants as saying that despite the escalation of tension between Russia and the West during the past 24 hours, the availability of oil is very restricted, which does not allow Europe to dispense with a large supplier such as Russia. Traders added that they expect Europe to avoid taking any steps that might significantly affect oil trade between Russia and European countries.
This comes at a time when Russian President Vladimir Putin signed an order to send what he called “peacekeeping forces” to the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, which declared their independence from Ukraine unilaterally, following Russia officially recognized their independence yesterday.