Field Notes

Each Field Note tests a market story against its numbers.

Eleven notes since April 2026, newest first, in three series: Risk, Value-Chain and Make-or-Buy. Ten of them carry 250 numbered sources in all, each a regulator, a court of record, a company’s own disclosure, or an established industry, research or news body.

Filter 11 field notes · newest first

SE Asia · Gas & LNG

The 33-Month Bet

Eni and Petronas have set first gas at Kutei North 33 months after sanction. Of eleven large floating developments, two were faster, and Hormuz has made the date worth more.

MONTHS · FID TO FIRST GAS

SE Asia · Iron Ore

Paid on 6 March, Re-dated 12 March

An iron ore invoice paid by Glencore was re-dated and sold to a bank within days. It sits at the centre of a three-country fight between Glencore, its former partner and their lenders.

INVOICE · PAID, THEN SOLD

China · Iron Ore

Value-Chain Series

▸ Audio · 16:31

Beijing has spent four years and three supply embargoes fighting for control of the iron ore benchmark. It has won the reference, not a lower price, and the lever that will move the price is Simandou.

TRADES · 2022 TIMESTAMPED WINDOW

Europe · Oil & Gas

The €300 Million Confession

Saipem and Subsea7 published a €300m annual synergy built on fleet optimisation and reduced bidding overlap. Twelve months later Brussels opened Phase II on the same industrial facts, then stopped the clock.

SYNERGY · PHASE II SUSPENDED

Latin America · Oil

▸ Audio · 16:55

Sixty-Five Billion

Washington announced control of 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan crude. The deal's own revenue arithmetic sells eleven billion, and producing 65 billion inside the term would need 7.12m bpd sustained.

SOLD · 65bn ANNOUNCED

West Africa · Manganese

▸ Audio · 14:13

Eighty-Three Days

Eramet's strategy document could not survive its own results: €672m of losses in six quarters against €441m of equity.

LOST · €441m EQUITY LEFT

SE Asia · Nickel

Value-Chain Series

6% to 60%. Control not included.

Indonesia rebuilt the world's nickel supply in a decade. It also broke the price, handed the margin to Chinese capital and coal, and built a machine the West's green rules now exclude. Owning a market is not controlling it.

OF WORLD SUPPLY · FROM <6%

Latin America · Risk

The $100 Billion Illusion of Control

Vale's disclosures certified 100% of its dams stable. One, rated 1.09 against a 1.5 benchmark, liquefied without warning: the confusion of documentation with control, priced in lives and market cap.

ERASED IN ONE SESSION

West Africa · Steel

Make-or-Buy Series

$8bn spent. Not a tonne of steel made.

Forty-seven years and more than $8bn after construction began, Ajaokuta has never lit its blast furnace. That record is the base rate every West African build case should price.

SPENT · FURNACE NEVER LIT

Latin America · Copper

Value-Chain Series

$4.3bn out the door. BHP read the cycle.

BHP sold its silver stream rather than defend it: a capital-allocation tell about a major pre-funding its dividend before a copper-heavy capex peak, a contested Samarco appeal, and a Chinese buyer consolidating its iron-ore book.

SILVER STREAM · SOLD

Middle East · Oil

Value-Chain Series

28× the oil that exists. Trade the shape.

Paper barrels trade at roughly 28× the physical market. Positioning on the spot price misreads a market whose real signal lives in the shape of the curve, not the level.

PAPER TO PHYSICAL

The briefings on film

The value chain, on film.

From the rock to the market. Sourced films on the geology, commodities and fields behind the notes above.

New feature film · Geology

Ground Truth.

Geology sets the limits of every mine and oil field. Capital and policy decide what happens inside them. Seven minutes on how the rock was made, and why it still sets the cost curve.

7 minutesHD filmSources on screen

Watch the film Read the four findings

Four findings

Six intervals hold the source rocks for over 90% of the oil and gas found.
About 200 times: copper ore against copper’s average in the crust.
About 8% a year: oil decline with no new investment.
73% and 67%: DR Congo’s share of world cobalt, Indonesia’s of nickel.

Iron Ore

The seaborne trade the price forgets.

Copper

The deficit everyone models, nobody supplies.

Aluminium

The most electricity-intensive metal we make.

Coal

The capacity the world keeps building anyway.

Feature film · Offshore & subsea

Life of Field.

How a subsea development is engineered, installed, operated and removed, from spoolbase to recovery.

6 minutesHD filmDeck available

Watch the film Get the Life of Field deck

Practitioner's challengeWe have hidden twenty-one details in the film that only someone who has worked offshore will spot. Count them, then get the answer key.