Field Notes

Each Field Note tests a market story against its numbers.

Fourteen notes since April 2026, newest first, in three series: Risk, Value-Chain and Make-or-Buy. Thirteen of them carry 421 numbered sources in all, each a regulator, a court of record, a company’s own disclosure, or an established industry, research or news body.

Series Risk Value-Chain Make-or-Buy Emerging-risk model

Each note, the day it publishes Follow on LinkedIn Follow on X

Filter 14 field notes · newest first

Africa · Aluminium

Make-or-Buy Series

Mozal · Guinea · Indonesia · Zimbabwe · Ajaokuta

Mandates Without Megawatts

Governments from Conakry to Lilongwe are ordering miners to process at home. A smelter needs about 500 MW of firm power, and the record shows the decision that matters is who owns that power and the capital behind it.

FIRM POWER PER SMELTER

China · Copper

Maike Metals · He Jinbi · Xiamen Xinda · ICBC

RMB67.8 Billion of Claims: The Fall of He Jinbi

Maike Metals handled a quarter of China's copper imports on a trading margin of about one per cent. Its founder has been sentenced to life, according to Bloomberg, and has appealed. The filings show who was paid, and who was handed trust units carried at zero.

CLAIMS FILED · 863 CLAIMS

West Africa · Iron Ore

Simandou · Rio Tinto · Baowu · Guinea

The Fiscal Return Behind Guinea's $200 Billion Bet

Guinea's Simandou 2040 programme is costed at US$200 billion. The official fiscal model puts the state's revenue from Simandou at about US$20 billion over the same fifteen years, most of it after 2030.

STATE REVENUE · 2026–40 MODEL

SE Asia · Gas & LNG

Eni · Petronas · Kutei North

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

Glencore · Radiant World · Deutsche Bank

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

China Mineral Resources Group · Platts · Simandou

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

Saipem · Subsea7 · European Commission

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

Venezuela · PDVSA · ExxonMobil

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

Eramet · Weda Bay · Comilog

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

Indonesia · Tsingshan

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

Vale · Brumadinho

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

Ajaokuta Steel · Nigeria

$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

BHP · Wheaton · Antamina

$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

WTI · Brent · Hormuz

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 films on the value chain are now on the sector pages: Mining & metals → · Oil & gas →