Commodities
Amazon rainforest gold mining is poisoning scores of threatened species
© Reuters. A scientist uses a miniature anesthesia mask to knock out a small-eared pygmy rice rat while researching for signs of mercury contamination in animals, at the Los Amigos Biological Station, in Los Amigos, in the Madre de Dios region, Peru May 24, 2023. RE
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By Gloria Dickie and Jake Spring
LOS AMIGOS BIOLOGICAL STATION, Peru (Reuters) – In a camping tent in the Peruvian jungle, four scientists crowded around a tiny patient: An Amazonian rodent that could fit in the palm of a human hand.
The researchers placed the small-eared pygmy rice rat into a plastic chamber and piped in anesthetic gas until it rolled over, asleep. Removing the creature from the chamber, they fitted it with a miniature anesthetic mask and measured its body parts with a ruler before gently pulling hairs from its back with tweezers.
The hairs, bundled into a tiny plastic bag, would be carried to a nearby lab at the Los Amigos Biological Station for testing to determine whether the rat is yet another victim of mercury contamination.
Los Amigos lies in the rainforest of southeastern Peru’s Madre de Dios region where some 46,000 miners are searching for gold along river banks in the country’s epicenter of small-scale mining.
Tests like this are providing the first extensive indications that mercury from illegal and poorly regulated mining is affecting terrestrial mammals in the Amazon (NASDAQ:) rainforest, according to preliminary findings from a world-first study shared with Reuters.
Absorbing or ingesting mercury-contaminated water or food has been found to cause neurological illness, immune diseases and reproductive failure in humans and some birds.
But scientists don’t yet know its full effects on other forest animals in the Amazon, where more than 10,000 species of plants and animals are at a high risk of extinction due to destruction of the rainforest.
Reuters accompanied the researchers in Madre de Dios over three days in late May and reviewed their previously unreported findings. Their data showed mercury contamination from informal gold mining making its way into the biodiversity hotspot’s mammals — from rodents to ocelots to titi monkeys.
Leaders from the eight countries around the Amazon meeting in Brazil next week will discuss how to end illegal gold mining.
The rapid expansion of mining in the rainforest over the past 15 years is seen by regional governments as an environmental and health threat. Colombia has proposed a regional pact to end illegal mining, although has not suggested a deadline to reach that goal, a government spokesperson told Reuters.
A research team from the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, the California nonprofit Field Projects International and Peruvian partner Conservación Amazônica have collected fur and feather samples from more than 2,600 animals representing at least 260 species, including emperor tamarins and brown capuchins, in the 4.5 square kilometer (1.7 square mile) area around the Los Amigos station.
While the scientists began testing for mercury at Los Amigos in 2021, some of the samples were gathered as early as 2018.
Of the 330 primate samples tested so far, virtually all showed mercury contamination — and in some cases the levels were “astounding,” said biologist Mrinalini Erkenswick Watsa of the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance.
Erkenswick Watsa said they could not share specific readings before their findings are published in peer-reviewed journals.
But a study last year led by biogeochemist Jacqueline Gerson of the University of Colorado Boulder, drawing on the same data generated at Los Amigos, found that songbirds living around the station had mercury levels as much as 12 times higher than those in a forest farther away from gold mining.
During Reuters’ visit to Los Amigos, scientists caught rodents in metal traps baited with peanut butter and snagged birds and a bat in mist nets floating through the forest.
A MINING BOOM
The vast majority of small-scale or artisanal miners in the Amazon are mining illegally in protected areas, or working informally – outside reserves but without explicit permission from the government.
Informal miners even in government-designated mining corridors, which includes much of the Madre de Dios region, operate with little regulatory oversight.
Some researchers say this means that many small-scale mining operations disregard environmental laws restricting deforestation and the use of toxic liquid mercury to separate precious metal from sediment.
Some of that mercury is then absorbed into the environment and, in some cases, into endangered species.
“When someone buys their gold engagement ring, they could be causing the Amazon to get a little bit sicker,” said Erkenswick Watsa.
Peruvians have mined gold for centuries. Artisanal mining boomed in the Madre de Dios region during the 2008 Great Recession as gold prices spiked, driven up by investors fleeing financial markets and national currencies for a safe place to put their money.
Tracking artisanal miners is notoriously difficult. It is thought to make up about a fifth of worldwide gold production and is valued between $30 billion and $40 billion, according to nonprofit Artisanal Gold Council (AGC) which promotes the sustainable development of the sector.
That’s around 500 metric tons annually as of 2023, up from about 330 metric tons in 2011, AGC data shows. Peru, the largest gold producer in Latin America, churns out around 150 metric tons of artisanal gold every year, according to the AGC.
In Madre de Dios, about 6,000 miners work with formal permission while roughly 40,000 operate informally or illegally, according to a 2022 USAID report.
The Peruvian government declared a state of emergency in Madre de Dios in 2019 and deployed 1,500 police and soldiers to the region to crack down on illegal mining.
The operation pushed many miners out of protected areas and into a government-designated mining corridor, according to satellite monitoring project MAAP.
Peru’s environment ministry did not respond to questions about mercury contamination.
In 2021, mining arrived on Los Amigos’ doorstep. The station sits on the edge of the mining corridor and overlooks a barren curve across the river where miners have stripped away the forest and replaced it with mining pits.
“This is a region in Peru where there’s been an economic boom, and it’s been associated with gold mining,” said Gideon Erkenswick, a researcher and Mrinalini’s husband, who has come to Los Amigos since 2009 to study wildlife diseases and primates. “This place is being transformed by it.”
The Peruvian government estimates that illegal miners dump about 180 metric tons of mercury in Madre de Dios annually.
The miners mix mercury with fine river silt in oil drums. The mercury binds to the gold fragments, resulting in lumps known as amalgams. Burning the amalgams turns the mercury to vapor which floats into the atmosphere, leaving only gold behind.
This gaseous mercury has been found to infiltrate the forest through pores in plant leaves, according to research published in Nature Communications last year.
Mercury vapor sticks to dust and aerosol particles, floating down through the canopy and landing on leaves. When it rains, that mercury is washed to the forest floor.
MERCURY MENAGERIE
Shortly after dawn, biologist Jorge Luis Mendoza Silva gently untangled a brilliant red, yellow and orange band-tailed manakin bird from a fine-mesh net.
Back in the sampling tent, the scientists tweezed clumps of the manakin’s breast feathers to be sent for analysis, before the bird is returned unharmed to the wild.
The machine incinerates the feathers at extremely high temperatures, measuring the emitted mercury.
Animals ingest mercury through their diet — plants, insects, or other animals. Those higher up the food chain generally have higher levels as they accumulate the mercury contained in their prey.
But scientists at the Los Amigos station are unsure where the mercury contamination in monkeys comes from, given fish or other foods traditionally high in the heavy metal aren’t typically on the menu.
Animals could be accumulating mercury from the water they drink, or the air they breathe, said Caroline Moore, a veterinary toxicologist with the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance studying mercury at Los Amigos.
How this will affect their health is not clear. The effects of mercury could show up in population size, she said. If mercury levels are high enough, it could prevent animals from reproducing.
“Are we noticing any changes in the number of babies that, for example, the tamarins are having?” Moore asked.
Those kinds of questions cannot be answered without more data, she said. In the years to come, scientists hope to create a long-term dataset in Peru and other mining hotspots to understand how mercury could be affecting imperiled mammals globally.
“It is widespread throughout the Amazon Basin, it’s widespread throughout the Congo Basin and Indonesia — this is a global tropics issue,” said ecotoxicologist Chris Sayers at the University of California Los Angeles, who has studied the impact of mercury on birds in Madre de Dios.
By Anna Hirtenstein
LONDON (Reuters) -Oil prices surged on Friday and were on track for a third straight week of gains as traders focused on potential supply disruptions from more sanctions on Russia and Iran.
futures gained $2.66, or 3.5%, to $79.58 a barrel by 1154 GMT, reaching their highest in more than three months. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures advanced $2.64, or 3.6%, to $76.56.
Over the three weeks to Jan. 10, Brent has climbed 9% while WTI has jumped 10%.
“There are several drivers today. Longer term, the market is focused on the prospect for additional sanctions,” said Ole Hansen, head of commodity strategy at Saxo Bank. “Short term, the weather is very cold across the U.S., driving up demand for fuels.”
Ahead of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, expectations are mounting over potential supply disruptions from tighter sanctions against Iran and Russia while oil stockpiles remain low.
This could materialise even earlier, with U.S. President Joe Biden expected to announce new sanctions targeting Russia’s economy before Trump takes office. A key target of sanctions so far has been Russia’s oil and shipping industry.
“That would be the farewell gift of the Biden administration,” said PVM analyst Tamas Varga. Existing and possible further sanctions, as well as market expectations of draws on fuel inventories because of the cold weather, are driving prices higher, he added.
The U.S. weather bureau expects central and eastern parts of the country to experience below-average temperatures. Many regions in Europe have also been hit by extreme cold and are likely to continue to experience a colder than usual start to the year, which JPMorgan analysts expect to boost demand.
“We anticipate a significant year-over-year increase in global oil demand of 1.6 million barrels a day in the first quarter of 2025, primarily boosted by … demand for , kerosene and LPG,” they said in a note on Friday.
Meanwhile, the premium on the front-month Brent contract over the six-month contract reached its widest since August this week, potentially indicating supply tightness at a time of rising demand.
Inflation worries are also delivering a boost to prices, said Saxo Bank’s Hansen. Investors are growing concerned about Trump’s planned tariffs, which could drive inflation higher. A popular trade to hedge against rising consumer prices is through buying oil futures.
Oil prices have rallied despite the U.S. dollar strengthening for six straight weeks, making crude oil more expensive outside the United States.
By Karen Braun
NAPERVILLE, Illinois (Reuters) -If anything can derail a price rally, it is a curveball from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Chicago corn futures have ticked slightly lower to start the year, but they had climbed nearly 12% in the final two months of 2024, an unusually strong late-year run.
Speculators now hold their most bullish corn view in two years, and luckily for them, the trade has already accepted that last year’s U.S. corn yield was a whopper.
Friday will feature USDA’s biggest data release of the year, with primary focus on the most recent U.S. corn and soybean harvests. U.S. quarterly stocks, U.S. winter wheat seedings and routine global supply and demand updates will also compete for attention.
U.S. CORN AND BEANS
On average, analysts peg U.S. corn yield at 182.7 bushels per acre, down from 183.1 in November. The trade estimate is more than 5 bushels above last year’s record and above USDA’s initial trendline yield for the first time in six years.
Bearish yield outcomes are less likely when the estimates are already large, and only four of 19 polled analysts see corn yield rising from November. However, the range of trade estimates (2.4 bpa) is smaller than usual, flagging the potential for surprise.
In the last decade, analysts anticipated the wrong direction of U.S. corn yield in January only once (2019). They did so three times for soybean yield (2016, 2019, 2022).
But bets are somewhat off for U.S. soybean yield outcomes because USDA’s slashing of the forecast in November was the month’s largest cut in 31 years. Trade estimates indicate some uncertainty around U.S. soybean production as the ranges for both yield and harvested area are historically wide.
Regardless, U.S. soybean supplies are expected to remain ample and at multi-year highs. However, USDA last month pegged 2024-25 U.S. corn ending stocks below the prior year’s level for the first time.
If USDA cuts U.S. corn ending stocks on Friday as expected, it would be the agency’s seventh consecutive monthly reduction. Such a streak has not been observed in at least two decades, reflective of the strong demand that has recently lifted corn prices.
From a market reaction standpoint, these demand dynamics could be somewhat insulating if the U.S. corn crop comes in larger than expected. The last two times CBOT corn had a distinctly negative reaction on January report day were 2012 and 2024, the latter sparked by a huge yield above all trade estimates.
U.S. WHEAT
USDA will not officially issue 2025-26 outlooks until May, but the wheat market will receive its first piece of 2025-26 U.S. crop intel on Friday with the winter wheat planting survey. Total (EPA:) U.S. winter wheat acres are pegged at 33.37 million, very close to both last year and the five-year average.
Analysts have had a rough time anticipating the planting survey in the last two years, coming in almost 1.4 million acres too high last year but lowballing by nearly 2.5 million acres in 2023.
Wheat traders have struggled to find viable bullish narratives despite wheat stocks among major exporters seen dropping to 17-year lows, so another big miss in the U.S. wheat acreage could either support or undermine the recent sentiment.
SOUTH AMERICA
The U.S. crops will probably dominate the headlines on Friday, but it is not too early to watch out for forecast changes in South America. Analysts see USDA upping Brazil’s 2024-25 soybean harvest to a record 170.28 million metric tons from the previous 169 million.
USDA has increased Brazil’s soy crop in three of the last eight Januarys, both on area and yield improvements, and many industry participants have already been factoring in a number north of 170 million tons.
For Argentina, there are already fears that ongoing dry weather could eventually warrant more significant cuts to soybean and corn crops than are anticipated for Friday. American and European weather model runs on Thursday remained stingy with the rainfall over the next two weeks.
USDA already hiked Argentina’s soybean output last month on higher area. The agency increased the crop last January but reduced it in the prior three Januarys. Current crop conditions are slightly worse than a year ago but better than in the prior three years.
Karen Braun is a market analyst for Reuters. Views expressed above are her own.
Investing.com– Oil prices steadied Thursday as traders digested data showing an unexpected increase in US product inventories, while weak economic data from top importer China weighed.
At 05:25 ET (10:25 GMT), expiring in March gained 0.1% to $76.25 a barrel, while rose 0.1% to $73.37 a barrel.
The crude benchmarks had slumped more than 1% on Wednesday, but trading ranges, and volumes, are likely to be limited throughout Thursday with the US market closed to honor former President Jimmy Carter, ahead of a state funeral later in the session.
China inflation muted in December
Chinese inflation, as measured by the , remained unchanged in December, while the shrank for a 27th consecutive month, data showed on Thursday.
The reading pointed to limited improvement in China’s prolonged disinflationary trend, even as the government doled out its most aggressive round of stimulus measures yet through late-2024.
China is the world’s biggest oil importer, and has been a key source of anxiety for crude markets. Traders fear that weak economic growth in the country will eat into oil demand.
The country is also facing potential economic headwinds from the incoming Donald Trump administration in the US, as Trump has vowed to impose steep trade tariffs on Beijing.
US oil product inventories rise sharply
U.S. gasoline and distillate inventories grew substantially more than expected in the week to January 3, government data showed on Wednesday.
inventories grew 6.3 million barrels against expectations of 0.5 mb, while grew 6.1 mb on expectations of 0.5 mb.
Overall crude also shrank less than expected, at 0.96 mb, against expectations of 1.8 mb.
The build in product inventories marked an eighth straight week of outsized product builds, and spurred concerns that demand in the world’s biggest fuel consumer was cooling.
While cold weather in the country spurred some demand for heating, it also disrupted holiday travel in several areas.
EIA data also showed that US imports from Canada rose last week to the highest on record, ahead of incoming U.S. president Donald Trump’s plans to levy a 25% tariff on Canadian imports.
Canada has been the top source of U.S. oil imports for many years, and supplied more than half of the total U.S. crude imports in 2023.
Strength in the also weighed on crude prices, as the greenback shot back up to more than two-year highs on hawkish signals from the Federal Reserve.
A strong dollar pressures oil demand by making crude more expensive for international buyers.
(Ambar Warrick contributed to this article.)
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