Saturday's material, sorted by the unit each number is written in.
Cubic metres
The most interesting document in Congolese petroleum this week is a reply letter. Since February the Inspection générale des finances has been running a probe into fuel imports in the southern zone under mission order OM007/2026, relaunched on 20 April, 12 May and 9 September, and the file turns on 100,000 cubic metres of product, roughly 100 million litres, that the press values at 80 to 110 million dollars. Ultimate Oil & Gas RDC, named as a sub-contractor on the Mbuji-Mayi–Nguba works, says in its letter of 21 May that the volumes never entered its stock accounts, that it never used Beira, Dar es Salaam, Tanga, Walvis Bay or Durban, and that thirteen IM4 exoneration declarations filed in its name during 2025 and 2026 were used by other importers to clear long-standing IM7 warehouse entries. SISC SA has twice denied any sub-contracting link or receipt of the volumes. The company's defence points the inspectors at the customs chain: delivery notes, gauging reports and truck registrations held by the DGDA, plus the 2006 ZRA–DGDA mutual assistance accord that allows Zambian transit statistics to be cross-checked against Congolese ones. Anyone moving product north through Kasumbalesa should assume those transit statistics are about to be read closely.
Pounds
COMEX copper settled at 6.6915 dollars a pound, 14,752 dollars a tonne, up 5.7% from 6.33 in a single session. The physical side of that screen is sitting in Louisiana: so much metal has been shipped into the United States that warehousing companies are asking the exchange to approve additional capacity in New Orleans, with trucks and sheds backed up against ballooning storage requirements. Sprott, separately, expects mine supply to record its first annual decline since 2017.
Barrels
Brent fell 6.0% to 99.29 dollars, 752 dollars a tonne, after Iran on 14 September set out an agreement with Gulf states on a temporary reopening of Hormuz. The products followed rather than led: ULSD lost 2.4% to 4.844 dollars a gallon, 1,516 dollars a tonne, and RBOB 1.9% to 3.2555. Sulphur in China stayed put at 7,669 yuan, 1,145 dollars a tonne, which is what a freight-driven rally looks like when the freight risk is withdrawn.
Tonnes of flour
The International Grains Council puts world flour trade at its lowest in five years, with sharp import declines from Sudan and Iraq doing most of the damage. Both are wheat-flour buyers whose demand normally lands on Black Sea and Turkish mills, so the tonnage does not vanish, it migrates up the chain into raw wheat or disappears with the household budgets behind it. CBOT wheat closed at 714.25 cents a bushel, 262 dollars a tonne, up 1.0%.
Litres
India's oil marketing companies took delivery of 845 million litres of ethanol in August, holding petrol blending at 20%, and Groww Mutual Fund has filed a draft offer document with SEBI for a sugar and ethanol index fund, which is roughly when a policy programme becomes a retail product. Raw sugar went the other way, down 4.2% to 17.4 cents a pound, 384 dollars a tonne.
Dollars of debt
Washington is lending 414 million dollars to Global Atomic's Dasa uranium mine in Niger, 40% above the 295 million proposed in 2024. In Nigeria's Niger state, a different jurisdiction with a confusingly similar name, all mining was suspended on Friday and a round-the-clock curfew imposed in Minna after 37 deaths, a crackdown now drawing criticism from the artisanal sector that supplies the state's tin and gold.
Also counted. The Port of Tilbury has expanded storage for Cefetra covering up to 65,000 tonnes of animal feed imports. The six largest iron ore producers depleted 11.1 billion tonnes of saleable reserves between 2016 and 2025 without replacing them. Covestro, Fertiglobe and MB Energy signed an ammonia memorandum. The Baltic Dry held at 3,370 and cobalt at 40,120 dollars a tonne, both unchanged. Milenge district in Luapula is targeting 40,000 tonnes of maize by 2031 across 4,600 farmers.