The long file: the war-risk map moves 1,200 miles north
Houthi forces say they hit the Saudi-flagged product tanker NCC Wafa (IMO 9688348) with ballistic missiles off Yanbu, in the northern Red Sea, and that this is the eighth Saudi oil tanker targeted since a blockade declared on 22 July, with 29 more vessels turned back. Damage has not been independently confirmed, and ship-tracking analysts note the vessel last transmitted on 19 July, southbound toward Bab el-Mandeb, dark since. The stated logic, delivered as a siege for a siege, is that vessels re-routing to avoid the strait will be pursued at the loading end instead.
Yanbu is where the East-West pipeline surfaces on the Red Sea coast, which is to say it is the piece of infrastructure Saudi Arabia built precisely so that barrels would not have to leave through Hormuz. A credible threat over the northern Red Sea takes both exits off the board at once, and it does so for the shortest, cheapest routing to Europe and the Mediterranean.
Brent, for its part, settled at 80.42 dollars a barrel on 5 August, down from 90.12, a fall of 10.8%. Freight has gone the other way: the Baltic Dry Index climbed 93 points to 2,936, a fourth consecutive advance and a three-week high, with Capesize Pacific tonnage still working around the Port Hedland strikes. Hulls are getting dearer while the cargo inside them gets cheaper, and the insurance line for anything loading on the Saudi Red Sea coast is the number to ask for before the freight number.
Short files
El Teniente. Codelco has suspended development and construction at Andes Norte, the deep extension of the El Teniente division, as a preventive measure. Six months of collected data point to what the company calls an emergent seismic phenomenon, distinct in character from the mining-induced seismicity El Teniente has managed for decades under panel caving, and associated with the greater depth of the Andes Norte works. Contractors on development and construction are stood down under a phased process; monitoring systems and production areas continue to run. Copper on COMEX closed at 6.6455 dollars a pound, up 3.3% on the session, with Cochilco marking a record high.
Nitrogen slips, phosphate holds. Urea printed 402.50 dollars a tonne on 5 August, down 3.6% from 417.50, the first look under 410 in this run. DAP barely moved, 798 dollars from 800. Against that, Mosaic reported second-quarter phosphate sales volumes of 1.4 million tonnes, a reminder that the phosphate side is shipping into a market that has not yet given ground the way the nitrogen side has.
Kinshasa's cost of money. The Banque Centrale du Congo has taken its policy rate to 12.5%, marking a year under Governor André Wameso. Elsewhere in the same budget, the state committed 2,014.5 billion Congolese francs to national education in the first half of 2026, stated at 875.8 million dollars, which implies a working rate near 2,300 CDF to the dollar, and the Primature holds 480.5 billion CDF of credits for the third quarter. Cheaper local credit and a stable franc change the arithmetic for Congolese buyers who have been paying for fertilizer and fuel in advance.
Dar es Salaam wants the cargo. Tanzania is pairing the Standard Gauge Railway with a billion-dollar UAE-backed port modernisation, aimed squarely at Copperbelt and Congolese volumes that currently choose Durban or Beira. Saudi milling group Arabian Mills, meanwhile, reported second-quarter profit up 10% on flour growth, and AGP opened its new grain export facility at the Port of Grays Harbor. Wheat on CBOT was 638 cents a bushel, off 0.2%.