https://ombogojr.com/digest/ Commodities, markets, and the occasional map — every edition of The Digest. en Tue, 28 Jul 2026 20:15:07 GMT https://ombogojr.com/digest/e/wire-brief-lusaka-wants-an-exchange-katanga-wants-a-list-2026-07-28/ https://ombogojr.com/digest/e/wire-brief-lusaka-wants-an-exchange-katanga-wants-a-list-2026-07-28/ Tue, 28 Jul 2026 20:15:07 GMT Michael Ombogo Tuesday 28 July 2026. Copper 6.336 USD/lb, cobalt unchanged at 56,290 USD/t, Brent 83.86. LUSAKA, A continental metals exchange enters a manifesto Jito Kayumba, adviser to President Hakainde Hichilema on finance and investment, said Zambia intends to spearhead a pan-African minerals and metals excha… https://ombogojr.com/digest/e/column-india-would-rather-build-its-own-urea-2026-07-28/ https://ombogojr.com/digest/e/column-india-would-rather-build-its-own-urea-2026-07-28/ Tue, 28 Jul 2026 11:39:32 GMT Michael Ombogo Tuesday, 28 July 2026 The biggest fertilizer number of the week came out of a cabinet room in Delhi, and it will be read in Ruwais, Mesaieed and Sohar long before it is read in Indian fields. Ten million tonnes, eight or nine plants India's Union Cabinet has approved NIPU-2026, its first dedicated u… https://ombogojr.com/digest/e/dossier-kinshasa-borrows-dollars-at-eight-percent-2026-07-27/ https://ombogojr.com/digest/e/dossier-kinshasa-borrows-dollars-at-eight-percent-2026-07-27/ Mon, 27 Jul 2026 12:46:30 GMT Michael Ombogo The file: Kinshasa sells dollars to itself The Democratic Republic of Congo goes to its own investors tomorrow with a dollar-denominated Treasury bond. The finance ministry is asking for 40 million dollars over two years at 8% annual interest, with bids due at noon on 28 July, principal amortised ev… https://ombogojr.com/digest/e/q-a-kinshasa-takes-the-pen-lloyd-s-takes-the-exit-2026-07-26/ https://ombogojr.com/digest/e/q-a-kinshasa-takes-the-pen-lloyd-s-takes-the-exit-2026-07-26/ Sun, 26 Jul 2026 21:57:21 GMT Michael Ombogo What exactly did Kinshasa hand itself on Saturday? The power to legislate alone for the length of the parliamentary recess. Senators voted the enabling bill in second reading on 25 July at the Palais du Peuple, after the National Assembly passed it the day before, and the text has gone to Félix Tshi… https://ombogojr.com/digest/e/three-things-oil-jumps-the-fence-copper-slips-congo-opens-th-2026-07-26/ https://ombogojr.com/digest/e/three-things-oil-jumps-the-fence-copper-slips-congo-opens-th-2026-07-26/ Sun, 26 Jul 2026 18:51:21 GMT Michael Ombogo Prices as of 26 July 2026. 1. Oil clears $96 and the fertiliser bill follows Brent settled at $96.78 a barrel, a 6.3% jump from $91.01, after US strikes on Iran reopened the question of whether the Strait of Hormuz stays navigable. For now the Red Sea bypass stays open and crude keeps moving. The kn… https://ombogojr.com/digest/e/market-note-the-gulf-reprices-everything-2026-07-25/ https://ombogojr.com/digest/e/market-note-the-gulf-reprices-everything-2026-07-25/ Sat, 25 Jul 2026 22:27:23 GMT Michael Ombogo Brent above 100 dollars, WTI near 90, a US blockade off Iran and Chilean copper down two-thirds of a million tonnes. The week the Gulf started setting the price of things it does not even ship. The Gulf, and everything downstream of it Oil is doing the thing everyone spent two years insuring against… https://ombogojr.com/digest/e/letter-the-sulphur-nobody-priced-2026-07-25/ https://ombogojr.com/digest/e/letter-the-sulphur-nobody-priced-2026-07-25/ Sat, 25 Jul 2026 10:54:46 GMT Michael Ombogo A letter on the sulphur nobody priced The market spent the back half of last month selling the Hormuz spike as if the tankers had merely been delayed. Crude came off the boil, the screens calmed, and everyone congratulated themselves for not panicking. Then confirmed flow through the strait collapse… https://ombogojr.com/digest/e/wire-koch-buys-into-morocco-urea-rides-the-gulf-zimbabwe-bol-2026-07-24/ https://ombogojr.com/digest/e/wire-koch-buys-into-morocco-urea-rides-the-gulf-zimbabwe-bol-2026-07-24/ Fri, 24 Jul 2026 21:37:59 GMT Michael Ombogo Wire brief, 24 July Koch takes an equity seat in Moroccan phosphate Wichita's Koch Ag & Energy Solutions has agreed to buy 50% of OCP Nutricrops' JFC I, the Jorf Lasfar phosphate joint venture, deepening a partnership the two firms first widened only days earlier. The timing is the story: it lan… https://ombogojr.com/digest/e/notebook-the-gulf-twitches-phosphate-sails-west-2026-07-24/ https://ombogojr.com/digest/e/notebook-the-gulf-twitches-phosphate-sails-west-2026-07-24/ Fri, 24 Jul 2026 11:20:07 GMT Michael Ombogo Notebook The market spent this week reading the Strait of Hormuz like a barometer, and the needle is not steady. The interim peace collapsed and tanker traffic through the strait thinned out, which is the sort of sentence that moves urea, sulphur and ammonia before it moves oil. Anyone lifting nitro… https://ombogojr.com/digest/e/governments-take-the-wheel-2026-07-23/ https://ombogojr.com/digest/e/governments-take-the-wheel-2026-07-23/ Thu, 23 Jul 2026 11:27:07 GMT Michael Ombogo The theme this week is capitals, not exchanges. India is legislating urea into being, the Pentagon is naming a lithium price, Chile is chasing new buyers by decree and Panama may build a state miner to reopen a mine it shut. Prices are following policy more than the other way round. Nitrogen goes po… https://ombogojr.com/digest/e/interrogation-desk-hormuz-copper-s-buyers-urea-goes-home-2026-07-23/ https://ombogojr.com/digest/e/interrogation-desk-hormuz-copper-s-buyers-urea-goes-home-2026-07-23/ Thu, 23 Jul 2026 10:43:50 GMT Michael Ombogo A conversation with the only analyst who always agrees with me. Start with the Gulf. How bad is Hormuz? Bad enough that the interim peace has effectively collapsed and Hormuz traffic is falling again. That strait carries the sulphur, ammonia and urea that leave Saudi, Qatari, Emirati and Iranian ter… https://ombogojr.com/digest/e/three-things-two-chokepoints-phosphate-crosses-the-atlantic-2026-07-22/ https://ombogojr.com/digest/e/three-things-two-chokepoints-phosphate-crosses-the-atlantic-2026-07-22/ Wed, 22 Jul 2026 20:08:18 GMT Michael Ombogo Two chokepoints at once The US-Iran fighting has run into a second week and now threatens two of the arteries that move Gulf energy and fertilizer to the world. Trump warned he would take out a bridge or power plant near Tehran for every strike on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, while the Houthis… https://ombogojr.com/digest/e/phosphate-money-gulf-nerves-copper-s-squeeze-2026-07-22/ https://ombogojr.com/digest/e/phosphate-money-gulf-nerves-copper-s-squeeze-2026-07-22/ Wed, 22 Jul 2026 11:28:20 GMT Michael Ombogo The loudest signals this week came from opposite ends of the periodic table: phosphate rock repricing itself around Washington's trade politics, and copper cathode vanishing from Chinese warehouses. Here is where the numbers sit. InstrumentLevelMove Comex copper (Sep)$6.55/lb+3.3%, <2% off record… https://ombogojr.com/digest/e/the-fertilizer-money-moves-west-2026-07-22/ https://ombogojr.com/digest/e/the-fertilizer-money-moves-west-2026-07-22/ Wed, 22 Jul 2026 10:23:55 GMT Michael Ombogo Wednesday, 22 July 2026 The interesting money this week is in rock and gas, not metal, so let me start there and come back to the Copperbelt at the end. The headline deal is Koch and OCP. Koch Ag & Energy is buying into Jorf Fertilizers Company I, an OCP Nutricrops plant at Jorf Lasfar in Morocc… https://ombogojr.com/digest/e/five-questions-copper-runs-chile-floods-2026-07-22/ https://ombogojr.com/digest/e/five-questions-copper-runs-chile-floods-2026-07-22/ Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:23:14 GMT Michael Ombogo Five Questions I'm Getting This Morning Tuesday, 21 July 2026 1. Is copper actually about to break its record? It is behaving like it. The metal is closing in on its US record as China's spot premium went from zero to a 14-month high inside a week and Shanghai bonded stockpiles fell 82%. More tellin… https://ombogojr.com/digest/e/three-that-matter-copper-s-physical-tell-2026-07-21/ https://ombogojr.com/digest/e/three-that-matter-copper-s-physical-tell-2026-07-21/ Tue, 21 Jul 2026 23:50:42 GMT Michael Ombogo Three things that matter, 21 July A quiet-looking Tuesday that was anything but: copper ran at China's back, Chile's north drowned, and the Strait of Hormuz found a fresh way to unsettle the sulphur desk. 1. Copper's squeeze is physical, not just tariff noise Comex September copper jumped 3.3% to $6… https://ombogojr.com/digest/e/prompt-metal-the-physical-market-speaks-2026-07-21/ https://ombogojr.com/digest/e/prompt-metal-the-physical-market-speaks-2026-07-21/ Tue, 21 Jul 2026 21:24:46 GMT Michael Ombogo Tuesday, 21 July 2026 The copper story has stopped being about forecasts and started being about physical metal that nobody can find. Comex September copper jumped 3.3% to $6.55 a pound ($14,440 a tonne), less than 2% off June's record, while LME three-month rose 1.7% to $13,851. New York now trades…