(Bloomberg) -- Big Oil kicks off earnings season this week, just as US President Donald Trump talks up America’s fossil fuel potential. West Africa’s cocoa woes raise risks of another supply deficit. And the world’s top cobalt miner plans to keep churning out the battery metal despite a price rout.
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Here are five notable charts to consider in global commodity markets as the week gets underway.
Coal
Trump continues to support coal’s role in the US energy grid. While domestic use of the dirtiest fossil fuel is steadily declining, US exports have been climbing to meet rising international demand. The International Energy Agency in December revised its forecast to show global demand will increase through 2027. “Nothing can destroy coal,” Trump said. “Not the weather, not a bomb.”
Cocoa
West African cocoa farms are being buffeted by the harshest Harmattan season in six years, hurting production at a time of tight global supplies and high prices. Farmers are already seeing soil dry out and full-grown pods wither on trees. That’s shrinking prospects for the approaching mid-crop harvest and raising risks of a fourth-straight world supply deficit, keeping already expensive cocoa prices elevated.
Renewables
China’s expansion of its renewables capacity continues to accelerate, with the country set to add a record 367 gigawatts of solar and wind plants, according to BloombergNEF estimates. That comes after China logged another record year for wind and solar installations, allowing the Asian nation to hit its 2030 renewables target six years early.
Oil
Trump has vowed to fill the US’s strategic oil reserve again “right to the top” after it reached lows not seen since the 1980s under President Joe Biden. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which has a maximum capacity of about 700 million barrels, currently stands at 394.6 million barrels following a record selloff during Biden’s administration. The emergency cache was created in the aftermath of the Arab oil embargo in the 1970s.
Cobalt
China cobalt king CMOC Group Ltd., which produced out a record amount of the battery metal in 2024, is targeting similar output this year following a ramp-up of two African mines. Elevated production from the world’s top cobalt miner could further pressure prices of a metal used in everything from electric-vehicle batteries to aerospace alloys.