Author: Reuters

(Reuters) -Frontier Lithium has formed a joint venture with Japanese trading house Mitsubishi to help advance lithium mining and processing in Ontario, sending the Canadian miner’s shares up 15% on Monday.

The deal will help finance the PAK Lithium Project mine and a planned lithium chemicals conversion facility, Frontier said, as the company aims to become a major supplier of the key mineral used in EV batteries to the North American supply chain.

Frontier shares were trading at C$1.06 after briefly hitting a five-month high earlier in the session.

Mitsubishi will buy a 7.5% stake in the project for C$25 million ($18 million) with an option to increase it to 25%, as per the terms of the agreement signed last week.

“Mitsubishi has significant previous experience in resource JVs and this partnership should improve market confidence to FID (for PAK Project),” said Stifel Canada analyst Cole McGill.

The PAK Lithium project encompasses about 27,000 hectares of land in Ontario, with two spodumene-bearing lithium deposits delineated since 2013. Spodumene concentrate is a type of lithium mineral ore.

($1 = 1.3560 Canadian dollars)

(Reporting by Kabir Dweit in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty and Sriraj Kalluvila)

By David Shepardson and Aatreyee Dasgupta

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Low-cost air carriers JetBlue Airways and Spirit Airlines canceled their $3.8-billion merger agreement on Monday, seeing no path forward after a U.S. judge blocked the deal in January on anti-competition concerns.

A successful deal would have created the fifth-largest carrier in the United States and helped Spirit ensure its survival, but the deal had been on the ropes ever since a Boston judge said it would harm consumers by reducing competition.

The decision is a victory for the Biden Administration, which has taken a hard line against tie-ups in the aviation sector and argued the deal would boost ticket prices for consumers.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said the decision by JetBlue “is yet another victory for the Justice Department’s work on behalf of American consumers” saying the merger “would have caused tens of millions of travelers to face higher fares and fewer choices.”

The administration has used antitrust action and other enforcement efforts to try to bring down prices for U.S. residents across several industries.

“With the ruling from the federal court and the Department of Justice’s continued opposition, the probability of getting the green light to move forward with the merger anytime soon is extremely low,” JetBlue CEO Joanna Geraghty told employees in an internal note seen by Reuters.

“Even if the ruling was overturned on appeal, we simply don’t see a path to regulatory approval by the required July 24 deadline.”

Spirit CEO Ted Christie said in a statement, “we concluded that current regulatory obstacles will not permit us to close this transaction in a timely fashion under the merger agreement.”

Under the agreement, JetBlue will pay Spirit $69 million. While the merger agreement was in effect, Spirit stockholders received approximately $425 million in total pre-payments.

Without the JetBlue deal, Spirit, the seventh-largest U.S. carrier, faces a rough road ahead. The ultra-low-cost carrier has grappled with weak demand in its key markets as it seeks to return to sustainable profitability. Some analysts have even suggested the company could face bankruptcy if it cannot shore up finances.

Spirit shares fell 14% in late morning trading, while JetBlue, the sixth-largest U.S carrier, shares rose 4%.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge William Young found the proposed deal was likely to hurt competition in the U.S. aviation market and could hike ticket prices.

That prompted JetBlue to raise doubts over the future of its deal, saying it might be unable to meet certain conditions required as part of the agreement.

JetBlue opted not to appeal a separate ruling that had declared its Northeast partnership with American Airlines anticompetitive.

JetBlue, which last month hiked baggage fees, said is working on numerous near-term efforts to boost revenue by more than $300 million and said it is on track to deliver $175-200 million in cost savings from its structural cost program and $75 million in maintenance savings from its fleet modernization.

A judge in May sided with the Justice Department and six states in a lawsuit challenging the joint venture that American and JetBlue entered into in 2020, called the “Northeast Alliance,” joining forces for flights in and out of New York City and Boston, coordinating schedules and pooling revenue.

Spirit said it was taking steps to ensure the strength of its balance sheet and ongoing operations and retained Perella Weinberg & Partners and Davis Polk & Wardwell as advisors.

(Reporting by Aatreyee Dasgupta in Bengaluru and David Shepardson in Washington; Editing by David Gaffen, Devika Syamnath, Arun Koyyur and Nick Zieminski)

LONDON (Reuters) – Late Irish singer and activist Sinéad O’Connor’s label demanded Donald Trump to stop using her music in political rallies, adding her to a list of artists from Taylor Swift to Rihanna who have denounced the former U.S. president.

The Dublin native, who was known for her outspoken views on religion, sex, feminism and war, would have been “disgusted, hurt, and insulted” to have her work misrepresented in this way by someone who she herself referred to as a “biblical devil,” the statement said.

Her longtime label Chrysalis Records and estate expressed “outrage” in a joint statement that Trump – the U.S. Republican frontrunner – had been playing her 1990 chart-topping hit “Nothing Compares 2 U” at his rallies.

“Throughout her life, it is well known that Sinéad O’Connor lived by a fierce moral code defined by honesty, kindness, fairness, and decency towards her fellow human beings,” they said on behalf of the singer, who died last July at the age of 56.

“As the guardians of her legacy, we demand that Donald Trump, and his associates desist from using her music immediately.”

The statement comes as Trump scored wins in Michigan, Missouri and Idaho Republican caucuses on Saturday, moving him closer to becoming his party’s White House standard-bearer and a likely general election rematch with U.S. President Joe Biden.

Many artists, or their representatives, have voiced similar objection to their compositions being played at Trump events over the years, including late American singer-guitarist Tom Petty, British singer-songwriter Adele, and rock band R.E.M.

(Reporting by Muvija M, Editing by Paul Sandle)

By Laura Sanicola

(Reuters) – The United States may sell its 1 million barrel Northeast gasoline reserve in fiscal year 2024, according to the draft text of a funding bill released on Sunday.

The reserve, first established in 2014 after Superstorm Sandy left motorists in the northeastern United States without fuel, is located in New York Harbor, New York, Boston, Massachusetts and Portland, Maine.

The proceeds from the sale of the refined products in the reserve would be deposited into the Treasury’s general fund, according to the text of the bill, which is likely to pass this week.

Once the Northeast Gasoline Supply Reserve is closed, the secretary of energy cannot establish any new regional petroleum product reserve unless funding is explicitly requested in advance of an annual budget submitted by the president and approved by Congress, the bill stipulates.

One barrel of gasoline contains approximately 42 gallons. Gasoline in New York Harbor is currently selling for about $2.29 per gallon.

The provision was included in a bill that also aims to prohibit Chinese entities from buying crude oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

The U.S. House of Representatives will have to vote on the bill first before the Senate can take up the package before Friday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said.

(Reporting by Laura Sanicola; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

By Leah Millis, Nathan Frandino and Rich McKay

CANADIAN, Texas (Reuters) -Fire crews in the Texas Panhandle on Friday were battling to get a tighter grip on the state’s largest wildfire on record, hoping to capitalize on a lull in incessant wind gusts that have fanned an inferno that has devastated the cattle-ranching region.

The deadly wildfire, dubbed the Smokehouse Creek Fire, has scorched more than 1 million acres (404,685 hectares), according to the latest figures from the Texas A&M Forest Service, provided on Thursday.

“Terrible is not strong enough of a word,” said Terrill Bartlett, owner of a family-run lumber company who serves as mayor of Canadian, Texas, the epicenter of the sprawling blaze. “The ground is just black in all directions.”

Since Monday, the fire has spread eastward across the Panhandle, pushing across the state’s border with Oklahoma. In its wake it has left at least two people dead, dozens of torched homes and hundreds of square miles of scorched grazing land.

While firefighters have gained a measure of control over the blaze, the danger has not passed, with the wind expected to pick up over the weekend, said Sean Dugan, a spokesperson for the Texas A&M Forest Service.

“We’re looking at the next few hot, dry days that will be windy,” he said. “Those heavy fuels will come back alive with dry and windy weather, kicking up embers and … carry them over into unburned fuel.”

Between 400 and 500 structures have been destroyed so far, based on a “premature assessment” that would likely change, Texas Governor Gregg Abbott said at a news briefing on Friday.

“We face enormous potential fire dangers as we head into this weekend,” Abbott said. “No one can let down their guard.”

Earlier, Canadian’s fire chief, Scott Brewster, said 109 homes were destroyed in the town and surrounding Hemphill County, as well as an unspecified number of other structures.

W. Nim Kidd, chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, said at the briefing that it was difficult to assess full damages with the fire still smoldering.

Kidd did not update the number of acres burned and the level of containment achieved by fire crews, saying he did not want to give people false confidence.

Earlier on Friday, Texas A&M’s Dugan said containment was conservatively estimated at 5%, up from 3% on Thursday.

SCENES OF DEVASTATION

The once-fertile grasslands around Canadian looked more like a war zone on Friday, with thousands of cattle corpses littering the charred fields, according to Wes Avent, who owns a local ranch supply store.

Avent turned his store into a makeshift station for distributing donated feed, fencing and other supplies to ranchers.

“Right now our biggest chore is to get feed to the cattle that survived,” he said. “We’ve got to get feed and hay out to these guys as fast as we can.”

A miles-long line of tractor trailers snaked along the highway into Canadian on Friday, waiting to deliver bales of cattle feed and other supplies to desperate ranchers.

The two people killed in the wildfire included a woman who succumbed to her injuries on Thursday, her family said on GoFundMe.com. She was rushed to a burn center in Oklahoma City after she was overcome with smoke and flames while driving her truck in Pampa, Texas, on Tuesday, local news reported.

An 83-year-old woman in Hutchinson County, northeast of Amarillo, was also killed in the fire, according to local media.

“As far as cattle, I don’t think anyone knows yet,” said Brewster, the fire chief. “I talked to one rancher and he said he lost 700 cattle. And that’s just one guy. There’s no telling what the tally will be, but it’ll be up there.”

Over the weekend, the weather forecast for the Texas Panhandle calls for no rain and winds of up to 45 miles (72 km) per hour, said Bob Oravec, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.

“These are ingredients for more fire,” Oravec said. “The winds have no moisture content coming from the southwest. It dries out the stuff that burns.”

According to the latest Texas A&M Forest Service numbers, the Smokehouse Creek Fire has now burned through 1.08 million acres (437,060 hectares), or nearly 1,700 square miles, an area larger than New York’s Long Island. That replaced a 2006 fire that charred about 900,000 acres (364,220 hectares) as the most expansive in state history.

Several smaller wildfires were burning in other parts of the Panhandle. The next largest, the Windy Deuce fire, has burned 142,000 acres (57,470 hectares) and was 50% contained on Friday, according to Texas A&M.

(Reporting by Leah Millis in Canadian, Texas; Nathan Frandino in Borger, Texas; Brendan O’Brien in Chicago and Rich McKay in Atlanta; Editing by Frank McGurty and Jonathan Oatis)

By Leah Millis, Nathan Frandino and Rich McKay

CANADIAN, Texas (Reuters) -Fire crews in the Texas Panhandle on Friday were battling to get a tighter grip on the state’s largest wildfire on record, hoping to capitalize on a lull in incessant wind gusts that have fanned an inferno that has devastated the cattle-ranching region.

The deadly wildfire, dubbed the Smokehouse Creek Fire, has scorched more than 1 million acres (404,685 hectares), according to the latest figures from the Texas A&M Forest Service, provided on Thursday.

“Terrible is not strong enough of a word,” said Terrill Bartlett, owner of a family-run lumber company who serves as mayor of Canadian, Texas, the epicenter of the sprawling blaze. “The ground is just black in all directions.”

Since Monday, the fire has spread eastward across the Panhandle, pushing across the state’s border with Oklahoma. In its wake it has left at least two people dead, dozens of torched homes and hundreds of square miles of scorched grazing land.

While firefighters have gained a measure of control over the blaze, the danger has not passed, with the wind expected to pick up over the weekend, said Sean Dugan, a spokesperson for the Texas A&M Forest Service.

“We’re looking at the next few hot, dry days that will be windy,” he said. “Those heavy fuels will come back alive with dry and windy weather, kicking up embers and … carry them over into unburned fuel.”

Between 400 and 500 structures have been destroyed so far, based on a “premature assessment” that would likely change, Texas Governor Gregg Abbott said at a news briefing on Friday.

“We face enormous potential fire dangers as we head into this weekend,” Abbott said. “No one can let down their guard.”

Earlier, Canadian’s fire chief, Scott Brewster, said 109 homes were destroyed in the town and surrounding Hemphill County, as well as an unspecified number of other structures.

W. Nim Kidd, chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, said at the briefing that it was difficult to assess full damages with the fire still smoldering.

Kidd did not update the number of acres burned and the level of containment achieved by fire crews, saying he did not want to give people false confidence.

Earlier on Friday, Texas A&M’s Dugan said containment was conservatively estimated at 5%, up from 3% on Thursday.

SCENES OF DEVASTATION

The once-fertile grasslands around Canadian looked more like a war zone on Friday, with thousands of cattle corpses littering the charred fields, according to Wes Avent, who owns a local ranch supply store.

Avent turned his store into a makeshift station for distributing donated feed, fencing and other supplies to ranchers.

“Right now our biggest chore is to get feed to the cattle that survived,” he said. “We’ve got to get feed and hay out to these guys as fast as we can.”

A miles-long line of tractor trailers snaked along the highway into Canadian on Friday, waiting to deliver bales of cattle feed and other supplies to desperate ranchers.

The two people killed in the wildfire included a woman who succumbed to her injuries on Thursday, her family said on GoFundMe.com. She was rushed to a burn center in Oklahoma City after she was overcome with smoke and flames while driving her truck in Pampa, Texas, on Tuesday, local news reported.

An 83-year-old woman in Hutchinson County, northeast of Amarillo, was also killed in the fire, according to local media.

“As far as cattle, I don’t think anyone knows yet,” said Brewster, the fire chief. “I talked to one rancher and he said he lost 700 cattle. And that’s just one guy. There’s no telling what the tally will be, but it’ll be up there.”

Over the weekend, the weather forecast for the Texas Panhandle calls for no rain and winds of up to 45 miles (72 km) per hour, said Bob Oravec, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.

“These are ingredients for more fire,” Oravec said. “The winds have no moisture content coming from the southwest. It dries out the stuff that burns.”

According to the latest Texas A&M Forest Service numbers, the Smokehouse Creek Fire has now burned through 1.08 million acres (437,060 hectares), or nearly 1,700 square miles, an area larger than New York’s Long Island. That replaced a 2006 fire that charred about 900,000 acres (364,220 hectares) as the most expansive in state history.

Several smaller wildfires were burning in other parts of the Panhandle. The next largest, the Windy Deuce fire, has burned 142,000 acres (57,470 hectares) and was 50% contained on Friday, according to Texas A&M.

(Reporting by Leah Millis in Canadian, Texas; Nathan Frandino in Borger, Texas; Brendan O’Brien in Chicago and Rich McKay in Atlanta; Editing by Frank McGurty and Jonathan Oatis)

By Nicole Jao

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Oil prices rose 2% on Friday and posted weekly gains as traders awaited an OPEC+ decision on supply agreements for the second quarter while also weighing fresh U.S., European and Chinese economic data.

Brent futures for May settled $1.64 higher, or 2%, at $83.55 a barrel. The April Brent futures contract expired on Feb. 29 at $83.62 a barrel.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) for April rose $1.71, or 2.19%, to $79.97 a barrel.

For the week, Brent added around 2.4% following the switch in contract months, while WTI gained more than 4.5%.

“The expectation that OPEC+ is going to continue with their voluntary production cuts well into the second quarter of 2024 is the main focus on the market,” said Andrew Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates.

A decision on extending OPEC+ cuts is expected in the first week of March, sources have said, with individual countries expected to announce their decisions.

“Sticking to the voluntary production cuts until the end of the year would be a strong signal and should therefore be seen as price-positive,” Commerzbank analyst Carsten Fritsch said.

A Reuters survey showed the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries pumped 26.42 million barrels per day (bpd) in February, up 90,000 bpd from January.

Strong expectations of Saudi Arabia keeping term prices of crude it sells to Asian customers little changed in April from March levels also underpinned the market on Friday.

Meanwhile, geopolitical tension in the Red Sea also lifted prices on Friday, said Tim Snyder, an economist at Matador Economics.

The leader of Yemen’s Houthis said on Thursday the group would introduce military “surprises” in the region.

U.S. energy firms added oil and natural gas rigs for a second straight week, energy services firm Baker Hughes said in its closely followed report on Friday.

The oil rig count, an early indication of future output, rose by three to 506 this week, the highest since September.

On the demand side, Chinese manufacturing activity shrank for the fifth straight month in February, an official survey showed.

Euro zone inflation fell in February according to Eurostat, but both the headline figure and core inflation, which strips out volatile food and fuel prices, just missed analysts’ expectations.

Supporting prices, the U.S. personal consumption expenditures (PCE) index showed January inflation in line with economists’ expectations on Thursday, reinforcing market bets for a June interest rate cut.

(Reporting by Nicole Jao in New York, Robert Harvey in London, Laura Sanicola in Washington and Trixie Yap in Singapore; Editing by Kirsten Donovan, Emelia Sithole-Matarise and David Gregorio)

By Nicole Jao

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Oil prices rose on Friday and were set for weekly gains as traders awaited an OPEC+ decision on supply agreements for the second quarter while also weighing fresh U.S., European and Chinese economic data.

Brent futures for May were up $1.68, or 2.05%, at $83.59 a barrel by 1:35 p.m. EST (1835 GMT). The April Brent futures contract expired on Feb. 29 at $83.62 a barrel.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) for April rose $1.74, or 2.22%, to $80 a barrel.

For the week, Brent was set to rise around 2.4% following the switch in contract months, while WTI was on track to close 4.6% higher this week.

“The expectation that OPEC+ is going to continue with their voluntary production cuts well into the second quarter of 2024 is the main focus on the market,” said Andrew Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates.

A decision on extending OPEC+ cuts is expected in the first week of March, sources have said, with individual countries expected to announce their decisions.

“Sticking to the voluntary production cuts until the end of the year would be a strong signal and should therefore be seen as price-positive,” Commerzbank analyst Carsten Fritsch said.

A Reuters survey showed the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries pumped 26.42 million barrels per day (bpd) in February, up 90,000 bpd from January.

Strong expectations of Saudi Arabia keeping term prices of crude it sells to Asian customers little changed in April from March levels also underpinned the market on Friday.

Meanwhile, geopolitical tension in the Red Sea also lifted prices on Friday, said Tim Snyder, an economist at Matador Economics.

The leader of Yemen’s Houthis said on Thursday the group would introduce military “surprises” in the region.

U.S. energy firms added oil and natural gas rigs for a second straight week, energy services firm Baker Hughes said in its closely followed report on Friday.

The oil rig count, an early indication of future output, rose by three to 506 this week, the highest since September.

On the demand side, Chinese manufacturing activity shrank for the fifth straight month in February, an official survey showed.

Euro zone inflation fell in February according to Eurostat, but both the headline figure and core inflation, which strips out volatile food and fuel prices, just missed analysts’ expectations.

Supporting prices, the U.S. personal consumption expenditures (PCE) index showed January inflation in line with economists’ expectations on Thursday, reinforcing market bets for a June interest rate cut.

(Reporting by Nicole Jao in New York, Robert Harvey in London, Laura Sanicola in Washington and Trixie Yap in Singapore; Editing by Jan Harvey, Kirsten Donovan, Emelia Sithole-Matarise and David Gregorio)

By Abhijith Ganapavaram and Allison Lampert

(Reuters) -Boeing is in talks to buy its struggling former subsidiary Spirit AeroSystems, as both companies try to solve persistent quality problems and contain costs related to 737 MAX production, an industry source familiar with the matter said on Friday.

A merger would bring Spirit back under the umbrella of Boeing, which spun it off in 2005 and in recent years has struggled with cost pressures and problems that have slowed aircraft deliveries and thinned its balance sheet.

Spirit has hired bankers to explore strategic options and has had preliminary discussions with Boeing, the Journal reported earlier on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. Boeing and Spirit declined to comment.

An industry source confirmed the move to Reuters.

Boeing had previously considered the prospect of buying Spirit AeroSystems back since divesting it, but the optics of buying at a higher price were among the factors that discouraged such a move, according to a second industry source.

Shares of Spirit jumped over 13% on Friday, while those of Boeing fell more than 1%.

Both Boeing and Spirit have been under fire since a Jan. 5 incident when a door plug blew off a 737 MAX plane in mid-flight, exposing frightened passengers to the outside air.

Reuters reported last month that years of decentralization of Boeing’s planemaking capacity – along with an exodus of experienced workers and aggressive cost-cutting – has affected quality.

Bringing Spirit back into the fold could address some of those quality issues as it would give Boeing more control over manufacturing.

Such a move would also help Boeing lower Spirit production costs through economies of scale, the second industry source said.

“Clearly Spirit is in a world of pain at the moment, and the ongoing regulatory risk on its largest program – the 737 – makes things worse,” said Vertical Research Partners analyst Robert Stallard.

“For Boeing, this does give them the opportunity to bring Spirit in-house and fix its problems, but Boeing of course has its own issues and has hardly covered itself with glory when it comes to execution of late.”

Spirit, one of the industry’s major manufacturers of large aircraft structures, has struggled with cash flow problems over the past few quarters and quality issues surrounding the fuselages it makes for Boeing’s 737 narrowbody jets.

Spirit’s shares have lost more than 70% of their value over the last five years, according to LSEG data.

Spirit is also exploring selling operations in Ireland that make parts for Airbus. Spirit’s market capitalisation stood at $3.3 billion as of Thursday’s close.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has barred Boeing from expanding production of its cash-cow 737 MAX family of jets after the Jan. 5 Alaska Airlines incident.

On Feb. 12, FAA head Mike Whitaker visited Boeing’s Renton, Washington, factory, where the 737 MAX line is produced, and expressed concerns about some things he saw on the tour to CEO Dave Calhoun earlier this week, two people briefed on the matter told Reuters.

Investigators are still trying to definitively sort out responsibility for the incident. Spirit made the panel, but Boeing removed it to fix rivet damage nearby and then put it back, according to a preliminary report by U.S. investigators who found pictures showing the panel at Boeing apparently missing key bolts.

Wichita, Kansas-based Spirit in October named former Boeing and Pentagon official Patrick Shanahan as its interim CEO, replacing Tom Gentile.

In the same month, Spirit reached an agreement with Boeing under which the supplier received immediate funding from the planemaker and revised prices for 737 and 787 production.

(Reporting by Abhijith Ganapavaram and Shivansh Tiwary in Bengaluru and Allison Lampert in Montreal; Editing by Anil D’Silva, Maju Samuel and Marguerita Choy)

By Svea Herbst-Bayliss

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Starbucks on Friday picked up fresh support in its board room fight with a coalition of labor unions over how it reacted to efforts to unionize and the effect those decisions had on the coffee chain’s brand and stock price.

Glass Lewis followed Institutional Shareholder Services and recommended that investors re-elect all 11 Starbucks directors and not support any of the three candidates proposed by the Strategic Organizing Center, a coalition of North American labor unions. The coalition includes the parent of Workers United, which represents Starbucks workers.

“We ultimately believe the SOC’s (Strategic Organizing Center) proxy campaign here is simply too myopic and falls well

short of justifying the board changes it is seeking,” Glass Lewis wrote in a report seen by Reuters on Friday.

Glass Lewis wrote that Starbucks “has been reasonably responsive” to complaints about pay and work conditions and labor matters more generally.

Shareholders will vote on March 13 unless the two sides reach an agreement beforehand.

This battle has been widely watched because it is among the first board challenges to turn environmental, social and governance issues instead of financial arguments into the campaign’s pillars.

Unionized workers make up only a small portion of Starbucks’ workforce, but the movement has gained traction with some 370 stores voting to unionize since 2021.

Both sides this week committed to talks aimed at finding ways to reach labor agreements and resolve law suits between the two sides.

Starbucks on Thursday welcomed the ISS recommendation while the union coalition disagreed with it.

(Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)