THE DISPATCH

The Friday Dispatch

Mining & Energy Friday Dispatch | Vol. 10 | May 15th, 2026

Before the war began, 138 ships crossed the Strait of Hormuz every single day. This week, only 40 crossed in an entire week. Iran has seized another vessel. Drone footage is showing dozens of tankers frozen in place. Trump called the ceasefire "on massive life support" on Monday, then flew to Beijing to meet Xi, came home declaring "fantastic deals," and returned to a Strait that is still effectively closed.

Meanwhile: India just raised fuel prices for the first time since the war started. The Mining Association of Canada dropped its annual report warning that Canada's $111 billion sector is losing ground fast. New Brunswick scrapped its entire Mining Act and replaced it. Poilievre is calling out 19-year permit timelines. And Trans Mountain's own CEO is arguing Ottawa should keep the pipeline, permanently.

There's a lot of pressure building.

🛠️ Featured Profiles

🟡 Precious Metals & Silver

• Gold holds above $4,650 as ceasefire "life support" rattles markets — WSJ Futures
  Gold May 2026 futures settled at $4,650.30 as of Thursday's close, down $47 on the day as Trump's Beijing visit briefly lifted risk sentiment. The pullback looks like consolidation, not reversal — with the ceasefire structurally fragile and oil still well above pre-war levels, the safe-haven bid remains intact. Weekly analysts are targeting a hold near $4,575 before the next move toward $5,545.

• Silver at $86.85 — sixth consecutive annual supply deficit — Silver Institute
  Silver spot was at $86.85/oz as of May 12, well above J.P. Morgan's full-year average forecast of $81/oz set earlier this year. The Silver Institute projects 2026 as the sixth consecutive year of structural supply deficit, with industrial demand from solar, EVs, and defence electronics continuing to outpace mine supply. Analysts are now watching $90 as the next key level.

• Copper at $6.60/lb — up 36% year-over-year — Daily Metal Price
  Spot copper hit $6.60/lb on May 13 — continuing the structural climb driven by electrification demand, defence procurement, and constrained mine supply. The CME's May 2026 Micro Metals update notes copper rose 6.5% month-over-month in April, "overcoming industrial demand concerns." At $6.60, Canadian copper projects that were marginal at $4/lb are definitively viable. The math has changed.

• Uranium steady at $86.15/lb — up 20% year-over-year — Trading Economics
  Uranium traded at $86.15/lb on May 14, up 20.32% year-over-year. The price has held in the $85–87 range since April — a market that has found its floor and is waiting for its next catalyst. With nuclear increasingly cited as the only credible baseload solution for AI data centre power demand, the structural thesis hasn't weakened.

⚡ Energy & Oil Markets

• Oil above $105 as Hormuz stalemate deepens — only 40 ships crossed the strait all week — Economic Times
  Crude climbed back above $105/barrel Friday as the Iran war resolution continues to stagnate. Before the war, 138 ships transited the Strait of Hormuz daily. This week, only 40 made the crossing in seven days — a collapse of roughly 95% in traffic. Drone footage published Friday shows dozens of tankers essentially frozen in position. Traders are watching US-China trade talks closely, but neither diplomacy track is moving fast enough to change the supply picture before late 2027 at the earliest.

• Iran seizes another vessel; Trump says ceasefire on "massive life support" — Reuters / The Hill
  Trump said Monday the ceasefire with Iran was "on massive life support" after rejecting Tehran's latest peace proposal. Sky News reported Friday that Iran has seized yet another ship. The Iranian "Persian Gulf Strait Authority" — the toll-collection body Iran unilaterally created last week — is now actively vetting and taxing vessels. Maritime intelligence firms continue to describe the strait as effectively closed for practical commercial purposes.

• India raises fuel prices for the first time since the Iran war began — Al Jazeera
  India — the world's third-largest oil importer — hiked retail petrol and diesel prices by approximately 3% on Friday, the first such increase since the war began. The Reserve Bank of India's governor had warned earlier this week that price hikes were inevitable if the conflict continued. India had been absorbing losses for weeks to protect consumers. It can't absorb them any longer. This is what a protracted Hormuz closure looks like when it arrives at the pump.

• Trans Mountain CEO: "This is a sovereign pipeline" — case for permanent government ownership — CBC
  Trans Mountain Corp. CEO Mark Maki made the case this week that Ottawa should retain indefinite ownership of the pipeline — potentially alongside Indigenous partners — describing it as "a sovereign pipeline" and "an incredibly strategic asset." CDEV's head echoed the sentiment, saying there's "a strong argument for being a long-term holder" and a personal preference for Canadian ownership. The federal government's stated position is still that it intends to sell eventually. With oil at $105+ and the pipeline at full capacity, the political and economic calculus is shifting.

🇨🇦 Canada: The Pressure Is Building

• Mining Association of Canada: sector contributes $111B to GDP — but "competitiveness pressures require urgent action" — Mining.com
  The MAC released its annual Facts & Figures 2026 report Wednesday. The headline: Canada's mining sector contributes C$111 billion to GDP — 3.6% of the economy, rising to over 5% when oil sands are included. The warning: the sector is stagnating despite surging global demand. MAC is calling for faster project approvals, expanded infrastructure, competitive fiscal incentives, better federal-provincial coordination, and expanded geoscience work in northern Canada. The opportunity is real. The system is not keeping pace with it.

• New Brunswick scraps decades-old Mining Act — introduces Mineral Resources Act to fast-track critical minerals — Investing News
  New Brunswick introduced its new Mineral Resources Act Wednesday, replacing a decades-old framework with legislation engineered to cut red tape and accelerate the permitting pipeline. The flagship prize: the Lake George antimony mine — once North America's largest primary antimony producer — sitting on an estimated 800,000 tonnes of ore valued at approximately US$1 billion at current prices. The province is actively evaluating private-sector proposals to bring it back into production.

• Poilievre: Canada's broken permitting system is blocking hundreds of mining projects — Canadian Mining Report
  In a speech published today, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre called out Canada's permitting crisis directly — citing mines taking up to 19 years to receive full approval. He contrasted this with the Harper era, when Canada approved and completed 23,500 projects in two years during the Global Financial Crisis. Whether you agree with his prescription or not, the diagnosis is one the MAC report made this same week in quieter language: the system is too slow, and the world isn't waiting.

🔋 Critical Minerals & Battery Metals

• China controls 91% of rare earth refining — Trump and Xi discussed export truce extension at Beijing summit — S&P Global
  China controls 91% of global rare earth refining capacity. Export curbs imposed in April 2025 have forced auto plant shutdowns in the US and Europe. Exports of heavy rare earths — yttrium, dysprosium, and terbium — are still down approximately 50% versus pre-control levels. Rare earths were a central agenda item at the Trump-Xi Beijing summit this week. No binding agreement was announced. The November 10 deadline on China's expanded export control suspension remains in place and unchanged.

• Trump-Xi summit ends with no sweeping trade breakthrough — "stabilization" but no deal — BBC / CNBC
  Trump brought a delegation of top US CEOs to Beijing for the two-day summit. He departed declaring "fantastic deals for both." Analysts described it more soberly as "stabilization without resolution" — with discussions covering agriculture purchases, Boeing aircraft, AI chips, Iran, and rare earths, but no formal mutual tariff agreement announced. Polymarket traders were pricing a 69.5% chance of no comprehensive deal by May 31 before the summit even concluded.

• China's rare earth grip remains tight despite summit — exports of key materials still down 50% — Reuters
  Despite the diplomatic warmth in Beijing this week, Chinese customs data confirms rare earth export controls continue to squeeze global supply chains. The restrictions have evolved into one of the most consequential legacies of the Sino-American trade dispute, disrupting defence, aerospace, semiconductors, and EVs. One US official says both sides are "seeking stability." Another says shortages "continue to affect American manufacturers." Both things are true.

• New Brunswick's Lake George antimony mine: North America's largest, valued at ~US$1B — Government of New Brunswick
  Lake George contains an estimated 800,000 tonnes of antimony-bearing ore — plus potential tungsten and molybdenum — valued between $933 million and $1.05 billion at current prices. It has been under provincial management since 2020. Antimony is a NATO-listed critical mineral used in flame retardants, ammunition, and semiconductors. New Brunswick has now launched a competitive private-sector process to bring it back into production. Worth watching closely.

💥 Conflict Watch

• US admiral tells Congress: strikes "severely degraded" Iran's military — mine-clearance capability questioned — Al Jazeera
  Admiral Brad Cooper testified on Capitol Hill Friday, defending the results of the US-Israeli war on Iran and asserting that strikes had "severely degraded" Iran's military and defence capabilities. Separately, lawmakers questioned whether the US had weakened its mine-clearance readiness in the region after the retirement of four minesweepers previously stationed there. Cooper declined to discuss operational details in open session — which, in context, is its own kind of answer.

• Dozens of tankers frozen in Hormuz as Iran declares control over passage — Times of India
  Eerie drone footage published Friday shows dozens of oil tankers and cargo ships barely moving in the Strait of Hormuz as Iran formally asserts control over all vessel passage. The visual tells the story more clearly than any price chart: the world's most important energy corridor is, functionally, closed. What was once 138 crossings a day is now 40 crossings a week. The economic damage compounds daily.

• Iran war ceasefire: full timeline — Wikipedia
  For those coming in late or wanting the full picture: the ceasefire was announced April 8, mediated by Pakistan. Iran agreed to open the Strait. Iran then immediately began charging tolls. Talks in Islamabad failed. The US launched a naval blockade. Iran and US forces exchanged fire May 7. Trump called it "life support" May 11. Iran has now created a formal strait authority and seized additional vessels. Trump flew to Beijing. The war is 76 days old and there is no deal.

🌍 Geopolitics & Trade

• At the Trump-Xi summit, China had the upper hand — CFR
  The Council on Foreign Relations had it right before the summit began: when Xi threatened to restrict rare earth flows in 2025, Trump folded. Beijing has continued to occasionally throttle rare earth and magnet supplies while expanding its anti-foreign sanctions arsenal. The result is an uneasy détente — one that favours Beijing. The summit changed the optics. It did not change the structure.

• Rare earths on Trump's agenda in China — but US electronic waste offers an untapped domestic source — Chatham House
  Chatham House published a sharp piece this week noting that while Trump was in Beijing negotiating over rare earth access, the US is sitting on a significant untapped domestic source: electronic waste. E-waste contains recoverable concentrations of rare earth elements — but the recycling and refining infrastructure to access them at scale doesn't yet exist. This is, incidentally, exactly the kind of processing and refining capacity Canada is trying to build right now.

• Canada's mining sector: rich in resources, lagging in growth — Discovery Alert / Briefglance
  Two sharp independent analyses this week echoed the MAC report's core finding: Canada is sitting on one of the world's most valuable mineral endowments and is systematically underperforming in turning it into production. The prescription is consistent across all sources — streamlined federal-provincial permitting, fixed timelines, expanded tax credits for the full exploration-to-development lifecycle, and stronger geoscience investment in the north. The tools exist. The will is the variable.

// NOTES FROM THE NORTH

Forty ships in a week. That's the number that stopped me this morning.

Not the oil price. Not the ceasefire language. Not the Beijing summit photo ops. Forty ships in a week, in a strait that used to move 138 a day.

And while that's happening, Canada is having a debate about permitting timelines.

I don't say that to minimize the permitting issue, it's real, it's urgent, and the MAC report and Poilievre speech and New Brunswick legislation are all pointing at the same problem. But there's something almost surreal about Canada sitting on the minerals and energy the world is scrambling for, in the middle of the most significant supply shock in a generation, and the headline coming out of Ottawa is that we might — might — be able to cut mine approval times in half. From nineteen years to nine. As if nine years is a victory worth celebrating.

India raised its fuel prices today for the first time since the war started. Not because they wanted to. Because they ran out of room to absorb the cost. The world's third-largest oil importer blinked.

Meanwhile Trans Mountain is full. Suncor just posted $2.1 billion in profit. New Brunswick is reviving North America's largest antimony mine. And Canada's negotiators are holding the line at the CUSMA table, telling Washington there's no entry fee to sit across from us.

That's the real story. Not the debate about whether we can build faster, of course we can, of course we should. But the fact that even at our current pace, even with our current constraints, Canada keeps showing up as the answer when the world asks who it can trust.

Imagine what we do when we actually get out of our own way.

Enjoy the long weekend.

-Lee