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Speaker 1: Good morning. It's Tuesday, the nineteenth of September here in London.

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Speaker 1: This is the Blueberg Daybreak You Up podcast.

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Speaker 2: I'm Caroline Hipcott.

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Speaker 3: And I'm Stephen Carroll. Coming up today, the CEO of

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Speaker 3: Chevron tells us one hundred dollars oil is a question

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Speaker 3: of when and not if.

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Speaker 1: Santander revamps its corporate structure in a move that could

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Speaker 1: prompt job cuts.

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Speaker 3: Plus, we take a closer look at Hungary's bit become

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Speaker 3: one of the world's biggest suppliers for electric vehicles, whatever

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Speaker 3: the cost.

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Speaker 1: Let's start with a roundup of our top stories.

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Speaker 3: The prospect of one hundred dollars oil is back as

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Speaker 3: supply remains tight and demand continues to grow. Production cuts

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Speaker 3: by Saudi Arabia and Russia have steadily tightened supplies and

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Speaker 3: helped to push the price of Brent up by thirty

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Speaker 3: percent since March. Here's what the Chevron CEO Mike Worth

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Speaker 3: had to say when he was asked by Bloomberg if the.

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Speaker 4: World is headed for triple digit oil. Sure looks like it.

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Speaker 4: We're certainly moving in that direction.

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Speaker 5: The momentum, you know, supply is tightening, Inventories are drawing

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Speaker 5: these things happen gradually conceded building, and so I think

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Speaker 5: you know that the trends would suggest that we're certainly

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Speaker 5: on our way.

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Speaker 4: We're getting close.

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Speaker 3: Chevron's Mike Worth went on to say that he believes

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Speaker 3: that robust global growth means the underlying economy can withstand

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Speaker 3: such a price bike. Right now, Brancrude is trading at

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Speaker 3: ninety five dollars and five cents a barrel.

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Speaker 1: Santander is overhauling its corporate structure in a move that

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Speaker 1: may involve job cuts. The Spanish bank is combining individual

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Speaker 1: countries retail and commercial banking businesses under a global unit.

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Speaker 1: Bloomberg understands that an expansion into US investment banking is

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Speaker 1: also in the works, with several new hires joining from

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Speaker 1: Credit Suite. The revamp closely resembles a plan announced last

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Speaker 1: week by City Group to streamline its operations.

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Speaker 3: UK inflation is expected to tick up for the first

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Speaker 3: time since February. Is fuel prices have risen. Data out

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Speaker 3: on Wednesday is like to show price gains not tired

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Speaker 3: to seven percent last month from six point eight percent

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Speaker 3: in July. According to a Bloomberg survey, The official CPI

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Speaker 3: figures are likely to complicate the backdrop for the Bank

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Speaker 3: of England's rate decision on Thursday. With concerns that the UK,

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Speaker 3: along with the rest of Europe, could face a period

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Speaker 3: of stagflation.

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Speaker 1: The US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says that ending America's

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Speaker 1: trading relationship with China is a no go. Yellen was

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Speaker 1: speaking during a fireside conversation with Hillary Clinton.

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Speaker 6: It's in many areas a win win relationship in the

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Speaker 6: sense that our trade and investment flows produce gains for

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Speaker 6: China and gains for the United States, and much of

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Speaker 6: it is uncontroversial, should thrive, and it would really be

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Speaker 6: disastrous to try to decouple from China.

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Speaker 1: Janet Yellen's comments come as relations between the world's two

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Speaker 1: biggest economies remain tense over everything from semiconductors to Taiwan.

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Speaker 1: But China remains among the US's biggest partners, with trading

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Speaker 1: goods between the two reaching a record six hundred and

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Speaker 1: ninety one billion dollars last year.

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Speaker 3: Israel's Prime Minister Benjaminnettannie, who was urging Elon Musk to

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Speaker 3: address anti Semitism on his social media platform x during

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Speaker 3: an in person meeting in California. Musque staunchly defended himself

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Speaker 3: against the accusations.

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Speaker 4: Obviously, I'm against anti sempitism.

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Speaker 7: I'm against anti really anything that is, you know, that

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Speaker 7: promotes a hateen conflict.

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Speaker 3: Meanwhile, the billionaire who founded Tesla and SpaceX has been

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Speaker 3: in a row with the ADL, a Jewish civil rights group,

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Speaker 3: which has highlighted the increase in extremist content. Benda Manettaniew,

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Speaker 3: who faced protests over his efforts to weaken Israel's judiciary

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Speaker 3: on his visit to Silicon Valley ahead of the United

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Speaker 3: Nations General Assembly meeting in New York.

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Speaker 1: Now, Microsoft's AI search team accidentally exposed a large cachet

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Speaker 1: of private data on the software development firm GitHub. That's

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Speaker 1: according to this cybersecurity firm Whiz. The exposed data included

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Speaker 1: Microsoft employees PC backups which contained passwords to Microsoft Services

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Speaker 1: secret keys, and more than thirty thousand internal Microsoft teams messages.

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Speaker 1: In a statement, Microsoft said that no customer data was

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Speaker 1: exposed and that the root cause of the issue has

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Speaker 1: been resolved.

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Speaker 3: Wreckage has been discovered in the hunt for a US

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Speaker 3: Marine F thirty five fighter jet that disappeared over South Carolina,

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Speaker 3: who brings ed.

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Speaker 4: Baxter has the details.

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Speaker 8: An intense hunt has been underway for the one hundred

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Speaker 8: million dollar jet near Williamsburg County, North Carolina. The pilot

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Speaker 8: ejected during a training mission on Sunday. Teams now from

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Speaker 8: the Marines, Navy, Civil Air Patrol, local law enforcement on

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Speaker 8: the search. The F thirty five is the most advanced

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Speaker 8: of the US fleet. The Marine Corps has ordered a

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Speaker 8: pause in air operations to review safety and best practices.

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Speaker 8: A statement cited three Class A mishaps in the last

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Speaker 8: six weeks. I'm at Baxter Bloomberg Radio.

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Speaker 3: It's been a strange time to be a worker in

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Speaker 3: one of those big tech companies. Over the past year,

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Speaker 3: we've had that raft of job cuts affecting some of

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Speaker 3: the biggest names in the industry. We have really interesting

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Speaker 3: report today about conditions at Meta, and they are working

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Speaker 3: now to try and improve staff morale after cutting some

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Speaker 3: twenty thousand jobs over the past few months. They've brought

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Speaker 3: back happy hours in the office. They're bringing back branded

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Speaker 3: T shirts for people as well. They've brought back dinner

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Speaker 3: time and laundry services and things that workers in Silicon

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Speaker 3: Valley and in a lot of the hubs that these

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Speaker 3: companies have around the world have gotten very used to

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Speaker 3: as a regular part of their working day, but they'd

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Speaker 3: all been cut back during what Mark Zuckerberg described as

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Speaker 3: their Year of Efficiency. It's an interesting reflection on where

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Speaker 3: these companies are now because they've done the cuts. In

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Speaker 3: most cases, I mean metas revenues have bounced back, so

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Speaker 3: there's less of a concern over the immediate future of

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Speaker 3: the business as well, and now they're having to work

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Speaker 3: to try and restore some of the things that their

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Speaker 3: employees very much appreciated at a time of course, and

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Speaker 3: they're also trying to get them to come back to

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Speaker 3: the offers too.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. I was going to say, how much of this

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Speaker 1: surely is worked from home? I mean in London there

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Speaker 1: are a couple actually very kind of glitzy tech hubs

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Speaker 1: that have been developed over the years. But yes, I

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Speaker 1: wonder whether it's about you know, retention, Is it about

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Speaker 1: trying to get people out of the home office or not.

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Speaker 1: I mean, there's a great deal of focus. I was

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Speaker 1: reading a piece yesterday about universities how young people are

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Speaker 1: really examining, you know, how well they can do in

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Speaker 1: the working world in terms of choosing which degree they do,

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Speaker 1: and actually the tech jobs in the UK, according to

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Speaker 1: all the data, are the ones that pay the best.

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Speaker 1: So I am perks.

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Speaker 3: I did love some of the comments in this though,

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Speaker 3: is that people are complaining that it's not quite as

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Speaker 3: good as it was before, some people saying the food

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Speaker 3: isn't as good as it was. So that's still I

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Speaker 3: think an open question. We might hear some more about

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Speaker 3: the future. Yeah, let's turn to get more now on

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Speaker 3: the situation and the oil markets. We're talking about Brent

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Speaker 3: crude trading at the level close to the highest level

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Speaker 3: in ten months. In fact, right as an analysts now

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Speaker 3: expecting many of them to see oil reach that one

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Speaker 3: hundred dollars a barrel handle. Our senior energy reporter Steven

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Speaker 3: Stotchensky joins us now from Singapore for more of the story. Stephen,

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Speaker 3: great to have you with us on the show. What's

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Speaker 3: driving this recent rally in prices?

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Speaker 4: Thanks for having me.

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Speaker 7: I think you have to look at what Saudi Arabia

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Speaker 7: and Russia are doing. They're really pulling back that production

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Speaker 7: and you're seeing it through the end of the year.

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Speaker 7: Earlier this month they said they were cut each one

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Speaker 7: million barrels a day through December, and OPEK analysts are

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Speaker 7: saying that there's going to be a deficit of more

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Speaker 7: than three million barrels a day for the fourth quarter.

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Speaker 7: If that comes to be true, then really, you know,

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Speaker 7: these these inventories are going to keep getting drained and

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Speaker 7: there's going to be a rush by refiners, by other

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Speaker 7: folks to grab on the crud, and so that's kind

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Speaker 7: of pushing things up at the moment. And then you

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Speaker 7: also have sort of this rosy picture out of the

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Speaker 7: United States in China, but both the economic data over

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Speaker 7: the last few weeks have shown that, you know, maybe

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Speaker 7: the chances of a recession are out of the cards,

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Speaker 7: and demand for these products will remain pretty strong. You know,

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Speaker 7: you heard Chevron's CEO say earlier that you know, he thinks,

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Speaker 7: you know, oil demand is going to rise from all

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Speaker 7: time high this year, and he was pretty bullish on

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Speaker 7: of course they sell the fuel. But still, you know,

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Speaker 7: that's that's one more person adding adding their opinion.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, I'm speaking of that Chefron CEO. And one

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Speaker 1: hundred dollars or what do you think is likely? Then?

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Speaker 1: Does there need to be something extra to push the

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Speaker 1: price to one hundred dollars and then for it to

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Speaker 1: stay there or is it simply the rebound economically?

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Speaker 7: Yeah, you know, that's a really good question, and I

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Speaker 7: think everyone's trying to kind of read the tea leaves

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Speaker 7: to figure out how how quick it goes and if

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Speaker 7: we will hit one hundred dollars. You know, this this

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Speaker 7: rally could run out of steam quickly if if you

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Speaker 7: see a rebound in production from say, for example, the

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Speaker 7: United States, if shale drillers really bring back a lot

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Speaker 7: of their rigs, if we see perhaps not as strong buying,

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Speaker 7: if we have some negative data coming out of China.

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Speaker 7: You know, all these things together could have kind of

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Speaker 7: pulled this away. There is momentum obviously, you know, when

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Speaker 7: you talk to people in the market compared to three

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Speaker 7: four months ago, there is this idea that one hundred

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Speaker 7: dollars could happen, but it being sustained and less. Don't

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Speaker 7: think that that's really going to happen, and you're going

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Speaker 7: to see OPEK come back. There's gonna be geopolitical pressure

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Speaker 7: for OPEC to reduce their cuts maybe next year, even earlier.

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Speaker 7: And at the same time, like you know, like I mentioned,

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Speaker 7: the shale producers come like other people are going to

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Speaker 7: try to profit off this, and they're going to bring

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Speaker 7: rigs back and the production will bounce. It's not quite

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Speaker 7: like last year where there was a shock and then

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Speaker 7: it was in that level for a while.

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Speaker 3: What about the outlook further down the line and kind

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Speaker 3: of how important is China to that picture?

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Speaker 7: Yeah, you know, China is very important. They're they're an

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Speaker 7: enormous consumer of crude. They they are the biggest importer,

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Speaker 7: and they're you know, key to making kind of keeping

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Speaker 7: prices at this level. Last year, around this time, people

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Speaker 7: were thinking, hey, China's going to really bounce back when

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Speaker 7: you remove those COVID curbs. The Chinese economy is going

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Speaker 7: to come roaring back. You're going to see you know,

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Speaker 7: potentially government backed stimulus and oil demand is going to roar.

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Speaker 7: And yes, oil demand has picked up this year in China,

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Speaker 7: but the economic recovery isn't exactly what everyone expects. It's

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Speaker 7: not bouncing back as fast. So you know, where where

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Speaker 7: does China stand? There's also, you know, looking even longer term,

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Speaker 7: there's also this question of all right, where where does

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Speaker 7: oil demand stand in China? Because the country is rapidly

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Speaker 7: shifting to evs at at a pace that I think

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Speaker 7: very few were expecting. And while you know the the

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Speaker 7: gasoline demand in China is just one small piece of

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Speaker 7: a larger oil demand picture. That is, that is a

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Speaker 7: actor that perhaps the market doesn't always appreciate that that

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Speaker 7: shift to electric vehicles.

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Speaker 1: Absolutely, Stephen, thank you so much for being with us

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Speaker 1: this morning. Stephen Stepcinski is our senior energy reporter, joining

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Speaker 1: us from Singapore for more. As of course, we watch

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Speaker 1: the eye catching rally in crude or brank crude futures

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Speaker 1: currently trading at ninety five dollars zero. Won the bow.

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Speaker 3: Let's got a hungry next for our next story, where

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Speaker 3: they're ramping up battery production at the fastest pace per

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Speaker 3: capita in the world. Not everyone's happy about it though,

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Speaker 3: in the Eastern European country or Prime Minister Victor Orban

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Speaker 3: is facing a backlash over environmental concerns. Joining us now

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Speaker 3: to discuss is our bit of best spirit. Chief Sheltine

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Speaker 3: Simon Shelton, great to have you with us on the program.

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Speaker 3: Give us a sense of how much headway Hungary has

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Speaker 3: made in scaling up its battery industry and how that

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Speaker 3: compares with other countries.

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Speaker 2: Hello. Yes, basically it's been pretty startling for everybody living

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Speaker 2: in Hungary. It's gone from basically its first battery plant

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Speaker 2: that opened around twenty eighteen by the South Korean battery

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Speaker 2: maker Samsung SDI to having today basically six battery plants

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Speaker 2: that are either working already or in the planning or

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Speaker 2: construction phase, as well as about two dozen companies related

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Speaker 2: to the battery industry like basically suppliers. So Hungary has

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Speaker 2: received over the past six years or so about twenty

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Speaker 2: billion euros more than twenty billion dollars worth of investment

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Speaker 2: in the battery industry, and that basically means that in

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Speaker 2: a few years time, Hungary is on track to become

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Speaker 2: the second biggest battery maker in Europe after Germany, and

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Speaker 2: the fourth biggest globally. And this is starting for a

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Speaker 2: country the size of the state of Indiana in the US.

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Speaker 4: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Absolutely, I mean the envy surely of the UK that

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Speaker 1: is trying to do something to increase battery technology and

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Speaker 1: EVS in the UK too. Why has Hungry How has

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Speaker 1: it become such a magnet for battery makers?

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Speaker 2: Well, basically it's it has a lot to do with

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Speaker 2: two things. One is it's Hungary has been host to

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Speaker 2: some of these sort of premium German car brands such

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Speaker 2: as Volkswagen's Audi, Mercedes Benz most recently BMW set up

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Speaker 2: a factory. And these these these car companies are obviously

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Speaker 2: making the rapid transition to evs to producing electric vehicles,

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Speaker 2: and so they're looking around at where do they convert

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Speaker 2: these uh uh, these older style uh car factories into

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Speaker 2: ones that will produce electric vehicles, and Hungary is becoming

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Speaker 2: an obvious choice. One because they have reat relationship with

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Speaker 2: Prime Minster Victor Orban's government, who is given lavish subsidies

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Speaker 2: to these car companies. And two because Orbanos is great

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Speaker 2: relations with China and a lot of the biggest many

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Speaker 2: of the biggest battery makers are Chinese. And so basically,

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Speaker 2: uh this has become Hungry has become the sort of

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Speaker 2: meeting point between Eastern battery makers and Western especially German

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Speaker 2: car makers.

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Speaker 4: But what sort of opposition is there to this expansion.

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Speaker 2: Well, basically a lot of it has to do with

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Speaker 2: the environment, which you know may sound odd of it

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Speaker 2: because you know we're talking about the green transition and

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Speaker 2: how you know, there's more and more sort of electric

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Speaker 2: cars which will sort of cut emissions and basically help

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Speaker 2: go to the Earth and go Europe greener. But locally

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Speaker 2: it's been such a frantic pace of basically battery plants

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Speaker 2: are being announced by the month, and these are like

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Speaker 2: billion dollar plus investments. Obviously, these factories have huge water

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Speaker 2: and needs, plus they do work with hazardous material, so

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Speaker 2: there's a lot of concern locally that you know, there's

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Speaker 2: a pleucher risk of contamination and I think it basically

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Speaker 2: I've done more than a dozen interviews here recently about this,

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Speaker 2: talk to residents officials, and there's real concern about how

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Speaker 2: much they can trust authorities to meet these companies abide

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Speaker 2: by environmental rules that they have. So it comes down

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Speaker 2: to basically a question of trust and also a question

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Speaker 2: of just quantity. People are asking how much how many

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Speaker 2: of these battery plants does a country the size of

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Speaker 2: Hungary really need.

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