How the world’s biggest mining project is a win for China

What's driving the markets this week? What's on investors' minds as they look ahead? Find out in 10 minutes or less on the Markets Podcast from Goldman Sachs. Listen now. Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Tuesday, November 11th, and this is your FT News Briefing. The world's biggest oil producer is shifting its focus, and President Trump is threatening to sue the BBC.

Plus, we'll dive into why China might get the upper hand in the iron ore market. I'm Mark Filippino, and here's the news you need to start your day.

Saudi Aramco is going to pivot towards producing natural gas. In a couple of weeks, the oil major will start production at the Jafora Field. It's one of the world's... biggest shale gas basins, and it's the cornerstone of Saudi Arabia's push into natural gas. I bet you're wondering, though, why does the world's largest oil producer want to start focusing on natural gas?

Well, it's to meet the growing demand for the energy required to power AI data centers in fast-growing cities. Jafora's gas output is expected to hit full capacity by 2030. Last week, Aramco lifted its growth target for gas production from 60% to 80% by the end of the decade, compared with 2021 levels.

Donald Trump is threatening to sue the BBC for $1 billion. The US president is accusing the British broadcaster of trying to defame him through, quote, intentional and deceitful editing of a speech he gave on January 6th, 2021. That was the day his supporters stormed the Capitol to protest the 2020 presidential election.

The BBC is now dealing with the fallout, and its inspector general, Tim Davey, resigned on Sunday night. What does this all mean for the future of the broadcaster? The FT's Daniel Thomas has been covering this story. Hi, Dan. Hey, Mark. So Dan, just give me a quick recap of what we've seen in the past couple of days. Yeah, so it's been a few days of really high drama at the BBC. This came after a sequence of events really kicked off from this memo.

which was sent to the BBC board by a chap called Michael Prescott, who's a former advisor to a standards committee. He accused the BBC of a series of failings in its coverage of Donald Trump. of the Gaza war, as well as things like the rights of transgender people, really coming to focus on a lot of wider concerns over the BBC's coverage over the last few months, indeed longer.

And it came to a head really over the weekend when Tim Davey decided that he should resign, partly because the BBC has been a political punching bag for so long and it's quite a tiring and quite a difficult job to do. But he was followed also by Deborah Turness, who's the head of news for the BBC there as well. So this is a...

seismic change for the country's national broadcaster. It's a massive story here for the political media scene, which is going to keep me very busy for the next week or so. Yeah, well, let's talk about some of those things that are going to keep you busy for the next week or so. What are some of the controversies and rumblings that were going on even before this? Well, the important thing to note with the BBC is

how it aims to be an impartial, independent voice, particularly when it comes to news. And the problem is that we operate clearly in a media landscape which is often far from impartial on various sides of the right and left, the culture wars.

are raging here. The BBC is right at the heart of that. And because it's got so many people doing so many different news stories all the time, programs, it often does make mistakes. And that's one of the issues here is it's not that there isn't justification behind the criticism of the BBC.

There absolutely is. It does make mistakes, but it does try to deal with them when it can do. It does try to make amends like all responsible media should do. Aside from accusations of editorial bias at the BBC, there have been... a number of cuts that the broadcaster has been dealing with over the past couple of years. How does that play into what we're seeing now, if at all? The BBC has seen a fairly dramatic drop.

in how much money it has been able to take in over the last 10 years in real terms. And that has led to cuts to jobs and to some of its coverage around the world. You know, the backdrop here is not so much the impact of the cuts so far. But what's going to happen next? Because the BBC is about to enter probably one of the most important periods in its history, certainly in its recent history.

Every 10 years, it has to go through what's called the charter renewal process, which effectively is an agreement with the government where it sets out the parameters of how the BBC operates, things like funding, its reach, its overall objectives, to the point of this. weekend scandals, it needs a management which has a very clear and consistent idea about what the BBC should be in the future. Can it stay...

This UK style of media, which aims to be fair and impartial in a world where, you know, elsewhere news has proliferated in different ways. And often news spread elsewhere is wrong. And the BBC tries. for all its faults, to get it right as much as it can do. So Dan, what are you looking out for moving forward? So this story is going to run and run. Donald Trump yesterday said he is looking for at least a billion dollars in damages if the BBC doesn't.

retract this edit. So you're going to see Trump continuing, I suspect, to go for the BBC. Here, the BBC isn't always going to be this political football. It's a lightning rod for cultural and societal debates. People want to see the BBC reflect themselves to some degree as a national broadcaster. So there is some justification behind that. But because of that, it's always going to be kicked around by politicians on both sides of the House. So I think this is what someone's going to run and run.

Dan Thomas is the FT's global media editor. Thanks, Dan. Thank you.

The world's biggest mining project ever is kicking off today, clocking in at a cool $23 billion. It's a Chinese-led venture going after high-grade deposits of iron ore located in the West African country of Guinea. And it's a story of how Chinese capital can unlock this kind of massive project that's just too big for any Western company to complete. Here to tell us more is the FT's Africa editor, David Pilling. Hi, David. Hi, Mark. So tell me about this iron ore mine. What are the details?

Well, I've just got back from Guinea and I can report that this mine is gargantuan, as you would expect. It's in the middle of the Guinean forest, more than 500 kilometres away from the capital. which means that it's a huge undertaking. So it meant building this railway, building a port. This is one of the reasons why this absolutely mammoth project really has got nowhere in the last 30 years.

Until a few years ago, when, as you say, with Chinese capital, suddenly it's raced for the finishing line. Can you give me a little bit of background before this Chinese-led venture came in? What happened was that Rio Tinto, the Anglo-Australian mining group, began exploring this deposit in 1997. Fast forward to 2008, and the dictator of the country, a man called Lassano Conte, took half of the mine away from Rio and transferred it.

to a company linked to Benny Steinmetz, who's an Israeli businessman under allegedly dubious circumstances. Steinmetz then sold half of this mine to Vale of Brazil, and Steinmetz was found guilty in a Swiss court of allegedly bribing. the Guinean government to get his half of the mine. He's appealing that and denies all wrongdoing. So what happened next? How did it eventually get off the ground and this Chinese-led venture step in?

So the two blocks that had been subject to all this intrigue were then transferred to a Singaporean Chinese consortium called Winning Consortium Simandu. And they began to develop the mine and build the railway very quickly. They were then actually stopped by the Guinean government. There was a coup in 2021. And the new leader of the country...

put the two consortium together, and he told them that they had to cooperate and build the railway and the port together to cut down on costs. So now you have Rio working with Chinese companies. to develop jointly the infrastructure and to ship the ore from these two, what are really quite separate mines, but along the same railway all through Guinea.

to a port where they'll be put on barges and then on boats and then sold into the global market. What does this all mean for the global mining industry? Because I'll remind listeners, this is a $23 billion venture. It's a huge mining venture. The iron ore that will be put onto the global market is about 6% or 7% of globally traded iron ore.

But even more significantly, perhaps, it's of such high quality that it can be used in what has been called green steel because it takes much less energy to turn it into steel. And therefore... It's a very big challenge to other producers of lower quality iron ore, which includes Australia, which has really kind of been a fundamental driver of the Australian economy for decades.

It's a power tilt to China, which will have much more influence over pricing. There will be more iron ore on the global market. A number of analysts seem to expect iron ore prices to fall from around 100. dollars a ton today to perhaps as low as $80 a ton. David Pilling is the FT's Africa editor. Thanks so much, David. Thanks so much, Mark. You can read more on all these stories for free when you click the links in our show notes.

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