Key Currency Exchange Rates for Friday, 8/7/20

Futures in New York dropped 0.7 percent after earlier gaining as much as 1.3 percent. American Petroleum Institute data Tuesday showed an unexpected decrease in U.S. stockpiles, while on Wednesday…

U.S. oil prices rose on Tuesday and gasoline fell as the gradual restart of refineries in the Gulf of Mexico that were shut by Hurricane Harvey raised demand for crude and eased fears of a fuel supply crunch. Gasoline futures RBc1 dropped 4 percent from their last close, to $1.68 per gallon, down from $2.17 on Aug. 31 and back to levels last seen before Harvey hit the U.S. Gulf Coast and its large refining industry. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures Clc1 rose more than 1 percent to $47.84 per barrel by 1008 GMT, up 55 cents from their last settlement. “Gasoline fell as refineries in Texas began to reopen,” said William O‘Loughlin, investment analyst at Rivkin Securities. Texas was edging towards recovery from the devastation of Harvey as shipping channels, oil pipelines and refineries restarted some operations.

Electric mobility is gaining ground worldwide, and its importance will continue to grow at a fast pace in the coming years. One of the biggest challenges in this is the rapid expansion of the charging infrastructure: today in Germany, for example, there are just 25,000 public charging points (source: statista.de, May 2017). However, around five times as many would be needed for the planned number of one million electric cars by the year 2020. It is therefore clear that there is a huge need for an extensive network of publicly available and private charging stations with the appropriate charging capacity. “We’re confident that we’re at a turning point when it comes to electric mobility,” says Rainer Hundsdörfer, CEO of Heidelberg. “Electric cars are becoming a real option for more and more drivers. We want to take advantage of this trend, and put our expertise to work to benefit from this growth market.” Click Read More below for additional detail.