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LAGOS, Nigeria, Sept. 27, 2011 — First of Torontos Former Fleet Set for Refurbishment, Delivery

LAGOS, Nigeria, Sept. 27, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The first of hundreds of Toronto subway cars that will furnish a new surface rail line in Lagos, Nigeria, has left Canada for the last time, and is now en route to Africas largest city.

A Nigerian company, Eko Rail, has agreed to purchase 255 of the Toronto Transit Commissions (TTC) best-equipped subway cars for use in a much-needed Lagos Blue Line mass transit system. The TTC is in the process of purchasing larger Rocket trains to increase passenger capacity on their lines.

As the electric-powered cars become surplus and are pulled offline in Toronto, they will be individually trucked to the United States for a rebuilding by a team of world-class rail engineers. The cars will also undergo track-width (or gauge) conversion and interior refurbishment before being shipped to Lagos.

The trains have been inspected by the Governor of Lagos State, Babatunde Fashola, who endorsed the plan to purchase them following his official visit to Toronto in May 2011.

The shipment of the first car is an important step in Eko Rails efforts to support the Governors transformation agenda for the city, said David Potter, Eko Rails Chief Engineer. Ultimately, the Blue Line, with this modernized fleet, will bring massive benefits to Lagos economic development and improve Lagosians quality of life.

Each of the TTC cars come equipped with air conditioning, automatic sliding doors, solid-state traction control, energy saving regenerative braking, and a wide range of modern safety features and amenities. Once equipped with a state-of-the-art, GPS-based train control system made by General Electric, Eko Rails trains will provide faster, safer, cheaper and more reliable transportation for Lagosians.

Eko Rail is entering into an innovative public-private partnership with the government of Lagos State to equip, operate and maintain the Blue Line for 25 years. Negotiations are being finalized and a concession agreement is expected to be signed in the near future. #xA0;Lagos State has already started to make significant progress with building the rail tracks and stations. Eko Rail is utilizing URS Scott Wilson, one of the worlds leading railway infrastructure consultancies, to ensure that the infrastructure is built to global standards. #xA0;

With financing led by Investec Plc, financiers of more than 25 rail projects around the globe, Eko Rail expects to invest about $400 million to equip the Lagos Blue Line, including construction of a dual-fuel electric power generating station, modern train control system, communications and power distribution, as well as depot and maintenance facilities. When the entire line is operational, Eko Rail expects to attract at least 300,000 passengers per day, with trains running every 5 minutes.

The Eko Rail consortium #x2013; led by Nigerian-based emerging markets investment firm Verod Capital #x2013; brings together a world-class team of manufacturers, technical advisors, metro operators and public private partnership experts from the UK, Canada and South Africa.

SOURCE Eko Rail

Copper prices staged a modest recovery on Monday, gaining 4.4 percent on the COMEX and 4.1 percent on the LME, as investors digested last week’s slide as an opportunity to bargain hunt. On Tuesday, the red metal posted more gains, tracing the upward momentum in equities, over positive sentiment that the Eurozone would take the necessary steps to avert a financial disaster.

Last week, the metal plunged to a 14-month low, as struggles in the Eurozone and a bleak outlook for the United States dampened demand prospects for the industrial metal. According to data from the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, last week speculators were the most bearish on copper since July 2009, as managed-money funds held net-short positions in copper futures and options. The data showed that speculators’ wagers on falling COMEX copper prices totaled 6,672 futures and options contracts as of Sept. 20.

On Monday, the reentry of investors back into the copper market was largely attributed to bargain hunting. “It would seem that the fall in prices over the past few days is now regarded as excessive,” said Daniel Briesemann, an analyst at Commerzbank AG in Frankfurt, said in a report. “The low price levels are being viewed as attractive buying opportunities.”

Margin increase

Last Friday, the CME Group announced that it would increase the collateral requirements to trade benchmark copper by 18 percent. The change, which went into effect at the close of trading on Monday, requires that speculative investors post $6,750 to open a contract and $5,000 to hold it overnight.  Analysts claim that the margin increase did not have a large impact on the market. Any differences between COMEX copper prices and benchmarks for the metal traded on other exchanges are typically closed quickly by traders looking for an opportunity to profit, and, on Monday, the market did not witness an unusual level of activity. At the same time that the group announced that it would increase the collateral requirements to trade copper, it also announced that it would hike the requirements to trade gold and silver.

Supply disruptions

Perhaps the one bright side of the struggling copper market is the fact that the rash of supply disruptions that have plagued copper suppliers this year have failed to impact prices. In the summer, Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) announced the amount of lost copper supply due to these disruptions would exceed estimates. When investment firms make their predictions for the copper supply/demand balance, and prices, they generally “bake in” a certain amount of metal production that will be lost, due to various supply disruptions. Greater-than-expected losses can contribute to upswings in the price of the metal; however, so far this year the copper market is reacting more strongly to signals of declining demand, and ignoring the supply disruptions. Analysts are still cautious, warning that if labour disputes drag on for too long, copper prices could spike.

That being said, labour disputes are continuing at Freeport-McMoRan Copper amp; Gold Inc.’s (NYSE:FCX) Grasberg Mine in Indonesia. Workers recently announced that they are planning to stage a rally on Sept 29^th, after last week’s government-brokered talks between the company and the union broke down. Approximately half of the 8,000 non-staff workers at Grasberg have walked off the job since Sept. 15, demanding pay more in line with what Freeport pays its workers, on average, around the globe. “We have conducted a peaceful stoppage in the 12 days of strike, but the management doesn’t appreciate that and has declared that our activity is illegal,” claimed Virgo Solossa head of organizational affairs at Freeport Indonesia’s labor union. “We want to show that we remain solid and will question the ‘no work no pay’ note from management as well as sanctions against several strikers, to the manpower office in the rally.” Freeport maintains that it will uphold its legal right not to pay employees on a day where workers do not report to work.

Another supply disruption hit the copper market over the weekend, when a massive power blackout paralyzed mining operations in top copper producer Chile. The blackout, which lasted for around 2 hours, resulted in smelting operations at various Chilean mines grinding to a halt. Copper producer Anglo American (LON:AAL) said operations at its Los Bronces mine were halted by the blackout and state-run Codelco said its Andina division was shut down. The outage exposed the fragility of the power supply infrastructure, which is being blamed on Chilean President Sebastian Pinera. Critics claim that Pinera has not been investing enough money into upgrading the country’s infrastructure.

Securities Disclosure: I, Leia Toovey, hold equity interests in Freeport McMoRan Copper and Gold Inc. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc.