TOP NEWS
Nye Tells Congress to Invest
Ward Nye, Martin Marietta chairman, CEO and president, explained to members of the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources about the importance of aggregates for infrastructure projects and the negative impact of excessive regulation on efforts to fix the nation’s crumbling infrastructure.
BMC Enterprises Expands
BMC Enterprises Inc. made three additions to its Missouri aggregates business: the opening of a new BMC Stone quarry in High Hill; the acquisition of a strategic interest in Base Rock Minerals LLC, a limestone quarry in Bonne Terre; and the subsequent acquisition of Strack Stone Co., a limestone quarry located just north of Cape Girardeau.
Luck Stone Partners with Airware
Luck Stone, the construction aggregate division of Richmond, Va.-based Luck Companies, plans to accelerate its growth in Unmanned Aircraft Vehicle (UAV) technology through a new partnership with Airware, a national and global provider of commercial enterprise solutions for capturing and analyzing aerial data.
MSHA WATCH
North American Quarry agreed to pay $360,000 in penalties and accept three flagrant violations and one “high” negligence violation on the eve of a trial between the contractor and MSHA. A flagrant violation is defined as “a reckless or repeated failure to make reasonable efforts to eliminate a known violation of a mandatory safety and health standard that substantially and proximately caused, or reasonably could have been expected to cause, death or serious bodily injury.” The contractor’s foreman also agreed to pay $6,000 in penalties because investigators found that the way he trained the deceased miner to load steel contributed to the accident.
USGS STATS
According to figures from the U.S. Geological Survey, an estimated 328 Mt of crushed stone was produced and shipped for consumption in the United States in the fourth quarter of 2016, a decrease of 4 percent compared with that of the same period of 2015. The estimated annual output of crushed stone produced for consumption in 2016 was 1.37 Gt, an increase of 3 percent compared with that of 2015.
ECONOMIC INDICATORS
Construction spending in February totaled $1.192 trillion at a seasonally adjusted annual rate. Construction spending increased from January to February and from a year ago, as private residential and public construction grew for the month and private-sector demand increased for the year, according to an analysis by the Associated General Contractors of America.
New construction starts in March increased 5 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $743.7 billion, marking the third straight monthly gain, according to Dodge Data & Analytics. The total construction growth in March was led by the nonbuilding construction sector, and particularly by public works.
Sales of newly built, single-family homes continued to expand, rising 6.1 percent in February to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 592,000 units, according to newly released data by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Census Bureau.
ENERGY
- WTI crude oil futures price: 4/24/2017: $49.23/barrels, down $3.42 from week earlier; up $5.50 from year earlier.
- Natural gas futures price: 4/24/2017: $3.066/MMBtu, down $0.097 from week earlier; up $0.926 from year earlier.
- Retail gasoline price: 4/24/2017: $2.449/gal., up $0.013 from week earlier; up $0.287 from year earlier.
- Retail diesel price: 4/24/2017: $2.595/gal., down $0.002 from week earlier; up $0.397 from year earlier.
- Weekly coal production: 4/15/2017: 14.938 million tons, up 1.173 million tons from week earlier; up 4.243 million tons from year earlier.
Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration