re: nickel/norilsk has no stocks Norilsk Says Has No Stocks to...

re: nickel/norilsk has no stocks Norilsk Says Has No Stocks to Ease Nickel Shortage

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The world's top nickel producer, Russia's Norilsk Nickel (GMKN.RTS: Quote, Profile, Research) , said on Friday it had no additional stocks for sale to ease a severe world shortage, while its latest quarterly output figures declined slightly.

"In 2003 we sold our 70,000 tonstocks. That was all we had and, sadly, we do not have additional volumes," Dmitry Usanov, Norilsk's investor relations head, told Reuters.

Key London Metal Exchange stocks of nickel were 5,610 tonnes on Friday, of which 2,382 were on canceled warrant and unavailable for delivery. Stocks are near their lowest since 1991, falling from nearly 35,000 tonnes at the start of 2005.

The tightness in the market was reflected by a $750/900 premium for cash metal over metal for three months delivery.

The market had speculated that Norilsk could deliver more metal, but analysts had alreaady expressed their doubts.

"We had a couple of people over in Russia two weeks ago and they said there was not much stock lying around," Bache Financial minerals strategist Angus MacMillan said on Thursday.

FIRST QUARTER OUTPUT DOWN

Norilsk sold 308,000 tonnes of nickel in 2003, including 70,000 tonnes of previously accumulated stocks.

Norilsk said in a statement it produced 59,000 tonnes of the metal in January-March, down 3.3 percent year-on-year from 61,000 tonnes.

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http://www.basemetals.com/

is showing Nickel at $16,795usd/t or $7.61us/lb.

same as http://www.metalprices.com/

http://www.kitcometals.com/ is showing $7.45us/lb & magically added 2,000 tonnes to LME inventories(perhaps a typo?).

Nickel price reporting has been acting very strange of late.

I don't know who to believe anymore.

cheers.