Chicago agricultural commodities open mixed

CHICAGO, Nov. 30 (Xinhua) -- Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) agricultural commodities opened mixed Thursday in morning trading, with soybean futures lower and corn futures slightly higher.

January soybeans were down 3.25 cents at 9.89 U.S. dollars per bushel as of 1500 GMT in the morning trading, March corn was 2.25 cents higher at 3.56 dollars, while March wheat was up 1.25 cents at 4.36 dollars.

In other markets, the New York Mercantile Exchange crude oil market is 35 cents higher, the U.S. dollar is lower, and the Dow Jones Industrials are 127 points higher.

On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Weekly Export Sales Report showed lackluster demand, except for soybeans.

As for vegetable oil markets, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said earlier this week that it will maintain the U.S. conventional biofuel mandate at 15 billion gallons, the same as the current year, and keep the biodiesel mandate at 2.1 billion gallons for 2018 and 2019.

Biodiesel groups have been heavily lobbing U.S. government to raise the 2019 mandate to 2.4-2.6 billion gallons based on additional capacity, but such an increase was not approved. Enditem