week ending May 28

FOMC Minutes Signal Fed Ready To Hike Above 'Neutral', Backs Multiple 50bps Hikes - Bloomberg's 'Sentiment of the Minutes Indicator' suggests the minutes were just as hawkish as the last set, remaining nearly as hawkish as the Fed has tended to be the last 30 years... Here's what The Fed wanted you to take away from that meeting on May 3rd/4th...

• All Fed participants agreed US economy was 'very strong/ labor market was extremely tight’ and inflation was very high
• Fed participants saw Ukraine conflict China COVID lockdowns posing heightened risks.' with particular challenges to restoring price stability while maintaining strong job market
• Participants said Q1 22 GDP decline contained 'little signal about subsequent growth.' and they expected real GDP would grow 'solidly' in 02 and be near or above trend for the whole year.
• A few participants added that some of their contacts were starling to report that higher prices were hurting sales.
• Fed participants emphasized that they were highly attentive to inflation risks and agreed those risks were skewed to the upside.
• These participants also emphasized that price pressures remained elevated and that it was too early to be confident that inflation had peaked
• A number of participants observed that recent monthly data might suggest that overall price pressures may no longer be worsening
• All participants supported plans to reduce size of Fed's balance sheet:
• A number' said after runoff was well under way. it would be appropriate to consider sales of MBS.
• Most Fed officials backed 50bps hikes at next couple meetings.
• All participants at May policy meeting agreed half-percentage-point interest rate hike was appropriate
• 'Most' judged such hikes appropriate at the next couple of meetings, regarding 50bps.
• All Fed participants agreed US economy was 'very strong/ labor market was extremely tight’ and inflation was very high
• Fed participants saw Ukraine conflict China COVID lockdowns posing heightened risks.' with particular challenges to restoring price stability while maintaining strong job market
• Participants said Q1 22 GDP decline contained 'little signal about subsequent growth.' and they expected real GDP would grow 'solidly' in 02 and be near or above trend for the whole year.
• “Residential house prices had risen rapidly, although the staff continued to see key differences from the previous debt-fueled housing boom: The mortgage finance reforms enacted after 2008 limited the potential for significant deterioration in underwriting standards, most new mortgage debt had been added by borrowers with prime credit scores, and homeowners’ equity positions were healthy.
• Most participants indicated that their business contacts had continued to report that substantial increases in wages and input prices were being passed through into higher prices to their customers.
• A few participants added that some of their contacts were starting to report that higher prices were hurting sales.
• But a number of participants observed that recent monthly data might suggest that overall price pressures may no longer be worsening
• Several participants who commented on issues related to financial stability noted that the tightening of monetary policy could interact with vulnerabilities related to the liquidity of markets for Treasury securities and to the private sector's intermediation capacity.
• A couple of participants pointed to increased risks in financial markets linked to commodities following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which had led to higher prices and volatility across a wide range of energy, agricultural, and metal products.
• These participants observed that the trading and risk-management practices of some key participants in commodities markets were not fully visible to regulatory authorities and noted that central counterparties (CCPs) needed to remain capable of managing risks associated with heightened volatility or that margin requirements at CCPs could give rise to significant liquidity demands for large banks, broker-dealers, and their clients.

Read the full FOMC Minutes below:

 FOMC Minutes: "Risks to inflation were skewed to the upside"; 50bp increases likely appropriate at next couple of meetings From the Fed: Minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee, May 3–4, 2022. Excerpt on the "Plans for Reducing the Size of the Balance Sheet:In their discussion of risks to the outlook, participants emphasized that they were highly attentive to inflation risks and would continue to monitor closely inflation developments and inflation expectations. They agreed that risks to inflation were skewed to the upside and cited several such risks, including those associated with ongoing supply bottlenecks and rising energy and commodity prices—both of which were exacerbated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and COVID-related lockdowns in China. Also mentioned were the risks associated with nominal wage growth continuing to run above levels consistent with 2 percent inflation over time and the extent to which households' high savings since the onset of the pandemic and healthy balance sheets would support greater-than-expected underlying momentum in consumer spending and contribute to upside inflation pressures. In addition, some participants emphasized that persistently high inflation heightened the risk that longer-term inflation expectations could become unanchored; in that case, the task of returning inflation to 2 percent would be more difficult. Uncertainty about real activity was also seen as elevated. Various participants noted downside risks to the outlook, including risks associated with the Russian invasion and COVID-related lockdowns in China and the likelihood of a prolonged rise in energy and commodity prices. ...[...] ...In their consideration of the appropriate stance of monetary policy, all participants concurred that the U.S. economy was very strong, the labor market was extremely tight, and inflation was very high and well above the Committee's 2 percent inflation objective. Against this backdrop, all participants agreed that it was appropriate to raise the target range for the federal funds rate 50 basis points at this meeting. They further anticipated that ongoing increases in the target range for the federal funds rate would be warranted to achieve the Committee's objectives. Participants also agreed that it was appropriate to start reducing the size of the Federal Reserve's balance sheet on June 1, as described in the Plans for Reducing the Size of the Federal Reserve's Balance Sheet that would be issued in conjunction with the postmeeting statement. Participants judged that an appropriate firming of the stance of monetary policy, along with an eventual waning of supply–demand imbalances, would help to keep longer-term inflation expectations anchored and bring inflation down over time to levels consistent with the Committee's 2 percent longer-run goal.All participants reaffirmed their strong commitment and determination to take the measures necessary to restore price stability. To this end, participants agreed that the Committee should expeditiously move the stance of monetary policy toward a neutral posture, through both increases in the target range for the federal funds rate and reductions in the size of the Federal Reserve's balance sheet. Most participants judged that 50 basis point increases in the target range would likely be appropriate at the next couple of meetings. Many participants assessed that the Committee's previous communications had been helpful in shifting market expectations regarding the policy outlook into better alignment with the Committee's assessment and had contributed to the tightening of financial conditions.All participants supported the plans for reducing the size of the balance sheet. ....[...]...Participants agreed that the economic outlook was highly uncertain and that policy decisions should be data dependent and focused on returning inflation to the Committee's 2 percent goal while sustaining strong labor market conditions. At present, participants judged that it was important to move expeditiously to a more neutral monetary policy stance. They also noted that a restrictive stance of policy may well become appropriate depending on the evolving economic outlook and the risks to the outlook. Participants observed that developments associated with Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the COVID-related lockdowns in China posed heightened risks for both the United States and economies around the world. Several participants commented on the challenges that monetary policy faced in restoring price stability while also maintaining strong labor market conditions. In light of the high degree of uncertainty surrounding the economic outlook, participants judged that risk-management considerations would be important in deliberations over time regarding the appropriate policy stance. Many participants judged that expediting the removal of policy accommodation would leave the Committee well positioned later this year to assess the effects of policy firming and the extent to which economic developments warranted policy adjustments.

Fighting Inflation Excuse for Class Warfare -A class war is being waged in the name of fighting inflation. All too many central bankers are raising interest rates at the expense of working people’s families, supposedly to check price increases.Forced to cope with rising credit costs, people are spending less, thus slowing the economy. But it does not have to be so. There are much less onerous alternative approaches to tackle inflation and other contemporary economic ills.Central bankers are agreed inflation is now their biggest challenge, but also admit having no control over factors underlying the current inflationary surge. Many are increasingly alarmed by a possible “double-whammy” of inflation and recession.Nonetheless, they defend raising interest rates as necessary “preemptive strikes”. These supposedly prevent “second-round effects” of workers demanding more wages to cope with rising living costs, triggering “wage-price spirals”.In central bank jargon, such “forward-looking” measures convey clear messages “anchoring inflationary expectations”, thus enhancing central bank “credibility” in fighting inflation.They insist the resulting job and output losses are only short-term – temporary sacrifices for long-term prosperity. Remember: central bankers are never punished for causing recessions, no matter how deep, protracted or painful.But raising interest rates only makes recessions worse, especially when not caused by surging demand. The latest inflationary surge is clearly due to supply disruptions because of the pandemic, war and sanctions. Raising interest rates only reduces spending and economic activity without mitigating ‘imported’ inflation, e.g., rising food and fuel prices. Recessions will further disrupt supplies, aggravating inflation and worsening stagflation. Some central bankers claim recent instances of wage increases signal “de-anchored” inflationary expectations, and threaten ‘wage-price spirals’. But this paranoia ignores changed industrial relations and pandemic effects on workers.With real wages stagnant for decades, the ‘wage-price spiral’ threat is grossly exaggerated. Over recent decades, most workers have lost bargaining power with deregulation, outsourcing, globalization and labour-saving technologies. Hence, labour shares of national income have declined in most countries since the 1980s.Labour market recovery, even tightening in some sectors, obscures adverse overall pandemic impacts on workers. Meanwhile, millions of workers have gone into informal self-employment – now celebrated as ‘gig work’ – increasing their vulnerability.Pandemic infections, deaths, mental health, education and other impacts, including migrant worker restrictions, have all hurt many. Contagion has especially hurt vulnerable workers, including youth, migrants and women. Economic policies by supposedly independent and knowledgeable technocrats are presumed to be better. But such naïve faith ignores ostensibly academic, ideological beliefs. Typically biased, albeit in unstated ways, policy choices inevitably support some interests over – even against – others. Thus, for example, an anti-inflation policy emphasis favours financial asset owners.Politicians like the notion of central bank independence. It enables them to conveniently blame central banks for inflation and other ills – even “sleeping at the wheel” – and for unpopular policy responses.Of course, central bankers deny their own role and responsibility, instead blaming other economic policies, especially fiscal measures. But politicians blaming central bankers after empowering them is simply shirking responsibility.In the rich West, governments long bent on fiscal austerity left the heavy lifting for recovery after the 2008-2009 global financial crisis (GFC) to central bankers. Their ‘unconventional monetary policies’ involved keeping policy interest rates very low, enabling corporate shenanigans and zombie business longevity.This enabled unprecedented increases in most debt, including private credit for speculation and sustaining ‘zombie’ businesses. Hence, recent monetary tightening – including raising interest rates – will trigger more insolvencies and recessions.

PCE Price Index: April Headline at 6.27% YoY -The BEA's Personal Income and Outlays report for April was published this morning by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The latest Headline PCE price index was up 0.25% month-over-month (MoM) and is up 6.27% year-over-year (YoY). Core PCE (YoY) is now at 4.91%, well above the Fed's 2% target rate. The adjacent thumbnail gives us a close-up of the trend in YoY Core PCE since January 2012. The first string of red data points highlights the 12 consecutive months when Core PCE hovered in a narrow range around its interim low. The second string highlights the lower range from late 2014 through 2015. Core PCE shifted higher in 2016 with a decline in 2017, 2019, and 2020. The first chart below shows the monthly year-over-year change in the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index since 2000. Also included is an overlay of the Core PCE (less Food and Energy) price index, which is Fed's preferred indicator for gauging inflation. The two percent benchmark is the Fed's conventional target for core inflation. Most recently, the Fed reviewed their monetary policy strategy and longer-term goals and released a statement, mentioning its federal mandate to promote "maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates". They also confirmed their commitment to using the two percent benchmark as a lower limit: The Committee reaffirms its judgment that inflation at the rate of 2 percent, as measured by the annual change in the price index for personal consumption expenditures, is most consistent over the longer run with the Federal Reserve's statutory mandate. Read the August 2020 statement here. The index data is shown to two decimal points to highlight the change more accurately. It may seem trivial to focus such detail on numbers that will be revised again next month (the three previous months are subject to revision and the annual revision reaches back three years). But core PCE is such a key measure of inflation for the Federal Reserve that precision seems warranted.

Fed facility tops $2 trillion as investors scramble to park cash — The amount of money parked at a major Federal Reserve facility climbed to yet another all-time high, surpassing the $2 trillion milestone for the first time, as investors struggled to find places to invest their cash in the short term. Money-market funds continue piling into the Fed’s overnight reverse repurchase agreement facility, even as the monetary authority raises interest rates and plans to start unwinding its mammoth balance sheet next month, moves intended to tighten financial conditions and drain the amount of excess liquidity in the financial system. Yet there’s still an imbalance in the Treasury-bill market that as of late has been exacerbated by robust tax collections in the U.S., and as a result the so-called RRP facility remains a haven for money markets with very few investment options. The Fed raised interest rates by 50 basis points earlier this month and the chairman indicated it was on track to make similar-sized moves at its meetings in June and July. Even Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase’s CEO, said at the firm’s investor day Monday that the Fed almost has to do so-called quantitative tightening since there is too much liquidity out there.

Fed’s Brainard walks the line on CBDCs -- The Federal Reserve is keeping its options open when it comes to developing and issuing its own digital currency. During a nearly three-hour-long hearing on a potential U.S. central bank digital currency, Lael Brainard, vice chair of the Fed’s Board of Governors, reiterated the stance that the Fed would prefer to pursue a digital dollar with the backing of Congress, but she did not concede that the central bank would require such a mandate to move forward. “The Federal Reserve discussion paper that was released in January, said that the Federal Reserve would not move forward without strong support from the executive branch and Congress, ideally in the form of authorizing legislation,” Brainard said.

Wall Street bank lobby lines up against a U.S. digital dollar - Wall Street lenders are calling on the U.S. government to hold off on launching a digital dollar, arguing that a virtual currency backed by the Federal Reserve risks draining hundreds of billions of dollars out of the banking system. An American central bank digital currency, or CBDC as it’s known, would act as a direct competitor to private bank deposits and make credit less available to businesses and households, according to the American Bankers Association and the Bank Policy Institute. The trade groups were responding to a Fed discussion paper released in January that laid out the potential benefits and risks of launching a new virtual tender. “As we have evaluated the likely impacts of issuing a CBDC it has become clear that the purported benefits of a CBDC are uncertain and unlikely to be realized, while the costs are real and acute,” the ABA said in a May 20 letter to the Fed. “Based on this analysis, we do not see a compelling case for a CBDC in the United States today.”

Chicago Fed: "Index suggests economic growth increased in April" - "Index suggests economic growth increased in April." This is the headline for this morning's release of the Chicago Fed's National Activity Index, and here is the opening paragraph from the report: The Chicago Fed National Activity Index (CFNAI) increased to +0.47 in April from +0.36 in March. All four broad categories of indicators used to construct the index made positive contributions in April, and three categories improved from March. The index’s three-month moving average, CFNAI-MA3, ticked down to +0.48 in April from +0.49 in March. [more] The Chicago Fed's National Activity Index (CFNAI) is a monthly indicator designed to gauge overall economic activity and related inflationary pressure. It is a composite of 85 monthly indicators as explained in thisbackground PDF file on the Chicago Fed's website. The index is constructed so a zero value for the index indicates that the national economy is expanding at its historical trend rate of growth. Negative values indicate below-average growth, and positive values indicate above-average growth. The first chart below shows the recent behavior of the index since 2007. The red dots show the indicator itself, which is quite noisy, together with the 3-month moving average (CFNAI-MA3), which is more useful as an indicator of the actual trend for coincident economic activity.

Q1 GDP Growth Revised down to minus 1.5% Annual Rate -- From the BEA: Gross Domestic Product (Second Estimate) and Corporate Profits (Preliminary), First Quarter 2022 Real gross domestic product (GDP) decreased at an annual rate of 1.5 percent in the first quarter of 2022 (table 1), according to the "second" estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the fourth quarter, real GDP increased 6.9 percent. The GDP estimate released today is based on more complete source data than were available for the "advance" estimate issued last month. In the advance estimate, the decrease in real GDP was 1.4 percent. The update primarily reflects downward revisions to private inventory investment and residential investment that were partly offset by an upward revision to consumer spending Here is a Comparison of Second and Advance Estimates. PCE growth was revised up from 2.7% to 3.1%. Residential investment was revised down from 2.1% to 0.4%.

Q1 GDP Second Estimate: Real GDP at -1.5%, Worse Than Forecast -The Second Estimate for Q1 GDP, to one decimal, came in at -1.5% (-1.51% to two decimal places), a decrease from 6.9% (6.89% to two decimal places) for the Q4 Third Estimate. Investing.com had a consensus of 1.3%.Here is the slightly abbreviated opening text from the Bureau of Economic Analysis news release:Real gross domestic product (GDP) decreased at an annual rate of 1.5 percent in the first quarter of 2022 (table 1), according to the "second" estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the fourth quarter, real GDP increased 6.9 percent.The GDP estimate released today is based on more complete source data than were available for the "advance" estimate issued last month. In the advance estimate, the decrease in real GDP was 1.4 percent. The update primarily reflects downward revisions to private inventory investment and residential investment that were partly offset by an upward revision to consumer spending (refer to "Updates to GDP"). [Full Release] Here is a look at Quarterly GDP since Q2 1947. Prior to 1947, GDP was an annual calculation. To be more precise, the chart shows is the annualized percentage change from the preceding quarter in Real (inflation-adjusted) Gross Domestic Product. We've also included recessions, which are determined by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). Also illustrated are the 3.18% average (arithmetic mean) and the 10-year moving average, currently at 2.30%.Here is a log-scale chart of real GDP with an exponential regression, which helps us understand growth cycles since the 1947 inception of quarterly GDP. The latest number puts us 15.5% below trend.

First-quarter GDP declined 1.5%, worse than thought; jobless claims edge lower - The U.S. economic contraction to start the year was worse than expected as weak business and private investment failed to offset strong consumer spending, the Commerce Department reported Thursday.First-quarter gross domestic product declined at a 1.5% annual pace, according to the second estimate from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. That was worse than the 1.3% Dow Jones estimate and a write-down from theinitially reported 1.4%.Downward revisions for both private inventory and residential investment offset an upward change in consumer spending. A swelling trade deficit also subtracted from the GDP total.The pullback in GDP represented the worst quarter since the pandemic-scarred Q2 of 2020 in which the U.S. fell into a recession spurred by a government-imposed economic shutdown to battle Covid-19. GDP plummeted 31.2% in that quarter.Economists largely expect the U.S. to rebound in the second quarter as some of the factors holding back growth early in the year subside. A surge in the omicron variant slowed activity, and the Russian attack on Ukraineaggravated supply chain issues that had contributed to a 40-year high in inflation.CNBC's Rapid Update survey shows a median expectation of 3.3% growth in the second quarter; the Atlanta Fed's GDPNow tracker also points to a rebound, but at a more subdued 1.8% pace."This year will be mixed. Declines should not be repeated, but growth will not match what has been seen since the economy began reopening," said Scott Hoyt, senior director at Moody's Analytics. "With the Federal Reserve seemingly totally focused on bringing inflation back down, recession risks are uncomfortably high, although perhaps more for next year than this."One factor helping to propel growth is a resilient consumer fighting throughinflation that accelerated 8.3% from a year ago in April.Consumer spending as gauged by personal consumption expenditures increased 3.1%, better than the first estimate of 2.7%. That has come as the labor market has continued to be strong and wages are increasing rapidly, though still below the pace of inflation.Initial jobless claims for the week ended May 21 totaled 210,000, a decrease from the previous 218,000, the Labor Department reported. Continuing claims, after holding around their lowest level since 1969, edged higher for the week for the week ended May 14 to nearly 1.35 million.

Q2 GDP Forecasts: Around 3.0% -From BofA: We are tracking 3.0% qoq saar for 2Q GDP. Next week's trade data will be a big swing factor. [May 27 estimate] ,From Goldman: The normalization in the trade balance was even larger than our previous assumptions, and we boosted our Q2 GDP tracking estimate by two tenths to +2.8% (qoq ar). [May 27 estimate]And from the Altanta Fed: GDPNowThe GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the second quarter of 2022 is 1.9 percent on May 27, up from 1.8 percent on May 25. After this morning's releases from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis and the US Census Bureau, an increase in the nowcast of second-quarter real net exports was partially offset by a decrease in the nowcast of second-quarter real gross private domestic investment. [May 27 estimate]

Real money supply declines sharply; another leading indicator for recession next year -- Real money supply declines sharply; another leading indicator for recession next year Real M1 declined -0.8% in April, and real M2 declined by -0.7%, following March declines of -1.0% for each: These have been the sharpest monthly declines since 2005: Real money supply is a long leading indicator, as shown in the below graph of both real M1 and real M2 going back over 60 years (shown in log scale to prevent inflation from showing earlier periods as mere squiggles): Here is a close-up of the past 10 months showing both: Real M1 is at a 9 month low. Real M2 is at a 12 month low. Real M2 fell out of favor after failing to actually decline YoY prior to the 2001 and 2008 recessions, but a YoY% decline in real M1 and a real YoY% gain of M2 of less than 2.5% is nevertheless an excellent leading indicator for recession: Again, the short term view shows that real M1 is only up 0.7% YoY (and if the trend continues, will be negative YoY in one month). Real M2 is already negative YoY: Real money supply is now another negative leading indicator for recession next year.

Four High Frequency Indicators for the Economy --These indicators are mostly for travel and entertainment. Note: Apple has discontinued "Apple mobility", and restaurant traffic is mostly back to normal. -----The TSA is providing daily travel numbers. This data is as of May 22nd.This data shows the 7-day average of daily total traveler throughput from the TSA for 2019 (Light Blue), 2020 (Black), 2021 (Blue) and 2022 (Red). The 7-day average is down 9.5% from the same day in 2019 90.5% of 2019). (Dashed line) Air travel has been moving sideways over the last two months, off about 10% from 2019. This data shows domestic box office for each week and the median for the years 2016 through 2019 (dashed light blue). Black is 2020, Blue is 2021 and Red is 2022. The data is from BoxOfficeMojo through May 19th. Movie ticket sales were at $120 million last week, down about 40% from the median for the week. This graph shows the seasonal pattern for the hotel occupancy rate using the four-week average. The red line is for 2022, black is 2020, blue is the median, and dashed light blue is for 2021. Dashed purple is 2019 (STR is comparing to a strong year for hotels). This data is through May 14th. The occupancy rate was down 5.9% compared to the same week in 2019. The 4-week average of the occupancy rate is at the median rate for the previous 20 years (Blue). Here is some interesting data on New York subway usage. This graph shows how much MTA traffic has recovered in each borough (Graph starts at first week in January 2020 and 100 = 2019 average). Manhattan is at about 39% of normal. This data is through Friday, May 20th.

 Interest on the debt is a huge threat - The justifiable and unavoidable focus on the highest inflation in 40 years should look beyond its visible impact on the economy and the cost of goods and services. While the most noticeable sign of increased prices appears at gas stations, where they are reaching record highs every day, there are less noticeable but more destructive long-term consequences of higher costs that should be made clearer to the American people. Over the past two years, $4.6 trillion has been provided by Congress in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The impact on inflation, particularly the timing of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act in March 2021, is subject to some debate, but what cannot be denied is the impact this spending has had on the interest paid on the national debt. Between 2011-2018, interest on debt held by the public averaged $272 billion annually. Between 2019-2021, annual interest on the debt averaged $389 billion, an increase of $117 billion, or 43 percent. The president’s fiscal 2022 budget, which is the first to project deficits of more than $1 trillion for 10 consecutive years, estimates that FY 2022 interest on debt of $26.3 trillion will be $305 billion and reach $941 billion in FY 2031, or more than triple the amount for the current fiscal year. By that time, interest payments will account for 59 percent of the projected $1.6 trillion deficit. The projected interest payments in the budget were made with the assumption that 10-year Treasury interest rates would be 1.4 percent in FY 2022, then average 2.2 percent for the next four years and average 2.8 percent for the following five years. But the 10-year Treasury interest rate is already 2.8 percent and likely to go higher given the Federal Reserve Bank’s plan to continue raising interest rates. An increase in interest rates of 1 percentage point above projected rates, according to Brian Riedl of the Manhattan Institute, would raise interest payments by $30 trillion through 2051, and at that time the payments would be equal to 70 percent of all tax revenue. An increase of 2 percentage points would mean that interest payments would equal 100 percent of all tax revenue in 2051.

 New York Fed Stuns with New Report: At Year End Its Trading Desk Owned 38 Percent of All 10-30 Year U.S. Treasuries -- By Pam Martens and Russ Martens - On Tuesday, the New York Fed’s trading desk released its annual report showing what it was up to in 2021. The New York Fed is the only one of the Federal Reserve’s 12 regional Fed banks to have a trading desk operation with speed dials to Wall Street’s trading houses, so we’re always interested in reading the “official” version of what’s been happening there.The report is a deeply sanitized version of the facts on the ground. (For example, there is nothing in the report to indicate that the New York Fed has established a second trading floor near the futures exchange in Chicago.)However, there is one paragraph in the newly-released report that took our breath away. It reveals that the New York Fed’s trading operation (officially called the System Open Market Account or SOMA) currently owns 38 percent of all outstanding U.S. Treasury Securities with 10 to 30 years remaining until maturity. (See the last two paragraphs on page 33 of the report.)There are multiple reasons that this detail takes our breath away. First of all, the U.S. Treasury market is massive – at $22.6 trillion as of year-end 2021. That any one entity controls a big chunk of the market is deeply concerning. (The same report showed that the New York Fed’s trading desk owned 25 percent of all maturities of outstanding Treasury debt.)The New York Fed’s trading desk owning 38 percent of the 10-30 year Treasuries is also deeply alarming because it is that maturity range that has a dramatic impact on the interest rate of the 30-year fixed-rate residential mortgage, the most popular mortgage among first-time homebuyers historically. It means that the New York Fed’s gobbling up of these 10-year U.S. Treasury Notes and 30-year U.S. Treasury Bonds, to the tune of 38 percent of the market, has created artificial demand for these instruments that would not otherwise exist. That, in turn, means that mortgage rates have been artificially held lower – much lower – than they would otherwise have been.Even more alarming, it means that the recent announcements by the Fed that it will bereducing its purchases of Treasury securities and shrinking its balance sheet byreducing the amount of principal payments that are rolled over into new Treasury securities, is going to have a dramatic impact on residential mortgage rates.The chart below shows how the 30-year fixed rate mortgage has risen since the Fed made its first announcement of QE tapering on November 3, 2021 and subsequent tapering announcements. The 30-year fixed rate mortgage has spiked from an average of 3 percent to 5.25 percent as of May 19 of this year – an increase of 75 percent. The dramatic spike in the rate over a period of just seven months has priced many first-time home buyers out of the market.

At Davos, Manchin offers insight into inflation, climate deal - Sen. Joe Manchin continues to envision legislation advancing this year to tackle inflation, drug pricing and climate change — but with an emphasis on fossil fuels. In remarks yesterday at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, the West Virginia Democrat said there is “a responsibility and opportunity that we can do something.”Manchin, who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, listed three major priorities: inflation and deficit reduction, lowering drug prices, and energy and climate. On the latter point, Manchin said, “You can’t do one without the other.”“The United States of America has an abundant supply of natural gas and oil,” Manchin said. “And we can use our fossil and the cleanest technology humanly possible to make sure that we are reliable, we have reliability and we have security.”The comments are in line with what he has said previously. Manchin has broadly sketched out his stance on how President Joe Biden’s agenda should proceed in the months since he announced his opposition to the $1.7 trillion “Build Back Better Act.” But he did outline a potential deal for Democrats on a revamped party-line budget reconciliation bill.On climate, Manchin said, “we have so much more that we can do.” “But you can’t do it by abandoning the fossil industry that gives us the ability to have reliability and security, not just for our nation, but what the world is needing today,” he added. Democrats have tried to keep their hopes alive for “Build Back Better” in conversations with Manchin and in public. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has been meeting privately with Manchin on inflation, the most important priority for the West Virginia Democrat in a potential reconciliation bill (E&E Daily, May 19).Manchin has also been leading meetings on climate and energy talks with a bipartisan group of lawmakers. The group could meet again this week, but those talks are nascent, and a deal that could garner the 60 votes needed to clear the filibuster would be a heavy lift in the 50-50 Senate with midterms approaching (E&E Daily, May 18).Negotiations on a “Build Back Better” revival have been muted as Congress approaches Memorial Day, the informal date by which Democrats had hoped to have a new deal. Democrats generally have tried to stay quiet about their conversations with Manchin after talks blew up publicly last year amid a spat between Manchin and the White House.“I am aware that there are a lot of very positive conversations going on amongst the 50 of us about what that would look like, on climate, but also on the other things that we want to try to accomplish as well,” Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.), a leading climate hawk, said yesterday during a virtual event with Evergreen Action.Even as the party scrambles to find solutions to sky-high oil prices ahead of the midterms, an infusion of money to oil, gas and coal could prove a tough pill to swallow for some Democrats. Indeed, House Democrats spent much of last week passing legislation to investigate oil companies for price gouging.As Smith put it, however, “Time is not our friend here.” “We need to agree to what we can agree to, recognize that there are going to be some things some of us think would be really good ideas that are not going to make it in,” Smith said. “And we just need to accept that and get what we can get.”

Clock ticking as bipartisan energy gang huddles again - Sen. Joe Manchin’s climate and energy gang met for the fifth time yesterday, but after a month of talks, they emerged no closer to putting pen to paper on a bipartisan bill. The group led by the West Virginia Democrat again discussed a hodgepodge of pro-fossil fuel and greenhouse gas emissions reduction policies with little hard agreement on what, exactly, an eventual bill would look like, according to senators in the room. Appetite for energy policy is high on Capitol Hill amid the supply crunch spurred by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the demise of the “Build Back Better Act,” Democrats’ partisan climate and social spending bill. But with little apparent progress, the gang is beginning to run into the realities of the snail-paced Senate. Advertisement The chamber is about to leave town for a weeklong Memorial Day recess, barring a schedule change to take up gun control legislation after the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. In congressional time, that means the clock is quickly running out to develop and whip votes for a substantial piece of bipartisan legislation ahead of the midterms, a situation members of the group acknowledged last night. “The bottom line is we got some tight windows here we have to work in, but we’ll see,” Manchin, the Energy and Natural Resources Committee chair, told reporters after the meeting. “We’ve just got to make some decisions here.” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) pinned down July 4 as a potential deadline, saying Republicans may start looking toward a future majority if the group doesn’t ramp up talks by then. “I suspect it’d be a very different scenario after the election in terms of opportunities [for Republicans],” Cramer told reporters. There appeared to be fewer lawmakers present yesterday than at the last few meetings. Democrats other than Manchin, as they have after past huddles, largely declined to comment. Senate Environment and Public Works Chair Tom Carper (D-Del.) would not comment as he emerged from the room, while Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) simply said the meeting was “productive.” Other attendees included Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.). Manchin said writing a bill would be relatively easy if the group reaches that point. It would effectively be an exercise of picking and choosing what they like from the House-passed “Build Back Better Act” and putting it together with policies to boost domestic oil and gas production and address fossil fuel geopolitics after Russia’s invasion. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle also have long-standing legislative proposals to reform permitting and boost domestic critical minerals production. “All you have to do is look at what has been written before and what’s come over and look at that,” Manchin said. He added, “the war has changed everything, and we need to know that. The world is unstable.”

Coal Miners Put Manchin on Spot to Deliver on Black Lung Benefit -Coal miners sickened by black-lung disease need renewal of an income stream to help fund their disability benefits. Sen. Joe Manchin, a pivotal figure in the Biden administration’s contentious budget plans, is under pressure to deliver.Congress will ensure it’s “taken care of,” Manchin (D-W.Va.) said. He predicted his stand-alone legislation (S. 2810), extending the 2021 tax rate companies pay into the Black Lung Disability Fund through 2031, will end up in a larger legislative package that’s yet to be determined. “There are many places we can put it, and many places we can’t,” he said in a hallway interview last week.Disabled miners and their dependents still have been receiving their benefits since the rate expired on Dec. 31. But less money overall is flowing into federal coffers because the higher tax rate companies paid last year is back to the reduced level, threatening the long-term integrity of the trust fund.Sen. Joe Manchin, shown on Capitol Hill May 10, 2022, is seeking a way to extend the tax rate coal companies pay to fund black-lung disability benefits.The tax, contributed by all coal companies—among them Peabody Energy Corp., Arch Resources Inc., and NACCO Industries Inc.—is the fund’s primary source of money. It’s shrinking and will continue to do so rapidly unless Congress renews the tax at the 2021 rate, advocates say.The trust fund is losing more than $2.8 million per week, the Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center and the environmental group Appalachian Voices estimates.The House-passed Build Back Better Act (H.R. 5376) included a four-year extension of the 2021 black lung excise tax rate. But Manchin’s opposition to separate measures in that package stalled its prospects in the Senate.Now, the congressional agenda is crowded ahead of the August recess and the November midterm elections.“You’ve got every Republican voting against every one of these things,” Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said when asked if an extension of the black lung excise tax rate could go into a bigger package. Brown unsuccessfully tried to insert an extension into the fiscal 2022 spending package (P.L. 117-103).

Biden’s Pick for the EPA’s Top Air Pollution Job Finds Himself Caught in the Crossfire - Inside Climate News - The Biden administration’s choice to head up the Environmental Protection Agency’s office of air and radiation faced sharp questioning during his confirmation hearing on Wednesday from coal state Republicans and a Democrat considered one of the Senate’s most ardent climate-action advocates.Joseph Goffman, known for consensus building during three decades at the EPA and on Capitol Hill, nonetheless found himself at the center of the conflict between President Joe Biden’s historic goals to tackle climate change and the harsh political realities keeping them from being realized. The actions Goffman and his colleagues at the Biden EPA have taken so far to curb smog- and haze-forming pollution from coal power plants have West Virginia and Wyoming politicians up in arms, possibly imperiling his nomination as assistant administrator. But they haven’t even begun to meet Biden’s goal of cutting U.S. greenhouse gas pollution by 50 percent eight years from now. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) held up a chart that he said showed how the Biden administration was falling short on climate: No EPA proposals yet on control of power plant pollution. Standards for cars and light trucks that will result in less emission reductions than the standards set by President Barack Obama. No mandates for zero-emissions vehicles as part of a pollution standard for heavy trucks. “We’re 16 months into this administration, and in what is widely believed to be a world climate crisis caused by carbon emissions,” Whitehouse said. He noted how the Justice Department surged, after President Donald Trump’s administration, to prosecute criminal cases stemming from the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.“They stood up an operation that met the moment,” Whitehouse said, urging the EPA to adopt a similar crisis stance on climate change. “When I look at the regulatory output that you guys have to date, I think what’s called for is a regulatory surge of similar or greater focus.” Goffman first gained his reputation for consensus on Capitol Hill where, as a Senate staffer, he helped design the successful acid rain program Congress passed in 1990. He also helped craft economy-wide climate legislation in 2005 that—for a brief time—garnered bipartisan support in the Senate.Later, as a top EPA official in the Obama administration, Goffman was one of the architects of the Clean Power Plan—Obama’s signature climate proposal, which set differing goals for reducing emissions for power plants in every state and allowed the states flexibility in meeting them. Goffman pledged to bring those same consensus-building skills to the job of assistant EPA administrator. He has been serving as principal deputy assistant administrator under EPA Administrator Michael Regan since nearly the start of the Biden administration. “I believe that all Americans, no matter where they live or what they do for a living, deserve clean air to breathe, a secure job and healthy, safe communities in which to raise a family,” said Goffman. “If confirmed, I will approach our decision-making by bringing all stakeholders to the table and will do so with the integrity, transparency and accountability that Administrator Regan demands.” But the Biden EPA is confronting obstacles to its climate agenda in both the Supreme Court and in Congress, as the Goffman confirmation hearing made clear.

Senate fight escalates over FERC chair. What will Manchin do? -The head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has teed up an ambitious policy agenda for the next several years, with implications for renewable energy, carbon emissions and pipelines. But FERC Chair Richard Glick’s plans face an uncertain fate, as he’ll need to win approval this year from the Senate — evenly split among Democrats and Republicans — to stay on at FERC for five more years. The outcome of that process is far from certain, analysts say. “I think it’s way too hard today to predict what the outcome might be in a 50-50 Senate,” said Neil Chatterjee, a former Republican FERC commissioner and chair. First appointed to FERC in 2017 by former President Donald Trump, Glick became head of the five-person commission shortly after President Joe Biden took office. Last week, the White House nominated the Democrat to serve another term in his current role. Under Glick’s leadership, FERC has advanced a major rulemaking to reform how new power lines are planned and paid for, an initiative that could help reduce bottlenecks in the transmission system that are holding up renewable energy. Glick has also sought to make the agency more responsive to people affected by its decisions, such as landowners in the path of natural gas pipelines, and to modernize the nation’s power markets, among other measures. “He’s doing a lot on grid modernization and expansion, and I think he’s struck up a very good relationship with states,” said Rob Gramlich, founder and president of Grid Strategies LLC and a former economic adviser at FERC. Still, Glick’s efforts to update how the commission approves new gas projects and estimates projects’ greenhouse gas emissions have drawn fierce criticism from Republican lawmakers and a key Democrat, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.). The chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee rebuked Glick and the other Democratic commissioners in February over two proposed new gas policies, which FERC has since drawn back (Energywire, March 25). The committee votes on FERC nominees before they are considered by the full Senate. “I suspect like so many things in the closely divided Senate, all eyes will be on Joe Manchin,” Tony Clark, a former Republican FERC commissioner who is now a senior adviser at Wilkinson Barker Knauer LLP, said in an email. Manchin’s team declined to address how the senator will vote on Glick. As of now, he appears to be “more likely than not” to support Glick, while Republicans are unlikely to vote for him, ClearView Energy Partners LLC said in a research note this week.

 Biden Readies Approval Of Long-Range Rockets To Ukraine - Russia Warns Over "Red Line" --The Biden administration is said to be intensely debating providing long-range missiles to Ukraine, in what would mark a massive escalation given their ability to reach inside Russian territory. Fresh reports suggest the White House is about to pull the trigger. CNN reports Friday that "The Biden administration is preparing to step up the kind of weaponry it is offering Ukraine by sending advanced, long-range rocket systems that are now the top request from Ukrainian officials, multiple officials say." It's expected likely part of the next large package of military assistance to Ukraine, which will be announced next week. The system in question which Washington is mulling over is the Multiple Launch Rocket System, or MLRS, capable of firing rocket barrages up to hundreds of kilometers in range. Within the first few months of the war, which is now in its fourth, President Biden publicly voiced a desire to avoid direct escalation with Russia by sending in larger, more advanced weapons systems that would be capable of hitting Russia. The fears are that such systems would lead to a rapid spiraling toward a direct NATO-Russia shooting war. But that apparently is becoming less of a concern as week by week there's been escalation, in what's increasingly openly acknowledged as a de facto proxy war. What's more is that reports of Ukrainian forces being encircled in the Donbas, and perhaps increasingly in key places south, appears to have US defense planners scrambling to keep the prospect of "victory" alive for Kiev - but without weighing consequences of escalation. As Sky News points out, Russian state media has issued fresh warnings to the West that long-range missiles supplied to Ukraine forces will mark a "red line":

As it escalates war against Russia, Biden administration threatens war against China -On Saturday, US President Joe Biden signed a bill authorizing $40 billion in spending, largely for weapons and other assistance to Ukraine.One month ago, US military assistance to Ukraine under the Biden administration totaled $4 billion. With the stroke of a pen, Biden has expanded the US commitment to the conflict tenfold.But with the ink barely dry on the latest weapons shipment, Washington went on to escalate the conflict further. On Monday, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced that the US would provide Ukraine with Harpoon anti-ship missiles via an intermediary, Denmark. The Harpoon is the standard anti-ship armament of the US Navy, capable of sinking large warships.On Friday, Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs adviser Anton Gerashchenko tweeted that “The US is preparing a plan to destroy the [Russian] Black Sea Fleet” as part of a “plan to unblock the ports.” He continued, “Deliveries of powerful anti-ship weapons (Harpoon and Naval Strike Missile with a range of 250–300 km) are being discussed.”The Pentagon responded by officially denying that the US is actively planning operations to destroy Russia’s navy in the Black Sea. However, Monday’s announcement makes clear that it is engaged in precisely such an operation. The US was already directly involved in the sinking of the flagship of the Russian fleet, Moskva, last month.As usual, military escalation by the United States is accompanied by a propaganda barrage. In this case, the apologists of US imperialism are declaring that greater involvement in military operations in the Black Sea is dictated by the need to open the ports for global food shipments.The Washington Post published an editorial entitled “Putin is starving millions of people around the world.” It concludes, “with 20 million metric tons of grain and corn just sitting in storage at Ukrainian ports right now, there’s only so much the rest of the world can do. Mr. Putin’s war is on the verge of becoming Mr. Putin’s global famine.”The Post’s hypocrisy is jaw-dropping. The United States is the world’s leading practitioner of using starvation as a “weapon” of foreign policy. In 1974, Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz declared, “food is a weapon. It is now one of the principal tools in our negotiating kit.” In December 1980, John Block, Reagan’s secretary of agriculture, told reporters: “I believe food is the greatest weapon we have.” US sanctions on food and medicine imported by Iraq in the 1990s contributed to the preventable deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, while US sanctions against Iran led to runaway food price inflation, meaning that “following a healthy diet has become more difficult for most Iranians,” according to one study. As for the present ongoing food crisis, fundamental responsibility lies with the US and NATO powers, which provoked the current conflict and have sought at every point to scuttle efforts at a negotiated solution to the war.

US effort to impose tougher UN sanctions on North Korea blocked by China, Russia - China and Russia on Thursday blocked an effort to impose tougher sanctions on North Korea at the United Nations Security Council that was led by the U.S. after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un conducted a spate of missile tests this year, including the launch of several intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).Both China and Russia hold veto powers at the UN Security Council, which they exercised after the introduction of a the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) — North Korea’s official name — for the tests with more restrictive sanctions.China’s Ambassador to the UN, Zhang Jun, said at the UN meeting on Thursday that “the reason why today’s draft resolution failed to pass” was because the U.S. had refused to accept proposals other than implementing sanctions.“China’s voting position is based on our assessment as to whether a proposal contributes to a solution,” Zhang said. “Perhaps some people wanted nothing but this situation, based on their cynical intentions.”The U.S. and South Korea led the push in recent weeks for the UN to impose tougher sanctions on North Korea following more than 15 missile launches from the regime this year. If the effort had passed, the UN would have toughened sanctions on North Korea for the first time since 2017.Following President Biden’s visit to East Asia over the weekend, North Korea fired at least three ballistic missiles off its east coast Wednesday morning local time.

No Way Out But War - by Chris Hedges  Permanent war has cannibalized the country. It has created a social, political, and economic morass. Each new military debacle is another nail in the coffin of Pax Americana... The United States, as the near unanimous vote to provide nearly $40 billion in aid to Ukraine illustrates, is trapped in the death spiral of unchecked militarism. No high speed trains. No universal health care. No viable Covid relief program. No respite from 8.3 percent inflation. No infrastructure programs to repair decaying roads and bridges, which require $41.8 billion to fix the 43,586 structurally deficient bridges, on average 68 years old. No forgiveness of $1.7 trillion in student debt. No addressing income inequality. No program to feed the 17 million children who go to bed each night hungry. No rational gun control or curbing of the epidemic of nihilistic violence and mass shootings. No help for the 100,000 Americans who die each year of drug overdoses. No minimum wage of $15 an hour to counter 44 years of wage stagnation. No respite from gas prices that are projected to hit $6 a gallon.The permanent war economy, implanted since the end of World War II, has destroyed the private economy, bankrupted the nation, and squandered trillions of dollars of taxpayer money. The monopolization of capital by the military has driven the US debt to $30 trillion, $ 6 trillion more than the US GDP of $ 24 trillion. Servicing this debt costs $300 billion a year. We spent more on the military, $ 813 billion for fiscal year 2023, than the next nine countries, including China and Russia, combined.We are paying a heavy social, political, and economic cost for our militarism. Washington watches passively as the U.S. rots, morally, politically, economically, and physically, while China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, India, and other countries extract themselves from the tyranny of the U.S. dollar and the international Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a messaging network banks and other financial institutions use to send and receive information, such as money transfer instructions. Once the U.S. dollar is no longer the world’s reserve currency, once there is an alternative to SWIFT, it will precipitate an internal economic collapse. It will force the immediate contraction of the U.S. empire shuttering most of its nearly 800 overseas military installations. It will signal the death of Pax Americana.Democrat or Republican. It does not matter. War is the raison d’état of the state. Extravagant military expenditures are justified in the name of “national security.” The nearly $40 billion allocated for Ukraine, most of it going into the hands of weapons manufacturers such as Raytheon Technologies, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing, is only the beginning. Military strategists, who say the war will be long and protracted, are talking about infusions of $4 or $5 billion in military aid a month to Ukraine. We face existential threats. But these do not count. The proposed budget for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in fiscal year 2023 is $10.675 billion. The proposed budget for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is $11.881 billion. Ukraine alone gets more than double that amount. Pandemics and the climate emergency are afterthoughts. War is all that matters. This is a recipe for collective suicide.

They’re Worried About The Spread Of Information, Not Disinformation | by Caitlin Johnstone -- We’re in the final countdown to British Home Secretary Priti Patel’s decision on the fate of Julian Assange, with the WikiLeaks founder’s extradition to the United States due to be approved or rejected by the end of the month. Joe Lauria has a new article out with Consortium News on the various pressures that Patel is being faced with from both sides of this history-making issue at this crucial time. And I can’t stop thinking, as this situation comes to a boil, about how absurd it is that the US empire is working to set a precedent which essentially outlaws information-sharing that the US doesn’t like at the same time western news media are full of hand-wringing headlines about the dangerous threat of “disinformation”. Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) has an article out titled “‘Disinformation’ Label Serves to Marginalize Crucial Ukraine Facts” about the way the mass media have been spinning that label to mean not merely the knowing distribution of false information but also of information that is true but inconvenient to imperial narrative-weaving. “In defense of the US narrative, corporate media have increasingly taken to branding realities inconvenient to US information goals as ‘disinformation’ spread by Russia or its proxies,” writes FAIR’s Luca Goldmansour. Online platforms have been ramping up their censorship protocols under the banner of fighting disinformation and misinformation, and those escalations always align with narrative control agendas of the US-centralized empire. Just the other day we learned that Twitter has a new policy which expands its censorship practices to fight “misinformation” about wars and other crises, and the Ukraine war (surprise surprise) will be the first such situation about which it will be enforcing these new censorship policies. Then there’s the recent controversy over the Department of Homeland Security’s “Disinformation Governance Board,” a mysterious institution ostensibly designed to protect the American people from wrongthink coming from Russia and elsewhere. The board’s operations (whatever they were) have been “paused” pending a review which will be led by Michael Chertoff, a virulent swamp monster and torture advocate. Its operations will likely be resumed in one form or another, probably under the leadership of someone with a low profile who doesn’t sing show tunes about disinformation. And this all comes out after US officials straight up told the press that the Biden administration has been deliberately sowing disinformation to the public using the mainstream press in order to win an infowar against the Kremlin. They’ve literally just been circulating completely baseless stories about Russia and Ukraine, but nobody seems to be calling for the social media accounts of Biden administration officials to be banned.

Geopolitics Takes A Back Seat As Biden Drops Sanctions On Venezuela - When Biden sent a delegation to Caracas in early March, rumors began to circulate that the U.S. was considering reopening relations with Venezuela as oil prices soared. Now, after a period of silence from Washington on the subject, it appears that the U.S. is going to ease its sanctions on the Latin American oil giant. At the same time that the U.S. is lifting some sanctions, Venezuela is working with Iran to help revive its oil industry. It seems geopolitics has taken a back seat to the global energy crisis as oil prices soar. The U.S. imposed oil sanctions on Venezuela under the Trump administration in 2019 due to ongoing human rights violations by President Nicolás Maduro. Under President Biden, there were discussions about reopening some trade links by allowing crude-for-diesel exchanges on humanitarian grounds, although this never came to fruition. However, the U.S. oil and gas firm Chevron has been allowed to continue limited operations in Venezuela in order to help avoid the collapse of the country’s oil industry. There has been speculation in recent months around whether Biden would ease restrictions on Venezuela in response to global crude shortages and a severe rise in oil prices, with several commentatorshighlighting the dangers of such a move.The White House announced in May that it was reconsidering its restrictions on Venezuelan oil, entering discussions with Maduro. Biden will now allow Chevron Corp. to negotiate its oil license with state-owned oil producer Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), thereby reducing certain sanctions on the oil-rich state. Although no further oil drilling or additional revenues for the Maduro government will be permitted. The move follows a meeting between US officials and Maduro in March to discuss how to move forward.Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez confirmed rumors about the shift in policy by tweeting“Venezuela aspires that these decisions of the United States of America pave the way for the absolute lifting of the illegal sanctions that affect all of our people.”But the Republican opposition has been quick to criticize Biden’s actions. Senator John Barrasso, the top Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, strongly opposes the easing of sanctions on Venezuela, stating “our experience buying Russian energy should have taught President [Joe] Biden that buying energy from tyrants is a dangerous proposition.”The White House apparently responded to a request by Maduro’s political opposition to ease sanctions, although the opposition said that the request came from Maduro. The Biden Administration hopes that dangling oil industry allowances in front of the president may encourage him to make greater political concessions with the opposition, putting Venezuela on track for free and fair presidential elections in 2024.Despite ongoing sanctions, Venezuela has been trading oil products with U.S.-sanctioned Iran in recent months, using discreet shipping methods. Venezuela has also increased its oil exports to China. Iran has been using ship-to-ship transfers to deliver oil products to Venezuela, as well as other clandestine methods. Although Venezuela has around 303 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, its crude is extra-heavy and requires condensate to dilute it, which has been in short supply.Iran has also shipped gasoline and equipment to Venezuela to support the reparation of PDVSA’s rundown refineries. This month, the state-owned National Iranian Oil Engineering and Construction Company signed a $116 million contract to restore the EL Palito 146,000-bpd refinery to restart production. This builds on the agreement between the two countries, established in 2021, to swap Iranian condensate for Venezuelan heavy crude.In April, more than 200,000 barrels of Iranian heavy crude were shipped to Venezuela’s 310,000-bpd Cardon refinery. In addition, 400,000 barrels of Iranian oil reached the Dino I carrier, en route to the Jose port. A further 2 million barrels of condensate were expected to reach Jose the same month. Despite the ongoing sanctions, Iran and Venezuela are becoming increasingly successful at boosting their energy trades.

How to Lose Influence and Alienate Neighbors in Latin America, the US Way - Readers of my May 13 piece, “Washington Faces Ultimate Snub, As Latin American Heads of State Threaten to Boycott Summit of Americas,” may recall that the Biden Administration is struggling to persuade heads of state from Latin America to attend the ninth Summit of Americas. As the FTnotes, the event, held once every three years or so, “is supposed to show that America is back in its own neighbourhood.” Yet less than two weeks before its grand opening, “the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles threatens to expose Washington’s weakness in the region.”The trouble began when Washington hinted it was thinking about excluding from the guest list “antidemocratic” governments from the region including Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, drawing the ire of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (Aka AMLO).The Mexican leader said he would not attend the summit unless all Latin American and Caribbean countries were invited. Since then a growing roster of Latin American leaders have threatened to do the same, including the presidents of Argentina, Chile, Honduras and Bolivia. Guatemala’s President has said he will bow out after the US criticized his government for appointing its attorney general Maria Consuelo Porras, whom Washington accuses of corruption, to serve another term.Even the Vatican has been using its back channels to pressure Washington to extend an invite to Cuba. According to official government sources in Havana, no fewer than 18 of the region’s 35 nation states have asked Biden for all American states to be invited to the summit. But that will not be happening.The Biden Administration this week confirmed it will not be inviting Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro, despite its recent offer to drop some of its sanctions against Caracas so that US oil majors can resume buying Venezuela’s heavier grades of oil, in the hope of relieving some of the price pressures in US energy markets. Washington will also not be inviting Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, who said he wouldn’t want to go to LA anyway even if they unfurled the red carpet for him. Cuba’s president Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel has also said he won’t be attending. In other words, AMLO’s attempt to bring all leaders of the Americas under the same roof in LA has failed. But it is not all bad news. AMLO’s ploy has certainly helped to cement his leadership in Central America and arguably across Latin America as a whole — something even mainstream publications in Mexico have conceded. Also, with so many empty places, Washington has decided to fill one of them by extending an invite to Pedro Sanchez, the prime minister of Spain, a country on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean but which, together with Portugal, France, the Netherlands and Britain, once colonised just about every inch of Latin America and the Caribbean.

Senate plows ahead with price gouging bill - Curbing high gasoline prices will remain a major topic on Capitol Hill this week, with the White House saying this weekend it is open to multiple options to bring them down.With the midterm elections looming, Democrats have been scrambling to find a solution to record-breaking prices. And White House economic adviser Brian Deese said yesterday that President Joe Biden was “open to anything that could constructively move to help bring some relief at the pump. This week, the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee will mark up legislation, S. 4217, that would give the Federal Trade Commission greater clout in cracking down on alleged price gouging by energy companies. The House passed its version of the bill, H.R. 7688, last week in a partisan vote (E&E News PM, May 19).“Protecting American households and business requires forcing the same level of transparency in fuel markets that we successfully fought to secure in other energy markets,” said Senate Commerce Chair Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), who is a leading sponsor of the legislation. She likened it to putting a “full-time policeman on the beat” to monitor fuel markets.The proposed bill would:

• Create a new FTC unit dedicated to monitoring and analyzing crude oil, gasoline, diesel, home heating oil and other petroleum distillate markets to insure transparent and competitive market practices.
• Double fines for fuel market price manipulation to $2 million per day.
• Require the U.S. Energy Information Administration to publish more information about fuel markets to help with competition and transparency.

Senate Commerce Democrats should have the votes to move the legislation out of committee, but it is likely to stall on the Senate floor.
Democrats control only 50 seats, and with the GOP lined up against the bill, it won’t come close to the 60 votes needed to advance in the Senate. Republicans have assailed the bills as “socialist price controls.”Still, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he would force a vote on the issue, in hopes of putting the GOP on the record as opposing an effort aimed at lowering gas prices. It’s not yet clear when that vote will occur.

 What is the Chance of NOPEC Succeeding? | Rigzone - The latest NOPEC legislation is unlikely to become law, according to Joseph Gatdula, the head of oil and gas at Fitch Solutions. “With the industry firmly against the changes, it is unlikely to garner enough votes to pass, and it remains unclear as to what the Biden administration’s position is on the issue, which will require presidential approval to pass into law,” Gatdula told Rigzone. “On top of that, the enactment of NOPEC would likely squander efforts from the U.S. to improve relations with Saudi Arabia,” he added. Gatdula admitted that efforts to pass the bipartisan NOPEC legislation in both the Senate and House had renewed in recent months as oil prices remain high and gasoline prices had risen to record levels. He added, however, that some form of an anti-OPEC legislation has been discussed as a solution to surging fuel prices by the U.S. Congress on multiple occasions over the last decades but said this has never gained sufficient support to be enacted. When asked by Rigzone if the latest NOPEC legislation had any legs, Matthew Bey, a senior global analyst at RANE, said, “President Biden is trying to improve relations with Saudi Arabia and the rest of the GCC and is unlikely to support the NOPEC legislation if it gets to his desk”. “Support of NOPEC would cause significant damage to the U.S.-Saudi Arabia relationship, which would be a liability to the United States as nuclear negotiations with Iran on life-support,” Bey added. In a recent letter to U.S. Senators Richard Durbin and Chuck Grassley, the American Petroleum Institute (API) President and CEO Mike Sommers noted that the industry group opposes the Senate NOPEC legislation (S.977). At the time of writing, S.977 still needs to pass the senate, pass the house, and go to the president before becoming law, according to the Congress website. The S.977 bill, which is available to see on the Congress site, aims to “amend the Sherman Act to make oil-producing and exporting cartels illegal”. What Would Happen If NOPEC Succeeded? The market would likely be left in uncertainty if the bill were to be passed, as the magnitude of financial impacts could be substantial, leading to more punitive actions against U.S. oil companies’ interests held in OPEC+ member countries, Gatdula noted. “A finding of collusion against OPEC or OPEC+ members could see fines under federal law, of ‘twice the amount the conspirators gained from the illegal acts or twice the money lost by the victims of the crime, if either of those amounts is over $100 million’,” Gatdula stated. “This substantial penalty could see a rise in tit-for-tat actions against foreign-held assets in OPEC member countries. Rather than lower oil prices, this could have a chilling effect on upstream investment on both IOCs and sovereign entities, reducing future supply and leading to continued market tightness and higher oil prices,” he added.

Senate Republicans block domestic terrorism bill - Senate Republicans on Thursday blocked a bill to create domestic terrorism offices within federal law enforcement agencies in response to a mass shooting in Buffalo, N.Y., that left 10 people dead. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) framed the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act as an opportunity to vote on Republican and Democratic amendments to curb gun violence, but his plea for GOP support to begin the debate fell flat with Republican colleagues. “The bill is so important because the mass shooting in Buffalo was an act of domestic terrorism. We need to call it what it is, domestic terrorism. It was terrorism that fed off the poison of conspiracy theories like white replacement theory,” Schumer said on the floor before the vote. The vote broke down along party lines, 47-47, with not a single Republican voting for the measure. The legislation would have created an interagency task force within the Justice Department, Department of Homeland Security and the FBI to analyze and combat white supremacist infiltration in the military and federal law enforcement agencies. Republican senators argued that new federal laws and offices are not needed to monitor and prosecute domestic terrorism because politically motivated violence is already covered by existing laws. They also voiced concerns that the bill could open the door to improper surveillance of political groups and create a double standard for extreme groups on the right and left of the political spectrum. The failed Senate vote comes roughly one week after the House passed the legislation largely along partisan lines, 222 to 203. Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) was the only Republican to vote for it.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz receives sharp backlash for comments in wake of Uvalde school shooting -Messages of condolences have been rolling in after a gunman shot and killed more than a dozen children at a Texas elementary school on Tuesday. That includes Sen. Ted Cruz (R), who represents the state where the shooting occurred, and he’s receiving sharp backlash for his comments that critics thought seemed to prioritize gun rights over human life. At least 19 children and two adults died after 18-year-old Salvador Ramos carried out a mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday. Shortly after news of the shooting began circulating, Cruz released a statement which said in part, “Heidi and I are lifting up in prayer the entire Uvalde community during this devastating time and we mourn the lives that were taken by this act of evil.” That comment, which Cruz also published to his Twitter account, immediately drew criticism. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) replied with, “Aren’t you slated to headline a speaking gig for the NRA in three days—in Houston, no less? You can do more than pray. Faith without works is dead.” Cruz is in fact scheduled to speak at the National Rife Association’s (NRA) leadership summit in Houston over Memorial Day weekend. He’s also received $176,274 in campaign contributions from the NRA, according to Brady United, a nonprofit advocating for gun control. In Washington, D.C., Cruz spoke with reporters and said Democrats and the media propose solutions that “try to restrict the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens. That doesn’t work, it’s not effective, it doesn’t prevent crime.” Cruz continued to say that targeting felons and fugitives and those with mental illness is a more effective strategy in preventing crime. Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) also had choice words for Cruz, tweeting at the Texas senator, “F— you @tedcruz you care about a fetus but will let our children get slaughtered. Just get your ass to Cancun. You are useless.”

NRA stages big gun show in Texas days after school massacre — The National Rifle Association begins its annual convention in Houston on Friday, and leaders of the powerful gun-rights lobbying group are gearing up to “reflect on” — and deflect any blame for — the deadly shooting earlier this week of 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. Former President Donald Trump and other leading Republicans are scheduled to address the three-day firearms marketing and advocacy event, which is expected to draw protesters fed up with gun violence. Some scheduled speakers and performers have backed out, including two Texas lawmakers and “American Pie” singer Don McLean, who said “it would be disrespectful” to go ahead with his act in the aftermath of the country’s latest mass shooting. While President Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress have renewed calls for stricter gun laws, NRA board member Phil Journey said the focus should be on better mental health care and trying to prevent gun violence. He said he wouldn’t support banning or limiting access to firearms. The NRA said in an online statement that people attending the gun show will “reflect on” the Uvalde school shooting, “pray for the victims, recognize our patriotic members, and pledge to redouble our commitment to making our schools secure.” People planning to attend picked up registration badges Thursday and shopped for NRA souvenirs, such as T-shirts that say “Suns Out Guns Out.” Police already had set up metal barriers across the street from the convention center, at a park where protesters are expected to gather Friday. Gary Francis traveled with his wife and friends from Racine, Wis., to attend the NRA meeting. He said he opposed any gun control regulations in response to the Uvalde shooting. “What happened there is obviously tragic,” he said. “But the NRA had nothing to do with it. The people who come here had nothing to do with it.”

Mass Shootings: The Vicious Cycle Fueled By America's Toxic Cult Of Violence - With alarming regularity, the nation is being subjected to a heartbreaking spate of violence that terrorizes the populace, fractures communities, and gives the government greater justifications to crack down, lock down, and institute even more authoritarian policies for the so-called sake of national security without many objections from the citizenry.Mass shootings have taken place in schools, on college campuses, movie theaters, nightclubs, grocery stores, concert venues, bars, workplaces, churches, on military bases, and in government offices. In almost every instance, the shooters were dressed in military-style gear and armed with military-style weapons.Take the latest shooting that took place in Uvalde, Texas, when 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, wearing body armor and carrying a rifle, walked into Robb Elementary School and opened fire, leaving at least 19 children and two teachers dead.This Uvalde shooting took place ten days after another 18-year-old man, heavily armed and wearing tactical gear (including a tactical helmet and plated armor), opened fire in a grocery store in Buffalo, N.Y, killing 10 people.In 2018, a 19-year-old former student armed with a gas mask, smoke grenades, magazines of ammunition, and an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle opened fire on students and teachers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., leaving 17 people dead.Ten years ago, 20-year-old Adam Lanza—wearing body armor and black clothing, and armed with military-style weapons—opened fire on students and teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., leaving 26 dead. Prior to the shooting, Lanza reportedly spent his days “playing violent video games amid posters showcasing military equipment.”According to an FBI report issued the day before the Uvalde shooting, these kinds of “active shooter attacks” have doubled in recent years.As expected in the wake of such tragedies, there has been a vocal outcry for enacting more strident gun control measures, more mental health checks, and heightened security measures.Yet surely there’s more to these shootings than just easy access to weapons and mental illness.Ask yourself: Why do these mass shootings keep happening? Who are these shooters modelling themselves after? Where are they finding the inspiration for their weaponry and tactics? Whose stance and techniques are they mirroring?When you start to connect the dots, they lead right back to the American police state and the war-drenched, violence-imbued, profit-driven military industrial complex, both of which continue to dominate, dictate and shape almost every aspect of our lives.The United States is the number one consumer, exporter and perpetrator of violence and violent weapons in the world.Violence has become America’s calling card.We are a military culture engaged in continuous warfare.We have been a nation at war for most of our existence.We are a nation that makes a living from killing through defense contracts, weapons manufacturing and endless wars.We are being fed a steady diet of violence through our entertainment, news, sports and politics.All of the military equipment featured in blockbuster movies is provided—at taxpayer expense—in exchange for carefully placed promotional spots aimed at boosting civic pride in the military, recruiting for the military, and churning out profit-driven propaganda for the military industrial complex. Even reality TV shows have gotten in on the gig. It’s estimated that U.S. military intelligence agencies (including the NSA) have influenced over 1,800 movies and TV shows. As journalist David Sirota writes for Salon, to those who profit from war, it is “a ‘product’ to be sold via pop culture products that sanitize war and, in the process, boost recruitment numbers.” No wonder entertainment violence is the hottest selling ticket at the box office. As professor Henry Giroux points out, “Popular culture not only trades in violence as entertainment, but also it delivers violence to a society addicted to a pleasure principle steeped in graphic and extreme images of human suffering, mayhem and torture.”America spends more money on war than the combined military budgets of China, Russia, the United Kingdom, Japan, France, Saudi Arabia, India, Germany, Italy and Brazil. America polices the globe, with 800 military bases and troops stationed in 160 countries. Moreover, the war hawks have turned the American homeland into a quasi-battlefield with military gear, weapons and tactics. In turn, domestic police forces have become roving extensions of the military—a standing army.

US Navy Sailors Deserting At "Staggering" Rate Amid Mental Health Crisis - A troubling new statistic shows U.S. Navy desertions are soaring and may point to an even more significant issue of an emerging mental health crisis in the service. NBC News reports the Navy has 342,000 active sailors. In 2021, there were 157 deserters, compared with 98 in 2020 and 63 in 2019. The total number of deserters who remain at large last year increased to 166 from 119 in 2019. Most of them were under the age of 25. An expert who reviewed the federal statistics obtained by NBC described the trend as shocking. "That's staggering," said Benjamin Gold, a defense attorney for U.S. service members.Navy officials couldn't explain what was causing the desertion rate to skyrocket. They pointed to "many different stressors" in the service. Other military branches didn't observe soaring desertions during the last several years. In fact, desertions in the Army and Marine Corps declined. The Coast Guard didn't have any. The average active-duty enlisted age was 21.6 years. Many at this stage in life don't plan too far out and aren't expecting harsh conditions upon joining the military. In fact, servicemen and women sign a multi-year contract that is nearly impossible to break. For a young person who joined the military and their expectations were immediately crushed, it's near impossible to leave. "It's hard for a young person at that age to grasp the amount of power and control that their employer has over their lives," said Rick Jahnkow, an organizer with the National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth, a nonprofit group. "They don't understand the commitment." The jump in desertions follows a string of deaths, many of which are suspected suicides, outlining rising mental health issues plaguing the service. Over the last year, seven crew members of the USS George Washington aircraft carrier have died, including four by suicide. This all suggests that youngsters who signed up for the military are locked in unbreakable contracts that some fear trapped if things don't turn out the way they expected. This may cause them to become a deserter or, in extreme circumstances, take their own life.

In rare show of bipartisanship, Congress aims to strengthen curbside recycling - Bipartisanship is as rare in Washington these days as a lunar eclipse. But it is front and center in a powerful legislative push aimed at addressing weaknesses in our nation’s curbside recycling system, for the benefit of both our environment and our manufacturing supply chain.A Senate panel recently unanimously approved two measures that would bolster rural recycling and also gather key data on household recycling from across the country in order to expand local collection programs.The reason behind the Senate effort is the need to strengthen residential recycling by expanding the collection and delivery of greater volumes of high-quality recyclable commodities such as steel, aluminum, paper and plastics that underpin U.S. manufacturing. According to non-profit The Recycling Partnership (TRP), only half of Americans have access to curbside recycling. And of the 37 million tons of curbside recyclable materials produced each year by single-family homes in the U.S., just 32 percent is being recycled or composted, according to TRP’s 2020 State of Curbside Recycling Report. Residential recycling accounts for well under 20 percent of the entire recycling stream, with the vast majority supplied from industrial and commercial sources. Improving residential recycling has implications for the Biden administration’s larger environmental goals, including reducing greenhouse gas emissions. According to the TRP report, if all of the yearly single-family recyclables were returned to the manufacturing stream instead of disposed, it would reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 96 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year. That’s the energy equivalent of 154 million barrels of oil or taking more than 20 million cars off the road.

"Very Dangerous": Pelosi Responds For The First Time Since Being Banned From Communion - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on May 24 reacted for the first time to being banned from communion in San Francisco, where she lives. The decision “is very dangerous,” Pelosi said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Joseph Cordileone recently announced that he was banning Pelosi because of her continued support for abortion despite “numerous attempts” to convince her of “the grave evil she is perpetrating.” Cordileone said he held off on the move for years while speaking with Pelosi but was compelled to act after the lawmaker’s position on abortion became “more extreme.” He also noted she has said that her Catholic faith motivates her support for abortion, which directly opposes Pope Francis and the Catholic teachings. “Since the first century the church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable,” the Vatican said in a communication to questioners in 2009, citing the Catechism of the Catholic Church. “Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law.” Pelosi will not receive communion in San Francisco until she “publicly repudiate[s] her support for abortion ‘rights’ and confess[es] and receive[s] absolution for her cooperation in this evil in the sacrament of penance,” Cordileone said. Pelosi, speaking on Tuesday, attacked Cordileone directly by describing him as being “against LGBTQ rights” and questioning why he has not barred people who support the death penalty from taking communion. “I wonder about death penalty, which I am opposed to. So is the church, but they take no action against people who may not share their view,” she said. Pelosi reportedly received communion at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Georgetown over the weekend following Cordileone’s announcement.

Obamacare 'Time Bomb' To Hit Right Before Midterms - Congressional Democrats have yet another thing to worry about going into this year's midterm elections. A temporary pandemic relief program aimed at lowering healthcare premiums under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare, is set to expire unless Democrats can revive a reconciliation bill that extends the financial assistance past the end of the year. And that means striking a deal with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV). If they can't, roughly 13 million Americans will be hit with steep price hikes amid crippling inflation, in what Insider describes as a "time-bomb." "There's no denying that if they are not extended, then there could definitely be a political impact," said healthcare policy analyst Charles Gaba. Voters are set to receive notices about premium increases in late October, as they head to the ballot box for the November midterms. Others would find out during the ACA open enrollment period, which begins on November 1. "If Congress lets the ACA premium help in the American Rescue Plan expire at the end of this year, middle-class people buying their own insurance would be hit hardest," tweeted Larry Levitt, vice president for health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation. If Congress lets the ACA premium help in the American Rescue Plan expire at the end of this year, middle-class people buying their own insurance would be hit hardest. Levitt noted that "a middle-class couple of 50 year-olds making $75,000 would see their premium go up by $8,304 on average," adding "And, if the insurer hikes the unsubsidized premium by 10% for inflation, that’s another $1,468."

Biden Plans To Cancel $10,000 In Student Debt Per Borrower Ahead Of Midterms As soon as this weekend, President Biden could announce a plan to cancel $10k in student debt per borrower, according to WaPo, citing three people with knowledge of the matter. Biden could make the announcement at the University of Delaware's commencement ceremony on Saturday. The plan would apply to Americans who earned less than $150k in the previous year or less than 300k for married couples filing jointly. On April 6, the White House announced it would extend the pause of federal student loan repayments through August 31. It wasn't clear if the administration would extend the moratorium beyond this. The decision to wipe out $10k of student debt per borrow who meets requirements comes as President Biden's approval ratings collapse. Notice how the number of stories in the news of "student debt loan forgiveness" is soaring ahead of the midterms, but Biden's polling numbers remain cratered. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan think tank, said canceling $10k of student debt per borrower would cost a whopping $230bln. WaPo said, "most of the nation's 41 million student borrowers stand to benefit." Though, who exactly benefits? Goldman Sachs' Jan Hatzius found canceling the debt would mainly benefit middle- and upper-income households, contrary to the administration's claims it would help the working poor. What this means, and just in time for the midterm elections in November, the Biden administration is trying to buy the loyalty of an entire generation by handing out free money. It comes as Democrats face an uphill battle in the elections. Biden and Democrats rarely speak about the nasty consequences of student loan forgiveness; they only talk of the positives. As Peter Schiff recently pointed out: Loan forgiveness would be like Christmas for colleges and universities. College administrators will figure, "Now we can really raise tuition because our students know they can borrow the money and they won't ever have to pay it back."Peter said it won't likely be a one-time thing. This will create a moral hazard.If they do it once, they're going to do it again. Everyone is going to expect it. … The moral hazard there is nobody is going to pay for college. Nobody is going to work to try to avoid going into debt because you're an idiot. Take on the debt! It's going to be forgiven."

18 Major Airlines, FAA, And DOT To Be Sued Over COVID Vaccine Mandates -John Pierce Law has filed a lawsuit against Atlas Air, on behalf of US Freedom Flyers (USFF) and Atlas employees, and plans to sue all major airlines, 18 altogether, plus the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Department of Transportation (DOT), contending that the vaccine mandates imposed by these agencies on the airlines’ employees infringed on their constitutional, religious, and medical liberties.The lawsuit against Atlas Air was filed in federal court in the Southern District of Florida, with over 100 plaintiffs pursuing litigation.“Fundamentally, this case is about whether Americans should be required to choose between their livelihoods and being coerced into taking an experimental, dangerous medical treatment,” reads the lawsuit (pdf).Plaintiffs are mostly unvaccinated pilots, flight attendants, as well as other Atlas staff.“It is also about the safety of America’s airline industry. Should pilots—under federal regulation required to be among the healthiest workers in the United States—who have taken an experimental ‘vaccine’ that is now shown to have potentially deadly, long-term side effects, be allowed to fly massive aircraft in our skies? While those who have (smartly) refrained from such a course be forced out of their jobs?” it states.Atlas Air is one of the industry’s largest cargo carrier companies and the world’s largest operator of the Boeing 747 aircraft.

Unpacking Tucker Carlson on WHO’s “Pandemic Treaty” (So-Called) --Lambert Strether --The meeting of the World Health Assembly this week was the occasion for Tucker Carlson’s Opinion: “Tucker: Biden administration is close to giving WHO power over every intimate aspect of your life” (transcript), the topic of this post. I have to give Carlson credit for doing the Lord’s work in nobbling the Biden Administraiton’s wacky proposal for a DHS. But this opinion is a bit of a Gish Gallop. To done my yellow waders, I’d have to have mastered the intricacies of WHO’s governance and drafting process, which I have not yet done (nor has Carlson, as we shall see). So I’m going to focus only on two of Carlson’s paragraphs, one on the “treaty” adoption process, the other on potential loss of national sovereignty. Having, in a past life, participated in the development of international standards, I’m going to be persnickety. (I’m not going to focus on Carlson’s irritable mental gestures; for example, it worries me more that Bill Gates, squillionaire, probably has more clout as a donor at WHO than most nation states, than that Tedros, like Buttigieg’s father (and Harris’s), is a [gasp] “Marxist,” whatever that might mean to Carlson. Carlson says (and I would be super-happy if FOX turned off autoplay so I didn’t have to actually hear him saying it): This January[1], the Biden administration submitted a series of proposed amendments to something called the International Health Regulations (the IHR)[2]. Now[3], the Biden administration’s amendments, along with those from several other countries, will be combined[4] to create a new global pandemic treaty[5]. “We need a pandemic treaty.” That treaty is set to be adopted starting this weekend in Geneva at the World Health Assembly[6]. Here are the problems I can find with this paragraph:

• [1] The proposed amendments (here) were accepted on 12 April 2022, which is when they became part of the formal amendments process, a more relevant date.
• [2] The amendments were submitted to WHO (see the WHO logo on the stationery). The amendments could not have been submitted to the International Health Regulations, because they are just that: regulations.
• [3] No, they won’t. The Biden administration’s amendments are not even on the agenda for the current World Health Assembly meeting.
• [4] There’s no reason at all to think this “will” happen. First, the IHR and the “Pandemic Treaty” are different documents under the control of different entities; “it is not yet clear how the 2005 regulations and the new pandemic treaty might fit together.” Second, the “Pandemic Treaty” will be the result of interminable sausage-making, and even if the United States submits its IHR amendments to the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body there’s no guarantee of what “will” happen.
• [5] I(I won’t belabor this point, but the INB’s deliverable need not be a “treaty” per se; it can be a “a convention, agreement or other international instrument.” The United States, incidentally, has opposed a “binding treaty.”)
• [6] Only by stretching the word “starting” to absurd lengths can this statement be construed as anything like true. Here is the schedule according to the UK House of Commons: So, “starting” on this weekend in 2022, indeed. “Submitted for consideration” in 2024, which is absolutely nowhere near “adopted,” since WHO could send the draft back to the INB for a rework. Come on. (Granted that this schedule, in fact, very rapid for an international organization, whose progress tends to be more stately.) Needless to say, that’s a lot to get wrong in one paragraph.

US Supreme Court denies federal appeal of Arizona death penalty cases on grounds of ineffective counsel -- The US Supreme Court ruled Monday that two death row inmates cannot raise evidence of ineffective counsel during a federal habeas appeal, since they failed to present it in state court. The 6-3 ruling, divided along ideological lines, effectively denies rights set forth in the Sixth Amendment to the US Constitution, including the right of the accused to counsel of choice, to appointed counsel and to the effective assistance of counsel. Overturning rulings by lower federal courts, the Supreme Court decision severely restricts the ability of felons convicted in state court to appeal to the federal courts on the grounds of ineffective counsel and present exculpatory evidence not raised at the state level. It effectively overturns the Supreme Court ruling in a 2012 case, Martinez v. Ryan, which said that a convicted defendant “is not at fault for any failure to bring a trial-ineffectiveness claim in state court.” That ruling opened the door to appeals like the one brought by Arizona death row inmate Barry Jones, who argued in federal court that his lawyers in state-level proceedings failed to present evidence clearing him of the charge of raping and murdering his girlfriend’s four-year-old daughter. In 2018, a federal court overturned Jones’ conviction and wrote that had he had effective counsel “there is a reasonable probability that his jury would not have convicted him of any of the crimes with which he was charged and previously convicted.” An appeal of that ruling by the state of Arizona was turned down by the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals. The other Arizona death row inmate in the Supreme Court case Shinn v. Ramirez, David Ramirez, claimed that his state-appointed lawyer made little effort to try to prove his intellectual disability. Ramirez was convicted of fatally stabbing his girlfriend, Mary Ann Gortarez, and her 15-year-old daughter Candie, in 1989. Ramirez claimed that his lawyers at the state level failed to present evidence of his horrific childhood that might have led to a sentence of life imprisonment instead of death. The US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals also sided with Ramirez.

Guilty Even If Attorney is Incompetent or a Liar -- Both Vox and Crooks and Liars had an article up on this issue. As did SCOTUS Blog.Not an attorney; but, I can tell you all the fun we had with a liar for an attorney, who took $10,000, lied to the court, had exparte conversation in judge’s chambers, was responsible for the death of a person from drugs in his apartment his mule picked up for him from dealers. This is an interesting comment by Justice Clarence Thomas:“Thomas stated that the Supreme Court has ‘discretion to forgive any forfeiture’ and because deciding the issue would reduce the likelihood of future litigation, ‘we choose to forgive the State’s forfeiture before the District Court.’” Just to get to Federal Court from the state court(s) a defendant must raise all issues in a state court which they will present in Federal Court. If they do not, it is inadmissible in Federal Court. We can thank Bill Clinton for signing the AEDPA bill for this.The Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (A.E.D.P.A.) is surely one of the worst statutes ever passed by Congress and signed into law by a President. The heart of the law is a provision saying that, even when a state court misapplies the Constitution, a defendant cannot necessarily have his day in federal court. Instead, he must prove that the state court’s decision was “contrary to” what the Supreme Court has determined is “clearly established federal law,” or that the decision was “an unreasonable application of” it.What Thomas is saying, is; “Even though the state violated your constitutional rights, we do not have to hear it even if you raised this issue in state court. We can forgive the state’s failure to do so.” wink-wink.” Especially if excusing the issue would reduce the likelihood of future litigation, “we choose to forgive the State’s forfeiture before the District Court.” In other words, I do not want to hear of your rights as a citizen. This opens up a whole new venue.May 24, 2024; “Sotomayor Blasts SCOTUS Colleagues For ‘Perverse, Illogical’ Ruling” or the “Conservative majority hollows out precedent on ineffective-counsel claims in federal court.” The court, 6-3, ruled federal judges cannot hear new evidence from death row inmates arguing that their state-appointed lawyers did not provide constitutionally adequate defense.The upshot of this decision: If the state appoints you a lawyer who is constitutionally ineffective at your trial; and then appoints you ANOTHER lawyer who is constitutionally ineffective to argue your trial lawyer was ineffective … you’re screwed. People raising this is; Barry Jones, one of the petitioners in this case whose conviction came after shoddy police work and inadequate defense. David Ramirez, the second petitioner, is severely mentally disabled. That fact was never raised by his defense attorney, even though federal law would exempt Ramirez from the death penalty.The state’s (AZ) argument: “it does not matter if the prisoner is actually innocent, as the lower courts found in the case of Barry Lee Jones. If Jones ‘failed to develop’ the evidence of his trial lawyer’s ineffectiveness in state court, the federal courts are powerless to alter his conviction and death sentence.” Don’tcha wonder how these guys sleep at night?

Hunter Biden Probe Ramps Up Ahead Of Midterms - Hunter Biden may never fall under scrutiny by his father's DOJ, but House Republicans are laying the groundwork for a full-court press into the First Son's finances as we head into this fall's midterm elections. On Wednesday, the top Republican on the House Oversight Committee, Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, fired off numerous letters to banks and the US Treasury Department to demand more information about Hunter Biden and his circle of associates, according to the Wall Street Journal, which has viewed the letters. The probe has no Democratic support, and House Republicans have no enforcement powers. But should Republicans win House control in November, as many polls suggest, it would give them the power to hold hearings and issue subpoenas. Lawmakers involved said the requests for information are a sign of where the GOP will focus its investigative authority. "We’re definitely laying the groundwork to come out of the gate in January," said Comer, who added that the investigation will focus on whether President Biden had any links to his son's business dealings. The Wednesday letters to several banks where Hunter Biden and family members have accounts request any possible records, documents and communications related to any potential suspicious-activity reports (SARs). In addition, Comer asked Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen for any SARs related to Hunter and James Biden, the president's brother. Message from Hunter Biden's abandoned laptop Democrats, meanwhile, say the investigation lacks merit. "My colleagues on the other side of the aisle are clearly feigning outrage to excite their base instead of working in a bipartisan way to improve the lives of Americans," said Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), Oversight Committee Chairwoman. 

What It Means That 'Hillary Clinton Did It' -- Never in the history of this Republic have so many citizens been so ill-served by so many "elitists" in government and the media... The Wall Street Journal ran a scathing editorial on May 20, called "Hillary Clinton Did It". This editorial began:"The Russia-Trump collusion narrative of 2016 was a dirty trick for the ages -- and now we know it came from the top -- candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton."The editorial quickly explained:"That was the testimony Friday by 2016 Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook in federal court [in Washington, D.C.], and while this news is hardly a surprise, it's still bracing to find her fingertips on the political weapon." (Also not surprisingly, The May 20 print edition of The New York Times did not include a story on Mook's testimony.)Mook's testimony was heard at the trial of attorney Michael Sussman, charged with lying to the FBI in calling to their attention a story that Donald J. Trump, by means of connections with Russia's Alfa Bank, was colluding with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The lie at issue was not the false claim about a Trump-Alfa connection, but the charge that Sussman brought this matter to the FBI as a good citizen, and not as a representative of the Clinton campaign. As the Journal editorial noted:"Prosecutors say [Sussman] was working for the Clinton campaign."The editorial pointed out,"Mr. Mook said Mrs. Clinton was asked about the plan [to call attention to the Trump-Alfa ties] and approved it. A story on the Trump-Alfa Bank allegations thus appeared in Slate, a left-leaning online publication."After that, the Journal explained how the Clinton campaign used the self-generated news of the investigation and the initial Slate article that came of it, both of which they had planted, as the basis for making tweet after tweet to the press about the Slate report to churn up mass coverage about it in the press and convince the public that the investigation was about something serious.The concluding paragraphs of the editorial are worth quoting in full:In short, the Clinton campaign created the Trump-Alfa allegation, fed it to a credulous press that failed to confirm the allegations but ran with them anyway, then promoted the story as if it was legitimate news. The campaign also delivered the claims to the FBI, giving journalists another excuse to portray the accusations as serious and perhaps true.Most of the press will ignore this news, but the Russia-Trump narrative that Mrs. Clinton sanctioned did enormous harm to the country. It disgraced the FBI, humiliated the press, and sent the country on a three-year investigation to nowhere. Vladimir Putin never came close to doing as much disinformation damage.

"Dirty Political Trick": Bill Barr Says Hillary Clinton Guilty Of 'Sedition' -Former US Attorney General Bill Barr says Hillary Clinton engaged in a "seditious" conspiracy against Donald Trump, and that he named Special Counsel John Durham to investigate what appears to have been a "dirty political trick" to paint the former president as a Russian stooge."I thought we were heading into a constitutional crisis. I think whatever you think of Trump, the fact is that the whole Russiagate thing was a grave injustice. It appears to be a dirty political trick that was used first to hobble him and then potentially to drive him from office," Barr said on an upcoming episode of Glenn Beck's Blaze TV podcast, adding "I believe it is seditious.""It was a gross injustice, and it hurt the United States in many ways, including what we’re seeing in Ukraine these days. It distorted our foreign policy, and so forth," he continued - while warning that those charges would be difficult to prove in court.An FBI investigation into Trump's campaign over alleged ties to the Russian government during the 2016 election, known as Crossfire Hurricane, was the source of unceasing controversy for Trump throughout his presidency. Leaks from the investigation were used by the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign to accuse Trump of colluding with the Russians to interfere in the election, spawning conspiracy theories that his victory was illegitimate. After Trump fired FBI Director James Comey in May 2017, congressional Democrats accused him of attempting to obstruct the Russia probe, demanding the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate Trump's actions. -The BlazeBarr says that when he appointed Durham to investigate the case, he was "highly confident" that the Biden administration, including Attorney General Merrick Garland, wouldn't interfere."I was highly confident he would remain in office and they wouldn’t touch him," he said, adding "The Biden administration had no real interest in protecting either Hillary Clinton or Comey.""And at the end of the day, for them to lose the capital and appear to be covering something up that would then never get resolved, I didn’t think was in their interest."Barr also said that a grand jury was required in order to get people to talk."If you don’t have the threat of a grand jury, no one will come in and talk to you. You’ll say, the usual thing is, ‘Please come in for a voluntary interview,' he said. "And people come in because they know if they don’t, they’re subpoenaed.""But if there is no grand jury, they say, ‘No, I’m not coming in,’ and there’s nothing you can do."Durham's investigation follows a two-year, $32 million investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who concluded in a March 2019 report that Russia did interfere with the 2016 US election, however the "investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities." Mueller's investigation would ultimately serve as a cover-up for Clinton's alleged sedition - failing to produce indictments for people like Michael Sussmann, a former Clinton Campaign lawyer who's now on trial for pushing the Hillary-approved hoax that the Trump organization was covertly communicating with a Kremlin-affiliated bank. Durham has accused Sussman of lying to the FBI about his reason for meeting with top bureau official James Baker, when he said he wasn't providing the information on behalf of any client.

Shouldn't Hillary Clinton Be Banned From Twitter Now? - by Matt Taibbi - Trial testimony reveals Hillary Clinton personally approved serious election misinformation. Is there an anti-Trump exception to content moderation? Last week, in the trial of former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, prosecutor Andrew DeFilippis asked ex-campaign manager Robby Mook about the decision to share with a reporter a bogus story about Donald Trump and Russia’s Alfa Bank. Mook answered by giving up his onetime boss. “I discussed it with Hillary,” he said, describing his pitch to the candidate: “Hey, you know, we have this, and we want to share it with a reporter… She agreed to that.” In a country with a functioning media system, this would have been a huge story. Obviously this isn’t Watergate, Hillary Clinton was never president, and Sussmann’s trial doesn’t equate to prosecutions of people like Chuck Colson or Gordon Liddy. But as we’ve slowly been learning for years, a massive fraud was perpetrated on the public with Russiagate, and Mook’s testimony added a substantial piece of the picture, implicating one of the country’s most prominent politicians in one of the more ambitious disinformation campaigns we’ve seen.There are two reasons the Clinton story isn’t a bigger one in the public consciousness.One is admitting the enormity of what took place would require system-wide admissions by the FBI, the CIA, and, as Matt Orfalea’s damning video above shows, virtually every major news media organization in America.More importantly, there’s no term for the offense Democrats committed in 2016, though it was similar to Watergate. Instead of a “third-rate burglary” and a bug, Democrats sent schlock research to the FBI, who in turn lied to the secret FISA court and obtained “legal” surveillance authority over former Trump aide Carter Page (which opened doors to searches of everyone connected to Page). Worse, instead of petty “ratfucking” like Donald Segretti’s “Canuck letter,” the Clinton campaign created and fueled a successful, years-long campaign of official harassment and media fraud. They innovated an extraordinary trick, using government connections and press to generate real criminal and counterintelligence investigations of political enemies, mostly all based on what we now know to be self-generated nonsense. The Clintons, and especially Hillary, have been baselessly accused of all sorts of things in the past, the murder of Vince Foster being just one example. The “vast right-wing conspiracy” was so successful that the Clintons ended up aligning with and helping fund its chief architect, David Brock, ahead of the 2016 cycle. Along with Perkins Coie and the research agency Fusion-GPS, headed by former Wall Street Journal reporter and current self-admiring sleaze-merchant Glenn Simpson, they engineered three long years of phony “collusion” headlines. No matter what papers like the Washington Post try to argue this week, this was an enormous scandal.The world has mostly moved on, since Russiagate was thirty or forty “current things” ago, but the public prosecution of the collusion theory was a daily preoccupation of national media for years. A substantial portion of the population believed the accusations, and expected the story would end with Donald Trump in jail or at least indicted, scrolling for a thousand straight days in desperate expectation of the promised justice. Trump was bounced from Twitter for incitement, but Twitter has a policy against misinformation as well. It includes a prohibition against “misleading” media that is “likely to result in widespread confusion on public issues.” I’m not a fan of throwing people off Twitter, but how can knowingly launching thousands of bogus news stories across a period of years, leading millions of people to believe lies and expect news that never arrived, not qualify as causing “widespread confusion on public issues”?

12 Groups Behind Protest Of Musk’s Twitter Takeover Have Ties With Gates Foundation, Soros - A dozen liberal groups that pressured Twitter advertisers to boycott the platform in response to Elon Musk’s plans to acquire it received money from entities backed by Bill Gates and George Soros, an analysis of public filings shows.In early May, a group of 26 organizations penned a public letter claiming that the Tesla CEO’s takeover of Twitter would “be a direct threat to public safety” and turn the platform into “a cesspool of misinformation.” The letter called for Twitter’s top advertisers to “hold [Musk] to account” by committing to “non-negotiable” standards for doing business with the site, one of which is to not restore the accounts of political and public figures banned for “egregious violations of Twitter Rules.” The letter contained the logos of Accountable Tech, Media Matters for America, and UltraViolet Action.An analysis of the public filings and records shows that at least 11 of the letter’s signatories or their affiliated groups have taken money from organizations funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. One of the three groups leading the letter has received over $1 million from billionaire financer George Soros’s grant-making network Open Society Foundations, while the two others were founded in part by former staffers for Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton.Eight signatories also collected roughly $10.25 million in federal grants and loans between 2020 and 2021, public records show.The New Venture Fund, the recipient of more than $500 million in grants from the Gates Foundation since 2012, in 2020 gave $180,000 in total to two signees, Media Matters for America and Center for Media Justice. Another $11.2 million of the New Venture Fund’s 2020 grant money went to North Fund, a shadowy progressive nonprofit based in Washington that funnels money to a number of other activist groups, including Accountable Tech, which published the letter.Accountable Tech’s website shows that two members on its team—its co-founder and digital director—worked for Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

 Citizen Bezos Logs On --The Washington Post owner is using social media to weaponize his paid punditry and send a message about his news preferences.Billionaire Washington Post owner and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has started using Twitter to amplify his political ideology, slam the Biden administration, and promote a pundit on his payroll who echoes his views.If you were looking for a digital era version of Citizen Kane behavior, this is it — and it not so coincidentally comes right after President Joe Biden hosted Amazon Labor Union organizers at the White House.And yet, talking about media ownership’s influence is taboo: Corporate journalists and Beltway consultants have rallied around the world’s second richest man and Post opinion columnist Catherine Rampell, insisting that there is nothing untoward about the Amazon executive chairman now promoting his own newspaper’s content that downplays corporate profiteering’s role in inflation — at the very moment his own company is jacking up prices on consumers while reaping big profits.These same corporate journalists seem downright offended at even the suggestion that Bezos’ new Twitter campaign is also sending a message to his editorialists about how he wants economic news framed.At issue is Bezos recently taking to Twitter to criticize President Joe Biden’s call to raise corporate taxes in order to control inflation, calling it a “misdirection” only a few months after revelations that Amazon avoided $5 billion in corporate taxes in 2021 alone.A few days later, Bezos retweeted a column from Rampell arguing that Democrats are wrong to talk about corporate greed as a factor driving inflation — and casting partial blame instead on the one-time $1,400 pandemic survival checks mailed out by Democrats last March. The column followed a similar missive by Rampell calling “Greedflation” a Democratic “conspiracy theory” equivalent to conservatives using a veterinary drug to try to cure COVID-19.The Post editorial board has weighed in with several columns of its own in recent months scoffing at the notion that “price-gouging” or “greedy businesses” are driving inflation. Their criticisms have been seconded by economist Larry Summers, who helped oversee the catastrophic deregulation of Wall Street and destructive corporate trade deals, as well as liberal blogger Matt Yglesias, who is now also seeing retweets from Bezos.Thanks to all of this, Bezos’s criticisms of Biden on inflation have now become a major political story — with Bezos’s own newspaper covering it as such.

AI ethics groups are repeating one of society’s classic mistakes MIT Technology Review -International organizations and corporations are racing to develop global guidelines for the ethical use of artificial intelligence. Declarations, manifestos, and recommendations are flooding the internet. But these efforts will be futile if they fail to account for the cultural and regional contexts in which AI operates.AI systems have repeatedly been shown to cause problems that disproportionately affect marginalized groups while benefiting a privileged few. The global AI ethics efforts under way today—of which there are do We believe these groups are well-intentioned and are doing worthwhile work. The AI community should, indeed, agree on a set of international definitions and concepts for ethical AI. But without more geographic representation, they’ll produce a global vision for AI ethics that reflects the perspectives of people in only a few regions of the world, particularly North America and northwestern Europe.This work is not easy or straightforward. “Fairness,” “privacy,” and “bias” meandifferent things (pdf) in different places. People also have disparate expectations of these concepts depending on their own political, social, and economic realities. The challenges and risks posed by AI also differ depending on one’s locale.If organizations working on global AI ethics fail to acknowledge this, they risk developing standards that are, at best, meaningless and ineffective across all the world’s regions. At worst, these flawed standards will lead to more AI systems and tools that perpetuate existing biases and are insensitive to local cultures.In 2018, for example, Facebook was slow to act on misinformation spreading in Myanmar that ultimately led to human rights abuses. An assessment (pdf) paid for by the company found that this oversight was due in part to Facebook’s community guidelines and content moderation policies, which failed to address the country’s political and social realities.There’s a clear lack of regional diversity in many AI advisory boards, expert panels, and councils.To prevent such abuses, companies working on ethical guidelines for AI-powered systems and tools need to engage users from around the world to help create appropriate standards to govern these systems. They must also be aware of how their policies apply in different contexts.Despite the risks, there’s a clear lack of regional diversity in many AI advisory boards, expert panels, and councils appointed by leading international organizations. Theexpert advisory group for Unicef’s AI for Children project, for example, has no representatives from regions with the highest concentration of children and young adults, including the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. Unfortunately, as it stands today, the entire field of AI ethics is at grave risk of limiting itself to languages, ideas, theories, and challenges from a handful of regions—primarily North America, Western Europe, and East Asia.

How Crypto Is Using the Behavioral Dynamics of Bernie Madoff’s Fraud --By Pam Martens ---On June 18, 1991 I was having lunch with two of my new investment clients on the outdoor patio of their private country club on Long Island. As their friends stopped by the table, the married couple introduced me as their investment advisor and recommended me to their friends. One friend said to my astonishment: “Can you guarantee me the same 13 percent annual return as Bernie Madoff?”I had been reading the Wall Street Journal for years at that point and the name Bernie Madoff did not ring a bell. I asked my clients if they knew this Bernie Madoff. My clients stunned me further by telling me that Madoff had been making good on his promise of a 13 percent return since 1978 – not to just my clients but to numerous other members of this country club.My cognitive processes sized up the situation like this: if this man is willing to brazenly break the law by guaranteeing stock returns, if he has delivered 13 percent returns steadily for more than a decade – including during years in which the S&P 500 had a negative return — then it is highly likely he is running a Ponzi scheme.When the news broke all over TV in December 2008 about Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, the SEC was making it sound like the fraud had only been in operation for a brief number of years. I knew that to be a lie. Although I had retired from Wall Street at that point, I still had my old desk calendars. I dug them out, located the exact date of my luncheon in 1991 at the Long Island country club, and called Susan Antilla, a reporter at the time for Bloomberg News. Antilla made it clear in her syndicated reportingabout my experience at the country club that the fraud was decades old. The SEC thereafter changed its story line.Madoff and crypto share an extensive number of behavioral dynamics. Madoff had prominent clients of swank country clubs vouching for him. Madoff also had celebrity clients, including famous Hollywood Director, Steven Spielberg, actor Kevin Bacon, and former New York Mets owner Fred Wilpon.Crypto’s celebrity endorsers have included Matt Damon, Spike Lee, Tom Brady, Alec Baldwin, and numerous others. (Check out the scrolling celebrity names at the FTX crypto exchange under the banner: “Join some of the world’s biggest names who trust FTX.”)Madoff and crypto also exploited the behavior instinct known as FOMO – or “fear of missing out.” Otherwise rational individuals at the Long Island country club were being told by prominent friends they trusted that Madoff had been delivering 13 percent returns reliably year after year for more than a decade. They didn’t want to miss out. The seduction of a promise of outsized returns has a long history of trumping common sense. We have been comparing crypto to the Tulip Bubble since 2014.Both Madoff and crypto also enjoyed the benefits of an inexplicable hands-off policy from the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC has been missing in action as millions of investors have been seduced to invest in crypto and thousands of others have been looted.It is this final aspect, a watchdog that repeatedly fails its mandate to protect investors, that requires a long overdue criminal investigation.

The Terra/Luna hall of shame - A once-stable, “safe and happy” crypto project named terraUSD imploded earlier this month, prompting an “I told you so” chorus from detractors aimed at those unfortunate enough to be duped — and inked — by the latest crypto calamity. It’s hard not to poke fun at a decentralised, trustless, permissionless, hard-money utopian future of finance unsuccessfully turning to quantitative easing (read: Kwontitative easing) for survival. But as is becoming distressingly clear, some investors have lost most of their life savings from the collapse of terra and its twin coin luna. This begs the question: who has been encouraging ordinary investors to jump on the latest bandwagon flashing a ticket to the moon? Whose credibility lent lustre to a doomed project? Here is FT Alphaville’s terra/luna hall of shame.

• Mike Novogratz: To give Novogratz his due, the Galaxy Digital co-founder recently penned a letter preaching humility in the investment world. Before those lessons were learned, Novogratz was touting the promise of terra’s terrific technology and cheering on Do Kwon — the once-inspiring face of the “LUNAtic” movement.When Novogratz wasn’t flexing his proof-of-LUNAtic ink on Twitter, he was overseeing a Galaxy-led funding round for Terraform Labs, the company behind the terra and luna debacle. “We are always looking at those projects because they are the canaries in the coal mines”, Novogratz said in January last year. Well, quite.
• Jump Trading: The backing of big-name trad-fi trading firm Jump Trading Group added a lot to the legitimacy of the Terra ecosystem. In February 2022, the high-frequency trader’s crypto branch Jump Crypto led a $1bn funding round that enabled the Luna Foundation Guard — terraUSD’s quasi-central bank — to establish a “UST Forex Reserve denominated in bitcoin”. Yes, really. A breakdown of Jump Crypto’s activity in the Terra community can be viewedhere.
• Marco Di Maggio: In a 2019 white paper, Harvard Business School scholar Marco Di Maggio teamed up with Terra’s Nicholas Platias to argue that terra’s dollar peg would prove “highly robust . . . based on 1mn years’ worth of simulation data”. Three years later, terra’s dollar peg was anything but. But in a rebuke of Do Kwon’s leadership, Di Maggio told FT Alphaville that the terra he once knew was no more. The terra he wrote about planned to peg a stablecoin to the Korean won. His analysis of how that system might fare under strain was therefore no longer relevant, he argued.OK.
• Binance: Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of Binance — the dominant crypto exchange behind this story’s lead quote — has had a lot to say about terra of late, including a joke that the crypto-bro who made it into Forbes’ top 20 rich list last month was now “poor again” after the project’s collapse. More importantly, Binance promoted a terraUSD lending scheme as a “safe and happy” investment just weeks before the terra/luna ecosystem collapsed in a heap of zeros and lost life savings.
• Raoul Pal -Real Vision CEO Raoul Pal also drank the terra Kool-Aid. “You can just put money . . . stake the network, and get 20 per cent, and [it’s] basically risk free”, said the former Goldman Sachs trader turned crypto preacher during an episode of Real Vision airing last November.“This is mind blowing”, he added. As mind blowing as terra might have been to Pal back then, it appears he didn’t put his money where his mouth was. In a Twitter thread published on May 10 — right when terraUSD’s fateful de-pegging was gaining steam — Pal tweeted that he “had no idea how it plays out” and that he “had no skin in the game”.

 Lagarde Calls For Crypto Crackdown, Says They're "Based On Nothing" -- European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde has taken aim at cryptocurrencies, arguing in an interview on Dutch television that they’re essentially “worth nothing” as they lack underlying assets “as an anchor to safety” while calling for them to be regulated. Lagarde made the remarks in an interview on the Dutch television program “College Tour,” due to be released on May 22, according to Politico. “I have said all along the crypto assets are highly speculative, very risky assets,” Lagarde told the program. “My very humble assessment is that it is worth nothing. It is based on nothing, there is no underlying assets to act as an anchor of safety.” She added that she’s worried about people speculating on cryptocurrencies with their life savings as they may not be aware of the risks. Lagarde said she’s concerned about those “who have no understanding of the risks, who will lose it all and who will be terribly disappointed, which is why I believe that that should be regulated,” as per Bloomberg. In January, Lagarde called for global regulation of Bitcoin, telling Reuters in an interview at the time that the digital currency had been used for money laundering and arguing for rules that would close related loopholes. Bitcoin “is a highly speculative asset, which has conducted some funny business and some interesting and totally reprehensible money laundering activity,” Lagarde told the outlet in an interview at the Reuters Next conference. While Lagarde did not elaborate on money laundering specifics related to cryptocurrencies, she argued for regulation that would be agreed upon and applied at a global level “because if there is an escape, that escape will be used,” referring to regulatory loopholes. Her remarks come amid recent turmoil in crypto markets, which have shed over $1 trillion in value over the past six months.The spectacular UST plunge prompted Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler to say earlier in the week that he, like Lagarde, worries that investors will be hurt in crypto markets. “I think a lot of these tokens will fail,” Gensler told reporters after a House Appropriations Committee panel hearing on May 18. “I fear that in crypto … there’s going to be a lot of people hurt, and that will undermine some of the confidence in markets and trust in markets writ large.” Besides regulators and other officials ramping up their crypto criticism, other prominent individuals have expressed reservations about the asset class. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said during a Reddit Ask Me Anything session on May 19 that he hasn’t invested in crypto because it isn’t “adding to society.”

IMF official urges against abandoning crypto after Terra’s crash - People shouldn’t completely shun the crypto world after the recent collapse of a popular stablecoin, an official at the International Monetary Fund said Monday. TerraUSD, or UST, imploded earlier this month, setting off a chain reaction that saw the overall value of the cryptocurrency market slashed by hundreds of billions of dollars. “I would beg you not to pull out of the importance of this world,” Kristalina Georgieva, the IMF’s managing director, said at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos. “It offers us all faster service, much lower costs, and more inclusion, but only if we separate apples from oranges and bananas,” she said, adding that it’s the responsibility of regulators across the globe to put up guardrails and offer education to protect investors.

OCC’s Hsu: Terra shows that ‘hype is not harmless’ -— Acting Comptroller Michael Hsu offered a sober perspective of crypto in front of a room of blockchain advocates. At the DC Blockchain Summit, Hsu publicly spoke about the TerraUSD crash at length for the first time, saying the episode underscored concerns he holds about cryptocurrency more broadly. Hsu has been a skeptic of cryptocurrency in the past, as he noted during his remarks, and said that the Terra meltdown should be a “wake-up call” to the industry.

Stable Coin and Cryptocurrency Investors Are Not the Only Ones in Tears: Ten Crypto Mining Stocks Have Fallen by 50 to 80 Percent Year-to-Date --By Pam Martens and Russ Martens --In October 2008 a group or individual using the name Satoshi Nakamoto released a paper outlining a new system for digital cash called Bitcoin. To this day, no one knows who Satoshi Nakomoto really is. For all we know, he/it/they could have been a strawman for the fossil fuels industry.Why do we say that? Because the major beneficiary of crypto has been the fossil fuel industry which has seena growing demand for its dirty energy from cryptomining companies while the big losers have been the environment, local communities and average citizens around the world hoping to breathe clean air and save the planet for their children and grandchildren.Consider what Senator Elizabeth Warren had to say about crypto at a Senate hearing in June of last year:“Cryptocurrencies have turned out to be a fourth-rate alternative to real currency. First, cryptocurrencies are a lousy way to buy and sell things. Unlike the dollar, their value fluctuates wildly depending on the whims of speculative day traders. You know, in just the last two months, the value of Dogecoin increased by more than ten-fold and then declined by nearly 60 percent. Now that may work for speculators and fly-by-night investors, but not for regular people who are looking for a stable source of value to get paid in and to use for day-to-day spending.“Second, crypto is a lousy investment. Unlike, say, the stock market, the crypto world currently has no consumer protection — none. As a result, honest investors and people trying to put aside some savings are at the mercy of fraudsters. Pump and dump schemes are outlawed in the case of ordinary stock, but they have become routine in crypto trading. One study found that the level of price manipulation in cryptocurrency is — and I quote — ‘unprecedented in modern markets.’“And third, crypto has become a haven for illegal activity. Online theft, drug trafficking, ransom attacks, and other illegal activity have all been made easier with crypto. Experts estimate that last year more than $412 million was paid to criminals in ransom through cryptocurrencies. And unlike other payment systems that make it tougher to move money illegally, a key feature of crypto is its secrecy. So just in the past few weeks, cryptocurrencies made it possible for hackers to collect a ransom to release the Colonial pipeline hack and to free JBS, the world’s largest meat producer, from paralyzing cyberattacks. And every hack that is successfully paid off with a cryptocurrency becomes an advertisement for more hackers to try more cyberattacks.“Finally, there are the environmental costs of crypto. Many cryptocurrencies are created through ‘proof-of-work’ mining. It involves using computers to solve useless mathematical puzzles in exchange for newly minted cryptocurrency tokens. Such mining has devastating consequences for the climate. Some crypto mining is set up near coal plants, spewing out filth in return for a chance to harvest a few crypto coins. Total energy consumption is staggering, driving up demand for energy. If, for example, Bitcoin — just one of the cryptocurrencies — were a country, it would already be the 33rd largest energy user in the world — using more energy yearly than all of the Netherlands.“And all those promised benefits – the currency that would be available at no cost to millions of unbanked families and that would provide a haven from the tricks and traps of big banks – well, those benefits haven’t materialized.”Clearly, Senator Warren was ahead of her time. During the week of May 9 of this year, a so-called “stable” crypto coin, TerraUSD, that was supposed to maintain a stable price of $1, crashed to pennies and never recovered. Its sister cryptocurrency, Luna, also collapsed.Bitcoin looks like the epitome of a pump and dump scheme with its market price spiking to $69,000 in November of last year to a trading range of $28,000 to $29,000 today.One of the unregulated exchanges for trading crypto, Coinbase, went public in April of last year and traded as high as $368.90 intraday last November. It closed today at $69.68 – a loss of 81 percent from its intraday high last year and a year-to-date loss of 72 percent.Two Nasdaq stocks which hold large positions in Bitcoin on their balance sheets, MicroStrategy and Tesla, have also seen their share prices plunge year-to-date. And for how two upstate communities in New York, Plattsburgh and Massena, fared after crypto miners set up shop, see this linked article from MIT Technology Review.

CFPB scraps fintech sandbox program with changes to innovation office --Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Rohit Chopra has scrapped a fintech sandbox program that issued “no-action” letters to startup companies, charting a different course for the bureau’s former office of innovation. The CFPB said Tuesday that the renamed Office of Competition and Innovation will no longer process applications for no-action letters designed to allow companies to develop products without fear of supervisory action. Instead, the office will focus on promoting competition, hosting events and making it easier for consumers to switch financial providers. The move appears to be a demotion for the fintech office that had previously reported to the CFPB director but is now part of the bureau’s division of research, markets and regulation. The CFPB said the changes will allow the office to have greater access to market research to explore obstacles to competition, including how big players are squeezing out little ones.

Treasury looks to spur AI innovation against money laundering --The Treasury Department will focus more effort on technical solutions to the country’s growing and ever-changing money laundering challenges, according to a strategy document the department published last week.The strategy, last updated in 2020, primarily focuses on regulatory and operational aspects of the U.S.’s fight against money laundering and financing of terrorism. But Treasury added technological innovation as the fourth priority to the 2-year-old list. The Federal Reserve potentially developing its own digital currency, other virtual assets likestablecoins, and creating safe harbors or a regulatory “sandbox” for AI-driven products designed to fight money laundering and terrorism financing were specifically mentioned. Banks can use artificial intelligence to improve their anti-money-laundering processes andavoid issues with regulators. The technology also can help the government’s efforts in cracking down on money laundering.

JPMorgan Whistleblower Names Former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair in Court Documents as Receiving “Emergency” Payments from Bank - By Pam and Russ Martens: - An attorney turned whistleblower who worked in compliance at JPMorgan Chase, Shaquala Williams, has named former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair as one of the parties receiving improperly processed “emergency payments” from the bank.Williams is suing the bank for retaliating against her protected whistleblowing activities by terminating her employment after she raised concerns about these payments to Blair and other serious compliance issues. (The case isShaquala Williams v JPMorgan Chase, Case Number 1:21-cv-09326, which was filed last November in the Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York.)The new revelation naming Tony Blair was contained in a transcript of Williams’ deposition that was filed with the court last week. Prior to that, Blair had been referred to simply as “a high risk JPMorgan third-party intermediary for Jamie Dimon…” in the Williams’ complaint.The fact that Williams had raised concerns about these “emergency” payments to Blair before she was fired was confirmed by another deposition transcript filed with the court on May 20 from a compliance colleague.Williams is a financial crimes compliance professional with more than a decade of experience at multiple global banks. Part of Williams’ role at JPMorgan Chase was to make sure that the bank was in compliance with a non-prosecution agreement the bank had signed with the Justice Department in 2016. (The bank has admitted to five criminal felony counts since 2014 and also received non-prosecution agreements for those as well. All of these frauds occurred while Jamie Dimon was Chairman and CEO of the bank. This is an unprecedented crime spree at a major U.S. financial institution, which just happens to own the largest federally-insured bank, “Chase,” in the United States with more than 5,100 branches across the country and $2.6 trillion in deposits. For how two trial attorneys compared the bank’s crime wave to the Gambino crime family in a book, see here.)The Justice Department had charged in 2016 that JPMorgan’s Asia subsidiary had engaged in quid pro quo agreements with Chinese officials to obtain investment-banking business and had falsified internal documents to cover up the activities. The quid pro quo agreements resulted in the bank putting the children of high Chinese government officials on its payroll in order to further its business interests in China. In exchange for avoiding prosecution, the Justice Department required JPMorgan to create compliance controls around third-party payments. Williams alleges, among numerous other serious charges, that the so-called third-party payment controls were a sham and that when she blew the whistle to her superiors at the bank, the bank retaliated against her by firing her in October 2019.

Bank profits fall amid economic uncertainty: FDIC -Bank profits declined in the first quarter as the country’s largest banks grew set-aside funds amid economic and political uncertainty, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s Quarterly Banking Profile. Profits dropped 22.2%, or $17 billion, from a year earlier. Larger banks, especially, started setting aside additional funds to guard against economic risks such as inflation and rising interest rates, a reversal of the recent trend of banks releasing their COVID-19 financial cushions. Provision expenses increased $19.7 billion from the same quarter last year.

 FDIC: Problem Banks Declined, Residential REO Increased Slightly in Q1 2022 -The FDIC released the Quarterly Banking Profile for Q1 2022 this morning: Net income fell by $17.0 billion (22.2 percent) to $59.7 billion in first quarter 2022 from the year-ago quarter. … Total assets increased $253.9 billion (1.1 percent) from fourth quarter 2021 to $24.0 trillion. Cash and balances due from depository institutions declined $183.5 billion (5.2 percent) from fourth quarter 2021. Total loan and lease balances increased $109.9 billion (1.0 percent), federal funds sold increased 48.3 billion (8.1 percent), and securities rose $14.6 billion (0.2 percent). Growth in U.S. Treasury securities (up $37.9 billion, or 2.6 percent) continued to drive the quarterly increases in total securities. The proportion of securities to total assets declined slightly to 26.1 percent from the QBP high of 26.3 percent reported in fourth quarter 2021.Loans and leases 90 days or more past due or in nonaccrual status (noncurrent loan balances) declined (down $4.5 billion, or 4.5 percent) from fourth quarter 2021, supporting a 5 basis point reduction in the noncurrent rate to 0.84 percent. The noncurrent rate was just 14 basis points above the historical low reported in second quarter 2006. Noncurrent 1–4 family residential real estate loan balances declined most among noncurrent loan categories (down $4.8 billion, or 10.5 percent). The FDIC reported the number of problem banks declined to 40. The number of FDIC-insured institutions declined from 4,839 in fourth quarter 2021 to 4,796. In first quarter, 3 banks opened and 44 institutions merged with other FDIC-insured institutions. The number of banks on the FDIC’s “Problem Bank List” declined by 4 from fourth quarter to 40, the lowest level since QBP data collection began in 1984. Total assets of problem banks increased $3.0 billion to $173.1 billion.11 No banks failed in the first quarter.This graph from the FDIC shows the number of problem banks and assets at problem institutions. Note: The number of assets for problem banks increased significantly back in 2018 when Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas was added to the list. An even larger bank was added to the list last year, although the identity of the bank is unclear. The dollar value of 1-4 family residential Real Estate Owned (REOs, foreclosure houses) increased slightly from $779 million in Q4 2021 to $788 million in Q1 2022. This graph shows the nominal dollar value of Residential REO for FDIC insured institutions. Note: The FDIC reports the dollar value and not the total number of REOs.

Ohio’s lieutenant governor gets paid gig at small bank, raising eyebrows --Heartland BancCorp, an Ohio-based community bank, is at the center of a controversy after adding the Buckeye State’s lieutenant governor to a paid position on its board of directors. Lt. Gov. Jon Husted began a term on the board last week, according to a company announcement. Husted, a Republican who is seeking a second term as lieutenant governor, was also elected in March to the board of the company’s banking subsidiary, Heartland Bank, the release said. Heartland BancCorp, which has $1.5 billion of assets, did not say how much Husted will be paid as a director. But it is a paid role, and whatever compensation Husted receives will be reported on his financial disclosures, Hayley Carducci, a spokesperson for the lieutenant governor, confirmed in an email Tuesday.

The FDIC quietly rolled back an independent review committee, and banks aren’t happy — The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. disbanded an internal court for banks to challenge supervisory findings and reinstated a board-controlled committee. Banking groups say the change makes the oversight of banks less independent and more politically fraught, while regulators argue it’s the more sensible approach. ‘From the standpoint of accountability, at the end of the day, we thought a board level committee was really the appropriate approach,” FDIC acting Chair Martin Gruenberg said at a press conference earlier this week. The Office of Supervisory Appeals was created in the last days of the Trump administration and only became fully staffed in December. Before that, banks complained that appealing supervisory decisions, such as an unfavorable rating from a bank examiner, to the Supervision Appeals Review Committee was ineffective, and that banks could fear retaliation from the agency.

Financial inclusion bill could reignite credit union-bank conflict - The trend of credit unions buying banks has grabbed a lot of attention in recent years, but two other key issues have raised tensions between the two industries. Bankers have long opposed attempts by credit unions to expand their field of membershipand their business lending capabilities, but proposed legislation would open the door to both. The bill, H.R. 7003, the Expanding Financial Access for Underserved Communities Act, was approved last week by the House Committee on Financial Services by a 27-22 vote.Introduced by the committee’s chair, Maxine Waters, D-Calif., the bill would allow all federal credit unions to apply to the National Credit Union Administration to expand their field of membership to include underserved communities, including those without a branch within 10 miles.

CFPB warns consumer lenders on 'black-box' algorithms -Financial institutions that use complex algorithms in their lending decisions are legally required to provide a specific explanation to consumers who are denied credit, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said Thursday. Creditors cannot simply skirt the requirements of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act by saying that artificial intelligence or machine learning technologies were used to evaluate credit applications, CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said in a written statement. “Companies are not absolved of their legal responsibilities when they let a black-box model make lending decisions,” Chopra said in a press release that accompanied a policy statement by the agency.

CFPB presses big card issuers on their credit reporting practices -The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is questioning the largest U.S. credit card issuers about the data they provide to credit bureaus, saying that shifts in industry practices may be hurting consumers’ ability to get cheaper loans.A top CFPB official wrote this week to the CEOs of JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, Capital One Financial, Discover Financial Services and American Express, saying that those companies appear to have stopped regularly reporting data on cardholder payments, and asking them to detail their practices. Consumers’ ability to find cheaper credit is “impaired if actual payment amount information is being suppressed by major credit card companies,” John McNamara, principal assistant director at the CFPB’s research, markets and regulations division, wrote to the bank executives.

‘Not a lot of momentum’ to reform outdated flood insurance program -After five years of stopgap extensions, there is bipartisan support for a long-term overhaul of the National Flood Insurance Program — at least in principle. In practice, however, the program is no closer to a multiyear reauthorization or any substantial changes after its first dedicated hearing in more than three years. The House Financial Services Subcommittee on Housing, Community Development and Insurance discussed the matter Wednesday afternoon but made no indication of further action. The current authorization for the NFIP expires on Sept. 30. Ron Haynie, senior vice president of mortgage finance policy for the Independent Community Bankers of America, told American Banker he is skeptical that a long-term agreement will be struck before then.

BankThink: The U.S. lags in financial regulation addressing climate change | American Banker -- Central banks and regulatory authorities are progressively integrating climate risks into their activities. The Network for Greening the Financial System was established in 2017 to mobilize finance for transitioning and managing climate risk. Now with 108 central bank members, the NGFS signifies the importance central banks are placing on the risk posed by climate change and their role in driving the environmental, social and governance transition in the financial sector. European central banks have led the way in developing stress testing and scenario analysis tools to assess risks. The European Central Bank conducted an economy-wide stress test in September 2021. It found the short-term cost of transitioning to net-zero carbon dioxide emissions is far exceeded by the long-term benefits of turning to a more sustainable financial sector and economy. Failure to transition could have severe consequences for financial stability across the banking and corporate sector, yet a huge portion of banks still fail to disclose whether climate and environmental risks have a material impact on their risk profile, despite increasing regulation.

 Rival sees advantages in ICE-Black Knight merger -- The third-largest loan origination system provider, Mortgage Cadence, sees an opportunity to pick up business if the merger between No. 1 ICE Mortgage Technology and No. 2 Black Knight goes through. Parent company Accenture has invested $80 million over the last couple of years to continue development of the platform, said Joseph Camerieri, executive vice president, sales and strategy."We've rebuilt the entire platform in HTML, and we've moved it to the Microsoft Azure public cloud, so we're excited about that," Camerieri said in an interview at the Mortgage Bankers Association's Secondary and Capital Markets Conference. "We're starting to get a lot of traction from lenders. We're vendor agnostic; our two largest competitors are not vendor agnostic because they own them all."Mortgage Cadence has created an application programming interface layer and a services hub, so integrations don't require releases any more, he said.Joseph Camerieri is executive vice president, sales and strategy at Mortgage Cadence."We've positioned ourselves well for this," Camerieri said. "We are predisposed to win, at least in the short term," with the disruption the merger would cause in the marketplace. The longer-term view involves the role an LOS could play at a combined ICE and Black Knight, given their focus on acquiring other service providers, he noted.

 FHFA finalizes public disclosure rules for Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae -The Federal Housing Finance Agency issued its final rule regarding public disclosure requirements for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on corporate governance, risk management, capital structure and capital requirements, aligning the government-sponsored enterprises with what large banks already do.The GSEs must issue their initial public disclosure reports under this final rule in the first quarter of 2023. This allows Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to establish internal reporting and governance functions and will minimize duplicative reporting by aligning the schedule of annual qualitative disclosures with their annual 10-K filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the final rule said."By allowing market participants to assess key information about the Enterprises' risk profiles and associated levels of capital, this final rule will promote transparency and encourage sound risk management practices at the Enterprises," said Sandra Thompson,who was confirmed as FHFA director by the Senate Wednesday. "The rule published today will foster financial stability at the Enterprises and in the broader housing finance market."

Freddie Mac: Mortgage Serious Delinquency Rate decreased in April - Freddie Mac reported that the Single-Family serious delinquency rate in April was 0.85%, down from 0.92% March. Freddie's rate is down year-over-year from 2.15% in April 2021.\ Freddie's serious delinquency rate peaked in February 2010 at 4.20% following the housing bubble and peaked at 3.17% in August 2020 during the pandemic. These are mortgage loans that are "three monthly payments or more past due or in foreclosure".Mortgages in forbearance are being counted as delinquent in this monthly report but are not reported to the credit bureaus.This is very different from the increase in delinquencies following the housing bubble. Lending standards have been fairly solid over the last decade, and most of these homeowners have equity in their homes - and they will be able to restructure their loans once (if) they are employed. The serious delinquency rate was at 0.60% just prior to the pandemic - almost back.

Update: Delinquencies, Foreclosures and REO - Today, in the Calculated Risk Real Estate Newsletter: Update: Delinquencies, Foreclosures and REO. A brief excerpt: Last year, I pointed out that the foreclosure moratorium, combined with the expiration of a large number of forbearance plans, would NOT lead to a surge in foreclosures and impact house prices (as happened following the housing bubble)....Here is some data on REOs through Q1 2022 …...We will probably see an increase in REOs in 2022.This graph shows the nominal dollar value of Residential REO for FDIC insured institutions. Note: The FDIC reports the dollar value and not the total number of REOs.The dollar value of 1-4 family residential Real Estate Owned (REOs, foreclosure houses) increased slightly from $779 million in Q4 2021 to $788 million in Q1 2022. (Probably declined in 2020 and 2021 due to foreclosure moratoriums, forbearance programs and house price increases)....The bottom line is there will be an increase in foreclosures this year (from record low levels), but it will not be a huge wave of foreclosures as happened following the housing bubble. The distressed sales during the housing bust led to cascading price declines, and that will not happen this time. There is much more in the free article.

MBA: "Mortgage Application Payments Jumped 8.8 Percent to $1,889 in April" -- This is a new monthly affordability index from the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA).From the MBA: Mortgage Application Payments Jumped 8.8 Percent to $1,889 in April -Homebuyer affordability decreased in April, with the national median payment applied for by applicants rising 8.8 percent to $1,889 from $1,736 in March. This is according to the Mortgage Bankers Association's (MBA) Purchase Applications Payment Index (PAPI), which measures how new monthly mortgage payments vary across time – relative to income – using data from MBA’s Weekly Applications Survey (WAS).“Rapid home-price growth, low inventory, and an 80-basis-point surge in mortgage rates slowed purchase applications in April, with the typical borrower’s principal and interest payment increasing $153 from March and $569 from a year ago,” said Edward Seiler, MBA's Associate Vice President, Housing Economics, and Executive Director, Research Institute for Housing America. “Despite strong employment and wage growth, housing affordability has worsened since the start of the year. Mortgage payments are taking up a larger share of homebuyers’ incomes, and sky-high inflation is making it more difficult for some would-be buyers to save for a down payment or come up with the additional cash they need to afford a higher monthly payment.”Added Seiler, “MBA’s updated forecast calls for mortgage rates to remain above 5 percent for most of 2022, but prospective homebuyers should start to see moderation from the double-digit price appreciation reported for well over a year in most of the country.”The national PAPI (Figure 1) increased 7.8 percent to 162.7 in April from 150.9 in March, meaning payments on new mortgages take up a larger share of a typical person’s income. Compared to April 2021 (120.2), the index jumped 27.0 percent. For borrowers applying for lower-payment mortgages (the 25th percentile), the national mortgage payment increased 9.6 percent to $1,236 from $1,129 in March.

MBA: Mortgage Applications Decrease in Latest Weekly Survey From the MBA: Mortgage Applications Decrease in Latest MBA Weekly Survey Mortgage applications decreased 1.2 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending May 20, 2022.... The Refinance Index decreased 4 percent from the previous week and was 75 percent lower than the same week one year ago. The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index increased 0.2 percent from one week earlier. The unadjusted Purchase Index decreased 1 percent compared with the previous week and was 16 percent lower than the same week one year ago.“The 30-year fixed rate declined for the second straight week to 5.46 percent but remains well above what borrowers were used to over the past two years. Most refinance borrowers continue to remain on the sidelines as a result, and refinance applications have fallen in nine of the past 10 weeks. Compared to January 2022, refinance activity is down 66 percent,” said Joel Kan, MBA’s Associate Vice President of Economic and Industry Forecasting. “Higher mortgage rates are also impacting purchase market conditions, as the purchase index remained close to lows last seen in the spring of 2020 when a significant portion of activity was put on hold due to the onset of the pandemic. Currently, higher rates, low inventory, and high prices are keeping prospective buyers out of the market.”The refinance share of mortgage activity decreased to 32.3 percent of total applications from 33.0 percent the previous week. The adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) share of activity decreased to 9.4 percent of total applications....The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances ($647,200 or less) decreased to 5.46 percent from 5.49 percent, with points decreasing to 0.60 from 0.74 (including the origination fee) for 80 percent loan-to-value ratio (LTV) loans. The first graph shows the refinance index since 1990.With higher mortgage rates, the refinance index has declined sharply over the last several months.The refinance index is at the lowest level since December 2018.The second graph shows the MBA mortgage purchase index According to the MBA, purchase activity is down 16% year-over-year unadjusted.

Michigan Couple Says Town Seized Their Building and Offered To Return It if They Bought Two Cars for Police -- A Michigan couple says their town seized a building they owned and then demanded that they buy two cars for the police department to get their own property back.The case, first reported by WXYZ Detroit, began in December of 2020 when the mayor of Highland Park and the police chief dropped by a 13,000-square-foot building owned by Justyna and Matt Kozbial for an impromptu fire code inspection.The city officials found a marijuana grow operation inside. The Kozbials, immigrants from Poland, say they had a state license to grow medical marijuana, but the city seized the building anyway and held on to it for 17 months without charging them with a crime.Under civil asset forfeiture laws, police can legally seize property—cash, cars, and even houses—suspected of being connected to criminal activity like drug trafficking, whether or not the owner has been charged with a crime. But not only were the Kozbials never charged with a crime, police never alleged there was any major criminal activity.In a response to an interrogatory filed in the Kozbials' subsequent lawsuit against Highland Park, a city police officer answered "none" when asked to identify any predicate felony offenses justifying the seizure.Things then took a highly unusual turn when the Kozbials say they received a settlement offer from the town: Stop growing marijuana and buy two vehicles for the local police department.A February 24, 2021, email provided to Reason by the Kozbials' attorney, Marc Deldin, shows that a Highland Park police officer, ferrying a message from city attorney Terry Ford, sent the Kozbials quotes for two cars from a local Ford dealership, totaling about $70,000. Civil liberties groups often criticize civil forfeiture for creating a perverse profit incentive for police and local governments, since forfeiture revenues often go straight into their budgets, but it's practically unheard of to see such an overt shakedown put into emails and court documents.

BofA: "High hurdles to rebalance the existing home market" --Note: This analysis is similar to many of my comments in What will Happen with House Prices? A few excerpts from a BofA research note: High hurdles to rebalance the existing home market . As the Fed now tries to slow the economy down, housing will be front and center as one of the main interest rate-sensitive sectors.As we have been writing, mortgage rates have spiked this year to around 5.5% creating a record affordability shock. This should lead to a major pullback in home sales and turnover. However, home prices will likely continue to move higher, and we recently revised up our home price appreciation forecast this year to 15%. It is hard to understate how tight the housing market is right now. The key metric to gauge the supply-demand imbalance is existing homes months supply, which is at a historically low level of 2.2 months as of April. As we recently pointed out in Fed throwing shade on hot housing market, months supply has a strong historical inverse relationship with % mom home prices. The record tightness therefore helps explain the record gains in home prices.Looking at the long history, a balanced market is likely closer to 5-7 months. To get from 2 months to 5 months would take some pretty big changes and swings in the existing home market. To assess this, we create a matrix for months supply with varying assumptions for weaker home sales and greater inventories. A combined 20% pullback in existing home sales and 20% increase in inventories, would add slightly over 1 month to months supply, bringing it up to 3.3 months. To get back to 5 months and the minimum threshold for a balanced market, it would take more severe moves in the range of 40% for both.Earlier this month I wrote: If sales decline to 5.0 million SAAR, inventory would have to increase to around 2.5 million units to reach 6 months-of-supply. This also might seem unlikely and would seem to argue for the slow house price growth scenario; however, I think there are reasons we might sales decline to around 5 million SAAR. We could see a wealth effect from the recent decline in the stock market and speculative assets. Also, my suspicion is household formation will slow (I think there was a sharp increase in household formation in 2021 that will slow later this year). I'll have more on household formation later this week.

Realtor.com Reports Weekly Inventory Up 9% Year-over-year - Today, in the Calculated Risk Real Estate Newsletter: Realtor.com Reports Weekly Inventory Up 9% Year-over-year Excerpt: Realtor.com has monthly and weekly data on the existing home market. Here is their weekly report released this morning from Chief Economist Danielle Hale: Weekly Housing Trends View — Data Week Ending May 21, 2022.. Note: They have data on list prices, new listings and more, but this focus is on inventory. Active inventory continued to grow, rising 9% above one year ago. In a few short weeks, we’ve observed a significant turnaround in the number of homes available for sale, going from essentially flat two weeks ago, to +5% last week, to +9% this week. This is the biggest year over year gain ever observed in our weekly data history which goes back to 2017, and the first consecutive weeks of gains since 2019. This is a milestone to celebrate, but should be understood in context. Our April Housing Trends Report showed that the active listings count remained 60 percent below its level right at the onset of the pandemic. This means that April’s buyers had just 2 homes to consider for every 5 homes that were available for sale just before the pandemic. May data in summary is likely to show that even as the market is adjusting rapidly, the number of homes for sale remains limited compared to pre-pandemic conditions. Here is a graph of the year-over-year change in inventory according to realtor.com. Note: I corrected a sign error in the data for Feb 26, 2022. Note the rapid increase in the YoY change, from down 30% at the beginning of the year, to up 9% YoY now. It will be important to watch if that trend continues. It appears that inventory growth is accelerating, as demand declines. There is much more in the article.

New Home Sales Decrease Sharply to 591,000 Annual Rate in April -- The Census Bureau reports New Home Sales in April were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR) of 591 thousand. The previous three months were revised down. Sales of new single‐family houses in April 2022 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 591,000, according to estimates released jointly today by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. This is 16.6 percent below the revised March rate of 709,000 and is 26.9 percent below the April 2021 estimate of 809,000. The first graph shows New Home Sales vs. recessions since 1963. The dashed line is the current sales rate.New home sales are now below pre-pandemic levels.The second graph shows New Home Months of Supply.The months of supply increased in April to 9.0 months from 6.9 months in March.The all-time record high was 12.1 months of supply in January 2009. The all-time record low was 3.5 months, most recently in October 2020.This is well above the top of the normal range (about 4 to 6 months of supply is normal). "The seasonally‐adjusted estimate of new houses for sale at the end of April was 444,000. This represents a supply of 9.0 months at the current sales rate." The last graph shows sales NSA (monthly sales, not seasonally adjusted annual rate).In April 2022 (red column), 53 thousand new homes were sold (NSA). Last year, 74 thousand homes were sold in April.The all-time high for April was 116 thousand in 2005, and the all time low for April was 30 thousand in 2011.This was well below expectations, and sales in the three previous months were revised down sharply. I'll have more later today.

April New Home Sales Decline Sharply, almost 6 Months of Inventory Under Construction -Today, in the Calculated Risk Real Estate Newsletter: April New Home Sales Decline Sharply, almost 6 Months of Inventory Under Construction Brief excerpt: The next graph shows the months of supply by stage of construction. “Months of supply” is inventory at each stage, divided by the sales rate.The inventory of completed homes for sale was at 38 thousand in April, up from the record low of 32 thousand in several months in 2021 and early 2022. That is just over 0.8 months of completed supply (red line). This is lower than the normal level.The inventory of new homes under construction is at 5.9 months (blue line) - well above the normal level. This elevated level of homes under construction is due to supply chain constraints. This is close to the record set in 1980. And 118 thousand homes have not been started - about 2.4 months of supply (grey line) - almost double the normal level. Homebuilders are probably waiting to start some homes until they have a firmer grasp on prices and demand.

Housing Bubble Getting Ready to Pop: Unsold Inventory of New Houses Spikes by Most Ever, to Highest since 2008, with 9 Months’ Supply, Sales Collapse at Prices below $400 -ky Wolf Richter - Sales of new single-family houses in April plunged by 16.6% from March and by 26.9% from a year ago, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 591,000 houses, the lowest since lockdown April 2020, according to the Census Bureau today. Sales of new houses are registered when contracts are signed, not when deals close, and can serve as an early indicator of the overall housing market.By region, sales plunged the most in the South:

• South: -19.8% for the month, -36.6% year-over-year.
• Midwest: -15.1% for the month, -25.5% year-over-year
• West: -13.8% for the month, -12.4% year-over-year.
• Northeast: -5.9% for the month, +17.1% year-over-year

Unsold inventory of new houses spiked in a historic month-to-month leap of 34,000 houses, and by 127,000 houses from April last year, to 444,000 unsold houses, seasonally adjusted, the highest since May 2008. Both, the month-to-month leap and the year-over-year leap were the largest leaps ever recorded, both in numbers of unsold houses and in percentages.By region, unsold inventory spiked the most in the South, and dipped in the Northeast. Percent increase year-over-year:

• South: +53%
• Midwest: +39%
• West: +8.4%
• Northeast: -4%

Supply of unsold new houses spiked in a historic month-to-month leap from an already high 6.9 months’ supply in March to a dizzying 9.0 months’ supply in April, having nearly doubled from a year ago:

Quarterly Starts by Purpose and Design: "Built for rent" Increasing ---Along with the monthly housing starts for April last week, the Census Bureau released Housing Units Started by Purpose and Design through Q1 2022.This graph shows the NSA quarterly intent for four start categories since 1975: single family built for sale, owner built (includes contractor built for owner), starts built for rent, and condos built for sale. Single family starts built for sale (red) were down 2% in Q1 2022 compared to Q1 2021. Owner built starts (orange) were up 28% year-over-year. Condos built for sale increased and are still low. The 'units built for rent' (blue) and were up 19% in Q1 2022 compared to Q1 2021. The recent housing boom had been mostly in single family homes 'built for sale', but 'built for rent' has picked up.

 NAR: Pending Home Sales Decreased 3.9% in April - From the NAR: Pending Home Sales Descend 3.9% in April - Pending home sales slipped in April, as contract activity decreased for the sixth consecutive month, the National Association of Realtors® reported. Only the Midwest region saw signings increase month-over-month, while the other three major regions reported declines. Each of the four regions registered a drop in year-over-year contract activity.The Pending Home Sales Index (PHSI), a forward-looking indicator of home sales based on contract signings, slid 3.9% to 99.3 in April. Year-over-year, transactions fell 9.1%. An index of 100 is equal to the level of contract activity in 2001."Pending contracts are telling, as they better reflect the timelier impact from higher mortgage rates than do closings," said Lawrence Yun, NAR's chief economist. "The latest contract signings mark six consecutive months of declines and are at the slowest pace in nearly a decade."...Month-over-month, the Northeast PHSI fell 16.20% to 74.8 in April, a 14.3% drop from a year ago. In the Midwest, the index rose 6.6% to 100.7 last month, down 2.8% from April 2021.Pending home sales transactions in the South dipped 4.7% to an index of 119.0 in April, down 10.3% from April 2021. The index in the West slipped 4.3% in April to 85.9, a 10.5% decrease from a year prior. This was below expectations of a 1.9% decrease for this index. Note: Contract signings usually lead sales by about 45 to 60 days, so this would usually be for closed sales in May and June.

Hotels: Occupancy Rate Down 3.5% Compared to Same Week in 2019 -From CoStar: STR: Weekly US Hotel Revenue per Available Room Reaches Highest Level Since July 2019 - U.S. hotel performance increased from the previous week, according to STR‘s latest data through May 21.May 15-21, 2022 (percentage change from comparable week in 2019*):
• Occupancy: 68.6% (-3.5%)
• Average daily rate (ADR): $151.75 (+13.4%)
• Revenue per available room (RevPAR): $104.06 (+9.5%)
*Due to the pandemic impact, STR is measuring recovery against comparable time periods from 2019.The following graph shows the seasonal pattern for the hotel occupancy rate using the four-week average.The red line is for 2022, black is 2020, blue is the median, and dashed light blue is for 2021. Dashed purple is 2019 (STR is comparing to a strong year for hotels). The 4-week average of the occupancy rate above the median rate for the previous 20 years (Blue).

Personal Income increased 0.4% in April; Spending increased 0.9% -- The BEA released the Personal Income and Outlays report for April: Personal income increased $89.3 billion (0.4 percent) in April, according to estimates released today by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Disposable personal income (DPI) increased $48.3 billion (0.3 percent) and personal consumption expenditures (PCE) increased $152.3 billion (0.9 percent). Real DPI increased less than 0.1 percent in April and Real PCE increased 0.7 percent; goods increased 1.0 percent and services increased 0.5 percent. The PCE price index increased 0.2 percent. Excluding food and energy, the PCE price index increased 0.3 percent. The April PCE price index increased 6.3 percent year-over-year (YoY), down from 6.6 percent YoY in March. The PCE price index, excluding food and energy, increased 4.9 percent YoY, down from 5.3% in March.The following graph shows real Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) through April 2022 (2012 dollars). The dashed red lines are the quarterly levels for real PCE.Personal income was below expectations, and the increase in PCE was above expectations. Inflation was at expectations (lower YoY increase than in March).

Real Disposable Income Per Capita Down Again in April - With the release of this morning's report on April's Personal Incomes and Outlays, we can now take a closer look at "Real" Disposable Personal Income Per Capita. At two decimal places, the nominal 0.25% month-over-month change in disposable income is cut to 0% when we adjust for inflation. This is a decrease from last month's 0.42% nominal and an increase from the -0.48% real change. The year-over-year metrics are -0.54% nominal and -6.41% real.Post-Great recession, the trend was one of steady growth, but generally flattened out in late 2015 with increases in 2012 and 2013. As a result of COVID pandemic stimulus measures, major spikes can be seen in April 2020, January 2021 (a December 2020 payment), and March 2021. The first chart shows both the nominal per capita disposable income and the real (inflation-adjusted) equivalent since 2000. This indicator was significantly disrupted by the bizarre but predictable oscillation caused by 2012 year-end tax strategies in expectation of tax hikes in 2013 and more recently, by COVID stimulus. The BEA uses the average dollar value in 2012 for inflation adjustment. But the 2012 peg is arbitrary and unintuitive. For a more natural comparison, let's compare the nominal and real growth in per-capita disposable income since 2000. Nominal disposable income is up 116% since then. But the real purchasing power of those dollars is up 37.5%.

Americans Have Lost $20 Trillion Since The Start Of 2022 -Citing estimates from JPMorgan, over the weekend Bloomberg wrote that courtesy of a Biden administration terrified of what soaring inflation will mean for the Democrats in the midterms, and a Fed that is determine to do anything - even crash the market and spark a recession - to do Joe Biden's "kill inflation" bidding, the US faces a new scary threat: a plunge in wealth which JPM estimates at least $5 trillion, and could reach $9 trillion by year-end.In short, the world’s richest nation is waking up to an unpleasant and unfamiliar sensation: It’s getting poorer... and worst of all, it's getting poorer at the behest of its own leaders. Since the start of the year, the S&P 500 Index is down 18%, the Nasdaq 100 has lost 27% and a Bloomberg index of cryptocurrencies has plunged 48%. That all amounts to “a wealth shock that is set to drag on growth in the coming year,” JPMorgan economists led by Michael Feroli wrote in a note Friday.Of course, this is not news to regular readers who have known about this one unpleasant side-effect of Biden's phobia for higher prices: we pointed out as much almost two weeks ago. We do however disagree with JPMorgan that "only" $5 trillion has been lost so far: as the following chart shows, US household net worth - which consists almost entirely of financial assets (and a smattering of real estate) - tracks the S&P with an almost 1.000 correlation. Well, that means that with the S&P briefly entering a bear market on Friday and sliding approximately 20% from its all time high, reached just a few days into 2022 when US net worth hit $150 trillion, it means that US households have seen about $20 trillion in net worth disappear in 2022 under Joe Biden, a loss far greater than under any other US president in history. One reason why Biden hasn't freaked out over this record crash in US household net worth, is that so far, the richest Americans have borne the brunt, with US billionaire fortunes down $800 billion since their peak amid the sharp losses in stocks, crypto and other financial assets.

 50% Of Millennials Think They Only Need $300,000 To Retire -- This has got to be one of the all time best forthcoming wakeup calls we've ever seen. A new survey published by Acorns last week revealed that half of millennials think they'll need just $300,000 to "retire comfortably".As the piece notes, this is obviously a fraction of what they will actually need to retire in comfort.Gen X and Gen Z had slightly higher estimates, guessing that they would need $500,000 to retire, while boomers have a clearer picture and understand they would need closer to $750,000 to retire.Catherine Collinson, CEO and president of the Transamerica Institute, who conducted the study, commented: “The estimated retirement savings for all workers are on the low side. I’m concerned that they’re not thinking big enough in terms of how much somebody should save.”Instead, as the article notes, people should be targeting about 75% of their pre-retirement income. That would mean that the average millennial earning $68,703 would need to save $1.8 million to retire comfortably by age 67. More than 40% of respondents to the survey said they arrived at their estimates "simply by guessing". “It’s surprising that people are not taking as much advantage as they can and should of the tools that are available,” Collinson said. Their $750,000 estimate “is much more than they’ve actually saved in all their retirement accounts,” she said about boomers, who have an average retirement account balance of just $200,000.

Bloated Inventories Hit Walmart, Target And Other Retailers' Profits, Trucking Demand -- There’s little in retailing that Walmart and Target aren’t prepared to handle. So it was jarring that over a 24-hour period the two scions of the trade posted weak first-quarter profits that appeared to blindside management at both. Part of the bottom-line blowup was due to fuel, which soared to record highs following Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine. Part of it was due to margin pressures caused by an unfavorable sales mix as consumers shifted their buying from higher-margin goods like electronics to less profitable items like groceries. An extension of that was an overshoot of inventory-stocking activity, which came back to bite the retailers after waning concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic pushed more consumer buying toward services and “experiences” and away from goods. There’s little that retailers can do about fuel prices. It can be argued they should have expected the pandemic-driven buying spree from March 2020 until the end of 2021 to peter out and that they should have planned their inventory strategies accordingly. Yet demand forecasting has always been a tough nut to crack, and the market is where it is. Inventory build may also have been the result of supply chain delays at the start of the year that resulted in some late deliveries of impaired freight. Inventory levels as of March, when compared to activity in March 2019 after inventories stabilized following a major pull-forward in 2018 ahead of the Trump administration’s China tariffs, produce a mixed bag of results. Unsurprisingly given the current dearth of motor vehicles, the ratio of vehicle and parts inventories to sales has fallen considerably, according to federal government data analyzed by Michigan State University. Apparel inventories to sales also declined over those periods, as did e-commerce. However, furniture, home furnishings and appliances, building materials and garden equipment, and a category known as “other general merchandise,” which includes Walmart and Target, among others, reported higher inventory-to-sales ratios, according to government data analyzed by Michigan State. For the latter sectors, the change has happened fast, according to Jason Miller, logistics professor at MSU’s Eli Broad College of Business. As of November, inventory-to-sales ratios were at pre-COVID levels, Miller said. They have since exploded upward. Miller said he expects a “cooldown” in retailer order volumes, even if inflation-adjusted sales stay constant, as retailers look to reduce their existing stock. He also expects retailers to launch major discounting programs to expedite the inventory burn. Fewer orders within certain categories bodes ill for carriers whose networks are strongly tied to inbound lanes to retailers’ distribution centers, Miller said.

 US Middle Class Is Shutting Down As Spending By The Rich Remains Robust -After dismal earnings by such mammoth retailers as Walmart, Targets and this morning's "horror report" by Abercrombie and Fitch, on Tuesday afternoon we actually got a solid report by Nordstrom, which not only printed strong earnings but also hiked guidance sending the stock higher as much as 12%. What was behind the divergence? Simple: as JPMorgan writes in its trading desk market recap, JWN earnings highlighted the divergence among consumer spending by income brackets. Picking up on this, Bloomberg's Felice Maranz writes that the latest earnings and comments from big-bank executives reinforce the view that while spending by lower and middle America may be falling off a cliff, spending by well-off US consumers is still robust, with scant sign of a pull-back. Bloomberg also points to department store Nordstrom which is jumping after the bell after boosting its revenue and earnings outlook. The company, unlike so many of its peers who have seen their stocks crater following Q1 earnings, said core categories in 1Q -- including men’s and women’s apparel and shoes - saw strong growth with shoppers “refreshing” wardrobes for social events, travel and going back to offices. And since the wealthy are far less impacted by rising prices in the core staples basket, there were no signs of a hit from inflation either, as merchandise margins for the likes of Nordstromg improved due to pricing and lower markdowns. That followed an earlier beat from that other upper/aspirational-class targeting retailer, Ralph Lauren, which was also able to raise prices, helped by resilient, affluent customers, as well as from electronics retailer Best Buy. Meanwhile over in Davos, BofA CEO Brian Moynihan said US consumers (at least the rich ones) have money to spend and were unlikely be deterred by inflation and economic gloom. That’s similar to JPMorgan chief Jamie Dimon’s reassuring remarks on Monday. The price of a new home - also a type of a luxury good - rose in April as well as prices surged while transactions tumbled as the middle (and lower) class is increasingly shut out of home purchases....... with the bulk of buying taking place at the ultra high end as seen by the record divergence between average and median home prices...

 LA Pays Record Gasoline Price Over USA Average -Los Angeles drivers know they pay more for gasoline than the average US driver: It’s the price for cleaner air in a state that’s made being green part of its DNA. What motorists in LA -- a city famed for its car culture -- may not realize is that the amount they pay over the national average soared to more than $1.80 a gallon in late March, the widest in at least 10 years, according to data from the AAA. So far, at least, the cash squeeze at the pump isn’t crimping travel plans, even though each tank costs about $24 more. The Auto Club of Southern California predicts 2.6 million local residents will take to the highways this Memorial Day weekend. That’s up 5% from 2021 but about 7% below 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic. The cause for the spike in prices earlier this year was refinery outages, according to Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, which tracks prices at 150,000 US gas stations. While the local refinery issues have largely been resolved, prices nationally have kept on climbing. Regular gasoline rose to $6.09 a gallon in LA this week, according to the AAA, still almost $1.50 more than the national average of around $4.60. The higher prices in California are partly the result of taxes and state programs to reduce greenhouse gases, like a rule requiring a less-polluting blend of fuel. These measures add about $1.30 to the cost of a gallon, according to the Western States Petroleum Association, a trade group. California also imports both oil and refined products, which must be trucked in or brought by tanker. “We don’t have pipelines coming in from Texas and other parts of the country,” said Kevin Slagle, a spokesman for the oil group. “We have to ship it in from around the world.” Prices, including the extra amount LA drivers pay, could spike again in the summer when travel picks up and a planned increase in the state tax is due to take effect. At the same time, a Chevron Corp. refinery in the state is scheduled for maintenance, and a South Korean refinery that supplies the US West Coast had some units offline after a fire. To offer drivers some relief, Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who’s running for re-election this year, has proposed an $11 billion package that includes $400 refunds to personal car and truck owners, with a maximum of $800 for up to two vehicles.

NYC gas prices: Gallon pushing $7 in Manhattan- - Some motorists had sticker shock at a gas station on Manhattan's West Side on Friday: the price for a gallon on supreme was pushing $7.The Mobil-branded station on West 51st Street and 11th Avenue in Hell's Kitchen had full-service per-gallon prices of nearly $6.40 for regular, a skosh under $6.70 for extra, and just shy of $7 for supreme-plus. The national average price of a gallon of gas was $4.60, according to AAA. One year ago, the national average was $3.04 per gallon. Despite surging gas prices, industry analysts say people are still planning to hit the road for Memorial Day weekend. Russia's invasion of Ukraine and COVID-related supply-chain problems continue to fuel inflation, especially with the prices of gas and food, according to analysts. Benchmark U.S. crude oil for July delivery rose 98 cents to $115.07 a barrel Friday. Wholesale gasoline for June delivery rose 14 cents to $4.02 a gallon.

Demand Destruction Hits Gasoline (But Only a Little) as Prices Spike in Historic Leap Just for Summer Driving Season - Demand Destruction Hits Gasoline (But Only a Little) as Prices Spike in Historic Leap Just for Summer Driving Season by Wolf Richter -I see gasoline prices rising further despite this modest short-term & long-term demand destruction. The price mayhem going on at the pump is now leading to some demand destruction. We’ve been seeing signs of it. We’re in the beginning of driving season, but gasoline demand is not following the classic pattern of a seasonal surge.The Energy Department’s EIA reported that gasoline consumption, at 8.85 million barrels per day (four-week moving average) was down by 2.7% from the same period in 2021, and by 6.1% from the same period in 2019. Consumption in 2022 (red line) is not following the summer driving surge: it’s up only 1.3% from early March. But in May 2019 (gray), consumption was up 5.2% from March, and in May 2021 (black), consumption was up 11.9% from March.Note that the EIA measures consumption of gasoline in terms of barrels supplied to the market by refiners, blenders, etc., and not by retail sales at gas stations. In October, November, and December last year, gasoline consumption ran above the levels in 2019. It’s when the gasoline price shock started spreading among consumers that consumption took a hit, but it hasn’t taken a big hit yet, and consumers seem to be getting used to the pain, and demand destruction hasn’t worsened over the past few weeks: What consumers are facing at the pump is a majestic spike in gasoline prices, that included a little dip in April to confuse everyone and to spread some false hopes that the price spikes were over. In May, the price spikes resurged to new records. On Monday, the EIA’s weekly measure reached $4.59 per gallon of regular: The years 2016-2019 may turn out to have been peak US gasoline consumption. The current price spike is shifting vehicle buying patterns once again to more economical vehicles, including smaller vehicles and hybrid powertrains, and we’re already seeing signs of that. These shifts in buying patterns have long-term consequences on gasoline consumption.Legacy automakers are finally rolling out EVs, and though large-scale production is still handicapped by the various shortages, particularly the semiconductor shortage that is hitting automakers on all their models, there is huge demand for EVs and long waiting lists. The 1.44 million EVs on the road in the US account for only 0.5% of the 280 million vehicles in operation, but EV sales are booming, and ICE vehicle sales are falling, and every percentage gain in the share of EVs represents a visible drop in gasoline consumption.And the wave among office workers of working-from-home during the pandemic has turned into a sort-of permanent trend to working at least part of the time from home, with commutes no longer being a daily thing, but may be a thing two or three times a week, which dramatically cuts gasoline consumption for those households, especially households that have long commutes, and enough of those households doing this will take some visible demand off the table. How much will gasoline prices have to spike before people return to commuter trains? The commuter train systems across the US have taken a massive loss in ridership during the pandemic, as people started driving to work or stayed home to work.So is the current price spike enough to get people back into trains? Let’s look at the San Francisco Bay Area’s BART trains. Here, drivers face gasoline prices in the $6 range, bridge tolls that have been jacked up, and traffic congestion that is nearly as bad as it was before the pandemic. That would be a big incentive to get back on the BART. So let’s see. Yup, in March, when gasoline prices spiked to new records, BART ridership jumped by 32% to 3.34 million rides, from 2.52 million in February. And in April, when gasoline prices dipped a little, ridership increased a tad to 3.38 million. And now in May, when gasoline prices at many gas stations are over $6 a gallon – well, we have to wait till the May data comes out. I expect another jump in ridership, similar to March. So gasoline demand destruction by people reverting to mass transit is taking place, but only in baby steps, and ridership remains 67% below the 10 million range before the pandemic:

May Vehicle Sales Forecast: Decrease to 13.4 million SAAR -From WardsAuto: May U.S. Light-Vehicle Sales to Fall from April, But Q2 Still Expected to Improve on Q1 (pay content). Brief excerpt: "With expectations that higher inventory at the end of the month will lead June’s results to rebound from May’s sequential decline, the second quarter's annualized rate is pegged to rise to 14.3 million units from Q1's 14.1 million." This graph shows actual sales from the BEA (Blue), and Wards forecast for May (Red). The Wards forecast of 13.4 million SAAR, would be down about 6% from last month, and down 20% from a year ago (sales were solid in May 2021, as sales recovered from the depths of the pandemic, and weren't yet significantly impacted by supply chain issues).

Automakers are jacking up prices on electric vehicles to bake in rising materials costs Automakers from Tesla to Rivian to Cadillac are hiking prices on their electric vehicles amid changing market conditions and rising commodity costs, specifically for key materials needed for EV batteries. Battery prices have been declining for years, but that may be about to change. One firm projects a sharp increase in demand for battery minerals over the next four years that could push the price of EV battery cells up by more than 20%. That's on top of already-rising prices for battery-related raw materials, a result of supply-chain disruptions related to Covid and Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The higher costs have some electric vehicle makers boosting their prices, making the already-expensive vehicles even less affordable for average Americans and begging the question, will surging commodity prices slow the electric-vehicle revolution? Industry leader Tesla has worked for years to lower the costs of its vehicles, part of its "secret master plan" to promote a global shift to zero-emissions transportation. But even it has had to raise its prices several times over the last year, including twice in March after CEO Elon Musk warned that both Tesla and SpaceX were "seeing significant recent inflation pressure" in raw materials prices and transportation costs. Most Teslas are now significantly more expensive than they were at the beginning of 2021. The cheapest "Standard Range" version of the Model 3, Tesla's most affordable vehicle, now starts at $46,990 in the U.S., up 23% from $38,190 in February 2021. Rivian was another early mover on price hikes, but its move wasn't without controversy. The company said on March 1 that both of its consumer models, the R1T pickup and R1S SUV, would get hefty price increases, effective immediately. The R1T would jump 18% to $79,500, it said, and the R1S would jump 21% to $84,500. Rivian at the same time announced new lower-cost versions of both models, with fewer standard features and two electric motors instead of four, priced at $67,500 and $72,500 respectively, close to the original prices of their plusher four-motor siblings. The adjustments raised eyebrows: At first, Rivian said that the price hikes would apply to orders placed before March 1 as well as to new orders, essentially doubling back to existing reservation holders for more money. But two days of pushback later, CEO RJ Scaringe apologized and said Rivian would honor the old prices for orders that were already placed. "In speaking with many of you over the last two days, I fully realize and acknowledge how upset many of you felt," Scaringe wrote in a letter to Rivian stakeholders. "Since originally setting our pricing structure, and most especially in recent months, a lot has changed. Everything from semiconductors to sheet metal to seats has become more expensive."

Average Age Of Vehicles On US Highways Keeps Getting Older --The average age of vehicles on US highways rose for the fifth consecutive year and to a record high, as supply-chain disruptions and inventory challenges prompt owners to hold on to their cars and trucks longer, according to research from S&P Global Mobility. Semiconductor shortages and inventory challenges were the top drivers in pushing US average vehicle age to 12.2 years, another all-time high. Chip supply constraints have caused continued parts shortages for carmakers, who have been forced to cut production. The constrained supply of new cars and light trucks, amid a strong demand for personal transportation, could have influenced consumers to continue operating their existing vehicles longer, as inventory levels for both new and used vehicles were depleted across the industry. - S&P Global MobilityThe finding reflects that used car life cycles are being extended because new vehicle supplies are tight. Kelley Blue Book recorded average new car prices at $46,526 in April, another obstacle for prospective buyers. Despite used car prices reversing from lofty levels, they remain out of reach for many, thus consumers are holding on to their vehicles longer. About a decade ago, a used vehicle with over 100,000 miles would've been deemed a lemon by a consumer, though now, it's common to see multiple owners for one with 200,000 miles. The increasing average vehicle age and higher mileage point to a "notable increase in repair revenue in the coming year," Todd Campau, associate director of aftermarket solutions at S&P Global Mobility, told Bloomberg. There's reason to believe the average age of vehicles on US highways will continue marching higher as tight supplies of new and used cars have sparked an unaffordability crisis.

Average Age of Cars & Trucks in Operation Rises to Record, as New Vehicle Sales & Miles Driven Plunged by Wolf Richter - The average age of all cars and light trucks in operation in 2022 rose to a new record of 12.2 years, according to S&P Global Mobility today. The metric tracks the average age of vehicles on the road, and not the average length of ownership.“Average age” is a function of two factors – and we’ll get to those in a moment:

• The number of new vehicles added to the national fleet in operation. Strong sales of new vehicles lower the average age of the whole fleet; weak sales raise the average age.
• The number of older vehicles removed from the fleet through scrappage.

The average age of “trucks” rose to 13.1 years. “Trucks” is an industry misnomer that includes not only pickup trucks, vans, and truck-like SUVs, but also compact SUVs that are car-like and smaller than station wagons used to be, and that are immensely popular. The average age of “cars” rose to 11.6 years.New vehicle sales plunged by total of 5.29 million vehicles in 2019, 2020, and 2021. New vehicle sales in the US have been marked by 25 years of stagnation interrupted by steep plunges and recoveries. The peak was in 2016, when 17.55 million new vehicles were sold, just a hair above the prior record in the year 2000! Sales started declining again in 2017, and by 2019 were down to 17.11 million vehicles.Then came the pandemic in 2020, and vehicle sales plunged. In 2021, demand returned, but the semiconductor shortages curtailed vehicle production globally, and new vehicle inventories vanished amid strong demand, and prices spiked by the most ever in recorded history, and these supply shortages kept sales at 14.95 million vehicles, roughly the same as in 1973.If new vehicle sales in 2019, 2020, and 2021 had each year been the same as in 2018 (17.23 million), then 5.29 million more new vehicles would have been added to the national fleet. And not getting better at the moment: In 2022 through April, new vehicle sales are down 16.6% year-over-year, as the semiconductor shortages and production problems continue to prolong the vehicle shortages.This dramatic slowdown in new vehicles being added to the national fleet was in part responsible for the rising average age.One of the reasons for this stagnation in new vehicle sales, despite a growing population, is that vehicles have been improving, and they last longer with fewer issues, and they look better for longer, and so consumers in aggregate drive these vehicles for longer before they finally end up in the junk yard.This process, which has been going on for decades, allows people to drive older vehicles without problems, and they’re doing it – and so the average age of vehicles in operation (VIO) nearly doubled from 6.6 years in 1980 to 12.2 years in 2022.:In 2020, the total number of miles driven by highway-legal vehicles of all types – passenger vehicles, buses, motorcycles, medium-duty and heavy trucks – plunged by 11% to 2.90 trillion miles in 2020 from the prior year, according to the Federal Highway Administration.In miles, this plunge amounted to 325 billion fewer miles driven, which amounts to a lot of wear and tear that didn’t happen, and less need to replace vehicles, and less need to send vehicles to the junk yard. In 2021, miles driven bounced to 3.23 trillion, but was still below the levels of 2018 and 2919:

10,000 Truck Drivers Taken Off The Road Due To Marijuana Violations - Five years ago in 2017, when the US labor shortage was in its nascent stages and when the US was years away from a wage-price spiral, the Fed’s Beige Book surveys of economic activity across the country in April, May and July all noted the inability of employers to find workers able to pass drug screenings: “It’s not just a matter of labor participation; there is also a lot of collateral economic damage,” said Alan B. Krueger, a Princeton economist who wrote a widely discussed paper on the subject last year. In other words, too many people were high 24/7 to be gainfully employed.Well, fast forward to today when with the US in the depth of the biggest labor crisis in history, when there are almost two job openings for every unemployed worker (according to the latest JOLTs report), we learn that just marijuana violations have taken over 10,000 truck drivers off the road this year, adding more to unprecedented supply chain disruptions.While the COVID-19 pandemic has been the catalyst for a myriad of supply-chain challenges, including delayed packages, bare grocery store shelves, and inflated prices, there are other bottlenecks also causing supply chain issues, including a lack of truck drivers to transport goods from one place to another. In late 2021, the American Trucking Associations reported that the driver shortage had risen to an all-time high of 80,000, partly due to the aging population and shrinking wages.In response, the Biden administration vowed in December to get more truck drivers on the road by boosting recruitment efforts and expediting the issuing of commercial licenses. However, that won’t have an effect on another hurdle: disparate marijuana laws across the U.S. that are contributing to an increase in violations. According to KPLC News, in 2022, a growing number of truckers are being taken off the job, which could soon worsen the already suffering supply chain.As more states legalize recreational marijuana—four of which did so in the past year and three more are expected to by the end of 2022—more truck drivers have tested positive for the substance. As of April 1, 2022, 10,276 commercial vehicle drivers have tested positive for marijuana use. By the same time in 2021, there had been 7,750 violations. That’s a 32.6% increase year over year.Truck drivers who travel cross-country face inconsistent state regulations as 19 states have legalized recreational marijuana and 37 states permit it for medicinal purposes. But even if a driver used marijuana or hemp-based products like CBD while off duty in a state where those substances are legal, they could still be faced with a violation due to the Department of Transportation’s (DOT) zero-tolerance policy at the federal level.“While states may allow medical use of marijuana, federal laws and policy do not recognize any legitimate medical use of marijuana,” a DOT handbook for commercial vehicle drivers reads. “Even if a state allows the use of marijuana, DOT regulations treat its use as the same as the use of any other illicit drug.”

US Durable Goods Orders Disappoint In April -Amid a slew of dismal US macro data, analysts expected durable goods orders to continue to rise in preliminary April data and it did but less than expected. US Durable Goods Orders rose 0.4% MoM, less than the +0.6% MoM expected and a notable slowdown from March's +1.1% MoM (which was also revised down to a 0.6% MoM rise). Orders remain up 9.9% YoY... Ex-Autos were even worse, with orders rising just 0.3% MoM (below the +0.6% MoM expectation). The value of core capital goods orders, a proxy for investment in equipment that excludes aircraft and military hardware, climbed 0.3% (less than the +0.5% MoM expectation) after a 1.1% gain a month earlier. Shipments were better than expected, up 0.8% MoM as the supply chain bottlenecks catch up. As Bloomberg notes, the figures suggest companies are adhering to capital expenditures plans as they seek to enhance productivity to ease the burden of high inflation and a tight labor market. It’s less clear, however, whether businesses later this year will reconsider the current pace of investment in the face of higher interest rates and an anticipated cooling of economic activity. Another missed US macro data point though.

US Durable Goods Orders Climb 0.4% In April, Less Than Expected- A report released by the Commerce Department on Wednesday showed new orders for U.S. manufactured durable goods increased by less than expected in the month of April. The Commerce Department said durable goods orders rose by 0.4 percent in April after climbing by a downwardly revised 0.6 percent in March. Economists had expected durable goods orders to advance by 0.6 percent compared to the 1.1 percent jump that had been reported for the previous month. Michael Pearce, Senior U.S. Economist at Capital Economics, said the modest increase in durable goods orders "suggests that rate-sensitive business equipment investment growth is beginning to slow, with underlying capital goods shipments consistent with a sharp slowdown in business equipment investment growth from 15% in the first quarter to something closer to 6% annualized." "That is consistent with our view that economic activity is bending rather than breaking under the impact of higher rates," he added. The increase in durable goods orders was led by a rebound in orders for transportation, which climbed by 0.6 percent in April after dipping by 0.3 percent in March. Orders for non-defense aircraft and parts soared by 4.3 percent in April following an 8.1 percent nosedive in the previous month. Excluding orders for transportation equipment, durable goods orders edged up by 0.3 percent in April after surging by 1.1 percent in March. Ex-transportation orders were also expected to increase by 0.6 percent. The report showed notable increases in orders for machinery and primary metals, while orders for fabricated metal products and electrical equipment, appliances and components edged lower. Orders for non-defense capital goods excluding aircraft, a key indicator of business spending, rose by 0.3 percent in April after jumping by 1.1 percent in March. Shipments in the same category, which is the source data for equipment investment in GDP, increased by 0.8 percent in April after inching up by 0.2 percent in the previous month.

Richmond Fed Manufacturing: Declines in May - Fifth District manufacturing activity declined in May, according to the most recent survey from the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. The composite manufacturing index stood at -9 in May compared to 14 in April.The complete data series behind today's Richmond Fed manufacturing report, which dates from November 1993, is available here.Here is a snapshot of the complete Richmond Fed Manufacturing Composite series.Here is an excerpt from the latest Richmond Fed manufacturing overview:Many Fifth District manufacturing firms reported declines in activity in May, according to the most recent survey from the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. The composite manufacturing index fell from 14 in April to −9 in May, as two of the three components of the index turned negative: the indexes for shipments and volume of new orders declined from 6 in April to −16 and −15 in May, respectively. The third component, the employment index, remained positive at 8 but fell from 22 in April. Additionally, the local business conditions index continued its decline to −16 in May, from −10 in April. Firms are also less optimistic about conditions in the next six months as the index decreased to −13 in May from −1 in April. Link to Report Here is a somewhat closer look at the index since the turn of the century.

 Kansas City Fed Mfg Survey: Slowed in May -The latest index came in at 23, down from 25 last month, indicating slowed expansion in May. The future outlook fell to 31. All figures are seasonally adjusted. Here is a snapshot of the complete Kansas City Fed Manufacturing Survey.Quarterly data for this indicator dates back to 1995, but monthly data is only available from 2001.Here is an excerpt from the latest report:The pace of regional factory growth slowed slightly but remained strong. Firms continued to report negative impacts from higher inflation and supply shortages. Nearly 70% of all firms reported worse supply disruptions and shortages compared with 2021, with most expecting conditions to last another six months or longer. [Full report here]Here is a snapshot of the complete Kansas City Fed Manufacturing Survey.

Weekly Initial Unemployment Claims Decrease to 210,000 -The DOL reported:In the week ending May 21, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 210,000, a decrease of 8,000 from the previous week's unrevised level of 218,000. The 4-week moving average was 206,750, an increase of 7,250 from the previous week's unrevised average of 199,500.The following graph shows the 4-week moving average of weekly claims since 1971.The dashed line on the graph is the current 4-week average. The four-week average of weekly unemployment claims increased to 206,750.The previous week was unrevised.Weekly claims were lower than the consensus forecast.

CDC Now Recommends COVID Testing For All Domestic Air Travel, Including The Vaccinated --&The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is recommending that all domestic travelers undergo COVID-19 testing before and after they travel - regardless of vaccination status. In an update on the agency’s website, anyone traveling within the United States may want to consider “getting tested as close to the time of departure as possible,” and no more than three days before a flight. It previously only recommended testing for people who have not received COVID-19 vaccines or up-to-date booster shots. The CDC update is also recommending that people take a test before or after a trip if they went to crowded spaces “while not wearing a well-fitting mask or respirator.” In April, a Florida federal judge struck down the CDC mandate that required people to wear masks inside airports or on airplanes. Justice Department officials have signaled they will challenge the rule, implemented after President Joe Biden took office in early 2021, in court. A spokesperson for the agency told AFAR Magazine on May 19 that “COVID-19 vaccines are effective at preventing severe disease and death,” but added, “since vaccines are not 100 percent effective at preventing infection, some people who are up to date can still get COVID-19.” “People who are up to date with their COVID-19 vaccines may feel well and not have symptoms but still can be infected and spread the virus to others,” the spokesperson said.

NYC Parents Want In-Person Meeting With Mayor Over Toddler Mask Mandate: "Our Calls Have Gone Unanswered" - A frustrated group of more than 200 New York City parents have called the city’s mayor and public health chief to sit down and talk to them about the prolonged mask mandates for toddlers.Under the city’s public health policy, masks remain mandatory for children aged 2 to 4 in public schools and daycare centers. Mayor Eric Adam’s order to extend the mandate beyond its March expiration was initially struck down by a Staten Island judge, who called it “arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable,” but was later restored by an appeals court.In their letter sent to the City Hall, the parents alleged that the mayor’s office has repeatedly ignored their complaints about forcing preschoolers to mask up.“We write this letter because our hundreds of phone calls and emails, and our direct requests for meetings, have gone unanswered,” the parents wrote. “We are now publicly requesting a meeting, by May 17, with both Mayor Eric Adams and Commissioner Ashwin Vasan to discuss NYC’s Toddler Mask Mandate.”Specifically, the parents wanted the mayor and his health team to explain the reasoning behind the decision, including how exactly continuing to mask the youngest New Yorkers does more benefits than harm.“We want to review the city’s analysis of how the benefits of covering the faces of babies who are still in diapers outweighs the harms,” the letter read. “We want to know why our young children continue to be masked even as every other resident of this city is given the option to unmask, regardless of vaccination status.”In a statement to The New York Post, which first reported the matter, Adams said that he’s willing to unmask the children, but only when “the science says it is safe to do so.”“My team of health experts and I will continue to evaluate the data, day after day, and we will continue to communicate with New Yorkers with additional updates,” the mayor told The Post.

Latest COVID wave exacerbates dire conditions in New York City K-12 schools --Last week, New York City’s Health Department raised the COVID alert level to “high” in response to a rapid increase in the spread of the highly infectious and immune-resistant Omicron subvariants. Earlier this month, the city’s warning level went from “low,” to “medium,” with the surge led by the boroughs of Manhattan and Staten Island. In February, the city’s infection warning system protocol was dramatically altered, requiring a higher threshold of community transmission, as well as increases in hospitalization, to trigger more severe levels of alert. The metrics now represent what would have, in previous months, been a significantly higher risk to public health. Additionally, the widespread promotion of at-home testing, whose results are often not recorded in county, regional, state and national infection totals, means that the current transmission figures are likely severe undercounts. As of Saturday, the citywide infection rate was 342 per 100,000 residents, and hospitalizations were 70 per 100,000 residents. In the latter category, levels are about 25 percent of what they were during the height of the harrowing Omicron surge earlier this year. The Omicron wave of infection triggered protests, and walkouts by New York City students. Scientists have cited the prevalence of a new variant, BA.2.12.1, as accounting for nearly 80 percent of new infections in the city. New York City K-12 schools have seen a near-twofold increase in infections recently, with more than 10,000 cases last week. The numbers of school cases have climbed to nearly as high as they were during the peak of the Omicron surge. This is under conditions in which an already inadequate school testing regimen has drastically undercounted the actual figures. Since the beginning of the pandemic, 37 children in New York City between the ages of 0-17 have died due to COVID. The administration of Democratic Mayor Eric Adams has responded to the current surge by attempting to numb the population to the virus’s impact to keep businesses open and profits to Wall Street flowing. Continuing the policies of former mayor Bill de Blasio, Adams has acted in concert with the Biden administration to promote every lie, distortion and manipulation surrounding the pandemic to quell public concern and resistance. It has fought to keep schools open no matter the cost to human life and safety.

Keeping schools open during the pandemic is causing mental health crisis for US teachers -The continuing uncontrolled pandemic is having a devastating impact on the mental health of teachers in the US. Overworked and severely underpaid, many teachers are leaving the profession, deepening the crisis in public education. According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), there are almost seven percent fewer K-12 public school teachers now than at the start of the pandemic. Between February 2020, before the pandemic took hold in the United States, and December 2021, the EPI found that total public school employment, including support staff, was down 376,300 positions, a 4.7 percent decline. The pandemic only accelerated the long-standing trend of declining public school employment. In the years following the 2008 financial crisis—caused by rampant speculation and outright fraud by the capitalist ruling class—states made huge cuts to public education. These cuts were not fully restored by the time the pandemic hit. The EPI determined that if school staffing had kept pace with student enrollment growth since the 2008-2009 school year, public school employment would be 658,000 higher than it was in December 2021, or 8.6 percent higher than the actual employment levels. These downward trends are also reflected in college teacher preparation programs. In 2019, prior to the pandemic, the number of students graduating with teaching degrees was 25 percent fewer than in 2009. Many teachers are leaving the profession because of incredible workloads, only exacerbated by the pandemic, causing unsustainable stress and burnout. In a June 2021 RAND survey, 78 percent of teachers reported experiencing frequent, job-related stress, compared to 40 percent of employed adults overall. Twenty-five percent of teachers reported symptoms of depression, compared with 10 percent for the adult population as a whole. As a result, nearly a quarter of teachers said they were likely to leave their jobs by the end of the 2020-2021 school year, compared with one in six teachers who reported being likely to leave prior to the pandemic. The National Education Association (NEA), the largest teachers’ union in the country, conducted a January survey of 3,621 of its members. The results paint a devastating picture of working conditions in schools and stand as an indictment of the NEA for its failure to take any meaningful measures to improve the lives of their members during the worst public health crisis in at least a century. Instead, the NEA, along with the American Federation of Teachers, has snuffed out every strike waged by teachers since a wave of walkouts began with a wildcat strike by West Virginia teachers in 2018. Since the start of the pandemic, the NEA and AFT have functioned as the most reliable enforcers of the criminal back-to-school, back-to-work policies first of Trump, then Biden.

Texas School Shooting Leaves 18 Children and 2 Adults Dead -- 21 people are dead — 19 students, a teacher and one other adult are dead — after a shooting Tuesday at an elementary school in Uvalde. Initially Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott announced that 14 students and their teacher were gunned down in their classroom but later Tuesday Sgt. Erick Estrada of the Texas Department of Public Safety confirmed the death toll was 19 students and two adults, according to CNN. The shooter has also shot his grandmother but she had survived the attack. According to Abbott, the shooter, identified as Uvalde resident Salvador Romas, is dead. The shooter opened fire at Robb Elementary School at about 11:30 a.m. after abandoning his vehicle, and it is believed police killed him. Police said at a Tuesday press conference they believe the shooter, who according to Abbott had a handgun and possibly a rifle, acted alone. The children killed were in the second, third and fourth grades, police said. Uvalde is a small city of about 16,000 residents, approximately 85 miles west of San Antonio. "He shot and killed — horrifically, incomprehensibly — 14 students and killed a teacher. [The shooter], he himself is deceased," Abbott said. "And it is believed that responding officers killed him." Abbott also said the shooter shot his own grandmother, but did not give an update on her condition, reports ABC News. University Health San Antonio tweeted there are two patients — a 66-year-old woman and a 10-year-old girl — who are in critical condition. Abbott said two responding officers were injured and expected to survive, according to ABC. Congressman Tony Gonzales, who represents the area, said in a statement, "I am heartbroken for our South Texas community. It is devastating when our innocent children become the victims of senseless violence. We are devastated."

Alleged Texas school shooter identified: What we know about motive - Texas saw its deadliest school shooting in modern state historyTuesday as details begin to emerge after an alleged gunman reportedly killed at least 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.During a news conference, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott identified the assailant as Salvador Ramos, 18, and said he was a resident of the heavily Latino community about 85 miles west of San Antonio. The governor said Ramos walked into Robb Elementary School in Uvalde around 11:30 a.m. Central time and opened fire.USA TODAY has decided not to show an image of the suspect but is providing general details about the alleged shooter to inform how mass attacks are often planned and carried out, particularly with respect to how weapons and targets are selected. These details give authorities and the public information that could help citizens spot future mass shooters and even prevent them.Tuesday’s massacre was the deadliest shooting at a U.S. grade-school since a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, almost a decade ago. The Texas shooting comes just 10 days after a gunman in body armor killed 10 Black shoppers and workers at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, in what authorities say was a racist attack.The alleged attacker was "reported to have been a student" at Uvalde High School, Abbott said at the news conference Tuesday.The high school, part of the same school district as Robb Elementary where the shooting took place, enrolls about 1,100 students, according to the school district. 91% of students in the district are Hispanic, and almost 80% are economically disadvantaged, the district said.Uvalde is home to about 16,000 people, about 85 miles west of San Antonio and 75 miles from the Mexican border. About 82% of the city's population is Latino, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Abbott said the alleged gunman was a Uvalde local and a U.S. citizen.The gunman allegedly legally purchased two assault rifles at a local gun store on his 18th birthday, Democratic Texas State Senator Roland Gutierrez told USA TODAY."It was the first thing he did when he turned 18," he said on CNN, citing a briefing from Texas Rangers. Abbott said earlier in the day that the shooter had a handgun and possibly a rifle. Officials have not revealed a motive for the shooting, but the alleged gunman acted alone, said the school district's police chief, Pete Arredondo. Ramos allegedly crashed into a ditch near the school before the shooting, Texas Department of Public Safety Sergeant Erick Estrada said Tuesday evening on CNN. He was confronted by law enforcement when he tried to enter the school with a rifle, Estrada, said but was able to enter through the south door of the building where he went to several classrooms and began shooting. Gutierrez told USA TODAY he was unaware that the alleged gunman had been known to law enforcement prior to the attack. The gunman also allegedly shot his grandmother before going to the school, Gutierrez told USA TODAY. The woman, according to Gutierrez, was being treated for her injuries while being transported to a hospital in San Antonio.

What we know about the victims of the Texas school shooting in Uvalde so far - A fourth-grade teacher and a 10-year-old boy were among those killed in a mass shooting at a Texas elementary school on Tuesday, ABC News has learned.At least 19 children and two teachers were killed after a gunman opened fire at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, west of San Antonio, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.The alleged gunman -- identified by officials as 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, a student at Uvalde High School -- is dead, authorities said."When parents drop their kids off at school, they have every expectation to know that they're going to be able to pick their child up when that school day ends. And there are families who are in mourning right now," Gov. Greg Abbott told reporters.

• Amerie jo Garza, 10. Amerie jo Garza's father, Angel Garza, told ABC News that his daughter just turned 10 two weeks ago -- her birthday was May 10. Garza met with U.S. Marshals Tuesday night, who informed him that his daughter had been killed in the shooting at her elementary school. "Thank you everyone for the prayers and help trying to find my baby," Garza wrote in a statement to ABC News. "She's been found. My little love is now flying high with the angels above. Please don't take a second for granted. Hug your family. Tell them you love them. I love you Amerie jo. Watch over your baby brother for me."
• Xavier Lopez, 10. Fourth-grader Xavier Lopez died in Tuesday's elementary school shooting, his family confirmed to ABC News. According to his cousin, Xavier's mom was at his awards ceremony one to two hours prior to the shooting, not knowing it would be the last time she would see him.
• Eva Mireles. Eva Mireles, a fourth-grade teacher at the elementary school, was killed in the shooting, her aunt, Lydia Martinez Delgado, confirmed to ABC News. She had been a teacher in the school district for approximately 17 years, Delgado said. "I'm furious that these shooting continue. These children are innocent. Rifles should not be easily available to all," Delgado said. "This is my hometown, a small community of less then 20,000. I never imagined this would happen to especially to loved ones." "All we can do is pray hard for our country, state, schools and especially the families of all," she said.

US teachers and students respond in anger to Texas school shooting -- On Tuesday, 19 elementary students and two teachers were killed and 17 others injured after 18-year-old gunman Salvador Rolando Ramos opened fire on an entire classroom at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. While many details have not yet been released, what is clear is that unimaginable horror unfolded in the classroom where the majority of deaths occurred. The death toll continued to rise through Tuesday night as authorities had to use the DNA of parents to identify their slain children. The shooting has shocked the globe. Many parents across the country decided to keep their children home from school the following day.Tuesday’s school shooting is yet another horrifying instance of mass violence, which has become evermore commonplace in US schools. On November 30, 2021, Ethan Crumbley, 15, opened fire on his classmates at Oxford High in the Detroit metro area of Michigan, killing four and wounding seven others. On February 14, 2018, Nikolas Cruz, 19, gunned down 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. In December 14, 2012, 20 elementary school children and six adults were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, by gunman Adam Lanza, 20. In the past five months alone there have been 27 school shootings in the US. According to the Gun Violence Archive, there has been at least one mass shooting nearly every day since the start of the year.A teacher in Florida said, “I’m barely grappling with this right now. I work at a school in Parkland. After the Oxford High School shooting in Michigan last year, I was getting major anxiety about going back to my own campus, recalling too easily what happened on our turf back on February 14, 2018. These events are less than three years apart.“One of my colleagues actually thought it would be comforting to say to me, ‘Don't worry about it, we already had our shooting. It’d be like lightning striking in the same place twice if it happened again.’ There is nothing okay about this country’s relationship with guns when we are all just waiting for our turn to be a school shooting town, to mourn our own children, to counsel the forever-traumatized survivors. It doesn’t make me feel better that it’s not our children being killed this time. They are someone’s children. Even the slain teacher is someone’s child. None of these people should be dead. This is all wrong. Horrible and wrong. The answer to ‘How many times must we grieve?’ cannot simply be ‘stop grieving them.’”A teacher in Indiana expressed anger at the lack of overall lack of safety in schools. “I’ve come to the realization today that I’m no longer going to comply with my school’s lockdown/evacuation drills. Why should I? The doors to my room were installed in the 50s, each with a 2x3 window of thin glass that’s been warped by time. My administration refuses to keep outside doors closed when it’s hot out since we have no AC and anyone has access to the building. We practice our escape routes and meet-up points, which just ensures [that] our future gunman will know when and where to shoot. Two years ago, our school board purchased for us these cheap plastic hooks we could use to tie a rope to that’s attached to our door knobs and a can of wasp spray.“I’m done with this theater-acting administration that makes us go through to ‘prepare’ for school shootings. … It doesn’t make them or myself any safer. It’s meant to make idiots feel like our school is safe when it’s the furthest thing from it. They can fire me.

Former classmate says shooter sent him photos of gun and ammunition before the attack - A former classmate of school shooter Salvador Ramos said the gunman texted him photos of a firearm he had and a bag full of ammunition days before the attack. The friend, who did not want to be identified by name, said he was somewhat “close” to Ramos and would hear from him occasionally to play Xbox together. “He would message me here and there, and four days ago he sent me a picture of the AR he was using … and a backpack full of 5.56 rounds, probably like seven mags.” “I was like, ‘bro, why do you have this?’ and he was like, ‘Don’t worry about it,’” the friend said. “He proceeded to text me, ‘I look very different now. You wouldn’t recognize me,’” he added. The friend said Ramos was taunted by others for the clothes he wore and his family’s financial situation, and eventually was seen less in class. “He would, like, not go to school ... and he just, like, slowly dropped out,” the friend said. “He barely came to school.” He said that after his own graduation, he communicated with Ramos less. But every few months, Ramos would send a text or ask to play Xbox, he said.

 Husband of one of the teachers fatally shot at Uvalde school dies from heart attack - John Martinez awoke Thursday just before 10 a.m. to a text message from his younger brother: “Pray for tío Joe.” Mr. Martinez, a 21-year-old student at Texas State University, said at first that he didn’t think anything was amiss. Of course his uncle needed prayers, he said. Joe Garcia had just lost his wife, the mother of his children, his life partner. Irma Garcia, 48, was one of the two teachers slain in a shooting rampage at Robb Elementary School in the Garcias’ hometown of Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday. Less than two hours after the morning text message, Mr. Martinez got a call from his family to tell him his uncle had died after being rushed to the hospital following an apparent heart attack. Mr. Martinez texted his brother around noon. “This is so overwhelming.” On Thursday, as Mr. Martinez began to fill in the details from his relatives, he said, he felt ill with grief. Mr. Garcia had just returned to the family’s home after venturing out to leave flowers at a memorial set up for the victims outside Robb Elementary School. He was in the kitchen, Mr. Martinez said, when he suddenly seized and fell over. Mr. Martinez’s mother, who was at the house with the family, sprang into action, administering chest compressions until paramedics arrived to take him to the hospital. He died there. “We’re all just in shock,” Mr. Martinez said. Before his uncle’s death, Mr. Martinez told The Washington Post on Wednesday that his tia Irma had died a hero and that his family wanted her to be remembered as someone who sacrificed her life to protect her students. “They weren’t just her students. Those were her kids, and she put her life on the line. She lost her life to protect them,” Mr. Martinez said. “That’s the type of person she was.” On Thursday, he struggled to find the words to describe his aunt and uncle. Together, the couple had four children: Cristian, 23; Jose, 19; Lyliana, 15; and Alysandra, 12.

US Government Admits It Used Schools As Tool To Erase Culture, Seize Native American Land: Report --Erasing culture, pulling children away from their parents, and disregarding the emotional needs of children. These tactics could be pulled from today’s headlines, but they are the tried-and-true education policies the United States has admitted to using for 150 years as a tool to force the assimilation of Native Americans, and specifically to acquire Indian territorial land.This month, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) released a 106-page report detailing how the U.S. federal government “applied systematic militarized and identity-alteration methodologies in the Federal Indian boarding school system to assimilate American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian children through education.”The BIA says the government used the education of children to “replace the Indian’s culture with our own.” This, the report says, was considered “the cheapest and safest way of subduing the Indians, of providing a safe habitat for the country’s white inhabitants, of helping the whites acquire desirable land, and of changing the Indian’s economy so that he would be content with less land.” The report was requested last year by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna in New Mexico. She is the first Native American to serve as a cabinet secretary.Haaland asked for an investigation into the loss of lives and lasting consequences of the Federal Indian boarding school system.“This report shows for the first time that between 1819 and 1969, the United States operated or supported 408 boarding schools across 37 states [or then-territories], including 21 schools in Alaska and seven schools in Hawaii,” Bryan Newland, assistant secretary of Indian Affairs, wrote in a letter introducing the report.Another report expanding the investigation is planned.“The Federal Indian boarding school policy was intentionally targeted … at children to assimilate them and, consequently, take their territories,” Newland said.

Millennials and Gen Zers are getting swindled by the biggest scam in higher education --It's graduation season. Over the past couple of weeks, some 2 million college students have earned their bachelor's degrees and headed off to the next stage of their lives. For many, that next stage will be … back on campus, in a grad program, most likely gunning for a master's degree. And for a sizable chunk of them, that decision will turn out to be a catastrophic error.Millennials and Gen Zers have been told a master's degree is the new bachelor's — meaning the minimum level of education needed to land a prestigious, well-paying job. But new research indicates that this advice is misleading at best and cynical at worst. Many master's degrees not only fail to deliver on the promise of better employment, but they also leave their overeducated recipients saddled with crippling, lifelong debt.More than 3 million students were enrolled in a graduate program in 2020. That's a million more than there were in 2000. Over those two decades, the number of master's degrees awarded almost doubled. And as the number of master's students has soared, so has their share of student-loan debt. Though master's students account for only 12% of all college-goers, the higher price tags on their degrees mean they're burdened with 26% of all student debt. Bachelor's students with federal loans owe an average of $32,000 upon graduation. Master's students owe $65,000.This towering debt, combined with the often modest earnings potential that many advanced degrees deliver, means that many master's programs make no financial sense. Despite the fancy degree, you wind up owing more without earning more. So why do so many people keep wasting their money on these worthless pieces of paper?A look at the earnings data makes it easy to see why so many millennials and Gen Zers are drawn to graduate school. If you get a medical or dental degree, you make 45% more, on average, than you would with only a bachelor's. Same for law degrees (though that's more likely to be true if you attend a highly selective law school). Ph.D.s, too, generally lead to significantly higher salaries, though there are large differences depending on the field.The problem is that most grad students aren't getting MDs, JDs, or Ph.D.s. They're getting master's degrees.Sure, people with a master's earn more, on average, than those with just a bachelor's degree — but only by 18%. And when you look at the numbers by individual graduate programs, the payoff potential plunges even further. Preston Cooper, a researcher at the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, recently measured the return on investment of nearly 14,000 grad programs. He found plenty of evidence that medical school, law school, and dental school were worth it and that master's degrees in computer science, engineering, and nursing tended to pay off. But he also found that 40% of master's degrees had no return at all on lifetime earnings — none.What are the most financially worthless degrees? That honor goes to master's in the arts, humanities, and theology: Cooper estimated that 85% of those degrees had a negative return on investment. You could make an argument about the inherent value of knowledge, of course, but that's not likely to impress whatever credit agency comes knocking to collect your student-loan debt. It doesn't take a master's degree in the arts to see that a master's degree in the arts will leave you worse off, financially, over your lifetime.

Student-loan borrower advocates just sued Biden's Education Department for leaving 'countless borrowers in the dark' over stalled relief - After a for-profit college accused of predatory behavior shut down, its students were promised student-loan relief. But six years later, they're still waiting — and now they're taking legal action. On Thursday, advocacy groups Student Defense, the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and the National Consumer Law Center sued the Education Department, on behalf of former Westwood College students. Westwood, which shut down in 2015, was later accused by the department of misrepresenting graduates' employment prospects, and as a result, those students should have qualified for borrower defense to repayment, which gives student-loan relief to those defrauded by for-profit schools. But many of those students have yet to receive the promised relief, prompting the lawsuit. "For nearly six years, across administrations, the Department has shirked its obligations, leaving countless borrowers in the dark about whether or when they'll receive the relief they're owed under federal law," Student Defense Litigation Director Eric Rothschild said in a statement. "The Department has everything they need to free borrowers from financial limbo and offer them a well-deserved fresh start. It's beyond time they act on it." An Education Department spokesperson declined to comment on pending litigation. In 2016, the Illinois Attorney General filed a borrower defense application on behalf of former Westwood students in Illinois in the criminal justice program, and while it resulted in the clearing of institutional loans, which are loans owed by the student to the school, it did not address federal student debt. Earlier this month, Illinois' Attorney General Kawame Raoul sent a letter to the Education Department following up on the 2016 application. "There is no more analysis or evidence needed: Westwood defrauded all students who attended its Illinois criminal justice program," Illinois AG Raoul wrote. "The Department – and only the Department – knows which defrauded borrowers continue to carry federal loan debt for their time at Westwood. These consumers continue to be harmed by the student loan debt they carry and its negative impact on their lives." The lawsuit noted the relief the Education Department has already provided to students defrauded by other for-profit schools, like Corinthian College, ITT Tech, and even Marinello Schools of Beauty, which gave relief to borrowers who did not even submit an application. And while the department did approve some relief for former Westwood students in February, the lawsuit cites the failure to act on the Illinois group application as "unlawful," requiring those students to pay off debt they should not owe once the pandemic payment pause on student loans ends after August 31.

Student debt: Biden is considering canceling some. Here's why it might not be such a great idea - President Joe Biden is considering canceling some federal student loan debt, suggesting a once pie-in-the-sky idea is closer than ever to becoming reality.But while some Democrats argue that the President should immediately erase large amounts of student loan debt for 43 million Americans with the stroke of his pen, the implications of such a significant policy move are complicated.There are upsides and downsides.On the one hand, student debt cancellation could deliver financial relief to millions of Americans, helping them buy their first homes, start businesses or save for retirement -- all investments that may take a back seat to pay off student debt. Loan forgiveness could also help narrow the racial wealth gap, some experts say.But broad student loan forgiveness would also shift the cost -- likely hundreds of billions of dollars -- to taxpayers, including those who chose not to go to college or already paid for their education. Loan cancellation could also add to inflation while doing nothing to address the root of the problem: college affordability."This is a pretty complex issue," Education Secretary Miguel Cardona told MSNBC's Symone Sanders earlier this month when she pressed him on why broad student debt cancellation hasn't happened yet.Borrowers currently hold $1.6 trillion in outstanding federal student loan debt, more than Americans owe in either credit card or auto loan debt. About 54% of borrowers with outstanding student loan debt owed less than $20,000 as of March 2021, according to the College Board. About 45% of the outstanding debt was held by the 10% of borrowers owing $80,000 or more.Compared with other kinds of debt, it's extremely difficult to discharge student loans in bankruptcy. Prior to the pandemic, thousands of borrowers had their Social Security checksgarnished because their student loans were in default.Federal student loan payments and interest accrual have been frozen since March 2020 due to a pandemic-related pause that Biden has extended several times. Payments are set to resume after August 31, and the White House has indicated that the President will decide whether to cancel some student debt by then -- just months before the midterm elections.A one-time cancellation of federal student loan debt would do nothing to bring down the cost of college for future borrowers or those who already paid for their degrees."Forgiving debt does not affect college affordability at all," said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, a conservative think tank, and former director of the nonpartisanCongressional Budget Office.In fact, it might even drive up the cost of college, he said. If prospective students have reason to believe that a future president may cancel their debt, they may be more willing to borrow more money -- and colleges, in turn, may decide to charge more for tuition and fees."It creates this moral hazard and sets up an expectation that debt may be forgiven in the future,"

Biden to propose debt relief soon, but how soon? -As President Biden is inching closer to making an announcement on a possible plan to cancel some of the $1.7 trillion owed in student debt, rumors of when the final announcement will occur and what the policy might look like are spreading, with no foreseeable answer on a likely timeline or final policy.A Wall Street Journal article published Tuesday stated that administration officials had thought an announcement might come as soon as this Saturday, when Biden is scheduled to give a commencement address at the University of Delaware.The officials, however, also stated that no final decision had been reached by the president.A House Democratic aide confirmed with Inside Higher Ed that they had not yet heard from the Biden administration that a final announcement on debt relief was planned for Biden’s Saturday commencement speech. With questions of when and what Biden’s final decision on debt relief will be still largely in the air, higher education leaders have been provided little information on how to prepare for what could be one of the largest shifts in federal policy for higher education in decades. Scott Buchanan, executive director of the Student Loan Servicing Alliance, which represents 95 percent of loan providers that service federal student loans, said that no matter what Biden announces, it could take months for loan servicers to implement Biden’s proposal administratively. In addition, a lack of communication between the administration and servicers has given them little room to prepare for such a change. “If past is prologue, we will have no information in advance. I’ve hoped and I’ve hoped and I continue to hope that they will change that practice so that we could actually get some guidance and be prepared to answer the tens of thousands of phone calls—if not millions—that we will get from borrowers asking what this means for them,” said Buchanan.

Biden’s debt forgiveness misses targets - The Biden administration’s prospective move to cancel $10,000 of outstanding federal student loan debt, while welcomed by many current and former students with debt, has been critiqued for not being very well-targeted and for neither addressing the affordability of higher education nor the needs of future students. Instead, finding ways to decrease the cost of higher education going forward would reduce the need for families to borrow. In addition, fixing federal income-based repayment programs would ensure that debt does not become a lifelong burden for those who have borrowed but whose incomes ultimately make repayment difficult. Whether or not federal student debt is completely or partially forgiven, let’s not forget that many who started college and failed to get a degree also have institutional debt. These are debts owed to the colleges and universities they attended, for a range of expenses from tuition to library and parking fines. This type of debt too often keeps them from re-enrolling and completing a degree. This also disadvantages them in the labor market, making it even more challenging to pay back what they owe. Most colleges and universities withhold transcripts and prevent students from re-enrolling or transferring to another institution if they owe institutional debt. Withholding transcripts is viewed as one of the most easily available methods of collecting those debts. However, we have estimated that only about 7 cents on the dollar of such institutional debt are ever collected, while preventing individuals from gaining a valuable degree or credential that can help them increase their earnings. A program to help these students with institutional debt, freeing up their transcripts and any “stranded credits” so that they can continue their education, could potentially benefit up to 6.6 million adult learners. At the same time, this would help states achieve their educational attainment goals and contribute to the strength of their economies, including increasing tax revenues. Such a program need not cost much, because individual institutions would benefit if canceling institutional debt led to students re-enrolling and paying tuition (perhaps with Pell grants or other forms of federal or state financial aid). If institutions in a system collaborated in implementing such a program, all could benefit compared to collecting 7 cents on the dollar, if students reenroll and stay enrolled. This would take effective advising, including discussions around a clear pathway to a degree or valuable certificate. Canceling this institutional debt would be well-targeted, in that it would affect those adult learners with some credits who have been prevented from continuing their education because of these debts. And, it helps keep credits that students had previously earned, and states and the federal government in many cases supported through financial aid, from being wasted. This directly reduces the costs of degree attainment across higher education. Compared to the projected Biden policy, which cancels $10,000 of debt for each borrower, many who can and would ultimately pay it back, institutional debts tend to be smaller, less likely to be paid back by those who have incurred them, and prevent individuals from finishing their degrees.

Why it's hard for Biden to decide how much student debt to forgive -- President Joe Biden has said that he'll soon be making an announcement about student loan forgiveness. In the meantime, the White House is trying to figure out what shape — if any — that relief should take. The decision could be among the most consequential made by the Biden administration. More than 40 million Americans owe a collective $1.7 trillion in student debt, a balance that has tripled since the Great Recession. About 25% of those borrowers are in delinquency or default. On the campaign trail, Biden said he was in support of clearing $10,000 from borrowers' accounts. Doing so would cost around $321 billion and completely forgive the loans of about one-third of student loan borrowers. Yet there's concern that such an announcement would cause more frustration and disappointment than anything else. The average education debt balance, after all, is three times that, at around $30,000. And more than 3 million borrowers owe more than $100,000. As a result, the Senate's top Democrat, Chuck Schumer of New York, along with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and other Democrats, are pushing the president to cancel at least $50,000 for all. The NAACP has also been vocal about how $10,000 wouldn't go nearly far enough for Black student loan borrowers. Wisdom Cole, national director of the association's youth and college division, recently said on Twitter that nixing just $10,000 would be "a slap in the face." Canceling $50,000, however, comes with its own potential perils. That level of relief would come with a price tag of more than $900 billion and would leave 80% of student loan borrowers no longer owing anything. But that larger amount is more likely to be met with political attacks and legal challenges, said higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz. "The biggest criticism of forgiving $50,000 is that it provides forgiveness for borrowers who are capable of repaying their own student loans," said Kantrowitz, adding that it's often those with multiple degrees who owe the most. Republicans, who largely oppose student debt forgiveness, are also less likely to challenge a lower amount of forgiveness simply on the cost factor, he said. The amount of forgiveness may not matter, though, because the move could be called into question in court if the president bypasses Congress, which he appears to be considering doing. Challengers may come forward, Kantrowitz said, "to uphold the principle that only the legislative branch can appropriate funds." Meanwhile, no amount of forgiveness would leave all borrowers happy. Even if $50,000 per borrower was erased, the 3 million-plus borrowers who are more than $100,000 in the red would still be stuck with large balances. "There are also concerns about a backlash from borrowers who have already paid off their loans, people who never borrowed because they saved for college in advance or worked their way through college, and from people who didn't borrow because they didn't go to college," Kantrowitz said. Still, history shows action on student debt can decide an election. In 2006, the Democrats pledged to slash interest rates on student loans, Kantrowitz said, "and that helped them gain control over the House and Senate." That example is likely a key consideration for Democratic legislators and the White House as the midterm elections approach.

Editorial: The problem with college debt is that we never fix the causes - Los Angeles Times -President Biden has wisely resisted pressure to issue blanket forgiveness for graduates’ college debt of up to $50,000 per borrower. Instead, the president has chosen more targeted — and fair — approaches.Those have included allowing debtors to stop paying on their loans during the pandemic without owing any additional interest on the loan; canceling the debt ofseverely disabled grads and those who were taken in by for-profit schools that made false promises or that closed down before they could finish their education; and making fixes to the troubled program under which students were supposed to receive debt relief if they entered public service.The public-service debt relief program was tangled in inexplicable delays and checks were withheld because of bad communication between loan servicers and lenders. Under the Biden administration, more than 110,000 graduates in that program have now received an average of $60,000 each in loan forgiveness, and potentially hundreds of thousands more will now benefit as well.But another form of student debt relief is about to end in August — the pandemic-era moratorium on payments. As a result, Biden faces renewed pressure to make a sweeping, $1-trillion loan forgiveness of up to $50,000 per borrower that would wipe out two-thirds of the college debt in the country. He has indicated that he’s more inclined toward canceling $10,000 of debt, which would cost less than half as much and reach the largest number of students per dollar.There’s no doubt that student debt has mired many Americans — about 43 million — in debt. Not all of those are unable to meet their obligations and not all of the debt involves federally guaranteed loans. But economists have shown that the added financial strain keeps many borrowers from buying homes and cars and starting families — a trickle-down effect on the economy and social structure of the nation. Total debt has climbed precipitously, nearly doubling in the decade from 2011 to 2021.No matter what course Biden takes at this point, though, what’s missing is a plan to permanently reduce student debt through basic college reform. After all, today’s college graduates might get relief, but what about next year’s grads, and those in the years and decades to come? Free college as modeled on the systems of other nations isn’t the answer. German public universities, for example, are tuition-free but bare-bones; few are admitted; students generally live at home and commute, class sizes are large, and student activities and services scant. And, like Germany, governments in other nations are willing to foot the tuition bill. Still, the U.S. and its colleges could learn lessons from other countries about keeping costs down. Team sports, most of which are heavily subsidized at schools here, play a much smaller role in other nations. The number of administrators is much lower; bloated administrative costs are the primary driver of ballooning college prices in this country. The Department of Education should be putting colleges on notice that they must reduce these costs to continue receiving federal aid.

U.S. Births increased Slightly in 2021, First increase since 2014 -From the National Center for Health Statistics: Births: Provisional Data for 2021. The NCHS reports:The provisional number of births for the United States in 2021 was 3,659,289, up 1% from 2020 and the first increase in the number of births since 2014.The general fertility rate was 56.6 births per 1,000 women aged 15–44, up 1% from 2020 and the first increase in the rate since 2014. The total fertility rate was 1,663.5 births per 1,000 women in 2021, up 1% from 2020. Birth rates declined for women in age groups 15–24, rose for women in age groups 25–49, and was unchanged for adolescents aged 10–14 in 2021. The birth rate for teenagers aged 15–19 declined by 6% in 2021 to 14.4 births per 1,000 females; rates declined for both younger (aged 15–17) and older (aged 18–19) teenagers. Here is a long-term graph of annual U.S. births through 2021.

 CVS to halt prescriptions for controlled substances from telehealth startups -- CVS Pharmacy will no longer be accepting prescriptions for controlled substances issued by telehealth companies Cerebral and Done Health, citing ongoing concerns that were unable to be resolved. In a statement to The Hill, CVS said it was “important that medications are prescribed appropriately.” “We recently conducted a review of certain telehealth companies that prescribe controlled substance medications,” the pharmacy chain said. “As a result of our being unable to resolve concerns we have with Cerebral and Done Health, effective May 26, 2022 CVS Pharmacy will no longer accept prescriptions for controlled substances issued through these companies.” CVS’s decision was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.. Cerebral called the timing of CVS’s decision “unfortunate” in a statement to The Hill. The telehealth company noted that it had stopped prescribing controlled substances earlier this month and was already in the process of transitioning its patients away from controlled substance use, by either finding alternative treatment plans of transfer their care to a local provider. “In light of CVS’s decision, Cerebral is doing everything possible to ensure these patients get access to medications that their health care providers have determined they need,” Cerebral said. US effort to impose tougher UN sanctions on North Korea blocked by China, Russia Energy & Environment — SCOTUS rebuffs bid to halt climate accounting metric “This includes reaching out individually to every patient impacted by this development to help ensure that their transition to another source of prescribed medications is as seamless as possible under these circumstances. Our focus is on the health of our patients,” added the company.

How Often Can You Be Infected With the Coronavirus? --A virus that shows no signs of disappearing, variants that are adept at dodging the body’s defenses, and waves of infections two, maybe three times a year — this may be the future of Covid-19, some scientists now fear.The central problem is that the coronavirus has become more adept at reinfecting people. Already, those infected with the first Omicron variant are reporting second infections with the newer versions of the variant — BA.2 or BA2.12.1 in the United States, or BA.4 and BA.5 in South Africa.Those people may go on to have third or fourth infections, even within this year, researchers said in interviews. And some small fraction may have symptoms that persist for months or years, a condition known as long Covid.“It seems likely to me that that’s going to sort of be a long-term pattern,” said Juliet Pulliam, an epidemiologist at Stellenbosch University in South Africa.“The virus is going to keep evolving,” she added. “And there are probably going to be a lot of people getting many, many reinfections throughout their lives.”It’s difficult to quantify how frequently people are reinfected, in part because many infections are now going unreported. Dr. Pulliam and her colleagues have collected enough data in South Africa to say that the rate is higher with Omicron than seen with previous variants.This is not how it was supposed to be. Earlier in the pandemic, experts thought that immunity from vaccination or previous infection would forestall most reinfections.The Omicron variant dashed those hopes. Unlike previous variants, Omicron and its many descendants seem to have evolved to partially dodge immunity. That leaves everyone — even those who have been vaccinated multiple times — vulnerable to multiple infections.“If we manage it the way that we manage it now, then most people will get infected with it at least a couple of times a year,” said Kristian Andersen, a virologist at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego. “I would be very surprised if that’s not how it’s going to play out.”The new variants have not altered the fundamental usefulness of the Covid vaccines. Most people who have received three or even just two doses will not become sick enough to need medical care if they test positive for the coronavirus. And a booster dose, like aprevious bout with the virus, does seem to decrease the chance of reinfection — but not by much.At the pandemic’s outset, many experts based their expectations of the coronavirus on influenza, the viral foe most familiar to them. They predicted that, as with the flu, there might be one big outbreak each year, most likely in the fall. The way to minimize its spread would be to vaccinate people before its arrival. Instead, the coronavirus is behaving more like four of its closely related cousins, which circulate and cause colds year round. While studying common-cold coronaviruses, “we saw people with multiple infections within the space of a year,” said Jeffrey Shaman, an epidemiologist at Columbia University in New York. If reinfection turns out to be the norm, the coronavirus is “not going to simply be this wintertime once-a-year thing,” he said, “and it’s not going to be a mild nuisance in terms of the amount of morbidity and mortality it causes.”

How Often Do We Have to Get Covid to Stop Getting Covid? - In October 2020, a few weeks before the experimental trial results for the BioNTech-Pfizer, Moderna and Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccines were released, German virologist Christian Drosten cautioned that the shots would be of limited effectiveness in preventing the spread of the disease. “We are dealing here with an infection of the mucous membrane, i.e., in the nose and the throat and then later the lungs,” he said on Episode 62 of Das Coronavirus-Update, the podcast launched by broadcaster NDR in March 2020 that helped make Drosten a household name in Germany. “The mucous membranes already have their own special local immune system. With the current vaccines, which are more likely to be injected into the muscle, you don’t reach this local immune system so well.” As a result, the vaccines “probably protect more against the severe course [of the disease] than against infection.” Which is of course exactly how things played out. The vaccines have been spectacularly effective at preventing severe disease and death, much less so at preventing transmission. Drosten, director of the Institute of Virology at Berlin’s Charité medical school, is perhaps the world’s leading coronavirus expert, responsible for identifying the original severe acute respiratory syndrome virus in 2003 and devising the first diagnostic test for the Covid-causing SARS-CoV-2 virus in January 2020. His public commentary, delivered chiefly in podcast form after he grew frustrated dealing with some in the German media, has tended toward the cutting-edge and forward-looking — as indicated by what he was saying about vaccines in October 2020.I recount all this as context for what Drosten said last month in the 113th and final (for now) regular Coronavirus-Update episode. He was talking again about the mucous membrane — which in German is conveyed as the more graphic “Schleimhaut,” literally “slime skin” — and its role in keeping infectious diseases in check (translation and editing-for-brevity by me): With influenza it is simply the case that everyone gets infected x times over the course of their lives. These infections occur in the mucous membrane, in the throat. Our mucous membranes have a local immune system of their own, if you want to call it that. And everyone in the population, except for the children, of course, has so many infections behind them that there in the mucous membrane, immunity exists. That is why the adults in the population, and that is the vast majority of the population, are not so infectious.It is this mucosal immunity that keeps influenza from spreading most of the year, with the disease’s effective reproduction number (the average number of people who will get it from each one who has it) surpassing 1 for only a few months in winter, when indoor crowding, drier air and other factors seem to lead to increased transmission.Contrast that with Covid: Current vaccines generate some mucosal immunity but it fades quickly, and while there are nasal-spray vaccines in development that target the mucous membrane, they’re not ready yet, and this approach has been of only mixed effectiveness against influenza. Meanwhile, less than half the German population has been infected with Covid, Drosten said (in the U.S., according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report this week, it’s 57.7%), so there probably isn’t nearly enough mucosal immunity out there to prevent the reproduction number from rising back to 2 or 3 in the fall, bringing another huge wave of infections and concomitant stresses on hospitals and disruption of daily life. One thing that could preclude this, Drosten speculated, might be a lot of young people (the “Party Generation,” he called it, in English) getting infected a second or third time over the summer, but he expressed doubt that this would be enough to make a difference in 2022. How many times are people going to need to be infected to confer effective immunity against transmission, asked NDR science reporter and podcast moderator Korinna Hennig. Drosten’s reply: My idea is that this is in the range of a number that you can count on one hand. But no one can say for sure at the moment.

Omicron COVID-19 variant likely to re-infect ‘over and over again,’ experts say - Although COVID-19 cases are declining across the country, chances of getting re-infected with the virus are still possible — especially from the omicron variant — experts say.“As long as it’s transmitting in the community, there’s always a possibility,” Stephen Hoption Cann, clinical professor at the University of British Columbia’s school of population and public health, told Global News.Getting Omicron more than once also seems more likely than with other variants.“The Omicron variant, in particular, seems to be one that will re-infect people over and over again,” Kelly McNagny, professor of medical genetics at the University of British Columbia’s school for biomedical engineering, told Global News.“It’s a little bit more like the common cold virus that tends to infect the upper airways, which is a place where you tend not to develop strong immunity easily.”Unlike Omicron, other variants of the virus tend to infect someone deeper in the airways, according to McNagny. “I think that gave you a bit more protection,” he said. Lisa Glover, assistant director of Alberta Health, also says “reinfections have increased since Omicron has become the dominant variant.”“The risk of reinfection from Omicron is much higher than any other previous variant,” Glover told Global News.“A major factor that increases the likelihood of reinfection is the waning immunity from a previous infection or not being fully up-to-date with COVID-19 immunization, including additional doses,” she said.

Omicron patients may develop Long COVID less frequently than those who had other variants, study finds Those who had Omicron may develop Long COVID less frequently than those who had other variants, the authors of a new study out of Japan concluded.The study, published this week to journal preprint server medRxiv, found that only one Omicron patient out of 18 interviewed had long-term symptoms, versus 10 out of 18 in a group of similar patients who had other COVID variants.Symptoms were similar among those who experienced Long COVID, regardless of variant, wrote the authors, who are affiliated with the National Center for Global Health and Medicine Hospital in Tokyo.The study defined Long COVID, which it refers to as "post COVID-19 condition," as at least one symptom that lasts for at least two months, with an onset within three months of COVID infection. Symptoms seen in patients included fatigue, difficulty breathing, cough, hair loss, depression, brain dog, difficulty concentrating, and memory issues. Researchers were unable to rule out alternate diagnoses that could cause these symptoms, the report stated.The study represents the first time epidemiological data on Long COVID in Omicron patients has been examined. But more research is needed to see if findings are applicable to Omicron patients as a whole, and to determine the long-term impact of the variant "on health-related quality of life and social productivity," the paper stated.Long COVID may already affect between 7 million and 23 million Americans who previously had the virus, or up to 7% of the U.S. population, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office.Different estimates of how many people are affected with long COVID vary widely, from 10% to 80% of COVID survivors. More than half of COVID survivors report symptoms that persist after six months, Penn State College of Medicine researchers reported last year. Long COVID is a poorly understood condition that could potentially impact over a billion worldwide in just a few years, says Arijit Chakravarty, a COVID researcher and CEO of Fractal Therapeutics, a drug development firm. Experts say that it’s quickly growing into a major public health concern already overwhelming primary-care physicians.

 Rebound COVID Is Just the Start of Paxlovid’s Mysteries - The first data on Paxlovid, out last November, hinted that the COVID antiviral would cut the risk of hospitalization and death by 89 percent. Pundits called the drug “a monster breakthrough,” “miraculous,” and “the biggest advance in the pandemic since the vaccines.” “Today’s news is a real game-changer,” said Albert Bourla, the CEO of Pfizer, which makes the drug. The pills are “a game changer,” President Joe Biden repeated a few months later.Now, finally, the game is being changed. The government has ordered 20 million courses of Paxlovid, committing half of the $10 billion in additional COVID funding that is being negotiated in the Senate; and Pfizer says that the number of patients taking the drug increased by a factor of 10 between mid-February and late April.But as the treatment spreads, so too does confusion over its effectiveness and side effects. Patients have complained of a bitter, metallic taste, or one likegrapefruit juice mixed with soap, the whole time they were on the drug. More concerning, some have reported experiencing a second round of symptoms, and going back to testing positive, when the pills were done, a phenomenon that’s become known as “Paxlovid rebound.” Meanwhile, Pfizer has never published any final data on the use of the drug by vaccinated patients, leaving medical professionals with little information about how the drug works for people who have received their shots—which is to say, most of the adult population in the U.S. “We’re all riding on hope at this point,” Reshma Ramachandran, a family-medicine doctor at Yale, told me. An individual patient would never know if Paxlovid worked for them, because you could never say how sick you would have gotten if you hadn’t taken the pills. If the drug doesn’t really do that much for vaccinated people—if it fails to have meaningful effects on their risk of severe disease, and doesn’t help resolve their symptoms—then giving it out widely could be a waste of the dwindling resources the United States has committed to fight the pandemic, not to mention physicians’ time and patients’ sense of taste. And because people who have just recovered from COVID might reasonably believe they’re in the clear, and mingle with abandon, surprise cases of Paxlovid rebound could end up causing more transmission. “We continue to monitor data from our ongoing clinical studies and post-authorization safety surveillance,” a Pfizer spokesperson told me in an email, noting that cases of viral rebound “are being reported at a rate consistent with observations” from the company’s published clinical trial.Taste disruption (a.k.a. dysgeusia) is the most straightforward of the Paxlovid mysteries, because any sudden onset of soapy-grapefruit-penny flavor can be attributed to the antiviral with a decent amount of confidence. In its only published trial of the drug, conducted in unvaccinated, high-risk patients, Pfizer found that 5.6 percent of Paxlovid-takers experienced dysgeusia, compared with 0.3 percent of those who got the placebo. Given how people like to kvetch on social media, that side effect could very well seem like it’s occurring in a lot more than one out of 18 patients. But I’ve heard from dozens of patients on the drug in the course of my reporting, and every single one told me that they’d suffered through at least mild dysgeusia. Paul Sax, the clinical director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, told me he suspects “way more than half” of the people who’ve taken Paxlovid have experienced the taste.

Forget ‘stealth omicron.’ A new COVID variant could soon be dominant in N.J. - nj.com - We’ve heard nonstop about the “stealth omicron” subvariant.But another strain is about to take over in New Jersey.Surveillance of the coronavirus in the state shows an increase of BA.2.12.1, which is also a descendent of the omicron variant.BA.2.12.1 now accounts for 46.1% of specimens collected in New Jersey, not far behind BA.2 (stealth omicron) at 53.9%, according to the state’s variant surveillance report.The rise tracks nationwide. BA.2.12.1 is responsible for 47.5% of the virus in the U.S. BA.2 accounts for 50.9%, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention variant tracker.BA.2.12.1 accounted for just 12.9% of all samples in early April, but that number has been steadily rising. The highly transmissible omicron sublineage — more contagious than BA.2 — was found earlier this year in Europe and in New York State.While the variant continues to spread, new coronavirus cases continue to rise in New Jersey.The state reported 2,402 new confirmed positive tests Monday as its seven-day average for confirmed cases was 3,850, nearly unchanged from a week ago, but up 120% from a month ago.

New Omicron Subvariant: Symptoms, How Fast It’s Spreading, and More – NBC Chicago -The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updates its estimates on which subvariants are causing cases of coronavirus in the United States each week, and a new version of omicron could ascend to the top of that list this week. According to last week’s data, the BA.2.12.1 subvariant of omicron made up an estimated 47.5% of COVID cases in the United States. BA.2.12.1 is a subvariant of omicron, and emerged from the BA.2 subvariant that has been the dominant strain in the U.S. since late March, according to the CDC. It is one of several subvariants, or “sublineages,” of the omicron variant of COVID-19, with the CDC also tracking B.1.1.529 and BA 1.1, among others. According to experts, most of the symptoms of the subvariant are the same as other strains of COVID, including a stuffy nose, body aches, sore throat, sneezing, headache, coughing, fatigue and more. Researchers in the UK found that runny nose and fatigue were slightly more prevalent in BA.2.12.1 cases, according to NBC News. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is recommending travelers get tested for COVID-19 as close to the time of departure as possible. The CDC says that “early evidence suggests BA.2.12.1 is increasing in variant proportion faster than other omicron sublineages,” and data seems to point to that, with the subvariant making up nearly 50% of new COVID cases in the U.S. according to CDC estimates. According to data cited by Forbes Magazine, BA.2.12.1 appears to be approximately 25% more transmissible than the original BA.2 subvariant of omicron. For context, BA.2 was 50% more transmissible than the original omicron variant when it roared onto the national scene in early March. Is it Causing More Severe Illness? The short answer is no, and for the longer answer, omicron subvariants have generally “caused less-severe disease” than prior variants, according to the CDC, and BA.2.12.1 seems to be following that same pattern, according to experts.

Ashtabula, Lorain counties listed as having 'high' COVID levels -COVID-19 cases in Ohio have been climbing for weeks, and now, we're starting to see the effects of that increase on the community at-large.According to the CDC's guidelines, Ashtabula and Lorain counties now have "high" community levels of COVID, the first time in months any part of the state has seen those risk assessments. This means health experts are advising all residents in those counties to wear face masks while in indoor public spaces, regardless of vaccination status.Following a surge in cases last winter caused by the highly contagious omicron variant, the CDC updated its guidelines to better account for coronavirus hospitalizations after originally using case numbers as the overriding factor. While new infections per capita still play a role, new hospital admissions now help determine if doctors recommend face coverings or not, especially in counties where infections are under 200 per 100,000 residents in the past week.When it comes to Ashtabula and Lorain counties, however, both regions have reported more than 200 new COVID-19 cases per capita over the last seven days, meaning the threshold of new hospitalizations per capita is now 10 instead of the usual 20. The CDC reports Lorain County has had 229.16 new infections and 10.4 new hospital admissions per 100,000 citizens in the last week, while Ashtabula is dealing with a whopping 332.16 new cases per capita and 10.7 new infections.There is another indicator that could put counties with such levels of spread in the "high" zone, and that's if at least 10% of all hospital beds are occupied by COVID patients over an average of seven days. Thankfully, Ashtabula and Lorain's percentages sit at just 2.9% and 2.7%, respectively, but those figures could rise if community spread continues at its current pace. The Ohio Department of Health says that of the state's more than 72,000 COVID-19 hospitalizations since the start of 2021, more than 93% have involved people who were not fully vaccinated against the virus. The CDC reports 64.2% of Lorain County's total population has been fully vaccinated, compared to just 53.3% in Ashtabula County.In "high" counties, those who are immunocompromised or who have close contact with such individuals are also advised to avoid high-risk areas or gatherings, if possible. In addition, eight other Northeast Ohio counties have risen to "medium" risk for COVID-19, meaning masks could be the best option for high-risk individuals: In new numbers released Thursday, Ohio reported more than 19,000 new coronavirus cases in the past week, compared to just over 3,000 seven weeks prior. Active hospitalizations have also been creeping up, but still sit at just 640, or less than 3% of all available beds.Nearly all of the state's cases are now caused by the omicron BA.2 or BA.2.12.1 variants.

 Ohio COVID-19: Nearly 20,000 new cases, but spike trend changes -- (WCMH) – The Ohio Department of Health on Thursday reported 19,546 new COVID-19 cases for the past week, extending a streak of week-over-week increases to eight.This week followed last week’s theme, again reporting nearly 20,000 cases. Over the past seven days, the state averaged about 2,792 new coronavirus cases, the highest rate since Feb. 22. However, the rise in cases compared to last week is dramatically smaller than in previous weeks. Cases are up less than 1% since last week, so while the state still saw thousands of new cases over the past seven days, it amounted to only 10 more than the 19,536 cases health officials reported last week.Columbus Health Commissioner Dr. Mysheika Roberts said some of the increase comes from people gathering in groups again, largely due to warmer weather, holidays and maskless traveling. But, she said the spike over the previous weeks mostly has to do with the virus itself. “The weather is getting nicer, so that is causing more people to gather together,” Roberts said. “But really what is driving a lot of this is the virus itself and the new variant omicron is highly contagious.” ODH began reporting COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, deaths and vaccinations weekly instead of daily in mid-March after new infections slowed to a low level after the omicron wave. Although cases are ticking up and more people are being hospitalized with the virus, fewer people are dying from it. The 506 hospitalizations reported by ODH in the past seven days (about 72 per day) are up from 473 last week and 353 two weeks ago.Thirty-eight more Ohioans died of COVID-19 in the past week, a decrease from 40 deaths last week, 57 deaths two weeks ago, 65 deaths three weeks ago and 68 deaths a month ago.

Cuyahoga, Lorain, Ashtabula counties at CDC's 'high' community level of COVID-19 | wkyc.com The recent surge in COVID-19 cases continues to impact Northeast Ohio. On Thursday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) added Cuyahoga County to the list of those at a 'high' community level. Lorain and Ashtabula counties are also at that threshold for the second consecutive week. Those counties at a high COVID-19 community level are advised to wear a mask indoors in public and on public transportation. Following a surge in cases last winter caused by the highly contagious omicron variant, the CDC updated its guidelines to better account for coronavirus hospitalizations after originally using case numbers as the overriding factor. While new infections per capita still play a role, new hospital admissions now help determine if doctors recommend face coverings or not, especially in counties where infections are under 200 per 100,000 residents in the past week. The threshold of new hospitalizations per capita is at 10 for those counties with more than 200 new COVID-19 cases per capita over the last seven days.The CDC reports Cuyahoga County has a case rate of 240.15 per 100,000 residents with a 11.9 hospitalizations per 100,000. Lorain County sits at 267.89 cases per 100,000 with hospital admissions at 11.8, while Ashtabula County is at 240.64 cases and hospital admissions at 11.9. Another indicator that could put counties with such levels of spread in the "high" zone is if at least 10% of all hospital beds are occupied by COVID patients over an average of seven days. All three Northeast Ohio counties are at 4% or lower.In "high" counties, those who are immunocompromised or who have close contact with such individuals are also advised to avoid high-risk areas or gatherings, if possible. In addition, nine other Northeast Ohio counties have risen to "medium" risk for COVID-19, meaning masks could be the best option for high-risk individuals:

• Erie
• Geauga
• Huron
• Lake
• Medina
• Mahoning
• Portage
• Summit
• Trumbull

Allegheny County COVID-19 risk level moves from ‘medium’ to ‘high’ | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - Allegheny County’s community level of COVID-19 was elevated to “high” on Thursday evening by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The county moved to “medium” risk two weeks ago on May 12 after being designated as “low” since Feb. 25, when the CDC announced new metrics to assess COVID-19 risk. In counties with a high community level of COVID-19, the CDC recommends wearing a mask indoors in public. Community levels are determined by the number of new hospital admissions, inpatient beds being used by COVID-19 patients and new cases in the past seven days. The county’s rising infections and new hospitalizations account for the change in the designation. During the week ending May 25, there were 92 reported virus-related hospitalizations, according to data released Thursday by the Allegheny County Health Department. That’s up from 76 the week ending May 18, which was an increase from 41 hospitalizations the week before that. To date, there have been 13,529 COVID-related hospitalizations in Allegheny County. Black residents in Allegheny County continue to be hospitalized for COVID-19 at higher rates than white residents, according to county data. For the week of May 1, Black residents were admitted to the hospital for COVID-19 at a rate of 12.2 per 100,000 people compared with 5.8 per 100,000 among white people. Over the past three months, 19% of hospitalizations were among Black residents, despite Black people making up 13% of the county population. During the omicron surge in January, Black residents were hospitalized at nearly three times the rate of white residents. One reason for the disparity is that vaccination rates are lower among Black residents. While over 65% of white county residents are fully vaccinated, only about 51% of Black residents are. The recent spike in hospitalizations follows a rise in infections across the county. Although rates are still well below where they were during the omicron wave, they’re now similar to levels seen in late November 2021. During the week of May 19-25, there were 4,386 new infections reported, up from 3,732 the week of May 12-18. For the week of May 5-11, there were 2,761 reported cases. These numbers are likely an undercount due to the widespread use of at-home testing. Countywide, new infections have been rising since the end of March, when weekly cases hit their lowest at 401. There were four deaths reported this week and two reported last week. To date, a total of 3,269 people in Allegheny County have died due to COVID-19. Viral concentrations in wastewater have continued to increase between 2% and 8% daily from the first to second week of May. The county has yet to launch its public-facing wastewater dashboard, which had been expected to go live in March. In Western Pennsylvania, Beaver, Butler, Crawford, Erie, Warren and Westmoreland Counties were also at a high risk level once the CDC updated its map on Thursday evening. Armstrong, Cambria, Clearfield, Elk, Forest, Indiana, Jefferson, Mercer, Venango and Washington Counties were designated medium. Just two weeks ago, Allegheny County was the only county in Western Pennsylvania at the medium level.

Opinion | It’s Still Covid’s World. We’re Just Living In It. - The New York Times -There are days, now, when you can almost forget about the virus.Hundreds of thousands of people around the world are still being infected with Covid-19 daily — an average of about 361 Americansdied from it every day in the last week — but after more than two years and millions of lost lives, the pandemic has given way in headlines and breaking-news crawls to older and more familiar atrocities.Across much of the United States the rhythms of life have returned to something like their prepandemic tempo. Bars and restaurants are packed, there’s a wedding boom, and Memorial Day weekend looks likely to kick off a busy summer travel season.But remember how giddy we all were for a virus-free summer last year? It was in May 2021 that officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised that Americans who had been vaccinated could take off their masks and forget about social distancing in most settings. Then, during a successful campaign to vaccinate millions of Americans, the White House began preparing a Fourth of July bash to declare a “summer of freedom” from the virus.You know how that turned out. America’s vaccination rate was too low, and just when we thought we’d licked it, Covid wriggled free. First the Delta variant spread widely, then Omicron and its manysubvariants. Masks were ordered back on. Boosters were soonrecommended for people over 12. And in the year since what was once billed “hot vax summer,” about 400,000 more Americans died from Covid-19.This is not a column about the dangers of prematurely declaring victory against the pandemic. Few American health officials are urging anything but caution and vigilance now.But last summer’s rapid Covid turnabout does illustrate a dynamic that I worry we have yet to internalize: Any peace we’ve reached with the virus may be only a temporary, uneasy one. It seems likely that, at least for the foreseeable future, our lives may continue to be upended by the whims of this wily, unpredictable virus, until we can advance against it.And it isn’t just our health that’s at stake. I worry that Covid’s very unpredictability could inject volatility into global affairs. It’s been remarkable to watch how the zigs and zags of the pandemic era have confounded not just public health officials and the Biden administration, but also the Federal Reserve, the Chinese government, hedge funds and some of the world’s largestbusinesses.How can humanity effectively plan for the future if the virus keeps pulling the rug out from under us? From the beginning of the pandemic we’ve heard about adjusting to a “new normal,” but Covid’s malleability suggests it may not be just one new normal we’ll have to get used to. And as long as the virus keeps swerving in unpredictable directions, it may continue to rock our politics, shock our economy and hinder our ability to work collectively to address every other major problem humanity faces, especially global threats like climate change.

Beijing's fight against Omicron still at a stalemate as city sees record number of new cases - One month after the latest COVID-19 resurgence began on April 22, Beijing's fight against Omicron is still at a stalemate with daily cases seeing a new peak on Sunday, despite strict measures including at least a dozen rounds of mass nucleic acid testing in three major districts. Chinese Vice Premier Sun Chunlan inspected on Monday some places that reported a cluster infection in Beijing. She called for a faster response to eliminate infections outside controlled areas as soon as possible to secure people’s health and ensure their quality of life and work is in order, Xinhua News Agency reported. Sun noted that the overall epidemic in Beijing is under control, but sporadic infections still occur. For that reason, the anti-epidemic work should not be slackened. The capital city witnessed 63 infections from Sunday 3 pm to Monday 3 pm with residential communities further enhancing entry-exit management. While the overall epidemic in the country has been declining in the past week, health experts said it is still difficult to predict an inflection point for Beijing and believed that the outbreak may last until June. But there is more hope than challenges, renowned Chinese epidemiologist Zhang Wenhong said, noting that more drugs are under research and development, and the vaccination rate is increasing. "We need more time and patience," he said. A Chinese health official said at a press conference on Monday held by the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, China's cabinet, that the overall number of daily new infections in the country had decreased to less than 1,200 in the past week, showing a declining tendency. But the country still faces a severe and complex epidemic situation, the official said, vowing to put local outbreaks under control in the shortest time and at the lowest cost. In the past month, the number of daily new infections in Beijing fluctuated around 50. But in a 24-hour period on Sunday, the number reached a single-day record high of 99 during this wave of the Omicron epidemic with 83 confirmed cases and 16 silent carriers, which virologists warned could be a signal that daily new infections in Beijing are likely to exceed 100 sooner or later. It's much harder to detect new COVID-19 patients as the Omicron variant spreads fast and in a hidden way, and patients' symptoms are mild, which also causes difficulties in epidemiological investigation, a Beijing-based respiratory expert told the Global Times on Monday on condition of anonymity. But there has been no significant increase in the number of new COVID-19 positive cases, which is the result of active prevention and control measures carried out in Beijing, indicating that the city's epidemic prevention strategy is effective, the expert said. At the press conference on Monday, Beijing officials clarified requirements for those working from home, noting that these people should avoid moving, traveling or gathering. Strict measures like working from home, banning dine-in services, suspending the operation of some busy subway stations and intensive mass nucleic acid testing have been implemented since late April, but Beijing is still struggling to eliminate Omicron infections as the city is trying to explore a method to curb the virus from spreading while not locking down the city.

 Australia surges past seven million COVID-19 infections, 8,000 deaths - The official infection total across Australia has soared past seven million, with more than 995,000 cases recorded in the last three weeks. Australia has now registered a total of 8,264 COVID-19 deaths. More than 290 people died from the virus in the past week alone, an average of almost 42 per day. An additional 47 “historic” deaths were reported in Victoria yesterday. An average of more than 46,000 new infections are recorded each day and there are currently over 340,000 active cases across the country, higher than on all but 76 days of the pandemic. There is a vast chasm between this objective reality and the lies promoted by the entire political establishment that the pandemic is over. This was a striking feature of the recent election campaign, in which COVID-19 barely rated a mention, because all the parliamentary parties are in total agreement with the homicidal “let it rip” program demanded by big business. Labor was silent on the pandemic during the campaign despite the infection of leader Anthony Albanese and numerous senior party members and mass opposition to outgoing prime minister Scott Morrison over his government’s handling of the crisis. This, along with the critical role of state Labor governments in spearheading the reopening drive responsible for almost 6,000 deaths this year alone, makes clear that the newly elected government will do nothing to stem the tide of mass infection, illness and death. Despite the efforts of the parliamentary parties to keep COVID-19 off the official campaign agenda, the impact of mass infection was undeniable. Less than 24 hours before polling day, the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) and the federal government were compelled to expand phone voting eligibility after public opposition to the possible disenfranchisement of hundreds of thousands of people who had tested positive in the week before the election. The AEC also reported staff shortages of up to 15 percent due to COVID-19 infection, forcing reduced operating hours at many polling stations. Days before the election, it was unclear whether dozens of booths in regional areas would operate at all. The record-high rate of pre-poll and postal voting, which together made up more than half the vote, reflected widespread concern among workers that the election, held under conditions where masking requirements and capacity limits have been abolished across the country, would be a national “superspreader” event.

Long COVID affects nearly 2 million in the UK -- The massive growth of Long COVID in the UK, now rapidly approaching 2 million cases, has exposed the devastating scale of the public health disaster produced by the government’s profit-driven “living with COVID” strategy. At the beginning of April, the number of people suffering Long COVID reached 1.8 million, 2.8 percent of the UK population, according to data published by the Office for National Statistics. Of these self-reported cases, 1.3 million have suffered one or more COVID symptoms for more than 12 weeks, 791,000 for more than one year, and 235,000 for more than two years. The World Health Organisation has described the condition as a “pandemic within the pandemic”. The number of cases worldwide has grown to an estimated 100 million as the wealthiest capitalist governments have allowed the virus to spread and mutate without restriction in the name of saving “the economy”—i.e., the profit interests of big business. The most common symptoms reported are fatigue (51 percent), shortness of breath (33 percent), loss of smell (26 percent), and problems concentrating or brain fog (23 percent). Two-thirds of all cases, 1.2 million people, report being unable to perform some or all their regular daily actives. There are currently 1 million missing from the workforce compared to pre-pandemic employment in the UK, including 400,000 no longer working because of poor health, including Long COVID. Long COVID is defined as suffering symptoms for 12 weeks or more after a COVID-19 diagnosis, in conditions where no other cause is identified. Half of all people hospitalised with COVID still exhibit at least one symptom two years after infection, according to a study published in the Lancet medical journal. As with risk of serious illness and death from infection with COVID-19—which kills working-age people in the most deprived areas at nearly four times the rate than among people in the wealthiest areas—Long COVID is primarily a disease of the poor and socially vulnerable. The Imperial College London’s REACT study of 500,000 UK adults found a higher risk of persistent COVID symptoms among women, people who smoke or who are overweight, people who live in deprived areas, and those who have been admitted to hospital with COVID-19. While some COVID survivors experience persistent symptoms for only a few weeks or months, there is a growing body of scientific research linking Long COVID to a plethora of life-changing and deadly chronic diseases, including brain damage, kidney disease, diabetes, chronic fatigue, nerve damage and heart disease. While these illnesses are more common in those who developed severe illness upon initial infection, Long COVID can also devastate the health of those who experienced only mild symptoms.

North Korea reports 89,500 more people with fever symptoms amid COVID outbreak - (Reuters) - North Korea reported 89,500 more people showing fever symptoms, but no new deaths on Sunday amid the country's first confirmed coronavirus outbreak, state media KCNA said.

Shanghai reports 93 new local asymptomatic COVID cases, 29 symptomatic cases for May 28 - (Reuters) - Shanghai reported 93 new domestically transmitted asymptomatic coronavirus cases for May 28, down from 131 a day earlier, while local symptomatic cases also fell to 29 from 39, the city government said on Sunday. One new case were reported outside quarantined areas, the same as May 27.Shanghai recorded zero COVID-19-related death for May 28, unchanged from a day earlier.

Belgium Begins Monkeypox Quarantines, Biden Warns "Everybody Should Be Concerned" - Belgium has become the first country to introduce a mandatory 21-day monkeypox quarantine for those who contact the virus, after three cases were recorded in the country. The Palace of the Nation in Brussels, the official seat of the Belgian parliament The infections were all linked to a festival in the port city of Antwerp, according to the Daily Mail, as Belgium is now one of 14 countries to confirm outbreaks of the viral disease (in addition to suspected, but not confirmed cases in Austria and Greece). On Sunday, US President Joe Biden said that the recent spread of monkeypox is "something that everybody should be concerned about." "It is a concern in that if it were to spread it would be consequential," he said, speaking from Osan Air Base in South Korea. Biden is reportedly receiving regular updates, according to National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, who told the traveling press pool that the United States has vaccines "available to be deployed." UK health officials, meanwhile, have warned that the UK faces a 'significant' rise in infections, and the government's response is 'critical' in containing the spread. Dr Susan Hopkins, a chief medical adviser to the UK Health Security Agency, today also warned that monkeypox is spreading through community transmission in the UK with more cases being detected daily. Sajid Javid yesterday revealed another 11 Britons had tested positive for the virus, taking the total to 20. The cases include a British child currently in a critical condition at a London hospital, while a further 100 infections have been recorded in Europe. -Daily Mail "There is going to be more diagnoses over the next week," said Dr. Claire Dewsnap, president of the British Association for Sexual Health and HIV. "How many is hard to say. What worries me the most is there are infections across Europe, so this has already spread." "How many is hard to say. What worries me the most is there are infections across Europe, so this has already spread," she added. "Getting on top of all those people's contacts is a massive job."

Monkeypox Outbreak Primarily Spreading Via Sexual Contact: WHO Officials -The recent outbreak of the monkeypox virus in North America and Europe is primarily spreading through sex, according to World Health Organization (WHO) officials on Monday, while confirming about 200 cases so far. The virus itself is not a sexually transmitted infection, but WHO officials said the recent surge in cases is linked to homosexual men. However, they said that anyone can contract monkeypox, which is generally confined to Central and West Africa. “We’ve seen a few cases in Europe over the last five years, just in travelers, but this is the first time we’re seeing cases across many countries at the same time in people who have not traveled to the endemic regions in Africa,” Dr. Rosamund Lewis, who runs WHO’s smallpox research, said in a streaming event on social media. So far, the United States has confirmed at least two cases and a third suspected case is being investigated by officials in Florida. The cases have been reported in New York City and Massachusetts. “Many diseases can be spread through sexual contact. You could get a cough or a cold through sexual contact, but it doesn’t mean that it’s a sexually transmitted disease,” Andy Seale, who advises WHO on HIV, hepatitis, and other sexually transmitted diseases, or STDs. Seale said monkeypox isn’t considered an STD. Meanwhile, Dr. David Heymann, who chaired a meeting of the World Health Organization’s advisory group on infectious disease, told The Associated Press that the leading theory to explain the spread of the disease was sexual transmission at events held in Spain and Belgium. Monkeypox has not previously triggered widespread outbreaks beyond Africa, where it is endemic in animals. “We know monkeypox can spread when there is close contact with the lesions of someone who is infected, and it looks like sexual contact has now amplified that transmission,” said Heymann. “It’s very possible there was somebody who got infected, developed lesions … and then spread it to others when there was sexual or close, physical contact,” Heymann said, adding that “these international events … seeded the outbreak around the world, into the U.S., and other European countries.”

Mexico confirms first case of monkeypox - health official - (Reuters) - Mexico on Saturday reported the first confirmed case of monkeypox in the country, according to deputy health secretary Hugo Lopez-Gatell. The patient was a 50-year-old permanent resident of New York who is being treated in Mexico City, Lopez-Gatell said on Twitter. “He was probably infected in the Netherlands,” Lopez-Gatell wrote, adding that the patient was being isolated and was in stable condition. On Friday, Argentina became the first Latin American country to report a case of monkeypox. Around 20 countries where monkeypox is not endemic have reported outbreaks of the viral disease, with more than 200 confirmed or suspected infections mostly in Europe. The outbreaks are raising alarm because monkeypox, which spreads through close contact and was first found in monkeys, mostly occurs in West and Central Africa, and only very occasionally spreads elsewhere.

 Monkeypox cases are rising—here’s what we know so far - When experts in the United Kingdom confirmed the first case of monkeypox on May 7 this year, epidemiologist Andrea McCollum and her colleagues at the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention kept a close watch.Human monkeypox infections are rare, especially outside of Central and Western Africa where the virus is endemic in animals and circulates primarily in heavily forested areas. Since 2018, only eight cases had been confirmed in non-endemic countries including Israel, Singapore, the U.K., and the U.S.—and all were associated with travel, just like the May 7 patient, who had taken a trip to Nigeria.But as cases with no known travel links to Africa popped up in several countries, alarm bells went off, McCollum says. “We've never really seen this type of observation from monkeypox before,” she says, “so this is particularly concerning.”Between May 13 and 24, at least 16 countries in Europe and North America, as well as Australia and Israel, reported more than 250 confirmed and suspected monkeypox cases. The West African strain of the virus seems to be causing these infections. It triggers flu-like symptoms followed by a rash on the face which can spread to other parts of the body. This rash transforms from red spots to pus-filled blisters that eventually scab and fall off. Most often, these symptoms go away on their own within a few weeks, but they are fatal in about three percent of the cases. Its counterpart, the Congo Basin monkeypox strain, causes a more severe disease and kills nearly 10 percent of those infected. The smallpox virus, which was eradicated in 1979 and is a close relative of monkeypox, was much deadlier, killing 30 percent of those infected.“It [monkeypox] is very different from COVID,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the World Health Organization, at an online public Q&A on May 23. “Transmission is really happening from close physical contact, skin-to-skin contact.” Monkeypox, unlike COVID-19 which circulates via tiny air-borne droplets, doesn’t spread as easily.“This is a containable situation,” Van Kerkhove said. There are potential antivirals for those infected and vaccines for people most at risk: those who come in close contact with infected individuals. “This [vaccination] is not something that everybody needs,” she said.A large proportion of the currently confirmed cases have been reported from Europe, particularly the U.K., Spain, and Portugal. Most of these infections were among men, many who self-identified as men who had sex with men. In a May 23 interview with The Associated Press, a key advisor to the WHO said that the leading theory to explain the ongoing outbreak was sexual activity among men at two recent raves in Spain and Belgium. Although monkeypox can spread through sexual contact, it’s not a sexually transmitted infection, said Andy Seale, an advisor to WHO’s HIV, hepatitis, and sexually transmitted infections program, at an online public Q&A on May 23. That typically requires the infectious virus to be carried via semen or vaginal fluids, and currently there is no evidence to suggest that.The disease spreads via an infected person’s bodily fluids—spit or pus—that can harbor the virus. Bedsheets or clothes contaminated with such virus-laden fluid can also be a potential source of infection.Given the widespread nature of the current outbreak, epidemiologists and virologists are trying to understand if there’s enhanced person-to-person transmission of this virus. Some experts are studying the geneticsequences of the virus obtained from infected patients to see if there are any mutations that could make the currently circulating virus potentially more transmissible than any previous versions. They’re also checking whether the monekypox virus is present in semen or vaginal fluids, and if it is infectious, to confirm this isn’t a sexually transmitted disease.

Highly pathogenic avian influenza EA H5N1 hitting domestic, wild birds --The 2021-22 outbreak of avian flu in North America is already the worst in seven years among U.S. domestic flocks and evidence is mounting it could be the deadliest ever documented among America's wild birds, including bald eagles. The highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) strain, called EA H5N1, has been circulating since late 2021. It had been detected in 38 states as of Monday, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. So far about 38 million domestic birds have died in the outbreak, mostly through depopulations at infected poultry farms, according to federal figures. It's the biggest since 2015 when HPAI subtype H5N2 affected about 49 million domestic birds. At a cost of $1 billion, the outbreak was the most costly animal health emergency in U.S. history, according to the USDA. The toll on wild birds is much more difficult to assess. In the last major avian flu outbreak, 98 HPAI-positive wild birds were detected between December 2014 and June 2015, according to the USDA. Most were hunter-harvested waterfowl from the Pacific Flyway. That number has spiked by more than 10 times among wild birds in the current outbreak, according to USDA figures released Monday. Among the 1,156 wild birds documented with avian flu over the last six months, three states have more than 100 cases (212 in North Dakota, 143 in North Carolina and 108 in Florida); Wisconsin has had 51. But wildlife experts say the number of birds tested is a tiny fraction of the number likely affected by the disease. "It's simply not possible to find all the sick birds in the wild," said Sumner Matteson, avian ecologist with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. "The testing tells us the disease is here but not how many birds have it. The trend this year is worrisome, certainly." The global spread of avian flu is driven in large part by migratory waterfowl, according to the USDA. Knowledge about migratory patterns and intercontinental associations of waterfowl, as well as genetic analyses of viral strains, supported the hypothesis that previous HPAI outbreaks entered North American from Asia via migratory birds. Wild waterfowl and other species shed the virus into the environment through their oral and nasal secretions and feces.

Bird Flu Outbreak Plunges US Egg Production To 7-Year-Low -- Avian influenza has already impacted more than 37 million birds across 34 US states this year. The fast-spreading virus has sent the production of eggs tumbling and prices at the supermarket soaring. Bloomberg reports the production of US eggs in April plunged as millions of egg-producing hens were slaughtered to mitigate the virus' spread. The latest data from the USDA shows egg production fell 3.9% to 7.55 billion, while the number of egg-laying birds dropped 5.3% from a year ago. The reduced output will continue to pressure retail prices for a dozen of eggs higher. In April alone, prices jumped 23% from the month before to $2.52. Prices reached levels not seen since early 2016, a period that followed the avian influenza outbreak of 2014-15, which led to a 50% increase in egg prices in the second half of 2015. Egg prices could rise more as producers fail to meet increased demand as supplies tighten. The cost of breakfast is soaring. Everything from orange juice to bacon to wheat has jumped in price -- the first meal of the day used to be the most affordable -- not so much anymore.

Avian flu found in dead geese in Colorado park - The avian flu has been found in dead geese in Lakewood and city officials urge the public not to handle dead birds or animals. A presumptive positive test for avian influenza, also know as bird flu, was received by Colorado Parks and Wildlife after dead goslings were found in Cottonwood Park, 10461 W. Evans Ave., according to a Lakewood news release. An investigation is ongoing. Avian flu has been spreading among wild birds and domesticated poultry in Colorado. The first identified human case in the United States of the H5N1 virus — avian flu — was found last month in a Colorado man who works on a Western Slope poultry farm. Lakewood officials urge people not to touch sick or dead geese. Warning signs have been posted in the park and people are asked to call 303-980-7300, to alert a park ranger or an animal control agent, if they come across dead wildlife. Meanwhile, the Foothills Animal Shelter, in Golden, has received a confirmed positive case, from the National Veterinary Services Laboratory, for the avian virus. The shelter will no accept birds for the next two weeks.

Bird flu outbreak kills ducks and sickens chickens in New Jersey, report says - -- A bird flu outbreak in New Jersey has killed 10 ducks and sickened chickens in Monmouth County, according to a report on SILive.com’s sister site, NJ.com.The bird flu -- or “highly pathogenic avian influenza,” -- was identified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the New Jersey Department of Agriculture after a flock of backyard ducks died.Some of the ducks died from the flu, while others were euthanized due to USDA protocol and “the highly contagious nature of avian influenza,” according to NJ.comAlmost 40 million birds have been infected with the deadly flu so far this year, according to the USDA. Previously, New Jersey reported 21 bird flu infections in wild ducks in February, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Officials are highly concerned after an outbreak in 2015 killed millions of birds.That outbreak caused soaring egg prices and severely disrupted the marketplace until it dissipated the following year, the Advance/SILive.com reported.The highly contagious flu spreads through contact with bodily secretions, which include feces, ocular, nasal, or oral secretions from infected birds. It can also be spread on surfaces, such as vehicles, equipment and shoes.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said the recent infections pose “a low risk to the public.”However, the agency noted that outbreaks in these flocks could expose some who regularly come into contact with the animals, heightening their risk of exposure. Human cases of bird flu viruses are rare but can still occur, most often after close contact with infected birds, which do not necessarily show symptoms.

First case of avian bird flu discovered in Salt Lake County Utah backyard flock The first case of the avian flu has been discovered in Salt Lake County on Thursday, bringing the total number of cases in Utah to five. The Utah Department of Agriculture and Food (UDAF) says so far, the Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) totals one in Utah County, three in Cache County, and one in Salt Lake County. The first case in Salt Lake County was discovered in a backyard bird flock on the west side of the county.“We urge bird owners with flocks of all sizes to take extreme caution with their bird’s habitats,” said Utah State Veterinarian, Dr. Dean Taylor. “The more potential exposure the birds may have to wild and migrating birds, the greater the risk of the flock contracting the disease.” Officials believe the disease in Salt Lake County was contracted after contact with wild waterfowl that may have access to the backyard property. Health officials have quarantined the flock and depopulation measures have been implemented to contain the disease. Officials say the current bird flu outbreak has been detected in over 600 wild birds throughout 31 states and among 27 million poultry birds in 26 states, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Utah bird owners are urged to continually monitor their birds for signs and symptoms of potential avian influenza infection. “Symptoms include high death loss among flocks, nasal discharge, decreased appetite or water consumption, and lack of coordination in birds,” says UDAF. If owners notice their birds experiencing any of these symptoms, please contact the state veterinarian’s office immediately at statevet@utah.gov.

100+ black vultures found dead in park; bird flu detected — A number of cases of avian flu, or bird flu, have been detected in Harford County, the Maryland Department of Agriculture reported. Bird flu was discovered after more than 100 black vultures were found dead at Fisherman's Park near Conowingo Dam, according to the U.S. and Maryland departments of agriculture. Poultry farmers on Maryland's Eastern Shore are also feeling the effects. After a February outbreak of bird flu in Delaware, there is now evidence the disease has made its way to Maryland, most likely spreading through migratory birds and poultry. "Raptors, vultures, migratory waterfowl and poultry seem to be the species that are carriers for the disease," Deputy Maryland Agriculture Secretary Steve Connelly said. The MDA said poultry farmers on the Eastern Shore have noticed sick birds since March. Bird flu is currently in 35 states and has infected more than 38 million birds. The Maryland Zoo in Baltimore became concerned when the vultures were found dead in Harford County. "It's scary because our No. 1 priority for us is our bird collection safety," said Jen Kottyan, curator of birds at The Maryland Zoo in Baltimore. Constellation, which runs the park, closed a number of trails to the public in an effort to curb the spread.

Dead vultures in Charleston County tested positive for a form of bird flu – South Carolina’s lead health agency on Friday confirmed some dead vultures in Charleston County tested positive for highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI).The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control, Department of Natural Resources, US Department of Agriculture, and Clemson Livestock Poultry Health are aware of what they called a mass die-off of wild vultures in the county.Some of the birds tested positive for HPAI, which they said is caused by influenza virus subtypes, including H5N1.Leaders with the health agency said the risk of HPAI transmission to people or pets and tame animals is thought to be low, the risk is also not well known and is best avoided by not having contact with dead birds.“DHEC urges community members to ensure that they, their pets and domestic animals avoid contact with dead or sick vultures, other birds and wild animals,” the agency said. “DHEC recommends that residents avoid areas where dead birds have been found.”The virus causing HPAI can be spread through feathers and fecal material, or areas and items contaminated by infected birds.“Handling dead birds without recommended protective measures increases the risk of transmission,” DHEC said. “SCDNR will continue monitoring and surveillance and encourages members of the public to report unusual bird mortality events.”If you encounter a dead vulture – or other dead birds in the area – DHEC recommends you seek medical attention if you become ill with symptoms of fevers, cough, fatigue, body aches, etc., and report your potential exposure to your health care provider

 Alaska’s bird flu outbreak is taking an especially heavy toll on eagles and other wild birds -- For three days in early May, the Alaska Raptor Center received multiple calls about a bald eagle in the Sitka Historical National Park that appeared lethargic and didn’t fly away even when people got close.“The first phone call was just, the bird was acting kind of like it had a head injury,” said the center’s avian director, Jennifer Cedarleaf. She figured maybe it had been hit by a car.Then the center got a call that the eagle was on the ground and “didn’t look right,” she said.By the time their in-house veterinarian arrived, the bird was dead.That eagle was one of the first birds in the state confirmed through subsequent testing to have H5N1, a strain of a highly pathogenic avian flu virus that’s been killing thousands of domestic poultry and hundreds of wild birds across the country.The highly pathogenic avian flu that arrived in the state earlier this month is hitting Alaska’s eagles and other wild birds especially hard while, at least so far, largely sparing domestic flocks like chickens.As of Friday, at least 12 bald eagles confirmed to have the virus had died, as well as eight Canada geese. On Thursday, authorities also announced the virus was detected in a red fox in Unalaska, likely because it had fed on an infected dead bird — perhaps one of the eagles also testing positive there.Authorities say that given the abundant numbers of eagles and other wild birds here, the virus isn’t expected to put a dent in their numbers.But this current strain is unusual because of its ability to sicken not only domestic poultry but wild birds, said Andrew Ramey, director of the molecular ecology laboratory with the U.S. Geological Survey Alaska Science Center.Cases are being detected all over the state, from the Aleutians to Mat-Su to Haines and the Interior.“What we’re seeing this year is an unprecedented level of highly pathogenic avian influenza in wild birds,” Ramey said.Nationwide, nearly 40 million birds have died from infections or exposures in 355 commercial and backyard flocks in 35 states so far this year, according to the USDA. At least 1,300 wild birds in 38 states have also been infected, according to the CDC.

Why unprecedented bird flu outbreaks sweeping the world are concerning scientists - A highly infectious and deadly strain of avian influenza virus has infected tens of millions of poultry birds across Europe, Asia, Africa and North America. But scientists are particularly concerned about the unprecedented spread in wild birds — outbreaks pose a significant risk to vulnerable species, are hard to contain and increase the opportunity for the virus to spill over into people.Since October, the H5N1 strain has caused nearly 3,000 outbreaks in poultry in dozens of countries. More than 77 million birds have been culled to curb the spread of the virus, which almost always causes severe disease or death in chickens. Another 400,000 non-poultry birds, such as wild birds, have also died in 2,600 outbreaks — twice the number reported during the last major wave, in 2016–17.Researchers say that the virus seems to be spreading in wild birds more easily than ever before, making outbreaks particularly hard to contain. Wild birds help to transport the virus around the world, with their migration patterns determining when and where it will spread next. Regions in Asia and Europe will probably continue to see large outbreaks, and infections could creep into currently unaffected continents such as South America and Australia. Although people can catch the virus, infections are uncommon. Only two cases have been reported since October, one each in the United Kingdom and the United States. But scientists are concerned that the high levels of virus circulating in bird populations mean that there are more opportunities for spillover into people. Avian influenza viruses change slowly over time, but the right mutation could make them more transmissible in people and other species, “These viruses are like ticking time bombs,” he says. “Occasional infections are not an issue — it’s the gradual gaining of function of these viruses” that is the real concern, he says. The highly pathogenic H5N1 strain emerged in commercial geese in Asia in around 1996, and spread in poultry throughout Europe and Africa in the early 2000s. By 2005, the strain was causing mass deaths in wild birds, first in East Asia and then in Europe. Since then, the strain has repeatedly infected wild birds in many parts of the world, Through repeated spillovers, Ramey says, H5N1 seems to have become more adapted to wild birds. It’s “now become an emerging wildlife disease”, he says. In 2014, a new highly pathogenic H5 lineage — called 2.3.4.4 — emerged and started infecting wild birds without always killing them. This created opportunities for the virus to spread to North America for the first time. The virus affects some wild bird species more severely than others. For instance, some infected mallard ducks (Anas platyrhynchos) show no signs of disease, whereas the virus killed roughly 10% of the breeding population of barnacle geese (Branta leucopsis) in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard late last year and hundreds of Dalmatian pelicans (Pelecanus crispus) in Greece earlier this year. Wildlife researchers are trying to understand why the virus affects species differently. They are particularly concerned about the virus’s impact on vulnerable bird species with smaller populations or restricted geographic ranges, and species that are particularly susceptible to infection, such as whooping cranes (Grus americana) and emperor geese (Anser canagicus), Ramey says. Ramey adds that only a fraction of cases in wild birds are diagnosed and reported. More monitoring could unveil the true magnitude of wild bird mortality, he says.

Late May snow pastes Colorado 24 hours after 90-degree heat - The Washington Post - Memorial Day weekend is just a week away, but it looks like Christmas in many parts of Colorado. A late winter storm dumped as much as 20 inches of snow in the Centennial State.More than 100,000 customers are in the dark because of the heft of the wet snow, which weighed down trees — already green with leaves — and power lines. The greatest concentration of outages focused on the south and west sides of Denver in Jefferson and Denver counties, where nearly 80,000 customers were without electricity, according to PowerOutage.US.The pasty snow, most of which fell late Friday into early Saturday, came just 24 hours after temperatures soared to nearly 90 degrees. In Denver, it was 87 Thursday afternoon before temperatures crashed to 33 — a 54-degree change.Denver received about 2 inches of snow. According to Chris Bianchi, a meteorologist for Denver’s CBS television affiliate 9 News, the storm tied as the ninth-latest on record to produce at least an inch in the city. The average last inch of snow, he tweeted, occurs on April 22. The city’s latest big snowstorm on record occurred on May 26-27 in 1950, when 10.7 inches fell. Heavier amounts fell to the north and west of the Mile High City, including a little more than 8 inches in Boulder. Heavy snow also fell on the north and west sides of Colorado Springs. Some of the snowfall totals from Colorado include:

• 20 inches — 19 miles west-southwest of Cripple Creek
• 19 inches — Palmer Lake
• 16 inches — Woodland Park
• 14 inches — Cascade

Heavy snow also blanketed parts of southern Wyoming, where up to 18 inches was reported. While some of the snowfall lingered in Colorado on Saturday morning, much of the accumulation had ended, as snow has difficulty sticking due to high sun angle at this time of year. Roads and travel were not heavily affected because a lot of the snow melted on paved surfaces.

Spring storm dumps more than a foot of snow in parts, knocks down limbs, power in Denver area — A spring snowstorm dumped more than a foot of snow in some parts of Colorado and knocked down limbs and power to thousands in the Denver area.More than 66,000 customers were without power in the Denver metro area Saturday morning, according to a spokesperson for Xcel Energy. The western and southern areas of the metro were hit the hardest, Xcel said.More than 450 crews were working to restore power and were also helping to cut down any tree limbs that have either come in contact with a power line or were in danger of making contact, the company said.Tree damage is a concern as many trees have now leafed out and the weight of the snow will likely cause damage, which was the case in one Denver neighborhood.Downed tree limbs damaged parked cars in Denver's University Park neighborhood. One resident awoke to the sound of falling limbs.The storm has had minimal impact on roads due to the warm ground with the Colorado Department of Transportation reporting no major closures as of Saturday morning.Another round of shower activity is expected tonight. Temperatures will drop to around or below freezing, so keep those sensitive plants and vegetation protected.Here are the snow totals as of Saturday evening from the National Weather Service.
15 NNE Howard – 28.5 inches
2 SE Floyd Hill – 24 inches
9 SSE Gould – 22.8 inches
1 NE Echo Lake – 21.6 inches
2 SSE Blue Valley – 20.2 inches
19 WSW Cripple Creek – 20 inches
Palmer Lake – 19 inches
1 S Breckenridge – 18.6 inches
Aspen Springs – 18.5 inches
3 NW Black Forest – 18.2 inches
1 WSW Woodland Park – 18 inches
Alma – 17 inches

Deadly derecho leaves widespread damage in Canada -Massive power outages and at least ten casualties were the result of a powerful thunderstorm complex, known as a derecho, riding through a densely-populated corridor of southeastern Ontario and Quebec over the weekend.In Ontario, six deaths were caused by falling trees, part of the massive damage due to winds that gusted up to 82 mph, according to local reports. All nine deaths in Ontario were caused directly by the storm or its aftermath, according to CBC.Police reports from the area say the fatalities include a 44-year-old man, a woman in her 70s that was out walking, a 59-year-old man on a golf course and one person killed in their camping trailer. Additionally, a woman in Quebec died after she was caught in a boat that was capsized in the midst of the storm. A 61-year-old from Lakefield, Onatio, was killed due to a falling tree from the storm,Peterborough Police confirmed on Monday.Nearly one million people were left without power in the wake of the destructive weather, with over 400,000 residents still in the dark as of Monday.The storm, according to Environment and Climate Change meteorologist Gerald Cheng, has the same markings of a derecho, a rapidly-moving thunderstorm complex that produces widespread wind damage."When you look at the damage, that was widespread, it wasn't just one track," Cheng said. AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Johnathan Porter said the derecho traveled an area of roughly 18 million people, which is nearly 47% of the country's population, according to AccuWeather's data analytics tools. "Saturday’s devastating windstorm across southeastern Canada is likely to be remembered as one of the most impactful, if not most impactful, thunderstorm complexes to affect Canada," Porter explained.This derecho event caused wind gusts above 75 mph for hours on end across Canada, carving a remarkable laser-like precision path from southwest to northeast in Canada's most densely populated areas, which included Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa.

Deadly thunderstorm complex cuts power to nearly a million in Canada --A line of violent thunderstorms tore across the most populous corridor of Canada on Saturday, killing at least 10 people and cutting power to nearly a million people. The storms carved a path of destruction from southern Ontario to southeast Quebec, passing close to or directly through three of Canada’s four largest cities: Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa. Pearson International Airport, which serves the Toronto metro area and is the largest airport in the country, measured a wind gust of about 75 mph. Ottawa International Airport, another major hub, also recorded a 75 mph gust. Environment Canada, the nation’s weather and climate agency, reportedat least 10 deaths and several injuries because of strong winds. It also reported “extensive damage to trees, power lines and buildings,” as well as overturned cars and widespread outages.Several of the fatalities were caused by falling trees, including at a golf course and a conservation area. One woman died when her boat capsized on the Ottawa River in Quebec, according to local media, and another women died Sunday after being hit by a falling tree branch in the storm’s aftermath. “My thoughts go out to both of their families & friends and I offer condolences on behalf of all Ontarians,” Ontario Premier Doug Ford tweeted Saturday evening. Hydro One said Monday that some 196,000 people remained without power in Ontario. Crews from as far away as the Atlantic province of New Brunswick had been called in to help, the utility said in a tweet. In Ottawa, the city set up reception centers for affected residents. Several of the deaths underscore a common theme in severe wind events: Those participating in outdoor activities are particularly vulnerable to violent wind gusts. The U.S. Storm Prediction Center website says that “those involved in outdoor activities are especially at risk,” particularly “campers or hikers in forested areas,” who “are vulnerable to being injured or killed by falling trees.” Two dead, 44 injured in unusual northern Michigan tornado Widespread damage to trees and power infrastructure also dealt a hefty blow to electrical distribution in the urban corridor. As of Saturday evening, power outage aggregator PowerOutage.com listed about 925,000 outages in Quebec and Ontario, a massive event for a country with just over 38 million citizens. Emergency crews responded to more than 500 calls on Saturday for downed power lines, fires, fallen trees and damaged buildings, CTV Ottawa reported.

At least 9 killed as fast-moving severe thunderstorms hit the most populated part of Canada, leaving 1 000 km of damage - - - (3 videos) A line of fast-moving severe thunderstorms (derecho) swept over southern Ontario and Quebec – the most populated part of Canada – on May 21, 2022, leaving roughy 1 000 km (620 miles) of damage in its wake and at least 9 people dead. It developed near Sarnia, Ontario late Saturday morning and tracked northeast over southern Ontario toward Ottawa in the afternoon.The storm produced winds in excess of 120 km/h (74 mph), damaged many homes and businesses, overturned cars, and downed trees and powerlines.As a result, at least 9 people have been killed, several were injured and more than 950 000 customers were left without power.Of the 9 reported fatalities, 8 were reported in Ontario due to falling trees and 1 in Ontario after a boat capsized on the Ottawa River.¹The damage extends roughly 1 000 km (620 miles) from the Michigan border all the way to Quebec City, Quebec, the most populated part of the country, The Weather Network’s chief meteorologist, Chris Scott, said.²Pearson International Airport recorded a wind gust of 120 km/h (74 mph), breaking its previous monthly record of 119 km/h (73 mph) set on May 4, 2018. This is also its 5^th strongest wind gust on record.Ottawa International Airport also recorded a wind gust of 120 km/h – its 2^nd strongest May wind gust on record and the 4^th highest of all time.Kitchener/Waterloo Airport recorded a 132 km/h (82 mph) gust that could be one of their strongest on record, according to Tyler Hamilton, a meteorologist at The Weather Network.Peak wind gusts as reported by Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) include 144 km/h (89 mph) at Lake Memphremagog, 128 km/h in Shawinigan (79 mph), 100 km/h (62 mph) at Quebec City airport and 96 km/h (59 mph) in Trois-Rivières.A state of emergency was declared in Uxbridge, Ontario, and in Clarence Rockland, east of Ottawa, after numerous buildings were damaged. More than 400 000 customers were left without power in Ontario (~170 000 in Otawa) and 550 000 in Quebec (from Gatineau to Quebec City). Ontario utility Hydro One said the storm toppled large electrical transmission towers in the Ottawa area, and more than 600 hydro poles across the province. “The distinction with this storm is the severity of damage we’re seeing,” Hydro One spokeswoman, Tiziana Baccega Rosa, said. “Steel transmission structures aren’t supposed to come down … it’s very very extreme damage.” More than 270 000 customers in Ontario and 350 000 in Quebec were still without power as of Sunday afternoon, May 22. As of early Monday, 226 000 customers were still without power in Ontario and 166 000 in Quebec Officials said it will take several days for the power to be fully restored. Ottawa Fire Services said that the city’s fire, police and paramedics fielded about 3 000 911 calls between 04:00 Saturday and midnight – with 2 000 of them coming in the storm’s first three hours. “This one hit us hard, it hit us fast… I was out at the airport earlier and I saw telephone posts knocked down, large trees uprooted, and several hydro lines being split in half. It was incredible. The sheer area that was affected is like nothing I’ve seen in my memory,” the City of Ottawa’s head of emergency services, Kim Ayotte, said.

Large tornadoes hit west Texas, U.S. - (4 videos) A very marginal severe weather day took a shocking turn of events with a localized outbreak of large tornadoes west of Lubbock, Texas on the evening of May 23, 2022.The video below shows 4 tornadoes from this one singular storm including two, large wedge shape tornadoes, as documented by Ohio Storm Chasers.The next video shows several tornadoes between Morton and Levelland (west of Lubbock) captured by Max Olson:A large dusty tornado developed near Morton and was captured by several storm chasers, including Live Storms Media and Texas Storm Chasers (in 4K):A slow-moving storm system is expected to produce a multi-day heavy rainfall and flash flooding event across much of the Central to Southern Plains and Lower Mississippi Valley regions, NWS warns.Severe weather may produce large hail and high winds, but also a threat of tornadoes, across Texas and spreading on Wednesday into the Lower Mississippi, Tennessee and Ohio Valleys.

Firefighters in New Mexico face more dangerous conditions as wildfires spread - The Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak Fire, which has devastated New Mexico’s northeastern Mora and San Miguel counties since last month, is expected to worsen after two days of moderated winds and weather conditions allowed firefighters to slow its spread. Forecasters issued warnings that starting May 19, high fire danger would exist from southern Nevada through parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado and would last for at least three days. The destruction from the Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak Fire, now categorized as the largest fire in the state’s history, has been horrendous. Over 303,000 acres have been burnt and at least 340 homes and 275 other buildings in Mora and San Miguel Counties have been destroyed. Projections of the total loss of buildings range from 1,000 to 1,500. The fire is the worst of several blazes scorching the state. In the north-central area just 25 miles west of the state capital Santa Fe, the Cerro Pelado Fire has consumed nearly 46,000 acres. It is now considered 75 percent contained. The Black Fire in Gila National Forest in the southwest has consumed 93,000 acres since it flared up on May 13. The Bear Trap Fire, north of the Black Fire, has burned about 105,000 acres. The containment level of these two wildfires is zero percent. Authorities have closed some public recreation areas. The Carson and Santa Fe National Forests, as well as the Pecos Canyon State Park, all in the north, have been shut until further notice due to extreme fire danger. In the central part of the state, the Cibola National Forest and National Grasslands west of Albuquerque are partially closed to the public. The Calf Canyon Fire was the result of a botched prescribed burn carried out by the Forest Service on April 19. Once it got out of control, it merged with the Hermits Peak Fire, which had been raging since April 6. As of May 19, the Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak Fire was reported as 34 percent contained, though continued aridity and gusty winds could negatively affect containment.

4 California wildfires spread during hot and windy weekend Four different wildfires burned throughout California this weekend. Hot and windy conditions made it difficult for fire crews to contain the blazes.

More wildfires predicted in central, eastern Washington -— With many counties in eastern Washington experiencing moderate to severe drought conditions, the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) is anticipating an above-average wildfire season in the summer. While western Washington has had a wetter and cooler than normal spring, the NIFC said central and southern parts of Washington have already reached an "above-normal risk" for wildfires. Eighteen Washington counties – all east of the Cascade Mountains – are currently experiencing moderate to severe drought conditions. A monthly report from the NIFC said central Washington is expected to have an elevated risk for wildfires by July, before "significant fire" risk envelops most of the Pacific Northwest by August. According to long-range climate models, Washington is projected to have higher than normal temperatures and precipitation is likely to be below normal during the summer, two factors that can lead to an uptick of wildfires in the area. The Northwest region, which includes Oregon, had approximately 90 wildfires determined to be mostly human-caused, according to the NIFC report. Over half of the fires were in Washington state, with one large wildfire in northeast Washington burning 442 acres by itself. Most of the wildfires burned fewer than one acre of land, the NIFC said. Drought conditions persist across nearly 90% of the western United States and the amount of acres burned this year is 70% above the country's 10-year average, continuing an upward trend. All Bureau of Land Management (BLM) public lands throughout Oregon and Washington will begin fire restrictions Friday. Imposed restrictions mean the use of fireworks, exploding targets or metallic targets, steel component ammunition (core or jacket), tracer or incendiary devices, and sky lanterns or prohibited. “Fire restrictions help protect our first responders, local communities, and public lands from accidental wildfires,” said Barry Bushue, BLM Oregon/Washington state director. “We are continuing to see drought conditions across Oregon and Washington. By following fire restrictions, the public can help us focus our fire resources on naturally caused fires.” BLM said a fine up to $1,000, a prison term up to one year and a bill for the cost of fire suppression are possible if caught violating the new fire restrictions.

Drought, winds to fuel Southwest wildfires as heat builds --For weeks, the Southwest has been gripped by extreme drought, rapidly spreading wildfires and surges of heat. AccuWeather forecasters say that this trend will continue with the temperatures in some cities possibly approaching record territory.Across the Southwest, the fire season is already off to an active start. Earlier this month, destructive wildfires raged from Texas to Arizona, some of which are still active fires. The Hermits Peak Fire, which started in New Mexico when crews lost control of a prescribed burn, was only 40% contained with over 310,000 acres lost as of Monday morning. Farther south in the state, the Black Fire remained only 8% contained with over 130,000 acres burned as of the start of the week. Active fires are also continuing in Arizona. The Tunnel Fire, located just north ofFlagstaff, Arizona, has burned nearly 10,000 acres, but it is 98% contained as of Monday morning. This past weekend, calm and cool weather helped fire crews battle the blazes across the Southwest. A bulge in the jet stream over the East Coast created a bottleneck in the atmosphere, sending temperatures surging in the East but allowing for cooler-than-normal weather for much of the rest of the country, even allowing for a late-season snowstorm in Colorado and Wyoming. However, forecasters say that a change in this pattern is underway."As a cooler air mass slides into the eastern half of the country, this will open the door for heat to rapidly build in the Southwest," said AccuWeather Meteorologist Matt Benz.As higher temperatures take hold in the Southwest, a disturbance sliding through the Rockies and into the Plains will bring an uptick in winds across parts of the Southwest, helping to provide conditions favorable for the spread of wildfires. While this disturbance may bring flooding rain to areas farther east, little to no rain is expected in the Southwest, a familiar pattern that has continued to build the ongoing drought in the area."A system will swing through the Rockies before shifting into the Plains on Tuesday. This system will bring steady winds to the Southwest through midweek," Benz explained. "This combination of wind and very low humidity will cause this dangerous fire weather setup."The gusty winds and fire risk will continue through at least Wednesday before winds finally subside. Gusts as high as 50 mph will be possible, especially at higher elevations and in mountain passes.Meanwhile, winds in California will remain light through the first half of the week, keeping the wildfire risk at bay. A brush fire occurred Monday on the Pomona Freeway westbound in Diamond Bar, California, but was 100 percent contained as of 3 p.m. PDT after burning through 1.7 acres.

 Above-Normal Summer Heat Is Forecast for Most of the U.S. - The New York Times --Just as temperatures were heating up for about half of the U.S. population this week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued its monthly climate trends report on Thursday. The main takeaway? Prepare for a scorcher of a summer.The agency said that above-normal temperatures are likely across almost all of the lower 48 states in June, July and August, except for small areas in the Pacific Northwest and Northern Plains. The Northeast, from Delaware to Maine, has the highest likelihood of being extra-hot, along with parts of the West. The agency also forecast lower-than-normal precipitation for much of the West, which means it’s unlikely that the severe drought gripping the region will end. The heat and dryness also portend a very bad wildfire season. In New Mexico, where firefighters are already battling severe blazes, including one that’s the largest in the state’s history, it’s hard to imagine how things could get any worse. The climate pattern called La Niña is likely responsible for some of the above-normal heat. But it’s important to remember that, generally, it’s hotter than it used to be.Greenhouse gas emissions have warmed the Earth’s atmosphere by about 2 degrees Fahrenheit compared with preindustrial times. Under the 2015 Paris climate agreement, nations set goals of reducing emissions to limit warming to about 3.6 degrees.

California Faces Summer Blackouts from Climate Extremes - Scientific American For the next five summers, extreme heat and other climate change impacts will threaten the reliability of California’s electrical grid, state officials said Friday.Available electricity supplies might not be able to keep up with demand if heat waves hit, droughts make hydropower less available or wildfires reduce electricity transmission, staff of the California Energy Commission (CEC) and California Public Utilities Commission advised agency leaders.Energy planners fear a combination of those warming impacts also arrive at the same time. CEC Vice Chair Siva Gunda reminded officials Friday that “securing energy reliability is a tremendous responsibility” as the climate changes.“The responsibility is becoming increasingly difficult to fulfill with the tools we have in hand,” he said. “Climate-change-induced drought, fire and heat is very difficult to predict.”State and grid officials earlier this month revealed that California faces the possibility of electricity blackouts returning this summer because of power supply shortages (Energywire, May 9). That prediction was based on an analysis of existing power supplies, new sources expected to come online and the potential for extreme events. Friday's presentation was the first to give an in-depth look at potential gaps between electricity supply and peak demand beyond this coming summer, with analyses that also cover the summers of 2023 through 2026.The most precarious window for electricity supply shortages is early evenings, after the state’s robust solar power is no longer working. September is the most potentially problematic month in all of the years examined.The warnings come as the nation’s most populous state seeks more renewable energy on its grid, with the aim to have a 100 percent carbon-free electricity supply by 2045.

California hydro generation to be half of average this summer: EIA analysis | S&P Global Commodity Insights - The ongoing drought in California could cut the state's hydroelectric power generation nearly in half this summer, leading to an increase in natural gas generation, according to an analysis from the US Energy Information Administration.The estimated 8% rise in electricity from gas generation could also mean a 6% increase in energy-related carbon dioxide emissions and an average 5% increase in wholesale power prices throughout the US West, according to EIA."California has a diverse electricity fuel mix and is highly interconnected with the regional electric grid, but our study shows that a significant decrease in hydropower generation this summer could lead to higher electricity prices, among other effects," EIA Administrator Joe DeCarolis said in a May 26 statement.Over the last decade, California has experienced more frequent and intense drought conditions, which limit water use in general and reduce hydropower in particular, according to EIA's analysis"Current drought conditions in the state potentially have a significant impact on power markets throughout the West, which could be different than in past years, given the state's accelerating growth in intermittent generating capacity and reliance on imports, which account for nearly one-third of California's power supply," according to the analysis.California's hydro generation typically accounts for 15% of the generation mix, but is expected to drop to 8% this summer, according to the EIA. So far this month, hydro generation has averaged less than 8% of the total fuel mix, down 6.3 percentage points from the five-year May average, according to California Independent System Operator data.The EIA Analysis shows the state purchasing more electricity from neighboring markets to make up the difference, as well as increasing in-state gas generation to 50% of the summer generation mix from 45%.Gas prices across California and the Pacific Northwest are already up sharply over the past year.At the PG&E city-gate, spot gas prices have climbed to over $10/MMBtu in recent trading, up from the upper-$3 to low-$4 range in late May 2021, according to S&P Global Commodity Insights pricing data. Over the same period, gas prices at the Sumas Canadian border hub have climbed nearly as much to trade in the mid-$8s, compared with year-ago levels in the upper-$2 range.The higher gas prices have driven up power prices. SP15 on-peak day-ahead locational marginal prices have averaged about $86/MWh so far this month, 133% higher than in May 2021 and 508% higher than then May 2020 average, according to S&P Global pricing data.

Up To 6 Major Atlantic Hurricanes Forecasted For 2022 -Forecasters at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, a division of the National Weather Service, are predicting above average hurricane activity in the Atlantic this year, NOAA’s website has revealed. NOAA’s outlook for the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season, which extends from June 1 to November 30, predicts a 65 percent chance of an above-normal season, a 25 percent chance of a near-normal season and a 10 percent chance of a below-normal season. The organization is forecasting a likely range of 14 to 21 named storms, with winds of 39 miles per hour or higher, of which six to 10 could become hurricanes, with winds of 74 mph or higher, including three to six major hurricanes, with winds of 111 mph or higher. NOAA noted that it provides these ranges with a 70 percent confidence. The organization also highlighted that its outlook is for overall seasonal activity and is not a landfall forecast. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center will update the 2022 Atlantic seasonal outlook in early August, just prior to the historical peak of the season. “Early preparation and understanding your risk is key to being hurricane resilient and climate-ready,” U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina M. Raimondo said in a statement posted on NOAA’s site. “Throughout the hurricane season, NOAA experts will work around-the-clock to provide early and accurate forecasts and warnings that communities in the path of storms can depend on to stay informed,” Raimondo added in the statement. NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad said, “as we reflect on another potentially busy hurricane season, past storms - such as Superstorm Sandy, which devastated the New York metro area ten years ago - remind us that the impact of one storm can be felt for years”. FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said, “Hurricane Ida spanned nine states, demonstrating that anyone can be in the direct path of a hurricane and in danger from the remnants of a storm system”. Atlantic weather systems have severely affected oil and gas operations in the past. For example, at its peak, Hurricane Ida shut in 95.65 percent of Gulf of Mexico oil production on August 29, 2021, and 94.47 percent of Gulf of Mexico gas production on August 31, 2021, Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) figures show. In October 2020, the BSEE estimated at one point that approximately 84.8 percent of oil production and 57.6 percent of natural gas production in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico had been shut-in as a result of Storm Zeta. Several other storms affected U.S. oil and gas production in 2020, including Hurricane Delta, Hurricane Sally, Hurricane Laura and Tropical Storm Cristobal.

New research on tidal flats is ‘wake up call’ for US coastal communities - About 29 percent of the United States’ population live in coastline counties—more than 41 million are in Atlantic counties. This high population density poses a critical challenge to sustainable developments in coastal areas. Tidal flats, which make up coastal wetlands, are facing unprecedented challenges because of increased human activities. They are widely recognized as sentinels of coastal environment change. Importantly, they are the guardians for beachfront communities as they can largely mitigate destructive forces from the ocean. Without them, coastal communities are more vulnerable. Currently, there isn’t an effective way to identify and quantify the interactions between urban areas and tidal flats, which is essential to preserve the nation’s coastal communities. Moreover, existing research is limited to individual cities, which doesn’t provide the big picture. To address this environmental crisis, researchers from Florida Atlantic University have developed a novel approach that quantifies change patterns of tidal flats from a spatiotemporal perspective using data collected across time. Their study is one of the first to investigate correlations between tidal flats and urban areas using this technique. For the study, researchers selected and analyzed the annual dynamics of three highly urbanized coastal counties in the southeastern U.S., which represent unique environmental settings: a tidal flat system of more than 3,168 square kilometers characterized by numerous sounds, estuaries, as well as the twice-daily ebb and flow of the tides. They separately assessed the spatiotemporal dynamics of tidal flats and urban areas in the counties of Charleston, South Carolina; Chatham, Georgia; and Duval, Florida between 1985 and 2015. They then identified and quantified the tidal flat losses in these three counties, which are directly or indirectly associated with urban expansion, from a geographic lens that focused on place and space. Results of the study, published in the international journal, Earth, verify and highlight the conflicts between intensified human activities and coastal environments. Findings showed that tidal flats are under pressure from urban expansion from both the eastern and western sides. In particular, the western side has been rapidly urbanized during the three decades, giving Duval County the largest new urban areas within 2 kilometers of the coast. Duval County has experienced more erosion and urban growth than the other two counties and also has much smaller tidal flats than the other two counties. It has the largest newly urbanized area toward the seashore. Compared with the two other counties, Duval County also has a less stable environment of tidal flats, which calls for a higher level of public awareness and concern. Meanwhile, some suburbs in the two other counties also have been rapidly urbanized, including the eastern and western wings of the City of Charleston and southwestern side of the City of Savannah. These urbanizations also would considerably affect the surrounding tidal flats, and the closer places would receive higher environmental pressures. In observing the spatial overlaps between new urban areas and tidal flat erosions, the researchers found that the constant shrinkage of tidal flats is hysteretic (has lagging effect) to the accelerated process of urbanization in the coastal area. This hysteresis effect also exists in the restoration and management of ecosystems, and severe damages could result in irreversible changes.

HSBC CEO disavows executive’s remarks about coping with Miami being underwater --HSBC’s CEO disavowed comments made by a senior executive of the bank in which he compared the financial threat of climate change to anxiety over Y2K and said people could “cope with” Miami being underwater. At a Financial Times conference over the weekend, Stuart Kirk, head of responsible investing for HSBC’s asset management division, delivered a presentation entitled “Why investors need not worry about climate risk.” In the presentation, Kirk dismissed warnings of the financial risks of climate change as the latest in a series of “nut job[s] telling me about the end of the world.” Kirk went on to compare such warnings to proponents of returning to the gold standard and those who warned the year 2000 could lead to widespread computer meltdowns by machines that did not recognize the digits “00” to represent the year. Numerous international governments tasked the public and private sector with preparing to avoid such a scenario for years leading up to the date. Kirk expressed confidence that the populace would learn to deal with the impact of climate change, saying “human beings have been fantastic at adapting to change, adapting to climate emergencies, and we will continue to do so. Who cares if Miami is six meters underwater in 100 years? Amsterdam has been six meters underwater for ages, and that’s a really nice place. We will cope with it.”

Tropical Storm “Agatha” forms, forecast to rapidly intensify into a hurricane and make landfall over southern Mexico - Tropical Storm “Agatha” formed on May 28, 2022, as the first named storm of the 2022 Pacific hurricane season. A steady to rapid intensification is forecast and Agatha is expected to become a hurricane on May 29 and make landfall over southern Mexico on May 30.

• There is an increasing risk of tropical-storm-force and hurricane-force winds along portions of the southern coast of Mexico in the next two to three days, and a Hurricane Watch is now in effect for portions of this area. Interests in this area should closely monitor the progress of this system and updates to the forecast, NHC said.
• Heavy rains associated with Agatha will develop over portions of southern Mexico by Sunday and continue through Tuesday, May 31. This will pose a threat of potentially life-threatening flash flooding and mudslides.
• Storm surge could produce coastal flooding near and to the east of where the center passes the coast in areas of onshore winds. The surge may be accompanied by large and destructive waves.

At 12:00 UTC on May 28, the center of Tropical Storm “Agatha” was located about 355 km (220 miles) SSW of Puerto Angel, Mexico.¹Agatha’s maximum sustained winds were 75 km/h (45 mph), with gusts up to 85 km/h (50 mph). The minimum barometric pressure was 1 002, and the system was moving W at 7 km/h (5 mph).Tropical-storm-force winds were extending outward up to 55 km (35 miles) from the center of Agatha.A turn toward the northwest is expected later today, followed by a turn toward the northeast by Sunday, May 29.On the forecast track, the center of Agatha will approach the southern coast of Mexico on Sunday and make landfall there on Monday, May 30.A Hurricane Watch is currently in effect for the southern coast of Mexico from Salina Cruz to Punta Maldonado, Mexico. A Hurricane Watch means that hurricane conditions are possible within the watch area. A watch is typically issued 48 hours before the anticipated first occurrence of tropical-storm-force winds, conditions that make outside preparations difficult or dangerous. Interests elsewhere in southern Mexico should closely monitor the progress of Agatha. Additional watches and warnings will likely be required for portions of this area later today. Agatha is expected to be in a moist environment with light wind shear, significant upper-level divergence, and warm sea surface temperatures until landfall, NHC forecasts Beven and Bucci noted.2 This should allow steady to rapid strengthening, and the SHIPS model rapid intensification index shows a 70% chance of the storm strengthening 55 kt (102 km/h; 63 mph) during the next 48 h. The intensity forecast thus calls for the cyclone to strengthen to a possibly conservative peak intensity of 85 kt (157 km/h; 98 mph). There is a possibility that the remnants of Agatha could emerge over the Bay of Campeche by June 2, but at this time it appears unlikely the system will still be a tropical cyclone.

Severe hailstorm hits Bihar, claiming lives of at least 33 people – A severe hailstorm swept over parts of Bihar, India on May 19, 2022, destroying crops and homes, and leaving at least 33 people dead. The storm follows several weeks of scorching heat and meteorologists said more rains accompanied by gusty winds and hail storms could hit the region ahead of the monsoon season.1 A large number of trees were uprooted across the state, while lightning and strong winds disrupted traffic. A tree fell on a power substation near the Patna high court, leaving many areas in the state capital without power. Authorities said seven people died in the Bhagalpur district, followed by 6 in Muzaffarpur and 3 each in Saran and Lakhisarai. Munger and Samastipur recorded 2 deaths each, while Jehanabad, Khagaria, Nalanda, Purnia, Banka, Begusarai, Araria, Jamui, Katihar and Darbhanga each reported one death. CM Nitish Kumar on Friday announced an ex-gratia payment of Rs 4 lakh each to the next of kin of all the people killed.2 He asked officials to make a rapid assessment of the loss of houses and crops and provide assistance to affected families. Nitish urged all residents to maintain complete awareness during rough weather, follow suggestions issued by disaster management officials and remain home during rough weather.

The Age of Extinction Is Here — Some of Us Just Don’t Know It Yet - My friends in the Indian Subcontinent tell me stories, these days, that seem like science fiction. The heatwave there is pushing the boundaries of survivability. My other sister says that in the old, beautiful city of artists and poets, eagles are falling dead from the sky. They are just dropping dead and landing on houses, monuments, shops. They can’t fly anymore.The streets, she says, are lined with dead things. Dogs. Cats. Cows. Animals of all kinds are just there, dead. They’ve perished in the killing heat. They can’t survive.People, too, try to flee. They run indoors, spend all day in canals and rivers and lakes, and those who can’t, too, line the streets, passed out, pushed to the edge. They’re poor countries. We won’t know how many this heatwave has killed for some time to come. Many won’t even be counted.Think about all that for a moment. Really stop and think about it. Stop the automatic motions of everyday life you go through and think about it.You see, my Western friends read stories like this, and then they go back to obsessing over the Kardashians or Wonder Woman or Johnny Depp or Batman. They don’t understand yet. Because this is beyond the limits of what homo sapiens can really comprehend, the Event. That world is coming for them, too.The analogy is often used to describe “climate change” of frogs in a boiling pot. It’s useful, but only to a certain degree. When the pot boils, they’re taken out and eaten. We were in a boiling pot, and now we’re at the stage where we’re about to get taken out and eaten. This is when things start to get really, really bad — really, really fast.The way that I’ve come to think of the Event — a species that’s been around for 300,000 years now having altered the climate in ways that haven’t happened for millions of years, triggering an Extinction Event — is this.Imagine a black hole. Humanity’s lined up before it. Everyone has to march through. Some are at the front of the line. They reach the other side first. Some are at the back of the line. They’re still laughing and joking and pretending, maybe. Nobody much hears from those who’ve gone through, because, well, it’s a black hole. But on the other side, nothing is ever to be the same again.This is where we are now. We are at the threshold of the Cataclysm. Some of us are now crossing over to the other side, of a different planet, one that’s going to become unlivable. This isn’t “going to happen” or “might happen,” it is actually happening now.Those are my friends, for example, in the Indian Subcontinent, where eagles are falling dead from the sky, where the streets are lined with dead things.Extinction. The Event. You can literally see it happening there.They are the first ones through the Event Horizon, if you like — the lip of the black hole. They are canaries in the coal mine, my Indian and Pakistani and Bengali friends. They are on the other side, and are experiencing the world in the Event. And that world is coming for us all.

Deadly Asian heat 'highly unlikely' without climate change - A blistering heat wave in India and Pakistan last month sent temperatures soaring above 120 degrees Fahrenheit, all before the summer had even kicked off. Now scientists say climate change helped make the shocking weather possible.A new analysis finds that global warming made the heat wave at least 30 times more likely to occur. The event was about 1 degree Celsius, or 1.8 F, hotter than it would have been in a world without climate change.Without the influence of global warming, “this event was highly, highly unlikely,” study co-author Arpita Mondal, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Technology, said at a news conference yesterday.The findings were released by the research consortium World Weather Attribution, which specializes in attribution science — studies that investigate the links between climate change and individual weather events. Since it was founded in 2014, the group has published dozens of analyses on climate-related disasters including floods, hurricanes, droughts and extreme heat.Earlier this month, WWA released a study of the extreme rainfall and catastrophic floods in South Africa last month, concluding that climate change made them both more likely to occur and more intense (Climatewire, May 16).Most analyses use a standard method. They collect historical climate data from the region in question, and they run two types of simulations using climate models — one representing present day and one representing a hypothetical world without human-caused climate change. These simulations help demonstrate how warming has influenced the probability or intensity of a given event. The recent heat wave was a prime target for investigation. Not only did the heat reach punishing extremes, it also started unusually early in the year and dragged on for weeks.“What was particularly exceptional or particularly unusual about this heat wave was how early it started,” said study co-author Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London and co-lead of WWA. “It basically was hot from the beginning of March.” Sherry Rehman, Pakistan’s climate minister, noted last month that the region had undergone a “year without spring.” The heat has been linked to at least 90 deaths across both India and Pakistan so far, and experts say that’s likely an underestimate. WWA’s study is at least the second on this event. Last week, the U.K.’s Meteorological Office published a similar analysis, concluding that climate change made the heat wave at least 100 times more likely to occur.

Release of two new datasets related to climate in Central Asia -As one of the climate change hot spots, central Asia witnessed a significant warming in the past and is very likely to experience more heatwaves and drought events in the future. Due to lack of high-resolution climate projection datasets, it's difficult to study the potential impacts of future climate changes on many sectors in central Asia, in particular, ecological and hydrological systems. To tackle this problem, a research group led by Prof. Feng Jinming from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences produced a 9KM resolution climate projection dataset in central Asia based on dynamically downscaling results of multiple bias-corrected global climate models, which is called HCPD-CA for short. This dataset covers two periods: 1986–2005 and 2031–2050. It utilizes the emission scenario RCP4.5, and includes four geostatic variables and ten meteorological elements, which can be used to drive most of the ecological and hydrological models. Related results were published in Earth System Science Data. In the study, the HCPD-CA dataset was evaluated at various time scales. The results showed that the dataset had high accuracy in describing the historical climatology in central Asia. In addition, the researchers assessed the projected changes (2031–2050 vs. 1986–2005) in the ten meteorology elements. They found that surface air temperature, downwelling shortwave and longwave radiation were expected to significantly increase, with minor changes in other elements. The horizontal resolution of this dataset increases from ≥30KM to 9KM, which largely improves its accuracy, especially in the mountainous regions. Multiple global climate models are used to drive the regional climate model, which can reduce the uncertainties in the downscaled results brought by the driving data. Moreover, the climatology of the driving data is bias-corrected with the reanalysis data, which largely reduces the biases in the regional climate simulations. Central Asia is highly agrarian. To understand the potential impacts of the projected climate changes on the local agricultures in central Asia, the research group also calculated six agroclimatic indicators and analyzed projected changes (2031–2050 vs. 1986–2005) in these indicators. The related study was published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences.

People in Brazil's Amazon rainforest again reel from floods -For the second straight year, inhabitants of Brazil's Amazon rainforest are being overwhelmed by flooding, with hundreds of thousands of people already affected by waters that are still rising. Heavy rainfall in the Amazon over the past two years is associated with the La Nina phenomenon, when Pacific Ocean currents affect global climate patterns, and which scientists say is intensified by climate change. Manaus, the Amazon's largest city, began tracking flood levels in 1902 and has seen seven of its worst floods over the past decade, including this year's. "Unfortunately, severe floods have been happening over and over in the past decade," Luna Gripp, a geosciences researcher who monitors the western Amazon's river levels for the Brazilian Geological Survey, told The Associated Press in a text message. "It is confirmation that extreme climate events are increasing greatly." In Brazil's Amazonas state alone, an estimated 367,000 people have been affected by rising waters, the state's civil defense authority says. The Negro River reached a depth of 29.37 meters (96 feet) Monday at the measuring station in Manaus, compared to the record 30.02 meters registered last year. "I faced last year's flood, and now I'm dealing with the 2022 flood," said Raimundo Reis, a fisherman who lives with his son in Iranduba, a city across the river from Manaus. He is using wooden planks to improvise an elevated floor inside his home and stay above the water. "River-dwelling life is what you see—lots of difficulties and unfulfilled promises. Politicians only come here in the election season," said Reis, who has not received any help from the government. Peak flooding in Manaus typically occurs around mid-June, and it takes weeks—sometimes months—to subside. Last year, the Negro River remained above the 29-meter flood line for 90 days. The Jurua, Purus, Madeira, Solimoes and Amazon rivers are also flooded now, prompting 35 municipalities in Amazonas state to declare states of emergency. Flooding causes significant damage to agriculture, traditionally done in the Amazon close to riverbanks where soil is more fertile, the head of the state's civil defense authority, Charlis Barros, told AP by phone. That makes food distribution one of the most urgent needs at the moment, he said.

Record-low temperatures hit southern Brazil – (city temperature table, video) Temperatures in Brazil began dropping early last week with the approach of Subtropical Storm “Yakecan”1 – eventually reaching unprecedented lows in the country’s south. At least one person has died of hypothermia in Sao Paulo. The Federal District recorded 1.4 °C (34 °F) on May 19 – its coldest temperature in history while Sao Paulo set a new record with 6.6 °C (43.8 °F) on May 18, temperatures unheard of since 1990.2, 3 Belo Horizonte, the capital city of Minas Gerais, recorded 4.4 °C (38.9 °F) – its lowest temperature since 1979. Santa Catarina registered -2 °C (28.4 °F) and the first snowfall in 15 years.

Heavy rains in Brazil's northeast kill at least 35 - (Reuters) - At least 35 people died amid heavy rainfall in northeastern Brazil on Friday and Saturday, as downpours lashed two major cities on the Atlantic coast, in what is the South American nation's fourth major flooding event in five months. In the state of Pernambuco, at least 33 people had died as of Saturday afternoon, as rains provoked landslides that wiped away hillside urban neighborhoods, according to the state's official Twitter account. Another 765 people were forced to leave their homes, at least temporarily, according to the state government. Authorities in the neighboring state of Alagoas had registered two deaths, according to Brazil's federal emergency service. In late December and early January, dozens were killed and tens of thousands displaced when rains hammered Bahia state, also located in northeastern Brazil. At least 18 died in flooding in the southeastern state of Sao Paulo later in January. In February, torrential downpours in the mountains of Rio de Janeiro state killed over 230. While much of Brazil spent the majority of 2021 in a severe drought, unusually intense rains started to arrive in the final months of the year. The often-deadly flooding that followed has provoked debate over the potential role of climate change in Brazil's volatile weather pattern and has focused attention on the nation's often-haphazard urban planning. Many of the deaths on Friday and Saturday occurred in Pernambuco state capital Recife. As in many urban areas in Brazil, many of Recife's neighborhoods have been built in locations vulnerable to land and mudslides.

California is about to begin the nation’s largest dam removal project. Here’s what it means for wildlife — After decades of negotiation, the largest dam-removal project in U.S. history is expected to begin in California’s far north next year. The first of four aging dams on the Klamath River, the 250-mile waterway that originates in southern Oregon’s towering Cascades and empties along the rugged Northern California coast, is on track to come down in fall 2023. Two others nearby and one across the state line will follow. The nearly half-billion dollars needed for the joint state, tribal and corporate undertaking has been secured. The demolition plans are drafted. The contractor is in place. Final approval could come by December. Now, among the last acts of preparation, scientists are trying to make sure the fish and wildlife that are intended to benefit from the emergence of a newly wild river will thrive. While the decision to remove the hydroelectric dams was financial, it was urged — and enabled — by those hoping to see a revival of plants and animals in the Klamath Basin. The native flora and fauna in the region are bound to prosper as algae-infested reservoirs at the dams are emptied, the flow of the river quickens and cools, and river passage swings wide open. “At its heart, this is really a fish-restoration project,” said Mike Belchik, senior fisheries biologist for the Yurok Tribe, which has long lamented the decline of salmon on its ancestral territory in the basin. “That’s why we’re doing this.” In one of the latest and most significant tests of how fish may fare, a team of scientists recently released thousands of juvenile salmon into the rivers and creeks upstream of the dams, areas where fish migrating up the Klamath haven’t been able to go since the dams blocked access more than a century ago. The researchers are tracking these “experimental” salmon with the goal of learning whether more than 300 miles of waterways in the upper Klamath Basin are still navigable and fit for fish. As it stands now, fish swim upriver but are stopped at the dams, an impasse considered detrimental to their numbers. “The landscape is a lot different now than it was,” said Mark Hereford, fish biologist at the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, who is leading the study on fish passage in the Klamath Falls area of Oregon. “There are uncertainties we have about how the fish will do as they migrate through the system.” The concerns run the gamut. Urban development has crowded out wetlands. Recently established invasive fish could prey on natives. Communities may be drawing too much water from rivers and creeks. At stake is nothing less than the future of the cherished chinook salmon run. The fish once numbered in the hundreds of thousands in the Klamath River, making its migration the third largest salmon run on the West Coast. Only populations in the Columbia and Sacramento rivers were bigger.

USDA, Wyo. agree on habitat protections for migrating animals - The Department of Agriculture and the state of Wyoming today announced a set of conservation measures to protect habitat for migratory big game animals. The USDA said it would spend an initial $15 million through existing conservation programs to prevent development of agricultural lands and enroll privately owned land in multiyear contracts to maintain big game habitat. Robert Bonnie, the USDA’s undersecretary for farm production and conservation, announced the arrangement at the University of Wyoming’s Yellowstone National Park 150th anniversary symposium in Cody, Wyo. “Conserving America’s most iconic wildlife and wildlife migration corridors depends on the conservation of private working lands and tribal lands through voluntary, collaborative incentives that reward farmers, ranchers and forest owners for stewardship of their lands,” Bonnie said in a news release, adding that the agreement came through conversations with state officials and local organizations. The effort is a pilot project aimed at encouraging conservation on wide swaths of private lands that might otherwise be developed for uses not compatible with migrating game animals. The department said lessons drawn from the experiment could be applied more widely across the West as part of the Biden administration’s conservation agenda. Among other practices, the money could be used for ensuring that fences used on working agricultural lands are compatible with migrating animals, the department said. Wet meadow restoration, removal of encroaching woods and restoring stands of degraded aspen trees are other examples, the USDA said. Conservation groups in Wyoming praised the initiative. “People respond to market signals. Right now if you are a landowner in Wyoming the two market signals you get are pushing you toward wind and residential development,” Bob Budd, executive director of the Wyoming Wildlife and Natural Resource Trust, said in a news release. “If we want conservation, there has got to be a market signal for conservation.”

EPA proposes protections for Alaska salmon fishery, in blow to proposed mine - The Biden administration is moving toward protections for a major sockeye salmon fishery in Alaska — at the expense of a proposed gold and copper mine. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed a decision that would protect the Bristol Bay watershed, dealing yet another blow to the imperiled Pebble Mine project. The issue has been ongoing for years and has pitted environmentalists, tribes and fishing interests against mining interests. The EPA under former President Trump had allowed the mine to move forward, but the Army Corps of Engineers denied a permit for the project after prominent conservatives including Fox News host Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump Jr. rallied against the move. The Biden administration had previously indicated that it was likely to protect the watershed. In its latest decision on Wednesday, the administration said that the mine’s construction and operation would result in waste discharges into waters, which would result in a loss of fish habitat. “The Bristol Bay watershed is a shining example of how our nation’s waters are essential to healthy communities, vibrant ecosystems, and a thriving economy,” EPA administrator Michael Regan said in a statement. “EPA is committed to following the science, the law, and a transparent public process to determine what is needed to ensure that this irreplaceable and invaluable resource is protected for current and future generations,” he added. The mine’s developer, the Pebble Partnership, condemned the EPA’s proposal as “political.” “As we are still actively working through the established permitting process via our appeal of the Army Corps of Engineers permit denial, we oppose any action that is outside of that process. This preemptive effort is clearly a political conclusion to attempt to block our ability to work through that established process,” Pebble Partnership CEO John Shively said in a statement.

 Zimbabwe Seeks to Sell Supply of Seized Elephant Ivory - Zimbabwe is seeking international support to be permitted to sell its supply of seized elephant ivory. Selling the ivory could earn about $600 million. Officials say the money could be used to support efforts to deal with the country’s fast-growing elephant population. Zimbabwean officials have urged the European Union (EU) and other nations to support the sale of ivory, which has been banned since 1989. The ban was enacted by CITES, the international body that governs the world’s endangered species. Officials from Zimbabwe’s National Parks and Wildlife Management Authority recently showed ambassadors from the EU, Canada and the United States its supply of ivory tusks. The tusks are kept in secure containers in the capital, Harare. They were all seized from poachers and collected from elephants that died. Fulton Mangwanya leads the authority for Zimbabwe. He told The Associated Press the country has about 130 tons of ivory and 6 to 7 tons of rhino horn. Later this month, Zimbabwe will be holding a gathering called an “elephant summit.” Representatives from 14 African countries, as well as from China and Japan, are expected to attend. The purpose of the meeting is to consider ways to manage populations of the world's largest land animal. “We need assistance. These elephants are multiplying at a dangerous rate,” Mangwanya said. Officials in Zimbabwe have said the country’s elephant population is double the number its national parks can safely control. The country is estimated to have 100,000 elephants. Park officials say the elephants are destroying trees and plant life that are necessary for elephants and other wildlife. Zimbabwe's elephant population is getting so big that Mangwanya warned “it will be very difficult for us to do anything but culling, which is opposed by everyone.” Neighboring Botswana has the world's largest elephant population, with more than 130,000. Together, Zimbabwe and Botswana have nearly 50 percent of the world's elephants. The two countries say they are struggling to deal with the expanding numbers. That is why they are seeking permission to sell their supplies of seized tusks. Other African countries, such as Kenya, favor continued bans on all ivory sales in an effort to reduce international trade in ivory. There is a strong illegal trade in ivory driven by international criminal organizations. The organizations pay poachers to kill elephants and remove their ivory tusks. The ivory is then sent to countries where it is used to make jewelry and other products.

Very strong M7.2 earthquake hits southern Peru -A very strong earthquake registered by the USGS as M7.2 hit southern Peru at 12:02 UTC on May 26, 2022. The agency is reporting a depth of 217.8 km (135 miles). EMSC is reporting M7.2 at a depth of 211 km (131 miles).The epicenter was located about 13.1 km (8.1 miles) WNW of Azangaro (population 13 290), 30.3 km (18.8 miles) E of Ayaviri (population 19 310), and 73.4 km (45.6 miles) NNW of Juliaca (population 245 675), PeruSome 800 000 people are living within 100 km (62 miles).24 000 people are estimated to have felt strong shaking, 1 548 000 moderate, and 8 000 000 lightThe USGS issued a Green alert for shaking-related fatalities and economic losses. There is a low likelihood of casualties and damage.Overall, the population in this region resides in structures that are highly vulnerable to earthquake shaking, though some resistant structures exist. The predominant vulnerable building types are mud wall and reinforced/confined masonry construction.Recent earthquakes in this area have caused secondary hazards such as tsunamis and landslides that might have contributed to losses.

Eruption at Bezymianny volcano, Aviation Color Code raised to Orange, Russia - (3 videos) A new eruption took place at Bezymianny volcano in Russia at 20:34 UTC on May 23, 2022. According to the Tokyo VAAC, ash is rising up to 5.2 km (17 000 feet) above sea level, drifting NW.As a result, KVERT raised the Aviation Color Code from Yellow to Orange.Strong fumarole activity, incandescence at the lava dome, and hot avalanches on the eastern flank of the lava dome accompany extrusive-effusive eruption, KVERT said, adding that a gas-steam plume with some amount of ash is extending 30 km (18 miles) NW of the volcano.¹They warned aerosol clouds and ash plumes from hot avalanches could occur at any time, potentially affecting low-flying aircraft.Ash emissions continued into May 24.Activity at the volcano increased on March 14, with new viscous lava flowing out of the dome.²A gas-steam plume with some amount of ash extended about 90 km (55 miles) to the W of the volcano at 22:00 UTC. By 04:20 UTC on March 15, the cloud was extending about 120 km (75 miles) W of the volcano.

High-level eruption at Bezymianny volcano, ash to 15 km (50 000 feet) a.s.l., Russia – (videos) Extrusive-effusive eruption at Bezymianny volcano, Kamchatka, Russia intensified on May 28, 2022, with intense paroxysmal episode and pyroclastic flows. As a result, KVERT raised the Aviation Color Code to Red at 07:26 UTC. Bezymianny was considered extinct before it started erupting in 1955 (VEI 5).According to the Tokyo VAAC, volcanic ash cloud top was reaching 15 km (50 000 feet) above sea level at 08:40 UTC, drifting SE.The distance of the ash cloud was 365 km (227 miles) SE of the volcano at 07:40 UTC.The paroxysmal phase of the explosive eruption has ended by 10:00 UTC, but the volcano’s eruptive activity, with the emission of ash up to 5 km (16 400 feet) a.s.l. continued, KVERT said at 10:07 UTC and lowered the Aviation Color Code back to Orange.¹ Two ash plumes were observed in the satellite images at 10:00 UTC. The first was reaching a height of 9.5 km (31 200 feet) a.s.l. and extending 212 km (131 miles) southeast of the volcano, while the second extended 650 km (403 miles) southeast of the volcano, according to KVERT. The Aviation Color Code was raised from Yellow to Orange on May 23 when eruption at the volcano ejected ash up to 5.2 km (17 000 feet) above sea level.2 Activity at the volcano increased on March 14, with new viscous lava flowing out of the dome.3 A gas-steam plume with some amount of ash extended about 90 km (55 miles) to the W of the volcano at 22:00 UTC. By 04:20 UTC on March 15, the cloud was extending about 120 km (75 miles) W of the volcano.

Strong explosive eruption at Stromboli volcano, Italy - (video) A strong explosive eruption took place at Stromboli volcano, Italy at 14:11 UTC on May 25, 2022. This is the second major eruption at the volcano since May 13.The eruption was registered from several vents in the central-southern area of the crater terrace.¹The activity produced a significant release of lapilli and lava bombs that covered part of the crater terrace and reached Pizzo. Ash cloud produced during the eruption drifted south.The phenomenon was over after about 4 minutes.Seismic activity analysis shows there were 2 explosions with a total of about 2 minutes.All parameters returned to normal levels at 17:53 UTC.A series of strong explosions took place at the volcano on May 13, 2022.²The first event was a moderately strong explosion at 14:42 UTC, followed by a dozen other events over the next three minutes of which the most energetic was at 14:43 UTC.

Asteroid 2022 KG1 flew past Earth at 0.16 LD - - A newly-discovered asteroid designated 2022 KG1 flew past Earth at a distance of just 0.16 LD / 0.00040 AU (60 012 km / 37 408 miles) at 11:11 UTC on May 22, 2022.This is the 57^th known asteroid to fly past Earth within 1 lunar distance and the 5^th so far this month.2022 KG1 belongs to the Aten group of asteroids and has an estimated diameter between 17 and 37 m (55 – 121 feet).Its size is comparable to the Chelyabinsk event of February 15, 2013 – the biggest asteroid outburst since the 1908 Tunguska event and the only asteroid confirmed to have resulted in a large number of injuries.The asteroid exploded some 29.7 km (18.5 miles) above the Russian city of Chelyabinsk at 09:20 YEKT (03:20 UTC) on February 15, 2013, damaging more than 3 000 buildings and injuring over 1 500 people (mostly by broken window glass). Asteroid 2022 KG1 was first observed at ATLAS-HKO, Haleakala, Hawaii on May 23, one day after it made its close approach to our planet.

Potentially Hazardous Asteroid 7335 Near Earth May 27 --NASA is calling it a 'potentially hazardous asteroid,' and it will fly harmlessly past Earth in the coming days. Skywatchers will be able to catch a glimpse of the mile-wide rock --provided they know where to look in the sky. A massive asteroid over a mile wide is about to make a closer-than-normal trip past the Earth near the end of May, an approach so close that it could be spotted in the sky.Asteroids fly past the Earth on a regular basis, but Asteroid 7335 (1989 JA) is bigger than many of them, measuring 1.1 miles (5,900 feet) across. For comparison, it is four times larger than the Empire State Building and more than twice as large as the Burj Khalifa, located in Saudi Arabia, and the tallest building on the planet. It is also about as tall as 350 giraffes.On May 27, the mammoth asteroid will make its closest encounter with our planet since its discovery, but rest assured, it will safely pass by with no threat of impact.Asteroid 7335 was discovered on May 1, 1989, and is one of 2,265 space rocks that NASA has labeled as a "potentially hazardous asteroid."To be considered potentially hazardous, an asteroid has to be at least 460 feet across and come within 4.6 million miles of Earth's orbit around the sun. This may sound close on a cosmic scale, but this distance is more than 19 times farther away than the moon is from the Earth.Near the end of the month, Asteroid 7335 will come within 2.5 million miles of the Earth, which is just over 10 times farther away than the moon. Not only is this the closest that it will come to the planet since its discovery, but this is the closest it will come through at least 2194.

Greenhouse gas pollution trapping almost 50 percent more heat than 30 years ago - Planet-warming gases are trapping more and more heat in the atmosphere, holding in significantly more heat than they were in previous decades, a new assessment has found. The Monday assessment from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) found that human-caused greenhouse gas pollution trapped 49 percent more heat in 2021 than in 1990.“Our measurements show the primary gases responsible for climate change continue rising rapidly, even as the damage caused by climate change becomes more and more clear,” said Ariel Stein, the acting director of NOAA’s Global Monitoring Laboratory, in a statement.Climate change is caused by an increased amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. These increases are primarily driven by human use of fossil fuels.Last year, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said that climate change is “unequivocally” caused by humans.And, it has been linked to more droughts and heat waves, stronger hurricanes and rising sea levels.NOAA found that carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas, which can last more than 1,000 years in the atmosphere, is the biggest contributor. it also found that carbon dioxide levels are responsible for 80 percent of the increased heat tracked by the agency’s Annual Greenhouse Gas Index since 1990.The 2021 increase in the second-biggest greenhouse gas, methane, was the largest increase recorded since the early 1980s. Methane is about 30 times as powerful as carbon dioxide over a 100-year period, but spends less time in the atmosphere.

Climate change is stealing sleep - People around the world are losing sleep over climate change — literally. A new study finds that rising temperatures are eroding hours of rest worldwide. And it’s likely to get worse as the planet gets hotter.The research, published Friday in the journal One Earth, finds that warm nighttimes steal an average of about 44 hours of sleep per person each year. And they cause the average person to suffer from around 11 nights of inadequate sleep — that’s less than seven hours in a night — each year.The findings are the fruit of a simple but vital research tool: sleep-tracking wristbands. The researchers gathered billions of individual sleep measurements collected from more than 47,000 participants across 68 countries around the world. They then paired these observations with weather and climate data from the locations where they were gathered.It’s one of the largest studies of its kind to examine the links between climate change and sleep.“In this study, we provide the first planetary-scale evidence that warmer-than-average temperatures erode human sleep,” lead study author Kelton Minor, a Ph.D. student at the University of Copenhagen, said in a statement.The findings suggest a clear link between night temperatures and the human ability to fall — and stay — asleep. Participants fall asleep later, wake up earlier and generally sleep less during warmer nights.These effects worsen significantly after night temperatures rise above 10 degrees Celsius, or 50 degrees Fahrenheit. And temperatures greater than 77 F increase the risk of a person getting less than seven total hours of sleep in a night, upping the odds by about 3.5 percent compared with a baseline temperature range of 40 to 50 degrees.Some groups are more vulnerable than others.The effects of temperature on sleep loss are about twice as great for people over the age of 65, compared with middle-aged adults. Women seem to be slightly more vulnerable than men. And people in lower-income countries are substantially more vulnerable than people in higher-income countries.The effects appear to be strongest during summers, when temperatures are already at their highest. And they’re also worse in hotter regions than the rest of the world.The bad news doesn’t end there. The findings suggest that humans don’t seem to adjust to higher temperatures over time. The effects are about the same at both the beginning and the end of the summer — in other words, sleep doesn’t get easier the longer the body is exposed to high heat.The findings reinforce the conclusions of other, smaller sleep studies. A 2017 paper — including one of the co-authors from the new study — also found that higher temperatures chip away at nighttime rest. And those findings also revealed that older people and people with lower incomes were more susceptible to the heat.That study relied on self-reported information on interrupted sleep, collected in surveys. By relying on wristbands, the new research takes a more exact approach to the question.

Think climate action is expensive? Inaction could cost $178 trillion. -For centuries, fossil fuels have been associated with prosperity, progress, and growth. But more and more economists say that the continued use of coal, oil, and gas is now driving the world in the opposite direction — toward a lower standard of living and a global economic slump. A new report from the consulting firm Deloitte, released during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Monday, found that if the world stayed on its current course, it would cost $178 trillion over the next 50 years. For perspective, roughly $500 trillion of wealth exists on Earth today. On the other hand, swift action to zero out global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 could add $43 trillion to the global economy over the same period and, according to the analysis, plant the seeds for a green Industrial Revolution. “Economics is on the side of a low-emissions future,” Punit Renjen, CEO of Deloitte Global, wrote in the report’s introduction, declaring that a coordinated, worldwide investment in climate action would “pay handsome dividends for the global economy.” Deloitte’s report says that if the world warmed by 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 Fahrenheit) compared to pre-industrial times, it would hinder economic growth in every region. Economic opportunities would dwindle, since countries would have to spend money on repairing damages from climate change instead of on new innovations, and much of the world’s population would live a worse life. “Translated into human terms, job opportunities would dry up,” the report says. “Crops would fail. Health care spending would rise.” Economic models can sometimes be narrow in scope, but the researchers at Deloitte attempted to provide a fuller picture of the damages that global warming will inflict. They accounted for changing weather patterns, sea-level rise, and the spread of disease, calculating the toll on the labor force’s productivity, urban and agricultural land, infrastructure, people’s health, crop yields, and tourism. “That’s what we factor now into the baseline,” said Pradeep Philip, a partner at the Deloitte Economics Institute in Australia and one of the paper’s authors. “Most economic analysis assumes that economies will grow on-trend, and that’s because they don’t take into account these factors.”

New Study Says World Must Cut Short-Lived Climate Pollutants as Well as Carbon Dioxide to Meet Paris Agreement Goals - Climate policies that rely on decarbonization alone are not enough to hold atmospheric warming below 2 degrees Celsius and, rather than curbing climate change, would fuel additional warming in the near term, a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concludes. The study found that limiting warming in coming decades as well as longer term requires policies that focus not only on reducing emissions of carbon dioxide, but also of “short-lived climate pollutants”—greenhouse gases including methane and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs)—along with black carbon, or soot.“We’re simultaneously in two races to avert climate catastrophe,” said Gabrielle Dreyfus, chief scientist for the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development and lead author of the study. “We have to win the sprint to slow warming in the near term by tackling the short-lived climate pollutants, so that we can stay in the race to win the marathon against CO2.”The study used climate models to assess how the planet would respond if countries addressed climate change solely through decarbonization efforts—namely transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable energy—without reining in methane and other short-lived but potent climate pollutants.The authors found that decarbonization-only efforts would actually result in increased warming over the near term. This is because burning fossil fuels emits both carbon dioxide and sulfates. Unlike carbon dioxide, which warms the planet and remains in the atmosphere for centuries, sulfate particles reflect sunlight back into space but only remain in the atmosphere for several days, so they have a powerful, but short-lived cooling effect. The continual release of sulfates through the ongoing burning of fossil fuels currently offsets roughly half a degree of warming that the planet would otherwise experience from the carbon dioxide emissions of fossil fuel combustion, Dreyfus said. Transitioning to renewable energy will quickly remove the short-term curb on warming provided by sulfate emissions, and the planet will continue to heat up for a couple of decades before the longer-term cooling from cutting carbon dioxide emissions takes hold, she added. If, however, emissions of methane, HFCs, soot and nitrous oxide occur at the same time as decarbonization, both near-term and long-term warming can be reduced, Dreyfus said.

New measurements from Northern Sweden show less methane emission than feared --It is widely understood that thawing permafrost can lead to significant amounts of methane being released. However, new research shows that in some areas, this release of methane could be a tenth of the amount predicted from a thaw. The research was conducted in Sweden by an international group that includes researchers from the University of Copenhagen. A crucial, yet an open question is how much precipitation the future will bring. Permafrost runs like a frozen belt of soil and sediment around Earth's northern arctic and sub-arctic tundra. As permafrost thaws, microorganisms are able to break down thousands of years-old accumulations of organic matter. This process releases a number of greenhouse gases. One of the most critical gasses is methane; the same gas emitted by cattle whenever they burp and fart. Because of this, scientists and public agencies have long feared methane emissions from permafrost to rise in step with global temperatures. But, in some places, it turns out that methane emissions are lower than once presumed. In a comprehensive new study by a collaborative from the University of Gothenburg, Ecole Polytechnique in France and the Center for Permafrost (CENPERM) at the University of Copenhagen, researchers measured the release of methane from two localities in Northern Sweden. Permafrost disappeared from one of the locations in the 1980s, and 10 to 15 years later in the other. The difference between the two areas shows what can happen as a landscape gradually adapts to the absence of permafrost. The results show that the first area to lose its permafrost now has methane emissions ten times less than in the other locality. This is due to gradual changes in drainage and the spread of new plant species. The study's findings were recently published in the journal Global Change Biology.

Could Google’s Carbon Emissions Have Effectively Doubled Overnight? - The temperature in parts of the Antarctic was seventy degrees Fahrenheit above normal in mid-March. Pakistan and India saw their hottest March and April in more than half a century, and the temperature in areas of the subcontinent is above a hundred and twenty degrees this week. Temperatures in Chicago last week topped those in Death Valley. But, on Tuesday, three nonprofit environmental groups jointly released a report containing a different set of numbers that appear to be nearly as scary. They indicate that the world’s biggest companies—and, indeed, any company or individual with cash in the bank—have been inadvertently fuelling the climate crisis. Such cash, left in banks and other financial institutions that lend to the fossil-fuel industry, builds pipelines and funds oil exploration and, in the process, produces truly immense amounts of carbon. The report raises deep questions about the sanity of our financial system, but it also suggests a potential realignment of corporate players that could move decisively to change the balance of power which has so far thwarted rapid climate action.To grasp the implications of the new numbers, consider Google’s parent company, Alphabet. It has worked hard to rein in the emissions from its products. Last year, for example, Google Sustainability published an account of the work it put into having casing suppliers convert from using virgin to recycled aluminum for Google’s new Pixel 5 phone, an immense effort involving everyone from the metallurgy team—which, the company said, “studied the chemical compositions of different recycled aluminum alloys and grades, looking for an optimal combination of alloying elements to meet our performance standards”—to executives who had “to go far upstream in the supply chain to the source that was supplying our aluminum, then negotiate a new type of deal that they’d never done before.” All this was done, Google said, in order to “lower the carbon footprint of manufacturing the enclosure by 35 percent.” It’s the kind of grinding work that goes on day after day at companies that take the climate crisis seriously.But, according to the new report, these efforts have missed perhaps the most important source of corporate emissions: the money that these companies earn and then store in banks, equities, and bonds. The consortium of environmental groups—the Climate Safe Lending Network, the Outdoor Policy Outfit, and BankFWD—examined corporate financial statements to find out how much cash the world’s biggest companies had on hand, and then calculated how much carbon each dollar sitting in the financial system may have generated. According to these calculations, Google’s carbon emissions, in effect, would have risen a hundred and eleven per cent overnight. Meta’s emissions would have increased by a hundred and twelve per cent, and Apple’s by sixty-four per cent. For Microsoft in 2021, the report claims, “the emissions generated by the company’s $130 billion in cash and investments were comparable to the cumulative emissions generated by the manufacturing, transporting, and use of every Microsoft product in the world.” Amazon, too, has worked to cut emissions; it plans to run its delivery fleet on electric trucks, for instance. But in 2020, the report claims, its “$81 billion in cash and financial investments still generated more carbon emissions than emissions generated by the energy Amazon purchased to power all their facilities across the world—its fulfillment centers, data centers, physical stores.” Also according to the report, in 2021, the annual emissions from Netflix’s cash would have been ten times larger than what was produced by everyone in the world streaming their programming—which is to say, Netflix and heat.

Supreme Court rejects red states’ bid to block Biden accounting metric -- The Supreme Court is rebuffing an attempt from red states to block the Biden administration from using a key climate accounting metric in its decision-making. In a new order on Thursday, the high court denied the states’ request to review a ruling that enabled the Biden administration to use the climate impacts measurement. The order did not provide insight into the court’s reasoning. The tool in question, known as the “social costs” of greenhouse gases, is a set of values that help the government calculate the climate costs or benefits of its actions. For example, the values may be used to help the government quantify the benefits of a regulation that prevents planet-warming carbon dioxide from being released into the air or the additional damage that could be caused by approving a project that emits a lot of it. The Obama, Trump and Biden administrations have all used social cost values for greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, but the Trump administration put a much lower cost on their release. A higher cost of these gases may be used to justify taking more stringent climate actions, while a lower cost could justify actions that are less stringent.

An Honest Look At Direct Air Capture's Promise And Pitfalls - At the most basic level, carbon-capture technology is not new, but it has attracted a lot more attention in recent years amid discussions about how best to transition to a net-zero world by 2050. Efforts to ramp up carbon capture have faced a number of hurdles, however, including the difficulty in capturing some emissions at the point where they’re generated. That’s where direct air capture (DAC) — which essentially works as a large-scale air filter and can be located just about anywhere — comes into play. In today’s RBN blog, we take a closer look at the still-emerging technology and its limitations, a project in Iceland that is the largest currently in operation, and plans by Occidental Petroleum to make Texas home to the world’s largest DAC facility. We’ve already covered a lot of topics related to carbon capture in this blog series, starting with the basics of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). Then we covered the federal 45Q tax credit and legislation that could expand its size and reach to encourage more CCS projects as well as some of the underlying economic and technological reasons why project successes have been limited so far. We followed that up by checking out some of the projects aiming to capture carbon including the Houston CCS Innovation Zone, the biggest project currently taking shape, along with three proposals to capture emissions from ethanol plants in the Midwest that were also the subject of a recent Drill Down Report.More recently we examined why variable costs can make some projects uneconomic, which is an especially important factor in the development of DAC technology. Carbon-capture projects are the most economic when CO₂emissions are highly concentrated, making them easiest to capture. For that reason, ethanol production, ammonia production and natural gas processing — each with a CO₂ source stream concentration of 99% or higher — are ideal candidates for carbon capture, which is why there are several projects planning to do just that. The central challenge for DAC technology is that it operates at the other extreme, as CO₂ makes up only about 0.04% of regular air.DAC technology also faces a dilemma about costs and development, sometimes referred to as the Innovation Valley of Death, or the time between a technology’s initial research-and-development financing — currently aided by government support — and its viability on a commercial scale. The Orca plant has cited $600-$800/MT for carbon-capture credits, several times the current price of a European Union (EU) permit to emit carbon, which has traded around $90/MT this year, and well above forecasts that see carbon permits hitting $200/MT by 2030. With DAC prices that high, it could be difficult to find enough customers to develop the technology on a larger scale, which in theory would allow prices to fall and draw in more users. Climeworks has said recently that costs could fall to $250-$300/MT by the end of the 2020s, but that scale-up would need to happen quickly for that to become a reality. Climeworks has said that advance sales of its DAC credits are allowing it to raise financing for future plants. Another challenge for DAC is its extremely limited scale, at least for the projects currently in operation. If the Orca plant runs as designed, it’ll pull 4,000 MT of CO₂ from the air every year. If the site were 100 times larger and pulled out 400,000 MT each year, that would still only be the equivalent of about 21 MMcf/d. By comparison, the Houston CCS Innovation Zone, the largest CCS project taking shape worldwide, aims to store up to 50 million MT each year by 2030, and perhaps twice that much by 2040. To put both of those numbers in perspective, the IEA said global CO₂ emissions hit 36.3 billion MT in 2021.

Colorado pipeline operator strikes carbon sequestration deal with food giant ADM - A Denver-area natural gas pipeline company plans to transport captured carbon dioxide emissions from a food processing plant in eastern Nebraska and sequester it deep underground at a new facility in Wyoming.Tallgrass Energy, a Leawood, Kansas-based company with its operations based out of Lakewood, struck a deal with food giant ADM to carry pure carbon dioxide gas emissions from a corn processing plant in Columbus, Nebraska, in a repurposed pipeline. It will pump the greenhouse gas into permanent underground storage 400 miles west at a Tallgrass sequestration site southeast of Cheyenne.The project will require moving some natural gas customers off Tallgrass Energy’s Trailblazer pipeline, which runs east from near Cheyenne and the Colorado border to Beatrice, Nebraska, and repurposing the pipeline for westbound carbon dioxide transport ending at the Wyoming sequestration hub the company is developing.The project is a good fit for Tallgrass, said Kyle Quackenbush, segment president for Tallgrass.“What we do well is large-scale infrastructure projects, particularly in the energy space,” he said.The ADM carbon dioxide sequestration is scheduled to start in 2024.The companies didn’t disclose how much CO2 from the ADM corn processing facility would be sequestered.Environmental Protection Agency records show the plant producing between 815,000 and 1.3 million metric tons of CO2 emissions annually in recent years.“ADM is meeting growing customer demand, advancing our strategy and living up to our purpose by continuing to lead in the decarbonization of our industry,” said Chris Cuddy, president of ADM’s carbohydrate solutions business, in a statement. “Earlier this year, we announced an agreement that would allow us to sequester carbon from two of our biggest processing facilities in the U.S., and now we’re looking forward to working with Tallgrass to continue our work toward meeting our decarbonization goals.”

Supervisors get update on Summit carbon pipeline --A representative for Summit Carbon Solutions, one of the two companies planning carbon pipelines through the state, gave an update on the project to the Webster County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.Paul Phillips, with TurnKey Logistics of Houston on behalf of Summit, told the supervisors that construction of the pipeline is projected to start in the summer of 2023. He said the company is about 60 percent complete with land easement acquisitions in Iowa.The carbon pipeline’s purpose will be to capture carbon emissions from 32 ethanol plants — including 11 in Iowa — and transport the carbon to a location in North Dakota, where it can be permanently sequestered, Phillips said.“Fifty percent of the corn produced in Iowa is used for ethanol production,” he said. “So we are building this pipeline to directly benefit the citizens of Iowa and benefit the citizens of Webster County.”During its April 26 meeting, the Board of Supervisors signed a letter to the Iowa Utilities Board to record its objection to the use of eminent domain for carbon capture pipeline projects. Many Webster County land owners who would be impacted by the Summit pipeline — as well as the Navigator CO2 pipeline — have publicly opposed the projects.If built, the Summit pipeline will snake along the eastern side of Webster County, entering south of Vincent, running northwest of Duncombe, south to Lehigh and then southwest between Harcourt and Dayton, before crossing into Boone County.According to a factsheet Phillips gave the county supervisors, the project’s total investment in Webster County will be nearly $28 million, with an additional $1 million annually in new property taxes.

Lessons from Dakota Access Pipeline Shape Farmers' Battle Over Proposed Carbon Pipelines | Nebraska Public Media - Keith Puntenney is still feeling the impacts from the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline through a corner of his central Iowa farmland.Three acres of the land isn’t worth planting, Puntenney said, five years after part of the 1,200-mile pipeline was put under his land to carry crude oil from North Dakota to Illinois. He says the soil is compacted and doesn’t get the same yields.“They promised that they would remediate the soil,” he said. “They never did.”Now another pipeline, this one carrying carbon dioxide, could be adjacent to another section of Puntenney’s farm.“Déjà vu,” he said. “This is just … the same thing, different day.”Iowa company Summit Carbon Solutions is proposing the pipeline that would run near Puntenney’s land. It would capture carbon dioxide emissions from ethanol plants in Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, Minnesota and North Dakota and pipe them underground to be stored in underground rock formations in North Dakota.Two other companies are also proposing pipelines elsewhere in Iowa that would travel into several Midwestern states. While the projects are aimed at making the ethanol industry greener and more sustainable, farmers' issues with the Dakota Access Pipeline are setting the stage for another fight over land. “The issues that I experienced and still experience five years later are not ending,” Puntenney said. “They’re just going to happen to somebody else.”Keith Puntenney's history with the Dakota Access Pipeline started long before construction and shows how difficult it could be for farmers to keep pipelines from their property.After the crude oil pipeline was announced in 2014, he worried what would happen if oil from the pipeline spilled and opposed its construction. But the Iowa Utilities Board signed off on the project, allowing the pipeline company to seize peoples’ private land through eminent domain. Puntenney, a retired tax attorney, fought the board and the pipeline all the way to the Iowa Supreme Court, where the high court sided with the utilities board. It was a bitter disappointment.Eminent domain, the power of the government to seize peoples’ private property for a public purpose, has been used for projects such as water infrastructure, highway and pipelines, said University of Iowa law professor Shannon Roesler.“One of the first things you learn in law school in your first year property class is that property rights are a lot less absolute than you probably assumed,” Roesler said.

Biden releases plan to avoid 'dangerous' CO2 pipeline failures - E&E News -The Biden administration yesterday stepped into a debate about the safety of carbon dioxide pipelines, announcing plans for new safety rules and seeking a nearly $4 million fine for a rupture two years ago in Mississippi that sent at least 45 people to the hospital. The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration also rolled out several other CO2 pipeline measures, including a 269-page investigative report on the failure in Mississippi and an updated safety advisory to the industry. The package is designed to protect the public from “dangerous pipeline failures” and address concerns that have been voiced about proposals to ship carbon dioxide underground to reduce the climate effects of fossil fuel production (Energywire, March 31). The $3,866,734 fine is the largest fine ever sought by PHMSA. “The safety of the American people is paramount and we’re taking action to strengthen CO2 pipeline safety standards to better protect communities, our first responders, and our environment,” PHMSA Deputy Administrator Tristan Brown, the top administration official at the Transportation Department agency, said in a news release. Advocates of carbon capture, utilization and storage said they welcome safety rules for pipelines, which they say have an excellent safety track record. “CO2 pipelines are actually some of the safest infrastructure that we’ve built in terms of all of the infrastructure that’s going to be necessary to mitigate climate change,” said Jessie Stolark, the public policy and member relations manager at the Carbon Capture Coalition. The February 2020 rupture in Mississippi has become a rallying cry for some pipeline opponents in the Midwest, where several projects have been proposed to carry captured carbon dioxide from ethanol plants. In the Mississippi incident, a pipeline owned by Plano, Texas-based Denbury Inc. was snapped by a landslide. Its contents, mixed with deadly hydrogen sulfide, were intended to be used for enhanced recovery of oil. The rupture caused a blast that left a crater 40 feet deep. A plume of liquid CO2 grew, crested a hill and crept west on the windless night until it reached the village of Satartia, Miss. Carbon dioxide is not toxic, but a cloud of it can displace oxygen and asphyxiate people. It is heavier than air and spreads along the ground until it dissipates. People in and around Satartia reported sensing the rotten-egg odor of hydrogen sulfide, then feeling dizzy or even passing out. PHMSA’s accident investigation and penalty notice released yesterday allege a cascade of failures by Denbury before and during the incident. Denbury failed to tell emergency officials and some people living near the line about the dangers if the pipeline were to rupture, the reports say, and gave no information about what to do. An in-depth investigation of the Satartia rupture by the Climate Investigations Center found that dispatchers initially told panicked callers that there had been a natural gas leak. PHMSA said emergency officials initially thought they were responding to a chlorine leak. The company “significantly” underestimated the size of the area likely to be affected by a release of CO2, PHMSA said, and failed to address known dangers to the pipeline such as landslides, conducted inadequate monitoring of the ground above the pipeline and took too long to notify officials after the blast.

SEC proposes regulations aimed at cracking down on ESG greenwashing --New federal rules released Wednesday could help ensure that investment funds labeled as environment, social and governance (ESG) actually deserve the name — and the high fees they command.The Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed a new regulation to combat the practice of “greenwashing,” the misleading marketing of unsustainable investments under the ESG label.If adopted, the measure would require funds marketing themselves as ESG-focused to disclose additional information to investors. Different categories of funds would be required to report varied information. Those that are focused on considering environmental factors would be required to share the climate contributions associated with their investments and those that claim to have certain impacts would need to summarize their progress. “The lack of specific disclosure requirements tailored to ESG investing creates the risk that funds and advisers marketing such strategies may exaggerate their ESG practices or the extent to which their investment products or services take into account ESG factors,” it said. A related rule, also introduced Wednesday, would require any fund that labeled itself as ESG-focused to put at least 80 percent of its money into such investments.“ESG encompasses a wide variety of investments and strategies. I think investors should be able to drill down to see what’s under the hood of these strategies,” SEC Chair Gary Genslersaid in the statement.

How an Organized Republican Effort Punishes Companies for Climate Action - In West Virginia, the state treasurer has pulled money from BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, because the Wall Street firm has flagged climate change as an economic risk. In Texas, a new law bars the state’s retirement and investment funds from doing business with companies that the state comptroller says are boycotting fossil fuels. Conservative lawmakers in 15 other states are promoting similar legislation. And officials in Utah and Idaho have assailed a major ratings agency for considering environmental risks and other factors, in addition to the balance sheet, when assessing states’ creditworthiness. Across the country, Republican lawmakers and their allies have launched a campaign to try to rein in what they see as activist companies trying to reduce the greenhouse gases that are dangerously heating the planet. “We’re an energy state, and energy accounts for hundreds of millions of dollars of tax revenue for us,” said Riley Moore, the West Virginia state treasurer. “All of our jobs come from coal and gas. I mean, this is who we are. This is part of our way of life here in the state. And they’re telling us that these industries are bad.” “We have an existential threat here,” Mr. Moore said. “We have to fight back.” In doing so, Mr. Moore and others have pushed climate change from the scientific realm into the political battles already raging over topics like voting rights, abortion and L.G.B.T.Q. issues. In recent months, conservatives have moved beyond tough words and used legislative and financial leverage to pressure the private sector to drop climate action and any other causes they label as “woke.” “There is a coordinated effort to chill corporate engagement on these issues,” said Daniella Ballou-Aares, chief executive of the Leadership Now Project, a nonprofit organization that wants corporations to address threats to democracy. “And it is an effective campaign. Companies are starting to go into hiding.” The pushback has been spearheaded by a group of Republican state officials that has reached out to financial organizations, facilitated media appearances and threatened to punish companies that, among other things, divest from fossil fuels. They have worked alongside a nonprofit organization that has run television ads, dispatched roaming billboard trucks and rented out a Times Square billboard criticizing BlackRock for championing what they call woke causes, including environmentalism. These efforts come after years during which many in the financial sector boasted that they were prioritizing environmental, social and governance issues, also known as ESG, rather than pure profits. That activism has often put companies at odds with the Republican Party, traditionally the ally of big business. In 2015, Salesforce and other big employers threatened to leave Indiana after the state passed, and then quickly rolled back, a law that would have allowed businesses to refuse service to gay customers. Nike faced a fierce backlash for its 2018 ad featuring Colin Kaepernick, the former N.F.L. quarterback who knelt during the national anthem to protest racism and police brutality.

Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Corner: No time to waste - -The old cliche goes that, when you’re in a hole and trying to get out, you first stop digging. That is the opposite of what we’re doing when it comes to fossil fuels and derivative industries like plastics and petrochemicals amidst global climate, biodiversity loss, pollution, and contamination crises.A study published last Tuesday in the journal Environmental Research Letters lead by researchers at Oil Change International estimates that “40% of fossil fuel reserves at currently operational development sites across the globe must be left in the ground if the world is to have a 50-50 chance of adequately slashing carbon emissions and limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius [above a preindustrial baseline] or below,” as referenced in an article for the media outlet Common Dreams. This is in addition to the finding by the International Energy Agency in 2021 that no new oil and gas exploitation and development and no new coal-fired power plants must come about in order to stay on a safe climate path and meet the goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.These sound scientific findings are being ignored. According to reporting in The Guardian, the 28 largest producers of oil and gas made close to $100 billion in combined profits in just the first three months of 2022. A study soon-to-be published in the journal Energy Policy has found that fracking projects across U.S. lands and waters will release 140 billion metric tons of planet-heating gases if fully realized. The study found that the emissions from these oil and gas “carbon bomb”projects would be four times larger than all of the planet-heating gases expelled globally each year, according to Guardian reporting.  Even the “solutions” being proposed by the fossil fuels and related industries are mostly bunk.  While hydrogen shows promise for decarbonization of hard-to-decarbonize sectors like aviation, shipping, and the production of steel and cement, blue hydrogen or other hydrogen color codes derived from fossil fuels will release massive amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas 86-times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat over a 20-year period and continue other massive pollution and contamination problems. And Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage (CCUS) is prohibitively expensive, not proven at anywhere near scale, and dangerous in its own right.

Biden Is Preparing To Crush A Historic Climate Change Lawsuit A vital effort to establish a legal right to a living planet could soon move forward — but the Biden administration is trying to stop it. - Any day now, a federal circuit court is expected to deliver a ruling that would allow a historic climate change lawsuit to proceed to trial.If and when the case moves forward, however, it faces a major obstacle: President Joe Biden’s Justice Department.The lawsuit, Juliana v. United States, was brought by 21 young plaintiffs in 2015 and seeks to establish a federal, constitutional right to a livable planet. If the case is successful, any federal policies that enable more fossil fuel development could be challenged as unconstitutional.But the Obama and Trump administrations both vehemently fought the lawsuit, and now those close to the case say that Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) has indicated it will also use every procedural tool at its disposal to prevent the lawsuit from ever getting a trial.“I have asked [them] very directly, if we win this motion, and we can move forward with the case, do you intend to go to trial?” Julia Olson, the lead plaintiff’s lawyer, told The Lever. “Their response has always been something along the lines of, ‘It is our position that the court doesn’t have jurisdiction and that this case should never go to trial.’”Juliana v. United States was ambitious from the start. The plaintiffs are asking a federal court system, stacked with right-wing judges backed by the fossil fuel industry, to enshrine a constitutional right to a livable climate. But the plaintiffs point to what they’ve pulled off thus far as evidence it’s achievable.For example, Oregon District Court Judge Ann Aiken wrote in a procedural ruling on the case in 2016, “I have no doubt that the right to a climate system capable of sustaining human life is fundamental to a free and ordered society.” That was the first time a federal U.S. judge declared that such a constitutional right existed.The case has widespread support from public officials: Last year, six state attorneys general filed an amicus brief in support of the case, and 48 congresspeople wrote to the Biden Justice Department in support of the plaintiffs. The matter is also beginning to capture public attention; the lawsuit is the subject of a newly released Netflix documentary, “YOUTH v GOV”.

ESG Crusade On Backburner As World Grapples With Energy Crisis -The ESG investment momentum has run up against energy supply disruptions since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. As shareholders at the biggest energy companies are asked to vote—again—on various climate resolutions, many investors continue to call for more transparent and detailed plans for how firms intend to align with the Paris Agreement goals. Others, such as the world’s top asset manager, BlackRock, expect to support fewer shareholder proposals this AGM season compared to 2021 as it finds that climate-related shareholder proposals have become unduly more prescriptive and micromanaging.Sure, large institutional investors are not abandoning the ESG trend or insistence that companies need to be prepared to change as the energy transition progresses. But some, including BlackRock, acknowledge the current energy market pressures and the need for investment in both traditional and renewable energy sources. Fund managers want companies to double down on the energy transition, which has become an even more urgent topic of conversation after the Russian war in Ukraine and Europe’s subsequent struggles to cut—and ultimately eliminate—its dependence on Russian fossil fuels. Yet, energy security and economic stability in the short term appear to override the longer-term drive to accelerate the transition toward green energy sources. Investors are also looking to shift their focus onto actual outcomes instead of on simplified ESG ratings that are based on policy statements. BlackRock: Investment In Both Traditional And Renewable Energy Needed BlackRock said in early May that “many of the climate-related shareholder proposals coming to a vote in 2022 are more prescriptive or constraining on companies and may not promote long-term shareholder value.”“Importantly, in the context of voting on shareholder proposals regarding climate-related risk, companies face particular challenges in the near term, given under-investment in both traditional and renewable energy, exacerbated by current geo-political tensions,” BlackRock Investment Stewardship (BIS) said. “This set of dynamics will — at least in the short- and medium-term — drive a need for companies that invest in both traditional and renewable sources of energy and we believe the companies that do that effectively will produce attractive returns for our clients.” That’s why BlackRock is likely to back proportionately fewer climate-related resolutions this proxy season than in 2021, as it does not consider them to be consistent with its clients’ long-term financial interests, the asset manager said.

White House weighing waiving smog rules on gasoline to lower pump price - sources - The White House is considering waiving U.S. gasoline environmental rules aimed at reducing summertime smog as a way to combat rising pump prices, according to three sources involved in the discussions. Refiners and blenders are required to avoid lower-cost components like butane in summer gasoline, but the White House is weighing suspending that rule to help lower fuel costs. The components help elevate gasoline’s reid vapor pressure, which contributes to smog at higher levels.

Diesel Prices Jump 37% in 10 Weeks, Gas Prices Projected to Hit $6.20 by August | AgWeb - The White House is considering waiving U.S. gasoline environmental rules aimed at reducing summertime smog, hoping the waiver will combat rising pump prices, Reuters reported, citing three sources involved in the discussions. Retailers are required to sell summer-blend gas from June 1 to Sept. 15. In the past, the U.S. government has waived those requirements regionally or nationally to deal with hurricanes or other supply issues. The Biden administration has already lifted the restriction on summer sales of E15. The waiver under consideration would apply to all grades of gasoline, the sources said. The Reuters report indicates the blending items are things like butane and that such a move to waive the smog rules would apply to all grades of gasoline and does not signal any impact for ethanol. "These pollutants have severe impacts on public health and would likely exacerbate the inequity in air quality that BIPOC communities already bear,” activist green groups including Friends of the Earth, National Wildlife Federation and Sierra Club, wrote to EPA Administrator Michael Regan on Monday. The “potential savings from this measure are limited, while the climate impacts are irreversible. Solutions to oil price hikes lie elsewhere.”This comes as gas prices are at record highs — a dollar more than one year ago — and one J.P. Morgan analyst predicted prices could reach $6.20 per gallon by August. U.S. average retail prices for ultra-low-sulfur diesel rose more than 37% in just 10 weeks after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, setting a new nominal record of $5.62 a gallon in the week ended May 9, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.The Biden administration is considering a release of diesel fuel from federal reserves to address surging prices and the threat of supply outages on the East Coast. Officials have drafted an emergency declaration as prices have soared to record highs in recent weeks, White House spokeswoman Emilie Simons said on Twitter on Monday. Such a declaration would allow for the quick release of some of the 1 million barrels of diesel in the Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve “if necessary,” she said. While the reserve only contains about one day’s supply, and might not substantially reduce diesel prices, it could prevent spot outages of the fuel, an official said. Diesel has outpaced gasoline prices because of refinery closings and because Russia was such a big supplier of refined fuels into Europe, causing ripple effects world-wide.

Stellantis CEO Warns Of Impending EV Battery Shortage As 'Greenification' Hits Snag - The latest sign the rapid transition to a green economy could soon hit a snag is a warning from the world's fourth-largest carmaker about an approaching electric vehicle (EV) battery shortage. Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares expects a shortage of EV batteries by 2024-25, according to CNBC. He then said the adoption of EVs by 2027-28 will slow due to a lack of raw materials for vehicles. "The speed at which we are trying to move all together for the right reason, which is fixing the global warming issue, is so high that the supply chain and the production capacities have no time to adjust," Tavares said. President Biden's ambitious target of 50% EV sale shares in the U.S. by 2030 could hit a brick wall unless domestic supply chains are strengthened and raw materials for battery-making are adequately sourced. Tavares said new EV regulations to phase out traditional internal combustion are too aggressive and urged lawmakers to stop moving targets for EVs forward. He expects a battery shortage will first emerge and then a lack of raw materials for the vehicles."You'll see that the electrification path, which is a very ambitious one, in a time window that has been set by the administrations is going to bump on the supply side," the CEO added, who runs the world's fourth-largest carmaker, with brands such as Chrysler, Dodge, Ram, Jeep, Abarth, Alfa Romeo, Lancia, Maserati, and others. A shortage of batteries and raw materials will drive the spread of EV-combustion average car prices even wider. The average cost of an EV is around $60k, versus $46k for all other vehicles. That's a difference of $14k. The spread will continue to widen as battery costs increase, thus making EVs unaffordable for most people. And it's not just EVs that could soon run into trouble. Greenify the nation's power grid could result in power shortfalls across the western half of the US because grid operators have removed too much power capacity through retiring fossil fuel power plants and have yet to bring enough solar and wind to satisfy the increasing demand. This may trigger a summer of power blackouts. What's deeply depressing is that elected and unelected officials forcing this green transition have taken no accountability for their actions upon mishaps. Thank the billionaires at Davos for this mess, who want the masses to own nothing, drive EVs, and eat bugs.

Lithium mine investments lag behind EV supply chain —An important lesson from our many supply chain snarls is that upstream shortages can cause major downstream jams.Short on lumber? That’ll crimp wooden pallet supplies and disrupt goods transport. Short on aluminum? You’ll have to wait longer for that can of soda. Short on chips? That’ll shut down entire car plants.The electric vehicle supply chain is similarly exposed to raw material shortages. And there’s an added problem: investments in downstream EV factories and battery plants are outstripping investments in upstream lithium mining.“There’s a very significant imbalance,” says Keith Phillips, CEO of mining company Piedmont Lithium, referring to the whole EV supply chain. “There’s an immense amount of capital going into the construction of vehicle plants and battery plants, and there’s not nearly enough capital going into lithium production…that means many of [the EV and battery plants] will be empty.”Indeed, the battery materials consultancy Benchmark Minerals calculates that the downstream of EV supply chain is growing at twice the pace of upstream mining and processing. ”Something drastic needs to happen to close this gap if one of the key pillars of the [energy transition]is to exist at scale,” the consultancy’s CEO Simon Moores noted on Twitter this month. A number of factors can explain the EV supply chain’s lopsidedness.First, lithium projects take a lot longer to build, get permitted, and ramp up, notes Phillips. He would know. Piedmont’s flagship project is slated to be one of the US’s first new and major lithium mines when it opens. But the permitting process, which Phillips says is far more complicated and lengthy than in Australia or China, has taken years and is still not completed.Second, Phillips thinks EV companies were slow to fully appreciate the enormity of lithium demand. “In the past, these car companies haven’t had to deal with difficulties in procuring steering wheels and windshields or seats. They never really had a shortage of this before,” he said. That’s now starting to change. Take Tesla: its CEO Elon Musk wants the company to get into lithium mining as a way to secure supplies and control costs.

Biden moves to protect major Alaska watershed from mining -The Biden administration on Wednesday moved to ban the disposal of mining waste in Alaska's Bristol Bay watershed, potentially halting the controversial Pebble Mine project that's been disputed for more than a decade.If finalized, the proposal from the Environmental Protection Agency would protect one of the world's largest salmon fisheries and block a plan to mine in the southern Alaska watershed for copper, gold and other metals.The EPA's action to end a years-long battle between Alaska Natives and the mining industry is part of President Joe Biden's broader goal to conserve 30% of the country's land and waters by 2030, as well as restore biodiversity and protect wilderness from climate change.The Bristol Bay watershed has supported critical wildlife and a $2 billion commercial fishing industry that has long sustained Alaska Native communities and attracted travelers to the region.EPA officials, citing the Clean Water Act of 1972, found that waste associated with the mining plan could result in "unacceptable adverse effects" on the watershed's fishery, including the permanent destruction of 8.5 miles of streams that would displace or kill the salmon."The Bristol Bay watershed is a shining example of how our nation's waters are essential to healthy communities, vibrant ecosystems, and a thriving economy," EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a statement."EPA is committed to following the science, the law, and a transparent public process to determine what is needed to ensure that this irreplaceable and invaluable resource is protected for current and future generations," Regan said.However, the company behind the mine plan, Pebble Limited Partnership, said it's still working to get a permit and called the EPA's move a "giant step backwards" for the administration's climate change goals."I find it ironic that the President is using the Defense Production Act to get more renewable energy minerals such as copper into production while others in the administration seek political ways to stop domestic mining projects such as ours," John Shively, the company's CEO, said in a statement.

Helium: Longtime 'canary in the coal mine' signals more trouble - Today, helium (the gaseous element, not the cryptocurrency) is in the headlines because there is an acute shortage. I first called attention to a coming helium shortage back in 2009 with a piece entitled "Let's party 'til the helium's gone." It appears that that is precisely what global society has done in the 13 years since.The story of helium is a cautionary tale for it has provided a canary-like signal for many years that all was not well with our way life. I once more wrote about mounting troubles in the helium market in 2013 and again in 2019. For each and every resource, we as a society have assumed that we will always find the substitutes we need in the quantities we require at the prices we can afford by the time we need them. We are now testing that belief with regard to helium and other materials such as certain rare earth elements which are used in a wide variety of modern technologies such as consumer and military electronics and alternative energy equipment.Helium is emblematic of the resource problem we face. First, helium is an element. As such, it cannot be manufactured from other more abundant elements or substances. It must be found and extracted and finding it is becoming increasingly difficult. Above all, it is rare and finite in its supply on Earth.Second, helium is critical for several applications which require extremely low-temperature environments such as magnetic resonance imaging machines and other systems requiring thesuperconductivity that can only be achieved at the low temperatures provided by liquid helium (minus 452 degrees F). As a gas it is used extensively for protection (in lieu of air) during the growing of silicon crystals needed for silicon wafers used in semiconductors. Helium gas also protects surfaces from interacting with the atmosphere during certain kinds of welding.Probably helium's most visible uses are lighter-than-air ships or blimps and party balloons. Given the growing shortage of helium, this last use seems problematic as there is no way to recycle the helium used in balloons. For a more complete list of applications including short explanations, check this page.It's not going to be easy to find ready substitutes for helium. For processes requiring temperatures below minus 429 degrees F there is simply no substitute.

Democrats signal support for controversial federal solar panel probe --Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Bob Casey (D-Pa.) signaled their support Thursday for a federal investigation into solar panel components condemned by many of their colleagues in both parties. The Commerce Department investigation, announced in March, concerns allegations that panel parts manufactured in southeast Asian countries have been used as fronts for Chinese companies to avert antidumping and countervailing tariffs. The Solar Energies Industry Association (SEIA) has said the investigation could devastate the U.S. solar industry, and allies in the Senate, led by Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), have called on Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and President Biden to expedite the conclusion of the probe. Brown and Casey pushed back against the SEIA characterization of the investigation in a letter Thursday, writing that “it is troubling that corporate lobbying against a simple investigation would reach this level of mass hysteria if there was not some concern over what career civil servants at [the Department of Commerce] may uncover.” “It is unclear why millions of dollars would be spent on advertising and lobbying to urge political interference in the trade enforcement process,” they added. They noted that SEIA membership includes U.S. subsidiaries of a number of Chinese solar panel manufacturers, including JinkoSolar, JA Solar and Trina Solar.

Interior Department announces first offshore California wind lease sale -The Biden administration on Thursday announced the first proposed wind power lease sales offshore in California, the latest in a series of sales as the administration seeks to build out renewable energy infrastructure. The lease sales, which are also the first off the U.S. west coast, will take place in five proposed lease areas. Two of the areas are off the coast of northern California in the Humboldt Wind Energy Area, while the remaining three are off of central California in the Morro Bay Wind Energy Area. The proposed leases total about 373,268 acres and would install more than 4.5 gigawatts of offshore energy capacity, according to the Interior Department. The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has already held 10 lease sales and issued 25 offshore wind leases in an area of the Atlantic stretching from North Carolina to New England. The proposed lease sale notice for the West Coast will last for 60 days beginning May 31. The Biden administration has set a goal of 30 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity by 2030, spanning the east and west coasts. Earlier this month, California announced a goal of about 3 GW of offshore wind by 2030, enough to power about 3 million homes in the Golden State, with another 7-12 GW by 2045.

US added 6.619 GW of utility-scale clean power capacity in Q1 2022: ACP report | S&P Global Commodity Insights The US added a record 6.619 GW of utility-scale clean power capacity in first quarter 2022, even as the rate of growth slowed to 11% year over year compared to 50% between 2019 and 2021, according to the American Clean Power Association's Clean Power Market Report Q1 2022.The Q1 gains were largely due to gains in battery storage installation, which climbed 173% year on year, according to the report. In addition, solar installations were up 11% year over year, while wind installations were down 3%, according to the report released May 24."The record-breaking quarter for clean power is encouraging, but the industry still faces many hurdles that are stalling growth," ACP CEO Heather Zichal said in a May 24 statement. "Ongoing uncertainty from the Department of Commerce's unwarranted solar tariff case, the unsettled fate of clean energy tax credits, supply chain issues and inflation are all making investment and planning decisions a difficult challenge. The industry needs resolution and policy clarity if we are to meet the Biden administration's clean power goals of reaching a net zero grid by 2035."Solar installations slowed in Q1 due to pandemic-related challenges in the supply chain, inflation, trade risks, and lack of regulatory certainty, the industry is facing another significant obstacle as it looks beyond Q1 with the Department of Commerce's inquiry into solar manufacturing in Southeast Asia, according to ACP."ACP finds that the inquiry has had a chilling effect on the US solar industry – both immediately and over the next two years," ACP said in a May 24 statement.Prior to Commerce's inquiry, market researchers anticipated 17 GW of utility-scale solar capacity to be added to the grid in 2022 and nearly 20 GW in 2023, according to ACP. ACP's market impact survey indicates at least 65% of the projected crystalline silicon market across 2022-2023 is already at risk of cancellation or delay. The most common reason for delay or cancellation is lack of module availability.The clean power pipeline is slowing, growing by 4% in Q1 compared to 12% quarterly in 2021, according to ACP. There are nearly 1,100 projects in the pipeline totaling 125.476 GW of operating capacity, including 40.522 GW of projects under construction and 84.953 GW in advanced development.However, a total of 14.8 GW were delayed by the end of Q1, including 6.576 GW that were delayed in Q1, according to ACP, which added on average projects have been delayed by seven months.

Gas generation down across US West this spring as renewable capacity grows | S&P Global Commodity Insights 0 Recent growth in renewable generating capacity across the Western US is putting downward pressure on gas-fired power burns this spring in a trend that's only likely to accelerate in the years ahead. NSince the start of April, gas demand from power generators across the desert southwest, California and the Pacific Northwest has averaged just under 3.3 Bcf/d – down about 260 MMcf/d, or more than 7%, compared with the same eight-week period in 2021, data from S&P Global Commodity Insights shows. The drop in gas-fired power demand appears to be uncorrelated with the weather. This spring, population-weighted temperatures in California, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico, which account for the vast majority of western power burns, have averaged an estimated 64.6 degrees Fahrenheit, nearly identical to the 2021 average at 64.4 degrees. In 2022, California and the desert southwest have seen lower burns across the board, regardless of temperature. Scatterplot data comparing year-to-date power burn samples from 2022 and 2021 shows a roughly 250 MMcf/d drop in the average burn rate this year compared with last. This year's drop in power burn demand comes after steady annual gains in generator demand across the West in the three years prior and is likely the result of continued additions in renewable capacity. In just the past year, California, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico have added a combined total of 8.1 GW of renewable capacity in the form of wind, solar and battery power, S&P Global data shows. In California alone, there is now over 26 GW of installed renewable generating capacity as of the end of April, according to the California Independent System Operator's Key Statistics report published May 10. Over the past two years, the West has seen a major push to add generating capacity across the region following the 2020 rotating power outages, ongoing drought conditions and extreme temperatures, which have strained supply and boosted summer cooling demand. Last August, the California Energy Commission approved two orders to comply with Governor Gavin Newsom's emergency proclamation to reduce strain on energy infrastructure and ensure increased clean energy capacity due to projected shortfalls of 3.5 GW in 2021 and 5 GW in summer 2022. CAISO was counting on a significant addition of storage to help ease tight supply, but supply chain issues mean that likely won't materialize by this summer. With insufficient storage to capture excess renewable generation, solar and wind power curtailments have risen to record levels, reaching a new all-time high of 596.175 GWh in April, surpassing the previous record by 29%.

FERC commissioners respond to elevated power outage risks across two-thirds of US -At its monthly meeting Thursday, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission members dissected the North American Electric Reliability Corp.’s warning that roughly two-thirds of the United States faces heightened risks of power outages this summer.The Midcontinent Independent System Operator is at a high risk of blackouts this summer under normal peak conditions, NERC said in a report Wednesday. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the Southwest Power Pool, the California Independent System Operator, the rest of the Western U.S. and Saskatchewan are at elevated risk of outages during above-normal peaks, according to the grid watchdog group.The NERC report is a sign the country may be shifting away from dispatchable power plants too quickly, according to FERC commissioners Mark Christie and James Danly.“We’re headed for a reliability crisis,” Christie said Thursday during the agency’s monthly meeting.Utilities are moving too quickly towards wind and solar, which fluctuate in their power output, and away from fossil-fueled power plants, Christie said, citing NERC assessments. “We’re just not ready yet,” Christie said.The issue is largely driven by states, which have authority over their power fleets, according to Christie. State utility regulators are aware of the reliability issues their states face, but the shift towards intermittent renewable energy reflects the aims of state policymakers, he said. Also, power markets fail to adequately maintain resource adequacy, according to Danly. “I don’t think that our markets are creating the correct pricing to ensure the orderly entry and exit of the resources that are required,” Danly said. The issue is largely caused by FERC’s “misbegotten project” to accommodate state energy policies, Danly said. The agency is also failing to provide the regulatory certainty required by investors in the natural gas pipeline system, according to Danly. Improving grid reliability cannot be fixed by building more transmission lines, which are expensive and take a long time to develop and build, Danly said. "I think that there is in the minds of some an idea that as long as we get the transmission issue correct, everything will eventually solve itself," Danly said. "I am simply a skeptic." FERC Chairman Richard Glick agreed the grid faces reliability challenges. “We are in a transitory phase, on the electric side in particular of the industry, and we need to address some of the challenges that arise associated with that,” Glick told reporters Thursday.

'More, more, more': Biden's clean grid hinges on power lines - With its signature climate legislation roadblocked in Congress, the Biden administration is seeking an unprecedented expansion of high-voltage electric lines to open new paths to wind and solar energy. “We obviously need more, more, more transmission to run on 100 percent clean energy … and handle all the buildings and the cars and the trucks that we’re working to electrify,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in February. For example, 80,000 megawatts of new wind farms could be built on open lands in Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas, the Energy Systems Integration Group (ESIG) noted at a DOE webinar in March. But today, there’s only enough existing high-voltage transmission to export one-tenth of that amount, according to ESIG, a nonprofit organization of grid experts. The gap highlights a major challenge for President Joe Biden’s goal to decarbonize the grid by 2035. In response, DOE has started to roll out a range of proposals under its $16 billion Building a Better Grid initiative announced in January, hoping to break through layers of obstacles to transmission. In an interview with E&E News, Patricia Hoffman, principal deputy assistant secretary for DOE’s Office of Electricity, described a two-track strategy: Decisions beginning this year offer financial backing to help get “shovel ready” power line projects under construction quickly, and a multiyear planning operation seeks state officials’ support for new interregional power lines connecting large wind and solar regions with population centers. DOE invited suggestions this month on how to structure the shorter-term initiative. It will contract to purchase up to half the electricity on new power lines up to a total commitment of $2.5 billion, aiming to get previously announced projects across the starting line to construction. “We hope that we can expand the program in 2023 with some of the other authorities we have,” Hoffman said. DOE would resell the power to utilities, replenishing the funding pool, under the plan. “We recognize that the earliest opportunity” for impact “is buying capacity contracts,” she said. “We are looking for projects that are further along in the development cycle.” DOE’s recent information notice about the program said it expected to fund lines that could start operation by December 2027. “[T]he good and the bad is there’s only $2.5 billion in this program,” said Michelle Manary, acting deputy assistant secretary at DOE’s energy resilience division in the electricity office, speaking at a February webinar that also featured Granholm. “I wish I had a couple of other zeroes on there, because I could spend it, because transmission is expensive.”

Coal prices are surging, but Appalachian boom unlikely - David Byrd, of Sulphur, Kentucky, is one of the few people left who sell coal for household uses. Think heaters and blacksmiths. Byrd says he sells one ton of coal (about the amount that could go in the bed of a normal-sized pickup truck) for about $185. But with recent changes in the coal market, he could sell it for a lot more.One ton of coal was valued at about $85 last May. Now, it’s worth nearly four times as much, hovering at about $320.“So right now we got a mini coal boom going,” Byrd said, staring at a train rolling by his house. “And everything’s going to the train.”What Byrd means is that companies want to ship their coal abroad, on trains just like the one rolling by his house. That’s because European countries boycotting Russian natural gas still need a reliable energy source, says Bill Wolf, a market analyst at mining consulting firm John T. Boyd.“If you don’t have the ability to rely on natural gas, particularly if it’s being supplied from Russia, they’re going to have to ramp up some of these coal fire units,” Wolf said. “So that’s why you’re seeing this very rapid increase in coal prices literally across the globe.”Wolf says it’s not just the Russian invasion in Ukraine though. China – by far thelargest coal consumer in the world – stopped buying coal from Australia back in 2020 after the government called for an investigation into the origins of COVID-19. That created an opportunity for new sellers to move into Chinese coal markets. “Yeah it’s probably an unprecedented situation,” Wolf said. “I hate to use that word ‘unprecedented’ but it kind of sums things up right now.” In traditional economics, high demand usually means suppliers ramp up production to take advantage of rising prices. But Erin Bates, communications director for the United Mine Workers of America, says coal companies can’t meet demand with their current labor force.“There’s just not that many experienced miners out there that are wanting to come back to coal after they’ve been laid off the last couple of years,” Bates said. “So it’s kind of an interesting dynamic.”Without workers, the coal in Appalachia isn’t going anywhere fast, Bates said. U.S. Energy Information Administration data shows production in Kentucky is only up about 4% compared to this time last year.Bates says it’s also not economical for coal companies to ramp up coal production for what could be a temporary boom. Especially when, long term, people and companies are moving to green energy.“The operators still find it to be too expensive to put the machinery back in there and get the employees back in there,” Bates said. “Even though the price is so high. They just don’t see the value in it.”

Missouri considers new coal ash rule. Opponents say it would allow ‘water pollution with impunity’ — Environmental advocates, lawyers and state regulators are squaring off again over how Missouri regulates coal ash, the waste from burning coal that is laced with mercury, arsenic and other contaminants.The Missouri Department of Natural Resources has proposed a permit that would authorize water “impacted” by coal ash storage sites to be discharged into underground waterways, and not regularly monitored.Energy utilities like Ameren are transitioning toward alternative coal ash storage techniques, but the companies are still allowed to keep old ash in leak-prone pits dug into the water table next to major rivers.The regional chapter of the Sierra Club says Missouri's current proposal would allow “groundwater and surface water pollution with impunity.” The department has scheduled a public hearing, online, from 9 a.m. to noon this morning, and will accept public comments by May 31.

Interior unveils guidance for getting coal mine cleanup money - The Biden administration has unveiled guidance for states and some Indigenous communities seeking to tap $725 million in grant funding to clean up abandoned coal mine sites.The Interior Department released a draft outline today guiding states and communities that are part of the Navajo Nation on how they can apply for some of the first $725 million of $11.3 billion in funding made available over 15 years from the bipartisan infrastructure law passed last year. The funding can be used for cleaning up old coal mining sites left behind by operators without being reclaimed (Greenwire, May 16).This draft also explains what projects will qualify for the funding, which will only be available for the restoration of former mine sites abandoned before passage of the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977.Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement that the Biden administration is committed to tackling “legacy pollution” and helping communities negatively affected by environmental contamination or physical safety hazards left at abandoned coal mining sites.“President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law makes historic investments in coal communities that will help revitalize local economies and support reclamation jobs that put people to work locally, including current and former coal workers, all while addressing harmful environmental impacts from these legacy developments,” Haaland said.Abandoned mine sites requiring cleanup that would qualify for funds under the draft guidance include locations where there are dangerous highwalls, waste piles, subsidence, open portals and other openings where gases harmful to public health could be released into the air. The guidance outlines three categories for “priority” funding. Priority 1 projects are those that protect public health and safety from “extreme effects” of legacy coal mining at the location, whereas Priority 2 projects would protect the public from “adverse effects” from legacy mining. Priority 3 projects would “restore” areas “previously degraded by adverse effects.”The guidance also outlines “emergency projects” that could receive funding, describing such activities as those to “restore, reclaim, abate, control, or prevent adverse effects of coal mining practices, on eligible lands when an emergency exists constituting a danger to the public health, safety, or general welfare and no other person or agency will act expeditiously to restore, reclaim, abate, control, or prevent adverse effects of coal mining practices.”

Kingston coal ash cleanup workers still seek damages more than 13 years after spill | WPLN News (interview transcript) In December 2008, the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston Fossil Plant in Roane County was the site of the largest industrial spill in U.S. history when a pit containing millions of tons of coal ash gave way and flooded the surrounding area with a toxic slurry.In the more than 13 years since the spill, more than 50 workers hired by TVA contractor Jacobs Engineering to clean up the spill have died from cancers, respiratory diseases and other ailments that appeared after the cleanup, while hundreds more have fallen ill. The workers and their families are currently suing Jacobs for damages.On Wednesday, a federal appeals court ruled against Jacobs. Tennessee Lookoutreporter Jamie Satterfield joined This Is Nashville guest host Nina Cardona on Monday to break down the ruling. Nina Cardona: Let’s go back to 2008, which is when this all began. I remember the first reaction a lot of us had was just horror at seeing images of homes engulfed in a black ooze. That was the first time most of us had ever heard of coal ash. And we all asked a question at the time that I think is worth revisiting now, especially for the benefit of those who weren’t in Tennessee a dozen years ago, what is that sludge?

Climate worries galvanize a new pro-nuclear movement in the U.S. - The Washington Post --Charles Komanoff was for decades an expert witness for groups working against nuclear plants, delivering blistering critiques so effective that he earned a spot at the podium when tens of thousands of protestersdescended on Washington in 1979 over the Three Mile Island meltdown. Komanoff would go on to become an unrelenting adversary of Diablo Canyon, the hulking 37-year-old nuclear facility perched on a pristine stretch of California’s Central Coast that had been the focal point of anti-nuclear activism in America. But his last letter to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, in February, was one Komanoff never expected to write. He implored Newsom to scrap state plans to close the coastal plant. Komanoff’s conversion is emblematic of the rapidly shifting politics of nuclear energy. The long controversial power source is gaining backersamid worries that shutting U.S. plants, which emit almost no emissions, makes little sense as governments race to end their dependence on fossil fuels and the war in Ukraine heightens worries about energy security and costs. The momentum is driven in large part by longtime nuclear skeptics who remain unsettled by the technology but are now pushing to keep existing reactors running as they face increasingly alarming news about the climate. The latest report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, published in April, warned that the world is so dangerously behind on climate action that within a decade it could blow past the targets crucial to containing warming to a manageable level. Emissions analysts are increasingly critical of retirements of existing nuclear reactors as they take large amounts of low-emissions power off the grid, undermining the gains made as sources such as wind and solar come online. The movement to keep plants open comes despite persistent worries about toxic waste and just a decade after the nuclear disaster at Japan’s Fukushima plant. It has been boosted by growing public acceptance of nuclear power and has nurtured an unlikely coalition of industry players, erstwhile anti-nukers, and legions of young grass-roots environmental activists more worried about climate change than nuclear accidents.

Energy secretary: We must find a solution for nuclear waste (AP) — It is critical to find a solution for storing the nation’s spent nuclear fuel, U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said Friday during a visit to a nuclear power plant in Connecticut.Granholm was invited to tour Millstone Nuclear Power Station in Waterford by Democratic U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, the local congressional member. They are both working to change how spent nuclear fuel is stored nationwide to solve a decadeslong stalemate.Spent fuel that was meant to be stored temporarily at current and former nuclear plant sites nationwide is piling up. Some of it dates to the 1980s. “It is important for us as a nation to say we are finding a place to store nuclear waste in one place, so that communities are not bearing this responsibility and we are consolidating the waste,” Granholm said at Millstone in front what appeared to be a concrete bunker that stores spent fuel. There’s renewed momentum to figure out a storage site, or sites, to free up the land where the waste is currently being stored and move it away from population centers, fault lines and flood plains. The Biden administration and many state officials view nuclear energy as essential to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and staving off the worst effects of a warming planet.

Japan Nuclear Regulator Greenlights Radiactive Water Release From Fukushima - The Japanese Nuclear Regulator Authority has given its initial approval to Tepco to start releasing irradiated water from the Fukushima plant that collapsed during a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011.Plans were revealed last year to pour the water from Fukushima into the sea after an assessment that would check whether there were any safety issues with such a plan. According to the Nuclear Regulator Authority, there are none. Final approval will be granted in a month after the public has had the opportunity to comment on the issue.The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency will also carry out safety reviews of the water release.There are about a million tons of contaminated water from Fukushima that Tepco, the operator of the nuclear plant, has been looking for ways to dispose of for several years now. Releasing the water into the ocean has emerged as the most viable solution to the problem despite opposition both from inside Japan and its neighbors.Despite the absence of viable options, environmental groups and fishing industry organizations are against the release of the liquid into the sea, even with assurances from scientists that the risk of contamination is low.The water will be first filtered and then diluted to reduce the concentration of radioactive material 40 times, according to some of the reports from last year that were confirmed this year as well. The release is scheduled to begin this year if the Nuclear Regulator Authority gives its final go-ahead to Tepco. Back in 2018, official calculations by the Nuclear Damage Compensation and Decommissioning Facilitation Corp pegged the cost of decommissioning the Fukushima nuclear power plant at some $75 billion, which was a sum four times larger than the initial estimate of how much it would cost to put Fukushima out of commission.

Russia dominates nuclear power supply chains — and the West needs to prepare now to be independent - Russia's war in Ukraine has pushed countries around the globe to wean themselves from Russian oil and natural gas. Parallel conversations are imminent in the nuclear energy space, too, because Russia is also a dominant player in global supply chains of nuclear reactor technology, as is detailed by a new paper published Monday from Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy. There were 439 nuclear reactors in operation around the globe in 2021, and 38 of them were in Russia, an additional 42 were made with Russian nuclear reactor technology, and 15 more under construction at the end of 2021 were being built with Russian technology. Reducing or eliminating dependence on nuclear supply chains from Russia will vary by country and need. If a country has not yet constructed nuclear reactors, then they can, from the beginning, decide not to contract with Russia. The U.S., France, Korea and China are "viable" supplier options, according to the paper. Second, if a country already has Russian nuclear reactor models, VVERs, then probably looks to Russia for repair parts and services. (VVER stands for 'water-water energy reactor' in Russian, which is vodo-vodyanoi enyergeticheskiy reaktor in Russian, ergo the acronym.) In this case, countries can get repair assistance from Westinghouse, which is headquartered in Pennsylvania, according the the report. Then there is the issue of fuel. Nuclear fission reactors are fueled with enriched uranium. Russia mines approximately 6% of the raw uranium produced annually, according to the report. That's an amount that can be replaced if other countries that mine uranium increase their uranium mining. However, uranium does not go directly from a mine into a nuclear reactor. It has to go through conversion and enrichment before it can be used as fuel in a nuclear reactor. Here, Russia is a dominant player. Russia owned 40% of the total uranium conversion infrastructure in the world in 2020, and 46% of the total uranium enrichment capacity in the world in 2018, according to the report. (This was the most up-to-date data publicly available, according to the report authors.) Besides Russia, these uranium conversion and enrichment capabilities exist in Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States. Those capacities "are enough to replace at least some" of the conversion and enrichment that Western nuclear reactors need, but it's not clear that the capacity will be able to fully replace the Russian capacity. The U.S. also needs to be prepared for fuel that goes into advanced reactors, which are currently in development, and require uranium enriched to 15 to19.75%, where conventional light water reactors that are currently in operation in the United States use uranium enriched to between 3 to 5 %.

Former PUCO chair texted he knew FirstEnergy charge was likely unlawful, but company would keep money anyway - Newly disclosed texts from a former head of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio suggest he knew a grid modernization charge that cost ratepayers nearly half a billion dollars was “likely to be found illegal and could not be refunded.”Former PUCO Chair Asim Haque and former FirstEnergy Vice President Michael Dowling exchanged text messages on the same day the Supreme Court of Ohio held the charge unlawful. Challengers in the case had argued that the commission’s order imposing the charge basically had no strings attached to make FirstEnergy take any specific actions to modernize the grid.At the same time, the court ruled against refunding the charge. By that time in 2019, Ohio ratepayers had spent roughly $456 million.“And knowing that it would likely be found illegal and could not be refunded, I knew you would hold onto the funds,” Haque wrote. The text suggests the ruling wasn’t a surprise to him and that the failure to provide for any refund in the 2016 order was deliberate. The court ruling and text message exchange were in June 2019, more than two months after Haque’s resignation. Haque is now a vice president at grid operator PJM.In an email response to Eye on Ohio and the Energy News Network, Haque maintains the exchange was a joke. But advocates for Ohio ratepayers aren’t laughing.“This is just wrong and improper on its face,” said Howard Learner, executive director of the Environmental Law & Policy Center, which has challenged FirstEnergy bailout efforts since 2014. “The former PUCO chair, whose job was to protect consumers by ensuring fair utility rates, is cozying up to a FirstEnergy senior executive and suggesting that he intentionally did favors for the utility.”“Once again, this undermines public confidence in the fairness and integrity of PUCO’s ratemaking process,” Learner added.“When you break this down, the first thing that [Haque] says is that he knew that his ruling was likely to be found illegal. And he made the ruling anyway,” said attorney Rob Kelter, also at the Environmental Law & Policy Center.“The second part of it is that he knew the money couldn’t be refunded, and that part of his thinking was that he knew FirstEnergy would be able to hold onto the money because of the longstanding prohibition against retroactive ratemaking,” Kelter said. “It speaks volumes about his integrity as chairman,” Kelter added.

Ohio Bill Pitches Local Tax Incentives For Natural Gas Projects – Law360 - Ohio would allow localities to create special taxing districts to encourage the development of natural gas pipelines and related infrastructure under a bill introduced in the state House of Representatives....

OH HB 685 | 2021-2022 | 134th General Assembly | LegiScan - Status: Introduced on May 25 2022 - Summary: To amend sections 166.01, 166.02, 166.08, 4929.16, and 5727.11 and to enact sections 122.161, 122.162, 166.31, 166.32, 4929.164, 4929.168, and 4929.169 of the Revised Code to authorize the creation of areas within which tax and other incentives are available to encourage the development of natural gas pipelines and other infrastructure and to make an appropriation.

MWCD Signs Lease for 7,300 OH Acres – $5,500/Acre + 20% Royalties | Marcellus Drilling News- For the better part of a decade, MDN has brought you stories about shale development in the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District (MWCD), an agency formed in 1933 to help control flooding and promote water conservation in the Muskingum River watershed area of Ohio, an area that covers 8,000 square miles. Over the years MWCD has leased thousands of acres for Utica Shale drilling and cut deals to sell water to drillers for fracking. It’s been a while since the last lease announcement. MWCD has just completed negotiations to lease more of its land for drilling. We have all the details.

MWCD Reaches Lease Deal with Encino Energy | wtuz.com -- Some 7,300 acres will be leased by the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District at Tappan Lake to Encino Energy for Utica Shale development.The deal was reached this week, and relates to non-surface work, with no new well pads or structures on the property, and 15 wells drilled over the initial five years with a three-year option also available.Set to generate $5,500 per acre over a five-year period with gross royalties of 20 percent, Marketing and Communications Director for MWCD Adria Bergeron says that the funds will be put to use improving recreational opportunities at Tappan.“We have invested all of the dollars that we have received from oil and gas back into recreational opportunities by upgrading our facilities and our campgrounds, improving all of our recreational offerings that we currently have, as well as offering opportunities for communities for improved water quality.”Additionally, the deal puts a heavy emphasis on minimizing negative impacts on the lake or watershed’s health, along with the recreational activities for visitors.Water testing, erosion control, reclamation plans, and visual impact analysis were all a part of negotiations for the lease. Funds generated are expected to be used in Phase Two of MWCD’s Master Plan, which adds amenities such as playgrounds, trails, increased connectivity speed, and more.

 High air pollution from fracking in Ohio county -Sensors pinpoint emissions missed by expensive EPA instruments. Some residents of Belmont County in eastern Ohio have long suffered from headaches, fatigue, nausea and burning sensations in their throats and noses. They suspected these symptoms were the result of air pollution from fracking facilities that dominate the area, but regulators dismissed and downplayed their concerns. With the technical assistance of volunteer scientists at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, MIT and the American Geophysical Union's Thriving Earth Exchange, local advocacy groups set up their own network of low-cost sensors. They found that the region's three EPA sensors were not providing an accurate picture: The sensors revealed concerning levels of air pollution, and correlations between local spikes and health impacts. The results are published today in the journal Environmental Research Letters. Nestled in an Appalachian valley, Belmont has been booming with new infrastructure to extract and process natural gas. Fracking is known to emit pollutants including particulate matter and volatile organic compounds such as benzene, toluene and ethylbenzene, which have been linked to respiratory and cardiovascular health problems. Lung and bronchus cancer have become the leading cause of cancer deaths in Ohio. A 2017 Yale Public Health analysis confirmed the need for additional monitoring and regulation for chemicals associated with unconventional oil and gas development.Concerned about the fumes in certain areas of the community and the lack of information and transparency, two activist groups, Concerned Ohio River Residents and the Freshwater Accountability Project, wanted to set up a high-density monitoring network. After submitting their proposal to the Thriving Earth Exchange, which enables collaborations between community groups and volunteer scientists, they were paired with Garima Raheja, a PhD candidate who studies air pollution at Lamont-Doherty."We realized that the Thriving Earth Exchange program would give us valuable aid to validate the complaints we often receive from those living near pollution sources in a way that would provide credible and actionable data to improve air quality in the region," said Lea Harper, managing director of Freshwater Accountability Project.With advice from Raheja and other scientists, the community members bought 60 low-cost sensors to monitor particulate matter and volatile organic compounds in the air. Then they identified areas of highest concern, and recruited residents to install and maintain the sensors in backyards, churches and schools in those areas.The new study presents the first two years of data from the sensor network. The team found that many sites frequently experienced days when air pollution exceeded levels recommended by the World Health Organization. For example, in the city of Martins Ferry, where a sensor took measurements for 336 days, it measured unsafe levels of air pollution on 50 of those days."It is kind of wild," said Raheja, "considering that it's generally a clean area. I think any number of days above WHO guidelines is really concerning for an area like this."She sees a clear link to the area's fossil fuel development. "If there wasn't fracking in this area, there would be no reason for bad air pollution. It's not an urban area. There's not a lot of cars or rush hour or anything like that which usually causes air pollution."

 Train strikes truck in Harmar, sending derailed cars into inlet near Allegheny River - More than a dozen train cars derailed Thursday afternoon after a train collided with a dump truck in Harmar, sending many of the cars into an inlet about 100 yards from the Allegheny River. County dispatchers said the derailment occurred around 3:15 p.m. in the 2400 block of Freeport Road in Harmar. The area is between the Hulton Bridge and Route 910 and near the Allegheny Valley Joint Sewage Authority Treatment Plant. The train, operated by Norfolk Southern, collided with a dump truck crossing the tracks, the company said in a statement. Officials said 17 train cars derailed and that nine of them were in the water after the train struck the truck as it was crossing the tracks near the treatment plant. Of those nine cars in the water, four carried oil. The driver of the truck and two people in the train engine were injured and taken to the hospital, the official said. There was no information on their identities, the extent of their injuries or the hospital. Shortly after 7 p.m., local and Allegheny County officials briefed reporters along Freeport Road. One of the overturned rail cars was visible just off the road behind them as they spoke, and large rigs needed to remove the cars were staging nearby. Four of the cars were carrying a sweet crude, said Steve Imbarlina, assistant chief of the county emergency services, oil similar to diesel. Other cars served as buffers for the cars carrying the combustible material. Though officials initially said none of the sweet crude on board the tanker cars had leaked into the water, a county spokeswoman confirmed shortly after 11 p.m. that leakage into the river had occurred. Mr. Imbarlina earlier said that crews had boomed the water, a containment strategy for oil spills that involves a floating barrier, between Deer Creek and the Allegheny River. The booming then was a precaution that would prove to be necessary. Mr. Imbarlina likened the boom device to a floating pool noodle that traps oil on top of the river before it flows out into the larger body of water. Water authority intakes were notified downstream from the accident. A water line severed by the accident cut service in Harmar. It was restored after about two hours. Allegheny County hazmat crews and the Salvation Army were on the scene, in addition to police, fire and EMS crews. According to Mr. Imbarlina, railroad ties were knocked off of the bridge that the train was passing over, although the bridge itself did not collapse. The size of the truck contributed to the extent of the damage, Mr. Moretti said. “The size of the truck didn’t help,” he said. “It’s a large construction vehicle, so it did a lot of damage.”

 PIT, CNX Develop Fuel Strategy to Reduce Emissions, Costs for Aviation - On Friday, Pittsburgh International Airport officials announced a new phase of their ongoing partnership with locally based natural gas exploration, production, midstream, and technology company CNX Resources Corp. aimed at further reducing carbon emissions in the transportation industry and related sectors by using natural gas produced at the airport and converting it into alternative fuel with CNX proprietary technology. “We feel that natural gas and derivative products provide a path for the transportation industry both to reduce carbon emissions in the short term while working toward a goal of net-zero in the long term as hydrogen and other potential solutions mature,” said airport CEO Christina Cassotis. The agreement comes on the heels of an announcement earlier this week from Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf about a statewide initiative to secure a hydrogen hub and large-scale carbon storage system in Pennsylvania, bringing further partnership opportunities to PIT. The hydrogen initiative would build what it calls a “regional ecosystem” for the transition to clean hydrogen and carbon capture and storage, large-scale investments that leaders say put the region on a path to sustainability while creating jobs. Airport and CNX officials say their agreement builds on the statewide initiative. CNX has developed proprietary technology to cost-effectively convert on-site dry natural gas into liquefied natural gas (LNG), compressed natural gas (CNG) and electricity for various uses including as a hydrogen feedstock. These technologies will reduce local emissions and further reduce operating costs at the airport. The strategy also envisions a sustainable fuel hub at PIT using locally sourced, lower-cost, lower-carbon-intensity LNG and CNG fueling depots for airlines, transit, cargo, fleet, military, and other energy-intensive business purposes.As part of the agreement, CNX will develop the Utica shale on airport property, representing the first wells from this formation completed and brought into production in Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is located. The Utica shale yields a dry gas which is more easily converted into LNG and CNG alternative fuels and hydrogen.

CNX, Pittsburgh Airport to Showcase Natural Gas Aviation Potential with Utica Project - Pittsburgh International Airport, known to fliers by the three-digit code PIT, is stepping up its natural gas development partnership with Appalachian Basin-focused independent CNX Resources Corp. PIT and CNX earlier this month launched another phase of their public-private partnership. It currently includes a revenue-sharing deal for CNX-operatedMarcellus Shale wells on airport property and a 20-MW natural gas-solar microgrid that supplies all of the airport’s electricity. Under the latest deal, CNX plans to develop Utica Shale wells on airport property. It would deploy proprietary autonomous separation technology to convert dry gas produced onsite into liquefied natural gas (LNG), compressed natural gas (CNG) and electricity. Electricity also could be used to produce hydrogen, among other uses.“In a nutshell, it’s a technology that leverages the ultra-high pressure of a Utica well and uses that pressure to create LNG and CNG and electricity,” CNX’s Yemi Akinkugbe, chief excellence officer, told NGI.He said the technology could be deployed at the wellsite to create the derivative product, LNG or CNG, as well as “generate electricity that could be the feedstock for a future maturation of hydrogen.” “LNG is improving as a potential aviation fuel going forward,” Akinkugbe said. “The key is getting the industry to embrace LNG as a sustainable aviation fuel. We’re saying this is an alternative that has a low cost, a much lower emissions signature, and also benefits the region.”PIT would “help bring more partners to the table” on the sustainability front, airport CEO Christina Cassotis told NGI.“We’ve already been moving in this direction,” she said. “Last year we became the first airport in the world to be completely powered by a microgrid powered by natural gas and solar energy.”Besides LNG, CNG could be used for airport ground transportation and hydrogen could ultimately be used to fuel planes as well as ground vehicles, he said.CNX and PIT, whose partnership began nine years ago with the airport authority signing a deal with then-Consol Energy Inc., also envision creating a “sustainable fuel hub at PIT” with LNG and CNG fueling depots for airlines, transit, cargo, fleet, military, and other purposes.“Natural gas and derivative products provide a path for the transportation industry both to reduce carbon emissions in the short term while working toward a goal of net-zero in the long term as hydrogen and other potential solutions mature,” said Cassotis.She called the Utica deal with CNX “a massive opportunity to both lead the way on a transformational fuel strategy to reduce carbon emissions while cementing Pittsburgh’s role as an innovative world leader.”

Monolith Materials and Key State Made Important Announcements at Appalachian Hydrogen & Carbon Capture Conference - -- Last month’s Appalachian Hydrogen & Carbon Capture Conference, held south of Pittsburgh, in the Marcellus/Utica Shale plays’ bosom, had two companies making major announcements. Monolith Materials said that their first commercial scale unit, Olive Creek which has been in commercial production since 2020, proved the concept of methane pyrolysis to produce hydrogen and carbon black. Renewable electricity is the only other input. Olive Creek I produces 4,000 metric tonnes of hydrogen annually, along with 13,000 MT of carbon black with one pyrolysis reactor. Olive Creek 2 will be the model as Monolith considers expansion locations across North America and worldwide. The Appalachian Basin is one such location Monolith is actively exploring for expansion. The region offers abundant natural gas for conversion to clean hydrogen and cleanly made carbon black. Monolith is also excited about the workforce in the area and its potential for helping to bring manufacturing jobs back to America. At its Nebraska facility, it was noted that the long-term, high-paying, advanced manufacturing jobs offered by Monolith are the kinds that families and communities are built on. Monolith was also quick to note that Congress passing PTC (production tax credit) legislation would help expedite their decisions around possible expansion, including into the Appalachian Basin. A potential site in the Appalachian Basin could mirror Olive Creek in more than design. Modeling their success in Hallam, Nebraska, Monolith could locate in or near a small town where the plant can help economically rejuvenate the area. The other announcement was KeyState LLC, already in Pennsylvania building the state’s first natural-gas-to-blue-hydrogen plant, plans to construct a second facility in Pennsylvania and a third in a state to be identified.

EHN reporter wins Golden Quill award for "Fractured" reporting - Environmental Health News -- EHN reporter Kristina Marusic won an award at the 2022 Golden Quill Awards for her reporting on the health impacts of fracking.The Golden Quills competition, held by the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania, honors excellence in print, broadcast, photography, videography and digital journalism in western Pennsylvania and nearby counties in Ohio and West Virginia. This was the 58th year for the annual awards, which were presented at an awards dinner in Pittsburgh on May 24.Marusic was presented with an award for Excellence in Written Journalism in the Science/Environment category for her four-part series Fractured: The Body Burden of Living Near Fracking, which documented exposure to harmful chemicals in Pennsylvania families living near fracking wells.In the investigation, Marusic collected air samples, water samples, and urine samples, and found that five families who live near oil and gas wells are exposed to higher-than-average levels of a long list of toxic chemicals used by the industry, prompting a group of more than 30 state lawmakers to call on Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf to do more to protect Pennsylvanians. Marusic also won two Golden Quill awards in 2020 for her reporting on air pollution and cancer in western Pennsylvania, including a Best in Show Ray Sprigle Memorial Award.

FERC enforcement ramp-up spurs pipeline wars - Last year, the head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission delivered a message to the energy industry: “The cop is back on the street.” Chair Richard Glick was referring to FERC’s Office of Enforcement, which seeks to ensure energy and power companies comply with the independent agency’s rules. Last fiscal year, the office opened 12 new investigations compared to six the previous year. The uptick in cases includes a new focus on energy infrastructure, including the country’s pipelines — and how companies handle their construction and operation. The bottom line, Glick said, is that pipeline companies must abide by the conditions in the permits that FERC issues. “The message is you’ve got to live up to your commitments,” Glick told reporters in December. “If you don’t do that, we’re going to come down on you, because that’s our role.” But as the agency seeks to penalize pipelines for permit violations — including pursuing record-setting fines — developers are hitting back with legal challenges that, if successful, could chip away at the commission’s enforcement powers. That in turn could make it more difficult to penalize companies for spills, groundwater contamination and failure to restore the land they trench through to build the lines. Since Congress boosted FERC’s enforcement authority in 2005, the Office of Enforcement has not typically gone after pipeline violations, focusing more on wrongdoing in energy and power markets. But that has recently begun to change, some legal experts said. Glick’s leadership has undoubtedly spurred FERC to increase oversight on pipelines, said Carolyn Elefant, a former FERC attorney who now represents landowners affected by pipelines. Before the Democrat was tapped by President Joe Biden to serve as FERC chair last January, “pipeline stuff was completely below the radar,” she said. Now, FERC is accusing two multibillion-dollar pipeline developers of failing to abide by the conditions and standards they agreed to when they were granted permits. In one case, the enforcement office is proposing its biggest-ever fines in a pipeline construction case. Increased enforcement from FERC may send a message to the natural gas industry that the agency is prepared to hold developers accountable for the terms and conditions included in their permits, said Carrie Mobley, an associate at the law firm McGuireWoods LLP. “We’ve seen a lot of interest that maybe wasn’t previously taken in pipeline cases,” Mobley said. “[The cases] are indicating that the commission is interested in ensuring compliance and is willing to be a little bit creative in their approach.”

TVA wants gas. Enbridge and Kinder Morgan want pipelines. Tennesseans want protection. Years before the company Plains All American proposed an oil pipeline in Memphis, the company obtained what’s known as a “Nationwide Permit 12” from the Army Corps of Engineers. It allowed the pipeline company to skip public input, because the Corps assumed the project would not harm the environment. “They did not communicate with the community,” said Angela Johnson, of Memphis, and “they were taking away generational land that belonged to people in our community.” Johnson spoke during one of several public meetings held by the Army Corps to reexamine the use of Nationwide Permit 12 for oil and gas pipelines. The Corps cited concerns about environmental justice, climate change and drinking water — along with the now-defunct pipeline project in Memphis — in its public notice for the review. “Nationwide permits are a type of general permit and are designed to regulate with little, if any, delay or paperwork certain activities in federally jurisdictional waters and wetlands,” the Corps explained. In addition to dodging public comments, pipeline developers have been skipping environmental assessments through this process. “It’s an absolute crime for the people who have to live with these projects, forever,” Heath Frantzen, of San Antonio, said during a meeting. Similar to Memphis, the Texas city sits above an aquifer that supplies local drinking water. Amanda Garcia, of the Southern Environmental Law Center, says this isn’t an academic question in Tennessee, since the state’s largest utility, the Tennessee Valley Authority, is planning two gas pipelines right now. “It’s important for Tennesseans in particular to have a voice in this process, because we have seen unjust and unwise pipeline proposals in the past and we’re seeing them going into the future,” Garcia said. TVA is planning to build new gas plants at its Cumberland and Kingston sites. Two major pipeline companies, Kinder Morgan and Enbridge, have already requested permits from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission — these companies both submitted objections to FERC last month when the agency considered a new rule to review greenhouse gases before approving new pipelines. The Corps, which did not directly respond to a request for comment, said in its review that it wants to restore science, quoting President Biden’s 2021 executive order that directs federal agencies to review regulations and “commence work to confront the climate crisis.” Climate justice is also an important consideration for the communities most affected by pipelines, according to Garcia. “The effects of climate change — the flooding, the severe heat — those types of effects are going to disproportionately affect people of color and low-wealth communities,” she said. “Those are the communities that are also being left out of the process of these pipelines and being burdened with the direct impact of them.”

Major gas pipelines face 1.3 million Dth/d of expiring contracts in Q2 | S&P Global Market Intelligence - Major U.S. natural gas pipelines have more than 1.3 million Dth/d of firm gas transportation contracts slated to expire during the second quarter, according to an analysis of S&P Global Market Intelligence data. WBI Energy Transmission Inc. could see nearly 22% of its contracted capacity drop off when a contract with Montana-Dakota Utilities Co. ends June 30. A spokesperson for MDU Resources Group Inc., which owns the 3,800-mile WBI Energy pipeline system spanning the northern Plains and Rocky Mountain regions from Wyoming to Minnesota, declined to comment about whether the capacity had been recontracted. WBI Energy in February completed its 60-mile, 12-inch diameter North Bakken natural gas pipeline expansion in North Dakota. Kinder Morgan Inc.'s Stagecoach Pipeline & Storage Co. LLC could see more than 6% of its contracted capacity roll off when a contract for 150,000 Dth/d of firm transportation ends June 30. A spokesperson for Kinder Morgan said the company does not comment on contract expirations. Kinder Morgan acquired the 185-mile Stagecoach system, which sends Marcellus Shale gas to Northeastern markets, in the second quarter of 2021. Tallgrass Energy LP's Rockies Express Pipeline LLC faced a pair of short-term contract expirations that totaled about 5.2% of the capacity of the 1,700-mile pipeline network that spans from Colorado to Ohio. The contracts with Freepoint Commodities LLC and BP Energy Co. each covered 150,000 Dth/d of firm transportation. A Tallgrass spokesperson said both contracts were seasonal. The S&P Global Market Intelligence analysis, which used an index of customers and tariff data, covered U.S. interstate gas pipeline contracts with maximum daily transportation of over 100,000 Dth/d and their estimated reservation charges, if available. Pipelines provide gas transportation service to shippers such as producers, utilities, industrial customers, power generators and energy marketers, often under firm contracts. Most of these agreements feature fixed reservation charges that are paid monthly regardless of the actual gas volumes moved or stored, plus a tariff component based on volume to compensate pipelines for their variable costs. S&P Global Market Intelligence estimates of monthly reservation revenue used the maximum revenue because negotiated rates are often not disclosed. Market observers' expectations for the midstream sector were largely bullish headed into the first-quarter 2022 earnings reporting season, with analysts watching for signs that the sector was pursuing infrastructure growth opportunities unlocked by high commodity prices and favorable sentiment for oil and gas because of the energy crisis in Europe. Midstream executives in a series of earnings calls anticipated that growing demand for new U.S. LNG capacity would drive investment in other midstream expansions.

As liquified gas exports surge at Port Everglades, risk of catastrophic accident rises - More than a half-million men, women and children in South Florida who live near truck and rail routes used to ship surging supplies of volatile liquefied natural gas (LNG) are at risk of a potentially catastrophic accident, according to a national non-profit environmental advocacy group.Those residents, as well as 228 schools and 13 hospitals, are within the U.S. Department of Transportation’s recommended one-mile evacuation radius if an LNG “tank, rail car, or tank truck is involved in a fire.”“A container rupture, truck crash or train derailment could result in fireballs, flammable vapors, toxic fumes, and devastating fires that burn so hot that they are exceedingly difficult to extinguish and nearly impossible to contain,” says a research report released Tuesday by Food & Water Watch (FWW). “First responders often lack training in responding to liquified gas releases.”The group is calling on Broward County commissioners to “protect residents by halting the transport of liquified gas at the Port and conducting an investigation into the operation.” Food & Water Watch made a similar overture in January. A press conference is scheduled noon Tuesday.Port Everglades Director Jonathan Daniels has expressed confidence in the ability of Broward Sheriff’s Office firefighters at the port to handle any LNG fire. And so far, the commission has not seen fit to address the issue in a public meeting.Safety concerns, however, appear to be taking a back seat to the growing economic importance of booming LNG exports, here and around the nation.A story last September in The Maritime Executive, headlined “LNG Exports Helped Drive Historic U.S. Trade Surplus in Energy,’’ says, “Thanks in large part to LNG sales, America exported more energy than it imported last year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency. It is the first time that the U.S. has recorded a net energy-trade surplus since at least 1974…In 2020, the trade balance of America’s energy products – petroleum, natural gas, coal, and electricity exports – ran a net surplus of $27 billion.’’

U.S. natgas futures soar 8% on jump in LNG and power usage (Reuters) - U.S. natural gas futures jumped about 8% to a near 13-year high on Monday as power generators and liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports plants consumed more of the fuel. Power and gas prices soared last week as homes and businesses cranked up their air conditioners to escape a spring heatwave. To keep the lights on, generators burned more gas to produce power. In addition, there is usually less wind when it's extremely hot. That means generators need to burn even more gas to make up for the lost wind power. Wind produced about 12% of the nation's power last week, down from as much as 16% in recent weeks, while gas produced about 37%, up from just 33% in recent weeks. U.S. front-month gas futures for June delivery rose 66.1 cents, or 8.2%, to settle at $8.744 per million British thermal units (mmBtu), the highest since it closed at a 13-year high of $8.783 on May 5. With Monday's gain, U.S. gas futures were up about 135% since the start of the year as higher global prices kept demand for U.S. LNG exports strong since Russia's Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine. Gas was trading around $27 per mmBtu in Europe and $22 at in Asia. U.S. futures lag far behind global prices because capacity constraints inhibit LNG exports. Data provider Refinitiv said average gas output in the U.S. Lower 48 states climbed to 95.0 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) so far in May from 94.5 bcfd in April. That compares with a monthly record of 96.1 bcfd in November 2021. Refinitiv projected average U.S. gas demand, including exports, would ease from 89.4 bcfd this week to 88.0 bcfd next week. Those forecasts were lower than the Refinitiv forecast on Friday. The average amount of gas flowing to U.S. LNG export plants has risen to 12.4 bcfd so far in May from 12.2 bcfd in April. It hit a monthly record of 12.9 bcfd in March. The United States can turn about 13.2 bcfd of gas into LNG. On a daily basis, LNG feedgas was on track to hit a seven-week high of 13.3 bcfd on Monday. Gas stockpiles in Northwest Europe - Belgium, France, Germany and the Netherlands - were about 11% below the five-year (2017-2021) average for this time of year, down from 39% below the five-year norm in mid-March, according to Refinitiv. Storage was currently about 39% of full capacity. That is healthier than U.S. inventories, which were around 15% below their five-year norm, and helped cause European futures on Monday to fall to their lowest since Feb. 22 - two days before Russia invaded Ukraine.

U.S. natgas hits 13-year high on soaring LNG exports, higher demand - U.S. natural gas futures edged up about 1% on Tuesday, closing at a 13-year high, as gas volumes flowing to U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) export plants jumped to the most in seven weeks on raised forecasts for demand next week. U.S. front-month gas futures for June delivery rose 5.2 cents, or 0.6%, to settle at $8.796 per million British thermal units (mmBtu) on Tuesday, a day after they soared 8%. It was their highest close since August 2008. With the June contract expiring this week, analysts at energy advisory EBW Analytics said in note that "Amplified volatility remains likely ahead of options expiration and final settlement (Wednesday) and Thursday." The 8% rise on Monday established "a bullish technical outlook suggesting natural gas could soon clear $9." U.S. gas futures were up about 135% year to date, as soaring global prices fed strong demand for U.S. LNG exports, especially since Russia's Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine stoked fears Moscow might cut of gas supplies to Europe. Still, while U.S. futures have soared about 30% over the past month, European gas prices slid about 8% as Russia kept sending supplies via pipeline while LNG vessels delivered cargoes. Gas has been trading around $27 per mmBtu in Europe and $22 in Asia. On a daily basis, LNG feedgas was on track to hit a seven-week high of 13.3 bcfd on Monday. The export facilities can pull in a little more gas than they can turn into LNG because they use some of the fuel to run plant operations. Since the United States cannot produce much more LNG soon, it has worked with allies to divert exports from elsewhere to Europe to help break the region's dependence on Russian gas. Russia exported around 7.4 bcfd of gas to Europe on Monday, the same as Sunday, on the three mainlines into Germany: North Stream 1 (Russia-Germany), Yamal (Russia-Belarus-Poland-Germany) and the Russia-Ukraine-Slovakia-Czech Republic-Germany route. That was down sharply from an average of 11.9 bcfd in May 2021.

Natural gas surges above $9, hits the highest since 2008 as inventories stay low -- Natural gas surged above $9 per million British thermal units, or MMBtu, on Wednesday, hitting the highest level in more than a decade as dwindling inventories push prices higher. U.S. prices surged more than 6% at one point to hit a high of $9.399 per MMBtu, the highest since August 2008. The contract later gave back the bulk of those gains, ending the day 1.99% higher at $8.971 per MMBtu. Still, prices remain elevated in what's been a blistering rally for natural gas as Russia's war on Ukraine sends energy markets reeling. David Givens, head of natural gas and power services for North America at Argus Media, pointed to three key catalysts fueling the rally: little production growth, high liquified natural gas exports, and storage levels that are roughly 17% below the five-year average. Rapidly rising prices are adding to inflationary pressures across the economy. Drivers are already grappling with record high prices at the gas pump, and now utility bills are set to increase too. While utility companies might have once switched to coal as a cheaper alternative, coal-fueled power is also now in short supply with a number of plants going offline due in part to ESG — environmental, social and governance — concerns. Campbell Faulkner, senior vice president and chief data analyst at OTC Global Holdings, said the drought in the Western U.S. has curtailed hydropower production. "[G]as is being forced to fulfill a significantly greater portion of power burn during a summer that looks to top records for electricity load," he said. "Gas for many years was the waste by-product of continued shale drilling across producing basins in the U.S. which kept prices unusually low. Since the 2020 low in drilling, the market has been pushed into a tight supply demand situation which will not be remedied quickly," he added. Natural gas is now up nearly 30% in May, the third straight month when gains have topped 20%, and prices are now up around 150% for 2022.

Cash Prices, June Natural Gas Futures Extend Furious Rally - Natural Gas Intelligence -- Natural gas futures on Wednesday soared past $9.000/MMBtu for the first time since 2008 amid worries that fragile supplies may prove inadequate to meet summer cooling demand and robust calls for U.S. exports. Traders through most of the year also have bought aggressively ahead of the prompt month’s final settlement, preferring to bet on bullish momentum given the supply/demand imbalance concerns. At its intraday peak Wednesday, the front month hit $9.399. The June Nymex gas futures contract, a day before rolling off the books, later gave back some of the gains in afternoon trading but still advanced 17.5 cents day/day and settled at $8.971. July jumped 15.7 cents to $8.993. After mounting a rally one day earlier, NGI’s Spot Gas National Avg. packed on a 48.5-cent gain to $8.900 on Wednesday. U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) export volume, uneven in recent weeks because of maintenance projects, gathered momentum this week and hit a two-month high on Wednesday above 13 Bcf. That put exports near the 14 Bcf-plus record level reached earlier this year amid robust demand from Europe. Europe escalated calls for U.S. exports of the super-chilled fuel to supplant Russian supplies. Countries across the continent are clamoring for American LNG as part of an ongoing effort to dramatically reduce reliance on Russian gas ahead of next winter. Now, Rystad Energy analyst Lu Ming Pang noted, Asian demand for U.S. LNG is on the rise as China and other major countries in the region brace for the summer cooling season. This could draw LNG away from Europe and toward Asia in coming weeks, elevating competition for U.S. supplies. “All factors remaining constant,” Pang said, “we may see a rebalance of LNG vessels.” Forecasts call for above-average domestic heat this summer, further fueling elevated demand expectations. At the same time, amid maintenance work, U.S. production is relatively anemic. It has held around or below 95 Bcf/d this spring – at times as low as 92 Bcf – far from the 97 Bcf peak of the past winter. All of this has pressured U.S. supplies and undergirded a market that could finish the current injection season light on gas in storage for next winter, Bespoke Weather Services said.

US Natural Gas Futures Spiked to Highest since 2008, Tripled in a Year: Why We Kissed that Dirt-Cheap Natural Gas Goodbye --By Wolf Richter - Natural gas futures spiked to $9.40 per million Btu earlier today, the highest since dirt was young, well, since the huge twin spikes between 2005 and 2008. In afternoon trading, the price dipped to around $9 again, having tripled from a year ago, when it was $2.98, and having more than tripled from the $2-3 that predominated from 2011 through the spring of 2021.Natural gas prices can spike and plunge, periodically taking down hedge funds that got caught on the wrong side. But this time, it’s different; this time, there are large-scale structural changes in the US natural gas market that have been in the works for years: Booming exports of natural gas as LNG has created a connection to the demand and prices in the rest of the world.And the fracking boom that caused prices to collapse in the US starting in 2009, while prices soared elsewhere, is now being leveraged to export LNG, and we already kissed those collapsed natural gas prices of $2-3 per million Btu goodbye.The fracking boom that took off in serious 15 years ago made the US the world’s largest producer of natural gas. Before the boom, the US had been a major natural gas net-importer (via LNG globally and via pipeline from Canada), and prices were influenced by global prices and by supply limitations in the US.Production from the fracking boom created so much supply in the US by 2009 that the price collapsed. Between 2003 and 2021, marketed production of natural gas nearly doubled. Note the spike in production in 2018 and 2019:This surge in production in the US triggered a series of events: Major natural gas producers, such as fracking pioneer Chesapeake, filed for bankruptcy;power production switched massively from coal to natural gas, causing coal miners to file for bankruptcy; and big industries sprouted in the US around cheap natural gas, including fertilizer producers which use natural gas as feed stock.And starting in 2016, more and more LNG export terminals were being built to arbitrage the cost differential between US natural gas and global pricing of LNG; and pipeline capacity was added to export more natural gas from US producing areas near the border to Mexico.Exports of pipeline natural gas to Mexico have grown at a steady clip (green line). But exports of LNG have exploded (purple line), starting from nearly nothing in 2016, to over 3.5 trillion cubic feet in 2021. And total exports reached 6.7 trillion cubic feet in 2021, roughly 18% of US marketed production:LNG exports require very capital-intensive liquefaction facilities that are connected to producing areas via pipeline. Export capacity soared from less than 1 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) in 2015 to about 12 Bcf/d at the end of 2021. More large-scale LNG export facilities are under construction, and still more have been approved, and still more are in earlier stages of the process.As US export capacity continues to grow, global demand for US LNG is competing to an ever-larger extent with demand in the US, which intensifies the link between global LNG prices and US natural gas prices.And those dirt-cheap prices of natural gas of 2009 through mid-2021 that consumers, power generators, and industrial companies benefited from, and that bankrupted many oil & gas producers that specialized in fracking for natural gas, and that bankrupted coal miners, is now a thing of the past. Much higher prices, in line with pricing globally, are what the US has to deal with now.

US gas storage stocks rise 80 Bcf to 1.812 Tcf; NYMEX futures breach $9/MMBtu | S&P Global Commodity Insights - Scorching temperatures across Texas and the Midcontinent last week limited net injections to US gas storage, expanding the inventory deficit while further fuelling a rally in the NYMEX gas futures contract. The US Energy Information Administration May 26 reported an 80 Bcf injection to US inventories for the week ended May 20, undershooting most storage analysts' expectations for a slightly larger build. The injection was 7 Bcf less than an S&P Global Commodity Insights survey of analysts that called for an 87 Bcf addition to stocks and 17 Bcf below the prior-five year average build for the corresponding week. As a result, US working gas inventories climbed to 1.812 Tcf. The shortfall to 2021 widened to 387 Bcf, leaving stocks nearly 18% below the year-ago level of 2.199 Tcf. The inventory deficit to the prior five-year average expanded to its widest yet this season, leaving stocks 327 Bcf, or about 15%, below the historical average of 2.139 Tcf, EIA data showed. The NYMEX Henry Hub's soon-to-expire June contract surged about 30-40 cents immediately following the release of the EIA's storage report to trade around $9.30/MMBtu, CME Group data showed. Unseasonably hot weather across Texas and the Midcontinent was a key driver behind the bullish EIA storage report, revealing the market impact that hot weather may have on US gas supply this summer. Last week, temperatures across Texas, Oklahoma, and the Central Plains soared into the 90s Fahrenheit, with some locations hitting afternoon highs at over 100 F, or about 20-30 degrees above normal. In Texas, gas-fired power burn hit record highs for mid-May at nearly 5.6 Bcf/d. In the Midcontinent, burns nearly topped 2 Bcf/d—also a record high for late spring, according to S&P Global Commodity Insights data. For the South Central storage region, which includes Texas and most of the Midcontinent states, the EIA estimated just a 16 Bcf injection to gas storage last week, undershooting the region's five-year average injection for the corresponding week by 12 Bcf. The latest estimate now puts stocks in the key industrial and export demand region at 128 Bcf below the historical average, EIA data shows. The seemingly outsized pressure on South Central's strong inventories last week is a worrisome sign for injection demand in other storage regions this summer. Short-term storage outlooks for the week ending May 27 are already predicting another below-average injection to inventory, with early estimates ranging from 63-70 Bcf, potentially widening the deficit by more than 35 Bcf. Longer-term, many storage analysts are now projecting US season-ending stocks to finish below 3.5 Tcf, in a potentially bullish scenario for Henry Hub gas prices in winter 2022-2023.

Mild Early-June Forecast Sinks July Natural Gas Futures; Cash Off Too -- July natural gas futures debuted at the front of the Nymex curve with a thud, tumbling 16.8 cents to $8.727/MMBtu ahead of the Memorial Day holiday weekend. Spot gas prices also softened amid light demand, with NGI’s Spot Gas National Avg. sliding 80.0 cents to $7.850. After falling to hold intraday gains on Thursday, bearish technical pressure took hold of Friday’s trading session early. The July Nymex contract opened less than a dime lower at around the $8.880 mark but quickly fell below $8.500 as trading got underway. While technical factors were in play, fundamentals also weighed on prices. For example, weather forecasts cooled a bit for the next week overall, aside from a brief period of strong national demand from Sunday to Tuesday. The period through June 8 appeared to be “mostly comfortable,” according to NatGasWeather. There is potential for hotter weather to arrive around June 9-14, although the data has more to prove, the forecaster said. In addition, long-range forecasts reflected a rather bearish set-up for the first half of June, with notable heat not materializing until the second half of the month. “Essentially, the longer range European Centre wasn’t quite as hot as needed the front half of June but was relatively bullish the second half of June,” NatGasWeather said. Even with the cooler forecast, gas demand for power generation has remained strong. Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. (TPH) analysts said power burns capped the week at 29 Bcf/d, tracking as much as 1.5 Bcf/d ahead of norms in recent days. As warmer weather kicks power generation demand into high gear in the coming weeks, “supply remains a key focal point,” according to TPH. The analyst team said production backtracked toward around 94 Bcf/d in recent days after a sustained run in the 95 Bcf/d range over the last three weeks. TPH said lower volumes primarily were from the Permian Basin, where output trended toward 13.3 Bcf/d to exit the week. This is down around 1 Bcf/d from the prior week’s average of 14.1 Bcf/d. The supply/demand balance portends a continuation of the tightness observed in the latest government inventory report. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) on Thursday reported a smaller-than-expected 80 Bcf injection into storage for the week ending May 20. The build reflected a market that was about 1 Bcf/d undersupplied, according to TPH. With the injection, inventories rounded out the week at 1,812 Bcf, which is around 15% below the five-year average of 2,139 Bcf.

Texas Natural Gas Exports Via Corpus Christi Up 50%-Plus - For the first four months of 2022, liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports from Texas’ Port of Corpus Christi were up 56.2% over the previous tonnage record set in January through April 2020, the port authority said Monday. The Port of Corpus Christi’s CEO Sean Strawbridge said “we have the table set for meeting the increasing energy demands of the global markets both today and well into the future.” LNG exports totaled 5.4 million tons in January through April of this year. The port is home to Cheniere Energy Inc.’s Corpus Christi Liquefaction (CCL) facility, which boasts about 15 million metric tons/year (mmty) of production capacity across three trains. Cheniere plans to make a final investment decision this summer on an expansion project that would add 10 mmty of liquefaction capacity at CCL. Bolstering the case for the CCL expansion is a supply deal that Cheniere made with EOG Resources Inc. in February. EOG is developing the estimated 21-Tcf Dorado natural gas play in the Austin Chalk and Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas. In addition to record-setting LNG volumes, the Corpus Christi port recorded strong growth in tonnage for crude oil and refined product exports. The 34 million tons of crude oil that moved through the port from January through April represented an increase of about 9% from the corresponding period in 2020, the port authority said. Refined product exports, which totaled 10.6 million tonnes during the first four months of this year, are up 17.8% from the early 2020 level.

FERC Approves Gas Pipeline Projects To Increase U.S. Exports - The U.S. Energy Information Administration recently updated its Natural Gas Pipeline Project Tracker with recently approved and completed natural gas pipeline projects. In the first quarter of 2022, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approved three projects intended to increase U.S. natural gas exports via pipeline and as LNG. The tracker also lists pipelines that were completed last quarter. FERC approved two projects that connect to LNG terminals in Louisiana. The Evangeline Pass Expansion Project is a 1.1 billion cubic feet project owned by the Tennessee Gas Pipeline Company. The project includes 13.1 miles of new pipeline and two new compressor stations that will deliver natural gas to the proposed Plaquemines LNG Project in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana. The Alberta Xpress Project is a 0.17 Bcf/d project owned by TC Energy that will use existing capacity on the Great Lakes Gas Transmission system and the ANR pipeline and will add a new compressor station in Evangeline Parish, Louisiana. The project expands capacity from the Great Lakes receipt point at the Minnesota-Manitoba border to delivery points in the U.S. Midwest and U.S. Gulf Coast, increasing the available capacity for LNG export facilities in the region. This project also improves the domestic natural gas infrastructure in those areas. The third project FERC approved expands capacity by 0.5 Bcf/d to transport U.S. natural gas via pipeline to the Energia Costa Azul LNG Export Project in Baja California, Mexico. TC Energy’s North Baja Xpress Project modifies existing facilities and compressor stations along its 86-mile North Baja Pipeline. Two notable projects were completed in Florida and North Dakota this past quarter. The Putnam Expansion Project is a 0.17 Bcf/d expansion project on the Florida Gas Transmission pipeline that facilitates natural gas deliveries to a Seminole Generation Cooperative natural gas-fired power plant in Putnam County, Florida. The North Bakken Expansion Project is a 62-mile extension of the Williston Basin Interstate pipeline system. The project provides 0.25 Bcf/d of additional takeaway capacity for natural gas produced in the core production area of the Bakken region in North Dakota and connects to the Northern Border Pipeline. We estimate that over 0.43 Bcf/d of new natural gas pipeline capacity was completed in the first quarter of 2022. In 2021, the EIA estimates that the United States added 7.44 Bcf/d of new pipeline capacity, the lowest amount added to interstate transmission since 2016.

U.S. Drilling Activity Eases Lower on Drop in GOM Count, BKR Data Show - A decline in Gulf of Mexico (GOM) drilling activity helped ease the U.S. rig count one unit lower to 727 for the week ended Friday (May 27), updated figures from oilfield services provider Baker Hughes Co. (BKR) show. Total GOM rigs fell two units to 15 for the period, while land drilling increased by one rig overall, according to the BKR numbers, which are based partly on data from Enverus. Changes domestically for the week included a two-rig decline in oil-directed drilling, partially offset by a net gain of one natural gas-directed rig. The 727 active U.S. rigs as of Friday represent a 270-rig increase over the 457 rigs active in the year-earlier period. Three directional rigs exited the patch in the United States for the week, while two horizontal rigs were added. Directional drilling was unchanged week/week, the BKR data show. The Canadian rig count, meanwhile, surged 15 units higher to reach 103 for the period, with the net increase entirely resulting from a jump higher in oil-directed drilling. The Canadian count ended the week 41 units ahead of its year-earlier total of 62. Broken down by major basin, there were small adjustments spread across a variety of drilling areas during the week, according to the BKR numbers. The Arkoma Woodford, Cana Woodford, Denver Julesburg-Niobrara, Eagle Ford Shale and Mississippian Lime each saw net increases of one rig. On the other side of the ledger, the Granite Wash, Haynesville Shale and Permian Basin each posted one-rig declines. Counting by state, Louisiana saw a net loss of three rigs week/week. Oklahoma and Texas added one rig each, BKR data show.

Few new oil refineries planned despite high profit margins - A barrel of West Texas Intermediate oil costs about $110; and Brent crude, mainly refined into diesel fuel and gasoline, is at $113. The national average price of gasoline:$4.59 a gallon.Late last week, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would outlaw what it calls predatory gas prices and also expand federal authority to investigate price gouging allegations.But getting that oil out of the ground and turning it into something we can put into our cars and trucks isn’t that simple. Even if our refineries are doing it as fast as they can, they’re producing a lot less than they were just a couple of years ago.In fuel refining circles there’s a phrase that gets thrown around quite a bit: crack spread.“The crack spread is the difference between the petroleum product price, such as diesel or gasoline, and crude oil prices,” said Jeff Barron, an economist at the U.S. Energy Information Administration.It’s basically a refiner’s profit margin, he said. Right now, the crack spread is entering record-breaking territory. That’s one reason the price of gasoline or diesel doesn’t drop even when the price of oil does.Jason Gabelman, a director at Cowen, said refiners aren’t holding anything back to try to inflate prices. “You know, they’re trying to produce as much as they can, because refining margins are where they are. So they have every economic incentive to run all in,” he said.According to the Energy Information Administration, the United States will be using about 95% of its refining capacity in June. Yet, we’re refining about a million barrels per day less than we were just a couple of years ago. Why?When COVID-19 hit and demand for fuel fell dramatically, a lot of refining companies shut plants down, he said.“Some refineries just shut down because of lack of demand, and they’re not coming back on. Then there was some weather-related issues also,” Daigle said. Last year’s freeze in Texas knocked several refineries offline, and some are still not operating at full capacity. But if refiner’s margins are so big and they’re making a killing on every barrel of fuel they get to market, why don’t energy companies just build more refineries while the money’s there?It takes a lot of money and time to build refineries. Additionally, “investors do not want to see companies pouring money into organic oil and gas growth,” Gabelman said.The long-term prospects for fossil fuels are uncertain. Most investors don’t want to be asked to chip in for long-term growth. In the present economic climate, they’re demanding a quicker return on their investment.

Biden's White House Eyes Restarting Idle Oil Refineries to Tame Gas Prices - The Biden administration is reaching out to the oil industry to inquire about restarting shuttered refineries, as the White House scrambles to address record high-gasoline prices that are setting off political alarm bells ahead of the midterm elections. Members of the National Economic Council and other officials have inquired within the industry about factors that led some refining operations to be curtailed and if plans are underway to restart capacity, a person familiar with the matter said. The person, who wasn’t authorized to speak on the record, added no direct ask to restart operations was made.

Oil Inventories Down to Dangerously Low Point - Crude oil inventories are down to a dangerously low point across Europe, North America, and OECD Asia just as OPEC+ spare production capacity has dwindled to the lowest levels since April 2020. That’s according to a new BofA Global Research report, which was sent to Rigzone on Monday. The report also highlighted that petroleum product inventories have fallen to “precarious levels” for middle distillates and gasoline “as the market heads into the peak of the U.S. driving season”. “As a result, refined petroleum cracks have recently spiked to record levels, contributing to boost volatility across the oil complex,” the BofA Global Research report stated. “Most worryingly, strategic oil barrels held by OECD governments are already low and set to decline steeply going forward, leaving consumers exposed to any future negative supply shock,” the report added. Only China appears to have a reasonable inventory cushion against the unexpected, according to the report, which noted that this rising inventory buffer could be explained because “Chinese fuel demand is exceptionally weak (an unplanned buildout) or because China has been hoarding oil to protect itself against the next energy crisis (a conscious effort)”. The BofA Global Research report warned of risks to BofA Global Research’s oil price forecasts, but also highlighted the role of low inventory levels in pushing prices higher. “With monetary policy tightening and recession at the top of investors’ minds, a downturn in global oil consumption is a risk to our projected Brent average of $102 per barrel for 2022 and 2023,” the report stated, adding that higher Russian petroleum exports to countries outside the West is another risk to watch. “However, low inventory levels, limited spare capacity, and a post pandemic demand recovery in EMs should combine to press Brent above $120 per barrel over the coming months,” the report added. At the time of writing, the price of Brent crude oil stood at $112.29 per barrel. Brent has closed above $120 per barrel on several occasions this year, including on March 7 ($123.21 per barrel), March 8 ($127.98 per barrel), and March 25 ($12.65 per barrel). According to the Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) latest weekly petroleum status report, which was published on May 18 with data for the week ended May 13, U.S. commercial crude oil inventories, excluding those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, decreased by 3.4 million barrels from the previous week. The EIA report outlined that, at 420.8 million barrels, U.S. crude oil inventories are about 14 percent below the five year average for this time of year. Total motor gasoline inventories also decreased by 4.8 million barrels and are about eight percent below the five year average for this time of year, the EIA report highlighted, adding that finished gasoline and blending components inventories also decreased. Distillate fuel inventories increased by 1.2 million barrels and are about 22 percent below the five year average for this time of year, while Propane/propylene inventories increased by 0.3 million barrels and are about 10 percent below the five year average for this time of year, according to the EIA report, which highlighted that total commercial petroleum inventories decreased by 2.9 million barrels.

Permian oil producers about to slow despite $100 crude -In a world crying out for more oil, a dusty stretch of West Texas and southeastern New Mexico is one of the only places that can deliver. But even with crude above $100 a barrel, producers in the Permian and other US shale basins are riding the brakes. For most of the past decade, the Permian was an unstoppable drilling machine. Its vast, low-cost reserves helped transform the US into the world’s swing oil supplier, primed to turbocharge output as soon as prices soared or to halt when they collapsed. Because shale producers amassed a backlog of wells that could be tapped in just a few weeks, a crude rally was sure to incite a fracking frenzy that would help replenish global stockpiles and cool off prices.But not this time.After Russia invaded Ukraine in late February, crude prices surged to a 13-year high. Gasoline is above $4 a gallon in every US state for the first time. Jet fuel in New York spiked to a record last month. Yet shale explorers show no sign of riding to the rescue. Their business model has fundamentally changed, reshaped by pressure to curb growth and divert cash to investors with dividends and buybacks. Inflation is also taking a toll. US oil output this year is expected to expand by less than half the amount it did in 2018, when crude traded around $65. That means more pain for consumers, with JPMorgan Chase & Co. predicting US gasoline at $6.20 a gallon by August.“The US oil and gas supply system remains very potent, but at any given price, growth will be smaller and slower,” said Raoul LeBlanc, vice president for North American upstream oil and gas at S&P Global. “Without the subsidy that shale shareholders provided, consumers can expect to pay higher prices.”Publicly traded independent oil companies, which produce more than half of U.S. crude, are now giving about a third of their cash flow back to investors. This means shale needs a new pricing floor of about $60 to $70 a barrel, up from $40 to $50 a barrel previously, to enable drilling broadly across the major U.S. oil plays, according to S&P Global. The pressure to prioritize shareholders over production is a direct result of the industry’s pre-pandemic, grow-at-any-cost model that, according to Deloitte LLP, led to nearly $300 billion of cash burn over the previous decade. Though shale output will rise this year, forecasters say there's minimal additional growth coming as a result of the war in Ukraine, despite the rally in crude prices. The US will add about 900,000 barrels a day of oil production this year, according to the average of five major forecasters: S&P Global, Rystad Energy, Bloomberg NEF, Enverus and the US Energy Information Administration. That compares with 1.9 million a day in 2018. This year’s growth was planned before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and analysts only see a modest increase of about 800,000 barrels a day next year, which would finally bring US output to pre-pandemic levels. In the field, operators say forecasters’ current estimates may even be too optimistic. Several OPEC producers, meanwhile, are struggling to fill their output quotas, leaving the global crude market increasingly tight.Wall Street isn’t the only source of shale’s growing pains. The global supply-chain crisis is particularly acute in the Permian Basin, which will make up 80% of this year’s US production growth, according to research and data firm Enverus.Disruptions to equipment supplies mean if a company wants to increase production, it would now take a year or more between drilling to pumping oil, up from three to four months before the pandemic, Linhua Guan, CEO of Permian driller Surge Energy, said in an interview. Guan planned for 16% cost inflation this year and says that will increase next year. As a result, Surge expects a 12% annual production growth rate this year, down from 29% in the 12 months through the first quarter. Even so, Guan expected the U.S. subsidiary of China’s Shandong Xinchao Energy Co. will make record profits this year if prices remain elevated.The cost of casing, a lining that helps to stabilize wells, is three times higher than usual and lead times to fill orders are much longer, said Dena Demboski, vice president of operations at Permian producer UpCurve Energy LLC. “Rig rates are higher than I've ever seen them” at more than $30,000 a day, she said. Pioneer Natural Resources Co., a major Permian driller, expects the cost of contracts for new rigs to rise as much as 40% next year. “It's just more difficult to get some of the key products that we need, whether that's pipe or sand,” said Travis Thompson, CEO of FireBird Energy LLC, a producer active in the Permian’s Midland Basin. “If we wanted to increase activity, say from three rigs to four or five, we would certainly have to plan on that a lot further out than what you would have had to a year or two back.”

Thai Billionaire Isara Vongkusolkit’s Banpu Buys Exxon Mobil’s Texas Gas Fields For $750 Million -Banpu—controlled by billionaire Isara Vongkusolkit and his family—has agreed to buy natural gas fields in Texas from Exxon Mobil for $750 million as the Thai coal miner accelerates its transition into cleaner energy.Under the deal announced late Friday, Banpu’s BKV Corp. will acquire 160,000 net acres in the Barnett Shale field—which holds about 93% stake across 2,100 wells that produce 225 million cubic feet equivalent (CFE) of natural gas per day—from Exxon Mobile subsidiaries XTO Energy and Barnett Gathering. The transaction will boost Banpu’s natural gas output by about 32% to 5.8 trillion CFE per day.“Our gas business is now well-positioned to scale up with extensive synergies and technology enhancement to build sustainable value,” Somruedee Chaimongkol, CEO of Banpu, said in a statement. “Today, BKV is a leading natural gas operator in the U.S. with an integrated approach to the value chain that allows the company to certify its responsibly sourced gas at the well head.”The latest acquisition follows the acquisition of a 768-megawatt combined cycle gas-fired power plant in Texas last August for $430 million. Banpu is deepening investments in power projects that use cleaner fuel to achieve its goal of expanding the group’s electricity generation capacity to 6,100 megawatts by 2025 from over 3,300 megawatts currently, according to Banpu’s website.The investments are starting to payoff, with Banpu reporting a first quarter net profit of 10.26 billion baht ($311 million) on sales of 41.5 billion baht. “Our strong first quarter earnings were driven by global economic recovery across industrial sectors and rising energy demand, with growing cash flow generated from both existing businesses and new acquisitions,” Chaimongkol said when the company announced its quarterly results earlier this month.

Canes Midstream Snaps Up Sizeable Permian Midland Asset Package - Private equity-backed Canes Midstream LLC said Wednesday it has closed on its acquisition of Permian Basin midstream firm Cogent Midstream LLC. Located in the southern portion of the Permian’s Midland sub-basin, the Cogent assets include 520 MMcf/d of natural gas processing capacity, over 800 miles of pipelines, 42 compressor stations, a crude oil gathering system, “and substantial acreage dedications from a diverse group” of Midland-focused producers, Canes management said. The Cogent system spans 10 Texas counties, with most of the infrastructure located in Reagan and Irion counties. “I was with these assets at inception and am excited to return and continue to grow them,” said Canes CEO Scott Brown. “With our newer facilities and the significant capital invested by Cogent to date, we are well positioned to grow the system and provide best-in-class midstream services to our existing and future customers. “I believe Canes will be the preferred midstream service provider in the Southern Midland Basin.” Founded in 2019, Canes is a Dallas-based portfolio company of EIV Capital and Denham Capital. “With fresh capital, Canes will continue to expand the system and support Permian production growth,” said EIV partner Greg Davis. “Canes, via this acquisition, is well positioned to drive differentiated outcomes for area producers,” added Denham’s James Obulaney, managing director. “We look forward to supporting Scott and team as they grow this tier-1 system to service new and existing customers in the Permian Basin.” The Permian is driving drilling, completions, permitting and production growth in the Lower 48 amid strong global commodity pricing and undersupplied oil and natural gas markets. Also on Wednesday, Crestwood Equity Partners LP announced plans to more than double its natural gas processing footprint in the Permian’s Delaware sub-basin through a $600 million acquisition of Sendero Midstream Partners LP. With natural gas takeaway constraints looming amid seemingly insatiable liquefied natural gas export demand, several initiatives to expand offtake capacity from the basin have been announced in recent days. These include sanctioning of the 2.5 Bcf/d Matterhorn pipeline, as well as planned expansions of the Whistler, Gulf Coast Express and Permian Highway pipelines.

Interior announces $33 million to clean up orphaned oil and gas wells on federal land - Officials from the Interior Department and the White House announced Wednesday they will spend $33 million to clean up 277 idle oil and gas wells on federal lands in nine states.Wednesday's funding allocation will go to clean up so-called orphaned wells in national forests and national parks in California, Kentucky, Louisiana, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah and West Virginia.The funding comes from the bipartisan infrastructure law, which included $4.7 billion to clean up orphaned wells across the country. Over $1 billion of that funding has already been released to states to help them tackle orphan well clean-up. States have identified over 130,000 orphan wells around the country and estimated it will take around $8 billion to clean those wells up, said Laura Daniel-Davis, Interior's principal deputy assistant secretary for land and mineral management."These are environmental hazards that jeopardize public health and safety by contaminating groundwater and emitting noxious gases like methane," Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said Wednesday.Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, and scientists have said it should be prioritized in efforts to address the climate crisis. It is also highly flammable (it's the main component of the gas that's used to power stoves, ovens and furnaces), and high concentrations of it can displace the oxygen in the air and lead to blurred vision, nausea, vomiting and headache, among other health issues.The US Environmental Protection Agency estimates there are around 3 million idle or unproductive oil and gas wells around the nation, and orphaned wells are a subset of that number. Oil and gas companies are responsible for cleaning up wells that reach the end of their productive life, but when companies go bankrupt and "orphan" their wells, the cleanup is left to federal and state governments.Daniel-Davis estimated there are about 15,000 orphaned wells on federal land; Wednesday's funding allocation is meant to be the first round of $250 million to help clean up those wells.Now that funding is being released, she said officials expect agencies will immediately begin the process of cleaning up and capping the wells. Four federal bureaus receiving this funding will measure emissions of methane coming from the wells -- a super pollutant that is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide.The program will require federal contractors to measure methane emissions both when they start and end the remediation process, to measure how effective well capping is.

New Mexico County to Ease Oil & Gas Drilling Rules Despite New Evidence of Health Dangers - A mapping project released today by nonprofit environmental groups EarthWorks and FracTracker shows that more than 12.3 million people live within a half-mile of an oil and gas facility in the United States — 144,377 of them in New Mexico. And earlier this month, a mostly rural county just south of Albuquerque passed an ordinance that could increase that number further.In early May, the Valencia County Board of Commissioners passed a zoning “overlay” that would allow anyone in the county to apply to exploit any natural resources on property not along the Rio Grande greenbelt (which bisects the county) and not in an incorporated area. They also would not lose the original county zoning classification of the property. Proposals would still need to meet county and state guidelines for resource development, but the overlay would dramatically reduce the administrative steps and public hearings required by the county for zoning changes.The change could help landowners exploit all sorts of resources, says County Commissioner Joseph Bizzell, who sponsored the bill. “It could be gravel, it could be hydrogen,” he says. He also has his own business idea: “I’m trying to go after the brackish water.” Bizzell says that water deposits in the west of the county could be tapped, desalinated and sold for both clean water and the resulting salt. Currently, that would require an industrial zoning change, he says, and if the brine ran out, he’d have to apply again to revert the land to either agricultural or residential use.But the overlay has uses beyond rocks or salty water.Harvey Yates Jr. of Albuquerque, a county to the north, told the commission, “I think there’s a good chance that we could develop a new industry that would mean a better economy for Valencia County.”And maybe a better economy for Yates, too.The one-time head of the state Republican party runs Jalapeño Corporation, an oil and gas drilling and exploration company based in Albuquerque. He’s also part of New Mexico’s best-known and wealthiest oil family. It was a Yates who drilled the first successful oil well in New Mexico in 1907. And in 2016, the family sold Yates Petroleum to EOG Resources for $2.5 billion. While the family’s businesses no longer primarily revolve around owning oil and gas wells, a search at the New Mexico Oil Conservation Division shows that other companies still own nearly 320 wells with “Yates” in the name.

Why Won’t the EPA Fine New Mexico’s Greenhouse Gas Leakers? --In the fall of 2019, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) hired a helicopter equipped with a leak-detecting infrared camera to criss-cross the Permian Basin looking for gaseous emissions, part of a monitoring program undertaken at the behest of and in partnership with the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED). Over the course of nine days, the EPA found leaking valves, leaking hatches, unlit and partially lit gas flares on wells, leaking tank batteries and compressor stations. In all, the flights documented 111 emissions at facilities run by 23 different oil and gas companies. In 2020, the EPA did it again, this time undertaking 15 days of flights and expanding their range to include part of the San Juan Basin in northern New Mexico. They found 244 facilities emitting gases. At least one site had five separate emission sources. Then, in March of this year, the EPA issued consent agreements with 11 companies — some of the biggest producers in the country, including Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Occidental — for violations of the Clean Air Act based on the 2019 flights. Yet under those agreements, two and a half years in the making, only one company was fined for environmental violations, despite the fact that all of the companies were cited for “directly releasing emissions to atmosphere.” The EPA fined another company for a paperwork violation. The other 21 operators of leaking wells weren’t fined anything at all. The Permian Basin is 75,000 square miles of mostly flat, mostly treeless scrubland straddling the Texas-New Mexico border. This one-time ranchland is now the nation’s most productive oil and gas field, with more than 38,000 active wells and associated facilities just on the New Mexico side. But that wealth of resources comes at a cost. Recent studies show that Permian wells emit much more methane — a greenhouse gas 80 times more potent than CO2 in its first 20 years in the atmosphere — than previously thought, a finding backed up by new reporting requirements from the state’s Oil Conservation Division. Operators themselves are reporting dramatically more venting, flaring and leaks than ever. And that’s on top of the unreported releases documented by the EPA flights. All of these emissions fuel climate change, which poses a deep and immediate threat to New Mexico. Massive forest fires supercharged by long-term aridification have charred more than a half-million acres across the state already this year, months before the usual start of fire season. This includes the largest single fire in the state’s recorded history. The need for proper monitoring and crackdowns on violators could hardly be more pressing, but the EPA has been slow in enforcement. Its recent consent agreements cover only what the agency found on the first round of flights. According to an EPA spokesperson, the 2020 flights are still being assessed, a year and a half after they concluded. No flights were conducted in 2021. But it’s not clear what the EPA will do about what it found in 2020 — those flights happenedbefore the EPA began notifying operators of the previous year’s violations.It’s also not clear why the EPA didn’t fine companies for their violations of the Clean Air Act. After days of costly helicopter flights, infrared camera rentals and more than two years of office and inspection work confirming that the companies had vented unknown amounts of methane and other gases into the atmosphere, the EPA wrote to most of the companies: “Upon review, EPA hereby confirms that you have completed all requirements … satisfactorily.”

Federal judge halts gas fracking plan for Western Slope forests – A U.S. District Court judge blocked a plan approved by federal agencies for 35 fracked gas wells across 30,000 acres of U.S. Forest Service land between Gunnison and the Grand Mesa, handing a victory to environmental groups suing the government for failing to take climate change into account in approving new drilling. U.S. District for Colorado Judge Marcia Krieger vacated previous approvals by the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management allowing Gunnison Energy LLC to drill and frack wells as part of the North Fork Mancos Master Development Plan. Gunnison Energy has already drilled one well under the plan, Krieger’s opinion said. The plan allowed for 35 wells to be drilled from five pads spread across the area. “Based on the court’s ruling, the agency must start over if they’re going to approve fossil fuel development in the area,” said Peter Hart, an attorney with Wilderness Workshop, part of the coalition that had sued to block the drilling plan. “This will give BLM a chance to reconsider whether this is the right decision in the first place, and to contemplate alternatives that don’t destroy the headwaters of the North Fork, pristine roadless areas and our climate,” Hart said. Krieger wrote that she based her decision to vacate the drilling plan on the federal agencies’ own admission during lawsuit proceedings that they had failed some required steps in the National Environmental Policy Act process for considering well permits. Those admitted missteps, the judge wrote, included “the analysis of the potential impact of the new wells on emissions of greenhouse gases such as methane.” The Forest Service and Bureau of Reclamation agreed the plan should be remanded to them for reassessment, but asked the judge not to vacate or block the drilling plan entirely. They told the judge one well was drilled and other permits had already been approved, and vacating the plan “would be unnecessarily disruptive to the operator,” Krieger’s opinion said. “By the agencies’ own admission, the plan should never have been approved in the first place . . . ,” Krieger wrote. “In this court’s view, allowing the agency the opportunity to fix the error is more important than forcing the public to abide by a decision that the agency concedes was improper.” The environmental coalition’s 2021 lawsuit against the master plan said the federal agencies’ drilling approvals ignored recent executive orders and other rulings that they must weigh any proposal’s contributions to greenhouse gases and climate change. Previously, required steps under the National Environmental Policy Act had focused more on impacts on wildlife, air pollution and water quality. The coalition, which included WildEarth Guardians, the Center for Biological Diversity, High Country Conservation Advocates and others, said releases of methane and other greenhouse gases during fracking would worsen climate change that has already raised Western Slope temperatures faster than other parts of North America.

Judge: BLM underplayed climate risk in Colo. fracking plan - A federal judge last week blocked hydraulic fracturing over 35,000 acres on Colorado’s Western Slope after finding federal officials had failed to do enough to account for climate risk.Senior Judge Marcia Krieger of the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado on Friday ordered the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service to redo the North Fork Mancos Master Development Plan, which had allowed construction of 35 new wells in parts of Grand Mesa and the Uncompahgre and Gunnison national forests.The order reinforces that the federal government cannot avoid disclosing the climate impacts of its actions, Melissa Hornbein, a senior attorney with the Western Environmental Law Center, said in a statement Friday.“This is a victory for the integrity of a biologically and economically diverse area,” she said.“The Bureau of Land Management has to confront the dissonance between its proposal for fracking in an area already disproportionately affected by climate change,” she continued, “and the reality that, to maintain any chance of keeping warming below the critical 1.5°C threshold, the government cannot approve any new fossil fuel projects.”The law center represented Citizens for a Healthy Community and other environmental groups that had challenged the Trump administration’s approval of the management plan in an area that was already experiencing severe warming (Energywire, May 12).They argued that the agencies violated procedural law and the National Environmental Policy Act by not doing enough to consider the climate or water impacts in the analyses underpinning their decisionmaking. The agencies had also failed to present reasonable alternatives to the plan, the groups said.Rather than defend the development plan, BLM and the Forest Service under President Joe Biden acknowledged there were “substantial concerns with the NEPA analysis” by the prior administration but argued that sending the decisions back to the agencies would be enough to correct the problems identified in the lawsuit.Krieger, a George W. Bush appointee, was unconvinced that the case met the standard for sending back an agency decision for reconsideration without requiring the government to start from scratch.The agencies had only discussed the consequences of tossing out the plan at “a high level of abstraction,” other than to point out that the move would “call into question” permits that had already been issued, Krieger said.

North Dakota extends deadline for gas pipeline proposals (AP) — A panel that regulates North Dakota’s energy industry voted Monday to extend the deadline for proposals to build a natural gas pipeline from western North Dakota’s oil patch to the eastern part of the state.The three-member, all-Republican North Dakota Industrial Commission headed by Gov. Doug Burgum moved the deadline for proposals to Aug. 15 after no applications were received by the deadline this month. The North Dakota Legislature in November set aside $150 million in federal coronavirus aid to help construct such a trans-state pipeline for natural gas, which is a byproduct of oil production. The idea, pushed by Burgum, was to help cut down on the wasteful flaring at well sites and pipe it to communities in the gas-poor eastern part of the state, hoping to spur industrial development.Despite the promised subsidies, no applications were submitted for the pipeline. WBI Energy, a subsidiary of Bismarck-based MDU Resources Group, said the project is not viable due to regulatory uncertainty, limited in-state demand and rising construction, labor and land-acquisition costs. MDU resources is North Dakota’s only Fortune 500 company.WBI Energy owns and operates more than 3,700 miles of transmission and storage pipelines in the Dakotas, Minnesota, Montana and Wyoming.

Billions in new industries coming to Williams County- State commerce officials say there is about $40 billion invested in new projects for the state. About $5 billion of that is planned in northwest North Dakota, where leaders are looking to add more value to the oil and gas industry. Williams County may be known for drilling oil and gas, but new, value-added projects are looking to add more opportunities. “I think what we will become over the course of time and what’s happening right now is we will be the value-add to the oil and gas production that is happening around here,” said Steve Kemp, Williams County Commissioner. Soon, work will begin on a number of facilities such as the Cerilon gas-to-liquids plant, the SAFuelsX plant, and Wellspring Hydro. These facilities will turn byproducts into valuable materials such as diesel fuel and even lithium. “This gas-to-liquids project will be the single-largest one in North America. Within the Bakken, we believe there is quite a substantial market that we could locally supply these products,” said Ron Opperman, CEO of Cerilon GTL. Leaders in charge of these programs spoke earlier this month about the benefits these industrial facilities can bring including carbon storage and reducing emissions. For homeowners, Kemp said these large projects can alleviate some property taxes. “Having this industrial base buildup, especially in the billions of dollars that we are talking about, will start to help relieve some of the burdens for homeowners,” said Kemp. It will take years before these industrial dreams are realized, but Kemp said these projects will help stabilize the region and make it less reliant on the success of the oil market.

Plains All American Agrees to $230 Million Oil Spill Settlement -Plains All American Pipeline LP and Plains Pipeline LP will consent to paying $230 million under a settlement reached over a 2015 oil spill in California, but the companies also told a federal judge in the state that they don’t “endorse the content” of the plaintiffs’ filing for initial approval of the agreement. Members of the fishing industry and property owners sued after an onshore pipeline at a beach in Santa Barbara County, Calif., ruptured and sent oil into the Pacific Ocean. The group says the oil spill affected fishing blocks and coastal properties. Plains will pay $184 million to the fishing class and $46 million to the property owner class, according to the settlement filed May 13. The settlement avoids the “inevitable” delays the classes would’ve suffered if the case went to trial and was appealed, according to the filing. Plaintiffs argued Plains should’ve known about the pipeline’s corrosion through inspections performed in 2007 and 2012. But the company says it “acted reasonably by performing in-line inspections and the required digs and repairs.” Plains also argues the spill volume “was a fraction of what plaintiffs’ asserted,” according to the motion for preliminary settlement approval. The spill volume could’ve affected liability and limited damages for each class, the filing says. The settlement will be distributed among the fishing class based on the share and value of fish purchased by each fish processor, the filing says. The plan for distribution for the property class will consider the value of each property, the number of days it was oiled, and the level of oiling, according to the agreement. Class counsel will seek about $75.9 million in attorneys’ fees and no more than $6.5 million in costs, the filing says. Plaintiffs will also seek up to $15,000 for class representatives, the filing says. Plains told the US District Court for the Central District of California May 20 that it doesn’t oppose the settlement. Judge Philip S. Gutierrez oversees the case.

ExxonMobil challenges denial of oil trucking operations permit - Irving, Texas-based Exxon Mobil Corp is accusing Santa Barbara County of unconstitutionally denying the company a permit to transport oil on Highways 101 and 166 in California.In a lawsuit recently filed by ExxonMobil in a California federal court, the company claims the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors unlawfully denied a permit request to haul oil by truck, violating its constitutional rights.ExxonMobil’s Santa Ynez Unit is seeking a permit to resume operations of three offshore platforms off the Santa Barbara County coast and an onshore processing center in Las Flores Canyon. Since operations began in 1970, oil from the platforms was transported to the processing center via pipeline.In 2015, one of the two pipelines ruptured, forcing both pipelines to shut down. Exxon Mobil was forced to transport the remaining 400,000 barrels of oil, or 2,500 truckloads, via truck to the Phillips 66 pump station in Santa Barbara. According to the complaint, it did so without incident.Since then, operations have ceased, but ExxonMobil has spent about $100 million each year to maintain the Santa Ynez Unit. In 2017, the oil company filed a permit application with Santa Barbara County to restart operations. This time, the primary mode of transportation will be trucks. However, that will only be temporary until a new pipeline becomes available.During the four years of working with the local government, ExxonMobil claims it submitted a wealth of evidence detailing the safety of the operations.

 Biden officials eyeing diesel stockpile to ease shortage --The Biden administration is in talks to tap to into a federal diesel reserve to address energy shortfalls, an official with knowledge of the matter confirmed to The Hill on Monday. An interagency team of officials has been monitoring East Coast diesel supplies and developing policy recommendations to address them, the official said. “The team has prepared emergency declarations for President authorize release from the Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve if conditions deteriorate,” they added. “We would call this a bridge to deal with short-term supply shortfalls.” The Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve, created in 2000, is a Northeast-based stockpile of about 1 million barrels of home heating oil. Due to its relatively small size, the reserve is considered to be of limited long-term use, about a day’s worth of supply for the region, according to the White House. It has only been tapped once before, in 2012, after Superstorm Sandy battered the East Coast. The White House official framed the crunch as a consequence of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a frequent refrain from the Biden administration as the war has thrown global energy markets into disarray. “In recent weeks, the team noted a worrisome decline in diesel inventories in the Northeast (below 20M barrels), as well as on-the-ground reports of supply issues, resulting from a lack of supply in part resulting from Putin’s actions in Ukraine and the disruption in the energy market,” the official said.

White House explores tapping emergency diesel reserve to ease price spike - The White House is considering an emergency declaration that would enable President Joe Biden to release diesel from a rarely used stockpile in a bid to address a major supply crunch, a senior White House official told CNN.The deliberations about tapping the Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve underscore the level of concern inside the White House about record-high prices for diesel.Diesel is a vital fuel for the US economy, powering not only farm and construction equipment but the trucks, trains and boats that move goods across the country. Skyrocketing diesel prices are likely to get passed along to families, contributing to America's worst inflation crisis in four decades.Inventories of diesel in the Northeast have plunged to record lows in recent weeks because of a confluence of factors that include the war in Ukraine and surging demand."The system is definitely under strain," the senior White House official said.The impact from such a release would be limited by the relatively small size of the reserve, which only contains 1 million barrels of diesel — equal to about a day's worth of supply in the region."It's small potatoes. It might buy a couple of weeks or even months, but it doesn't solve the underlying issues," Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates, told CNN.The national average price for diesel stood at $5.56 a gallon as of Sunday, just shy of the record of $5.58 set last week, according to AAA. This marks a 75% increase from a year ago and at least one leading energy economist recently told CNN the price could spike to $10 a gallon by the end of the summer.But the situation is even worse in the Northeast, a region that has fewer refineries. For instance, the average price for a gallon of diesel in New York is $6.52 a gallon, up 102% from a year ago, according to AAA.Alarmed by plunging inventories and soaring prices, Biden officials began extensive internal briefings and consulted with fuel retailers to better understand the situation, the official said.Now they are considering releasing diesel from the Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve, a step that has only been done once before: in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy in 2012. The reserve was originally launched in 2000 as a way to meet a supply crunch caused by a severe winter storm. In 2011, it was converted from home heating oil to ultra-low sulfur distillate, a cleaner-burning diesel used to power engines in trucks, tractors and other vehicles.

Grim Diesel - Principal among the fossil fuels in its importance is diesel, one of the most abundant products derived from refining a barrel of oil (second to gasoline). Diesel engines are ideal for long-haul truckers and heavy-equipment operators because they provide superior torque at low RPM, critical for pulling heavy loads. Diesel engines are efficient, reliable, and durable. Without the fuel to power these engines, our supply chains would quickly seize up, grocery store shelves would be stripped bare, mining of all critical ores would cease, and riots would soon follow.An urgent crisis is unfolding in the global supply of diesel – something Bloomberg energy and commodities columnist Javier Blas has been flagging for many months, both on Twitter and in print (emphasis added throughout):“The dire diesel supply situation predates the Russian invasion of Ukraine. While global oil demand hasn’t yet reached its pre-pandemic level, global diesel consumption surged to a fresh all-time high in the fourth quarter of 2021. The boom reflects the lopsided Covid-19 economic recovery, with transportation demand spiking to ease supply-chain messes.European refineries have struggled to match this revival in demand. One key reason is pricey natural gas. Refineries use gas to produce hydrogen, which they use to remove sulphur from diesel. The spike in gas prices in late 2021 made that process prohibitively expensive, cutting diesel output.” Without a doubt, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was an accelerant, turning years of terrible policies into today’s many catastrophes. It also gave cover for our leaders to externalize the blame for their prior missteps, making it unlikely we will course correct in an intelligent manner any time soon. Tell yourself a lie long enough and you start to believe it.As we have covered on several occasions, the natural gas crisis in Europe and the supply chain disruptions resulting from our reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic continue to reverberate in seemingly unexpected ways. The diesel shortage is exacerbated by both. To visualize the best path forward, we must appreciate the interconnected nature of integrated chemical processes, the whereabouts of supply chain pinch points, and the complexities of co-product economics.In their journey from sedimentary rock to the gas tank, the molecules manipulated out of oil and gas are handled, transformed, transported, and otherwise interacted with by dozens of highly specialized companies, many of whom run capital intense, low margin, and highly volatile businesses. There are drillers, oil field services companies, pipeline operators, railroad owners, refiners, distributors, and gas station retailers, just to name a few. A simplified flow diagram follows, and the orange box highlights the origination point of the current diesel price pressure – Crude Oil Refining.:Suffice it to say, the common assumption by the lay consumer (fed by politicians and pundits) that high prices at the pump result from gouging couldn’t be further from reality. Let’s dig in.

UK Petrol Pump Prices Soar to Record High -The average UK gasoline price at the pump surged to a fresh record on Monday, according to the RAC motoring organization. The cost of unleaded petrol -- a British term for gasoline -- hit 169.61 pence ($2.12) a liter on Monday, RAC data show. That’s up from 168.67 pence on Thursday last week. Diesel edged lower on Monday to 181.37 pence a liter, down from 181.48 the day before. “The high cost of diesel is not only hard for the 12 million-plus drivers who rely on it, but also for the majority of businesses which move products or deliver services by road,” RAC fuel spokesperson Simon Williams said. UK fuel prices have broken record after record in recent days, despite the government in March reducing fuel duty by 5 pence a liter. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has helped to push commodity prices, including fuels, higher, fanning inflation. “As ever-rising fuel prices are contributing to the cost-of-living crisis, we’re surely reaching a point where further intervention from the Chancellor is required to take the pressure off households and businesses,” Williams said. Eye-watering fuel prices aren’t just a UK phenomenon. Gasoline retail costs have also recently hit record levels in the US, while in European wholesale markets, the fuel’s premium to crude oil is well above the seasonal norm.

UK diesel shortage shows need for caution on sanctions: Kemp -(Reuters) - Like the east coast of the United States, Britain was experiencing a severe shortage of distillate fuel oil even before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which sanctions now threaten to make much worse. UK diesel and gas oil inventories had fallen to 1.57 million tonnes by the end of February, down from 2.23 million at the same point a year earlier, and the lowest seasonal level since 2014/15 and before that 2008. The country's passenger vehicle fleet is split between diesel and gasoline but long-distance freight transport, local delivery services, small businesses and construction all rely on diesel. Distillate consumption has rebounded much faster than gasoline, reflecting the resurgence in business activity and commercial journeys compared with commuting and leisure. Distillate use was down by just 2% in February from the same month before the pandemic, compared with a 12% decline for gasoline, according to data from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS). Diesel and gas oil inventories had fallen by almost 30% over previous twelve months compared with only 8% for gasoline ("Energy trends: UK oil and oil products", BEIS, April 28). As a result, the ratio of distillate stocks to consumption has fallen to its second-lowest level for decades, a sign of how tight inventories have become. The shortage has pushed retail diesel prices to a premium of 13-14 pence per litre (8-9%) over gasoline, the highest since 2008 ("Weekly road fuel prices," BEIS, May 24). High prices are intended to conserve inventories by discouraging consumption while incentivising more imports from abroad. Britain relied on net imports to cover almost 40% of its distillate consumption in 2021. Russia was the single largest source, accounting for 33% of all distillate imports and 17% of total consumption. Diesel imports from Russia can be substituted relatively easily from other sources since the volumes involved are not large on a global scale. Britain has announced it will wind down Russian imports over the course of 2022 ("U.K. to phase out Russian oil imports", BEIS, March 8). But there is not enough diesel and gas oil available from other sources for all European countries to make the same substitution at the same time. Planned EU sanctions on Russian petroleum will need to include more generous treatment for distillates or stocks are likely to fall critically low across Europe, risking shortages at retail level. The United States and Britain, both of which have already announced sanctions on Russian diesel, are therefore tacitly relying on the European Union to continue importing it to avoid sparking a worldwide crisis.

Cuba joint venture spuds second big exploration well - The second of two large oil exploration wells is under way in Cuba as a follow-up to the promising Alameda-1 oil discovery. Drilling of the Zapato-1 exploration well began on 21 May in Block 9 onshore Cuba. Operator Melbana Energy said Zapato-1 will test a target with a best estimate prospective resource of 95 million barrels of oil, with a 23% chance of success. Melbana’s assessment is that the large Zapato structure (with nearly 1000 metres of vertical relief) may be the primary structure, and thus the source of oil for the shallow Motembo oilfield discovered in the late 19th century that reportedly contained a very light oil at surface. Melbana is partnered in Block 9 by Sonangol, the national oil company of Angola. Melbana said it has a 30% interest with Sonangol meeting 85% of the exploration costs. The first well in the campaign — Alameda-1 — encountered up to 300 metres of net hydrocarbon pay across three independent zones, but early and short tests of the deeper oil intervals could not be done effectively using the current well design due to high formation pressures. The joint venture aims to do this testing following completion of Zapato-1.

Peru sues Repsol for $4.5 billion after oil spill -- Four months after an estimated 6000 barrels of crude spilled from the Mare Doricum tanker near the coast of Peru, the country’s government is backing its national legal agency in suing Spanish company Repsol for $4.5 billion.Peru’s government said in a statement that 700,000 people were affected by the spill, along with their businesses in tourism and fishing around Ventanilla, Callao, located just north of the capital Lima.The government said the estimated damages exceed $3 billion, along with collective non-material damages of $1.5 billion.Repsol has consistently claimed the oil spill was uncontrollable, the result of a tsunami from a volcanic eruption and landslide in Tonga, and said it was taking its own steps toward remediation.The Spanish producer said it mobilised more than 2900 workers to clean up the spill and has paid nearly $8 million to the 5500 affected citizens it has identified.“The cost of the containment, cleaning, and remediation of the coastline has been assumed by Repsol from the very beginning and the aid and advance payments provided allow us to reasonably calculate the number of people affected by the spill and the estimated amount of compensation for the damages. The overall amount of these items would be around $150 million,” Repsol said.“Therefore, the claim announced by the National Institute for the Defense of Competition & Protection of Intellectual Property (INDECOPI) is baseless, inadmissible, and inconsistent, because it does not address the causes of the spill; nor the clean-up and remediation work already completed by Repsol; nor the means established by the company to attend to those affected, through collaboration with the Peruvian Government; and because its estimates lack even the slightest basis to support the figures indicated.”INDECOPI’s lawsuit was filed before the 27th Civil Court of the Superior Court of Justice of Lima against several other defendants as well, including La Pampilla Refinery, Peruvian martime company Transtotal Maritime Agency, and Italian shipping company Fratelli d'amico Armatori.

 North Sea oil and gas rig workers end wildcat strike as Unite lines up with employers - Wildcat action across 16 platforms in the North Sea last week has been ended, according to the two main contractors operating the rigs for the oil and gas companies. The company Wood stated that its workers had ended the unofficial action Friday evening. Bilfinger UK, which bore the brunt of the stoppages, reported that all workers had returned to their posts by Saturday evening. According to one of the organisers, thousands of workers participated in the stoppages. The action started on Tuesday night and spread rapidly. It developed entirely outside of the trade unions, Unite, the GMB and the RMT, which are part of a collective agreement with fourteen contractors through the Energy Services Agreement (ESA). The ESA sets minimum standards of pay and conditions for 5,000 offshore workers. Its priorities are ensuring stability and certainty “for industry and investors” and the “sustainability of supply lines.” The strikers had demanded a “wage revolution.” Crucially, the message circulated by its organisers stated that the action was not directed at one company but the “industry world-wide as a whole.” Wage negotiations in recent years have been characterised by the absence of any pay demand by the trade unions. In contrast, those involved in the walkouts drew up a concrete demand for a £7 increase in the base hourly rate of pay. They explained that wages had declined or stagnated while prices have soared. Pointing to the profits extracted by the energy giants and contractors from their labour, the strikers referenced the current price of a barrel of oil which had risen to $100 plus. Among the installations hit by the action were the ETAP and Clair Field oil platforms operated by BP, which has reported expected profits of £15.5 billion this year.

The surreal, but also real, problem of Britain's gas glut -The UK energy system is drowning in natural gas. There is so much of the stuff in this country that for the time being at least no-one is quite sure what to do with it. If at this stage you're wondering whether I've lost my mind or that you're reading an article from a year or two ago: no. It is the middle of May 2022; the war in Ukraine is still raging; Europe is attempting desperately to pivot away from Russian natural gas and UK household energy bills (including, yes, gas bills) are at record levels. And I promise I haven't lost my marbles. The UK really is experiencing an almost unprecedented glut of natural gas. This probably still sounds implausible, so consider as proof, the spot price of gas on wholesale markets right now. We're talking here about what are known as "day ahead" prices: the price you'd pay for natural gas if you wanted it delivered tomorrow.The main North European price (TTF, as it's known) has come down a little since the Russian invasion of Ukraine but it is nonetheless considerably higher than before the invasion, and more than double the level it was last summer.Now look at the main UK wholesale gas price, the NBP or "national balancing point" to give it its technical name. It has fallen from around 285p a therm in late March to just 38p a therm a few days ago. At the time of writing it had bounced up to 100p a therm, but was still far lower than before the Russian invasion. In fact, these wholesale prices are at the lowest level for nearly 18 months.What's going on here? Why are UK prices so low, while they remain so high on the other side of the Channel?To understand the answer, you need to remember energy markets are in large part, a product of physical infrastructure. Not only do you need to get natural gas out of the ground, you also need to build the pipelines to get it into people's homes. When it comes to gas, geography matters; steel tubes matter. Much of Europe is, as we all know, highly reliant on Russian gas, most of which is piped in via a string of pipelines across eastern Europe, the Baltic and Black Sea into central Europe. Germany, in particular, is deeply dependent on this flow of gas. And, as you also know, everyone in Europe is doing everything they can to reduce their reliance on Russian gas.In recent months, there has been an enormous amount of LNG redirected to Europe (attracted by the high gas price), but the ships are running out of places to put their gas. This brings us back to the UK, where plenty of LNG has been flowing off tankers, through regasification facilities and into the gas grid in recent weeks. The two gas pipelines which connect the UK with the rest of Europe are running at full capacity right now (indeed, they have been running at 20 per cent above capacity recently). The problem, however, is these pipes simply aren't big enough to push all the gas coming into the UK via those LNG tankers through into continental Europe. And since we don't have much domestic storage in this country and since it's quite warm right now and most of our boilers are turned off, there isn't really anywhere else for the gas to go.

Shell shareholder meeting disrupted by protesters singing "We will stop you!" - Shell's annual shareholder meeting was temporarily suspended on Tuesday after dozens of climate protesters caused disruption, chanting slogans and holding banners. "Can I assume that you do not want me to speak?" Shell chair Andrew Mackenzie asked over chants such as "we will stop you" -- sung to the tune of Queen's "We Will Rock You" -- and "Shell must fall", which delayed the start of proceedings. Police arrived at the venue in central London but allowed protesters to continue chanting for over an hour after the meeting was supposed to start. "We're here to embarrass them and hold them to account," said Aidan Knox of activists Money Rebellion, which is linked to climate protest group Extinction Rebellion.Both Mackenzie and Shell Chief Executive Ben van Beurden stayed on the podium, watching the protests stone-faced, even as a screen behind them said the meeting was "temporarily paused" and non-protesting shareholders were asked to leave.After almost two hours, Mackenzie said police had asked all Shell employees, including board members, to leave the venue. Once they had left, the protesters departed voluntarily with police watching on. Shell said in a statement: "We respect the right of everyone to express their point of view and welcome any engagement on our strategy and the energy transition which is constructive. However, this kind of disruption ... is the opposite of constructive engagement.".

NPD Grants Slew of Drilling Permits The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD) announced a slew of drilling permits this week. On May 24, the NPD revealed that it had granted Aker BP ASA a drilling permit for well 6507/2-6, and on May 23, the organization revealed that it had granted the company a drilling permit for well 6507/3-15 and well 6507/3-16. The NPD also announced that it had granted Equinor Energy AS a drilling permit for well 30/3-11 S on May 23. Wellbore 6507/2-6 has a planned entry date in May and will be drilled by the Deepsea Nordkapp, according to the NPD’s website, which outlines that wellbore 30/3-11 S also has a planned entry date in May and will be drilled by the Deepsea Stavanger. Wellbores 6507/3-15 and 6507/3-16 both have a planned entry date of June and will be drilled by the Deepsea Nordkapp, the NPD’s site shows. Aker BP ASA holds a 70 percent stake in wellbore 6507/2-6 and an 80 percent stake in wellbores 6507/3-15 and 6507/3-16, according to the NPD’s website. Equinor Energy AS and Lundin Energy Norway AS each hold a 40 percent stake in wellbore 30/3-11, with Source Energy AS holding the remaining 20 percent interest, the NPD highlights. The NPD describes itself as a governmental specialist directorate and administrative body. Established in 1972, it reports to the Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy. Its primary objective is to contribute to the greatest possible values from the oil and gas activities to the Norwegian society, through efficient and responsible resource management, the NPD’s website states. Last week, the organization announced that preliminary production figures for April 2022 showed an average daily production of 1.871 million barrels of oil, NGL and condensate. Oil production in April was 10.6 percent lower than the NPD’s forecast and 5.4 percent lower than the forecast so far this year, the organization highlighted in an NPD statement at the time.

"It's Sick": Polish PM Says Norway Should Share "Gigantic" Oil & Gas Profits --One by one European countries have cut energy ties with Russia, but often at a significant cost, and inter-EU rifts are beginning to show as the inevitable consequence of higher prices are felt. At the same time, Norway as western Europe’s largest oil and gas producer is reaping the profits windfall. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has taken the unusual step of urging for Norway to share its "gigantic" profits made as a result of soaring oil and gas prices, posing during a Sunday Q&A at a political youth forum, "But should we be paying Norway gigantic money for gas — four or five times more than we paid a year ago?" He then asserted in the negative, "This is sick." "They should share these excess profits. It’s not normal, it’s unjust. This is an indirect preying on the war started by Putin," the Polish leader stressed. That's when he presented the controversial 'solution', saying: "Write to your young friends in Norway…They should share it, not necessarily with Poland [but] for Ukraine, for those most affected by this war. Isn’t that normal?"There will likely be further such possible similar scathing rebukes to come and sour grapes expressed at least behind close doors, given some 'frontline' European countries see themselves as first to make the greatest energy and economic sacrifices for the sake of supporting the West's economic war on Putin, while others on the periphery indirectly reap the benefits.

Poland terminates Yamal gas pipeline contract with Russia – Poland’s climate and environment minister has told PAP that the government has adopted a resolution terminating an agreement with Russia on the construction of a system of gas pipelines to carry gas through Polish territory. Anna Moskwa said the resolution was adopted on May 13 and concerned the withdrawal from an agreement on building a gas pipeline system and delivering Russian gas to Poland, which was signed in Warsaw on August 25, 1993. The agreement had been annexed multiple times and the last protocol amending it was signed by Polish and Russian officials on October 29, 2010. Moskwa explained that the agreement was an international contract so the appropriate notification will be made by Poland's Foreign Ministry in a message expected to be sent on Monday. "For years the government has consistently carried out a strategy of diversifying sources of gas deliveries to Poland and we have prepared ourselves to end the contract with Gazprom at the end of 2022 and not to buy more gas from Russia," Moskwa told PAP. "In 2019, (Polish gas company - PAP) PGNiG terminated and did not extend a contract on gas deliveries from Russia, the so-called Yamal contract. The propriety of the government's determination aimed at complete independence from Russian gas was confirmed by Russia's aggression against Ukraine. We have always known that Russia is not a reliable partner. The years 2006, 2009 and 2014 were marked by further unwarranted breaks in deliveries by Russia." Moskwa added that since 2010, the operator of the Yamal pipeline has been Polish firm Gaz-System. "As the years passed, the Polish operator's control over the pipeline was successively increased, in line with European law," Moskwa explained. "In 2022, a law was adopted which stipulates that the operator has the right to exclusively use the assets of this network's owner, essential to fulfilling the operator's obligations," she continued. "The operator will be responsible for issuing connection conditions and concluding and carrying out contracts for connection to the network. It will also set the tariffs for sending gas through the system and will submit them for approval to the president of the URE (Energy Regulatory Office - PAP). Provisions of international agreements, being contrary to European law, should not be binding." The climate minister went on to explain that the Yamal pipeline functions in a way fully compliant with European law, as a result of which so-called Physical Reverse Flow is possible, enabling gas to be sent to Poland from Germany. Moskwa also said the government's adoption of the resolution was a natural step following Russia's cessation of gas deliveries to Poland. "When Russia de facto breached the terms of the contract by cutting us off from deliveries, the Polish government considered it non-binding due to important conditions being broken," she said.

Oil spill in Baltic Sea hits Estonian islands - Baltic News Network - In the Baltic Sea, western Estonian islands have been hit by mazut pollution as authorities called on volunteers to help collect chunks of the oil product on beaches,Estonian public broadcaster ERR reports.The pollution was noticed on Vormsi and Hiiumaa islands last week. Police, Estonian Rescue Board and the Environmental Board have been involved in collecting the pollution, but Hiiumaa Municipality Mayor Hergo Tasuja called on all locals, friends of Hiiumaa, the Defence League and women’s voluntary defence organization Naiskodukaitse to come and help.«I hope more than a few people can find the time and will to help out,» Tasuja noted.The Hiiumaa Municipality Mayor noted that the pollution needs to be picked up in pieces. «Heavy fuel oil mostly occurs in what could be described as chunks. It is necessary to use protective equipment, such as gloves and suitable clothing and a bag for the mazut,» he said.The source of the pollution is currently unknown, ERR reports.

Russian Electricity Imports Halted To Another EU Nation - Lithuania has become the second European country within a month to have electricity supplies from Russia halted. Inter RAO, the only importer of electricity from Russia to Lithuania, confirmed the suspension of deliveries would begin on Sunday, according to Russian state-media Tass News Agency. Earlier this month, Inter RAO's Nordic branch stopped sending power to Finland after formally applying to join NATO. "According to the decision of the electricity exchange operator Nord Pool, trading in electricity generated in Russia, which was carried out by Inter RAO (through its subsidiary Inter RAO Lietuva), is terminated" starting from May 22, Lithuania's Energy Ministry said in a statement. It wasn't immediately clear why power trading between both countries was halted, though it comes as the Baltic nation (and NATO member) was the first European Union member to slash natural gas imports from Russia last month. Lithuanian Energy Minister Dainius Kreivys said Friday that cutting imports of Russian energy supplies, including oil, electricity, and natural gas, has allowed it to become "energy independent." While Lithuania says halting Russian energy imports is a move toward energy freedom, Inter RAO explained that the country could not pay for electricity. "Inter RAO has received notices from [exchange operator] Nord Pool about the suspension of trading by subsidiaries due to the risk of being unable to pay for Russian electricity," the company told TASS.Russian President Vladimir Putin recently declared that "unfriendly countries" countries must pay for energy products in rubles. He said if any country refuses to settle in Russian currency, "existing contracts will be suspended." Form Sunday, Lithuania will ramp up domestic electricity generation and increase imports from other EU countries. The latest figures show Lithuania, in 2021, imported 17% of all its domestic electricity demand from Russia. What's apparent is that Russian energy supplies are being reduced towards NATO countries or countries attempting to join NATO, along with ones who refuse to pay rubles.

EU Russian Oil Snub Appears to Be Gathering Momentum - Producers of Russian crude are finding it increasingly difficult to sell barrels in their traditional European market since President Vladimir Putin launched an assault on Ukraine. While the European Union has failed so far to impose a ban on oil imports from Russia, that hasn’t stopped the bloc’s refiners from shunning seaborne deliveries of crude from its key Baltic Sea export terminals. That shift seems to have gotten more pronounced since May 15, when tougher EU sanctions on the banking sector came into effect. The extent to which Europe avoids Russian oil is critical to the global market. The continent’s refineries have been forced to pile into the market for premium crudes instead, driving up prices. Cargoes shipped from Primorsk and Ust-Luga, Russia’s two main Baltic Sea oil ports, are being forced to take much longer voyages to refineries in Asia and to just a handful of buyers in the Mediterranean. Deliveries to the more usual destinations in the Netherlands and France have all but halted. The switch began in earnest in mid-March, after European buyers and shippers began to avoid Russian barrels. The tougher EU sanctions that came into effect on May 15 have made it even harder to ship barrels to European countries. “EU sanctions prohibit a whole number of things from May 15,” Mike Muller, head of Asia at Vitol Group, the world’s largest independent oil trader, said a week before the deadline on a podcast produced by Dubai-based Gulf Intelligence. The international banking system “just cannot make payments to Russian entities work,” he said. Before the invasion, northwest Europe took more than 70% of all Urals crude cargoes shipped from the Baltic. That slipped below 40% in the aftermath of the invasion. While it is tricky to make a definitive judgment on just a few days of shipments, flows to northern European countries have so far fallen further since May 15, to just 20% of the total. Standard Baltic Sea cargoes are 100,000 tons a piece. The abundance of shipments to the Mediterranean is misleading. Shipments to the region from Primorsk have by and large been ending up either in Turkey, or at a refinery owned by Russian oil company Lukoil PJSC on the Italian island of Sicily. Only three cargoes loaded at Primorsk since the invasion have been delivered elsewhere in the Mediterranean. Self-sanctions and other measures taken against Russia in the wake of the Ukraine invasion may be having only a modest impact on overall crude export volumes, but they are increasingly forcing exports from the country’s western ports on much longer, and more costly, voyages to other regions.

Germany wants Russian oil embargo with or without Hungary: economy minister - German Economy Minister Robert Habeck is disappointed that the EU has not yet agreed to an oil embargo targeting Russia, he said in a radio interview, adding that Germany would be willing to forego Hungary's participation to speed up the proposed ban. "If the Commission president says we're doing this as 26 without Hungary, then that is a path that I would always support," Habeck told the Deutschlandfunk broadcaster ahead of talks with political and industrial leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos. "But I have not yet heard this from the EU," he added. Among the 27 EU member states, Hungary is the most vocal critic of the planned embargo on Russian oil.

Russia's Oil Export Loophole Runs Through Greece - Well, it appears that Russia won't be lacking new buyers of its deeply discounted Urals any time soon.Refinitiv Eikon via Reuters has just reported that Greece has emerged as a new hub for Russian oil via ship-to-ship (STS) loadings. According to the report, April shipments of Russian fuel oil with Greece as a destination clocked in at nearly a million tonnes, about double March levels, and are expected to reach new highs in May.Russia has been increasing fuel exports to Greece, with shipments set to jump to about 2.5 million barrels, according to data from oil analytics firm Vortexa.Trading Russian crude and oil products remain legal for now because EU members cannot seem to agree on the methodology of a complete ban.For all the tough talk about abandoning Russian energy commodities, Russia is still managing to sell a good amount of its oil and gas, thanks to the fact that some of the world's biggest commodity traders have little compunction against financing Putin's war machine. According to ship tracking and port data, Switzerland's Vitol, Glencore, andGunvor as well as Singapore's Trafigura, have all continued to lift large volumes of Russian crude and products, including diesel.

Russia cuts off gas exports to Finland in symbolic move -— Russia halted gas exports to neighboring Finland on Saturday, a highly symbolic move that came just days after the Nordic country announced it wanted to join NATO and marked a likely end to Finland's nearly 50 years of importing natural gas from Russia. The measure taken by the Russian energy giant Gazprom was in line with an earlier announcement following Helsinki’s refusal to pay for the gas in rubles as Russian President Vladimir Putin has demanded European countries do since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24. The Finnish state-owned gas company Gasum said that “natural gas supplies to Finland under Gasum’s supply contract have been cut off” by Russia on Saturday morning at 7 a.m. local time (0400 GMT). The announcement follows Moscow’s decision to cut off electricity exports to Finland earlier this month and an earlier decision by the Finnish state-controlled oil company Neste to replace imports of Russian crude oil with crude oil from elsewhere. After decades of energy cooperation that was seen beneficial for both Helsinki — particularly in the case of inexpensive Russian crude oil — and Moscow, Finland’s energy ties with Russia are now all but gone. Such a break was easier for Finland than it will be for other European Union nations. Natural gas accounts for just some 5% of total energy consumption in Finland, a country of 5.5 million. Almost all of that gas comes from Russia, and is used mainly by industrial and other companies with only an estimated 4,000 households relying on gas heating.Gasum said it would now supply natural gas to its customers from other sources through the undersea Balticconnector gas pipeline running between Finland and Estonia and connecting the Finnish and Baltic gas grids.

EU Leans Toward Delaying Pipeline Ban to Clinch Oil Deal - Some European Union leaders are leaning toward a deal that would ban seaborne oil while temporarily sparing deliveries through a key pipeline to give landlocked Hungary more time, as the bloc tries to reach an agreement on a new sanctions package targeting Russia for its war in Ukraine. EU governments are discussing a plan with the European Council and European Commission that would make shipments of oil through the giant Druzhba pipeline exempt for a limited period of time from a broader ban on oil deliveries to the bloc, according to people familiar the matter. The compromise would buy time for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban to iron out technical details of phasing out pipeline supplies to his country, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private. Hungary has for several weeks opposed a proposal that would give it until 2024 to give up Russian oil, almost two years longer than what would be required of most other member states. Since unanimity is required for EU sanctions decisions, Hungary has an effective block on the package, which also includes restrictions on Russian banks, consultancy services and buying real estate. Budapest indicated that at least 770 million euros ($826 million) would be needed to revamp its oil industry, including investments on infrastructure in Croatia, plus an unspecified amount of additional funds to adapt to potential oil price spikes. The commission, as part of a broader strategy to wean Europe off Russian energy, said it would commit infrastructure investment needs of up to 2 billion euros for member states, but even that has yet to convince Hungary. The EU and member states are expected to continue discussing the various options on Friday, according to the people. Other possibilities have included removing all oil-related measures from the package and continuing with efforts to reach an agreement with Hungary to keep the suite of actions intact, one of the people said. Politico reported earlier that some EU leaders were willing to exempt pipeline oil from the sanctions package. Even a compromise agreement is not certain, as some countries had previously opposed splitting seaborne and pipeline oil over a concern that their supplies would be hit disproportionately. Others worry about further weakening the package, which could lead to other member states seeking exemptions. A proposal to ban tankers from shipping Russian oil to third countries anywhere in the world was dropped earlier this month after Greece objected to that provision. The proposed actions on oil also include a ban on European companies from providing services, such as insurance, needed to transport oil to third countries around the world.

Europe accepts Putin’s demands on gas payments to avoid more shut-offs— European energy companies appear to have bent to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s demand that they purchase natural gas using an elaborate new payment system, a concession that avoids more gas shut-offs and also gives Putin a public relations victory while continuing to fund his war effort in Ukraine.The system, which involves the creation of two accounts at Gazprombank, enables Europe to say it is technically paying for natural gas in euros, while Russia can say it is receiving payment in rubles — a requirement Putin imposed on “unfriendly” nations.Putin’s insistence on rubles may be more about forcing European countries to scramble at his behest than about shoring up his country’s currency, some economists and energy experts suspect. European Union countries have been touchy about the notion they might violate their sanctions on Russia, and questions about the arrangement tested European unity, leading to weeks of chaos and contradictory guidance from Brussels. It also got countries talking about how much they still need Russian gas, even as they debate a Russian oil embargo.NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg urged Western countries to not trade security for economic profit, referring to debates over the use of Russian gas. (Video: Reuters)In the short term, they are willing to jump through some hoops to avoid an energy crisis.But that also means sending money to Russia even as they condemn the Kremlin-launched war, sanction oligarchs and supply weapons to Ukraine.Russia had already used strict capital controls and a massive interest rate hike to stabilize the ruble. With Europe now signaling that it will use the payment system as bills come due this week, the currency is strengthening all the more.Under the new billing system, gas payments will continue to be invoiced and sent in euros. The noteworthy change is that Russia will then take the money from the European energy company’s euro account, convert the euros into rubles, transfer the money into a special ruble account also belonging to the energy company, and then take the money once and for all.“This is a transaction where everybody saves face,” said Alessandro Lanza, a professor at Rome’s LUISS University and a former economist at Eni, Italy’s major energy company. A broad European refusal to adjust its payment terms to Gazprom, the Russian state-owned energy giant, would have pushed prices even higher for consumers and potentially led to rationing measures across the bloc. Two European Union members — Poland and Bulgaria — had their supplies cut in late April by Gazprom after refusing to go along with the new system, in what Poland’s prime minister called a “direct attack.” Finland this week was subject to a similar cutoff, as retaliation for its NATO application. But most European countries have appeared to go a different route, moving away from rhetoric about refusing to be blackmailed and making peace with an arrangement based on the technicalities. “Timely payment for the received gas deliveries from Russia is ensured,” said a statement from OMV, the Austrian oil-and-gas company.

We have to accept in the West that we are going to be a bit poorer, Dutch leader says - Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte on Wednesday said there is a "limit to what a government can do" to help people amid surging inflation. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Rutte told CNBC's Steve Sedgewick that the Dutch government would help people on lower and lower-middle class incomes with their rising energy bills. However, he added that "you cannot help everyone so ... we in the West will be a bit poorer because of the high inflation, the high energy costs." Inflation hit 9.6% in the Netherlands in April, according to the Dutch statistics body CBS. This was slightly lower than the 9.7% inflation recorded in March, though it remained historically high. The Dutch government in March announced support measures to help with the burden of rising prices. This included raising its one-off energy allowance to 800 euros ($852), for people with incomes around the country's social assistance benefit level. Rutte acknowledged that rising prices would present "societal pressures," which he said could be seen playing out in elections across Europe. But he added that "people generally understand that there is a limit to what a government can do, as long as they feel that it is done in an honest way that you've supported people who need it most." Rutte said that one of the priorities for his coalition government, which was installed in January and took nearly 10 months to form, was social mobility. He said the government wanted to deal with the country's "meritocracy trap" and that other factors, including education, could help people to become part of what he called the "Dutch dream." With regards to the European Central Bank's approach to tackling inflation in the eurozone, Rutte said there are "ramifications coming out of the energy crisis and out of the Ukraine crisis which are unavoidably also impacting on the macroeconomic figures that I cannot blame the central bankers for this."

Iran, Russia Sign Energy, Banking MoUs – Iranian and Russian officials have signed three memoranda of understanding (MoU) to broaden energy and banking relations. The MoUs were signed during a meeting in Tehran attended by Iran’s Petroleum Minister Javad Owji and Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak. The two officials serve as co-chairs of the Iran-Russia economic and trade cooperation commission. Owji said in the meeting that Iran and Russia had agreed to use national currencies for settlement of trade and energy payments. Novak has also told Russia’s official TASS news agency that Moscow and Tehran had agreed to “move to the highest possible level of mutual settlements in national currencies”. Novak said Iran and Russia will continue talks to connect their electronic payment systems as well as their financial messaging systems. According to Owji, Iran and Russia had also signed MoUs on joint projects in the upstream and downstream of their oil and gas sectors. Under the deals, Iran will be able to export petrochemicals and technical and engineering services to Russia, including a home-grown technology on catalyst manufacturing. Reports suggest that under new agreements with Russia, Iran will be able to use the Russian territory to carry out swap deliveries of natural gas to other countries. Under a similar agreement, Iran currently supplies gas to Azerbaijan in return for gas delivered to its northeastern border from Turkmenistan. Iran’s Petroleum Minister says annual trade exchanges between the country and Russia will increase 10-fold from the current 4 billion dollars. Javad Oji said the current trade volume is 4 billion dollars per annum and as per agreements between Iran and Russia during President Ebrahim Raisi’s visit to Moscow last year, this figure will increase to 40 billion dollars. Oji added that the trade will take place in the fields of energy, roads and industries as well as medical and agricultural equipment. Russia and Iran are to use each other’s currencies and monetary treaties and link their credit systems to each other as well. The oil minister elsewhere said the Islamic Republic has used half of a 5-billion-dollar credit line granted by Russia for the implementation of projects in various fields. He added that the two sides have entered into good deals aimed at developing joint oil and gas fields and joint ventures, production of petrochemical products, developing g technical know-how, swapping gas, oil products and even crude oil. Oji said Iran will import 5 million tons of wheat or grains from Russia. He noted that an agreement was finalized for this purpose during a visit to Moscow by an Iranian delegation Iran and Russia also may introduce major barter arrangements to facilitate trade between the two countries, including a plan that could allow Iran to import steel from Russia in return for exports of car parts and gas turbines to the country. Iranian trade and industries minister Reza Fatemi Amin said on Thursday that Iran will use barter trade with Russia to ensure supplies of raw materials for use in its metals and mining sector. Speaking on the sidelines of Iran-Russia joint economic and trade cooperation commission in Tehran, Fatemi Amin said Iran will need to import raw metals like zinc, lead and alumina from Russia to respond to a growing domestic demand. He said, however, that Iran and Russia had agreed to introduce barter arrangements for certain goods and commodities, including for Russian steel. The minister said Iran will be able to export car parts and gas turbines to Russia in return for Russian steel imports. He said some Iranian companies have signed deals to supply or repair gas turbines in Russian power plants.

Turkey dreams of gas pipeline with Israel - Turkey is ready for energy cooperation with Israel after years of hostility, reviving a project to pipe Israeli gas to Europe as Ankara seeks to reduce its dependence on Russia. But the plan faces Israeli scepticism over past diplomatic tensions and seems a pipe dream in the eyes of experts due to its logistical complexity and cost. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has voiced readiness to “cooperate (with Israel) in energy and energy security projects” with the prospect of shipping Israeli gas to Europe through Turkey as the conflict in Ukraine triggers supply fears. Israeli President Isaac Herzog made a landmark visit to Ankara in March to build relations with his Turkish counterpart when both leaders proclaimed a new era following more than a decade of diplomatic rupture. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu will visit Israel on Wednesday. But according to some experts, there is little Israeli interest in energy cooperation with Turkey. “Energy relations are forged by cooperative, trusting states — certainly not how one would describe the current dynamics between the two countries,” Gabi Mitchell, policy fellow at the Mitvim Institute in Israel, told AFP. “There are those in Israel who argue that Erdogan is an untrustworthy party,” he said. The Turkish leader is known for his angry outbursts at the Jewish state, especially over its policy toward the Palestinians. In 2009, he stormed out of a Davos panel after a heated exchange with the then Israeli president, Shimon Peres. NATO member Turkey had been Israel’s key ally in the Muslim world until a 2010 crisis where 10 civilians died in an Israeli raid on a ship seeking to breach a blockade on the Gaza Strip. In 2016, the two countries agreed to start examining the feasibility of an undersea pipeline to pump Israeli gas to Turkish consumers and on to Europe. But no progress has been made amid the tension between the two sides, with Erdogan seeing himself as a champion of the Palestinian cause and a strong backer of Hamas. Yet Erdogan has been muted in his criticism in recent months and only voiced sadness over the Israeli-Palestinian violence at the flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound. The pipeline project runs through controversial waters in the eastern Mediterranean, where Turkey and EU members Cyprus and Greece are often at odds. Mitchell said: “This isn’t something Israel is interested in pursuing as it would damage relations” with Cyprus, Greece and the European Union. “I’ve never thought the project feasible,” the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Middle East Program director Aaron Stein told AFP. “The idea of the project comes back every time there is a thaw, but the logistics needed to take it from a dream to reality is complicated and expensive.”

Oil Production Halves At Kazakhstan's Giant Kashagan Field - Kazakhstan’s offshore oilfield, Kashagan, has cut its production by nearly half since early May due to maintenance, sources told Reuters on Tuesday. The maintenance began on May 19 and will continue for months—until August 3. Production will stop completely at the giant Kashagan field in June due to that same maintenance. Kazakhstan’s oil production quota assigned by the OPEC+ group for May sits at 1.638 million bpd. For June, it will be lifted to 1.655. But Kazakhstan has been producing more than its quota. Due to the maintenance, however, Kazakhstan’s actual production fell on May 22 to 1.66 million bpd—from around 1.85 million bpd earlier in May. CNPC, Eni, ExxonMobil, Inpex, KazMunayGaz, Shell, and Total, form the field’s consortium. The production loss comes at a time when all eyes are on OPEC and nonOPEC members of the group formed to keep the oil market in balance, known as OPEC+. Kazakhstan suffered another oil disruption in March and April of this year, when the pipeline that the country uses to export most of its oil was rendered mostly unusable due to damage caused by a storm. The Caspian Pipeline Consortium said that two of three tanker-loading facilities were not operable. It wasn’t back up and running at full capacity for a month, until the week of April 26. The CPC restoration was slow going because the parts needed for repair were disrupted by the sanctions on Russia. Kazakhstan sends more than two-thirds of its oil to Europe via the CPC pipeline. Kazakstan said earlier this week that it expects to produce between 90 million tonnes and 93 million tonnes of oil in 2023, up from 87.5 million tonnes per year this year—contingent upon the expansion of the Tengiz field, which could be delayed.

Indian Oil posts highest revenue by any Indian co, record profit in FY22 --Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), the nation's biggest oil firm, on Tuesday reported a 31.4 per cent drop in the fourth quarter net profit as record refining margins were wiped away by a margin squeeze in petrochemicals and losses on auto fuel sales. Standalone net profit of Rs 6,021.88 crore, or Rs 6.56 a share, in January-March, compared with Rs 8,781.30 crore, or Rs 9.56 per share, in the same period a year back, the company said in a stock exchange filing. Sequentially, the profit was higher than Rs 5,860.80 crore in the previous quarter. For the fiscal April 2021 to March 2022, IOC posted the highest-ever revenue by any Indian corporate at Rs 7.28 lakh crore or USD 96 billion (standalone). Consolidated revenue, after including earnings of subsidiaries like CPCL, came at Rs 7.36 lakh crore. Reliance Industries Ltd had earlier this month reported Rs 7.92 lakh crore revenue for the fiscal FY22. This was claimed to be the highest ever by an Indian company but it included GST, which the company collected on behalf of the government on sale of products and is obligated to transfer to the government. IOC revenues do not contain the GST element. "IOC reported the highest-ever revenue from operations by any corporate during FY22," said company director-finance Sandeep Gupta. For the full fiscal 2021-22 (April 2021 to March 2022), IOC reported the highest ever net profit of Rs 24,184.10 crore, up from Rs 21,836.04 crore last year. "This is the highest profit by IOC ever," he said. For FY22, Reliance had reported a net profit of Rs 60,705 crore. According to stock exchange filing, IOC made record margins on turning crude oil into fuel but they were wiped away by lower cracks on naphtha as well as losses on petrol, diesel and domestic LPG sales. IOC earned USD 18.54 on turning every barrel of crude oil into fuel during January-March as compared to USD 10.59 per barrel gross refining margin a year back. After excluding inventory gains arising from processing crude oil bought at lower prices, core GRM in the fourth quarter of 2021-22 fiscal came to USD 13.52 per barrel as opposed to USD 2.51 a year back. But these gains were done in by fuel marketing losses. IOC and other public sector oil companies held petrol and diesel prices for a record duration despite a surge in the cost of raw materials (crude oil) to a 14-year high. They started raising prices only on March 22. And even after the Rs 10 per litre increase in petrol and diesel prices between March 22 and April 6, they continue to make losses as international crude oil prices have stated above USD 100 per barrel.

56,000 Litres Of Diesel Leaks Out From Bpcl Pipeline At Kandla - Times of India --Close to 56,000 kilo litres of high-speed diesel leaked out near Deendayal Port Trust (DPT) following an alleged pilferage attempt.The leakage happened in the pipeline of state-run Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) pipeline that originates at the oil jetty at the Kandla port on Sunday early morning. It took about 12 hours of constant effort by DPT’s fire department team to plug the leakage and suck the spilt diesel, officials said. The spillage happened about two km from the port and officials denied that any diesel had flown into the sea.No official complaint was lodged with the police in this regard.According to sources, an attempt was made to pilfer the petroleum from the BPCL pipeline which is six km long connecting to the company’s terminal.“A puncture was made in the pipeline at around 6am on Sunday. However, a guard of BPCL found this leakage and immediately asked for help from port officials. The fire brigade team of DPT used a vacuum system that sucked the oil that was spilled on the ground and saved 56,000 kilo litres which is equivalent to five tankers,” a source in the know of the incident said.Asim Chakraborty, fire officer of DPT and two station officers Devendra Gujarand Edward had controlled this leakage along with BPCL officials.BPCL officials said: “We believe that there was an attempt of oil theft from the pipeline but there is no concrete evidence, so we have initiated an internal investigation of the incident. There is no oil spill in the sea and there is no environmental concern. We have to ascertain the wastage quantity but it could be around 1,000 litres.”

Japan's Eneos gets much higher fuel oil requests from utilities for April-Sept - : Japan's top oil refiner Eneos Holdings Inc has received higher requests from local utilities for fuel oil to be used in oil-fired power plants for April-September, but it will be able to meet only a part of the request, its chairman said. For the first half of this financial year that started on April 1, Eneos has received strong requests for fuel oil that is 112 per cent higher than a year earlier, but it can only offer limited supply that is 44 per cent higher than a year earlier, Eneos Chairman Tsutomu Sugimori told a news conference.

China demand must remain weak or we'll have big trouble in the oil markets, IEA chief says --The executive director of the International Energy Agency spoke of the current challenges facing global oil markets on Monday, highlighting the significant influence Chinese demand could have over the next few months. In an interview with CNBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Fatih Birol painted a stark picture of the current situation, describing oil prices as being "very high." "They are risky for economic recovery around the world, but especially in the importing countries in the emerging world," he said. "It's a big risk, together with the food prices being very, very high, and I think that it may well trigger us, the world … step by step to a recession." With geopolitical tensions elevated following Russia's invasion of Ukraine and continued concerns about supply casting a shadow over oil markets, the price of Brent crude currently sits at around $113 a barrel. Looking ahead, Birol went on to lay out some of the challenges markets may face in the coming months. "I very much hope that the increase coming from [the] United States, from Brazil, Canada this year, [will] be accompanied by the increase coming from the key producers in Middle East and elsewhere," he said. "Otherwise, we have only one hope that we don't have big trouble in the oil markets in summer, which is hoping … that the Chinese demand remains very weak." Chinese oil demand weakened in recent months as the country imposed a number of stringent lockdowns in a bid to curb the spread of Covid-19. If China went back to the usual oil consumption and oil demand trends, "then we will have a very difficult summer around the world," Birol said.

Russia’s imminent oil ban puts Nigeria’s low output on the spot - - Nigeria has, more than ever before, been exposed as a country that is unable to meet its OPEC’s quota of 1.772 million. It is unable not take advantage of the looming Russian oil ban to ramp up its revenue. Following the war between Russia and Ukraine, the European Commission recently proposed an oil embargo on Russian crude oil and refined products as part of the sixth sanction package being discussed by the European Union. The crude oil embargo would come into effect after six months and the refined product embargo would come into effect at the end of this year. While the European Union alone imports some 3.5 million barrels of crude oil and refined products from Russia, the country’s supply quota in OPEC’s cut deal is 7 million barrels per day. Since a supply gap would be created when Russia’s ban takes effect, Europe is currently putting pressure on OPEC to increase output to compensate for the loss. However, OPEC has refused to increase output due to its alliance with Russia in the ongoing Declaration of Corporation, DoC, which has been in place since 2014. It is rather warning that “no capacity in the world can replace Russia’s oil”. Nigeria, also being one of OPEC’s strongest members, is torn between working to increase exploration by all means in order to take advantage of Russia’s oil ban to earn more revenue, and remaining loyal to OPEC’s quota. Yet, Nigeria’s eagerness to latch on the opportunity about to be created by the ban may be a mere wish, especially since the country currently battles vandalism, oil theft, low investments, technical issues and other forms of menace, which have kept it from producing more than 1.2 million barrels per day despite an opportunity that allows it to churn out more. Although OPEC has increased output quota twice this year, Nigeria is unable to meet its target, as the country’s output hovers around 1.2 million barrels per day for the past two years. Europe and Asia are Nigeria’s largest buyers of crude oil. Between October and December 2021, Nigeria exported over N4 trillion worth of crude oil. In the fourth quarter of 2021, crude oil exported to Europe amounted to about N2 trillion, while exports to Asia followed with around N1.4 trillion. If Russia’s ban comes into effect, Nigeria could be one of those countries that Europe would turn to Nigeria for succour. However, experts say the country is unprepared. An oil and gas expert, Dr. Dauda Garuba, said Nigeria did not prepare for the coming opportunity posed by the Russian ban, and therefore, would not, in any way, take advantage of it. “Nigeria is not, in any way, positioned to take advantage of what’s happening now because it is already under-producing,” he said. According to him, the issue at hand was a global one, “and even OPEC has already expressed its inability to bridge the gap that will be created by the ban. Nigeria didn’t prepare for this because, since 2017, the country’s reserves have remained static at 37 billion barrels. Although the government expressed interest to increase it to 40 billion barrels, this is all word of mouth. Practically, the government is not doing anything about it. What we can do is just to sit and watch the turn of events. It’s an unfortunate situation but it’s the reality,” he said.

Clean up underway after Algoa Bay oil spill Clean-up operations are underway after an oil spill in Algoa Bay.According to the South African Maritime Safety Authority (SAMSA), the oil spill took place on Monday at around noon, during a ship-to-ship transfer of oil."SAMSA has initiated all relevant oil spill response teams as per the National Oil Spill Contingency Plan to assist with the containment and clean-up operation," said SAMSA spokesperson Tebogo Ramatjie."All the relevant pollution response units have been activated, and booms deployed to contain the oil around the vessels."Teams worked through the night to collect the oil and the two ships would remain attached to help with the containment of the oil, added Ramatjie.[On Monday], SAMSA officials boarded the vessels to inspect the extent of the spill and will be conducting an aerial survey this morning. More information will be released in due course. All relevant authorities including the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and Environment are supporting the response where possible.The Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (SANCCOB) is also ready to receive oiled birds.SANCCOB's preparedness and response manager Monica Stassen said the organisation was working closely with the relevant authorities."No oiled seabirds have been reported at this stage. However, as part of our internal preparedness strategy, our response teams in Cape Town and Gqeberha are on standby in the event that we need to mobilise people and equipment.

Oman increases oil output by 9.2% as exports jump -- Oman’s daily average production of oil continued to remain above one million barrels per day (bpd) mark during the first four months of 2022, up by more than nine per cent in comparison to the daily average output recorded in the same period of last year. Oil production during January – April period of this year increased to 1.04mn bpd compared with 952,800 bpd in the corresponding period of 2021, the data released by National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI) showed. The sultanate’s total oil production in the first four months of 2022 grew by 9.2 per cent to 124.8mn barrels compared to 114.3mn barrels in the same period of 2021. Of the total production, crude output jumped by 12.8 per cent year-on-year to 98.9mn barrels during January – April period from 87.6mn barrels in the same period of last year, while condensates output decreased 2.9 per cent to 25.9mn barrels during these four months. Oman’s total oil exports grew by 16.5 per cent during January – April period of 2022 to 108.8mn barrels compared with 93.3mn barrels exports recorded in the corresponding period of 2021. The sultanate’s total oil exports for the full year 2021 had inched up 0.7 per cent to 288.9mn barrels from 287mn barrels in 2020. Exports to China, the biggest buyer of Oman’s crude, accounted for around 78 per cent of the sultanate’s total oil exports during the first four months of this year, lower than its shares in the previous months. In absolute terms, however, Oman’s oil exports to China rose 6.8 per cent to 84.7mn barrels during January – April period of this year compared to 79.3mn barrels in the same period of the previous year.

Iran to revive gas pipeline project to Oman: IRNA : Iran's oil minister has agreed to revive a long-stalled project to lay an undersea pipeline to carry gas to Oman, the Iranian state news agency IRNA reported on Saturday. Iran sits on one of the world's largest gas reserves, which Oman has been eyeing as it hopes to feed energy-intensive industries and liquefied natural gas (LNG) export plants. IRNA said the agreement to revive the project was reached during a trip to Oman by Iranian Oil Minister Javad Owji ahead of an official visit to the Gulf Arab state by Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi on Monday. In 2013, the two countries signed a deal, valued at $60 billion over 25 years, for Iran to supply gas to Oman through an undersea pipeline. In 2016, the two countries renewed efforts to implement the project, and Iran said in 2017 that it had agreed with Oman to change the route of the planned pipeline to avoid waters controlled by the United Arab Emirates. The project was subsequently delayed by price disagreements and U.S. pressure on Oman to find other suppliers before the United States withdrew from a 2015 nuclear deal between world powers and Iran, and reimposed sanctions in 2018. Tehran and Washington have held indirect talks in Vienna over the past year to revive the nuclear agreement which led to the lifting of sanctions, but the negotiations have stalled.

Saudi Arabia Says It Has Done All It Can for the Oil Market -Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister said there’s nothing more the kingdom can do to tame oil markets, implying that the world’s biggest crude exporter has no plan to accelerate its gradual production increases. “As far as we are aware there is no shortfall of oil,” Prince Faisal bin Farhan said, speaking on a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “We have to be sure that while we transition to a renewable future, there is enough energy in the market. The kingdom has done what it can.” Prince Faisal was responding to a question about what the US, which has put pressure on the Saudis and other members of OPEC+ to pump faster, could offer Riyadh in return for more crude. His comments echoed those of Saudi Energy Minister Abdulaziz bin Salman, who said in an interview this month that a refining crunch was to blame for soaring fuel prices. “It’s much more complex than just bringing barrels to the market,” Prince Faisal said. “Our assessment is that actually oil supply right now is relatively in balance.” Oil prices have climbed almost 70% in the past year to around $110 a barrel, first as demand rebounded from the coronavirus pandemic and then after Russia invaded Ukraine. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its partners, a 23-nation group led by Riyadh and Russia, are raising daily crude production by around 430,000 barrels each month. Major importers including the US and Japan have called on the alliance, known as OPEC+, to increase output more quickly. The group’s struggling to reach even its current monthly target, with many members pumping below their quotas. Pump prices for gasoline and diesel have hit record highs in the US in recent weeks, pushing up inflation putting pressure on US President Joe Biden ahead of November’s mid-term elections. Saudi Arabia and neighboring United Arab Emirates have said that fuel prices have jumped so much because of a lack of investment in refineries across the world in the past several years. Pumping more crude would do little to help the market because refineries are largely at full capacity, they’ve argued.

Oil prices firm on weak dollar, tight supply as US driving season looms (Reuters) -Oil prices gained on Monday with U.S. fuel demand, tight supply and a slightly weaker U.S. dollar supporting the market, as Shanghai prepares to reopen after a two-month lockdown that fuelled worries about a sharp slowdown in growth. Brent crude futures rose $1.12 or 1% to $113.67 a barrel at 0912 GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures climbed 96 cents, or 0.9%, to $111.24 a barrel, adding to last week's small gains for both contracts. "Oil prices are supported as gasoline markets remain tight amid solid demand heading into the peak U.S. driving season," "Refineries are typically in ramp-up mode to feed U.S. drivers' unquenching thirst at the pump." The U.S. peak driving season traditionally begins on Memorial Day weekend at the end of May and ends on Labor Day in September. Analysts said despite fears about soaring fuel prices potentially denting demand, mobility data from TomTom and Google had climbed in recent weeks, showing more people were on the roads in places like the United States. A weaker U.S. dollar also sent oil higher on Monday, as that makes crude cheaper for buyers holding other currencies. Market gains have been capped however by concerns about China's efforts to crush COVID-19 with lockdowns, even with Shanghai due to reopen on June 1. Lockdowns in China, the world's top oil importer, have hammered industrial output and construction, prompting moves to prop up the economy, including a bigger-than-expected mortgage rate cut last Friday. The European Union's inability to reach a final agreement on banning Russian oil following its invasion of Ukraine, which Moscow calls a "special operation", has also stopped oil prices from climbing much higher.

Oil Settles Nearly Flat; Recession Worry Vies With Higher Demand Outlook (Reuters) -Oil prices were little changed on Monday, settling just slightly higher as worries over a possible recession vied with an outlook for higher fuel demand with the upcoming U.S. summer driving season and Shanghai's plans to reopen after a two-month coronavirus lockdown. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude settled up 1 cent, or 0.01%, at $110.29 a barrel, while Brent crude futures settled up 87 cents, or 0.7%, to at $113.42. Multiple threats to the global economy topped the worries of the world's well-heeled at the annual Davos economic summit, with some flagging the risk of a worldwide recession. International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said she did not expect a recession for major economies but could not rule one out. Oil's losses were limited by expectations gasoline demand would remain high. The United States was set to enter its peak driving season beginning on Memorial Day weekend at the end of this week. Despite fears that soaring fuel prices could dent demand, analysts said mobility data from TomTom and Google had climbed in recent weeks, showing more drivers on the road in places such as the United States. To address a major supply crunch and blunt rising prices, the White House is weighing an emergency declaration to release diesel from a rarely used stockpile, an administration official said. The White House is considering tapping the Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve, created in 2000 to help with supply issues and used only once in 2012 in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. The impact from such a release would be limited by the relatively small size of the reserve, which only contains 1 million barrels of diesel.

Crude oil futures tick lower as uncertainty lingers over EU ban on Russian oil --Crude oil futures were lower in mid-morning Asian trade May 24 as Hungary continues to hold up the EU's planned embargo on Russian oil, but some support came from a weaker US dollar and tighter US gasoline inventories. At 10:39 am Singapore time (0239 GMT), the ICE July Brent futures contract was down 62 cents/b (0.55%) from the previous close at $112.80/b, while the NYMEX July light sweet crude contract fell 61 cents/b (0.55%) to $109.68/b. The EU continues to stall its unilateral decision to ban Russian oil as Hungary has been holding out on it, requesting more time to find alternative sources. "The EU has offered to phase in the sanctions to 2024, while Hungary has indicated it needs at least Eur770 million to revamp its oil industry," Meanwhile, a weaker US dollar added support, though analysts said that crude would trade rangebound. The ICE US Dollar Index was trading at 102.325 at 10:39 pm Singapore time (0239 GMT) May 24, down 1.05% on the week. A weaker dollar results in dollar-denominated assets like oil futures becoming more attractive to investors holding foreign currencies. Some additional support came from US gasoline inventory draws, which likely extended into the week ended May 20, analysts surveyed by S&P Global Commodity Insights said May 23. Dubai crude swaps and intermonth spreads were lower in mid-morning trade in Asia May 24 from the previous close. The July Dubai swap was pegged at $102.84/b at 10 am Singapore time (0200 GMT), down $1.00/b (0.96%) from the May 23 Asian market close. The June-July Dubai swap intermonth spread was pegged at $3.21/b at 10 am Singapore time, down 7 cents/b over the same period, and the July-August intermonth spread was pegged at $2.52/b, down 13 cents/b. The July Brent-Dubai EFS was pegged at $9.71/b, down 12 cents/b.

Oil near flat after choppy trade; U.S. says export ban not ruled out --Oil prices were near flat on Tuesday after choppy trade as tight supply worries offset concerns over a possible recession and China's COVID-19 curbs. Brent crude rose 14 cents to settle at $113.56 a barrel. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude fell 52 cents to settle at $109.77 a barrel. Oil has surged this year with Brent hitting $139 in March, the highest since 2008, after Russia's invasion of Ukraine exacerbated supply concerns. Prices fell on Tuesday after U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said U.S. President Joe Biden had not ruled out using export restrictions to ease soaring domestic fuel prices. "Initially the assumption is that is going to reduce the prices for products in the United States," said Phil Flynn, an analyst at Price Futures Group. Also weighing on prices were worries about threats to the global economy, a main theme of the Davos meeting this week. Beijing is stepping up quarantine efforts to end its COVID-19 outbreak while Shanghai's lockdown is due to be lifted in a little more than a week. Prices earlier were supported as the European Union moved closer to agreeing to a ban on Russian oil imports. Such an embargo is likely to be agreed to "within days," Germany's economy minister said on Monday. Travel during the upcoming U.S. Memorial Day weekend is expected to be the busiest in two years as more drivers hit the road and shake off coronavirus lockdowns despite high pump prices.

Oil Climbs as Report Shows Tightening US Gasoline Stockpiles - Oil rose after a two-day decline as an industry report showed US gasoline stockpiles shrunk further ahead of the summer driving season and Saudi Arabia said there’s nothing more it can do to tame the market. West Texas Intermediate futures traded near $111 a barrel. The American Petroleum Institute reported that inventories of the motor fuel fell by 4.22 million barrels last week, according to people familiar with the figures. Stockpiles are at the lowest level for this time of the year since 2013. The market has been gripped by a volatile period of trading since late February following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and a Covid-19 resurgence across China. Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister said that the kingdom has done what it could for the oil market, adding that there was no shortfall of crude. The war in Ukraine has upended trade flows and fanned inflation worldwide, with pump prices in the US repeatedly breaking records. Unseasonably high gasoline exports from America are also eroding domestic stockpiles ahead of the summer driving season that starts this weekend. US distillate inventories — a category that includes diesel — fell by 949,000 barrels last week, while crude stockpiles rose, the API said. Energy Information Administration data is scheduled to be released later Wednesday. Prices WTI for July delivery rose 1.5% to $111.44 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange at 11:02 a.m. in London. Brent for July settlement gained 1.3% to $114.98 a barrel on the ICE Futures Europe exchange. Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan said “oil supply right now is relatively in balance,” during a panel session at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “The kingdom has done what it can.” The US is leading a co-ordinated release of global crude reserves in an effort to tame rising energy prices. The Department of Energy made its latest announcement on the sale of strategic stockpiles, offering as much as 40.1 million barrels of predominantly sour crude.

WTI Holds Gains After Small Gasoline Draw, Distillates Build - Oil prices are higher overnight following API's report of a small crude build and large gasoline draw and the ongoing geo-economic push-pull. "The oil market remains caught between fears of recession and the consequences of the zero-Covid policy in China on the one hand, and tight supply, especially of oil products, coupled with the prospect of US gasoline demand picking up during the summer driving season on the other," .All eyes for now are on the official inventory data and any signs of demand destruction. API

• Crude +576k
• Cushing -731k
• Gasoline -4.223mm
• Distillates -949k

DOE

• Crude -1.02mm (-778k exp)
• Cushing -1.061mm
• Gasoline -482k
• Distillates +1.657mm - biggest build since Jan 2022

The official DOE data showed a significantly smaller gasoline draw than API and also showed a slightly bigger than expected crude draw. This was still the 8th straight week of gasoline draws (and 15th of last 16 weeks). Distillate inventories rose by the most since Jan 2022... Crude stocks at Cushing, Oklahoma, have resumed their slide, falling for a third straight week and dropping below 25 million barrels again.Many traders think critical levels at Cushing are likely around the 22 million-barrel level, so this will be closely watched heading into the summer months.Gasoline stocks remain dramatically below normal for this time of year...

Oil edges higher on tight supply, rising US refining activity – CNA -- Oil prices rose on Wednesday, buoyed by tight supplies and as U.S. refiners drove processing activity to their highest level since before the coronavirus pandemic started. Brent crude futures for July settled up 47 cents to $114.03 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude for July delivery ended up 56 cents to $110.33 a barrel. U.S. crude stockpiles fell 1 million barrels last week, the government said, with gasoline inventories also sliding modestly. Distillate stocks rose by 1.7 million barrels. Refiners picked up the pace of processing, boosting capacity use to 93.2 per cent, its highest since December 2019. Refiners have had to keep facilities running at full-tilt to deal with heavy demand, especially from overseas, as refined product exports rose to more than 6.2 million barrels per day last week. High exports and a reduction in refining capacity means gasoline stocks have dwindled in the United States. This upcoming weekend's U.S. Memorial Day travel is expected to be the busiest in two years, causing fuel demand to rise as more drivers hit the road and shake off coronavirus pandemic restrictions despite high fuel prices. "We're not seeing any elasticity in refined products demand,""People are still going to drive; people are still driving." Global crude supplies continue to tighten as buyers avoid oil from Russia, the world's second-largest exporter, after the invasion of Ukraine, which Moscow calls a "special military operation". The EU hopes to be able to agree on sanctions that would phase out Russian oil imports before the next meeting of the European Council, the council's president, Charles Michel, said on Wednesday. Even without a legal ban, self-sanctioning by numerous European companies has led to a record amount of Russia's Urals crude oil sitting in vessels at sea as it struggles to find buyers. On the flip side is the strict approach to the COVID-19 pandemic from China, the world's biggest oil importer. Beijing has imposed new curbs while Shanghai plans to keep most restrictions in place this month.

Oil Gains as US Crude Stocks Fall, Fed Signals Moderation - Oil futures nearest delivery settled Wednesday's session higher after Federal Reserve minutes for their meeting in early May revealed that while the central bank is sticking to its commitment to lift short-term interest rates, Fed officials are not planning more aggressive measures in tightening monetary policy. Major equity indices advanced Wednesday and the U.S. dollar index bounced off a one-month low to settle modesty higher at 102.077 following the afternoon release of minutes from the Federal Open Market Committee's May 3-4 meeting. While many market watchers have worried the central bank was set to pilot an aggressive monetary tightening path that could tip the U.S. economy into recession, minutes show Fed officials expect the U.S. economy to rebound from a first quarter contraction, as both business and household spending remained strong, and the job market remained robust. This led to a conclusion to hike the federal funds rate 50 basis points, announced May 4, and to begin reducing its holdings of Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities beginning June 1, while continuing to monitor economic developments. Midmorning Wednesday, Energy Information Administration reported a 1-million-barrel (bbl) draw in commercial crude oil inventory occurred during the week-ended May 20 that was more than expectations for a 600,000 bbl decline and countered a 567,000 bbl build reported late Tuesday by the American Petroleum Institute. Missed expectations coincide with the highest refinery run rate since the end of 2019 at 93.2%, up 1.4% from the previous week, with crude inputs topping 16 million bpd at 16.269 million barrels per day (bpd) for the first time since mid-August 2021. Crude inputs increased 334,000 bpd or 2.1% during the week reviewed, with the weekly input rate the third highest over the past 12 months. EIA also showed U.S. crude exports surged by 821,000 bpd or 23.3% last week to 4.341 million bpd, as crude oil released from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve continues to head to U.S. ports for export. EIA reported crude oil from the SPR was drawn down 6 million bbl last week to 532 million bbl. At settlement, July West Texas Intermediate futures gained $0.56 to $110.33 bbl, and ICE July Brent crude advanced $0.47 to $114.03 bbl. NYMEX June RBOB gained 2.07 cents to $3.8317 gallon, while front-month ULSD rallied 8.46 cents to $3.8664 gallon.

Oil prices jump 3% to 2-month high as EU seeks to ban Russian supply - (Reuters) -Oil prices rose about 3% to a two-month high on Thursday on signs of tight supply ahead of U.S. summer driving season, as the European Union (EU) wrangled with Hungary over plans to ban crude imports from Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. Brent futures for July delivery rose $3.21, or 2.8%, to $117.24 a barrel by 11:15 a.m. EDT (1515 GMT). U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude rose $3.98, or 3.6%, to $114.31. Brent was up for the sixth straight day in a row and on track for its highest close since March 25. WTI was headed for its highest close since March 23. "The fundamental backdrop ... is getting price supportive as the driving season is approaching and will turn even more bullish once the EU sanctions on Russian oil sales are endorsed by all parties involved," European Council President Charles Michel said he was confident an agreement can be reached before the council's next meeting on May 30. Germany's economy minister Robert Habeck said the EU can strike a deal on an oil embargo within days or look to "other instruments." Hungary remains a stumbling block, as EU sanctions require unanimous support. Hungary is pressing for about 750 million euros ($800 million) to upgrade its refineries and expand a pipeline from Croatia. Even without a formal ban, much less Russian oil is available as buyers and trading houses have avoided suppliers from the country. Russia's oil production should decline to 480-500 million tonnes this year from 524 million tonnes in 2021, state-run news agency RIA reported, citing Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak. OPEC+ meets on June 2 and is expected to stick to an oil production deal agreed last year and raise July output targets by 432,000 barrels per day, six OPEC+ sources told Reuters, rebuffing Western calls for a faster increase to control prices. Other factors also are supporting oil prices. "Shanghai is preparing to reopen after a two-month lockdown, while the U.S. peak driving season begins with the Memorial Day weekend," "All of the variables are pointing to further gains in oil prices going ahead." The U.S. government confiscated an Iranian oil cargo held on a Russian-operated ship near Greece and will send the cargo to the United States aboard another vessel. Britain announced a 25% windfall tax on oil and gas producers' profits, alongside a 15 billion pound ($18.9 billion) package of support for households struggling to pay energy bills. Hungary also announced new windfall taxes worth 800 billion forints ($2.19 billion) on "extra profits" earned by banks, energy companies and other firms.

Crude Futures Climb to Two-Month High Russian Oil Embargo Chatter -- Oil futures settled Thursday's session sharply higher along with rallying equity markets amid signs that the European Union is closing in on a compromise with Hungary and Czech Republic to ban Russian oil imports at a time when global oil markets slip further into supply deficit. Oil futures spiked more than 3% on Thursday as investors fretted over a potential EU embargo on Russian crude oil imports after Germany reportedly offered a compromise to the Hungarian government on financing projects for alternative oil supplies. Hungary is pressing for about 750 million euros to upgrade its refineries and expand a pipeline from Croatia to enable it to switch away from Russian oil. Germany's Economy Minister Robert Habeck indicated the new deal could be reached within days or look to "other instruments" to limit imports of Russian oil if no agreement is reached. Last month, EU proposed a phased-out approach to banning Russian oil imports, with several states including Hungary, Slovakia, and Czech Republic having been granted a longer period to transition away from Russian oil. Even without a formal ban, there is less Russian oil available to the market as buyers and trading houses avoid dealing with crude and fuel suppliers from the country. Russia's oil production is expected to decline to between 480 and 500 million metric tons this year from 524 million metric tons in 2021, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said, state-run news agency RIA reported on Thursday. In financial markets, U.S. equity futures rallied on Thursday, while the dollar eased against its global currency peers, as investors weighed the impact of the Federal Reserve's inflation fight. Minutes from the Federal Open Market Committee's May 3-4 policy meeting published Wednesday afternoon show a broad consensus for 50 basis point rate hikes at meetings in June and July. Participants did note the possible need for faster and deeper moves with a more "restrictive policy stance" that sustained market bets for a 75-basis point hike at some point in the tightening cycle. Minutes further showed that Fed's officials expect the U.S. economy to rebound from a first quarter contraction, as both business and household spending remained strong, and the job market remained robust. Bureau of Economic Analysis this morning released its second estimate of first quarter U.S. gross domestic product, which contracted 1.5% on an annualized basis versus an expected 1.3% contraction. Further supporting oil prices, a bigger-than-expected drawdown from U.S. commercial crude oil inventories in the week-ended May 20 while exports soared. U.S. refiners picked up run rates, boosting overall capacity use to the highest level since before the pandemic at 93.2%, Energy Information Administration data shows. Refinery crude inputs topped 16 million bpd at 16.269 million barrels per day (bpd) for the first time since mid-August 2021. Crude inputs increased 334,000 bpd or 2.1% during the week reviewed, with the weekly input rate the third highest over the past 12 months. EIA also showed U.S. crude exports surged by 821,000 bpd or 23.3% last week to 4.341 million bpd, as crude oil released from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve continues to head to U.S. ports for export. EIA reported crude oil from the SPR was drawn down 6 million barrels (bbl) last week to 532 million bbl. At settlement, July West Texas Intermediate futures rallied $3.76 to $114.09 bbl, and ICE July Brent crude advanced $3.37 to $117.40 bbl. NYMEX June RBOB rose 4.57 cents to $3.8774 gallon, while front-month ULSD rallied 10.16 cents to $3.9680 gallon.

Oil edging higher supported by the prospect of a tight market --Oil prices edged higher on Friday supported by the prospect of a tight market due to rising gasoline consumption in the United States in summer, and also the possibility of an EU ban on Russian oil. Brent crude was up 58 cents, or 0.5%, at $117.98 at 1545 GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude rose 14 cents, or 0.1%, to $114.23 a barrel. "Oil prices have risen to the highest level since end of March, benefiting from renewed declines in U.S. oil inventories," U.S. gasoline stocks fell by 482,000 barrels last week to 219.7 million barrels, U.S. Energy Information Administration said on Wednesday. The start of summer driving season in the United States normally entails increased consumption. "The U.S. driving season and strong travel demand should help (prices). With supply growth lagging demand growth, the oil market is likely to stay undersupplied. Hence, we remain positive in our outlook for crude prices," Staunovo added. Both benchmark crude contracts were also supported as the European Commission continued to seek unanimous support of all 27 EU member states for its proposed new sanctions against Russia, with Hungary posing a stumbling block. European Union countries are negotiating a deal on Russian oil sanctions that would embargo shipment deliveries but delay sanctions on oil delivered by pipeline to win over Hungary and other landlocked member states, officials said. Hungary's resistance to oil sanctions – and the reluctance of a handful of other countries – has held up implementation of a sixth package of sanctions by the 27-member EU against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. "We believe that a sharp contraction in Russian oil exports could trigger a full-blown 1980s style oil crisis and push Brent well past $150 per barrel," An agreement could be reached by envoys of European Union governments in Brussels on Sunday, in time for their leaders to endorse it at their May 30-31 summit, officials said. Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin told Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer on Friday that Moscow would meet its natural gas delivery commitments. "He also raised the subject (and said) that all deliveries would be completed in full," Nehammer said. Prices have gained about 50% so far this year. OPEC and allies, a group known as OPEC+, is set to stick to last year's oil output deal at its June 2 meeting and raise July production targets by 432,000 barrels per day, six OPEC+ sources told Reuters. OPEC+ members would thereby rebuff Western calls for a faster increase to lower surging prices.

OIL FUTURES: Brent, WTI crude benchmarks edge down; market stays strong | S&P Global Commodity Insights -Brent and WTI crude oil benchmarks edged down in midday Europe trading May 27 after gaining throughout the week toward two-month highs amid tight supply and rising demand. At 12:40 pm BST, ICE July Brent crude futures was down 48 cents/b on the day at $116.92/b while NYMEX July WTI futures fell 81 cents/b at $113.28/b. The UK introduced May 26 a windfall tax on energy companies -- a temporary measure effective until 2025 that is expected to raise GBP5 billion. The market remained divided over the newly announced measure. North sea oil and gas operators said this tax would make it less attractive for investors and lead to a production decrease. BP, which previously said the tax will not affect plans, is set to review its North Sea investments. The government is also looking at extending this tax to electricity generators in future. Across the Atlantic, increasing US refining activity drew down crude oil stockpiles. The upcoming Memorial Day weekend is when the summer driving season starts, and the market would watch whether high pump prices impact driving demand this year. The market also would be following the OPEC+ meeting June 2 to see if the producer alliance addresses Western calls to increase crude output. Additionally, an EU summit May 30-31 will have Russian oil ban as its main focus, with an embargo still to be agreed among all the bloc's members. An interim measure to impose an EU tariff on Russian oil, supported by the US, is under discussion. Commerzbank in a report raised its oil price forecast by $5 in each of the next three quarters. Crude prices are expected to rise less sharply due to the EU agreeing on a Russian oil embargo, according to Daniel Briesemann at Commerzbank. Although initially the ban would support prices but sufficient supply in the second half of the year would ease the pressure on the wider market, Commerzbank said.

Brent Nears $120 on Geopolitical Risk, Tighter Oil Supply - Heading into the Memorial Day holiday weekend, oil futures erased earlier losses to settle Friday's session with gains between 1% and 3.5% on reports suggesting Iran seized two oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz -- a critical water passage for millions of oil barrels at a time when the global market is sliding further into a supply deficit amid disruption to Russian crude oil exports and limited capacity from OPEC+ nations to quickly ramp-up emergency crude production. A combination of bullish market fundamentals and geopolitical factors propelled the international crude benchmark towards $120 barrel (bbl) on Friday -- reaching the highest price point since March 23. Brent outpaced gains for the West Texas Intermediate that settled the session at $115.07 bbl, up $0.98. Brent settled the session $2.03 higher at $119.43 bbl. Media airwaves were hit with reports on Friday indicating Iran seized two Greek oil tankers in the Persian Gulf that were loaded with crude oil from Basra, Iraq. The action could be retaliation for Greek assistance in the U.S. seizure of crude oil from an Iranian-flagged tanker this week in the Mediterranean Sea. The Iranian tanker reportedly violated Washington's sanctions on trading crude oil originated from the Islamic Republic. The incident might not affect the global supply-demand balances but further highlights the challenges in reaching a comprehensive nuclear agreement with Iran that could see sanctions relief free up millions of barrels of oil. Talks in Vienna stalled last month with top U.S. diplomats suggesting the prospects of reviving the 2015 nuclear deal are "tenuous at best." On Wednesday, the United States said it was sanctioning an international oil smuggling and money laundering network that has facilitated the sale of oil for Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force and the Iran-backed Hezbollah group. Iran's seizure on Friday was just the latest in a string of hijackings to roil the Strait of Hormuz -- a narrow waterway of the Persian Gulf through which a fifth of all traded oil passes. The incidents began after former U.S. President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from Iran's nuclear deal with world powers. Against this backdrop, the European Union is set to announce a sixth sanction package against Russia for its illegal invasion of Ukraine that will likely include a ban on Russian oil imports. The measure, however, could spell out carveouts for oil imports through a Russian pipeline into the landlocked countries of Hungary and Czech Republic. The Hungarian government has remained a major opponent to banning Russian oil imports, comparing it to a "nuclear bomb" being dropped on the Hungarian economy. Media reports indicate Hungary is pressing for about 750 million euros to upgrade its refineries and expand a pipeline from Croatia to enable the switch. On the session, NYMEX RBOB June contract rose 13.84 cents or 3.5% to $4.0158 gallon, while front-month ULSD advanced 3.49 cents to $4.0029 gallon.

Oil Posts Fifth Straight Weekly Gain As Warnings Of Brent Hitting $150 Surface - --With abundant signs that the oil market is tight globally and a warning that Brent futures could soar to $150 per barrel, crude prices on Friday posted a fifth straight weekly gain.Prices also were said to have risen due to news that Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard had seized two Greek oil tankers in the Persian Gulf. West Texas Intermediate settled up 98 cents to $115.07 per barrel, while Brent settled up $2.03 at $119.43 per barrel; and the WTI December December spread touched a fresh record high on Friday, reflecting what Livia Gallarati, senior oil analyst at Energy Aspects, described as reflecting “the risk of tank bottoms at Cushing and the need to keep more barrels at home.” For the week, Brent rose 6 percent while WTI gained 1.5 percent. Meanwhile, the latest development in lockdown China on Friday was that people familiar with the matter claim the government may issue state refiners additional fuel-export quotas to refiners in order to clear high inventories that have swelled (to what consultancy JLC thinks could total 3.5 million tons).But China appears to be an anomaly in a world thirsty for more fossil fuel, and Bank of America analysts led by Francisco Blanch wrote in a report released Friday that “If supply does not recover, oil demand may have to ease,” adding that Brent could top $150. Indeed, although it has steadfastly refused to open the taps, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) on Friday were yet again urged – this time by the Group of Seven – to reconsider their stance in advance of a meeting next week. The Group also stated in a letter that it was a matter of “special urgency” for the European Union to decrease its dependency on Russian natural gas, and stressed the important role increased supplies of liquefied natural gas (LNG) could play “in order to mitigate potential supply disruptions of pipeline gas, especially to European markets.” But it’s doubtful whether the cartel will respond, especially in light of de facto leader Saudi Arabia stating earlier this month that it would stand by Russia as a participant of OPEC despite tightening western sanctions on Moscow. Also on Friday, pushback to the U.K.’s announcement of a 25 percent tax on oil and gas firms (which is expected to raise about $6.3 billion and will finance grants to the poorest households in the nation) took the form of BP stating it will review its investment plans, giving credence to critics who warned that the tax proposal doesn’t include enough incentives to preserve investment overall.

US Warns Turkey Over 'Putting Americans Forces At Risk' In New Syria Offensive - The US State Department has raised deep concerns about reports of a planned Turkish military offensive in northern Syria, saying they worry about the civilian population, and that more fighting would put the US troops there at risk. - The area of northern Syria being targeted includes a lot of Kurdish territory. The Turkish government is constantly at odds with the local YPG, and the US statement acknowledged "Turkey’s legitimate security concerns."State Department spokesperson Ned Price said Tuesday, "We are deeply concerned about reports and discussions of potential increased military activity in northern Syria, and in particular, its impact on the civilian population there." "We recognize Turkey's legitimate security concerns on Turkey's southern border, but any new offensive would further undermine regional stability and put at risk US forces and the coalition’s campaign against ISIS," he said. The YPG had been US allies in the fight against ISIS in Syria, and while the US isn’t hostile with them after that, they’ve largely not done anything about Turkish incursions in the area. Turkey’s President Erdogan says the new operations will create a 30 km deep safe zone along the Syrian zone, saying it was necessarily to combat the "terrorists." He spoke about it as if it's 'unfinished business' which started in 2019. "We will soon take new steps regarding the incomplete portions of the project we started on the 30km deep safe zone we established along our southern border," Erdogan said.

Iran Deal Has Sunk As Biden Keeps IRGC On Terror List; Tehran "Evaded" Nuclear Inspectors For Years - At this point it looks like hopes for a restored Iran nuclear deal have effectively sunk, given that Politico is reporting President Biden has decided against taking the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) off the designated terrorist list. "President Joe Biden has finalized his decision to keep Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on a terrorist blacklist, according to a senior Western official, further complicating international efforts to restore the 2015 Iran nuclear deal," Politico writes Wednesday.The Israeli government has already been informed: "Another person familiar with the matter said Biden conveyed his decision during an April 24 phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, adding that the decision was conveyed as absolutely final and that the window for Iranian concessions had closed," according to the report.But removing the designation was of course a key stipulation of the Iranians in Vienna. Tehran has blamed Washington for the indefinite pause in talks, waiting for this final hurdle towards a restored JPOA to be removed. At the same time Biden's lead envoy on the Iran nuclear talks, Rob Malley, told a Senate panel Wednesday the status of the talks are now "tenuous at best".The Biden White House is fully aware that this action is likely to torpedo a nuclear deal which has long been in the negotiating process for most of last year. The irony is that the IRGC being a designated terror group has little to no impact on its financing or operations, according to the consensus of many reports over prior months.For example, geopolitical analyst Daniel Larison writes that the US actually has nothing to gain in terms of degrading the Islamic Republic's military capabilities with such a move:Biden’s decision to leave the entire IRGC on the list is the wrong one, but more than that it is a remarkably stupid decision because the designation has served no purpose. This is not a case of weighing between different priorities and considering the tradeoffs between them. If the US gained something from keeping the IRGC on the list, there might at least be something to debate, but the administration itself doesn’t believe that the designation matters. As Peter Beinart pointed out earlier this month, “By its own admission, the Biden administration is risking the Iran nuclear deal for nothing.” Biden is jeopardizing what should be a major policy success for the sake of preserving an empty gesture of hostility.He further calls the question of the IRGC's designation "likely the last chance that Biden had to salvage the nuclear deal" - which had been a year in the making, taking up much of the first part of Biden's administration. Thus it appears the hawks have won out, but it also comes as a major investigative report in The Wall Street Journal alleges that Iran has been covering up its nuclear weapons aspirations for years by allegedly falsifying a document trail with an eye toward covering up past work on a hidden nuclear weapons program... "Iran secured access to secret United Nations atomic agency reports almost two decades ago and circulated the documents among top officials who prepared cover stories and falsified a record to conceal suspected past work on nuclear weapons, according to Middle East intelligence officials and documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal."

Unprecedented: US Air Force To Join Israelis In Mock Attack On Iran -As if an intense proxy war with nuclear powerhouse Russia isn’t bringing enough heat, the Biden White House has now given the greenlight for unprecedented U.S. participation in an Israeli drill simulating a massive attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. According to The Times of Israel, “The U.S. Air Force will serve as a complementary force, with refueling planes drilling with Israeli fighter jets as they simulate entering Iranian territory and carrying out repeated strikes.” The mock attack on Iran will happen this month, as part of a broader Israeli military exercise called “Chariots of Fire.” The US Air Force is joining apartheid Israel to do military exercises simulating entering Iranian territory and launching airstrikes.The US and Israeli militaries are blatantly threatening Iran with war.https://t.co/j8upZD96FR In September, Israeli Defense Forces Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi said the IDF had “greatly accelerated” preparations for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. “Dozens of Israeli air force fighter jets are expected to take part in the exercise and fly hundreds of miles from Israel to the west above the Mediterranean in a way that simulates a flight route to Iran,” reports Axios. General Michael Kurilla, commander of U.S. Central Command, landed in Israel on Tuesday to observe the exercises.Though there’s no indication of an imminent real-world strike, U.S. participation in the drill is an implicit endorsement of an Israeli-initiated war of aggression—and a signal that the United States might not only agree to it, but participate. If so, it wouldn’t be the first time USAF tankers facilitated aggression in the region: Before a halt was announced in 2018, American tankers controversially aided Saudi strikes in Yemen. In addition to directly killing civilians—including 131 men, women and children gathered at a 2015 wedding celebration—the Saudi campaign has plunged Yemen into one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises. To the Quincy Institute’s Trita Parsi, the hawkish participation in the Israeli drill is a “puzzling” extension of a pattern, as Biden perpetuates an aggressive Trump-like posture toward Iran that Biden previously condemned: “Biden heavily criticized former President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the nuclear deal and opposed his ‘maximum pressure’ strategy seeking to force Iran to capitulate by crushing its economy through unprecedented sanctions. Yet, 18 months into his presidency, Biden has yet to shift away from Trump’s sanctions policy.”The saber-rattling move by Biden comes as talks to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal are stalled. A key sticking point: Iran wants the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps removed from the list of designated—and sanctioned—terrorist organizations.

US Seizes Russia-Flagged Tanker Full Of Iranian Oil Near Greece --Fresh off of the US targeting a series of companies involved in an Iran-linked oil smuggling network, the US has now seized an oil tanker near Greece, taking the Iranian oil within to be sent to the US.The oil was on a Russian-operated ship, which had been singled out for US targeting in February. It was then called the Pegas. The company renamed the ship the Lana and was Russian flagged. Greece had impounded the Pegas and its Russian crew last month over the invasion of Ukraine, but ultimately released it.Neither the US nor Russia is commenting. Greece says the US informed them the oil was Iranian, and that the US hired a different ship to take the oil to America. Iran has summoned the Greek charges d’affaires and called the incident a "clear example of piracy."The US accused the tanker of loading 700,000 Bbls of oil from Iran in August 2021. The tanker mostly sent oil to China.Earlier in the week The Maritime Executive detailed that "The story of a shadowy Russian oil tanker took a new turn... as the U.S. Department of Justice seized the oil aboard the vessel and according to reports is in the process of transferring the oil to the United States on a chartered tanker.""The vessel was detained nearly seven weeks ago in Greece when authorities thought it was covered by the European Union sanctions on Russian assets, but later held for mechanical deficiencies while watchdog groups announced that it was actually smuggling sanctioned Iranian oil."The report continued: "The Aframax tanker arrived off Greece early in April with reports of a possible mechanical failure and indications that they were looking for assistance to make repairs to continue their voyage. When she anchored south of the Greek island of Evia the 115,520 dwt tanker was being identified as the Russian-flagged Pegas." And the initial "assumption at the time was that it was laden with a Russian crude oil cargo," according to the report.The seizure of the tanker, and oil, comes amid tensions on the ongoing nuclear talks. Iran believes, and not unfairly, that the oil was just stolen from them, and the US position, while yet to be public, is that the oil is now theirs.It’s not a great precedent, but generally Iran can’t do much about it, and the US is keen to have the oil.

Iran Seizes 2 Greek Tankers In Gulf As Retaliation For US Taking Oil - Iranian military operatives have seized two Greek oil tankers in the Persian Gulf on Friday. The Associated Press initially reported that the US Navy is "looking into" the reports. The tankers were boarded in international waters in the gulf, with the AP in follow-up saying that IRGC operatives now have control of the ships.The IRGC has announced it is in possession of the seized vessels, with Bloomberg reporting, "The Guard's announcement comes as tensions remain high between Iran and the West over stalled negotiations regarding its rapidly advancing nuclear program." And more according to the AP:The Guard issued a statement on its website, accusing the unnamed tankers of unspecified violations.Greece’s Foreign Ministry said Iranian authorities “violently took over” the two ships in an “act of piracy.”Industry monitor Lloyd's List maritime intelligence describes that its "sources confirmed that in two seemingly similar operations the suezmaxes Delta Poseidon (IMO: 9468671) and Prudent Warrior (IMO: 9753545), both under Greek flag, were approached by Iranian helicopters on Friday afternoon.""They were both boarded by military personnel and later escorted by naval vessels from international traffic lanes to Iranian waters a few miles off the coast," the report continues. #BREAKING A second Greek-flagged oil tanker, Prudent Warrior, has also been seized by the Iranian military, according to @LloydsList. The seizure of the two vessels comes in response to Greece's move to seize an Iranian tanker and letting the US confiscate its crude oil. pic.twitter.com/R2THAMo1d4Earlier in the day Tehran threated "punitive measures" after the United States seized a Russian flagged tanker transporting Iranian oil off Greece.Iranian sources stated following the tanker seizure in the Mediterranean, "The Islamic Republic has decided to take punitive measures against Greece after it seized an Iranian tanker and let the US government confiscate its crude oil, Nour News, affiliated to Iran's Supreme National Security Council, reports."

Shots Fired During Tanker Loading -Protesters at Port of Marsa al Hariga, Libya, fired shots in a failed attempt to halt operations and stop the loading of one million barrels of crude to a berthed tanker, Dryad Global’s latest Maritime Security Threat Advisory (MSTA) has revealed. “Protesters were prevented from entering the port. The tanker was not hit in the crossfire and no injuries were reported,” the MSTA, which was published on May 23, noted. “Zueitina and Brega oil port both remain under force majeure despite claims that blockades would be lifted. Within wider Libya, Prime Minister Bashagha forcibly entered Tripoli on the 18th May 22, with his militia in a failed attempt to take control of the capital,” the MSTA added. “Bashagha’s forces miscalculated the scale of military opposition and were forced to retreat hours after following clashes with militias loyal to Prime Minister Dbeibah,” MSTA continued. On May 8, Libya’s National Oil Corporation (NOC) revealed that the chairman of the board of directors of NOC had received the adviser of the secretary-general of the United Nations on Libya, Stephanie Williams, and her accompanying delegation at the NOC headquarters. During a meeting between the parties, the situations of the oil sector and the “difficulties and challenges it faced during the past period” were discussed, NOC highlighted. “In this regard, the advisor Williams emphasized the full support of the UN mission for the oil sector and its stability, so that the NOC can achieve its plans and objectives to increase production rates, in the interests of the Libyan people, she also stressed the technical and non-political role of the NOC, aimed at supporting the Libyan economy despite all the challenges it faced,” NOC said in a statement posted on its website. According to BP’s latest statistical review of world energy, Libya’s oil production dropped from 1.3 million barrels per day in 2019 to 390,000 barrels of oil per day in 2020. The country’s natural gas production also dipped from 14.5 billion cubic meters in 2019 to 13.3 billion cubic meters in 2020, the review highlighted.

Bankrupt Sri Lanka Takes Russian Crude As Fuel Crisis Depletes Stocks, Mulls Loan From China - A foreign exchange shortage has resulted in the worst financial crisis Sri Lanka has ever endured, with shortages of everything from food to crude. Fuel supplies are down to just days, food has run out at supermarkets, and social-economic chaos has unfolded across the island country in South Asia.However, there's short-term hope, and somehow the bankrupt country found enough money to pay for a shipment of Russian crude. Bloomberg said Ceylon Petroleum Corp., the country's only refinery, is set to take shipment of Russian grade Siberian Light on May 28. It will be the first time the refinery has processed crude to produce high-value products such as gasoline and diesel in two months. Fuel supplies on the island nation are so low that the government has told citizens to stop waiting in long lines at filling stations. The government has run out of foreign reserves to pay for essential imports.Last week, newly-appointed prime minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, said his government needed $75 million for critical imports such as crude. "At the moment, we only have petrol stocks for a single day. The next couple of months will be the most difficult ones of our lives."We must prepare ourselves to make some sacrifices and face the challenges of this period," Wickremesinghe said. Sapugaskanda Refinery will commence operations for first time since March 20th with a Crude Oil cargo unloading tomo. The refinery will start producing Fuel Oil in 6 days. Stocks on 26 May - Ship-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg shows the Nissos Delos tanker carrying Siberian Light has moved towards a mooring point where it can begin discharge operations. The vessel loaded up on March 29 at Novorossiysk, a port city on the Black Sea in southern Russia. Bloomberg wasn't exactly sure how Sri Lanka paid for the Russian crude, considering it owes more than $50bn in overseas debt. It's seeking a $4bn loan from the IMF and has asked China to renegotiate at least $3.5bn in debt.China recently offered a few hundred million dollars in lending to help alleviate a shortage of essential goods."It's quite substantial. It would be a few hundred million dollars," Ranil Wickremesinghe, who was appointed Sri Lanka's prime minister this month, told the Financial Times in an interview. "It'll still help us get hold of essential consumer items, fertilizers. . . the ministry of finance is having discussions on some of the items."

China is shuttling small ships to tankers at sea to transport cheap Russian oil amid sanctions, report says -China is sending small vessels out to huge tankers at sea in an effort to transport cheap Russian oil to Asia, Bloomberg reported.Following the sanctions imposed over Russia's invasion of Ukraine, more shipowners and insurers are refusing to handle Russian oil, leading to Chinese buyers using risky ship-to-ship transfers to keep crude coming into the country, shipbrokers told Bloomberg.Shipbrokers told the outlet that at least one Chinese buyer is shuttling smaller vessels between the port of Kozmino in Russia and the coastline of Yeosu in South Korea. From there, the oil is transferred onto a massive oil tanker, which then makes its way to China, they said.Bloomberg cited an example from ship-tracking data which showed two of China's Cosco Shipping Holdings smaller tankers, Yang Li Hu and Yang Mei Hu, stocking up with Russian oil ESPO in mid-May in Kozmino port and sailing to Yeosu to transfer the cargo onto the Yuan Qiu Hu tanker, which then traveled to China three-quarters full of crude.It's unusual for Russian ESPO oil to be transported in this way. Normally, it's ferried directly to the buyer in China via small tankers, Bloomberg reported.The availability of oil tankers has dropped because of the financial sanctions against Russia, per Bloomberg. The ship-to-ship transfers allow the oil producers and buyers to deploy their fleet of vessels in a more effective manner, the shipbrokers told Bloomberg. However, it's not being done to avoid sanctions, they reportedly added.Shipbrokers told Bloomberg that the process takes longer for the oil to reach the buyer and costs more. The news comes as China has ramped up purchases of discounted Russian oil, which the West has shunned, Reuters reported. Data from Vortexa Analytics, which was cited by Reuters, said that China is set to import 1.1 million barrels per day of Russian oil brought by sea.Last month, we reported that India had doubled down on Russian oil after the west slapped a chain of sanctions on Moscow. India has never been a big buyer of Russian crude despite needing to import 80% of its needs. In a typical year, India imports just 2-5% of its crude from Russia, roughly the same proportion as the United States did before it announced a 100% ban on Russian energy commodities. Indeed, India imported only 12 million barrels of Russian crude in 2021, with the majority of its oil coming from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Nigeria.But reports emerged of a "significant uptick" in Russian oil deliveries bound for India. Matt Smith, the lead oil analyst at Kpler, told CNBC that since the beginning of March, five cargoes of Russian oil, or about 6 million barrels, have been loaded and are bound for India. In other words, India imported half as much crude from Russia in one month as it did in an entire year.China, on the other hand, had seen crude imports from Russia in the first two months of the year actually declined 9.1% to 1.57 mb/d largely due to agovernment crackdown on private Chinese refiners known as teapots. But with years of experience shipping banned Iranian oil using various cloaking methods, China is expected to remain one of Russia's biggest oil customers.

India Debt: India mulls $13 billion extra borrowing to offset fuel-tax cut -- India will probably borrow the entire Rs 1 lakh crore ($12.9 billion) that the government will forgo as revenues due to a cut in petrol and diesel levies, according to people familiar with the matter. Higher collections from the goods and services tax as well as personal income taxes will be neutralized by additional spending on food and fertilizer subsidies that the government is giving to the poor and farmers, said the people, who declined to be identified as the discussions are private. The loss to the exchequer due to the recent excise duty cuts will therefore have to be borne through additional market borrowings, the people said. Calls made to a finance ministry spokesman were unanswered outside of business hours in New Delhi. The mounting debt load will probably spook India’s bond market, where yields on benchmark 10-year notes have surged over the past month. The Reserve Bank of India, which is already managing a record borrowing plan, surprised investors with an off-cycle increase in interest rates this month. Over the weekend, the Central government cut levies on pump prices of petrol and diesel, waived import tax on coking coal and increased payouts on fertilizers as well as cooking gas for the poor. It lowered excise duty on diesel by Rs 6 a liter and gasoline by Rs 8, according to a tweet from Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. The revenue loss comes at a time when investors are staring at a record borrowing program from the government, surging price pressures as reflected in the wholesale and consumer price index, and the prospect of sharp interest rate increases by the central bank. India budgets to raise about Rs 14.3 lakh crore through debt issuances in this financial year through March 2023. The entire borrowings are in local currency, with banks and insurance companies the biggest buyers of sovereign debt. Analysts like Barclays Plc’s Chief India Economist Rahul Bajoria are raising their budget deficit estimates. Bajoria expects India’s budget gap to be at 6.9 per cent for fiscal year 2022-23, up from New Delhi’s forecast of 6.4 per cent of gross domestic product.

Soaring food, energy prices reach Asia to bring global inflation in sync -- The world is now facing a synchronized inflation outbreak as food and energy prices surge in Asia, a shift from just a few months ago when the region appeared to avoid the price fever gripping the U.S. and parts of Europe. Inflation readings across the region -- China, India, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand and South Korea -- recently rose more than forecast, while New Zealand on Wednesday hiked rates by the most in 22 years over price worries. And accelerating manufacturing costs suggest the worst is yet to come. Markets are starting to price in rising inflation expectations and more aggressive central bank action across much of Asia. That’s beginning to mirror trends seen in the U.S., where data Tuesday showed consumer prices last month rose by the most since late 1981, piling fresh pressure on the Federal Reserve to respond. Regional government bond yields have risen through this year, led by South Korea, with the emerging Asia total return index down 2.6%, its worst performance since 2013. That signals an expectation that some central banks will raise interest rates to slow inflation and prop up their currencies as capital leaves the region. The turning point was Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which triggered an upheaval in commodities markets. That pushed energy and fuel prices higher and threatened grain supplies to the world’s top consuming region. Rising fertilizer and transport costs are also filtering through to compound record global food prices. Elevated commodities prices are seen fanning inflation in developing Asia by 1 full percentage point to 3.7% this year, the Asian Development Bank said earlier this month. While that’s relatively tame compared to rates in the U.S., it’s forcing policymakers to shift focus and spooking some investors. Soaring food, energy prices reach Asia to bring global inflation in sync A net $22.3 billion in investments last month flowed out of emerging Asia, excluding China, according to Australia & New Zealand Banking Group -- marking the biggest sell-off since March 2020. India, the world’s second-most populous nation, is feeling the food and energy pinch. At his vegetable stall in a Mumbai suburb, Dnyaneshwar Uttam Sante’s problems could be seen in the plastic bag of mixed vegetables he had just packed for a customer: He was charging 450 rupees, or almost $6, which is about 80% more than a few weeks ago. “I’m helpless,” Sante said, just as a customer chimed in about the “unbelievable” cost of a cooking gas cylinder, which had risen almost 30% to 960 rupees. The reaction by the Reserve Bank of India is emblematic of Asia’s growing pressures. Governor Shaktikanta Das last week cited a “tectonic shift” in the macroeconomic and inflation outlook since the end of February -- basically, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine -- which “upended the earlier narrative” of calmer price pressures this year. “In the sequence of our priorities, we have now put inflation over growth,” Das said. In China, producer prices gained 8.3% from a year earlier, down from 8.8% in February but still above the median estimate of an 8.1%. Consumer prices excluding fresh food in Japan, the Bank of Japan’s benchmark, rose 0.6% in February from a year earlier, the fastest pace in two years, driven up by energy costs.

US/NATO-provoked war in Ukraine creates food crisis in Africa - The war in Ukraine deliberately provoked by United States and its NATO partners, together with sanctions on Russia, have triggered the biggest rise in global commodity prices in more than 50 years. The United Nations has warned that the war risks tipping 1.7 billion people, one-fifth of the world’s population, into poverty, destitution and hunger—a horrifying scenario the imperialist powers are utilising to step up their warmongering in the Black Sea. Nowhere is this threat more acute than in Africa. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s food price index, a gauge of food prices around the world, hit an all-time high in March, with food now costing 42 percent more than in 2014-2016. This comes at a time when food insecurity is already rising following the COVID-19 pandemic. It is the world’s biggest food crisis since World War II. According to the latest estimates from the State of Food Security and Nutrition around the World, the number of people facing food insufficiency has reached 811 million, up 161 million people in 2019, meaning around one in 10 of the world’s people went to bed hungry. Africa has suffered more than any other continent. A total of 282 million people or 21 percent of Africans suffered from hunger in 2020, up 46 million on the previous year. Households in sub-Saharan Africa spend 40 percent of their incomes on food, a much higher proportion than those living in the advanced countries who spend 17 percent, according to the Financial Times based on figures from the International Monetary Fund. The African Development Bank puts this figure at 65 percent. The joint impacts of the pandemic, unemployment, loss of earnings and the lack of social protection have pushed people into long-term poverty and destitution. Today, one in three Africans—422 million people—live below the global poverty line, defined as living on less than $1 per day. Exports from Ukraine and Russia are at a virtual standstill, where according to UN General Secretary Antonio Guterres there are “nearly 25 million tons of grain that could be exported but that cannot leave the country [Ukraine].” Last year, Russia and Ukraine accounted for nearly one third of the world’s grain exports, one fifth of its corn trade and almost 80 percent of sunflower oil production. According to the US Department of Agriculture, world wheat supplies will tighten, with exports from Russia and Ukraine likely to be 7 million tonnes lower than expected before the war.

European Commission president denounced Moscow for targeting Ukrainian grain warehouses -- As Russian forces continued a slow, deadly march towardUkraine’s last stronghold in the battered Luhansk region, the president of the European Commission on Tuesday accused Moscow of deliberately trying to provoke a global food crisis by targeting grain warehouses, ports and other critical infrastructure in its three-month war in Ukraine.Ursula von der Leyen denounced Russia for destroying silos, seizing grain stocks and enforcing a blockade that has kept Ukraine, one of the world’s most important food exporters, from shipping wheat, sunflower seeds and other products to hungry markets.“The consequences of these shameful acts are there for everyone to see: Global wheat prices are skyrocketing, and it is fragile countries and vulnerable populations that suffer most,” Ms. von der Leyen said in an address to the World Economic Forum, the annual gathering of global business leaders in Davos, Switzerland. Her comments came a day after the head of the World Food Program warned that if Ukraine’s food supplies remained off the market, the world could face shortages over the coming year that could amount to “hell on Earth,” according to The Associated Press.But for Ukraine’s Western allies, which have also sought to strangle Russia’s economy with sanctions, options to ease the food crisis appear to be few and fraught with peril.Ms. von der Leyen pledged to help Ukrainian exports transit through Europe via rail, although experts have said that doing so would free up only a fraction of the harvest. And although countries such as Britain have expressed initial support for a Lithuanian proposal for a naval operation to escort Ukrainian ships past the Russian blockade, such a move risks placing Ukraine’s Western allies in direct confrontation with Moscow’s warships in the Black Sea. …

Russian blockade of Ukraine's grain exports may require U.S. intervention, general says - The American general slated to become NATO’s next supreme allied commander warned Thursday that Russia’s blockade of Ukrainian grain exports could enable terrorist networks in other parts of the world and may require U.S. military intervention to ensure global markets don’t become destabilized.Gen. Christopher Cavoli, commander of all U.S. Army forces in Europe and Africa, told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee that groups including the Islamic State, al-Shabab and Boko Haram stand to benefit from food shortages resulting from the war. Those groups, he said, “feed on weak governance and food insecurity and corruption and poverty.” Cavoli appeared on Capitol Hill as part of the confirmation process to lead U.S. and NATO forces in Europe.Ukraine is the world’s largest exporter of sunflower oil, the fourth largest exporter of corn, and the fifth largest exporter of wheat. Western officials have accused Moscow of using food as a form of blackmail, as Russia’s navy effectively controls all traffic in the northern third of the Black Sea, according to U.S. intelligence assessments.There were mixed signals Thursday over Russia’s willingness to release any of the wheat now at risk of rotting while it sits on commercial vessels unable to depart Ukraine’s seaports. The Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said no ships carrying Ukrainian grain would be allowed to leave until Western governments lift their sanctions on Russia. Hours later, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi told reporters that, in a call, Russian President Vladimir Putin had agreed in principle to liberate several million tons. A Kremlin readout of the leaders’ conversation did not go that far.British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss condemned Moscow for attempting to “hold the world to ransom” and “essentially weaponizing hunger.” In calling on Putin to end the blockade, she rejected the idea of lifting sanctions and said “any appeasement” would only make the Russian leader “stronger in the longer term.”Draghi, the Italian premier, said during a news conference that he decided to call Putin because “millions and millions of lives are at stake.” The Russian leader, he said, blames Ukraine for blocking its seaports bylaying floating mines to stave off attack. The proposal involves a collaboration between Russia and Ukraine, “on the one hand on demining, and on the other on guaranteeing” that no attacks are launched while the operation is being carried out, Draghi said, adding that he intends to inquire with Kyiv whether Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would support such an arrangement.

Russia To Open Sea Corridors From Ukraine Ports Amid Wheat Crisis, But Warns Of Ukrainian Mines -After being accused of using the food supply as blackmail and a bargaining chip, Russia said Wednesday its military will open up protected sea corridors for international shipping to pass through from seven Ukrainian ports that have thus far been blockaded.According to a defense ministry statement reported by Bloomberg late in the day, "Humanitarian maritime corridors from ports on the Black Sea and Azov Sea, including Odesa, will operate from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily."The announcement comes two days after the head of the United Nations World Food Program David Beasley ripped Moscow for what he dubbed a "declaration of war" on global food security. He's been urging "political solution" to the crisis of blocked Black Sea ports, saying the war in 'the world's breadbasket' threatens to unleash "famine, the destabilization of nations as well as mass migration by necessity." Millions of people in 43 countries dependent on grain from the war-torn region are "knocking on famine’s door," he said.However, Russia has stressed that its military is engaged in extensive and complex demining operations due thousands of mines dotting Ukraine's coast placed by Ukrainian forces, making international shipping dangerous and impossible. As reported in the independent Moscow Times:The port of Mariupol has resumed normal operations, Russia's Defense Ministry announced Wednesday.The Defense Ministry said Black Sea Fleet specialists cleared more than 12,000 mines from the seaport and its surrounding areas.Some one-third of global wheat supplies originate from Ukraine and Russia, with the bulk of it passing through the Black Sea.On Wednesday Russia said it remains ready and willing to work with the West to reach a solution, but that easing sanctions is a necessity:"We have repeatedly stated on this point that a solution to the food problem requires a comprehensive approach, including the lifting of sanctions that have been imposed on Russian exports and financial transactions," Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Rudenko was quoted as saying by Interfax.But the statement called on Ukraine to cease deployment of sea mines, and to engage in immediate demining operations: "And it also requires the demining by the Ukrainian side of all ports where ships are anchored. Russia is ready to provide the necessary humanitarian passage, which it does every day," Rudenko added.

Ukraine Latest: Russia Pledges to Open Sea Corridors, Kyiv Wary - Russia said it’s opening corridors for shipping from seven Ukrainian ports amid growing international criticism of an unfolding global food crisis triggered by its blockade. Kyiv warned that security issues could still prevent free passage. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba spoke at the World Economic Forum in Davos and said peace negotiations with Russia are going “nowhere.” He compared Moscow’s offensive in the eastern Donbas region to a World War II battle.The Bank of Russia moved up its next interest-rate meeting by more than two weeks to Thursday. Moscow may make foreign debt payments in local currency after the US Treasury Department let a waiver expire, pushing Russia closer to a default.Humanitarian maritime corridors from Black Sea and Sea of Azov ports including Odesa will operate from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily, Mikhail Mizintsev, a Defense Ministry official said according to an emailed statement. But shipments may not begin moving quickly because Ukraine would have to remove its mines after seeking assurances of protection from Russia’s Black Sea fleet.The head of the UN’s World Food Programme, David Beasley, said Monday that Russia’s blockade of Ukrainian ports, preventing shipments of grain from the country, is a “declaration of war” on global food security.The interruption of Ukraine’s agricultural cycle risks a multi-year global food crisis, Kuleba said at Davos, “but in the end the problem is that you cannot trust Russia even if they sign papers guaranteeing safe passage.”

Wheat stocks in India may fall to their lowest level since ’16-17 - India’s federally-held wheat stocks in 2022-23 may fall to their lowest level since 2016-17, and second lowest in the past 13 years, with the government’s own purchases of the cereal likely being the lowest in 15 years. The staple’s offtake, which refers to withdrawal for subsidised distribution and open-market sales, has risen 38% over the last two years, official data show.India on May 13 said it was suspending exports of wheat to manage its food security which is “at risk”.The food ministry has said it had enough stocks to smoothly run the public distribution system. However, lower output due to a prolonged heat spell in March and record exports have necessitated a calibration of quantities of the winter staple that will be supplied through food schemes, pointing to a tight demand-supply situation.The government’s export ban was prompted by a sharp rise in consumer inflation, which surged to an eight-year high of 7.79%, while food inflation touched 8.38%. Cereal inflation was fairly high at nearly 6%.The government has kept a window open for overseas sales should a foreign neighbouring government make a request. An emerging issue, according to some analysts, is whether India can afford to export more wheat, after record overseas sales in the year ending March 31, and if the country will witness a further spike in domestic food prices. For 2022-23, the government forecast a record output of 111.30 million tonnes in February, against 109 million tonnes the previous year. A scorching summer shriveled maturing wheat crop in several states, prompting the government to cut production estimates by 5.7% to about 105 million tonnes. The government will also buy a sharply lower quantity of wheat: 19.5 million tonnes, down from a targeted 44 million tonnes.According to food secretary Sudhanshu Pandey, the country’s opening stock of wheat was 19 million tonnes, lower than last year’s balance of 27.3 million tonnes. “So, if you total up, against the stocks of 70.6 million last year, this year our stocks would be 37.5 million tonnes,” Pandey said on Saturday. Of the 37.5 million tonnes of total state-held stocks, the government needs to set aside 7.5 million tonnes due to emergency reserve norms as on March 31. This means the government has to make do with 30 million tonnes.For the public distribution system, the government needs about 26 million tonnes. The Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY), the Covid-relief free food scheme that will run till September, will also require 10 million tonnes more.Under PMGKAY, the government distributed an additional 10.3 million tonnes in 2020-21 and 19.9 million tonnes in 2021-22. This has raised offtake sharply to 50 million tonnes last year.The government will also have to intervene in open markets by releasing stocks to tame prices if food inflation soars further. Last year, the Centre sold 7.1 million tonnes through open-market sales.To adjust for lower wheat stocks, the Centre will cut down wheat supply under PMGKY and replace with 5.5 million tonnes of rice. It has also reduced allocation under the PMGKAY from 10.9 million tonnes to 5.4 million tonnes for April-September 2022.

UN Food Head Warns Conditions "Worse" Than Arab Spring As Inflation Riots Spread --Speaking at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, David Beasley, executive director at the UN World Food Programme, warned the world's food security conditions are "worse" than what was observed during Arab Spring over a decade ago. Beasley said even before the Ukraine crisis. A global food crisis was already emerging. Now the crisis is the "worst humanitarian crisis since World War II." "Just when you think the world food crisis couldn't get any worse well over a year ago, you had Ethiopia and Afghanistan, and then the breadbasket of the world [Ukraine] — just got the longest breadlines of the world — and so now because of this crisis, we're taking food from the hungry to give to the starving." "What happens when you take a nation [Ukraine] that normally feeds 400 million people and sideline that … it's devastating to global food security," he warned. Beasley said if you look at the economic conditions during the Arab Spring in 2011 — conditions today are "actually worse," which has already sparked social unrest in several countries He pointed out that social-economic instabilities are already developing in Sir Lanka, Indonesia, Peru, and Pakistan, adding "that is only a sign of things to come."There are "49 million people in 43 countries … and those are the countries that we need to be extremely concerned about because that will result in famine, destabilization, and mass migration — if we don't get ahead of this," Beasley said. Last month, the Rockefeller Foundation, which has closely aligned views with WEF, provided a countdown of six months to when the "massive, immediate food crisis" would unfold. Another warning from Beasley at Davos. Kicking off #WEF22 in #Davos. With a devastating global hunger crisis at our doorstep, it is all hands on deck to pull millions back from the brink of famine. We need EVERYONE's help to save lives today: from world leaders to the private sector and billionaires!! pic.twitter.com/oAH1LApFSX

Sri Lanka is running out of food, medicine, gas, and money — but the tourists just keep coming - Maumita Sarkar flew from India to Sri Lanka in mid-April. It was Sinhala New Year when she arrived, which is traditionally a time of renewal and celebration: People clean their homes, carry out rituals, and set off firecrackers. But by April this year, Sri Lankans weretaking to the streets to protest soaring prices, food and gas shortages, and a life they could no longer afford to keep living. Against the backdrop of growing discontent in the country, Sarkar considered her travel options. The blogger spoke to the Sri Lankan embassy, a friend who had recently returned from the country, and a handful of local travel agents. They all assured her that things were, as she put, "absolutely fine."She decided to go forward with her trip."As soon as I landed there, the airport had so many foreigners, it seemed all normal," Sarkar told Insider."While the media kept showing all the protests, I saw nothing except a handful of people in Colombo," Sarkar said of her impressions of the Sri Lankan capital. "The whole place was very calm."She spent the next 10 days traveling around the country, taking trains across Sri Lanka's lush landscapes, catching sunsets in the beach town of Mirissa, and Instagramming her way through mangrove wetlands and sacred temples.Even as the country buckles under the weight of its worst economic crisis on record, tourists continue to flock to Sri Lanka. While photos from the capital show the burned-out shells of cars and buses toppled over into lakes, international visitors continue to fly in, hoping to take advantage of a cheap tourism market still in post-pandemic recovery mode.In April, the Sri Lankan rupee hit a record low; food, medicine, and gas are in short supply; and the country is seeing rolling blackouts. On May 10, the government ordered troops to shoot anyone on sight if they were seen destroying property.And still, the tourists just keep coming.

Poor families in northern Sri Lanka flee to India to avoid hunger - Reports indicate that dozens of poor families from northern Sri Lanka have fled to southern India, including Tamil Nadu, in the past four months to avoid hunger.Rising prices and shortages of essentials such as food, medicines and fuel, and daily power cuts, have created unbearable social conditions for workers, youth and the poor throughout the island. This has produced an ongoing wave of protests since April with millions of workers participating in general strikes on April 28 and on May 6 to demand the resignation of President Rajapakse and his government and an end to the economic hardship.Residents of Sri Lanka’s North and East, who are still struggling with devastation of the 26-year bloody communal war that ended in May 2009, have been hard hit by the unprecedented economic crisis sweeping the country.According to the media over 80 people had migrated from these areas to India by boat in an attempt to escape starvation in Sri Lanka.

• * On May 2, a family of five, including a mother with a two-month-old infant, travelled to the Tamil Nadu coast in a fibreglass boat.
• * April 25, fifteen people from Mannar crossed to Tamil Nadu by fishing boat.
• * On April 10, a total of nineteen people, in two different groups, travelled in separate fibreglass boats to shallow waters near Dhanushkodi at the south-eastern tip of Pamban Island in Tamil Nadu. One group of ten, including two infants, were from Trincomalee, while the other group were residents of Mannar and Jaffna.

The boat owners generally leave the migrants a short distance from the Indian mainland, fearful that the Indian Navy will seize the boats. Passengers are compelled to make their own way shore, expecting to be arrested by police and moved to a refugee camp. Another group of 20 migrants which arrived by boat at Dhanushkodi are currently being held at the Mandapam refugee camp.

Paradigm and Nervous Breakdown: Globalization Goes Into Reverse as Inflation/Scarcity Crisis Accelerates by Yves Smith -- The headline for the upcoming Davos (in person! gah!) is Business leaders warn that three-decade era of globalisation is ending. However, this group sees a reduction in trade as vexing rather than catastrophic:The three-decade era of globalisation risks going into reverse according to company executives and investors, as world leaders prepare to meet in the Swiss town of Davos for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic began.The geopolitical fallout from Russia’s war in Ukraine, combined with the disruption to global supply chains caused by the virus, recent market turmoil and the rapidly worsening economic outlook leave corporate leaders and investors grappling with vital strategic decisions, several told the Financial Times in interviews….Onshoring, renationalisation and regionalisation had become the latest trends for companies, slowing the pace of globalisation, he [osé Manuel Barroso, chair of Goldman Sachs International and a former president of the European Commission] added: “[Globalisation faces] friction from nationalism, protectionism, nativism, chauvinism if you wish, or even sometimes xenophobia, and for me, it is not clear who is going to win.”…Christophe Weber, chief executive of Takeda, which is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, said drugmakers would continue to seek growth in international markets, particularly China because of its high potential. But corporate focus had shifted to a more sustainable form of globalisation, he said: “It’s a question of de-risking your supply chain.”…Consumer industries are also experiencing a shift away from globalisation, according to Rachid Mohamed Rachid, chair of Valentino and Balmain.Some luxury companies are rethinking their strategy, which tended to rely heavily on global branding, selling to tourists and shipping goods around the world, he said: “The business has gone local . . . Stores today in London or Paris or Milan are now catering for their local residents more than they used to before.”There’s a whistling-past-the-graveyard quality to this discussion. Maybe they don’t want to spook investors, but they act as if they can’t see the train bearing down on them/ Capitalism in advanced economies is at real risk o f not delivering on its promise of provisioning at least adequately for the majority of people, particularly those who work.There’s also a failure to admit to the political and economic fault lines between the US and Europe, and their Asian protectorates, Japan and South Korea, versus China, Russia, India, the Middle East, and the Global South. That schism is made worse by Russia’s strong market position in many key commodities and the West having allowed China to become the factory of the world. If things get really ugly, China and India overwhelmingly dominate the production of active ingredients for the pharmaceutical industry, as well as making many end products. China also has a virtual monopoly in the production of Vitamin C, which among other things is an important food preservative.

Who is responsible for starvation and rising food prices? - At the prompting of the Biden administration, the world’s capitalist politicians, CEOs and bought-off journalists have let flow a deluge of crocodile tears over the global food crisis, which they claim was singlehandedly created by Vladimir Putin. Addressing a well-fed crowd at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Monday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen professed a newfound concern for the “fragile countries and vulnerable populations” that will “suffer most” from rising food prices. The crowd of billionaires applauded self-righteously when the former German defense minister blamed Russia for “shamefully” profiting off of hunger. Heads nodded gravely when she urged the audience to provide “the World Food Program with the supplies it badly needs” to alleviate the threat of mass starvation. Rank hypocrisy. Six months ago, UN World Food Program President David Beasley issued a “one time appeal to billionaires to help fight famine,” which explained that if the world’s richest people donated a mere $6.6 billion of their collective $13.1 trillion in wealth (or 0.04 percent of the total), world hunger could be eliminated in 2022 and millions of lives could be saved. This request predictably fell on deaf ears, and in the next six months, in a modern world of breathtaking technological progress, 4.5 million human beings died in the most ancient way imaginable. Every year 9 million people starve to death with hardly any attention from the capitalist media, which only drags up the dead when trawling for war propaganda. The real source of mass starvation and world hunger is capitalism. This week, Oxfam issued a report detailing the massive growth of social inequality over the course of the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed 20 million people. Oxfam reported that one new billionaire “has been minted on average every 30 hours during the pandemic,” including 62 individuals who made their money profiting off of rising food prices in the agribusiness industry. “Corporations and the billionaire dynasties who control so much of our food system are seeing their profits soar,” the report read. For example, when von der Leyen denounced Vladimir Putin for “using hunger and grain to wield power,” there were two men in attendance—David MacLennan, CEO of Cargill, and Brian Sikes, the company’s COO—who may have joined in the applause. But according to the Oxfam report, the combined wealth of the Cargill family increased by $14.4 billion since the start of the pandemic, enough to feed the world’s hungry twice and still have billions left over. As the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated, there is no limit to the number of lives the capitalist class will sacrifice rather than part with even the smallest fraction of its wealth. The architects of the US-NATO proxy war against Russia are similarly prepared to sacrifice the lives of billions of working people—both through hunger and nuclear catastrophe—in order to subjugate Russia and conquer its wealth. As for the present rise in food prices, the US government and its imperialist allies are primarily responsible. Joe Biden has repeatedly stated that the US government’s aim is to ensure a “long and painful war,” and the spike in food prices is in large part a response to US-led sanctions. As a result of the prolongation of the war, as the foreign minister of Egypt told the Financial Times, “millions will die.”

Food and energy tycoons made $1 billion every 2 days amid soaring inflation while millions 'are skipping meals, turning off the heating': Oxfam --Soaring food and energy prices are hitting consumers the world over — but they have boosted the wealth of billionaires in these sectors by about $453 billion in the last two years, or about $1 billion every two days, according to Oxfam.The surge in billionaires' fortunes comes as food and energy companies post record-high profits amid the pandemic, "even as wages have barely budged and workers struggle with decades-high prices," the UK-based nonprofit wrote in its latest report, released Monday."Five of the largest energy companies (BP, Shell, TotalEnergies, Exxon and Chevron) are together making $2,600 profit every second, and there are now 62 new food billionaires," according to Oxfam calculations.Oxfam based its calculations on 310 billionaires on the Forbes Billionaires List in the food, agri-business, oil, gas, and coal sectors. Their combined wealth now is $1.5 trillion — up from over $1 trillion since March 2020.Energy and food prices have been on the uptick since the pandemic started in 2020 due to supply chain disruptions. They gained further after Russia invaded Ukraine. Both countries are major producers of energy and food.The US Consumer Price Index — a measure of the country's price growth — climbed 8.3% in the year through April, according to theBureau of Labor Statistics. While the pace of inflation slowed in April, it was still around the four-decade high of 8.5% in March.Monopolies "are especially common" in the energy, food, and pharma sectors, contributing to a rise in billionaire fortunes, Oxfam wrote."Together with just three other companies, the Cargill family controls 70 percent of the global agricultural market," the non-profit wrote. Oxfam did not name the three other companies, but world's dominant food companies are known in the industry as the "ABCD" quartet after their initials: Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge, Cargill, and Louis Dreyfus.Cargill is the biggest private company in the US, per Forbes. In 2021, the company recorded a $5 billion profit — the largest in its 156-year history, according to an August Bloomberg report that cited data the company released for fundraising purposes. Cargill stopped releasing its results in 2020. The Cargill-MacMillan clan, which owns the business, has also gotten richer. The family now has 12 billionaires, up from eight before the pandemic, according to Oxfam's report, which uses theForbes Billionaires List from various years.

Russian DJ and performer Nina Kraviz banned from three music festivals - In another deplorable, anti-democratic action by the cultural establishment in the US and Europe, three music festivals have excluded Russian DJ and performer Nina Kraviz from their events this summer. Kraviz has been banned from appearing at the Movement Music Festival in Detroit; the Crave in The Hague, the Netherlands; and PollerWiesen in Dortmund, Germany, on the grounds that she has not been sufficiently vocal about opposing the Putin regime’s reactionary invasion of Ukraine. Kraviz has become the focus of a right-wing campaign stirred up by the media, including Time magazine. In mid-May, Time published a witch-hunting article essentially singling out the prominent DJ for attack. Referring to the anti-Russian cultural boycott, the piece referred to Kraviz as the “latest artist at the center of this maelstrom.” This had something of the character of a self-fulfilling prophecy. By “naming names” in this manner, Time was seeking to place Kraviz at the “center of this maelstrom.” Nina Kraviz performs at the Coachella Music & Arts Festival at the Empire Polo Club on Friday, April 19, 2019, in Indio, Calif. (Photo by Amy Harris/Invision/AP) The article went on to argue that the DJ and singer was “arguably the most famous Russian pop musician on a global scale: over the last decade, she’s built an ardent following with 1.8 million Instagram followers, performed on Coachella’s mainstage, and collaborated with the likes of Grimes and St. Vincent. She sits close to the center of the global electronic music world, and was named Mixmag’s 2017 DJ of the Year.” Time claimed, on the basis of a few memes and online images, that Kraviz has “left a social media trail of support for Russian President Vladimir Putin. After the war began in February, she made one vague post about ‘peace’ before falling silent on social media for months, which prompted the criticism of those who feel that she should use her platform as one of Russia’s foremost cultural exports.” The hypocrisy, or the “lie of the soul,” if one prefers, is simply colossal. Where were the similar demands that US performers use their “platforms” to denounce the destruction of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and other countries targeted for America’s murderous “liberating” efforts? In fact, the various festival organizers, no doubt under pressure from governments at different levels and Ukrainian nationalist forces, are allowing themselves to become instruments for the whipping up of anti-Russian chauvinism and hatred, poisoning the political and cultural atmosphere and facilitating the war drive of the Biden administration and the other Western governments. None of the three festivals provided an honest account of the decision to exclude Kraviz, or even “gave explicit reasoning for this decision,” as Mixmag, the British electronic dance and clubbing magazine, pointed out. Mixmag noted that “PollerWiesen said, ‘this decision was made by us following a process of open dialogue with all parties involved.’”

Russia unlikely to use nuclear weapons, ex-Defense Secretary Gates says: -Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenksyy welcomed Poland's president to Kyiv on Sunday, saying the two nations are "defending a common universe called freedom and independence at a time when someone is committing barbarism of a cosmic scale." Russian missiles continue to relentlessly fly into Ukrainian homes, schools, hospitals, museums, theaters, temples, "even cemeteries," Zelneskyy said. "Eighty-eight days of madness. Even with the war in Ukraine going much worse than expected for Russia, the probability of Russian President Vladimir Putin deploying a nuclear weapon is "low but not zero,'' former U.S. Secretary of Defense and CIA Director Robert Gates said Sunday. Speaking on CBS's “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,” Gates said Russia's use of a tactical weapon would prompt a strong response from the West, including establishing a no-fly zone over Ukrainian skies. In addition, he said such a move wouldn't "change the military equation on the ground'' because Ukrainian forces are spread widely and are fierce in their resistance. "The other thing that I hope somebody around Putin is reminding him is that, in that part of the world, and particularly in eastern Ukraine, the winds tend to blow from the west,'' Gates said. "If you set off a tactical nuclear weapon in eastern Ukraine, the radiation is going to go into Russia.'' Gates, who served as defense secretary under Republican President George W. Bush and Democratic President Barack Obama between 2006-2011, said the Biden administration should have started arming Ukraine for a conflict with the Russians months earlier. But he gives President Joe Biden high marks for rallying the U.S. allies and assembling a coalition to confront Russia, resisting calls for a no-fly zone — which would require deeper intervention — and for refusing to bite on Putin's nuclear threats. Severe sanctions from the West and failures on the battlefield have dealt a major blow to Russia and its global standing, Gates said. “Putin will remain a pariah,'' Gates said, adding: "He has put Russia really behind the eight ball economically, militarily, and because now people are going to look at the Russian military and say, 'You know, this was supposed to be this fantastic military. Well, they give a good parade, but in actual combat, not so hot.'"

Pentagon says Russia racks up personnel, weapons losses - The U.S. military estimates that Russia has lost nearly 1,000 tanks and “a not insignificant amount” of personnel in its now three-month long attack on Ukraine, a senior U.S. defense official said Thursday. “We believe they’ve lost or rendered inoperable almost 1,000 of their tanks in this fight,” the official told reporters, but noted that “they still have a lot left available to them.” The official also said the Kremlin has “suffered a not insignificant amount of attrition” among its troops. Russian forces have also lost “well over 350 artillery pieces,” almost three dozen fighter bomber fixed wing aircraft and more than 50 helicopters. Pentagon press secretary John Kirby later said that the Russians “continue to take casualties every single day in this war,” which began on Feb. 24.

Zelensky: 'Bloody' Protracted War Cannot End Without Negotiated Settlement - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the war in his country could only end at the negotiating table, and signaled talks with Russia could begin soon. However, an adviser to Zelensky said diplomacy was counterproductive for Kiev. During a Ukrainian television appearance on Saturday, Zelensky laid out a path to resolve the war by talking with Russia. "There are things that can only be reached at the negotiating table." He added, the war "will be bloody, there will be fighting but will only definitively end through diplomacy."Zelensky was vague about the potential talks but indicated they could occur at the highest level. "Discussions between Ukraine and Russia will undoubtedly take place…Under what format I don’t know – with intermediaries, without them, in a broader group, at the presidential level," the leader said. He conditioned the talks on the good treatment of captured Ukrainian cities and POWs.Dialogue between Kiev and Moscow has been on hold for a month. The Kremlin blames Ukraine for the lack of diplomatic progress. Last week, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko claimed Kiev has not responded to Moscow’s proposals and left the negotiation table. "No, negotiations are not taking place. Ukraine has actually withdrawn from the negotiation process," Rudenko said.While Zelensky was offering a new round of diplomacy, a top adviser and member of the negotiation team threw cold water on the idea. Presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak argued making compromises with Russia would backfire. "The war will not stop (after any concessions). It will just be put on pause for some time. After a while, with renewed intensity, the Russians will build up their weapons, manpower…And they’ll start a new offensive, even more bloody and large-scale," he told Reuters on Saturday.Directly contradicting Zelensky, he said talks would not begin until Russian forces completely withdrew from Ukraine. Podolyak said, "The (Russian) forces must leave the country and after that the resumption of the peace process will be possible."Several NATO states have discouraged Ukraine from making an agreement with Russia. During his visit to Kiev, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson instructed Zelensky not to negotiate with Russia. Johnson "urged against any negotiations with Russia on terms that gave credence to the Kremlin’s false narrative for the invasion but stressed that this was a decision for the Ukrainian government," according to Johnson’s office.Significantly, Italy has proposed a new four-point peace plan that each side is said to be examining...

Ukrainian volunteers in the east feel abandoned as Russia advances - — Stuck in their trenches, the Ukrainian volunteers lived off a potato per day as Russian forces pounded them with artillery and Grad rockets on a key eastern front line. Outnumbered, untrained and clutching only light weapons, the men prayed for the barrage to end — and for their own tanks to stop targeting the Russians.  “They [Russians] already know where we are, and when the Ukrainian tank shoots from our side it gives away our position,” said Serhi Lapko, their company commander, recalling the recent battle. “And they start firing back with everything — Grads, mortars.“And you just pray to survive.”  Ukrainian leaders have projected and nurtured a public image of military invulnerability — of their volunteer and professional forces triumphantly standing up to the Russian onslaught. Videos of assaults on Russian tanks or positions are posted daily on social media. Artists are creating patriotic posters, billboards and T-shirts. The postal service even released stamps commemorating the sinking of a Russian warship in the Black Sea.Ukrainian forces have succeeded in thwarting Russian efforts to seize Kyiv and Kharkiv and have scored battlefield victories in the east. But the experience of Lapko and his group of volunteers offers a rare and more realistic portrait of the conflict and Ukraine’s struggle to halt the Russian advance in parts of Donbas. Ukraine, like Russia, has provided scant information about deaths, injuries or losses of military equipment. But after three months of war, this company of 120 men is down to 54 because of deaths, injuries and desertions.The volunteers were civilians before Russia invaded on Feb. 24, and they never expected to be dispatched to one of the most dangerous front lines in eastern Ukraine. They quickly found themselves in the crosshairs of war, feeling abandoned by their military superiors and struggling to survive.“Our command takes no responsibility,” Lapko said. “They only take credit for our achievements. They give us no support.” When they could take it no longer, Lapko and his top lieutenant, Vitaliy Khrus, retreated with members of their company this week to a hotel away from the front. There, both men spoke to The Washington Post on the record, knowing they could face a court-martial and time in military prison.

Record Rate Cut Shows Beijing Pursues Shock-and-Awe --The record reduction in China’s key interest rate on Friday was a rare positive policy surprise from Beijing since the Omicron variant of Covid began to wreak havoc on the economy in the past two months. It’s a clear policy U-turn that aims to offset some of the self-imposed constraints, such as housing restrictions, to boost business and household confidence. If so, more policy easing for the housing market and more fiscal spending are likely to come. China’s banks lowered the five-year loan prime rate (LPR), which is tied to the mortgage rate, by a record 15 bps on Friday, triple the amount that economists had forecast. It was the second policy move in a week that was aimed at propping up the ailing property market, after the People’s Bank of China cut the floor of the mortgage rate a week earlier. Until now, Beijing’s plan to save the economy had been conservative, focusing on liquidity injections and tax reductions. That had fallen short of what’s required to offset the destruction caused by Covid restrictions and the property slump. Take the housing sector: New home sales for the top 100 developers tumbled 59% in April from a year earlier. Goldman Sachs on Friday raised the default forecast for high-yield property developers’ bonds to 32% from 19%. The efforts to lower mortgage rates show a clear sense of urgency to turn around the housing market. As Zhaopeng Xing, senior China strategist at ANZ Bank, said: “The cut signals that the leadership has ended discussion over the property sector and decided to rescue it as soon as possible.” Source: Huatai Securities There are a few reasons to believe that the impact of the LPR cut alone will be limited. As Nomura’s Lu Ting pointed out, mortgage rates had already started to decline, even before recent policy moves. That did little to arrest the sales decline, in part because Covid restrictions limited mobility, jobs, income and confidence of residents. In addition, when consumer leverage is already high, the willingness and ability to borrow remains in question. In fact, property stocks fell Friday, even as the benchmark CSI 300 rallied. What’s clear, then, is more policy follow-ups are likely needed to boost income, save jobs and lift confidence. Here’s is a laundry list from Citigroup on what Beijing could do to revive the housing and the broader economy: .

Girls' chance of success at school in Sub-Saharan Africa shaped by language they are taught in - Millions of school children across large parts of Sub-Saharan Africa are sat silently in classrooms, struggling to follow lessons, and not progressing in their learning due to an insistence that all lessons should be taught in English, say the authors of a new report. The findings, published today as apolicy brief from the University of Bath's Institute for Policy Research (IPR) and the UK government's Girls' Education Challenge (GEC), highlight that a reliance on English as the principal 'language of instruction' within many schools is impacting girls most acutely.Drawing on studies conducted in Rwanda, Tanzania, Ghana, Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia, Sierra Leone and Egypt, the authors conclude that many children lack basic skills in English which has significant ramifications for their learning. English is often not practised or reinforced out of school, and teachers are also limited by language.The research team says an unfamiliar language of instruction is compounding existing challenges and barriers to education for girls. For example, girls can struggle more than boys because in families the burden of housework often falls to them, which in turn denies them an opportunity to work on their English out-of-school hours.The researchers argue that increasing access to education for girls is hugely important, but more attention now needs to be paid to the quality of that education too. Continuing to deliver all lessons in English, including maths and science, to children who struggle to understand, will hold back individual progress and have long-term, negative effects.To address this, their report suggests that in the short-term more must be done to increase teachers' own competence in English language to have a trickle-down effect on students. Longer term, they suggest that countries should re-evaluate historic decisions to teach in English and assess what impacts this is really having. And although English is often the predominant language of instruction, similar critiques can also be made about French and other dominant languages, which are typically defined by former colonial ties. Lead researcher from the University of Bath's Department of Education, Dr. Lizzi Milligan explained: "Many people will be unaware that across large parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, school lessons are delivered exclusively in English to children whose first and sometimes second language are different. As a result, and across the board, our research reveals that children are struggling to access education."Despite girls' education generally being high on the agenda for policymakers, this specific issue has received very little attention, but that really matters. Imagine someone trying to teach you maths or science in a language you were unfamiliar in? If we really want to make progress in increasing educational attainment, we need to urgently look at this issue."

Costa Rica, A Country Without an Army, Is At War With (Mainly) Russian Hackers -The Russia-based hacker group Conti’s cyberattack on Costa Rica continues to metastasize, spreading to 27 government institutions.Big things are happening in the small Central American country of Costa Rica that could end up having global repercussions. In April the country suffered a crippling ransomware attack against its finance ministry. Weeks later, the country’s incoming President (and former World Bank economist) Rodrigo Chaves Robles announced that Costa Rica is now locked in a digital war with Conti, a Russia-based group of hackers.“We’re at war and this is not an exaggeration,” Chaves said in his inaugural speech on May 8. The war, Chaves continued, “is against an international terrorist group, which apparently has operatives in Costa Rica. There are very clear indications that people inside the country are collaborating with Conti.”This is a powerful statement coming from the head of state of a country that hasn’t had a standing army since 1948 and which prides itself on its peaceful nature. Together with Panama, Costa Rica is one of only two countries in Latin America that doesn’t have an army of its own. This means it is disproportionately dependent on US “assistance” in security matters (h/t Jacob Hatch).In recent weeks the Conti cyberattack has continued to metastasize, spreading to 27 government institutions, nine of which have been “seriously affected,” according to Chaves. The departments targeted include the treasury, labor ministry, tax administration and the social security fund. The hackers have also brought down certain parts of Costa Rica’s electrical grid and have threatened to target private businesses in the country if the government doesn’t cough up.Most importantly, the hackers have hijacked the Finance Ministry’s tax filing and foreign trade systems. As a result, the Ministry has been unable to digitally collect tax payments and customs receipts since April 18. It is also unable to verify budget results without use of its online services. Over a month after the initial attack, only some of the services have been restored.When the attack began Chaves’ predecessor, Carlos Alvarado Quesada, refused to pay the $10 million ransom demanded by Conti. In response, Conti released 97% of the data it had infiltrated while doubling their initial ransom demand to $20 million. If that is not paid, they say they will bring down the Chaves government by scrapping the decryption keys that would reactivate government systems, plunging the country’s IT systems into chaos and further crippling the economy. Conti has also threatened to publish the forty-six remaining gigabytes of classified information online from highly sensitive departments of Costa Rica’s government.The attacks have already had an “enormous” impact on foreign trade and tax collections in the country, said Chaves. According to a BBC World article (in Spanish), dozens of millions of dollars have already been lost as a result, which is a lot of money for a country with a GDP of just $61 billion.

UK rail workers vote overwhelmingly for strike action - Rail workers at 15 train operating companies and Network Rail infrastructure have voted for industrial action in defence of jobs, pay and conditions. Around 40,000 members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT) were balloted, with 89 percent voting to strike off a participation rate of 71 percent. Guards, platform and ticketing staff, track maintenance workers and signal crews were among those balloted. Rail workers face a historic assault on jobs, terms and conditions, with £2.5 billion in cuts being rolled out. 2,500 jobs have already been axed through a “voluntary” severance scheme, with thousands more slated for destruction as the Johnson government proceeds with its plans for Great British Railways. Despite an unambiguous strike vote by rail workers—the biggest since the railways were privatised in 1994—the RMT has once again handed the political initiative to the government, appealing for negotiations. In a statement issued Tuesday night, the RMT announced, “The union will now be demanding urgent talks with Network Rail and the 15 train operating companies that were balloted to find a negotiated settlement to the dispute over pay, jobs and safety.”

Hundreds Of UK Grocery Items More Than 20% Pricier Over Last Two Years: Study - Consumers have seen the price of hundreds of popular grocery items rise by more than 20 percent over the last two years alongside a drop in supermarket discounts and budget ranges, a study has found. Which? found that the price of 265 groceries soared by more than a fifth at the same time as the availability of supermarket discounts and budget ranges—upon which consumers are increasingly relying—fell. The watchdog analysed the prices of more than 21,000 groceries over two years, comparing their average prices at eight major supermarkets between the start of December 2021 and the end of February 2022 with the same period two years previously. Items included Kellogg’s Crunchy Nut Corn Flakes Cereal 500g, which increased by 21.4 percent at Tesco, Asda’s 250g Own Label Closed Cup Mushrooms, up 21.4p ercent, and Cathedral City Extra Mature Cheddar 350g, which rose by 21.1 percent at Ocado. Across 20 categories of groceries, fizzy drinks saw the biggest average price rise at 5.9 percent, followed by butters and spreads (4.9percent), energy drinks (4.8 percent), and milk (4.6 percent). Groceries with the lowest inflation included chocolate (1.4 percent), fresh fruit (1.6 percent), biscuits (1.8 percent), and vegetables (1.9 percent). The study also found that across different supermarkets there have been fewer discounts, limited availability of own-label budget ranges, and products decreasing in size but remaining the same price over the same period. The number of promotions fell across every one of the 20 categories the watchdog studied, including the number of discounts on bottled water down 14.7 percent and on vegetables down 11percent. Meanwhile, the size of savings in promotions that did still happen was also cut in three-quarters of the categories. This was most pronounced for butters and spreads, where the size of savings fell by 3.6 percent over the two years, followed by vegetables (3.5 percent) and crisps (2.9 percent).