Powell warns rates will stay high for some time - Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell signaled the central bank is likely to keep raising interest rates and leave them elevated for a while to stamp out inflation, and he pushed back against any idea that the Fed would soon reverse course. “Restoring price stability will likely require maintaining a restrictive policy stance for some time,” Powell said Friday in remarks at the Kansas City Fed’s annual policy forum in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. “The historical record cautions strongly against prematurely loosening policy.” He said restoring inflation to the 2% target is the central bank’s “overarching focus right now” even though consumers and businesses will feel economic pain. Powell reiterated that another “unusually large” increase in the benchmark lending rate could be appropriate when officials gather next month, though he stopped short of committing to one. “Our decision at the September meeting will depend on the totality of the incoming data and the evolving outlook,” he said. Two-year Treasury yields rose as investors digested the remarks, pushing as high as 3.44%, while the two- to 10-year yield curve resumed its flattening. Equities were lower. Prior to Powell’s speech, investors saw the odds of a half-point or another three-quarter point hike at the Fed’s Sept. 20-21 gathering as roughly even. They remained in that vicinity after he spoke, but the amount of reductions in fed rates priced for 2023 briefly retreated. Mark Spindel, chief investment officer at MBB Capital Partners, said the resolute tone of Powell’s speech points to another large rate rise next month. “Failure to back that up with another 75-basis-point increase would cheapen his talk,” Spindel said, noting that Powell took pains to quote former chairs Alan Greenspan, Paul Volcker and Ben Bernanke, invoking the Fed’s Hall of Fame to bolster his message.
Powell sees 'some pain' ahead in quest to slay inflation - Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell was quick and to the point in a speech Friday morning: Inflation is not yet tamed, and until it is, households and businesses may feel the pinch. Speaking during his concluding remarks at the annual Jackson Hole symposium sponsored by the Kansas City Fed Friday morning, Powell said that getting inflation under control is the Federal Open Market Committee's "overarching focus," because price stability is a bedrock upon which the rest of the economy rests. "Without price stability, the economy does not work for anyone," Powell said. "In particular, without price stability, we will not achieve a sustained period of strong labor market conditions that benefit all. The burdens of high inflation fall heaviest on those who are least able to bear them." Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Friday that the central bank will continue its aggressive stance against inflation, dashing hopes that he might signal a more modest stance after some promising indicators were reported earlier this month. Powell went on to say that despite some promising jobs and economic growth forecasts published recently, as well as indicators suggesting inflation has slowed, curbing inflation for the long term "will take some time and requires using our tools forcefully to bring demand and supply into better balance."While higher interest rates, slower growth, and softer labor market conditions will bring down inflation, they will also bring some pain to households and businesses," Powell continued. "These are the unfortunate costs of reducing inflation. But a failure to restore price stability would mean far greater pain."Markets have been jittery all week in anticipation of Powell's speech, with some participants hoping that the recent positive data might result in a change of tune from the aggressive interest rate hikes of the last several months. Powell nodded to those promising indicators, but comprehensively dashed those hopes for a more dovish stance."While the lower inflation readings for July are welcome, a single month's improvement falls far short of what the committee will need to see before we are confident that inflation is moving down," Powell said. Powell's speech all but assures markets that the FOMC will raise interest rates by at least 50 basis points at its next meeting in September, with a significant chance of another 75-basis-point hike. Powell said that "another unusually large increase could be appropriate at our next meeting" but noted that the precise size of any future rate hike depends on forthcoming data and that "as the stance of monetary policy tightens further, it likely will become appropriate to slow the pace of increases."
Fed Chair Powell: "Higher interest rates ... will also bring some pain to households and businesses" -From Fed Chair Powell: Monetary Policy and Price Stability (watch on YouTube here) Excerpt: Restoring price stability will take some time and requires using our tools forcefully to bring demand and supply into better balance. Reducing inflation is likely to require a sustained period of below-trend growth. Moreover, there will very likely be some softening of labor market conditions. While higher interest rates, slower growth, and softer labor market conditions will bring down inflation, they will also bring some pain to households and businesses. These are the unfortunate costs of reducing inflation. But a failure to restore price stability would mean far greater pain.... July's increase in the target range was the second 75 basis point increase in as many meetings, and I said then that another unusually large increase could be appropriate at our next meeting. We are now about halfway through the intermeeting period. Our decision at the September meeting will depend on the totality of the incoming data and the evolving outlook. At some point, as the stance of monetary policy tightens further, it likely will become appropriate to slow the pace of increases. Restoring price stability will likely require maintaining a restrictive policy stance for some time.The historical record cautions strongly against prematurely loosening policy.
Fed Officials Push for More Hikes; Bullard Favors Front-Loading-- US central bankers stressed the need to keep raising interest rates and St. Louis Fed chief James Bullard said officials should act quickly and lift their policy benchmark to a 3.75% to 4% range by year end. “I like the front-loading. I like the idea that you get the rate increases in earlier rather than later,” he told CNBC Thursday in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. “You show you are serious about inflation fighting and you want to get up to the level that will put downward pressure on inflation. We are at 2.33% right now. That is not high enough,” he said, referring to the current effective level of the benchmark federal funds rate. Other officials speaking at their policy retreat in Wyoming reserved judgment on how big they should go at next month’ meeting, but agreed rates need to rise. Kansas City Fed President Esther George, who hosts the annual forum, said the Fed hasn’t yet raised them to levels that weigh on the economy and may have to take them above 4% for a time. “It’s very important that we are clear in our communication about the destination we are headed,” she told Michael McKee and Kathleen Hays in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “We have to get interest rates higher to slow down demand and bring inflation back to our target,” she said. Both officials vote on monetary policy this year and their comments helped set the stage for a busy two days of Fed speakers, who will be headlined Friday by Chair Jerome Powell with a speech likely to restate his resolve to keep tightening monetary policy to fight inflation. The US central bank is raising interest rates rapidly to curb the hottest price pressures in 40 years. US consumer prices rose 8.5% in the 12 months through July, according to Labor Department data. The Fed aims at a different gauge produced by the Commerce Department, called the personal consumption expenditures price index, which rose 6.8% in the year through June. Asked how high the Fed should push borrowing costs, George said there was “more room to go” and pushed back against bets in financial markets the central bank would begin cutting rates next year. “I think we will have to hold -- it could be over 4%. I don’t think that’s out of the question,” she said. “You won’t know that, I think, until you begin to watch the data signs.” Bullard said he’d deliberately not talked much about the outlook for rates in 2023 because it’s such a “volatile” environment, but cautioned that markets were underestimating the risk that price pressures fail to ease, and that the Fed has to push harder on the policy brake than investors expect. “A baseline would be that probably inflation would be more persistent than what many on Wall Street expect and that’s going to be higher for longer,” he said. “That’s a risk that’s underpriced in the markets today.”
St. Louis, Minneapolis Feds backed full-point discount rate hike - Directors at two of the Federal Reserve's 12 regional branches favored a 100-basis-point increase in the discount rate in July, minutes of discount-rate meetings show. The boards of the St. Louis and Minneapolis banks voted for a bigger move on July 14, the Fed said in a statement released Tuesday. A day earlier, a report showed the US inflation rate jumped to a fresh four-decade high in the prior month. Policymakers on the Federal Open Market Committee voted unanimously on July 27 to lift the target for their benchmark federal funds rate by 75 basis points to a range of 2.25% to 2.5%. The Fed board also raised the discount rate by the same amount to 2.5%. The discount rate governs the cost of borrowing for banks from the Fed's discount window. Discount-rate votes by regional Fed directors can be symbolically important as a sign of preference for how rates should move, and can semaphore the views of that bank's president. St. Louis Fed chief James Bullard has been a longstanding hawk and Minneapolis's Neel Kashkari has recently joined him on that wing of the policy-setting FOMC. Directors at nine of the regional banks had voted for a 75-basis-point increase in the discount rate by the time of the July 27 meeting, while Kansas City Fed directors sought a 50 basis-point hike. Kansas City Fed President Esther George had dissented in June against a 75-basis- point increase, citing concern the larger move could stoke policy uncertainty. Both George and Bullard voted with their FOMC colleagues for the 75-basis-point increase in July. Kashkari doesn't vote this year.
Fed Balance Sheet Shrinkage Kicks Into High Gear In September - The Fed began shrinking its balance sheet in June (at a pace which for various reasons many have found to be too slow but in reality is just as fast as had been expected, as we will explain tomorrow) and plans to double the pace at which it reduces its securities portfolio in September. And while there are ample reserves and liquidity for now, many prominent Wall Street strategists have warned that the Fed will have no choice but to end its QT much earlier than expected. Fed to roll off as much as $95bn per month from September. The Fed allowed $30bn of Treasury and $17.5bn of mortgage-backed holdings to mature in June. In September, the Fed will double that amount, increasing the caps or run-off amounts to $60bn per month for Treasuries and $35bn per month for mortgage-backed securities. The impact on yields, if any, has been overshadowed by macroeconomic concerns and volatile rate-strategy expectations. For now, the primary channel for monetary policy remains the fed funds rate. 2019 taught us that the Fed needs to maintain a flexible approach to its balance sheet policy. The size and pace of shrinkage should be tied to both economic performance and to controlling short-term rates that are intricately tied to its fed funds rate policy, such as repo rates for secured overnight lending. Fed balance sheet liquidity for financial institutions at $5.5tn. In 2017-2019, the Fed’s balance sheet run-off shrank bank reserves held at the Fed from a peak of $2.36tn to $1.39tn in September 2019 when repo markets turned disorderly and broke out of the Fed’s desired rate corridor. Today, the Fed has over $5.5tn in reserves including $3.3tn of bank reserves held at the Fed and $2.2tn in the Fed’s overnight reverse repo programme that was created during the most recent expansion of the Fed’s balance sheet.Consensus foresees slightly more than $2tn in balance sheet reduction: the Fed is expected to sustain its $60bn per month reduction of Treasury holdings until the end of 2023. After that, the pace of reduction may slow and cease by spring 2024. The Fed may independently sustain reductions of its MBS portfolio throughout 2024. Eventually, the Fed will need to buy Treasuries again to offset the reduction: the $64 trillion question is when. The bank reserves and reverse repo program together need to shrink by more than $2tn in order to achieve total balance sheet reduction of $2tn, reduction which would lift the effective fed funds rate back toward the Fed’s interest on reserves (IOR). If it continued to rise far above the IOR, the Fed’s standing repo facility would be activated and balance sheet reduction might be reversed, as in 2019. The sensitivity of rates to the volume of reserves in the system is lower (flatter curve) than in the 2017-19 episode. Two factors likely account for this: the substantially larger size of the balance sheet and the introduction of the reverse repo platform.
PCE Price Index: July Headline at 6.28% YoY - The BEA's Personal Income and Outlays report for July was published this morning by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The latest Headline PCE price index was up -0.07% month-over-month (MoM) and is up 6.28% year-over-year (YoY). Core PCE (YoY) is now at 4.56%, 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, with a major increase in 2022. 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 inflation rate over the longer run is primarily determined by monetary policy, and hence the Committee has the ability to specify a longer-run goal for inflation. 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. The Committee judges that longer-term inflation expectations that are well anchored at 2 percent foster price stability and moderate long-term interest rates and enhance the Committee's ability to promote maximum employment in the face of significant economic disturbances. In order to anchor longer-term inflation expectations at this level, the Committee seeks to achieve inflation that averages 2 percent over time, and therefore judges that, following periods when inflation has been running persistently below 2 percent, appropriate monetary policy will likely aim to achieve inflation moderately above 2 percent for some time." 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.For a long-term perspective, here are the same two metrics spanning five decades.
Q2 GDP Second Estimate: Real GDP at -0.6%, Better Than Forecast - The Second Estimate for Q2 GDP, to one decimal, came in at -0.6% (-0.58% to two decimal places), an increase from -1.6% (-1.57% to two decimal places) for the Q1 Third Estimate. Investing.com had a consensus of -0.8%. 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 0.6 percent in the second quarter of 2022 (table 1), according to the "second" estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the first quarter, real GDP decreased 1.6 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 0.9 percent. The update primarily reflects upward revisions to consumer spending and private inventory investment that were partly offset by a downward revision to residential fixed investment (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 3.17% average (arithmetic mean) and the 10-year moving average, currently at 2.24%. 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 16.0% below trend.
Q2 GDP Growth Revised Up to minus 0.6% Annual Rate --From the BEA: Gross Domestic Product (Second Estimate) and Corporate Profits (Preliminary), Second Quarter 2022. Real gross domestic product (GDP) decreased at an annual rate of 0.6 percent in the second quarter of 2022, according to the "second" estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the first quarter, real GDP decreased 1.6 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 0.9 percent. The update primarily reflects upward revisions to consumer spending and private inventory investment that were partly offset by a downward revision to residential fixed investment... Real gross domestic income (GDI) increased 1.4 percent in the second quarter, compared with an increase of 1.8 percent in the first quarter. The average of real GDP and real GDI, a supplemental measure of U.S. economic activity that equally weights GDP and GDI, increased 0.4 percent in the second quarter, compared with an increase of 0.1 percent in the first quarter. Here is a Comparison of Second and Advance Estimates. PCE growth was revised up from 1.0% to 1.5%. Residential investment was revised down from -14.0% to -16.2%.
U.S. economy shrank less than previously estimated, easing recession fears - The U.S. economy shrank at a 0.6% annual rate from April through June, the government said Thursday — a slight upgrade from its initial estimate and a sign that this year's drop in growth is less steep than originally feared. Most economists have said they doubt the economy is in, or on the verge of, a recession, noting that hiring remains strong, with low unemployment and ample job openings. Still, inflation is near a four-decade high and is punishing consumers and businesses. And the Federal Reserve's concerted campaign to tame inflation by driving up interest rates is raising the risk of a "hard landing" for the economy. "Recent employment and consumption data all but indicate the economy is not in a recession," Lydia Boussour, lead U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, said in a report. "But a faltering housing market and souring economic sentiment are clear signs that elevated inflation and higher borrowing costs are taking a toll on the economy." In its revised estimate Thursday, the Commerce Department calculated that the nation's gross domestic product — the broadest measure of economic output — contracted last quarter, though less than the 1.6% annual decline in the January-March period. In its previous estimate for the April-June quarter, the government had estimated that the economy had shrunk at a 0.9% rate. Consumer spending, which accounts for nearly 70% of U.S. economic activity, grew last quarter, but at a slower 1.5% annual pace, down from 1.8% from January through March. By contrast, government spending and business investment declined. And inventories tumbled as businesses slowed their restocking of shelves, shaving 1.8 percentage points from GDP. Rising interest rates hammered the housing market. Home construction plunged 16.2%. Adding to the mixed economic signals is the first estimate of gross domestic income, another measure of economic growth. GDI expanded at a below-normal 1.4% pace in the second quarter, down from its 1.8% gain in the first. "The gap between the GDP and GDI figures has therefore continued to widen, with the two sets of figures telling completely different stories about the economy. GDP is 2.6% above pre-pandemic levels while GDI is 6.4% higher," Michael Pearce, senior U.S. economist at Capital Economics, said in a research note. "The gap between the two has never been wider." The divergence makes it likely that the GDP figures will be revised "substantially higher" in later months, he added. In its drive to curb inflation, the Fed has raised its benchmark interest rate four times this year by increasingly large increments. By raising borrowing rates, the central bank is making it costlier to take out a mortgage or an auto or business loan. The idea is that consumers and businesses will borrow and spend less, thereby helping cool the economy and slow inflation. The rise in borrowing costs has weakened the housing market, in particular. Sales of both new and existing homes are down sharply, and the pace of home construction in July sank to its lowest point since early last year. Similarly, retail sales were flat last month, with inflation and higher loan rates forcing many households to spend more cautiously. Under Chair Jerome Powell, the Fed is aiming for a "soft landing," whereby the economy slows enough to reduce hiring and wage growth without causing a recession and lowers inflation back to the Fed's 2% annual target. But by tightening credit even while the economy has slowed, the Fed is heightening the risk that its rate hikes will trigger a downturn. The surge in inflation and fear of a recession have eroded consumer confidence and fanned public anxiety about the economy.
Chicago Fed: "Index points to a pickup in economic growth in July" -"Index points to a pickup in economic growth in July." 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:Led by improvements in production-related indicators, the Chicago Fed National Activity Index (CFNAI) rose to +0.27 in July from –0.25 in June. All four broad categories of indicators used to construct the index made positive contributions in July, and all four categories improved from June. The index’s three-month moving average, CFNAI-MA3, was unchanged at –0.09 in July. [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.
Four High Frequency Indicators for the Economy - These indicators are mostly for travel and entertainment. The TSA is providing daily travel numbers. This data is as of August 21st. 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 9.1% from the same day in 2019 (90.9% of 2019). (Dashed line) Air travel - as a percent of 2019 - has been moving sideways over the last several 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). The data is from BoxOfficeMojo through August 18th. Movie ticket sales were at $99 million last week, down about 54% from the median for the week. This graph shows the seasonal pattern for the hotel occupancy rate using the four-week average. This data is through August 13th. The occupancy rate was down 4.6% compared to the same week in 2019. The 4-week average of the occupancy rate is below the median rate for the previous 20 years (Blue). This graph, based on weekly data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), shows gasoline supplied compared to the same week of 2019. As of August 12th, gasoline supplied was down 5.9% compared to the same week in 2019. Recently gasoline supplied has been running somewhat below 2019 and 2021 levels.
Q3 GDP Forecasts: Around 1% From BofA: [W]e continue to track 3Q GDP at 0.5% q/q saar [August 26 estimate] From Goldman: The personal consumption details were softer than our previous assumptions, and we lowered our Q3 GDP tracking estimate by 0.2pp to +1.0% (qoq ar). [August 26 estimate] And from the Altanta Fed: GDPNow: The GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the third quarter of 2022 is 1.6 percent on August 26, up from 1.4 percent on August 24. After this morning's releases from the US Census Bureau and the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, an increase in the nowcast of third-quarter real net exports was partially offset by a decrease in the nowcast of third-quarter real personal consumption expenditures and third-quarter real gross private domestic investment. [August 26 estimate]
Biden Has Quietly Ramped Up Drone Strikes In Somalia, Killing At Least 20 - Conflict monitors on Friday drew attention to a series of U.S. airstrikes in Somalia in recent months, attacks that have received relatively little attention in the American corporate media despite having reportedly killed more than 20 people."If you were unaware that we were bombing Somalia, don't feel bad, this is a completely under-the-radar news story, one that was curiously absent from the headlines in all of the major newspapers this morning," wrote Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, a senior adviser at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. On Wednesday, Antiwar.com's Dave DeCamp reported that U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) launched its second strike on Somalia in a week. AFRICOM said its initial assessment found the attack, which occurred in Beledweyne and killed 13 fighters belonging to the al-Qaeda-linked Somali militant group al-Shabaab, and that no civilians were harmed.AFRICOM also said it killed four al-Shabaab members in three separate airstrikes near Beledweyne on August 9, two fighters in a joint U.S.-Somali operation near Labi Kus on July 17, and five militants in a June 3 bombing outside Beer Xani.All of these strikes have taken place since U.S. President Joe Biden approved the redeployment of hundreds of special forces troops to Somalia in May, reversing a drawdown from the war-ravaged nation implemented during the administration of former President Donald Trump.DeCamp noted that Trump's withdrawal from Somalia merely "repositioned troops in neighboring Djibouti and Kenya, allowing the drone war to continue. But Biden has launched significantly fewer strikes in Somalia compared to his predecessor."According to data from the U.K.-based monitor group Airwars, U.S. forces have bombed Somalia at least 16 times during Biden's tenure, killing between 465 and 545 suspected militants. On March 13, a joint U.S. drone and Somali airstrike killed a staggering 200 alleged militants.Airwars identified civilian casualties in just one of the attacks during Biden's presidency, a June 2021 strike attributed to either U.S. or Kenyan forces, which have been battling al-Shabaab since 2011. The attack on the southern town of Ceel Cadde killed Sahro Adan Warsame and seriously injured five of her children, according to local media reports.
US to announce another $3 billion in military aid for its “forever war” in Ukraine - One day before the six-month anniversary of the imperialist-provoked Russian invasion of Ukraine, US officials told the Associated Press that the White House is about to announce another $3 billion in spending to aid and train Ukraine’s military. This comes on top of $10.6 billion in direct military funding provided by the Pentagon since the beginning of the war, as well as over $17 billion for US weapons manufacturing for Ukraine. Based on anonymous US officials, the AP reported Tuesday that the new package is intended to provide weapons and ammunitions that may not arrive in Ukraine for a year or two. In other words, it is designed to fund the new “forever war” by US imperialism in Ukraine, which has already killed tens of thousands of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers and thousands of civilians, while displacing over a fourth of the country’s population. Speaking in a similar vain, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg stated on Tuesday, “Winter is coming, and it will be hard, and what we see now is a grinding war of attrition. This is a battle of wills, and a battle of logistics. Therefore we must sustain our support for Ukraine for the long term.” Stoltenberg made these remarks at the second online Crimea conference organized by the Ukrainian government of Volodymyr Zelensky. The event was attended by leading imperialist backers of the proxy war against Russia, including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. It was held within the framework of the “Crimean Platform” initiative, launched by Zelensky in March 2021 as part of Kiev’s official military strategy to “recover Crimea.” The campaign to “take back” the Black Sea peninsula is one of the most important provocations that prompted Russia’s invasion in February. At the conference on Tuesday, Zelensky insisted again that “retaking” Crimea was the principal military aim of Ukraine. He said, “I know that Crimea is with Ukraine, is waiting for us to return. I want all of you to know that we will return. We need to win the fight against Russian aggression. Therefore, we need to free Crimea from occupation.” Zelensky then stated, “Ukraine’s restoration of control of Crimea will be a historic anti-war step in Europe,” adding that he was “sure” that Crimea, like the rest of Ukraine, would one day become part of the European Union. In fact, what Zelensky describes as a “historic anti-war step in Europe” is widely seen by military experts as the potential trigger for a nuclear conflict with Russia. In July, Russia’s former president and deputy head of the Russian Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, warned that an attack on Crimea by Ukraine would result in a “judgement day” response by Moscow. The aggressive remarks by Zelensky were clearly intended to further fuel the war with Russia and herald major attacks on Crimea by Ukraine. In a deliberate effort to escalate the war with Russia, since August 9 Ukraine has already launched a series of strikes on Crimea, including on Russia’s Saki airbase, where at least 7 Russian fighter jets were destroyed, as well as a major ammunition depot in the north of the Black Sea peninsula. The headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol, Crimea’s capital, was the subject of a failed drone attack on Saturday.
U.S. sets $800M weapons package for Ukraine - The U.S. on Friday announced it will send a slew of new weapons to Ukraine as part of a $775 million package, including new drones, armored vehicles and artillery. The shipments indicate that Washington and Kyiv expect hard fighting on the ground in the coming weeks. For the first time, the U.S. is sending 15 ScanEagle surveillance drones to help the Ukrainians spot and correct the precision artillery and rocket strikes that have taken a toll on Russian forces in recent weeks. The small drones can be moved around the battlefield relatively easily and would be invaluable in the expected push to retake the city of Kherson in the south. Other items included in the tranche suggest preparations are underway for Ukrainian ground troops to make that push in the south, where fighting has been at a stalemate for weeks as the war has settled into one long, punishing artillery duel. “Right now, I would say that we are seeing a complete and total lack of progress by the Russians on the battlefield,” a senior Defense Department official, who insisted on anonymity to speak about the war effort, told reporters Friday. “In that sense, we are at a different phase than we were even a couple of months ago” when Russian forces were gaining ground in the Donbas and in the south. The equipment being sent for the first time includes 40 heavily armored MaxxPro mine-resistant vehicles, originally developed for U.S. forces in Iraq during the height of the fighting there when roadside bombs were taking a heavy toll on U.S. forces. In Ukraine, they will clear roads and fields before ground troops push forward, creating paths through dense minefields laid by the Russians. Also new are TOW guided anti-tank missile systems, sixteen 105mm howitzers and 36,000 rounds, and 2,000 rounds for the Carl Gustaf recoilless rifle, a small anti-armor weapon used by U.S. special operations forces. The Carl Gustaf, which can be carried easily and is designed to work in close quarters with an enemy, is an indication that the Ukrainians expect close-in fighting in the coming weeks. It’s unclear whether the equipment will be delivered ahead of that long-telegraphed counteroffensive, though the delay in its launch has many wondering if it’ll ever happen. The U.S. is also sending more fighter-launched High-speed Anti-Radiation Missiles that have targeted Russian radar systems, a key capability in disrupting the Russian’s ability to detect new Ukrainian movements and control their own forces. Ahead of the DoD announcement on Friday, a person familiar with deliberations told POLITICO that the U.S. is also planning to send Excalibur precision-guided artillery munitions in an upcoming tranche at some point in the future. Those weapons were not included in this tranche. The rounds would give the Ukrainians a new precision weapon with which to target dug-in Russian positions and command posts. Ukrainian officials say its military is focusing on striking targets deep in Moscow-held territory inside sovereign Ukrainian lands, pointing to dramatic attacks on Russian bases in Crimea that have destroyed several warplanes and ships, including several dramatic strikes on Thursday night that left a Russian ammunition depot in Crimea burning for hours. A Western official told POLITICO Friday that “more than half” of Russia’s combat naval aviation fleet in the Black Sea was knocked out by a recent attack on Saky air base on the peninsula.
US Invades Syria, Kills People, Claims Self-Defense – Caitlin Johnstone --Numerous Syrian and foreign militants have reportedly been killed and several US troops injured in an escalating exchange of attacks between the American invaders and the people in the country whose territory they are illegally occupying.On Tuesday night US Central Command announced that it had “conducted precision airstrikes in Deir ez-Zor Syria” in order to “defend and protect U.S. forces from attacks like the ones on August 15 against U.S. personnel by Iran-backed groups.”“The President gave the direction for these strikes pursuant to his Article II authority to protect and defend U.S. personnel by disrupting or deterring attacks by Iran-backed groups,” CENTCOM said.Iran has denied any link to the troops targeted in the airstrikes, up to ten of whom were reportedly killed.The US attack was followed by rocket attacks on US military positions in eastern Syria, injuring an unknown number of US troops, to which the US responded with an Apache helicopter assault on Syrian vehicles from which it claims the rockets were launched. Central Command claims “two or three suspected Iran-backed militants” were killed in the helicopter attack.As of this writing it remains to be seen if this exchange of attacks will continue, but what’s crystal clear is who the aggressor is.“US claims to be in Syria to fight ISIS, but it rarely fights ISIS,” journalist Aaron Maté tweeted of the exchange. “It’s actually there to deny Syria its own oil and wheat, and to occasionally attack Syrians and their allies who defeated US-backed sectarian death squads in the dirty war.”What he says is completely true. The US is an occupying force who is there without the permission of the Syrian government, without having been attacked by Syria, and without any valid claim to be defending itself from anyone in Syria. The “Iran-backed” militias in Syria are operating with the full authorization of the Syrian government. The US has quite literally invaded a nation on the other side of the world, killed the people in that nation who don’t want them there, and then claimed self-defense in doing so. If I broke into my neighbor’s house to steal his things, and then murdered him when he tried to stop me or make me leave, it would look pretty ridiculous if I tried to plead self-defense. It would look even more ridiculous if anyone believed me.
Sept. 11 victims not entitled to seize Afghan central bank assets -U.S. judge (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Friday recommended that victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks not be allowed to seize billions of dollars of assets belonging to Afghanistan's central bank to satisfy court judgments they obtained against the Taliban. U.S. Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn in Manhattan said Da Afghanistan Bank was immune from jurisdiction, and that allowing the seizures would effectively acknowledge the Islamist militant group as the Afghan government, something only the U.S. president can do. "The Taliban's victims have fought for years for justice, accountability, and compensation. They are entitled to no less," Netburn wrote. "But the law limits what compensation the court may authorize and those limits put the DAB's assets beyond its authority." Netburn's recommendation will be reviewed by U.S. District Judge George Daniels in Manhattan, who also oversees the litigation and can decide whether to accept her recommendation. The decision is a defeat for four groups of creditors that sued a variety of defendants, including al-Qaeda, they held responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks, and obtained default judgments after the defendants failed to show up in court. At the time of the attacks, the ruling Taliban allowed al-Qaeda to operate inside Afghanistan. The United States ousted the Taliban and al-Qaeda in late 2001, but the Taliban returned to power a year ago when U.S. and other Western forces withdrew from the country. Lawyers for the creditor groups did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The groups have been trying to tap into some of the $7 billion of Afghan central bank funds that are frozen at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York. In an executive order in February, U.S. President Joe Biden ordered $3.5 billion of that sum set aside "for the benefit of the Afghan people," leaving victims to pursue the remainder in court. The U.S. government took no position at the time on whether the creditor groups were entitled to recover funds under the Terrorist Risk Insurance Act of 2002.
Biden approves largest oil, gas lease sale in US history, steamrolls eco review with inflation bill - President Biden reinstated the largest oil and gas lease sale in U.S. history, essentially steamrolling the need for environmental review, by signing the Inflation Reduction Act into law on Tuesday.While the Inflation Reduction Act includes several green energy provisions opposed by the fossil fuel industry, the bill also orders the Department of the Interior (DOI) to take a series of steps to boost fossil fuel production on federal lands and waters. The legislation specifically requires the DOI to reinstate Lease Sale 257, a massive offshore oil and gas sale spanning 80.8 million acres across the Gulf of Mexico, within 30 days of enactment."There should be no questions about the issuance of leases from Gulf of Mexico Lease Sale 257," National Ocean Industries Association President Erik Milito told FOX Business in a statement Tuesday. "The legislation is clear and mandatory.""Congress has acted, the leases must be issued and the lawsuit must be dismissed," he continued. By signing the Inflation Reduction Act, President Biden reinstated Lease Sale 257, the largest oil and gas lease sale in U.S. history. In November, the DOI held the lease sale, which generated more than $191 million in bids for 308 tracts from fossil fuel companies despite criticism from several prominent Democratic lawmakers and environmental groups. However, a federal court blocked the sale in January, ruling in favor of a coalition led by Friends of the Earth and the Sierra Club that argued the Biden administration failed to properly analyze the climate impacts of the sale. The Biden administration opted against appealing the court's decision in March. The American Petroleum Institute (API), a group representing large segments of the fossil fuel industry, intervened and appealed on behalf of the companies involved in the sale. The case remains before a federal appeals panel.
Herschel Walker on climate bill: ‘Don’t we have enough trees around here?’ - Georgia Republican Senate nominee Herschel Walker is criticizing the sweeping climate, health-care and deficit-reduction bill signed into law by President Biden, arguing that it includes wasteful spending to combat global warming and asking, “Don’t we have enough trees around here?” The former NFL football player, who was encouraged to run by former president Donald Trump, has made head-scratching comments that have drawn ridicule. In a July 9 appearance, he spoke about climate change, suggesting that Georgia’s “good air decides to float over” to China, replacing China’s “bad air,” which goes back to Georgia, where “we got to clean that back up.” In an appearance Sunday, according to an account by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Walker reiterated his opposition to the Inflation Reduction Act, signed by Biden last week, that invests in curbing global warming, among other things. “They continue to try to fool you that they are helping you out. But they’re not,” Walker said. “Because a lot of money, it’s going to trees. Don’t we have enough trees around here?” It’s possible Walker might have been referring to a provision in the law that allocates $1.5 billion to the U.S. Forest Service’s Urban and Community Forestry Program. Walker, in a tweet posted Monday evening, stood by his remarks. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) rankled some fellow Republicans last week when he said his party could fall short of retaking the Senate, citing “candidate quality” as an issue. While McConnell didn’t name names, Walker, in his race to unseat Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D), is among those widely believed to be underperforming. Walker told the Journal-Constitution over the weekend that he was unfazed by McConnell’s comments. “I don’t ever worry about stuff like that,” Walker said. “When I got into this race, I got in this race to win it for the people. I said, ‘Guys, I’m here for the people of Georgia.’ I’m not worried about what people say.”
Expansion of Clean Energy Loans Is ‘Sleeping Giant’ of Climate Bill - Tucked into the Inflation Reduction Act that President Biden signed last week is a major expansion of federal loan programs that could help the fight against climate change by channeling more money to clean energy and converting plants that run on fossil fuels to nuclear or renewable energy.The law authorizes as much as $350 billion in additional federal loans and loan guarantees for energy and automotive projects and businesses. The money, which will be disbursed by the Energy Department, is in addition to the better-known provisions of the law that offer incentives for the likes of electric cars, solar panels, batteries and heat pumps.The aid could breathe life into futuristic technologies that banks might find too risky to lend to or into projects that are just short of the money they need to get going.“This is a sleeping giant in the law and a real gold mine in deploying these resources,” said Dan Reicher, who was an assistant energy secretary in the Clinton administration. “This massive amount being made available is a big deal.”But like all government efforts to aid industry and advance new technologies, the expansion of the loan authority carries risks for Mr. Biden and the Democrats, who passed the bill without any Republican votes. About a decade ago, conservatives seized on thefailure of Solyndra, a solar company that had borrowed about $500 million from the Energy Department, to criticize the Obama administration’s climate and energy policies.Backers of the program have argued that despite defaults like Solyndra, the program has been sustainable overall. Of the $31 billion the department has disbursed, about 40 percent has been repaid, and interest payments in the fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30, 2021, totaled $533 million — more money than the failed Solyndra loan.The Energy Department’s loan programs began in 2005 under the George W. Bush administration but expanded significantly in the Obama era. The department provided a crucial loan that helped Tesla expand when it sold only expensive two-door electric sports cars; the company is now the world’s most valuable automaker.Under the Trump administration, which played down the risks of climate change, the department’s loan office was much less active. The Biden team has been working to change that. Last month, the department said it planned to lend $2.5 billion to General Motors and LG Energy Solution to build electric-car battery factories in Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee. The department’s loan program office is reviewing 77 applications for $80 billion in loans sought before the new climate law was approved. The Inflation Reduction Act will add $100 billion to existing loan programs for financing production of electric vehicles, for instance, and for projects on tribal lands. It will also add up to $250 billion in new loan guarantees and $5 billion to support the costs of loan programs.
Democrats Designed the Climate Law to Be a Game Changer. Here’s How. - When the Supreme Court restricted the ability of the Environmental Protection Agency to fight climate change this year, the reason it gave was that Congress had never granted the agency the broad authority to shift America away from burning fossil fuels. Now it has. Throughout the landmark climate law, passed this month, is language written specifically to address the Supreme Court’s justification for reining in the E.P.A., a ruling that was one of the court’s most consequential of the term. The new law amends the Clean Air Act, the country’s bedrock air-quality legislation, to define the carbon dioxide produced by the burning of fossil fuels as an “air pollutant.” That language, according to legal experts as well as the Democrats who worked it into the legislation, explicitly gives the E.P.A. the authority to regulate greenhouse gases and to use its power to push the adoption of wind, solar and other renewable energy sources. “The language, we think, makes pretty clear that greenhouse gases are pollutants under the Clean Air Act,” said Senator Tom Carper, the Delaware Democrat who led the movement to revise the law. With the new law, he added, there are “no ifs, ands or buts” that Congress has told federal agencies to tackle carbon dioxide, methane and other heat-trapping emissions from power plants, automobiles and oil wells. This month, in the hours before the bill passed the Senate, Republicans waged a last-minute, mostly unsuccessful predawn battle to remove the language from the legislation. Later that day, the Senate approved the climate-and-tax bill by a vote of 51 to 50, along party lines, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tiebreaking vote.Republicans objected to the language, and to the fact that it appeared in a budget bill, a category of legislation focused on government spending and revenue. “It’s buried in there,” Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, said on Fox Business Network ahead of the Senate vote. “The Democrats are trying to overturn the Supreme Court’s West Virginia vs. E.P.A. victory,” he added, referring to the ruling that curbed the E.P.A.’s ability to tackle global warming. Mr. Cruz did not respond to requests to discuss his opposition.Conservative organizations that have challenged the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority in the past said the new law would not stop future lawsuits. Robert Henneke, executive director of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative nonprofit group, said “sneaking in this verbiage” into the new law “is probably just going to set up future regulatory fights.”Legal experts, on the other hand, said those fights would almost certainly be harder to win. Jody Freeman, a professor at Harvard Law School and an expert on the Clean Air Act, said the language cemented E.P.A.’s authority and would be “a powerful disincentive” to new lawsuits.
The climate law's methane catch -The $369 billion climate bill signed into law by President Joe Biden last week will tax methane emissions, a potentially significant step in meeting international climate targets.But the policy comes with a catch: roughly $1.5 billion in grants and loans to oil and gas companies to help them measure and address those emissions.It turns out that the only politically viable way to punish fossil fuel companies for their emissions was to dish out a new subsidy for the industry.Democrats had little choice. The policy was born out of several months of intense talks between Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), a vocal supporter of the methane fee, and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), a fossil fuel industry supporter and the Senate's most important swing vote.Even in its diluted form, the policy could help clean up emissions at a crucial time. Methane concentrations in the atmosphere are rising rapidly, sparking fears among scientists that it could prevent the world from meeting its climate goals."Those who want to criticize where we ended up are certainly free to do that," Carper said in an interview. "At the end of the day, defeat was not an option. We had to find our way to yes, we had to find a way to compromise."Methane is a highly potent greenhouse gas emitted in a variety of agricultural and industrial activities, most prominently by the oil and gas industry.Under the new law, many facilities that emit methane over a certain threshold level will be subject to fines beginning in 2024. A new methane regulation from EPA is also set to be issued as soon as this year.Still, it's a bitter pill for progressive Democrats who pledged during the 2020 campaign to do away with subsidies and special treatments for oil, gas and coal companies.Some natural gas facilities may also end up being exempted from the fee, raising questions about its potential impact on emissions. "The methane fee has clearly over time been watered down from original intent," said Barry Rabe, a University of Michigan professor who tracks energy and climate policy. "There are some real gaps in it in terms of the number of producing firms that are exempt."
Thanks to Manchin, IRA’s Methane Fee on Big Oil Is Riddled With Massive Holes - The newly enacted Inflation Reduction Act contains the world’s first-ever fee on methane, a powerful greenhouse gas believed to be responsible for roughly 30% of global temperature rise since the Industrial Revolution.But analysts and climate advocates fear that the fee, which is aimed at incentivizing U.S. fossil fuel companies to stop deliberately spewing the gas into the atmosphere, will have a muted impact on rapidly rising methane emissions given that 60% of the oil and gas industry is exempt from the penalty.Reuters reported earlier this month that thanks to carveouts won by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.)—the fossil fuel industry’s top ally in the Senate Democratic caucus and the chamber’s leading recipient of oil and gas donations—the fee “only applies to companies that emit 25,000 metric tons of CO2 equivalent per year,” including “a small number of the largest oil companies and independent producers.”“In another concession made to Manchin, oil and gas companies that comply with the Environmental Protection Agency’s forthcoming methane rules due later this year would also be exempted from the fee. The rules require companies to upgrade equipment, monitor leaks, and clean them up,” the outlet noted. “The bill would also exempt distribution facilities that bring natural gas to homes and businesses, offer exemptions to some pipelines and gathering facilities that sell volumes of gas below a certain threshold, and give industry nearly $1.5 billion in financial incentives to clean up their methane.”Responding to the slew of exemptions in the law, Peter Hart of Food and Water Watch tweetedthat “a certain type of climate wonk gets really excited about things like a ‘methane fee.'”“The one in the IRA was weakened so that it applies to basically no one,” he observed.E&E News pointed specifically to Cheniere Energy’s Sabine Pass facility, the largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal in the U.S. by volume, as an example of the IRA’s shortcomings on methane.“Sabine Pass reported methane emissions equivalent of nearly 30,000 tons of carbon dioxide in 2020,” E&E Newsnoted. “At first glance, the Southwestern Louisiana terminal would appear to be subject to the fee, which would only apply to facilities with annual emissions in excess of 25,000 tons.”“But a second provision could potentially allow the Sabine Pass to avoid paying a penalty,” the publication added. “Only LNG facilities with a leakage rate in excess of .05 percent of total gas sales are subject to the fee.”
Starting to Think Manchin's Side Deal is in Real Trouble -Bill McKibben -It’s starting to become clear that the “side deal” to permit pipelines and other fossil fuel projects that was put forth by Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer as an accessory to the Inflation Reduction Act (aka the ‘climate bill’) faces tougher-than-expected sledding in the Congress. Some of us started lobbying against the giveaways it proposed to the oil industry even before the IRA was signed, but now it appears that the agitation is growing—growing enough that what activists are calling a “dirty deal” may in fact be in danger.I talked at length this afternoon with Ro Khanna, who chairs the House Oversight Subcommittee on the Environment, and he was quite blunt. He called the side deal a gutting of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and said “that’s not going to happen. You’re not going to get progressive support for that.” In fact, he promised a September 15 hearing of his subcommittee to explore whether or not the fossil fuel industry actually wrote the language of the deal: an early draft circulating on Capitol Hill literally bore a watermark from the American Petroleum Institute.He pointed out that Raul Grijalva, chair of the Committee on Natural Resources, had written a letter to Speaker Pelosi saying such a deal was unacceptable. “I’m on that letter, many progressives will get on.” Manchin has said he was promised his deal would be attached to must-pass legislation, presumably the omnibus budget bill. “If that happened, you’d really have a mutiny among my progressive colleagues,” Khanna said.If the deal—which among other things could explicitly greenlight Appalachia’s Mountain Valley Pipeline boondoggle—did get added to the budget bill, and if Khanna was right that progressives objected, it might still pass if Republicans came on board to back it (that’s how big defense bills get passed each year over progressive objections). But Khanna said it would be “pretty unprecedented” to “come up with an omnibus budget bill that excluded a key caucus. It would split the party before a crucial midterm election,” creating a “media outcry.” It would be “a very divisive move. I’m not saying it’s impossible—we have to guard against it, and that’s why we’re mobilizing now.” “If this passes,” says Khanna, “it runs roughshod over these communities that have been fighting for five or ten years. There’s no way we can allow that kind of wholesale gutting to happen.”
Supreme Court climate ruling leaves EJ communities at risk - The Supreme Court’s landmark ruling that restricts EPA from broadly regulating greenhouse gas emissions from power plants could fall hardest on the poor and minority communities that are most vulnerable to climate change.The ruling in West Virginia v. EPA — which barred the agency from forcing utilities to shift away from fossil fuels and toward renewables — comes as the Biden administration has pledged to advance equity across the federal government and as EPA Administrator Michael Regan has promised to “center” environmental justice at the agency, addressing populations of people who have traditionally been overburdened with fossil fuel facilities and pollution.Advocates fear any curbs on EPA’s ability to reduce pollution will be felt first and sharpest in marginalized communities.“If EPA is constrained from taking action, that delay and exacerbation of the climate crisis will have the greatest effect on environmental justice communities, on fenceline communities,” said Amy Laura Cahn, legal director of Taproot Earth and former director of the Environmental Justice Clinic at Vermont Law and Graduate School.She added, “Any risk that is not reduced will be more deeply felt by communities of color, people with disabilities, low-income people, migrant communities.”EPA released a peer-reviewed study last year that showed minority communities are expected to see more loss of life, health and employment from climate change than the U.S. population as a whole (Greenwire, Sept. 3, 2021).Cahn noted that the Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling in West Virginia could have a chilling effect on agencies’ willingness to take aggressive steps, but could boost corporate-friendly approaches that lack accountability for addressing community concerns.“It potentially points to other solutions that will not center the communities most affected,” Cahn said, adding that the ruling “has the potential to shift the decisionmaking away from agencies that have accountability to the communities … and are at this moment trying to effectuate directives that actually mandate centering the communities.”Lost carbon reductions may not be the only outcome of the high court’s decision that falls heavily on poor and minority communities.The same power plants that spew carbon into the atmosphere also litter frontline neighborhoods with particulate matter, sulfur dioxide and other pollution that worsens respiratory and heart health and can even lead to premature death. Polluting infrastructure is often concentrated in minority communities because zoning laws have historically been racist (Greenwire, July 20, 2020).Peggy Shepard — executive director of WE ACT for Environmental Justice and co-chair of a panel that advises President Joe Biden’s White House on environmental justice issues — said an EPA power plant rule that does less to limit climate pollution would also leave frontline communities exposed to hazardous pollutants.“A weaker rule will not protect the communities located near these plants, and it will not significantly reduce the co-pollutants emitted with greenhouse gases,” she said.
Biden admin eyes funding Canadian mining - The Biden administration is looking at funding Canadian mining and metals companies, as the new climate law sends U.S. automakers scrambling to find new sources of raw materials for electric vehicles.Manufacturing low-carbon energy and transportation products like electric vehicles can call for a set of unique raw minerals and materials that are often produced and processed in China, and are not mined in the U.S. at all. It’s an import imbalance that security hawks believe will be a strategic vulnerability in a decarbonizing world.To wean off Chinese mining, the Biden administration is looking at getting those minerals from Canada — and even giving money toward their development.Canada, a premier mining jurisdiction and favorite destination for the industry, may benefit from a move President Joe Biden took in April to make Pentagon funding available under the Defense Production Act for certain mining activities, including feasibility studies, processes to produce minerals as a byproduct of other commodities, and technical improvements at mine sites (Greenwire, April 19).Funding under the Defense Production Act — a national defense law passed in response to the Korean War — is supposed to be limited to domestic sources.However, the White House has adopted an interpretation of military-sharing agreements from the 1950s and 1960s to state Canadian companies are “domestic” sources, opening the door for that country’s mining projects to qualify for U.S. financing under the law.Advocates for a stronger and more secure U.S. supply chain for electric vehicles say Canada could be a valuable ally in Biden’s mining-for-climate strategy.Part of the reason for that is a difficult reality: The U.S. may not have the geologic potential to make an electric vehicle battery. Although companies in the U.S. are trying to mine for key minerals like cobalt, graphite and nickel, studies have yet to confirm economic mineral reserves anywhere in the U.S. for those metals at the appropriate quantities or grades to meet the consumer demands of a lower-carbon future.
Republicans Are Being Mean to the IRS, Not That the Democrats Are Helping - by Yves Smith --It may seem peculiar to offer a defense of sort to the IRS, since most people here regard doing their taxes with even less enthusiasm than a visit to the dentist (although attitudes depend very much on the state of one’s finances and teeth). However, the reporting on the Democratic Party plan to increase IRS funding and staffing has been so bad that it’s not hard to feel a bit sorry for a generally unloved agency being kicked for mainly bogus reasons. The Financial Times does the helpful job, in a new, prominently placed story, of explaining how the barrage of whinging about the idea of a chronically budget-starved agency getting the additional dough to do a less bad job is coming almost entirely from the Republican side. Republicans hate taxes, ergo any mention of more taxes or more tax collection must be depicted as an evil feasting on productive American enterprise. Oh, once in a while they’ll also express faux concern for small fry taxpayers, but that’s just for optics, the same way that big banks get community banks to act as the front men in opposing legislation. However, taxes serve to validate the currency, drain demand, provide incentives and disincentives, and can be used to redistribute income. Team Dem puts up a PR defense of its IRS funding plans, without acknowledging that it’s a pretense to claim that the Federal government needs to tax to spend. Those are entirely political constraints. Do yo see anyone worrying about where the money for the next bombing run in Iraq weapons shipment to Ukraine is coming from? But the Democrats have done themselves and the IRS no favors by justifying the spending as more than paying for itself via improved collection (note it probably will but there are better reasons to argue for more IRS funding). As we’ll also discuss, their analysis is based on a Larry-Summers touted “tax gap” that tax pros view as greatly exaggerated. It is easy to forget that the IRS is at the very tail end of decisions. It did not write the overly complicated US tax code. It did not stand in the way of wage earners having the agency provide them with a pre-filled in tax form for them to sign and return if they agree….as is the practice in most civilized countries. It was H&R Block that prevented that.1 Nor did the IRS have anything to do with the near-total abandonment of anti-trust, which has resulted in a great increase in complexity of the legal structures of the biggest companies, as they gobbled up competitors and businesses with arguable synergies. That makes the biggest and even moderately big companies vastly more complex and difficult to audit than forty years ago. But most Americans and even commentators have also lost sight of the fact that the IRS has become the primary government agency in dealing with consumers and businesses. Taxpayers focus on the collection side, but the IRS also allocates the Earned Income Tax cCredit to low income wage earners. And the IRS distributed coronavirus payments: First, let’s review some key facts about the possibility of more cash and goodies for the IRS. Remember that the much-touted $80 billion increase is over ten years, as will be the 87,000 new hires. However, “new hires” do not equal “staffing increase”. The IRS is a geriatric agency. It lost 10,000 employees in the last ten years and expects an additional 50,000 to retire in five to six years. The 87,000 new bodies will largely replace existing bodies. And the increases will be concentrated in customer service and IT.
More than $10B in student loans for public workers canceled ahead of broader Biden announcement -The Department of Education has announced that it has provided more than $10 billion in student debt relief for public workers 10 months into a new program.The relief covers more than 175,000 people, according to a news release the department put out on Tuesday, and will be provided through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program.The effort comes as the White House is broadly expected to announce a new forgiveness program on Tuesday that would wipe out $10,000 in student debt for eligible borrowers. The program is expected to have income limits.The decision has been hotly anticipated but is likely to set off a political storm, with President Biden potentially coming under criticism both from Republicans opposed to the debt forgiveness over inflation concerns and liberals who do not think it goes far enough.The Education Department announced temporary changes to the PSLF program in October. It allowed borrowers to get credit for payments made on loans from different student loan programs and borrowers who work or worked in the public service field since 2007 to be eligible to receive these benefits. In a statement, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said that the PSLF program will be beneficial for public service workers who have seen previous installments of the program not benefit them. “We’re committed to helping borrowers who choose to pursue careers in education, public health, social work, law enforcement, and other critical fields receive the benefits to which they’re entitled for leading lives of service,” he said. This comes as Biden is expected to announce on Wednesday the cancellation of student loan debts and an extension of the existing payment pause.
Biden to cancel $10,000 in student loans for most borrowers, extend payment pause - President Biden said Wednesday he will cancel up to $10,000 in federal student loan debt for many borrowers — and double that amount for Pell Grant recipients — a move that could offer some level of forgiveness for up to 43 million people. The forgiveness is expected to apply to Americans earning under $125,000 per year, or $250,000 per year for married couples who file taxes jointly. The White House estimates that nearly 90 percent of relief will go to people earning less than $75,000 and that roughly 20 million borrowers could have their debt completely canceled. The president is also is extending a pandemic-era pause on federal student loan payments, first implemented under the Trump administration, through Dec. 31. “In keeping with my campaign promise, my Administration is announcing a plan to give working and middle class families breathing room as they prepare to resume federal student loan payments in January 2023,” Biden tweeted Wednesday. He is expected to discuss the decision more in the afternoon. Current students with loans are eligible for relief, if their household income was under $250,000 during the last federal student aid award year. Loans must have been originated before July 1 to qualify. The announcement puts to rest months of deliberation over whether Biden would use his executive authority to forgive a portion of the federal student debt burden. It arrives ahead of congressional midterm elections and could give the Democrats a boost with some voters, but also threaten their standing with those who say the amount is not enough — or too much.
Biden to Forgive $10,000 in Student Debt, Double for Pell Grant Recipients -- President Joe Biden announced a sweeping package of student-debt relief, forgiving as much as $20,000 in loans for some recipients and extending the moratorium on repayments for four months until the end of the year. Biden will also announce changes Wednesday to the current loan system, allowing borrowers with undergraduate loans to cap repayments at 5% of their monthly income. He will detail his plans in a speech at 2:15 p.m. Washington time from the White House. The $20,000 in debt forgiveness will apply to loans for those who also receive Pell grants. For most student-loan holders, the limit will be $10,000. That figure -- paired with a $125,000 income cap for individuals and $250,000 for households -- is in line with a level Biden has been weighing for several months. But it falls short of the amount that advocates have sought. Progressive lawmakers, civil rights groups and labor leaders pressured the White House to forgive higher debt-loads, arguing they are disproportionately carried by Black or lower-income students. The Biden Administration will also propose a new rule capping borrowers from paying more than 5% of their monthly discretionary income on undergraduate federal loans -- down from 10% today. The proposed rule also says that borrowers who make less than 225% of the federal minimum wage -- roughly $30,577, or what a full-time worker earning $15 per hour earns -- are not required to make payments on their federal undergraduate loans, according to the Department of Education. The rule calls for the government to forgive loan balances of $12,000 or less after a borrower has made 10 years of payments. Currently, borrowers must pay their loans for two decades and have a balance below that amount to have debt forgiven. The proposal also would restrict unpaid monthly interest from accruing as long as borrowers are making payments, so those who are benefiting from capped loan payments won’t see their overall balances grow. Although they’d pushed for a higher per-borrower debt relief figure, progressives lawmakers hailed the forgiveness of $20,000 for Pell grant recipients as a major win. Broader loan cancellation amounts for low-income people had been a major goal. “With the flick of a pen, President Biden has taken a giant step forward in addressing the student debt crisis by cancelling significant amounts of student debt for millions of borrowers,” Senator Elizabeth Warren and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a joint statement. Other advocates, while celebrating the news, noted that it won’t affect all borrowers. “While this announcement is a major win for many, it is important to stress that $10,000 will leave many others still crushed by debt, and important details will determine who has access to much-needed relief,” said Natalia Abrams, president and founder of Student Debt Crisis Center. The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators asked the Education Department to make implementation as easy as possible. ”Student loan relief without proposals for systemic reform is incomplete,” said Justin Draeger, the trade group’s president, adding that loan forgiveness would not help future borrowers.
Student loan handout: Wall Street Journal roasts Biden’s ‘inflation expansion act’ - The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board eviscerated President Biden’s much-anticipated student loan handout as an "inflation expansion act" and "vote-buying at its most raw." The editorial board published an editorial Wednesday headlined, "Student Loan Forgiveness Is an Inflation Expansion Act," that included a subhead noting the "mooted Biden plan would cost $300 billion and expose the Democrats’ anti-inflation posturing."Americans are set to fund t he expected nearly $300 billion deal to exonerate thousands in federal student loan debt and extend a repayment pause to next year."Wasn’t it only last week that Democrats were touting something called the Inflation Reduction Act? So much for that," the editorial board wrote. "The press is reporting everywhere that as early as Wednesday President Biden will announce he is canceling student debt and extending the moratorium on student-loan payments for several more months… this is an inflation expansion act."According to the Penn Wharton Budget Model, a one-time maximum debt forgiveness of $10,000 for borrowers who make less than $125,000 will cost around $300 billion for taxpayers. The cost increases to around $330 billion if the program is continued over the standard 10-year window, according to the figures. "That’s far more than the $102 billion the Inflation Reduction Act purportedly reduces the deficit over 10 years starting in 2027. About 70% of the loan relief would go to borrowers in the top 60% of income distribution," the WSJ editorial board wrote.
Biden’s Gimmie to the Higher Educational Complex and Well-Off, Dem Leaning Voters: The $10,000 Student Loan Writeoff by Yves Smith - This Biden scheme doesn’t even rise to the level of a band-aid over a gunshot wound. It leaves the system that has grotesquely inflated the cost of higher education. For any child not born of affluent parents (or say getting a very hefty scholarship), the choice is foregoing college or taking on a lot of debt. Long gone are the days when kids could earn enough to go to a pretty to very good state school by working over the summer. Why not direct less money to debt relief, particularly as we’ll discuss soon, it is mainly a subsidy to the better-off, and start giving more Federal support to state colleges and universities? And this grotesque system, of loading up young people with debt even before they’ve made key life decisions, like where to live, whether to get married and have kids, has created a new rentier class, in the form of a greatly enlarged and overpaid cohort of administrators…who have a very strong propensity to vote Democrat. So Biden has kept the subsidies to this voter block very much intact by refusing to do anything about out of control, unsupervised lending. Remember: nothing, not a single thing, is being demanded of banks who made questionable student loans or the schools who gave students unrealistic information about their future earning prospects. One would think it would be a no-brainer to impose automatic penalties on lenders and schools whose borrowers had delinquency rates over a certain level, and inspected the next tier and imposed fines for bad practices.So what are we going to do, keep throwing money at a bloated, elitist higher educational complex, and then pretend that this isn’t as grotesque a system as it appears to be by large scale writeoffs every decade or so? Doesn’t the magnitude of the debt cancellation say the time is overdue for root and branch reform? But oh noes, can’t break those rice bowls.Or how about, as we and many other proposed, having student loans be dischargable in bankruptcy, as they were before the 2005 bankruptcy “reform” that Biden, as Senator from MBNA (a major credit card lender) helped push through? Businesses that make bad decisions get to restructure their debts and carry on. Individuals who have a run of bad luck (big medical bills, job loss, divorce) can also either write off their debts or enter into a court-supervised repayment plan…except for student debt. It’s perverse to have this one type of lending be carved out as sacrosanct.Even though the Biden scheme is means-tested, it isn’t all that much, with the result that the program mainly benefits higher-income borrowers. Biden is expected to announce debt relief of up to $10,000 to borrowers earning up to $125,000, as well as extending the debt payment freeze that started in March 2020 another four months.One can take the cynical view that capping the amount of debt cancellation was designed to favor more affluent borowers. For starters, the relief could have been means tested more strictly, with the $10,000 stopping at $80,000, and allowing even higher loan cancellation amounts to lower income borrowers. Instead, as the Tokenist notes: For several months, Democratic lawmakers, labor leaders, and civil rights organizations have pressured the White House to cancel more than $10,000 in student debt. They allege that black or lower-income students are disproportionately carrying greater debt loads. The model estimates that households in the top 60% of the US income distribution would get between 69% and 73% of any debt forgiveness….
Student loan relief plan will cost $24 billion a year, White House says -President Biden's plan to provide relief for student loan borrowers will cost about $24 billion per year, the White House now says, a figure markedly lower than private estimates. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre offered up the new figure on CNN Thursday night, after facing repeated questions about the cost of the plan in briefings. The administration is calculating the cost based on revenue it will no longer collect on loans canceled under the program. Its calculation assumes that only 75% of eligible applicants will apply for the program, and considers other factors — like students who might default and stop paying their loans. Over a 10-year period, that would mean Biden's forgiveness program costs the government $240 billion in lost revenue. Administration officials have said the figure would likely be blunted by tax revenue on other economic activity — like home purchases — that Americans freed from paying debt would pursue. Bharat Ramamurti, the deputy director of the National Economic Council, said Friday at a briefing that White House officials "consider it fully paid for" because the federal government's annual budget deficit has declined under Biden. Private estimates put the cost of Biden's relief plan far higher. A new analysis from the Penn Wharton Budget Model, released Friday, estimates the debt cancellation alone will cost as much as $519 billion, with loan forbearance costing $16 billion and a new income-based repayment plan $70 billion. That would bring the total cost of the program to roughly $605 billion.The C ommittee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonprofit that analyzes federal fiscal policy, estimates Biden's student debt cancellation plan will cost anywhere from $440 billion to $600 billion over the next 10 years, accounting for all of the provisions.
Warren says student debt relief will still tame inequality and inflation -Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who lobbied hard for President Biden to forgive $50,000 in student loan debt per borrower, said his much smaller plan can still address racial and gender wealth inequality and help tame inflation. "Sure I argued for more, and I think there's more that we can do," Warren said in an interview Friday. "But it's important to stop and celebrate this historic moment." The Massachusetts Democrat said she, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Raphael Warnock met with Biden on multiple occasions to push him on student loan forgiveness. All three of them supported the $50,000 figure. Warren had directly engaged with Biden on the issue even before he was inaugurated, according to a person familiar with the discussions. She's also had dozens of calls with White House staff and education officials and advocated in recent months for a larger amount of forgiveness for targeted groups, including Pell grant recipients. Biden announced his student debt forgiveness package Wednesday after months of deliberation. Under the plan, Pell grant recipients with outstanding federal student loans would have up to $20,000 forgiven and other borrowers would have up to $10,000 wiped away. There is a $125,000 income cap for individuals to be eligible and $250,000 for married couples. Biden also extended a moratorium on federal student loan repayments through Dec. 31 and proposed a new income-driven repayment plan that would cap monthly payments at 5% of the borrower's discretionary income. Federal loans account for $1.6 trillion of student loan debt in the U.S. and 43 million borrowers could stand to benefit from Biden's plan. Critics of Biden's plan, including some policy experts, have raised concerns that canceling the student debt would add to inflation, which has been rising at the fastest pace in four decades. Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement Wednesday the debt forgiveness would add to inflation and is "a slap in the face to every family who sacrificed to save for college, every graduate who paid their debt, and every American who chose a certain career path or volunteered to serve in our Armed Forces in order to avoid taking on debt."
Progressives Say Biden Student Debt Plan 'A Good Start, But Not Enough' - After years of activist organizing, U.S. President Joe Biden on Wednesday announced a plan to cancel $10,000 to $20,000 in federal student loan debt per borrower, a move that drew both praise and admonition from progressives—many of whom want to erase $50,000 or even all educational debt. "Every penny of student debt should be erased because college is a public good and it should be free."Biden tweeted that in order "to give working and middle class families breathing room as they prepare to resume federal student loan payments in January 2023," his administration will forgive $10,000 in student loan debt for borrowers who attended college without Pell Grants and who earn less than $125,000, or $250,000 as a household. Borrowers who received Pell Grants will have $20,000 in debt erased.Additionally, the plan will cap interest for current and future loans at 5% of a borrower's income, half of the current rate.The president—who said he would discuss details of the plan at a Wednesday afternoon press briefing—also said that the pause on student loan repayments, first put in place during the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic, would be extended one final time through the end of the year."Today, with President Biden's announcement, 12 million American borrowers have had their educational debts erased, and millions more will be able to celebrate substantial cancellation that eases the indignity that predatory student loans have had on their lives," Melissa Byrne, executive director of the advocacy group We The 45 Million, said in a statement."This is a historic first step—establishing the clear authority that the president has to cancel student debt—but this should just be the beginning," Byrne added. "Now, the movement for higher education justice kicks into high gear. We need Congress to send President Biden a bill for free public college and to cancel the outstanding student loan debt that smothers the future of far too many Americans."While appreciating that "up to 20 million people could have their balances reduced to zero" under Biden's plan, Astra Taylor, co-founder of the Debt Collective, told MSNBC that "every penny of student debt should be erased because college is a public good and it should be free.""But there's no doubt this is a huge stepping stone—a milestone—on the path to that end," she added. "The call for debt cancellation was extremely unusual when we first raised it 10 years ago, and now the president is doing it."Democratic lawmakers welcomed Biden's announcement, with Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) calling the president's plan "a massive step in the right direction.""While not as high as we called for, this crucial step from the president keeps his campaign promise," Jayapal continued. "We are also pleased to see the pause on payments extended through December 2022, but we encourage the White House to ensure that repayments do not begin until debt cancellation can reach the people who need it," she added. "Under President Biden, no one has had to make a payment on a federal student loan. If millions have to restart these payments before the forgiveness reaches them, it would only increase the anxiety and hardship Americans are feeling amid other rising costs."
Some Biden Cabinet members still have student debt - President Joe Biden announced on Wednesday that his administration would cancel up to $20,000 of student loan debt per borrower — an issue that is personal to some of Biden’s top aides. An E&E News review of financial disclosures from the Office of Government Ethics found that several high-ranking Biden appointees — including a few senior environment and energy officials — reported having student debt, either from their own education or from their spouse’s or child’s. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland owed between $15,001 and $50,000 when the report was last updated in November 2021. An Interior Department spokesperson confirmed the debt is Haaland’s and said she continues to pay off student loan debt from her undergraduate, graduate and law schools. EPA Administrator Michael Regan also reported $15,001 to $50,000 in student debt as of November 2021. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre reported between $10,001 and $15,000 in student debt as of the same month. White House Council on Environmental Quality Chair Brenda Mallory had just finished paying off her student loan debt, some amount between $15,001 and $50,000, when her report was updated in July 2020. The OGE requires filers to report liabilities that are over $10,000 that they themselves, their spouse or their dependent child owed during the reporting period. Filers don’t report an exact number but instead check the box for the range that their liability falls under: $10,001-$15,000, $15,001-$50,000, $50,001-$100,000, and so on. Spokespeople for Regan, Jean-Pierre and Mallory did not respond to emails asking for comment and to confirm whom the debt belonged to. In Jean-Pierre’s 2019 memoir, “Moving Forward: A Story of Hope, Hard Work and the Promise of America,” she wrote about the $25,000 in student debt she owed after getting her master’s degree at Columbia University, “despite earning a full tuition scholarship for [her] second year.” Biden announced a cancellation of up to $10,000 for borrowers and up to $20,000 for borrowers who previously received a Pell Grant. But only borrowers who earn less than $125,000 a year or families earning less than $250,000 will be eligible for the relief. Based on publicly available salaries, and without knowing more about their family circumstances, the four aides are unlikely to qualify for the relief, Jonathan Fansmith, director of government relations at the American Council on Education, said in an email. Haaland makes $203,500 per year as Interior secretary, according to data collected by the Feds Data Center from the Office of Personnel Management. Regan and Mallory both make $183,100 per year in their positions. Jean-Pierre makes $180,000 per year as press secretary, according to a July report on White House personnel salaries.
How student loan forgiveness will ripple across financial services — President Biden's announcement Wednesday that the Department of Education would forgive up to $20,000 in student debt for eligible borrowers could have major implications across the financial system.The plan would forgive up to $10,000 in federal student debt for borrowers earning under $125,000 per year, and up to $20,000 in student loans taken out by lower-income Pell Grant recipients. Biden also announced that the moratorium on all student loan repayment that has been in effect since 2020 would cease at the end of the year and provided new rules governing student loan repayment and public service debt forgiveness going forward. President Biden on Wednesday announced a sweeping package of student-debt relief that forgives as much as $20,000 in loans for some recipients, a move he said would help a generation "saddled with unsustainable debt."Biden said the purpose of the plan was to reduce the burden of student loans for those struggling to build financial security, freeing up income to spend and invest in a stronger economy."All of this means people can start finally to climb out from under that mountain of debt," Biden said Wednesday. "To finally think about buying a home or starting a family or starting a business. And by the way, when this happens, the whole economy is better off."Many Democrats have been calling on the president to cancelsomeportion of federally held student debt since he took office. He already announced billions in loan forgiveness for certain borrowers who attended for-profit institutions and those who have pursued public service jobs. Yet much of that careful thinking around Wednesday's announcement relates to the precarious economic context in which the announcement was made; the Federal Reserve has been aggressively hiking interest rates to tame runaway inflation, leading to growing fears that the economy could be heading into a recession.Banks as a general matter do not hold a great deal of student debt — private student debt accounts for a little under 8% of the total $1.75 trillion student debt market, the vast majority of which is held by the Department of Education, Sallie Mae and other quasi-governmental organizations. But the announcement likely will affect consumer credit, inflation and the broader economy.Here are some of the main ways Biden's student loan announcement could change the political, economic and lending landscapes in the years to come.
Student loan forgiveness application coming in October, White House says- The White House said Friday that student loan borrowers will be able to apply for debt cancellation this fall and receive relief within four to six weeks.Speaking to reporters, White House National Economic Council deputy director Bharat Ramamurti said the Education Department will release the application for President Biden’s loan forgiveness program in early October. After making successful applications, borrowers should expect to have their loan balances reduced or in some cases fully erased in a month or so.The announcement arrives days after Biden said he would cancel up to $10,000 in federal student loan debt for borrowers who earn less than $125,000 per year, or less than $250,000 for married couples. Those who received Pell Grants, federal aid for lower-income students, could see up to $20,000 in forgiveness.In the wake of the news, borrowers have been clamoring for more information, peppering student loan servicers with questions andcrashing the Education Department’s website. Details of the plan continue to emerge from the Biden administration, giving borrowers a clearer understanding of how relief will work.Once the application is out, Ramamurti said borrowers should apply by Nov. 15 to have their balances lowered or eliminated before the student loan payment pause ends on Dec. 31. The Education Department, he said, will process applications on an ongoing basis even after payments resume.Roughly 8 million borrowers, whose income is already on file at the department, will have their loans automatically forgiven without having to apply. Everyone else can sign up on Studentaid.gov to be notified when the form goes live.The White House estimates that nearly 90 percent of relief will go to people earning less than $75,000 and that roughly 20 million borrowers could have their debt completely canceled.In all, about 43 million people could see some level of forgiveness, officials said.
Congress approved $386 million to retrain veterans. Only 397 benefited. - The offer to military veterans left unemployed by the coronavirus pandemic was tantalizing: A year of online courses courtesy of the federal government. Graduates would be set up for good jobs in high-demand fields from app development to graphic design.But more than a year after enrolling at the Chicago-based Future Tech Career Institute, Culbreth is no closer to her goal of landing a job in cloud computing. Like many former service members enrolled at the for-profit trade school under a pandemic relief program run by the Department of Veterans Affairs, she soon found herself immersed in discouraging chaos.Schedules were disorganized and courses did not follow a set syllabus. School-provided laptops couldn’t run critical software. And during long stretches of scheduled class time, students were left without instruction, according to interviews with Culbreth and 10 other veterans who attended the school.In February, VA cut off tuition payments to Future Tech, leaving Culbreth and more than 300 other veterans in the lurch.The disarray at Future Tech is the most painful example of broader problems with the $386 million Veteran Rapid Retraining Assistance Program, or VRRAP. Many schools proved unable to attract students or deliver promised services. In addition to Future Tech, nearly 90 schools have had their approvals yanked, according to VA officials, including several that were actively serving about 100 veterans. Some schools were cut off amid allegations of predatory practices, while others simply went out of business. As of Aug. 1, only about 6,800 veterans had enrolled in the program, far fewer than the 17,250 Congress created it to serve, the agency said; just 397 had landed new jobs. The story of VRRAP illustrates Washington’s often losing battle to effectively spend the torrent of cash Congress threw at the coronavirus pandemic starting in March 2020. In all, lawmakers approved more than $5 trillion for covid relief, an unprecedented wave of emergency loans, grants and other assistance intended to fight the virus and pull America out of its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. But haste and carelessness in crafting the aid created a wellspring for fraud and waste — a mess that hundreds of federal investigators are still trying to clean up.In VRRAP’s case, Congress bungled both the program’s design and its timing, critics said, diminishing the likelihood of attracting students. As of last week, roughly half the money had been spent, leaving VA on track to return tens of millions of dollars to the U.S. Treasury when the program expires in December.
Fauci Stepping Down In December - Dr. Anthony Fauci announced on Monday that he will be stepping down from his positions as director of NIAID and Chief of the NIAID laboratory of immunoregulation.The 81-year-old Fauci leave government service in December after more than 50 years. He will also be stepping down from his position of chief medical adviser to President Biden."I am moving from my current positions, I am not retiring," Fauci said in a statement.In a Sunday evening interview, Fauci said he was "not retiring in the classic sense," and would devote himself to a (undoubtedly profitable) circuit of traveling, writing and encouraging young people to enter government service."So long as I’m healthy, which I am, and I’m energetic, which I am, and I’m passionate, which I am, I want to do some things outside of the realm of the federal government," he told the NY Times. He's also got a memoir in the works. While he has been working on a memoir, Dr. Fauci said he did not yet have a publisher. In an interview last year, he said he was precluded from contracting with a publisher while he was still employed by the government.
First lady tests positive in COVID-19 ‘rebound’ case - First lady Jill Biden has tested positive for COVID-19 days after receiving a negative test in a “rebound” case of the virus. The first lady tested negative on Tuesday before receiving the positive test result on an antigen test on Wednesday afternoon, her office said. “The First Lady has experienced no reemergence of symptoms, and will remain in Delaware where she has reinitiated isolation procedures,” Kelsey Donohue, the deputy communications director for the first lady, said in a statement. Biden first tested positive for COVID-19 eight days ago and was given the antiviral drug Paxlovid. She tested positive while on vacation with President Biden and their family in South Carolina. The first lady had mild symptoms and remained there until receiving a negative test, then joined the president in Delaware where he had continued his vacation. Rebound cases can happen in patients who take Paxlovid when a patient tests negative for the virus, only to test positive again a few days later. The president had a similar rebound case after taking Paxlovid for his own COVID-19 infection late last month. He remained in isolation for another week because of the rebound case.
Pfizer asks FDA to authorize Covid booster shots that target omicron BA.5 for people ages 12 and older - Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech on Monday asked the Food and Drug Administration to authorize Covid booster shots that target the omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants for people ages 12 and older. The U.S. is preparing for a fall vaccination campaign using updated vaccines that target the dominant omicron subvariants. Public health officials expect another wave of infection this fall and winter as immunity from the currently authorized shots wears off and people head indoors to escape the colder weather. The updated vaccines would target the original strain of the virus that first emerged in Wuhan, China, in 2019 as well as omicron, known as a bivalent vaccine. Scientists and public health officials hope the new shots will provide broader and more durable protection against infection and mild illness. The currently authorized shots were developed to target the version of Covid that first emerged in China. Though the original vaccines are still preventing severe disease, they are not providing substantial protection against infection and mild illness. Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House Covid response coordinator, has said the new shots will become available to the public by early to mid-September. Pfizer said it can ship the omicron BA.4/BA.5 boosters as soon as the FDA authorizes them. The U.S. government has secured 105 million doses of Pfizer's updated shots and 66 million doses of Moderna's new vaccine. The FDA is working closely with the vaccine manufacturers to ensure the updated Covid boosters are available in the fall after a review of the safety and effectiveness of the shots, according to agency spokesperson Abby Capobianco. "The agency will work expeditiously to review this and any other submissions once received in order to make modified COVID-19 vaccines available for booster vaccination in this timeframe," Capobianco said. However, some infectious disease and public health experts are calling for the FDA and the vaccine companies to present more data on the new shots before they receive authorization. It's unclear whether or not the FDA's independent vaccine advisory committee will meet to review more data on the shots before the agency authorizes them.
Yet More Medically Bogus Covid Vaccine Profiteering: Requiring “Primary” Covid Shots to Get Omicron “Booster” – – Yves Smith - If you harbored any doubt, the latest Covid policy tidbit should convince you that US Covid policy has nothing to do with public health and everything to do with drug industry grifting and the desire of big business to pretend everything is fine so as to maximize their profits.The case study is the eligibility policy for the long-promised, finally-about-to-be-launched variant-specific vaccines. Remember how one of the much-touted benefits of mRNA vaccines was the ease of modifying them, supposedly within weeks, to combat new variants? Yet the great unwashed public has been urged to get “boosters” as in repeats of the original formula, designed for the wild type of Covid, when the Omicron variants almost entirely escape the vaccine.1But now….drumroll…we are finally about to get Omicron shots. But there’s a catch. From CNBC:Newly updated Covid booster shots designed to target omicron’s BA.5 subvariant should be available within in the next three weeks. That begs an important question: Who’s going to be eligible to get them? The short answer: anyone ages 12 and up who has completed a primary vaccination series, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spokesperson tells CNBC Make It. It’s unlikely to matter whether you’ve received any other booster doses or not before, the spokesperson says — but if you’re unvaccinated, you won’t be eligible for the updated formula until you complete a primary series with the existing Covid vaccines.IM Doc was incensed:If we need evidence of a massive fraud – look no further.The moral of the story – only those with the initial vaxx series will be eligible for the Omicron boosters.In decades of medical practice – this requirement to get the initial series has never been done. If so – we would be giving basically no flu shots.And what scientific fraud this is……Explain to me what good this will do for any patient to be vaccinated against strains of virus that have been extinct for two years. I guess it really does not matter anyway for the vaxxed – the Omicron boosters will likely be largely against already extinct variants.This is a naked play to get people to take the vaccines from 2 years ago so they do not have to throw them out.This is not going to work. I am afraid those who are still unvaxxed will remain so. And stunts like this will just harden the situation further. I am assuming they no longer have an ethics department in either the FDA or the CDC. IM Doc is right that there’s a financial angle, just not the one of making sure vaccines don’t get thrown out. Remember that Covid shots are still paid for by the government. Why sell one jab in the cases where you can force some patients to get two more? Let us stress that this policy has no medical justification. Immunity of all sorts to a coronavirus is short-lived, so it’s not as if being previously vaccinated will make the Omicron shot more potent.In fact, the example of flu vaccines suggests that more frequent vaccination can produce diminishing results.STAT and others reported on a 2015 study that found that kids who had not gotten a flu vaccine in the last five years and then got the jab had better protection that children vaccinated annually. Note that the write-up does not deny that the findings were valid.
New data shows long Covid is keeping as many as 4 million people out of work – Brookings - Since the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic through today, news about labor shortages and missing workers has dominated headlines. The question everyone still seems to be asking is: Why? This June, the Census Bureau finally added four questions about long Covid to its Household Pulse Survey (HPS), giving researchers a better understanding of the condition’s prevalence. This report uses the new data to assess the labor market impact and economic burden of long Covid, and finds that:
- Around 16 million working-age Americans (those aged 18 to 65) have long Covid today.
- Of those, 2 to 4 million are out of work due to long Covid.
- The annual cost of those lost wages alone is around $170 billion a year (and potentially as high as $230 billion).
These impacts stand to worsen over time if the U.S. does not take the necessary policy actions. With that in mind, the final section of this report identifies five critical interventions to mitigate both the economic costs and household financial impact of long Covid. The Census Bureau’s June to July 2022 HPS survey found that 16.3 million people (around 8%) of working-age Americans currently have long Covid.[1] This report uses HPS data rather than Current Population Survey (CPS) data—which is generally more robust—because the HPSasks questions specific to long Covid, and the CPS does not. The CPS asks about six specific manifestations of disability, which will likely identify some cases of long Covid, but almost certainly not all.[2] A recent Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis study corroborates the HPS figure. Using a longitudinal survey, it found that 24.1% of people who have contracted COVID-19 experienced symptoms for three months or more, which the author defined as long Covid.[3] And according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 70% of Americans have contracted COVID-19. If 24.1% of them have had long Covid, 34 million working-age Americans have, at some point, had long Covid.The Minneapolis Fed study found that 50% of respondents had recovered from long Covid. If we exclude that 50%, we are left with around 17 million people who may currently have long Covid—very near the HPS estimate of 16.3 million.[4] First, we need to know what percentage of people with long Covid have left the workforce or reduced their work hours. Estimates vary:
- The Minneapolis Fed study cited above found that 25.9% people with long Covid have had their work “impacted” (meaning that they are either out of work or working reduced hours).
- A survey from the United Kingdom’s Trades Union Congress (TUC) found that 20% of people with long Covid were not working, and an additional 16% were working reduced hours.
- A study published in The Lancet, found that 22% of people with long Covid were unable to work due to ill health, and another 45% had to reduce hours worked.
Second, we need to know how many people with long Covid were working in the first place. Since this report focuses on working-age Americans, we will use that group’s labor force participation rate of 75%. So, of the 16.3 million working-age Americans with long Covid, we can assume 12.2 million were in the labor force.Third, we need to calculate the reduced hours of the people with long Covid who kept working. The Minneapolis Fed study found that, on average, they reduced their hours by 10 hours a week; using that number and a 40-hour work week, we can assume that these workers reduced their hours by 25%. Using the Minneapolis Fed, TUC, and Lancet data on extent of work reductions gives us 2 million, 3 million, and 4 million full-time equivalent workers out of the labor force due to long Covid, respectively. The midpoint of this range—3 million full-time equivalent workers—is 1.8% of the entire U.S. civilian labor force.[5] This may sound unbelievably high, but it is not inconsistent with the experiences of comparable economies. For example, a Bank of England representative recently stated that labor force participation has dropped by around 1.3% across the entire 16- to 64-year-old population (not just those who are working), and that the majority of that impact is from the rise in long-term sickness—which he suspected was long Covid. Meanwhile, one-quarter of U.K. companies cite long Covid as one of the main causes of long-term staff absence.It is also not inconsistent with the current labor market experience in the U.S., where employers in face-to-face industries such as education, transportation, food service, hospitality, and health and social care are facing persistent labor shortages. And as economist Jason Furman recently pointed out, labor market participation is still around 1 percentage point lower than demographics would predict. Using the average U.S. wage of $1,106 per week, the estimated 3 million people out of work due to long Covid translates to $168 billion a year in lost earnings. This is nearly 1% of the total U.S. gross domestic product. If the true number of people out of work is closer to 4 million, that is a $230 billion cost.
Twitter's "Tricky" Timing Problem: Lawsuit Reveals Back Channel with CDC to Coordinate Censorship - Over the course of 110 pages in a federal complaint, that one descriptive word seemed to stand out among the exchanges between social media executives and public health officials on censoring public viewpoints. The exchange reveals long-suspected coordination between the government and these social media companies to manage a burgeoning censorship system.Twitter just reportedly suspended another doctor who sought to raise concerns over Pfizer Covid records. Former New York Times science reporter Alex Berenson is also suing Twitter over his suspension after raising dissenting views to the CDC. In the meantime, Twitter is rolling out new procedures to combat “misinformation” in the upcoming elections — a move that has some of us skeptical.The recently disclosed exchange between defendant Carol Crawford, the CDC’s Chief of digital media, revealed a back channel with Twitter and other companies to censor “unapproved opinions” on social media. The “tricky” part may be due to the fact that, during that week of March 25, 2021, then CEO Jack Dorsey was testifying on such censorship before Congress and insisting that “we don’t have a censoring department.”It seems that any meeting on systemic censorship with the government would have to wait until after Dorsey denied that such systemic censorship. The exchange is part of the evidence put forward by leading doctors who are alleging a systemic private-government effort to censor dissenting scientific or medial views. The lawsuit filed by Missouri and Louisiana was joined experts, including Drs. Jayanta Bhattacharya (Stanford University) and Martin Kulldorff (Harvard University). Bhattacharya objected this week to the suspension of Dr. Clare Craig after she raised concerns about Pfizer trial documents.Those doctors were the co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated for a more focused Covid response that targeted the most vulnerable population rather than widespread lockdowns and mandates. Many are now questioning the efficacy and cost of the massive lockdown as well as the real value of masks or the rejection of natural immunities as an alternative to vaccination. Yet, these experts and others were attacked for such views just a year ago. Some found themselves censored on social media for challenging claims of Dr. Fauci and others. The Great Barrington Declaration was not the only viewpoint deemed dangerous. Those who alleged that the virus may have begun in a lab in China were widely denounced and the views barred from being uttered on social media platforms. It was later learned that a number of leading experts raised this theory with Fauci and others early in the pandemic.
Covid fraud abuse has a clear, and counterintuitive, lesson - Catherine Rampell - The public might be drawing exactly the wrong lessons from reports that covid-19 relief efforts probably led to the largest fraud in U.S. history.The takeaway is that we need to be investing in better government. Notless government.Pandemic relief efforts have been riddled with fraud — in unemployment benefits; in small-business bailout programs; and in other spending and tax measures, passed under both the Trump and Biden administrations.In the unemployment insurance system alone, an estimated $163 billionwas paid “improperly,” thanks to some combination of accidental error and deliberate fraud. In the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program,tens of billions of dollars went to multiple applicants who shared the same accounts or contact information, a sign of possible fraud. Michael Horowitz, chair of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (created by the 2020 Cares Act and composed of inspectors general), recently said he would not be surprised if the total amount of fraud “exceeded $100 billion.”As ginormous relief programs were being built from scratch, fast, the Trump administration resisted oversight. Even if a more transparency-minded president had initially been in charge, though, the governmentstill likely would have been pickpocketed.That’s because, as I wrote back in April 2020, systematic underinvestment in government tech infrastructure created a situation ripe for poor performance and abuse. Government is as functional, or as dysfunctional, as it is designed to be; through a combination of incompetence, benign neglect and anti-government malice, we have designed our government to be maximally dysfunctional. Many government computer systems, both federal and state, are decades old. Agencies rely on disco-era computer languages that few coders know anymore, and some physical hardware is lapsing into disrepair. Such IT deficiencies not only doomed a lot of struggling Americans to long waits for needed assistance; they also left a lot of precious assistance dollars vulnerable to identity thieves and scam artists, who understood how to exploit the system. Early in the pandemic, one of the biggest, most celebrated assistance efforts was the Paycheck Protection Program. As its name suggests, the federal program’s primary goal was to ensure that workers still received paychecks even when their small-business employers might have been forced to close down or furlough staff.Alas, the government couldn’t readily determine who was getting paychecks from whom, or who had stopped getting paychecks because of layoffs and, therefore, who needed money. The government should have been able to figure out such things, given that companies must regularly remit payroll taxes for their employees, among many other ways administrative records illustrate who works where. But Government IT infrastructure stinks. Databases don’t talk to one another.
One Man Has Set Up a $1.6 Billion Slush Fund to Fuel the Radical Right’s Takeover of Congress; Get Ready for a Dirty Tricks Campaign -By Pam and Russ Martens ~ The New York Times dropped a political bombshell on Monday. The public interest website, ProPublica, built further on the story that afternoon. And, as luck would have it, Wall Street On Parade finds itself in the unique position of filling in missing pieces of the story thanks to an investigative report we published in 2010. The gist of the story is this: a sketchy billionaire named Barre Seid decided last year to donate his electronics manufacturing company, Tripp Lite, to a nonprofit tied to the radical right called Marble Freedom Trust. After the transfer of ownership to the nonprofit, Tripp Lite was then sold to the Dublin, Ireland based power management company, Eaton, thus avoiding capital gains taxes on the sale. This handed the nonprofit a cool $1.65 billion in tax free money from the sale of the business.In other words, the U.S. taxpayer is subsidizing the radical right’s ability to trash democracy in the U.S.Nothing about this maneuver appears to be illegal, a screaming call for reforming current laws if ever there was one. And, apparently, in an effort to make sure all the legal t’s had been crossed, the nonprofit hired the Big Law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell to handle the transaction and paid the law firm the hefty fee of $940,000.Sullivan & Cromwell’s former law partner, Jay Clayton, was appointed by Donald Trump during his time as President to head the Securities and Exchange Commission. Trump apparently liked what he saw in Clayton because Attorney General William Barr then tried to oust the sitting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and replace him with Clayton. That episode backfired badly. See our reporting: U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman’s Ouster: The Untold Story. So who is this Barre Seid that the public has never heard of who has the ability to drop a cool $1.65 billion into the lap of the radical right? It just so happens that our knowledge of Barre Seid dates back to November 16, 2010 when Salon published an article by Justin Elliott naming Seid as the likely source of money for a widely-distributed race-baiting film released just weeks before the presidential election of 2008, where the radical right was hoping to defeat presidential candidate Barack Obama by pushing conspiracy theories that he wasn’t born in the U.S. and was a Muslim. (Obama’s faith is Christian and he has released his birth certificate showing he was born in Hawaii.) The Salon article captivated our attention because it built on an earlier article we had published at CounterPunch on October 26, 2010 about a dark money slush fund called Donors Capital Fund that was sluicing money to the radical right. We had broken the story that Donors Capital Fund had given $17,778,600 to the dark money Clarion Fund to produce the race-baiting film, but we were not able to name the individual who had given the money to Donors Capital Fund. Salon named Seid as the likely mystery man and produced a tax document that had inadvertently exposed Seid as the donor of $16.775 million of the money that went to the Clarion Fund in 2008. That sum represented more than 90 percent of the Clarion Fund’s total contributions in 2008, meaning the bulk of the funding for the film could not have come from another source. Donors Capital Fund and its sister, Donors Trust, are classified as Donor-Advised Funds, meaning they are dark money groups that don’t publish the names of their donors but do take advice from the donors on where to secretly sluice the money.One of the first donations made by the newly-established Marble Freedom Trust from the $1.65 billion it received from the sale of Seid’s business was a $41 million donation to Donors Trust, according to its tax filing for last year. Below are excerpts from our 2010 reporting on the Clarion Fund and its financing of the race-baiting film. (Read our full report here.)
Copied voting systems files were shared with Trump supporters, election deniers - Sensitive election system files obtained by attorneys working to overturn President Donald Trump’s 2020 defeat were shared with election deniers, conspiracy theorists and right-wing commentators, according to records reviewed by The Washington Post.A Georgia computer forensics firm, hired by the attorneys, placed the files on a server, where company records show they were downloaded dozens of times. Among the downloaders were accounts associated with a Texas meteorologist who has appeared on Sean Hannity’s radio show; a podcaster who suggested political enemies should be executed; a former pro surfer who pushed disproven theories that the 2020 election was manipulated; and a self-described former “seduction and pickup coach” who claims to also have been a hacker.Plaintiffs in a long-running federal lawsuit over the security of Georgia’s voting systems obtained the new records from the company, Atlanta-based SullivanStrickler, under a subpoena to one of its executives. The records include contracts between the firm and the Trump-allied attorneys, notably Sidney Powell. The data files are described as copies of components from election systems in Coffee County, Ga., and Antrim County, Mich.A series of data leaks and alleged breaches of local elections offices since 2020 has prompted criminal investigations and fueled concerns among some security experts that public disclosure of information collected from voting systems could be exploited by hackers and other people seeking to manipulate future elections.Access to U.S. voting system software and other components is tightly regulated, and the government classifies those systems as “critical infrastructure.” The new batch of records shows for the first time how the files copied from election systems were distributed to people in multiple states.Marilyn Marks, executive director of the nonprofit Coalition for Good Governance, which is one of the plaintiffs in the Georgia lawsuit, said the records appeared to show the files were handled recklessly. “The implications go far beyond Coffee County or Georgia,” Marks said.In a statement to The Post, SullivanStrickler said the attorneys who hired the firm directed it “to contact county officials to obtain access to certain data” from Dominion Voting Systems machines in Georgia and Michigan. “Likewise, the firm was directed by attorneys to distribute that data to certain individuals,” the statement said. The firm said that it “had [and has] no reason to believe that, as officers of the court, these attorneys would ask or direct SullivanStrickler to do anything either improper or illegal.”
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has 20 people arrested for voting in the 2020 presidential election - The election police of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis arrested and charged 20 people for allegedly voting in the 2020 presidential election illegally. The move is an attempt at bolstering the “Big Lie” of Donald Trump and the Republican Party of a stolen election and justifying the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol aimed at overturning the election. Thursday’s charges are the first major public action from the Office of Election Crimes and Security, a police force DeSantis created earlier this year dedicated solely to pursuing voter fraud and other supposed election “crimes.” The governor’s prosecutorial actions are both a political appeal to Trump’s far-right base by fueling the false claims of widespread vote rigging and an attack against the working class and voting rights through the most anti-democratic and repressive measures. The policing unit was part of Senate Bill (SB) 524, a voting law package DeSantis signed in April adding severe restrictions, including requiring voter rolls to be reviewed annually and updated, sharpening ID requirements and increasing penalties for violations of election laws. The elections crime unit is presided over by the Florida Department of State, with its main focus being reviewing fraud allegations and conducting preliminary investigations. Already existing state law allowed the governor to appoint officers to investigate violations of election law but did not require him to do so. With SB 524, DeSantis is now required to appoint a group of special officers from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement tasked with pursuing election law violations. The election crimes unit drastically undermines the authority of local prosecutors in handling such cases, a testament to DeSantis’ growing tyrannical grip over local law enforcement activities of all kinds. At a campaign-style event in Fort Lauderdale, DeSantis declared that the 20 people charged had been previously convicted of murder or a felony sexual offense and were therefore exempt from a constitutional amendment that restores voting rights to some felons. Those arrested came from five different counties: Hillsborough (St. Petersburg), Orange (Orlando), Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade. The charges levied against each voter included voting as an unqualified elector and false affirmation. Most of them were charged with a third-degree felony, which can result in up to $5,000 in fines and up to five years in prison. “They did not go through any process, they did not get their rights restored, and yet they went ahead and voted anyways,” DeSantis said in front of right-wing supporters. “That is against the law, and now they’re gonna pay the price for it.”
The Koch network and other Trump allies are quietly backing his biggest GOP critic: Rep. Liz Cheney - Republican Rep. Liz Cheney has amassed a group of political consultants with ties to former President Donald Trump and the expansive Koch network as she mulls a run for the White House after losing in the GOP primary for her Wyoming House seat. Cheney's role as vice chair of the committee investigating Trump's actions in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol has cost the third-highest ranking Republican in the U.S. House her standing in the GOP and her seat in Congress. She lost the Republican nomination in a landslide race last week to one of Trump's picks, Wyoming lawyer Harriet Hageman. Cheney's now considering running against Trump for president in 2024, she told NBC News, and has quietly put together a team of top GOP advisors to help her ensure he doesn't ever get back in the White House. "I believe that Donald Trump continues to pose a very grave threat and risk to our republic. And I think that defeating him is going to require a broad and united front of Republicans, Democrats and independents, and that's what I intend to be a part of," she said in an exclusive interview with Savannah Guthrie on NBC's "TODAY" show last week. Cheney is using some of Trump's own consultants and allies, including those from the powerful Koch network, to try to keep the former president from winning a second term in the White House. Some of them appear to have used limited liability companies that shroud their identity from the public.
Trump files suit demanding special master in Mar-a-Lago search case - Former President Donald Trump made his first foray into the legal fight over the FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago estate, seeking the appointment of a “special master” to screen seized materials for potential privileged information. In a legal filing Monday afternoon in federal court in Florida, attorneys for Trump asked the court to appoint a third party to sift through the records FBI seized two weeks ago as part of an investigation into unlawful retention of classified information, misappropriation of presidential and federal records and potential obstruction of justice. “This matter has captured the attention of the American public,” Trump’s motion says. “Merely adequate safeguards are not acceptable when the matter at hand involves not only the constitutional rights of President Trump, but also the preservation of executive privilege.” In the submission, styled as a “Motion for Judicial Oversight and Additional Relief,” Trump’s lawyers also asked that investigators be blocked from further review of the seized materials until a third-party review process is in place. The court assigned Trump’s requests to Fort Pierce, Fla.-based U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee confirmed by the Senate about a week after Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election. It’s unclear whether Cannon will be the first to rule on Trump’s requests or whether that will be the magistrate judge who granted the warrant, Bruce Reinhart. A Reinhart decision would, in any event, be subject to appeal to a district court judge such as Cannon. Trump’s attorneys said they were informed by a prosecutor that a Justice Department “filter team” is reviewing the seized records to cull out any privileged materials, but the Trump lawyers contend that safeguard isn’t sufficient. The 27-page filing is replete with Trump’s typical political bombast, including boasts about the power of the former president’s 2022 campaign endorsements and about the Mar-a-Lago estate itself. But it also confirmed aspects of the timeline related to the Mar-a-Lago search, including the fact that the Justice Department issued two subpoenas prior to the search — one for documents on May 11 and another for security camera footage in late June.
Judge says FBI’s evidence for searching Mar-a-Lago is ‘reliable’ - The federal magistrate judge who authorized the warrant to search Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate emphasized Monday that he “carefully reviewed” the FBI’s sworn evidence before signing off and considers the facts contained in an accompanying affidavit to be “reliable.” Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart offered his assessment in a 13-page order memorializing his decision to consider whether to unseal portions of the affidavit, which describe the evidence the bureau relied on to justify the search of the former president’s home. “I was — and am — satisfied that the facts sworn by the affiant are reliable,” Reinhart said in the order. Reinhart ruled last week that he would consider unsealing portions of the affidavit after conferring with the Justice Department and determining whether proposed redactions would be sufficient to protect the ongoing criminal investigation connected to the search. But in his order, Reinhart emphasized that he may ultimately agree with prosecutors that any redactions would be so extensive that they would render the document useless. “I cannot say at this point that partial redactions will be so extensive that they will result in a meaningless disclosure, but I may ultimately reach that conclusion after hearing further from the Government,” Reinhart wrote. The new order underlines the historic significance of a typically secret part of the criminal investigative process, arriving just as Trump has indicated he’s preparing to mount his own attack on the FBI investigation in court. The Justice Department is due to propose potential redactions by Thursday, portending a potentially lengthy process of negotiation with Reinhart and possible appeals.
Documents recovered at Mar-a-Lago were among government's most classified, letter shows - The National Archives found more than 700 pages of classified material — including “special access program materials,” some of the most highly classified secrets in government — in 15 boxes recovered from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in January, according to correspondence between the National Archivist and his legal team. The May 10 letter — posted late Monday on the website of John Solomon, a conservative journalist and one of Trump’s authorized liaisons to the National Archives to review papers from his presidency — showed that NARA and federal investigators had grown increasingly alarmed about potential damage to national security caused by the warehousing of these documents at Mar-a-Lago, as well as by Trump’s resistance to sharing them with the FBI. These records included 700 pages of classified material, according to the letter, sent by National Archivist Debra Wall to Trump’s attorney, Evan Corcoran, and it doesn’t include records recovered by the Justice Department and FBI during a June meeting and the Aug. 11 search of the Mar-a-Lago premises. Wall’s letter describes earlier correspondence in which Trump’s team objected to disclosing the contents of the 15 boxes to the FBI. “As you are no doubt aware, NARA had ongoing communications with the former President’s representatives throughout 2021 about what appeared to be missing Presidential records, which resulted in the transfer of 15 boxes of records to NARA in January 2022,” Wall wrote. “In its initial review of materials within those boxes, NARA identified items marked as classified national security information, up to the level of Top Secret and including Sensitive Compartmented Information and Special Access Program materials.” NARA aides did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the letter, and Corcoran could not immediately be reached. The correspondence shows that even though NARA retrieved the 15 boxes in January, Justice Department and FBI investigators didn’t see their contents until May, after extended negotiations with Trump’s representatives. The letter also shows that in the interim, DOJ asked President Joe Biden to authorize NARA to provide the records to investigators despite an effort by Trump to claim executive privilege over the records. Wall indicated she had rejected Trump’s claim because of the significance of the documents to national security. “NARA informed the Department of Justice about that discovery, which prompted the Department to ask the President to request that NARA provide the FBI with access to the boxes at issue so that the FBI and others in the Intelligence Community could examine them,” Wall wrote.
Gang of 8 wants to see Trump Mar-a-Lago search docs - The group of congressional leaders charged with reviewing the most sensitive intelligence information has asked the Biden administration for access to the documents seized from former President Donald Trump’s private residence in Florida, according to two people with direct knowledge of the request. The inquiry from the so-called “Gang of 8” comes as lawmakers from both parties seek to learn more about the unprecedented investigation into the former president. And it suggests that Congress is unwilling to be a bystander in the political and legal fallout following the FBI’s Aug. 8 search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla. It follows a similar request from Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Vice Chair Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), two Gang of 8 members who asked the nation’s top intelligence official to draw up an assessment of possible national-security risks related to Trump’s handling of the sensitive documents. The Gang of 8 includes the top two congressional leaders in each chamber — Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy — as well as the top Democrat and Republican on the House and Senate intelligence committees. A spokesperson for the Senate Intelligence Committee declined to comment. A representative for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence also declined to comment. Meanwhile, a spokesperson for a Gang of 8 member indicated that a specific request hadn’t been signed onto by all eight lawmakers, but acknowledged that congressional oversight is ongoing. (The Gang of 8 and its staff routinely ask the intelligence community for specific information in ways that don’t always require sign-off from all eight members.) Privately, Capitol Hill aides have expressed frustration about the fact that Congress has learned little about the investigation into the former president, especially since it reportedly involves matters of national security. The executive branch has historically resisted congressional inquiries about ongoing law-enforcement actions, arguing that it could compromise the investigation. The FBI search warrant unsealed earlier this month revealed that the Justice Department was investigating potential violations of the Espionage Act, the Presidential Records Act and obstruction of justice in relation to Trump’s storage of White House materials at his home. At a hearing last week in south Florida, the Justice Department’s top counterintelligence official, Jay Bratt, said the investigation is still in its “early stages.”
No let-up in criminal probe of Trump’s handling of military-intelligence documents -The crisis of the American political system continues to mount in the aftermath of the unprecedented raid on former President Donald Trump’s private compound in Palm Beach, Florida carried out by the FBI on August 8.Amid new revelations about the highly sensitive character of the documents Trump removed from the White House, the Justice Department appears to be expanding its investigation into the ex-president’s violations of national security procedures, while Trump is initiating a rearguard legal action in an attempt to stall the probe.Tuesday’s print edition of the New York Times featured a report, based on information leaked by unnamed “people briefed on the matter,” that the government had recovered more than 300 documents with classified markings from Trump, who failed to turn them over to the National Archives when he left the White House in January of 2021.These documents, kept by Trump at his Mar-a-Lago private club and residence, were retrieved in three batches: one turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) at the latter’s insistence last January, a second provided by Trump aides to Justice Department officials in June following a subpoena issued the previous month, and the third seized by over two dozen FBI agents who raided Mar-a-Lago on August 8. The raid was carried out on the basis of a judicial warrant citing probable cause that Trump violated the federal Espionage Act and federal statutes prohibiting tampering with official government records and obstructing a criminal investigation. Among other significant revelations in the Times article:
- The 15 boxes of documents turned over to NARA in January included documents from the CIA, the National Security Agency and the FBI.
- The FBI agents who conducted the raid on August 8 found documents in a closet in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago office, in addition to those taken from the storage room in the basement of the complex where, according to Trump’s lawyers, all of the documents removed from the White House had been stored.
- Justice Department investigators decided to seek a search warrant after Mar-a-Lago surveillance footage they had subpoenaed and obtained from Trump’s aides showed people moving boxes in and out of the storage room and changing the containers in which documents were being kept.
- Justice Department investigators are now requesting additional surveillance video from Mar-a-Lago for the weeks leading up to the August 8 search.
This information follows previous reports that the 26 boxes of documents removed from Mar-a-Lago on August 8 included 11 separate batches of material marked as classified, comprising scores of documents. One set had the highest level of classification—top secret/secret compartmented information. More damaging information, from the standpoint of the US national security apparatus and American imperialist foreign and military policy, was made public on Tuesday through the release of a letter sent last May 10 by the acting US archivist, Debra Steidel Wall, to M. Evan Corcoran, one of Trump’s lawyers. In the letter, Wall expressed alarm over Trump’s stonewalling in regard to official records still being withheld from the government and his efforts to hold back the FBI and other federal agencies from conducting a damage assessment of his mishandling of sensitive documents by making frivolous claims of executive privilege.
Mar-a-Lago affidavit says many witnesses interviewed, 184 classified files returned in January The FBI searched former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home this month after reviewing 184 classified documents that were kept there since he left the White House, including several with Trump’s apparent handwriting on them, and interviewing a “significant number” of witnesses, court filings unsealed Friday say.The details contained in a search-warrant affidavit and related memocrystallize much of what was already known about the criminal probe into whether Trump and his aides took secret government papers and did not return all of the material — despite repeated demands from senior officials. The documents, though heavily redacted, offer the clearest description to date of the rationale for the unprecedented Aug. 8 search and the high-stakes investigation by the Justice Department into a former president who may run again for the White House.The affidavit suggests that if some of the classified documentsvoluntarily returned from Mar-a-Lago to the National Archives and Records Administration in January had fallen into the wrong hands, they could have revealed sensitive details about human intelligence sources or how spy agencies intercept the electronic communications of foreign targets. Over the spring and summer, the affidavit states, the FBI came to suspect that Trump and his team were hiding the fact that he still had more classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, leading agents to want to conduct a search of the property.“There is also probable cause,” the affidavit says, “to believe that evidence of obstruction will be found.”Federal Magistrate Judge Bruce E. Reinhart approved the search on Aug. 5. Three days later, FBI agents dressed in polos and khakis executed the search warrant at the Palm Beach estate, carting away an additional 20 boxes of items from a bedroom, office and a first-floor storage room, according to an inventory of what was retrieved from the property that was made public earlier this month.Those boxes contained 11 more sets of classified documents, the inventory says, several of them also top secret.The warrant authorizing the search of former president Donald Trump’s home said agents were seeking documents possessed in violation of the Espionage Act. (Video: Adriana Usero/The Washington Post)The warrant authorizing the August search said agents were seeking all “physical documents and records constituting evidence, contraband, fruits of crime, or other items illegally possessed in violation of three potential crimes,” including a part of the Espionage Act outlawing gathering, transmitting or losing national defense information. The warrant also cites destruction of records and concealment or mutilation of government material.More than half of the 32-page affidavit remains redacted. The portion that is visible is silent on some of the evidence that has propelled the investigation forward. It does not describe, for instance, what people close to Trump told the FBI about the documents, where the documents were kept, or who had access to them. It also doesn’t discuss security camera footage at the club that was subpoenaed and reviewed by government investigators and raised additional security concerns.The filing includes as an attachment a May 25 letter from Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran to the Justice Department, defending the president’s conduct by arguing Trump had the ultimate classification authority within the government.In a statement after the document was unsealed, Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich said that “this is a grave travesty, and what is unredacted only further supports President Trump’s position, there was NO reason for a raid — it is all politics!”
Read the partially redacted Mar-a-Lago search affidavit, annotated - Washington Post Why did FBI agents search former president Donald Trump’s residence? We now have the evidence laying out their reasoning — kind of. It’s called an affidavit. In its full form, this document spells out exactly what FBI agents think was hidden at Mar-a-Lago and what crimes may have been committed. They presented this to a judge to make their case to search Mar-a-Lago, and these documents are usually kept under lock and key.But given the extraordinary circumstances surrounding a former president, a judge ordered the government to release as much of the affidavit as it can to the public. The version the Justice Department unsealed Friday is heavily redacted, which prosecutors said was to protect its ongoing investigation.Below are notable highlights from the affidavit, with annotations providing analysis and background.This document spells out exactly what FBI agents think was hidden at Donald Trump’s residence and what crimes may have been committed.Click or tap the highlighted passages for additional analysis.
- PAGE 1 -The government is conducting a criminal investigation1 concerning the improper removal and storage of classified information in unauthorized spaces, as well as the unlawful concealment or removal of government records.1 We already knew the FBI went to Mar-a-Lago looking for evidence of the violation of three potential crimes, including part of the Espionage Act. That’s based on the search warrant that the Justice Department released earlier this month, under public pressure, after the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago. This is the very first line in the 38-page affidavit that the FBI put together to apply for that search warrant. And it underscores that the government seemed fairly worried that Trump and/or his allies were illegally storing classified material — and potentially keeping it from the government.The investigation began as a result of a referral the United States National Archives and Records Administration2 (NARA) sent to the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) on February 9, 2022, hereinafter, NARA Referral.
- PAGE 2 The FBI’s investigation has established that documents bearing classification markings,3 which appear to contain National Defense Information (NDI), were among the materials contained in the FIFTEEN BOXES and were stored at the PREMISES in an unauthorized location.Further, there is probable cause to believe that additional documents that contain classified NDI or that are Presidential records subject to record retention requirements currently remain at the PREMISES.There is also probable cause to believe that evidence of obstruction will be found at the PREMISES.4
- PAGE 3 Based upon the following facts, there is probable cause to believe that the locations to be searched at the PREMISES contain evidence, contraband, fruits of crime, or other items illegally possessed in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 793(e), 1519, or 2071.5
- PAGE 8 [A] preliminary review of the FIFTEEN BOXES indicated that they contained “newspapers, magazines, printed news articles, photos, miscellaneous print-outs, notes, presidential correspondence, personal and post presidential records, and ‘a lot of classified records.’ Of most significant concern was that highly classified records were unfoldered, intermixed with other records, and otherwise unproperly [sic] identified.6
- PAGE 11 Boxes Containing Documents Were Transported from the White House to Mar-a-Lago. According to a CBS Miami article titled ''Moving Trucks Spotted At Mar-a-Lago,” 7published Monday, January 18, 2021, at least two moving trucks were observed at the PREMISES on January 18, 2021.
- PAGE 17 -From May 16-18, 2022, FBI agents conducted a preliminary review of the FIFTEEN BOXES provided to NARA and identified documents with classification markings in fourteen of the FIFTEEN BOXES. A preliminary triage of the documents with classification markings revealed the following approximate numbers: 184 unique documents bearing classification markings, including 67 documents marked as CONFIDENTIAL, 92 documents marked as SECRET, and 25 documents marked as TOP SECRET8. Further, the FBI agents observed markings reflecting the following compartments/dissemination controls: HCS, FISA, ORCON, NOFORN, and SI. Based on my training and experience, I know that documents classified at these levels typically contain NDI. Several of the documents also contained what appears to be FPOTUS 's handwritten notes.
- PAGE 19 In the second such letter, which is attached as Exhibit I, FPOTUS COUNSEL 1 asked DOJ to consider a few “principles,” which include FPOTUS COUNSEL’s claim that a President has absolute authority to declassify documents. In this letter, FPOTUS COUNSEL 1 requested, among other things, that “DOJ provide this letter to any judicial officer who is asked to rule on any motion pertaining to this investigation, or on any application made in connection with any investigative request concerning this investigation9.I am aware of an article published in Breitbart on May 5, 2022, available at https://www.breitbart.comvoliticsi2022i05/05/documents-mar-a-lago-marked-classified-wereah-eadv-declassifi.ed-kash-patel-savs/, which states that Kash Patel, who is described as a former top FPOTUS administration official, characterized as ''misleading” reports in other news organizations that NARA had found classified materials among records that FPOTUS provided to NARA from Mar-a-Lago. Patel alleged that such reports were misleading because FPOTUS had declassified the materials at issue.10
Top Trump executive pleads guilty to fraud in New York - — A former top executive at the Trump Organization directly implicated the company Thursday as he pleaded guilty in New York Supreme Court to a yearslong tax fraud scheme. Allen Weisselberg, who was Chief Financial Officer at former President Donald Trump’s company, entered the guilty plea in a criminal case brought by the Manhattan district attorney. Weisselberg confessed a 15-year scheme to avoid paying taxes on lavish perks received from the company. Last year, he was indicted on 15 felony counts, including grand larceny, criminal tax fraud, scheme to defraud and falsifying business records. The Trump Organization itself was also charged in the case. The company did not plead guilty and will continue to face prosecution. Weisselberg agreed to testify when the case goes to trial. But his plea deal did not include an agreement to cooperate in broader ongoing investigations against Trump. “This plea agreement directly implicates the Trump Organization in a wide range of criminal activity and requires Weisselberg to provide invaluable testimony in the upcoming trial against the corporation,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a statement issued as Weisselberg was entering his plea. “We look forward to proving our case in court against the Trump Organization.”
Facebook misinformation is bad enough. The metaverse will be worse. - Here’s a plausible scenario that could soon take place in the metaverse, the online virtual reality environments under rapid development by Mark Zuckerberg and other tech entrepreneurs: A political candidate is giving a speech to millions of people. While each viewer thinks they are seeing the same version of the candidate, in virtual reality they are actually each seeing a slightly different version. For each and every viewer, the candidate’s face has been subtly modified to resemble the viewer. This is done by blending features of each viewer’s face into the candidate’s face. The viewers are unaware of any manipulation of the image. Yet they are strongly influenced by it: Each member of the audience is more favorably disposed to the candidate than they would have been without any digital manipulation. This is not speculation. It has long been known that mimicry can be exploited as a powerful tool for influence. A series of experiments by Stanford researchers has shown that slightly changing the features of an unfamiliar political figure to resemble each voter made people rate politicians more favorably. The experiments took pictures of study participants and real candidates in a mock-up of an election campaign. The pictures of each candidate were modified to resemble each participant. The studies found that evenif 40 percent of the participant’s features were blended into the candidate’s face, the participants were entirely unaware the image had been manipulated. In the metaverse, it’s easy to imagine this type of mimicry at a massive scale. At the heart of all deception is emotional manipulation. Virtual reality environments, such as Facebook’s (now Meta’s) metaverse, will enable psychological and emotional manipulation of its users at a level unimaginable in today’s media.
When Billionaires And The Government Work Together To Control Information – Caitlin Johnstone -Facebook restricted visibility of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story in the lead-up to the 2020 election after receiving counsel from the FBI, according to Facebook/Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.“So we took a different path than Twitter,” Zuckerberg said during a Thursday appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience. “Basically the background here is the FBI, I think basically came to us — some folks on our team and was like, ‘Hey, um, just so you know, like, you should be on high alert. There was the — we thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election. We have it on notice that basically there’s about to be some kind of dump of — that’s similar to that. So just be vigilant.’”Zuckerberg said a decision was made to restrict that information on Facebook’s multibillion-user platform. He said that unlike Twitter, which banned the sharing of the article entirely, Facebook opted for the somewhat subtler option of censorship by algorithm.“The distribution on Facebook was decreased,” he said, adding when pressed by Rogan that the decreased visibility of the article happened to a “meaningful” extent.As we’ve discussed previously, censorship by algorithm is becoming the preferred censorship method on large Silicon Valley platforms because it can be done to far more people with far less objection than outright de-platforming and bans.In addition to being censored across social media platforms, the Hunter Biden laptop story was firstignored and dismissed by the mainstream news media, then spun as a Russian disinfo operation. Those media outlets eventually came around to admitting that the leaked emails were probably authentic, and Hunter Biden tacitly authenticated them himself when he acknowledged that the information “could” have come from his laptop. Nothing that came from that laptop was anywhere near as scandalous as the unified front presented by the news media and Silicon Valley in reducing the political impact of an October surprise before a presidential election.And now we know that the reason the world’s largest social media platform censored that particular story was because they were cautioned by the FBI against allowing such information to circulate. How many of those other institutions suppressed that news story because they were told to by the FBI or other government agencies? How often are US government agencies involving themselves in the act of censorship? What other information is being suppressed in this or similar ways? What other information will be suppressed in the future?Because of the veils of government and corporate secrecy which obscure our view of the behaviors of power, we don’t get to have answers to these questions. All we get to have is what oligarchs like Mark Zuckerberg choose to tell us, in whatever way and to whatever extent they choose to tell us about them.
Whistleblower: Twitter misled investors, FTC and underplayed spam issues - Twitter executives deceived federal regulators and the company’s own board of directors about “extreme, egregious deficiencies” in its defenses against hackers, as well as its meager efforts to fight spam, according to an explosive whistleblower complaint from its former security chief.The complaint from former head of security Peiter Zatko, a widely admired hacker known as “Mudge,” depicts Twitter as a chaotic and rudderless company beset by infighting, unable to properly protect its 238 million daily users including government agencies, heads of state and other influential public figures.Among the most serious accusations in the complaint, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post, is that Twitter violated the terms of an 11-year-old settlement with the Federal Trade Commission by falsely claiming that it had a solid security plan. Zatko’s complaint alleges he had warned colleagues that half the company’s servers were running out-of-date and vulnerable software and that executives withheld dire facts about the number of breaches and lack of protection for user data, instead presenting directors with rosy charts measuring unimportant changes.The complaint — filed last month with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice, as well as the FTC — says thousands of employees still had wide-ranging and poorly tracked internal access to core company software, a situation that for years had led to embarrassing hacks, including the commandeering of accounts held by such high-profile users as Elon Musk and former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump.Peiter Zatko, known by his hacker name, Mudge, filed a complaint that says Twitter is violating its agreement to maintain solid security practices. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)In addition, the whistleblower document alleges the company prioritized user growth over reducing spam, though unwanted content made the user experience worse. Executives stood to win individual bonuses of as much as $10 million tied to increases in daily users, the complaint asserts, and nothing explicitly for cutting spam.Chief executive Parag Agrawal was “lying” when he tweeted in May that the company was “strongly incentivized to detect and remove as much spam as we possibly can,” the complaint alleges.In an interview with The Post, Zatko described his decision to go public as an extension of his previous work exposing flaws in specific pieces of software and broader systemic failings in cybersecurity. He was hired at Twitter by former CEO Jack Dorsey in late 2020 after a major hack of the company’s systems. “I felt ethically bound. This is not a light step to take,” said Zatko, who was fired by Agrawal in January. He declined to discuss what happened at Twitter, except to stand by the formal complaint. Under SEC whistleblower rules, he is entitled to legal protection against retaliation, as well as potential monetary rewards.
Banks fire back at Warren over OCC crypto guidance - Two bank trade groups asked acting Comptroller Michael Hsu to deny Sen. Elizabeth Warren's request that the banking agency abandon Trump-era guidance on cryptocurrency. Warren, along with Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Sheldon Whitehouse, D-Rhode Island, and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., sent a letter earlier this month to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency asking the agency to rescind a series of interpretive letters issued during the tenure of Trump-era acting comptroller Brian Brooks. In response, the Bank Policy Institute and the American Bankers Association is urging the OCC to reject that request. The bank groups reiterate what's become a central talking point in the industry's attempts to persuade their regulators to allow banks increased access to the crypto space: Regulated banks are better equipped than less-regulated nonbanks to innovate responsibly, with more robust risk management systems in place, as well as supervision and examination processes. "Failure to provide clarity regarding the expectations for all banks engaging in crypto activities is hindering the ability of banks to engage in responsible innovation in this space, thereby requiring consumers to look solely to unregulated or lightly regulated nonbank financial service providers and limited-purpose, uninsured banking institutions for digital asset products and services, instead of banks," the groups said in the letter. "Therefore, we urge you to work with the FDIC and the Federal Reserve to provide clarity regarding the permissibility of, and risk management expectations related thereto, for banks engaged in crypto related activities."The letter from the banking groups echoes rising concerns among industry players and some Republican lawmakers that the Biden administration's approach to cryptocurrency regulation is verging away from the previous "technology neutral" stance. Earlier this week, Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Minn., raised that issue with the Treasury Department over the sanctioning of Tornado Cash.The Bank Policy Institute and the ABA note that the banking industry was largely insulated from the recent crypto market turmoil, and argued that "restricting banks from engaging in permissible banking activities utilizing modern technologies" would not mitigate the risks of unregulated nonbanks or the volatility in crypto markets. The groups also urged the OCC to join other regulators in creating a regulatory framework for cryptocurrency, especially for nonbanks in the industry. "We agree that to the extent possible, a consistent approach among the federal banking agencies regarding the permissibility of, and risk management expectations for, banks engaged in crypto activities would be helpful to institutions and their customers," the two groups said in the letter. "The withdrawal of the Interpretive Letters, however, is not necessary to achieve that goal."
BankThink: Regulating stablecoins is none of the Fed's business | American Banker - Members of Congress and cryptocurrency industry advocates alike yearn for legislative clarity on crypto regulation. All this year, those listening to crypto whisperers in Congress have heard a similar refrain: "If anything happens this year, it will be on stablecoins." With time on the legislative calendar in the 117th Congress quickly running out, House Financial Services Committee leaders and Biden administration officials have reportedly been in extended talks to reach a bipartisan compromise on stablecoin legislation. Specifics on the proposal are light, and the committee has yet to publicly circulate draft text. However, one reported core element of this draft bill — mandatory Federal Reserve banklike supervision for all nonbank dollar stablecoin arrangements — may result in a regulatory regime for industry and consumers that would be worse than no bill at all. For fintech firms, crypto-industry advocates and the variety of nonbanks crucial to America's financial services sector — insurers, asset managers, payments companies and consumer lenders, to name a few — Fed supervision over stablecoin arrangements should be a nonstarter. Like many other nonbank fintech services, dollar stablecoin arrangements are primarily regulated by states, with stablecoin companies typically holding either a state trust company charter or a series of money transmission licenses. Improving state-level regulatory regimes for stablecoins by adding more transparency around stablecoin reserves would be more productive than a one-size-fits-all approach to stablecoin regulation at the Fed, which will likely stifle innovation. For decades, the Fed has tried to extend its regulatory reach into various areas of nonbank finance, without necessary checks and balances or adequate regard for the ultimate costs to American households. In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the Fed — through a Dodd-Frank über-regulator called the Financial Stability Oversight Council — tried to regulate asset managers and insurers. Americans pushed back when they saw the price tag, and courts threw out some of the oversteps. When money market funds were targeted by the Fed, the SEC stood up against its regulatory creep. More recently, the Fed has also spent three years and millions of taxpayer dollars to stand up a so-called FedNow retail payments system that would compete with superior and cheaper private-sector alternatives. This alarming track record alone illustrates why the Fed should not be in the business of regulating stablecoins. But, it should also be noted that adding the Fed as the sole gatekeeper to stablecoin arrangements led by nonbanks would kill innovation in the space. Nonbank retail payments companies — such as Square, PayPal and Toast — are leaders in payment innovation and are not supervised by the Fed. Why should stablecoin arrangements be any different? Proponents of a Fed supervisory regime may point to the Fed's administration of interbank payments systems and its regulation of The Clearing House — a company owned by numerous large banks that administers core large-value payments infrastructure — as reasons for the Fed's greater involvement in payments. They may also note that major credit card banks are regulated by the Fed. But the Fed does not, has never and should not regulate nonbank retail payments companies. In fact, its inspector general recently found that its approach to supervising the only private-sector nonbank payments system that it does directly regulate has many deficiencies.
Hedge funds suffer big outflows in Q2 – data (Reuters) - Investors yanked a net $7.8 billion out of hedge funds in the second quarter, industry data published on Wednesday showed, as volatile markets sent many looking for safer places to keep their cash. Large investors like pension funds, asset managers and family offices pulled more money out of hedge funds than they added, ending an 18-month trend of them investing more, according to Citco, a firm that provides administrative services to the sector. Global hedge funds that bet on equity markets suffered the biggest withdrawals, losing $6.4 billion of the net outflows, Citco's report showed. U.S.-based hedge funds were big losers, followed by those in Asia and in Europe. Financial markets have tumbled in 2022 as investors were rattled by central bank monetary tightening to fight soaring inflation and fears of rapidly slowing economies. Volatility has soared and stocks tanked, handing many hedge funds large losses and forcing investors to sell out of riskier assets. Mark Dowding, the chief investment officer at BlueBay Asset Management which also invests in hedge funds on behalf of clients, said that since 2021 he had seen money shift towards private equity and private debt. "Yet with the economic cycle turning, it won't be surprising that those investors may come to regret shifting money in that direction in quarters to come," he said. Sharp falls in traditional fixed income and equity indices would draw investors back to hedge funds, he told Reuters.
Many banks to pay higher taxes under Inflation Reduction Act - Many banks are set to receive a bigger tax bill next year under the new Inflation Reduction Act, which raises tax rates for some larger U.S. corporations and slightly penalizes share buybacks.The two provisions are estimated to raise some $296 billion in revenues over 10 years for the federal government, helping pay much of the tab for climate change investments that President Biden signed into law earlier this month.Several large and regional banks may take a bigger share of the tax hit because they currently pay below the new 15% minimum corporate tax rate. The new minimum tax applies to any companies with at least $1 billion in average annual earnings over the past three years.The buyback provision, which charges a 1% excise tax on share repurchases, is more wide-ranging and would impact publicly traded banks of all sizes.Two key Democrats who have sought a buyback tax — Senate Banking Committee Chair Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden of Oregon — have pitched it as an incentive for companies to boost their investments and wages rather than making payouts to shareholders.But experts are skeptical that a 1% tax is large enough to achieve that goal. They say that the new tax may make dividends, which are another way to distribute excess capital, slightly more attractive, but it won't meaningfully change the landscape.The tax will likely curtail buybacks "very little," but it is "definitely not going to decrease payments to shareholders overall," said Northwestern University finance professor Phillip Braun.Below is a breakdown of the two provisions' impact on banks.
JPMorgan Chase Failed to Disclose Its Role in Financing a $1.8 Billion Loan to a Ski Resort Deal Tied to an “Independent” Board Member - By Pam and Russ Martens -Last week the Federal Reserve announced that it was banning Ronald D. Paul for life from the banking industry. Paul is the former Chairman and CEO of EagleBank, for extending “credit totaling nearly $100 million to entities that Paul owned or controlled, including certain family trusts, without making appropriate disclosures….” This is just one more case of the Federal Reserve going after the little fish while taking a hands-off approach to the killer whales – the megabanks on Wall Street. For more than a decade, JPMorgan Chase has been asserting in its proxy statement that its entire Board of Directors, other than Jamie Dimon, consists of independent directors. In its most recent proxy statement for 2022, JPMorgan Chase asserts that “The Board, having reviewed the relevant relationships between the Firm and each director, determined, in accordance with the NYSE’s listing standards and the Firm’s independence standards, that each non-management director…had only immaterial relationships with JPMorgan Chase and accordingly is independent.”Got that? “Immaterial relationships.” But JPMorgan Chase has failed to disclose the granular details of a string of financial dealings it has had with companies tied to its Board member James S. Crown, Chairman and CEO of Henry Crown and Company, a private company owned by Crown and his siblings that invest in a sprawling array of businesses.James S. Crown served on the board of Bank One Corporation from 1991 to 2004. In 2004, Bank One merged with JPMorgan Chase. Crown then continued to serve as a Director of JPMorgan Chase for the next 18 years. He remains on the Board today.During the years that Crown served on the Risk Committee at JPMorgan Chase, the bank was engaged in a major lending operation with his company, Henry Crown and Company. The details of that specific loan were not disclosed in the bank’s proxy statement.The loan involved the 2017 purchase of Intrawest Resorts Holdings and Mammoth Resorts by a joint venture formed by an affiliate of KSL Capital Partners and Henry Crown and Company – the largest deal in ski resort history according to the Denver Post. In 2018 the resulting company was named Alterra Mountain Company. The company’s press release indicated that “The destinations that make up Alterra Mountain Company are spread throughout five states and three Canadian provinces: Steamboat and Winter Park in Colorado; Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows, Mammoth Mountain, June Mountain and Big Bear Mountain Resort in California; Stratton in Vermont; Snowshoe in West Virginia; Tremblant in Quebec; Blue Mountain in Ontario; Deer Valley in Utah; and CMH Heli-Skiing and Summer Adventures in British Columbia.”Under the corporate governance statute covering “Director Independence,” 17 CFR § 229.407 Item 407, the Instruction to Item 407(a) reads: “The description of the specific categories or types of transactions, relationships or arrangements required by paragraph (a)(3) of this Item must be provided in such detail as is necessary to fully describe the nature of the transactions, relationships or arrangements.” (Italic emphasis added.)In the case of little EagleBank, the Fed banned its former Chairman and CEO for life from the banking industry over $100 million in undisclosed loans. But in the case of JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the United States, the Fed has left the same Chairman and CEO, Jamie Dimon, in place through an unprecedented string of five criminal felony counts and the failure to report loans totaling $1.8 billion tied to a member of its Board of Directors – a Director that the bank calls “independent.”
Progressive groups urge regulators to reject TD-First Horizon deal -- The Center for Responsible Lending and 11 other progressive groups urged U.S. regulators to reject Toronto-Dominion Bank's proposed acquisition of First Horizon Corp., arguing that the $13.4 billion deal would harm low-income communities and reduce small- business lending.In a letter to the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the groups also cited the bank's overdraft-fee practices and made the case that large bank consolidation adds to systemic risk."Unfettered bank mergers contributed to the rise in megabanks and systemic fragility that led to the 2008 financial crisis, which imposed widespread and long-lasting economic costs on everyone, but especially lower-income people and people of color," the groups wrote Signatories of the letter, which was sent Tuesday, include the Woodstock Institute, Demos, the California Reinvestment Coalition and the Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund, in addition to the Center for Responsible Lending.In a written statement Wednesday, TD responded to the groups' criticisms by pointing to various changes it has made. Those actions include the launch of a program meant to increase homeownership opportunities in communities of color, the introduction of an overdraft-free bank account, plans to open branches in underserved areas and the establishment of a fund to support minority-owned small businesses in the United States."TD is committed to meeting the needs of the diverse communities that we proudly serve," the bank said in its statement.Community groups have typically conditioned their support for large bank mergers on agreements to make specified investments in local communities. And various community groups took that approach last week during a public hearing on the TD-First Horizon deal, asking regulators to hold off approving the merger unless the banks agree to invest more in communities.But the TD-First Horizon deal faces more outright opposition than most recent large bank mergers. If approved, the acquisition would make TD the sixth-largest bank in the United States.In June, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., urged the OCC to reject the deal after a Capitol Forum report found that TD used similar tactics as Wells Fargo to incentivize employees to open fake customer accounts. TD has called the report's findings "unfounded."Federal bank regulators have not formally rejected a bank merger in more than 15 years, and the number of U.S. banks has dropped over the last four decades from around 18,000 to less than 5,000 today, according to the progressive groups' letter.
Consumer groups urge FDIC to reject Ford's ILC application - Four consumer groups are asking the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to deny Ford Motor Co.'s industrial loan charter application. The National Community Reinvestment Coalition, the National Consumer Law Center, Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund and the Center for Responsible Lending said in a letter to the FDIC that allowing Ford to own a bank would open the door for other companies outside of the financial system to mix commerce and banking.The groups also argued that Ford's application raises privacy concerns and raised objections about the automaker's community reinvestment plans."Granting deposit insurance to this applicant creates a dangerous mix of commerce and banking, would permit a charter to an entity that has not made a community reinvestment commitment that is commensurate with its size and would create the grounds for a Big Tech data surveillance operation to break the barriers meant to protect consumer privacy," the groups wrote in the letter. The application would create Ford Credit Bank, which would offer auto loans, as a unit of Ford Motor Credit Co. It's the first big ILC application submitted during the Biden administration. ILCs owned by automakers aren't unprecedented — Toyota and BMW already operate industrial banks — but the consumer groups argued that such institutions pose risks."Automobile manufacturers rely on captive financing divisions to support retail sales," the groups wrote in the letter. "While the benefit of lower-cost deposits as a substitute for commercial debt and equity financing benefits manufacturers, it increases the interdependence between financing and manufacturing divisions, leading to correlated risks that undermine safety and soundness." Ford's application relies heavily on the pitch that the company will use Ford Credit to finance electric vehicles, a priority of the Biden administration.The consumer groups argued in their letter that Ford's ability to invest in electric vehicles isn't dependent on owning an industrial bank. They noted that a wide range of tax credit and other funding opportunities for customers and companies are available under President Biden.
Banks faulted for 'atrocious' customer service in CFPB inquiry -Banks are getting thrashed in angry public comments to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau about customer service with complaints about long wait times, too few branches and rampant fraud. The CFPB received roughly 100 comments to a request for information in June that is laying bare some of the holes in banks' customer service offerings. Commenters generally blamed poor customer service on bank consolidation, an overreliance on technology and job cuts. Bank customers, advocates and legal aid attorneys described obstacles faced by protected classes including the disabled, low-income consumers, non-English speakers, seniors and veterans. The most common complaints involved disputes over fraud, scams and unauthorized transactions in which a bank was faulted for failing — or refusing, as some consumers alleged — to help their own customers figure out what happened to their money. "Investigations of disputed charges are often ignored for months at a time, and sometimes are never responded to except by form letters which contain no details," Mary McCune, a senior staff attorney at Legal Services NYC, said in a comment letter posted in the Federal Register. Even bankers themselves complained that fraud plays a huge role in criticism of banks' customer service. Steven Gonzalo, president and CEO of the $1.1 billion-asset American Commercial Bank & Trust in Ottawa, Illinois, said bank fraud has jumped dramatically but that some banks and credit unions either are not investigating or refuse to pursue criminals. "We are often frustrated in our attempts to recover fraud losses on behalf of our customers because of the lack of cooperation or even basic communication from the larger banks and credit unions," Gonzalo wrote. "It is clear to us that there are a small number of banks and credit unions through which the vast majority of fraud occurs. We are frequently told not to expect any response to our official communication of fraud for more than 180 days or receive no response at all."
Texas bans 10 banks, 348 investment funds over fossil fuel policies --Texas is banning 10 large banks and 348 investment funds for allegedly boycotting fossil fuel-based energy companies critical to the state's economy, a move critics said could cost taxpayers in the Lone Star State hundreds of millions annually in higher interest costs. The state's blacklist released Aug. 24 follows West Virginia's decision in July to ban five banks for the same reason. Such actions come as some Republican-led states are cracking down on corporate social and environmental policies the states perceive to be politically driven. Banks that Texas put on notice earlier this year went to great lengths to show that they are, in fact, investing tens of millions in the fossil fuel industry, but some failed to convince the state. Texas and West Virginia have now banned BlackRock Inc., the world's largest asset manager, from doing business with the state. Texas' exclusion list of so-called Annex I companies also includes BNP Paribas SA, Credit Suisse AG, Danske Bank A/S, Jupiter Fund Management PLC, Nordea Bank Abp, Schroders PLC, Svenska Handelsbanken AB (publ), Swedbank AB (publ) and UBS Group AG. The 348 investment funds belong to banks in the U.S. and Europe. Large pension funds such as the Teacher Retirement System of Texas will now be required to divest from companies and funds on the list, as will a multibillion-dollar public school fund. "A vibrant Texas oil and gas industry is a stabilizing force in today's economic and geopolitical environment," Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar said in a statement. "My greatest concern is the false narrative that has been created by the environmental crusaders in Washington, D.C., and Wall Street that our economy can completely transition away from fossil fuels, when, in fact, they will be part of our everyday life into the foreseeable future." The Texas crackdown came on the heels of Florida's Aug. 23 decision to bar the state's $186 billion pension fund from considering environmental, social or governance factors in investment decisions. Other Republican-led states are expected to follow suit.
Go Woke, Get The Hell Out: Texas Bans Wall Street Giants Blackrock, Credit Suisse And Others Over Energy Boycott - BlackRock, BNP Paribas, and Credit Suisse are among the list of firms that Texas has just issued that will now be banned from working with the state due to their hostility to the energy industry. After almost a year of suspense that cost banks business as Texas municipal-bond issuers avoided firms whose status was unclear amid the probe, Bloomberg reports that Glenn Hegar, the Republican state comptroller, on Wednesday named the firms he will prohibit from entering into most contracts with the state and its local entities after his office found they “boycott” the fossil fuel sector. More than 150 firms were sent detailed inquiries, requesting information on whether they were shunning the oil and gas industry in favor of sustainable investing and financing goals.As a reminder, the survey was triggered by a GOP-backed state law that took effect on Sept. 1, 2021, and which limits Texas governments from entering into certain contracts with firms that have curbed ties with carbon-emitting energy companies. Many firms argued that they were simply reacting to customer demand on ESG strategies, but it appears the nation's to producer of crude and natural gas saw straight through the ESG scam.
Zombie homes increase for a second quarter as foreclosures rise -The number of zombie properties — homes abandoned by their owners while in pre-foreclosure status — is inching higher, with the total likely to increase, even as overall vacancies should drop.A total of 7,707 residential properties facing foreclosure are sitting vacant in the third quarter, increasing by 1.8% from 7,569 three months earlier and 2.2% from 7,538 year over year, according to a report from real estate data provider Attom. It is the second consecutive quarterly increase in zombie numbers. The trend runs counter to vacancy rates relative to all U.S. properties, which fell to just under 1.3 million, equaling 1.28%, or one in 78 homes. The total is down from 1.31% during the second quarter and 1.35% a year ago."We see two trends heading in opposite directions — the number of vacant properties continues to decline and the number of zombie properties continues to increase, although neither trend appears to be particularly worrisome," said Rick Sharga, executive vice president of market intelligence at Attom, in a press release.The current total of zombie properties represents one in every 12,947 homes, up from one in 13,424 three months ago. However, as the number of homeowners entering the foreclosure process also increased by a larger margin, zombies made up a smaller portion — 2.8% — of pre-foreclosure volume compared to earlier reporting periods. In the second quarter, they accounted for 2.9% and one year ago, represented a 3.5% share."The number of zombie properties should continue to increase slowly as foreclosure activity climbs back from historically low levels due to government intervention," Sharga said.
Freddie Mac: Mortgage Serious Delinquency Rate decreased in July -Freddie Mac reported that the Single-Family serious delinquency rate in July was 0.73%, down from 0.76% June. Freddie's rate is down year-over-year from 1.74% in July 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 they are employed. The serious delinquency rate was at 0.60% just prior to the pandemic - almost back.
Black Knight: Mortgage Delinquency Rate increased in July - From Black Knight: lack Knight’s First Look: Foreclosure Starts Pull Back in July, Holding Well Below Pre-Pandemic Levels, While Early-Stage Delinquencies Edge Slightly Higher
• The national delinquency rate edged up to 2.89% in July – driven by a 4% increase in early-stage delinquencies – but remains just 14 basis points higher than the record low set in May of this year
• Serious delinquencies – loans 90 or more days past due, but not yet in active foreclosure – pulled back in July after worsening for the first time in 22 months in June
• The number of seriously delinquent loans curing to current has dropped steadily over recent months, from 104K in March to 58K in July, indicating that the easiest workouts have likely been completed
• Foreclosure starts retreated 25% from June for a total of 17.7K starts – some 55% below pre-pandemic levels for the month of July – equating to just 3% of 90+ day past-due loans
• Though still up from record lows that came from widespread moratoriums and forbearance protections last year, the number of loans in active foreclosure declined slightly by 6K in July
• Prepayment activity dropped by another 18% in July and is now down by 67% from the same time last year as rising rates put downward pressure on both purchase and refinance lending
According to Black Knight's First Look report, the percent of loans delinquent increased 1.9% in July compared to June and decreased 30% year-over-year.
Black Knight reported the U.S. mortgage delinquency rate (loans 30 or more days past due, but not in foreclosure) was 2.89% in July, up from 2.84% in June. The percent of loans in the foreclosure process decreased in July to 0.52%, from 0.53% in June. The number of delinquent properties, but not in foreclosure, is down 663,000 properties year-over-year, and the number of properties in the foreclosure process is up 44,000 properties year-over-year.
Serious delinquencies resume their decline, but at a more gradual pace -Long-term delinquencies re-established a downward trend in July, but they aren't curing as quickly as they were, according to Black Knight's latest report.Loans that were 90 days late but not in active foreclosure during July decreased by 5,000 from June and 853,000 a year earlier to 594,000. However, at 58,000, cures from that status — defined as any circumstance in which delinquent loans were recategorized as current — have been almost halved since March. Also, the overall national delinquency rate did rise slightly to 2.89% from 2.84% in June.Despite this increase in the total delinquency rate and diminished cures for serious arrears, multiple indicators of foreclosure activity were lower on a consecutive-month basis. At 17,700, starts were down 25% from the previous month, and loans in pre-sale foreclosure inventory totaled 184,000 during July, marking a 6,000 decline from June. Although the pre-sale foreclosure inventory rate is up 44,000 from a year earlier, it's 55% below pre-pandemic levels.These statistics add to signs that distressed loan specialists are facing a need to expend more of their energies on a growing number of borrowers who may be unable to cure as their forbearance plans end."People that rolled off of forbearance, they tried to get permanent loan mods. Many couldn't meet the trial payments and are falling off. Now the servicers are looking at what is that all going to mean?" Jane Mason, founder and CEO of servicing technology vendor Clarifire, said in an interview.While overall loan performance remains relatively healthy, with the overall delinquency rate just 14 basis points above its record low, it does seem to be getting tougher to bring mortgages that have been in arrears current, Black Knight researchers said. (While newstudent loan relief the Biden administration announced Wednesday could improve some mortgage-borrowers' finances, at deadline it looked unlikely to immediately improve the overall performance outlook for home loans.) "We've now seen serious [mortgage] delinquencies improve in 22 of the past 23 months. That said, the rate of improvement has slowed in recent months suggesting that the easiest workouts have been completed, with more difficult wood to chop ahead," said Andy Walden, vice president of enterprise research and strategy at Black Knight, in an email.
Why Fannie Mae's mortgage outlook has dimmed despite falling rates - released Monday nevertheless got a little more pessimistic overall. Fannie Mae, a government-sponsored enterprise that backs a sizable number of home loans in the United States, cut its total origination estimate for the year to $2.47 trillion from $2.53 trillion, reflecting lower projections for home-purchases that eclipsed higher estimates for refinancing. That means originators may be contending with less volume at the same time a slight rise in refinancing potentially introduces new prepayment risk for servicers. Mortgage companies that service loan payments typically make less money when loans in their portfolios refinance."Housing remains clearly on the downtrend," Fannie Mae Chief Economist Doug Duncan said in a press release.That's largely because although the average 30-year rate has dropped more than half a percent from its recent peak this year, the move only partly reverses a more than two percent-point increase since a year ago, Fannie noted.The GSE estimates 84% of borrowers have rates at least 1% below current market rates."A strong 'lock-in' effect for consumers remains: Many existing homeowners are likely reluctant to move due to having a current mortgage with a rate well below current market rates," Fannie said.Refi activity is low compared to the extraordinary boom period when borrowers who could qualify rushed to get record-low rates available during the pandemic, according to Fannie. More specifically, refinancing is down 80% compared to its pandemic-high in the third quarter of 2020, according to Fannie Mae's index.Meanwhile, rate-lock activity in the purchase market has declined below pre-pandemic levels due to persistent affordability concerns.Fannie's forecast typically falls in the mid-range of those the industry closely follows, the other two coming from the Mortgage Bankers Association and Freddie Mac. Neither of the other two had updated their forecasts at the time of this writing. The MBA has been more optimistic about purchase volume to date than Freddie and Fannie. The latter's current forecast calls for $1.7 trillion in purchase lending this year, down from its previous estimate of nearly $1.78 trillion.
Black Knight: Median House Prices Declined in July; First Decline in 32 Months -- Today, in the Calculated Risk Real Estate Newsletter: Black Knight: Median House Prices Declined in July; First Decline in 32 Months - A brief excerpt: Important caveats: In normal times, median house prices flatten or decline seasonally in the 2nd half of the year. So, a decline in July isn’t unusual.Also, the median price is distorted by the mix of homes sold. The repeat sales indexes - like Case-Shiller and FHFA - are better measures of house price movements, but median prices can be a leading indicator of price changes.... From Andy Walden at Black Knight: Something Had to Give: Home Prices Down for First Time In 32 MonthsAnnual home price growth still clocked in at 14.3% – more than three times the long-run average – but most of that appreciation occurred in the last months of 2021 and earlier this year. Such strong annual growth rates can hide underlying weakness. Month-over-month data gives us a much clearer picture of just how much – and how quickly – the housing market has shifted.The median home price fell by 0.77% in July, the largest single-month drop since January 2011. On a seasonally adjusted basis, July’s dip ranked among the 10 largest monthly declines on record, dating back more than 30 years. There is much more in the article.
What a housing recession means for homeowners, buyers, sellers -Just months ago, the housing market remained in overdrive: surging home prices, historically low interest rates and unrelenting demand. However, data now suggests to some experts that the market is in a "housing recession."For example, sales of existing homes in July fell by 5.9% from June, marking the sixth straight month of a decline — and a drop of more than 20% from a year earlier. What's more, there have been layoffs and slower job growth in the industry, homebuilder sentiment has turned negative and buyers are canceling contracts in the face of interest rates that have jumped to 5.72% from below 3.3% heading into 2022."We're witnessing a housing recession in terms of declining home sales and home building," Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, said in a recent report.At this point, however, it's a different story for homeowners, buyers and sellers."It's not a recession in home prices," Yun added. "Inventory remains tight and prices continue to rise nationally with nearly 40% of homes still commanding the full list price."But there are signs the market is starting to shift in buyers' favor."Prices are still rising in nearly all markets across the country … and inventory is improving slightly, but not greatly so," Yun told CNBC."Homeowners are in a very comfortable position financially, in terms of their housing wealth," Yun said. He also recently said that homeowners are "absolutely not" in a recession.Sales of existing homes were down in July by 20.2% to 4.8 million properties from 6 million a year earlier, according to NAR. However, the median price last month was $403,800, up 10.8% from July 2021.With interest rates roughly double where they were six months ago, buyers have had more trouble qualifying for loans or affording higher rates. "I am seeing homebuyers cancel a contract if their payment is just a little bit higher than what they expected — I'm talking about $100," said Al Bingham, a mortgage loan officer with Momentum Loans in Sandy, Utah. "Homebuyers are very cautious right now."For buyers, the slowdown in demand is generally good news, experts say."Buyers should expect a little better price negotiation possibility," Yun said. "Last year, they were at the mercy of whatever sellers were asking … and there were multiple offers. Buyers may not face that now."
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 August 19, 2022.... The Refinance Index decreased 3 percent from the previous week and was 83 percent lower than the same week one year ago. The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index decreased 1 percent from one week earlier. The unadjusted Purchase Index decreased 2 percent compared with the previous week and was 21 percent lower than the same week one year ago.“Mortgage applications continued to remain at a 22-year low, held down by significantly reduced refinancing demand and weak home purchase activity. Last week’s purchase results varied, with conventional applications declining 2 percent and government applications increasing 4 percent, which is potentially a sign of more first-time homebuyer activity. The average purchase loan size continued to trend lower, as purchase activity at the high end of the market is weakening,” “Mortgage rates increased for all loan types last week, with the benchmark 30-year fixed rate jumping 20 basis points to 5.65 percent – the highest in nearly a month. The spread between conforming fixed-rate loans and ARM loans narrowed to 84 basis points from over 100 basis points the prior week. This movement made fixed rate loans relatively more attractive than ARMs, thereby reducing the ARM share further from highs seen earlier this year.”...The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances ($647,200 or less) increased to 5.65 percent from 5.45 percent, with points increasing to 0.68 from 0.57 (including the origination fee) for 80 percent loan-to-value ratio (LTV) loans.The first graph shows the refinance index since 1990.
Housing Inventory August 29th Update: Growth has Slowed --Inventory is still increasing, but the inventory build has slowed over the last month. Still, inventory is increasing faster than in 2019 at this time of year. Here are the same week inventory changes for the last four years: Inventory bottomed seasonally at the beginning of March 2022 and is now up 129% since then. More than double! Altos reports inventory is up 27.8% year-over-year and is now 26.1% above the peak last year. This inventory graph is courtesy of Altos Research. As of August 19th, inventory was at 551 thousand (7-day average), compared to 550 thousand the prior week. Inventory was up 0.2% from the previous week. nventory is still historically low. Compared to the same week in 2021, inventory is up 27.8% from 432 thousand, however compared to the same week in 2020 inventory is down 7.1% from 594 thousand. Compared to 3 years ago, inventory is down 42.6% from 960 thousand. Here are the inventory milestones I’m watching for with the Altos data:
1. The seasonal bottom (happened on March 4th for Altos) ✅
2. Inventory up year-over-year (happened on May 13th for Altos) ✅
3. Inventory up compared to two years ago (currently down 7.1% according to Altos)
4. Inventory up compared to 2019 (currently down 42.6%).
NAR: Pending Home Sales Decreased 1.0% in July - From the NAR: Pending Home Sales Slipped 1.0% in July -Pending home sales declined for the second consecutive month in July, and for the eighth time in the last nine months, according to the National Association of REALTORS®. Three out of four major regions registered month-over-month decreases, though the West notched a minor gain. Year-over-year, all four regions saw double-digit percentage slides, the largest of which occurred in the West.The Pending Home Sales Index (PHSI), a forward-looking indicator of home sales based on contract signings, slid 1.0% to 89.8 in July. Year-over-year, pending transactions sank 19.9%. An index of 100 is equal to the level of contract activity in 2001. "In terms of the current housing cycle, we may be at or close to the bottom in contract signings," said NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun. "This month's very modest decline reflects the recent retreat in mortgage rates. Inventories are growing for homes in the upper price ranges, but limited supply at lower price points is hindering transaction activity."...The Northeast PHSI dipped 1.9% from last month to 79.3, down 15.4% from July 2021. The Midwest index retracted 2.7% to 91.2 in July, a 13.4% decline from a year ago.The South PHSI decreased 1.1% to 106.6 in July, a pullback of 20.0% from the previous year. The West index increased 2.2% in July to 70.0, down 30.1% from July 2021. This was less of a decline than expected for this index. Note: Contract signings usually lead sales by about 45 to 60 days, so this would usually be for closed sales in August and September.
New Home Sales Decrease Sharply to 511,000 Annual Rate in July - The Census Bureau reports New Home Sales in July were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR) of 511 thousand.The previous three months were revised down slightly, combined. Sales of new single‐family houses in July 2022 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 511,000, according to estimates released jointly today by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. This is 12.6 percent below the revised June rate of 585,000 and is 29.6 percent below the July 2021 estimate of 726,000. The first graph shows New Home Sales vs. recessions since 1963. The dashed line is the current sales rate. New home sales are now well below pre-pandemic levels. The second graph shows New Home Months of Supply. The months of supply increased in July to 10.9 months from 9.2 months in June.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 July was 464,000. This represents a supply of 10.9 months at the current sales rate."The last graph shows sales NSA (monthly sales, not seasonally adjusted annual rate).In July 2022 (red column), 42 thousand new homes were sold (NSA). Last year, 62 thousand homes were sold in July.The all-time high for July was 117 thousand in 2005, and the all-time low for July was 26 thousand in 2010.This was well below expectations, and sales in the three previous months were revised down slightly, combined.
Sales of New Houses Collapse (in the West by 50%!) Inventories & Supply Spike to High Heaven, Worst since Peak of Housing Bust 1 --Wolf Richter - The plunge in home sales is just stunning. Sales of new single-family houses collapsed by 12.6% in July from the already beaten-down levels in June, and by nearly 30% from July last year, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 511,000 houses, the lowest since January 2016, and well below the lockdown lows, according to data from the Census Bureau today.New house sales plunged in every region compared to July last year. Note the West, oh dear: A similar plunge, but now quite as bad, occurred in sales of previously owned homes, which plunged by 20% across the US in July compared to a year ago.In California, sales of existing homes collapsed by 31% year-over-year; and in the previously hottest market, San Diego, by 41%!Sales obviously would be a lot higher if prices were a lot lower, and more people could actually buy at these mortgage rates – today, the average 30-year fixed rate is at 5.7% again, according to Mortgage News Daily – but it takes a sustained plunge in volume to hammer the message into increasingly motivated sellers what they need to do if they want to sell: They have to go where the buyers are, and the buyers are a lot lower. Homebuilders know this because they have been lamenting for months the plunge in traffic of prospective buyers, according to the survey of homebuilders, conducted by the National Association of Home Builders: Suddenly no “housing shortage”: Inventories and supply spike to high heaven. Inventory for sale in all stages of construction jumped to 464,000 houses, up by 28%, from July last year, and the highest since March 2008: Supply of unsold new houses spiked to nearly 11 months of sales, on this surge in inventory and the collapse in sales. This was the highest since the worst months of Housing Bust 1 in late 2008 and early 2009: By region, unsold inventory jumped in three of the four regions, in terms of the percent increase year-over-year: Prices must come down at these mortgage rates, and they’re starting to. The median price of new single-family houses that were sold in July rose to $439,000, not quite undoing the plunge in June. This was down by $20,000 from the peak in April, whittling down the year-over-year gain to 8.2%, the smallest gain since November 2020. In a moment, we’ll look at the three-month moving average, which gives a clearer picture: The three-month moving average, which irons out some of the month-to-month ups-and-downs of the median price, fell for the second month in a row, the first such declines since the lockdown months.
New Home Sales Decrease Sharply, Record Months of Unsold Inventory Under Construction --Today, in the Calculated Risk Real Estate Newsletter: 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. There are 1.06 months of completed supply (red line). This is about two-thirds of the normal level. The inventory of new homes under construction is at 7.33 months (blue line) - a new record and well above the normal level. This elevated level of homes under construction is due to supply chain constraints. And a record 107 thousand homes have not been started - about 2.51 months of supply (grey line) - more than double the normal level. Homebuilders are probably waiting to start some homes until they have a firmer grasp on prices and demand. ... This suggests we will see a sharp increase in completed inventory over the next several months - and that will put pressure on new home prices.
July new home sales signal a recession is near - Unless today’s new home sales data for July is revised away, it is very significant. First of all, June’s sales data was indeed revised slightly lower from 590,000 to 585,000. More significantly, the median price of a new home, originally reported at +7.2% YoY, was revised higher to +10.7%. In July, new home sales declined to 511,000 at an annualized pace. That is the lowest since January 2016. It is also 49.3% off its peak of 1.036 million in August 2020. Here is the long term view since the start of the data in the 1960s: This is simply a huge decline. Typically a decline of only 33% from peak has been enough to indicate the imminent onset of a recession. The only bigger decline was the housing bust from 2005-07. The YoY data tells the same story. The only similar YoY% declines that did not signal recessions were in 1966 and 2010: I’ve included the far less noisy single family permits (red) in the above graph as well. Permits tend to lag by a month or two, and are currently only down -11.3%. Again, unless today’s data is revised away, it is likely permits will be down over -20% YoY within several months, which also has almost always signaled an oncoming recession. Finally, the median price of a new home rose on a monthly basis to $439,400, below April’s peak of $458,200: But because price data is not seasonally adjusted, the best way to look at it is YoY. My rule of thumb is that, when YoY growth is less than half of the peak in the past 12 months, the measure (if we could seasonally adjust it) has probably peaked. YoY prices in July increased 8.2%, only about 1/3rd of the 24.2% YoY increase last August: This tells us the prices most likely peaked in May, the last time the YoY% increase was more than half of the peak. Even with the upward revision to June, averaging the last 2 or 3 months of price data yields a result more than 50% below the peak average 2 or 3 months of price data from last summer. In summary: sales have continued to fall, prices have now likely turned down, and inventory can be expected to continue to increase. Further, the decline in sales is so severe that, unless very heavily revised upward, it almost certainly means a recession is near.
Update: Housing Completions will Increase Sharply in Late 2022 and Early 2023 -Today, in the Calculated Risk Real Estate Newsletter: Update: Housing Completions will Increase Sharply in Late 2022 and Early 2023.A brief excerpt: Even as housing starts slow, there will be a sharp increase in new supply in 2022 (and into 2023) including both single family homes and apartments. This graph shows total housing completions and placements since 1968 with an estimate for 2022. Note that the net additional to the housing stock is less because of demolitions and destruction of older housing units. My current estimate is total completions (single family, multi-family, manufactured homes) will increase about 10% in 2022 to almost 1.6 million. If correct, this would be the same level of completions as in 2007.
AIA: Architecture Billings Index "slows but remains healthy" in July - Note: This index is a leading indicator primarily for new Commercial Real Estate (CRE) investment.
From the AIA: Architecture Billings Index slows but remains healthy - For the eighteenth consecutive month architecture firms reported increasing demand for design services in July, according to a new report today from The American Institute of Architects (AIA).The AIA Architecture Billings Index (ABI) score for July was 51.0. While this score is down from June’s score of 53.2, it still indicates stable business conditions for architecture firms (any score above 50 indicates an increase in billings from the prior month). Also in July, both the new project inquiries and design contracts indexes moderated from June but remained strong with scores of 56.1 and 52.9 respectively.“Despite architecture services employment recently surpassing pre-pandemic levels, the ABI score this month reflects the slowest growth since January, and marks the fourth straight month with a lower score than the previous month, indicating a slowing trajectory in billings activity,” said AIA Chief Economist, Kermit Baker, Hon. AIA, PhD. “With a variety of economic storm clouds continuing to gather, we are likely looking at a period of slower growth going forward.”...
• Regional averages: South (53.6); Midwest (52.2); West (51.7); Northeast (48.4)
• Sector index breakdown: multi-family residential (52.8); commercial/industrial (52.2); mixed practice (52.1); institutional (49.6) This graph shows the Architecture Billings Index since 1996. The index was at 51.0 in July, down from 53.2 in June. Anything above 50 indicates expansion in demand for architects' services. Note: This includes commercial and industrial facilities like hotels and office buildings, multi-family residential, as well as schools, hospitals and other institutions.
This index has been positive for 18 consecutive months. This index usually leads CRE investment by 9 to 12 months, so this index suggests a pickup in CRE investment in 2022 and into 2023.
Personal Income increased 0.2% in July; Spending increased 0.1% -The BEA released the Personal Income and Outlays report for July: Personal income increased $47.0 billion (0.2 percent) in July, according to estimates released today by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Disposable personal income (DPI) increased $37.6 billion (0.2 percent) and personal consumption expenditures (PCE) increased $23.7 billion (0.1 percent).The PCE price index decreased 0.1 percent. Excluding food and energy, the PCE price index increased 0.1 percent. Real DPI increased 0.3 percent in July and real PCE increased 0.2 percent; goods increased 0.2 percent and services increased 0.2 percent. The July PCE price index increased 6.3 percent year-over-year (YoY), down from 6.8 percent YoY in June. The PCE price index, excluding food and energy, increased 4.6 percent YoY, down from 4.8% in June.The following graph shows real Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) through July 2022 (2012 dollars). Note that the y-axis doesn't start at zero to better show the change. The dashed red lines are the quarterly levels for real PCE.Personal income and PCE were below expectations. Inflation was lower than expected.
Real Disposable Income Per Capita Inches Up in July - With the release of this morning's report on July'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 0.17% month-over-month change in disposable income comes to 0.24% when we adjust for inflation. This is an increase from last month's 0.68% nominal and -0.27% real change. The year-over-year metrics are 2.0% nominal and -4.0% 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 119% since then. But the real purchasing power of those dollars is up 37.3%.
Consumer Income & Spending Still Out-Hobble Inflation, Despite Everything - by Wolf Richter -Spending on gasoline plunges due to plunge in price. “Real” spending on durable goods, amazingly, jumps for 2nd month. Services spending rises but stuck below pre-pandemic trend.Something interesting happened in July to inflation-adjusted consumer income and spending. Remember when President Biden said that inflation was “zero percent” when the Consumer Price Index data came out in mid-August? Obviously, neither inflation nor CPI were 0%. CPI jumped by 8.5% in July 2022, compared to July 2021, which is how we generally discuss inflation. But the plunge in gasoline prices caused CPI to not change in July from June, so 0% change month-to-month, but 8.5% change year-over-year. So today, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported consumer income and spending in July. Adjusted for inflation (= “real”) by the PCE inflation measure, in July from June, the change in the “seasonally adjusted annual rates” were:
- Real personal income from all sources: +0.3%
- Real personal income without government transfer payments: +0.4%
- Real personal spending: +0.2%
Total consumer spending without adjustment for inflation increased by $23.7 billion in July from June (increase in the seasonally adjusted annual rate of spending). Spending fell in three categories, notably on gasoline due to the plunge in gasoline prices, and rose in the remaining categories: Spending fell in these three categories, in July from June, without inflation adjustment:
- Gasoline: -$55.9 billion, as the price of gasoline has plunged
- Financial services and insurance: -$20.1 billion
- Transportation services: -$0.5 billion as airfares come down a little.
Spending rose in the remaining categories in July from June, without inflation adjustment:
- Housing and utilities: +$23.4 billion
- Other services: +$13.7% billion
- Other nondurable goods: +$11.0 billion
- Final expenditures of NPISH (Non-Profit Institutions Serving Households): +$10.8 billion
- Recreational goods and vehicles: +$9.7 billion
- Motor vehicles and parts: +$8.4 billion
- Furnishings and durable household equipment: +$7.3 billion
- Clothing and footwear: +$4.3 billion
- Food and beverages: +$3.6 billion
- Healthcare: +$2.8 billion
- Other durable goods: +$2.0 billion
- Food services and accommodations: +$1.7 billion
- Recreation services: +$1.4 billion.
The BEA adjusts consumer income and spending based on its PCE inflation measure, not the CPI inflation measure. Its July PCE price index dipped by 0.1% in July from June, on a 4.8% plunge in energy prices, and was up 6.3% year-over-year. In other words, inflation adjustments had little impact overall on income and spending growth in July from June, though they did impact year-over-year growth. “Real” personal income from all sources rose 0.3% in July from June, undoing the dip in the prior month, and is flat with April (purple in the chart below). This includes income from wages and salaries, dividends, interest, rentals, farms, businesses, and government transfer payments such as stimulus, Social Security, unemployment, welfare, etc., but does not include capital gains/losses. Compared to July 2021, real income fell 1.6%; compared to July 2020, it fell 2.2%; compared to July 2019, it was up 5.9%. It dipped below pre-pandemic trend at the beginning of this year and has remained there.
Used Vehicle Wholesale Prices Decreased 3.6% in First Half of August; Goldman Sees Sharp Decline in User Car PCE Inflation First, from Goldman Sachs economists: One wildcard for the core goods outlook is used car prices—particularly after the 3.6% drop in Manheim used car auction prices in the first half of August (mom sa). Coupled with the July rebound in auto production to late 2020 levels, we now expect used car PCE inflation to fall from +4% in June to -11% year-on-year in December. From Manheim Consulting: Wholesale Used-Vehicle Prices Decline in First Half of August Wholesale used-vehicle prices (on a mix-, mileage-, and seasonally adjusted basis) declined 3.6% from July in the first 15 days of August. The Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index fell to 211.6, which was up 8.8% from August 2021. The non-adjusted price change in the first half of August was a decline of 2.0% compared to July, leaving the unadjusted average price up 6.6% year over year.This index from Manheim Consulting is based on all completed sales transactions at Manheim’s U.S. auctions.The Manheim index suggests used car prices decreased in the first half of August and are up 8.8% year-over-year (YoY) compared to 12.5% YoY in July.The YoY change is getting smaller. This index was up 45% YoY in January - and falling used car prices will slow PCE inflation.
As Used-Car Prices Have Hit Wall amid Signs of Buyers’ Strike, Used EV Prices Spike amid Huge Demand and Little Supply by Wolf Richter -Used vehicle retail prices skyrocketed from August 2020 through December 2021. The “average listing price,” tracked by Cox Automotive, was up by a mind-blowing 41% over that 17-month period. The Consumer Price Index for used vehicles, which is seasonally adjusted, maxed out a month later, in January 2022, due to seasonal adjustments, up by 53% over the 18-month period.But since the beginning of this year, the average listing price and the CPI for used vehicles have meandered up and down from month to month, with a downward bias. By July, the average listing price was down just a hair from the December peak (-0.3%). And the CPI for used vehicles was down by 1.5% from the January peak:So the mind-boggling used-vehicle price spike ended in January. But the influx of used vehicle from rental fleets into the used vehicle market – usually 2-3 million vehicles per year – continues to be constrained as rental fleets are having trouble getting new vehicles in sufficient quantity due to the ongoing production shortfalls by automakers. And they’re hanging on to their vehicles longer. Inventory in used vehicles is adequate for the lower sales levels. And sales are down because buyers are balking at the still crazy-high prices, but dealers don’t want to cut their prices to boost sales because they’re facing limited supply. So the market is hobbling along with still sky-high prices, lower sales, frustrated potential buyers, and tight inventories.But within the market, there’s a big divergence.A study by used-vehicle search engine iSeeCars.com found that prices of used vehicles with internal combustion engines (ICE), which make up the vast majority of the used vehicle market, trended flat to lower this year roughly in line with the “average listing price” and the CPI for used vehicles.But prices of used EVs – battery EVs only, not hybrids – after following the trajectory of ICE vehicles earlier in the year, surged again since March amid strong demand from buyers, and very little supply since EVs are still just a minuscule portion of the used vehicle market, with now supply from rental companies as they’re just now starting to incorporate them into their fleets.For this study, iSeeCars.com analyzed the listings of 13.8 million one-to-five-year-old used vehicles between January and July of 2021 and 2022, by model, and calculated the average listing price for each model and compared it to the average listing price of the same model a year earlier. It excluded low-volume models and models that went out of production by the 2022 model year.This chart, based on data from iSeeCars.com, shows how the year-over-year price spike of used ICE vehicles was whittled down over the seven months this year, in line with the overall data, to +10% in July; and how the year-over-year price spike of EVs followed the same trend until March, but then headed higher again and in July were up 54% year-over-year.
DOT: Vehicle Miles Driven Decreased year-over-year in June --This is something to watch with higher gasoline prices. The Department of Transportation (DOT) reported: Travel on all roads and streets changed by -1.7% (-4.8 billion vehicle miles) for June 2022 as compared with June 2021. Travel for the month is estimated to be 282.1 billion vehicle miles. The seasonally adjusted vehicle miles traveled for June 2022 is 268.0 billion miles, a -1.80% ( -4.8 billion vehicle miles) change over June 2021. It also represents a -1.0% change (-2.7 billion vehicle miles) compared with May 2022. Cumulative Travel for 2022 changed by +2.8% (+43.2 billion vehicle miles). The cumulative estimate for the year is 1,587.1 billion vehicle miles of travel. This graph shows the monthly total vehicle miles driven, seasonally adjusted. Miles driven declined sharply in March 2020, and really collapsed in April 2020. After recovering, miles driven might have softened due to higher gasoline prices.
Richmond Fed Manufacturing: Slowdowns in August - Fifth District manufacturing activity slowed in August, according to the most recent survey from the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. The composite manufacturing index is at -8 in August compared to 0 in July.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 slowdowns in August, according to the most recent survey from the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. The composite manufacturing index fell from 0 in July to −8 in August, almost matching the June reading of −9. Two of its three component indexes tumbled: the indexes for shipments and volume of new orders slid from 7 and −10 in July to −8 and −20 in August, respectively. The third component, the employment index, rose to 11 from 8 in July. Link to Report Here is a somewhat closer look at the index since the turn of the century.
Kansas City Fed Mfg Survey: Growth Slows in August - The latest index came in at 3, down 10 from last month, indicating "slow" expansion in August. The future outlook fell to 10. 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:Tenth District manufacturing activity growth slowed considerably in August but remained slightly positive. Expectations for future activity eased somewhat but were still solid overall (Chart 1, Tables 1 & 2). Monthly survey price indexes fell to their lowest levels in over a year. Both price indexe s saw a significant easing in growth from a month and year ago. Expectations for future raw materials prices decreased further, while finished goods prices were expected to rise modestly.The month-over-month composite index was 3 in August, down from 13 in July and 12 in June (Tables 1 & 2). The composite index is an average of the production, new orders, employment, supplier delivery time, and raw materials inventory indexes. In August, the slower pace in factory growth was driven by decreased in activity in wood products, machinery, computer products, and transportation equipment manufacturing. Month-over-month indexes were mostly negative in August. The new orders index declined to its lowest level since May 2020, and indexes for production, shipments, order backlog, and inventory materials declined moderately. On the other hand, the employment index remained moderately positive, and the finished goods inventory index increased slightly. Year-over-year factory indexes decreased, with a composite index of 36. Production, shipments, and new orders indexes declined moderately compared to a year ago. The future composite index was 10 in August, a moderate decline from 26 in July. Nearly all future indexes decreased from the previous month, with order backlog and inventory indexes falling into negative territory. [Full report here] Here is a snapshot of the complete Kansas City Fed Manufacturing Survey.
Weekly Initial Unemployment Claims decrease to 243,000 -The DOL reported: In the week ending August 20, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 243,000, a decrease of 2,000 from the previous week's revised level. The previous week's level was revised down by 5,000 from 250,000 to 245,000. The 4-week moving average was 247,000, an increase of 1,500 from the previous week's revised average. The previous week's average was revised down by 1,250 from 246,750 to 245,500.The following graph shows the 4-week moving average of weekly claims since 1971.
Employment: Preliminary annual benchmark revision shows upward adjustment of 462,000 jobs - The BLS released the preliminary annual benchmark revision showing 462,000 more payroll jobs as of March 2022. The final revision will be published when the January 2023 employment report is released in February 2023. Usually, the preliminary estimate is pretty close to the final benchmark estimate. The annual revision is benchmarked to state tax records. From the BLS: In accordance with usual practice, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is announcing the preliminary estimate of the upcoming annual benchmark revision to the establishment survey employment series. The final benchmark revision will be issued in February 2023 with the publication of the January 2023 Employment Situation news release.Each year, the Current Employment Statistics (CES) survey employment estimates are benchmarked to comprehensive counts of employment for the month of March. These counts are derived from state unemployment insurance (UI) tax records that nearly all employers are required to file. For National CES employment series, the annual benchmark revisions over the last 10 years have averaged plus or minus one-tenth of one percent of total nonfarm employment. The preliminary estimate of the benchmark revision indicates an upward adjustment to March 2022 total nonfarm employment of 462,000 (0.3 percent). Using the preliminary benchmark estimate, this means that payroll employment in March 2022 was 462,000 higher than originally estimated. In February 2023, the payroll numbers will be revised up to reflect the final estimate. The number is then "wedged back" to the previous revision (March 2021). Construction was revised up by 62,000 jobs, and manufacturing revised up by 22,000 jobs. This preliminary estimate showed 571,000 more private sector jobs, and 109,000 fewer government jobs (as of March 2022) than originally estimated.
Nonfarm Payroll Employment and Implications of the Preliminary Benchmark Revision - Each year, the establishment series is benchmark-revised. The preliminary estimate for March was released yesterday. Short story – employment growth looks faster and stronger – up 462K relative to original 150856K (up by 0.3%). Figure 1: Nonfarm payroll employment as reported (bold black), Bloomberg consensus for August (pink triangle), CES preliminary benchmark revision for March (red square), implied revision (teal), in 000’s s.a., on log scale). Source: BLS via FRED, BLS, Bloomberg, author’s calculations.The benchmarking process is described somewhat in this post. The previous year (from April 2021 to March 2022) will have the divergence “wedged in” so as to match in March 2022.Private nonfarm payroll was revised up by 0.4%, big revisions up to transportation & warehousing (+2.3%) and information (+2.2%), while big negative downward revisions were made to mining & logging (-3.6%) and retail (-2.1%).How does the aggregate NFP series change the picture? Figure 2: Nonfarm payroll employment as reported (bold black), Bloomberg consensus for August (pink triangle), implied revision (teal), civilian employment adjusted to conform to NFP concept (chartreuse), in 000’s s.a., on log scale). Source: BLS via FRED, BLS, Bloomberg, author’s calculations.The benchmark revision further buttresses the view that no slowdown occurred in labor markets during H1, and further erodes the argument for a recession — defined as a broad, sustained, reduction in economic activity — occurred during the first half of the year.
Quiet Quitting: White Collar Workers No Longer in the Mood to Give More at Work Than They Are Paid For -- by Yves Smith - Apparently the executive hive mind is finding out, now that a fair number of recent work-at-home staffers have been bludgeoned into coming back into the office, that they just aren’t that into overproducing to keep the bosses happy. The perception is that some (and any is too many in the eyes of our corporate slavemasters) are now willing to do only what the job demands, and not any more. The horror of having workers who aren’t fawning and fearful! This new (bad) attitude is called quiet quitting. It’s become enough of a thing that both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have written about it in the last week. Mind you, there does not seem to be any actual data, which makes sense. Why would employers really want to know the degree to which employees aren’t in to them any more? And why would employees trust that any survey would be anonymous? So this newly visible lack of worker enthusiasm for jumping through hoops may be limited to once uber-competitive workplaces, where any decline in anxiety and aggression levels would be evident. And since those highly neurotic workplaces are often those of the supposedly most desirable companies, they’d be more intensely followed by the media than, say, Taco Bell franchises in the Southwest. An overview courtesy Twitter: Recall that this new trend, whether real or a corporate strategy to try to restore lost psychologic leverage over employees thanks to Covid, follows ghosting, another new behavior that deeply offended employer confidence in their right to deferential treatment by job candidates. From Forbes in May 2021: For high school and college seniors about to enter the workforce, certain norms and best practices of applying, interviewing and negotiating for jobs are taught and ingrained…. According to a February 2021 report by Indeed, 28% of job applicants had ghosted a prospective employer over the past year. That’s up from 18% in 2019, despite a global pandemic wreaking havoc on the job market and creating a shortlist of employment options. The numbers are even more startling from the employer side, with 76% reporting they’ve been ghosted in the past year and 57% saying it’s more common than ever before. The level of ghosting is broad, with employers reporting that some candidates simply disappear from the process after an initial screening call or first interview. Despite the simplicity of an email to express a lack of interest but appreciation for their time, candidates choose the path of silence. However, others are taking the trend to a whole new level, with 46% of job candidates not showing up for a scheduled interview and 7% failing to appear for their first day after successfully landing a job.
Long Covid keeping 2-4 million Americans out of workforce, report says --About 16 million working-age Americans have long-term Covid and 2-4 million are out of work because of its ill effects, according to a new report from the Brookings Institution.Employers have complained of labor shortages throughout the pandemic, and the analysis of data from the US Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey, which collects data from Americans through a survey on education, employment, health and housing, suggests one possible reason for the lack of workers. The report found that about 16 million Americans between 18 and 65 have long Covid. Of these people, who are considered of working age, they estimate that 2 to 4 million are out of work because of their symptoms.Brookings estimates that there are currently 10.6m unfilled jobs. The report estimates the dollar amount of the lost wages is between $170bn and $230bn a year. Long Covid, defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as Covid-related symptoms that last three or more months after first contracting the virus, has turned out to be a complicated beast. It is hard to track and study as symptoms can vary from individual to individual. Symptoms can range from gastrointestinal issues to nerve pain and fatigue.The CDC in June estimated that nearly one in five American adults who had Covid-19 still have long Covid symptoms. Overall, one in 13 adults in the US – about 7.5% of the population – have long Covid.Other countries have reported similar problems with long Covid affecting employment. In a May speech, a Bank of England representative attributed the workforce shrinking by 440,000 largely to “increases in long-term sickness”.Estimates say the US workforce has decreased by between 3 million and 3.5 million people over the course of the pandemic. The report noted that addressing long Covid’s impact on the workforce will entail policy measures like expanded paid sick leave and better employer accommodations. Over 25% of private sector workers do not have any form of paid sick leave. Of those in the bottom 25% of earners, over half do not have access to paid sick leave. Some workers have reported being fired for taking sick leave.
Taxi Drivers Tell Gov. Hochul They Want Out of Manhattan Toll Plan - -- Cabbies and drivers for ride-hailing apps, who have spent years dueling for passengers on city streets, on Wednesday found themselves aligned in asking the governor to spare them from additional congestion pricing fees. The potential tolls — which aim to cut traffic in Manhattan’s “central business district” and raise billions of dollars for transit improvements — could tack up to $19 on passengers in every yellow taxi and for-hire vehicle trip south of 60th Street, according to a series of scenarios included in an environmental assessment released earlier this month. At a New York Taxi Workers Alliance rally in front of Gov. Kathy Hochul’s Midtown office, drivers for yellow taxis and app-based ride-hailing services called on Albany to exempt them from being tagged with more surcharges that are supposed to be a boon for the MTA, but which could take a heavy toll on drivers for hire. “It’s not good for the drivers, because the prices are going to be up for the passengers,” said Harouna Cisse, 56, who has been driving five years for Uber after previously being a yellow taxi driver. “That’s bad news for all of us — yellow, Uber and Lyft drivers.” THE CITY this week detailed the potentially crippling impact the new fees could have on the long-struggling taxi industry, as well as on drivers for the much larger for-hire vehicle business. “The MTA has been broke since the day before I became a cab driver,” Jawaid Poppa, 55, a taxi driver for 27 years, told THE CITY. “And after 27 years, they’re still broke — we didn’t create their problems and their problems are not our problems.”9:56 PM
Starbucks informs workers at two stores of closures, union claims retaliation - Starbucks has informed workers at two locations that their stores will be closing, a move that the coffee chain's union says is retaliation for organizing efforts. The company said the union activity isn't the reason for the closures. It said a Kansas City, Missouri, location, where vote results are pending, is closing due to safety issues. It said a Seattle location, where workers voted to organize in April, will close and reopen, operated as a licensed location by a neighboring grocery store. Starbucks will engage in bargaining with the union to seek an agreement that gives workers there the opportunity to transfer to other stores. "We continue to evaluate the partner and customer experience at all of our stores as a regular course of business," Starbucks said in a statement Tuesday about the Seattle location, adding that its decision would help build on the location's relationship with customers of the grocery store. About 200 of Starbucks' roughly 9,000 locations in the U.S. have voted to unionize. Under interim CEO Howard Schultz, Starbucks has been focusing on the company's reinvention and emphasizing priorities including store safety and advancement opportunities for workers. As part of the push, Starbucks closed more than a dozen stores over safety concerns, most of them on the West Coast. A letter sent to employees last month cited personal safety and mental health issues and drug use at some of the locations. But the union maintains some closures are about more than safety, pointing to a list of 19 Starbucks locations that have closed or are closing, with eight of them having unionized, filed or started to organize. "If Starbucks was serious about solving safety issues, they could work with partners and our union. Instead, Schultz and Starbucks have sent a message loud and clear — complain about safety, and we'll close your store," Starbucks Workers United said in a statement.
"Tsunami Of Shutoffs": 20 Million US Homes Are Behind On Power Bills - At least 20 million households -- or about 1 in 6 American homes -- are behind on their power bills as soaring electricity prices spark what is said to be the worst-ever crisis in late utility payments, according to Bloomberg, citing data from the National Energy Assistance Directors Association (Neada).Neada said electricity prices had increased significantly since 2020 after a decade of stagnation. The steep rise has resulted in billions of dollars in overdue power bills. Electricity inflation is being propelled by soaring costs of fossil fuels, such as natural gas, coal, and petroleum. NatGas fuels about 40% of the US power grid and soared to the highest levels since 2008 on Tuesday. The chart below shows for the two decades, real electricity prices were relatively flat, except for the commodity boom times around the 2008 GFC. Now CPI less energy has peaked, though electricity continues to rise to a blistering 30% year on year. Utility shutoffs have become more common across the US as some lower-tier households are thousands of dollars behind on their power bills. Jean Su, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, which tracks utility disconnections across the US, warned of a "tsunami of shutoff" as the highest inflation in forty years eats away wages and has financially devastated the working poor.
Record Number of US Households Behind on Energy Bills; Brace for a Cold Winter by Yves Smith - As our companion post today shows, many eyes are on the increasingly desperate energy situation in Europe, as electricity prices keep marching higher with no relief in sight. And this is August, when energy demands will be more severe come the fall and winter. Yet despite Ukraine having no realistic chance of beating Russia and European societies paying enormous and rising costs, EU leaders are too arrogant and insulated to save the lives of their own and Ukraine citizens by trying to negotiate with Russia.1With the Biden administration insistent on presenting the US economy as strong despite accelerating inflation and deteriorating fundamentals, many in wealthy Democratic party enclaves no doubt think things are still hunky dory, absent some decay in their securities portfolios and maybe their real estate value.2The new Bloomberg story, A ‘Tsunami of Shutoffs’: 20 Million US Homes Are Behind on Energy Bills, paints a starkly different picture. Lower income and otherwise precarious households are already showing signs of severe stress due to big jumps in the costs in “must have” categories, namely food, energy, shelter. Winter in the US may not be as widespread a disaster as in the UK and Europe, but plenty of people will be having to decide how to get by with not enough food and heat.From Bloomberg:The Nice household is one of some 20 million across the country—about 1 in 6 American homes—that have fallen behind on their utility bills. It is, according to the National Energy Assistance Directors Association (Neada), the worst crisis the group has ever documented. Underpinning those numbers is a blistering surge in electricity prices, propelled by the soaring cost of natural gas.The power bill crisis is even more acute in Europe, where the spike in natural gas prices has been far greater in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Policymakers there have sprung into action, throwing billions of euros in aid at struggling families to help them pay bills. There’s been no meaningful talk of doing anything on a similar scale in the US, where the hand-wringing has been dedicated, as always, to the gyrations of gasoline prices at the pump.Utility shutoffs can have deadly consequences, though, a risk that’s becoming more palpable as summer heat shatters records. Already gut-punched by soaring prices for just about everything, more and more people are facing a choice among food, housing, and keeping the power on. “I expect a tsunami of shutoffs,” says Jean Su, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, which tracks utility disconnections across the US. Notice the mention of the EU providing energy relief. That’s not the sort of thing the US or US states customarily provide, but the specter of Dickensian level distress plus homes at risk of pipe bursts might jolt officials out of their usual stupor. Or will they instead go the punitive route of providing what amounts to heat shelters, warm places to go to at night….and catch Covid too?
America’s first homelessness problem: Knowing who is actually homeless — Handwritten notes were everywhere, taped into car windows or tucked under windshield wipers or scrawled across van doors. They were public announcements and cryptic rants — tiny splashes of individuality amid the anonymity of garbage piles and ripped tarps surrounding the trailers and campers parked near the railroad tracks south of downtown.“Sick sleeping do NOT wake up,” one on a camper said. “I have narcan spray,” said another. “DO NOT TOW MY HOME!” stated a third.Toward the end of July, one more sign began appearing at the encampment. “Notice,” the warning from the city said. “Order to remove all personal property.” The area would be cleared July 26.John and Michelle Tirado’s 17-foot trailer stood near a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. The windows inside were blocked so they could sleep for their evening shifts as security guards at an abandoned foundry, both temporary jobs with no benefits. They had been living in the encampment for four months. When they arrived, they were sleeping in their GMC Yukon, an SUV. Later the couple found the trailer on Facebook for $1,700 — better than sleeping in the car, and more affordable than the deposit and first and last month’s rent needed for an apartment. But the Tirados couldn’t help feeling that they were bobbing between bad and slightly better, while still on a general slide into worse.“Some people would count that as a home, but it’s not,” Michelle, 33, said of the trailer they would soon have to move. “It’s a space where we survive.”“We are homeless,” John, 32, said. “We hate it.”Until last year, the federal government did not always include people like the Tirados or the others living in trailers within sight of the sun-polished towers of downtown Seattle in its annual tally of the homeless, a reflection of what advocates, academics and policymakers say, is a flawed methodology that underlies billions in spending on homelessness. On a Saturday morning in July, Marvin Futrell, 57, wheeled his car down the narrow lane where the Tirados’ trailer was parked. Around 55 other campers and RVs filled the street. He was doing his own informal count.“Let’s just say one person lives in each. That’s 55 displaced people and probably more living in each one,” Futrell said as he rolled by the encampment. “But the system doesn’t recognize folks living in RVs as homeless.” He then glanced back at the image of the RV encampment shrinking in his rearview mirror. “The response that we have now isn’t enough.”Getting that figure right has gained new urgency as rising housing costsand a persistent shortage of affordable housing mean more people havefewer options when it comes to shelter. Tent cities now sprawl across sidewalks, along overpasses and over green spaces in many major American cities. The visibility of homelessness has triggered a wave of municipal and state laws criminalizing it. Advocates also say violent confrontations between the housed and unhoused appear to have increased.
Student vaccinations is down. Can schools catch them up? - Wendy Hasson, a pediatric intensive care physician in Oregon, knows the tragedy that can befall an unimmunized child. As the nation reeled from the coronavirus pandemic, one of her young patients in Portland missed vaccinations against bacteria that can cause meningitis. The infant grew dangerously ill and nearly died. “These infections are rare but they can be particularly devastating,” said Hasson, medical director of the pediatric ICU at Randall Children’s Hospital, remembering that the child sustained permanent brain and kidney damage, and lifelong disabilities. “It’s a tragedy because the patient was a completely normal, healthy child previously,” she said. Parents are often racked by regret, she said. Health officials worry about scenarios like that one as students across the nation, now returning to school, have fallen behind on routine school immunizations during the pandemic. Families missed doctor visits and yearly physicals. and some never caught up on shots for diseases such as polio, measles, whooping cough and diphtheria. The toll of the pandemic is hard to dispute. In Virginia, statewide rates for school-required vaccinations among kindergartners and adolescents fell by 10 percentage points from fall 2019 to fall 2021 — to around 86 percent, state data shows. Officials attributed the drop to fewer well-child visits, months of virtual learning, fluctuations in kindergarten enrollment and other factors. Arkansas saw vaccinations for children and adolescents drop more than 12 percent from 2019 to 2021. And in D.C., more than 30 percent of students had not met requirements as of mid-August, though city officials think the number is far lower because of complexities in record-keeping. City health officials said they did not have comparative pre-pandemic data “due to changes in reporting methods.” California officials said in August that more than 1 in 8 students in that state was behind on a vaccine required for kindergarten — a shot for measles, mumps and rubella — after the pandemic interruptions of daily life led to missed shots and vaccination delays. The state did not provide directly comparable data but said 1 in 24 kindergartners missed one or more vaccinations in 2019. Now, as schools open for the fall, the push is on to close the gap. Vaccination centers have been set up in school buildings. Letters and automated phone calls have gone out to parents. Reminders have been posted at bus stops. “We’re cautiously optimistic but we also know there’s work to do to make sure that children do get caught up on vaccines, or in some cases they haven’t been vaccinated and that they get vaccinated,” said Georgina Peacock, director of the Immunization Services Division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nationally, pandemic-years data on school immunizations has lagged. But a sizable decline can be seen in the number of orders placed for a key federal vaccination program and in other data from fall 2020, Peacock said.
CPS failed to alert court about video of state employee telling 14-year-old girl to become a prostitute - - "She's a mother of nine, and she does have a daughter who has had some behavioral problems," said family law attorney Mike Schneider.That's why Keisha Bazley turned to Child Protective Services. But then her 14-year-old daughter told her when she told a CPS employee, she was hungry that worker told her to become a prostitute.The daughter recorded the CPS worker on her cell phone."Because the worker had been telling her this is how you can make money, I used to do this, and you could do the same thing," said Keisha Bazley, the 14-year-old girl's mother. "When I saw the video with the lady, like my soul left my body."I think they're threatened by the fact that this video even exists," said Schneider. "They know about it. They apologized and the head of CPS has apologized about this. What they didn't do is tell the court dealing with this case that was going on Thursday, when they wanted to dismiss the case."Schneider says CPS was hoping to dismiss the case and get the 14-year-old out of the state's care. That didn't happen. The girl is now living in a foster home instead of a hotel."The fact that they didn't think it was relevant that their own agency is trying to prostitute a child, that's incredibly disingenuous, to have a hearing and not bring that to the court's attention."
Nearly 80 percent of parents say they became more interested in kids’ education during virtual learning: study - Seventy-nine percent of parents say they became more interested in how their child was being educated during the pandemic, when the process went largely virtual, according to a new survey. The survey, conducted by the Harris Poll on behalf of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, similarly found that 84 percent of parents agreed they learned more about how their child was educated during pandemic at-home education, and 78 percent said they became more involved in their child’s education because of what they saw. “Things were moving along as usual, and then within a few weeks of being at home all day with their children, parents were able to see first-hand what their students were learning, or not learning,” the National Alliance wrote in its report. “Some students were receiving only a few hours of remote-learning instruction per week,” the report continued. “Parents began to talk among themselves, sharing tips with each other.” Seventy-one percent of parents worried about learning loss during the pandemic, and concerns heightened about safety and the overall wellbeing of students while they are learning, according to the survey. The survey also found that more parents appeared to switch their child’s category of school since the pandemic. Seventeen percent said they switched their child’s school type since March 2020 — a span of roughly two years — compared to 15 percent who said they switched their child’s school type at any time prior to the pandemic. Three-quarters of parents who made a switch since the pandemic said they made the decision due to COVID-19–related factors. Cheney independent presidential run would hurt Biden more than Trump: poll Missouri school district brings back punishment by paddle “For many parents, this new interest and involvement may have made them highly motivated to make changes to their child’s education,” the report states. More than 4 in 5 parents agreed that education has become a more important political issue to them than in the past. Eighty-two percent said they were willing to cross party lines to vote for a candidate aligned with their education views, the survey found.
D.C. schools extend deadlines for covid, routine vaccination mandate - Students in D.C. public and charter schools will have more time to comply with vaccination requirements this school year, the city’s deputy mayor for education said Friday. The city’s top education official notified school leaders Friday about the change, designed to reduce the number of children who could be barred from school, as well as align the District’s charter systems and public school district under a single enforcement timeline. The change comes a few days before the start of school and amid some concern that the mandate could keep students out of class, particularly Black students who lag behind their white classmates in routine and coronavirus vaccination rates. Officials previously said schools should not allow students to come to class for more than 20 days without their routine vaccinations, against illnesses including measles and polio, or their coronavirus shots. But because schools across the district have different start dates — D.C. public schools reopen Monday and many charter school students have already returned — officials designed a timeline that would put everyone on the same page. Prekindergarten through fifth-grade students who do not have their routine pediatric immunizations by Sept. 7 will receive an official notice from their schools. If they are not vaccinated by Oct. 11, they face exclusion from school. D.C. schools is not offering a virtual option for most students this school year. Students in sixth through 12th grades will be notified about noncompliance on Oct. 3 and will need to be vaccinated by Nov. 4. The city’s coronavirus vaccine mandate, which applies to students 12 and older, falls under a different timeline. Students who are not fully vaccinated against the virus will by notified Nov. 21 and will need to comply by Jan. 3. The city’s youth coronavirus vaccine mandate has been nearly a year in the making. The D.C. Council introduced legislation in October that called for the vaccine to be on the list of immunizations required for enrollment in school. The law stipulates that the mandate goes into effect only when the shot has received full authorization from the Food and Drug Administration. After that, students have 70 days to get the vaccine to remain in school. But the 70-day window posed some challenges, particularly around tracking vaccinations, Paul Kihn, deputy mayor for education, acknowledged in a letter to school leaders. He wrote that he hopes the new Jan. 3 exclusion date will provide more time for schools to prepare and students to get caught up. The District’s coronavirus vaccine requirement is rare at this point in the pandemic when many workplaces, universities and school districts have moved away from such mandates. This week a D.C. Superior Court judge said a vaccination mandate Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) imposed on city government workers earlier this year was unlawful. And a group of three Republican congressmen sent a letter to Bowser this week asking her not to enforce the mandate for students.
Gov. Ron DeSantis charts new political path for GOP as he takes the unusual step of endorsing school board candidates that vow to back his education plans --— Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is working to line up a slew of loyalists on school boards across Florida as he seeks a second term in the nation's third-largest state. "We need help at the local level," DeSantis said at a firehouse to about 430 enthusiastic supporters during a campaign event on Sunday. "You guys with your power going out and voting is going to make a huge difference." The governor has endorsed 29 conservative candidates ahead of Tuesday's election for school board races, which typically don't receive much attention and are technically nonpartisan. School board members make decisions about spending, schedules, supplies, curriculum, and other matters. But in more than a dozen counties where DeSantis endorsed candidates, school boards defied the governor last fall by requiring students to wear masks. School board elections have gained attention from voters who were frustrated after schools across the US stayed closed during the coronavirus pandemic. DeSantis and other Republicans have taken note of the energy behind these races, as they've also moved to restrict school curriculum or practices on race, gender, and sexual orientation. "We are not going to surrender to woke," said DeSantis, whose political committee donated to the school board candidates. "We are going to prevail and Florida is the state where woke goes to die." Lieutenant Gov. Jeanette Nuñez, who also appeared at the event, told the crowd that the DeSantis administration was focused on education because it "is key to opportunity, it's the key to our future." "I'm calling on each and every one of you to join us in this battle to take back our school boards," she said. Criticizing the Democratic Party as a "woke dumpster fire," DeSantis indicated during his speech he would double down on many of the education issues he tackled over the past four years, which are spelled out in his 10-point education agenda on his website. They include rejecting school lockdowns and to "keep woke gender ideology out of schools." DeSantis vowed during his speech to support higher pay for teachers. Florida comes in at No. 48 in the nation for average teacher salaries, according to the National Education Association, even though state lawmakers and the governor increased their pay this past year and gave teachers bonuses. On Tuesday, DeSantis proposed a plan to reduce Florida's teacher shortages by providing temporary teaching certificates to police officers, paramedics, and firefighters.
DeSantis uses cash and clout to reshape Florida school races - Jacqueline Rosario, a school board member in Indian River County in Florida, was recently chatting with a cashier at an ice cream shop when she mentioned she was running for reelection. A staunch supporter of school choice and parental rights, Rosario earned the backing of Gov. Ron DeSantis for her upcoming race in part because she voted against masking students during the pandemic. “She said, because I’ve been endorsed by him, ‘you have my vote,’” Rosario said in an interview. “She didn’t even ask my stance on issues or why I’m running.” Rosario is one of more than two dozen conservative school board candidates DeSantis endorsed this election cycle, a move that came with $1,000 donations and subsequently set off a series of partisan-fueled races across the state that have seen a huge amount of campaign money flowing into them. DeSantis fundraising could break Florida state campaign finance records: 6 things to know By wading into school board races and endorsing local candidates, DeSantis is attempting to reshape the education landscape in the country’s third most populous state. The move is also leading Florida Republicans to send cash and campaign help on the eve of the primaries, in many cases targeting incumbents who have opposed some of the GOP’s policies. Some candidates have received hundreds of thousands of dollars from individual donors. Political committees tied to Florida Republicans and Democrats are also pouring tens of thousands of dollars into these normally sleepy races — eclipsing the amount in the 2018 midterm — underscoring the importance of K-12 education and mobilizing parents ahead of November. “Parental rights, curriculum transparency and classrooms free of woke ideology are all on the ballot this election, and it starts with school board elections,” DeSantis said last week when announcing a statewide campaign tour ahead of the midterms. Out of those endorsements, the DeSantis campaign is targeting 15 school board races among several counties that defied him and the GOP last fall by passing local student mask mandates. DeSantis is also challenging at least 10 incumbents who are running for reelection. In most instances, incumbents, regardless of affiliation, are being pushed to raise significantly more cash to defend their seats compared to four years ago, a sign of how endorsements are affecting campaigns this year. If he succeeds, DeSantis could end up with new allies on school boards who can help him as he continues to rail against teacher unions and Democrats who oppose the handling of Covid-19 mandates and how schools should teach lessons on race and sexual identity.
DeSantis removes Broward school board officials after Parkland report - Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) suspended four elected school-board members on Friday, after a grand jury found that they had acted with negligence and incompetence in implementing safety measures at schools in Broward County and recommended their removal.The grand jury investigation was prompted by a 2018 shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla., that killed 17 people. In its report, released last week, the grand jury said that the Broward school board had mismanaged a program funded by an $800 million bond and failed to deliver on promised projects, including safety upgrades to its schools.“It is my duty to suspend people from office when there is clear evidence of incompetence, neglect of duty, misfeasance or malfeasance,” DeSantis said in a statement. “We are grateful to the members of the jury who have dedicated countless hours to this mission and we hope this suspension brings the Parkland community another step towards justice.”Broward County, which includes Fort Lauderdale, is the country’s sixth-largest school district and is responsible for about 260,000 students. The rare decision to forcibly remove elected officials from office was praised by the families of victims of school violence, but also sparked accusations of political overreach.DeSantis suspended Patricia Good, Donna P. Korn, Ann Murray, and Laurie Rich Levinson from the board. (The jury also recommended the removal of a fifth board member, who has since been elected to the state Senate.) While school board positions are nonpartisan, all the elected officials DeSantis removed are registered as Democratic voters. Several of their replacements worked in Republican politics.“What country is this? What Gov. DeSantis did is un-American and undemocratic,” Levinson said, according to the Miami Herald. “Because you may disagree on local policy decisions is not a reason to remove someone from elected office.”
Democrats allow school budget cuts in New York City to move ahead - With just over two weeks remaining before classes resume, schools across New York City are implementing deep cuts to staffing and critical programming imposed upon them by the austerity budget for Department of Education (DOE) public schools. The massive cuts, spearheaded by Mayor Eric Adams and passed by his fellow Democrats on the City Council, are moving forward after a state appeals court on August 9 temporarily blocked a lower court decision that would have reinstated funding. A full hearing by the appellate court is set for August 29, a timeline that in practice solidifies many cuts, regardless of the final ruling. New York City has become the center of a fierce offensive by the local ruling establishment to enforce a new wave of austerity measures in its education system. In early June, Mayor Adams announced a restructuring of budgets which left hundreds of K-12 schools lacking in funds for the upcoming year. It is difficult for the true size and scope of these budget cuts to be fully understood, as all public information has been the subject of vicious debate between the various municipal agencies involved. While the city comptroller’s office has put the total cuts at $378 million, after factoring in fluctuations in spending within the school year as well as additional remaining federal pandemic funds, the figure of $215 million in reductions has been the official total presented by the administration. Other media outlets have estimated total education budget cuts as high as $1 billion. There can be no doubt that the mayor and the factions of the local ruling establishment most aggressively pursuing the cuts are deliberately concealing the actual numbers in an effort to deflect and diffuse massive popular resistance to austerity. Widespread opposition to the plans of the Adams administration was immediately triggered after the initial proposal passed in mid-June. Subsequently, dozens of teachers and school staff, including many art and music teachers, school counselors and special education staff took to social media, reporting that they had been “excessed”—i.e., removed from their schools and forced to look for open jobs within the system in order to remain on payroll. Dozens more educators protested the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars in their schools at a time when the resumption of in-person learning amid a global pandemic has already dealt a devastating blow to their profession. The total number of teachers excessed this summer has been in the hundreds. Parents, students, and teachers have spoken out against the dramatic effect that these cuts will have on their communities. In various protests at City Hall and in comments online, overwhelming sentiment has been that job losses and fund reductions in schools still reeling from the past year have added tremendous insult to injury.
Natrona schools short ~115 personnel two weeks away from start of classes - Casper, WY - — The Natrona County School District has roughly 115 full- and part-time positions it has yet to fill ahead of the Tuesday, Sept. 6 start of the fall semester. Difficulty filling certain positions is not unique to NCSD, Superintendent Mike Jennings told the Board of Trustees during its meeting on Monday. The district has roughly 2,200 total employees and Jennings said that despite some positions remaining unfilled, NCSD is “not in a crisis situation like many school districts are across the country.” Decreased enrollment and graduation out of the University of Wyoming’s College of Education has been exacerbating hiring issues for NCSD and other school districts in Wyoming. In 2010, about 210 students graduated out of UW’s College of Education compared with 170 in 2021. In 2010, the College of Education had 1,250 undergraduates enrolled, a figure that dropped to around 700 in 2021. Jennings said the trend predates the COVID-19 pandemic. “It has challenged all districts across the state,” Jennings said. NCSD has enacted measures to help fill hard-to-fill positions. This includes efforts to train new administrators. A shortage of principals may not be often discussed, but Jennings said the administrator shortage across the country “is actually quite severe.” NCSD has been able to hire 13 new administrators to start the new school year and has four interns training to serve such roles in the future. The district did not report any unfilled administrator positions heading into the new school year.3:31 AM
Teacher ‘pay penalty’ hits new high - Amid what is being called crisis-level teacher shortages in public school districts across the country, a new report offers a partial explanation: Average weekly wages of teachers increased just $29 — repeat, $29 — from 1996 to 2021, compared with a $445 increase in weekly wages of other college graduates. (The figures were adjusted only for inflation.)It’s what’s called the “teacher wage penalty,” which the nonprofit and nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute (EPI) has been tracking for years. According to the EPI report, the penalty grew to a record high in 2021: to 23.5 percent, meaning that teachers earn that much less than other college graduates.In 1996, the teacher wage penalty was 6.1 percent. Average weekly wages for teachers went from $1,319 in 1996 to $1,348 in 2021; for other college graduates, average weekly pay rose from $1,564 to $2,009 over the same period (both in 2021 dollars).“Over the last 18 years, EPI has closely tracked trends in teacher pay,” the report says. “Over these nearly two decades, a picture of increasingly alarming trends has emerged. Simply put, teachers are paid less (in weekly wages and total compensation) than their nonteacher college-educated counterparts, and the situation has worsened considerably over time.”School district leaders say a combination of factors have led to today’s debilitating shortages: complaints about low pay; inadequate resources; school shootings; and now, the culture wars. Teachers have become targets for conservative activists and Republican policymakers who are restricting what teachers can say about U.S. history, race, gender and other subjects.Teacher morale in poll after poll is at its lowest in decades, and many who quit cite a lack of respect for their work and profession — manifested in, among things, low wages. They point to Arizona, where the legislature is now allowing people without college degrees to teach, and Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has called on veterans without degrees to become teachers.For anyone who thinks teachers’ benefits make up for the wage deficit, the numbers don’t work out that way, EPI says. The teacher total compensation penalty was 14.2 percent in 2021 (a 23.5 percent wage penalty offset by a 9.3 percent benefits advantage). “The bottom line is that the teacher total compensation penalty grew by 11.5 percentage points from 1993 to 2021,” according to the report, “Surveys report that some college students would like to go into teaching but say the pay is too low and falling behind more and more compared to that of other professions they could choose,” “So, many forgo teaching. Money matters.”
Columbus teachers’ union votes to strike – Columbus teachers voted Sunday night to go on strike, a culmination of five months and 22 negotiations that failed to produce a single contract agreement.At a meeting at the Greater Columbus Convention Center, the 4,500-member union, Columbus Education Association (CEA), voted to commence a strike after it and the Board of Education could not agree on the terms of its labor contract, setting Ohio’s largest school district up for an unconventional first day Wednesday: Teachers with picket signs and students learning from substitutes and administrators online.“It is with a full understanding of the sacrifices that students, parents, and teachers will make together to win the schools Columbus Students Deserve that CEA members overwhelmingly rejected the Board’s last, best and final offer tonight and voted to strike,” CEA spokesperson Regina Fuentes said in a statement after Sunday’s vote. “In multiple efforts to negotiate through the media after walking away from the bargaining table, the school board has tried desperately to make this strike about teacher salary, teacher professional development, and teacher leaves. “Let me be clear. This strike is about our students who deserve a commitment to modern schools with heating and air conditioning, smaller class sizes, and a well-rounded curriculum that includes art, music and P.E.”Teachers were seen leaving Sunday’s meeting carrying “On Strike” picket signs, some with the slogan “On Strike for the Schools Our Students Deserve.”According to the union, 94% of members voted to reject the district’s latest offer, with the same percentage voting to strike.The current teachers’ contract expires at midnight. Teachers began picketing Monday morningat 20 different sites around the district.Following Sunday’s vote, the Columbus City Schools Board of Education called an emergency meeting for Monday at 8 p.m. with the expectation it would immediately enter into a closed executive session to discuss the district’s next steps.
Teachers take to the picket lines in Columbus, Ohio - In the first strike in 47 years, nearly 4,700 teachers, librarians, nurses and other school employees took to the picket lines in Columbus, Ohio, early Monday morning. The educators are demanding wage increases, the hiring of more teachers and support personnel, smaller class sizes and retrofitted HVAC to provide clean and safe conditions in buildings. Teachers are also demanding that all the buildings be brought up to code. Many of the district’s dozens of buildings are rodent- and pest-infested, have leaking roofs, peeling lead paint and other structural problems. Teachers also want art, music, PE and other programs expanded for the students throughout the district. Several thousand teachers attended a mass meeting Sunday night at the Columbus Convention Center. Teachers expressed their determination to fight the board and outrage at the board’s final offer. Teachers came into the meeting with groups of co-workers carrying signs in preparation for picketing the next morning. They could be heard from outside the meeting erupting in cheers after calls for strike action or denunciations of the board's rejection of their demands to improve education for the children. Going into the meeting, teachers spoke with the World Socialist Web Site about what was motivating them. Amber Nash, who has been a teacher for 19 years, stated what was the most important issue for her. “Mold, lead paint. I think it is a basic right that the heating and cooling align with OSHA standards in every building in every neighborhood. The conditions in some of our buildings would not be accepted in the suburbs. So why are they being accepted for some of our most struggling communities?” Amber currently teaches at West Mound Elementary School which has undergone a complete rebuilding in the past 8 to 10 years. 'West Mound is actually a new build. It has been completely rebuilt. New air conditioning, new HVAC. We don’t have lead paint. So my building is one of the best buildings.” Others are not, she said. “I’ve been on the East Side; I was in a Mod [module] that was not attached to the school.” Amber explained that Mods are like trailers. “We had no plumbing, no running water. I worked eight years there, and I never had less than 28 students every year in a Mod. “The children in every building deserve an equitable learning space where they feel valued. They can look around them and feel proud of their space. Feel comfortable to learn and be engaged.
Columbus City Schools strike: Teachers out on picket lines --With cups of coffee in one hand and "ON STRIKE" signs in the other, hundreds of Columbus City Schools teachers and other professional staff lined the sidewalks outside Yorktown Middle School Monday morning. Their signs carried the union's demands:
- Columbus students deserve: smaller class sizes, art, music and P.E.
- Columbus students deserve: a safe place to learn
- Columbus students deserve: a safe working environment
Teachers waved at honking cars driving by along East Livingston Avenue on the city's Far East Side.Several hours earlier at the Greater Columbus Convention Center, theColumbus Education Association announced late Sunday night thatmore than 94% of its members had voted to reject the Columbus City school board's last final offer and go on strike for the first time since 1975. The union did not release the actual vote count.The nearly 4,500-member union — which represents teachers, librarians, nurses, counselors, psychologists and other education professionals — met for more than three hours at the convention center to vote."It is with a full understanding of the sacrifices that students, parents, and teachers will make together to win the schools Columbus students deserve that CEA members overwhelmingly rejected the Board's last, best and final offer tonight and intend to strike," CEA spokesperson Regina Fuentes said.Board president Jennifer Adair continued to express the district's disappointment in the union striking and mentioned that they believe their compensation package to teachers was generous, along with "provisions that would positively impact their classrooms.""School does start on Wednesday which means our children will be online learning," Adair said. "We know that this is absolutely not ideal but we do have an obligation as the school district to continue education and supporting our students."With no new contract, the CEA's previous contract with the district expired at 12:01 a.m. Monday.Instead of reporting to school buildings for teacher preparation day, CEA members began picketing at 7 a.m. Monday at 20 locations, including 19 schools (out of more than 100) and at the district's Southland Center. Monday and Tuesday are scheduled as school preparation days before the scheduled start of classes Wednesday.
Labor Disputes Threaten Start of New School Year - Teachers in Columbus, Ohio, are picketing at dozens of sites across the city on Monday after voting to go on strike for the first time since 1975 as they failed to reach an agreement with the city’s board of education over the terms of their labor contract.Citing long standing concerns over pay, classroom size, the condition of school facilities and full-time art, music and physical education teachers, among other things, 94% of Columbus Education Association members voted to back the strike on Sunday evening, making it likely that the city’s 47,000 students will be learning virtually from substitute teachers on Wednesday, the first day of the new academic year.“CEA is committed to bargaining for the safe and welcoming, properly maintained, and fully-resourced public schools Columbus students deserve,” union leaders said in a statement Sunday night after the vote. “The bargaining team has negotiated for months in an attempt to reach an agreement, but Columbus City Schools continues to ignore the voices within our community and invest in our schools in a way that will improve learning conditions for our students.”The decision to strike comes after union officials and board members held 22 negotiating sessions over five months. “The decision to strike by the CEA is incredibly disappointing,” Jennifer Adair, board of education president, said during a press conference on Monday morning. “We are very saddened by this unfortunate situation our families, our communities and our children now face. We believe we offered a generous compensation package for our teachers and provisions that would positively impact their classroom and our students.”The board of education is holding a closed-door special session Monday evening to discuss next steps, Adair said. Union officials plan to hold a rally outside.“School does start on Wednesday, which means our children will be online learning,” she said. “We know this is absolutely not ideal but we do have an obligation as the school district to continue educating and supporting our students despite this current circumstance.”Meanwhile, a labor dispute also threatens the start of the school year in Philadelphia, where 32BJ SEIU, a union representing roughly 2,000 employees of the Philadelphia School District, voted to authorize a strike over higher wages and better training programs.The new academic year begins Aug. 29 for the city’s 200,000 students. The strike is set for Aug. 31, the date the current contract expires.Officials from the union, which represents custodial workers, bus drivers, mechanics, building engineers and other trade workers, lamented over what they said were pay cuts that hadn’t been restored and weekly contributions from their wages to help keep the district afloat as it faced disruptions stemming from the coronavirus pandemic.
Unmitigated school choice policies increase segregation, research shows - School choice is often touted as a way to desegregate schools, but a new study by USC Marshall School of Business researchers shows it may drive segregation. The study was published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). "We found that school choice increases racial segregation even when parents do not factor racial demographics into their choice because racial groups have different priorities when it comes to school characteristics," said the study's lead author Kalinda Ukanwa, an assistant professor of marketing at USC Marshall. To determine the effect of school choice at scale, Ukanwa and her research partners Aziza C. Jones and Broderick L. Turner, Jr. modeled school choice as an open market. The authors presented more than 1,600 Black and white parents with a set of fictional school choices intended to uncover underlying market segment preferences for characteristics including a school's performance rating, teachers' experience, income, racial demographics, and commute time. The authors found that school performance ratings in particular signal a school's potential to alter a child's socioeconomic status. As such, Black parents were more willing to forgo other school attributes, such as short commutes or teacher experience, for higher-rated schools. Meanwhile, white parents placed greater value on short commutes. Both groups, however, also valued teacher experience. The study shows that even if parents do not intentionally seek schools where students are of their race, unmitigated school choice among these market segments can increase segregation because these groups are seeking schools that have different attributes. The researchers first conducted a survey with parents in which they rated the attributes they consider most important in a school, with consideration for their race and other demographic information. They then created a computer model that ran a scenario of how such preferences would play out in a district that had seven schools with a combined 4,000 students. The model reflected residential segregation that currently exists in U.S. neighborhoods. Each of the schools in the simulation was randomly assigned an A, B or C rating and teacher experience levels. The simulation revealed that even when racial preference was not a consideration for parents, their preferences for other attributes increased segregation. The simulations suggested that for every 3% of households that exercise school choice, an additional 564,000 U.S. children would need to leave their schools to offset the racial divide. School choice could only reduce segregation if Black and white parent groups shared the same preferences, the authors wrote. "Expanding school choice without first addressing underlying differences in parental preferences will lead to increased segregation. Schools may need to take the unique preferences of these parents' racial groups into consideration when attempting to market their school to these distinct demographics," said Ukanwa.
Students, don’t count on loan debt forgiveness ever happening again - The Biden administration has established an expectation that future administrations won’t or can’t meet: forgiveness of additional student loan debt.President Biden announced a plan to cancel up to $10,000 in student loans for millions of borrowers with an income of $125,000 or less for individuals and not more than $250,000 for couples filing a joint federal tax return. Pell Grant recipients could get as much as $20,000 of their loans erased.This move could drive people deeper into debt.The White House said nearly one-third of borrowers have education debt but no degree. I worry about setting a precedent that broad-based loan forgiveness will be available again. It is paramount we manage borrowers’ expectations.Some students looking to take advantage of the promised forgiveness have already signed up for more loans, according to Betsy Mayotte, president of the Institute of Student Loan Advisors.“There are people who are applying for loans for this semester or more loans than they had originally applied for because they assume they’re going to be forgiven,” said Mayotte, who works closely with student and parent borrowers.This fall, millions of high school seniors will begin applying to college for the 2023-2024 academic year. One wonders if they might overextend themselves with the expectation that they, too, will someday not have to repay part or all of their loans.Only current borrowers are eligible for forgiveness of loans fully disbursed by June 30, Mayotte said in an interview. “We’ve opened Pandora’s box,” she said.In the last five years, Mayotte said she’s seen a trend of borrowers assuming they won’t have to pay back their loans.Mayotte said she received an email from a woman in her mid-70s who decided to return to college to get a master’s degree, racking up $100,000 in education debt.“She said, ‘I want to know how I can get forgiveness because I’m old,’” Mayotte said. “It would never occur to somebody that their car loans would be forgiven. It would never occur to somebody that their credit card debt would be forgiven other than through bankruptcy.”Mayotte said she favors forgiveness but is concerned that some people will take it as a sign of future debt relief and borrow under that assumption.Biden’s announcement this past week could lure families sending their kids off to college into taking on too much debt. And it doesn’t deal with the underlying issue: the high cost of college. Many families don’t shop for college as they do for other major expenditures, Mayotte said. This is something I’ve observed as well. The college choice becomes emotional, with parents and students willing to take on an uncomfortable amount of debt. As a parent who has been stung many times by overpromising something to my children, here’s a warning: Don’t take on future student loan debt you can’t afford in anticipation that it will be wiped out. This has to be said given the euphoria of people desperate to find out when they might get some, if not all, of their student loans forgiven. The news of the debt cancellation understandably crashed the federal government’s studentaid.gov website. Millions of folks have been hoping for this relief. When I tried to access the site, I was put in an online waiting room with a notice that said, “StudentAid.gov is experiencing high volumes of visitors. You will be able to proceed to the site momentarily. Thanks for your patience!”’
Why I Left Academia (Since You’re Wondering) - William Deresiewicz, Quilette - If I care so much about college—about students, about teaching, about the humanities, about the transformative potential of the undergraduate experience—then why did I leave? Why, in 2008, after 10 years on the faculty at Yale, did I say goodbye not only to that institution but to the profession as a whole? A lot of people have asked me that question; a lot more have assumed they know the answer. Did I quit in disgust at the corruption of the academic enterprise? Could I no longer bear to participate in the perpetuation of the class system? If I didn’t get tenure at Yale, did I regard it as beneath my dignity to work at a less prestigious institution? No, no, and no. Here’s why I left: I didn’t have a choice. I not only failed to get tenure at Yale—which was completely expected—I failed to land another job anywhere else. Let me explain how it works. When you are hired as an assistant professor, after you complete your PhD, at a leading research institution like Yale, the hope is not that you’ll get tenure down the line. That almost never happens; for tenure at a top school, you need to stand among the foremost leaders in your field, and very few people are capable of establishing that kind of reputation in the space of six years. No, the hope is that you’ll stay awhile, publish, then jump to another job somewhere else, somewhere that will tenure you. That’s exactly what I saw among the junior faculty who preceded me in the English department. They got jobs at places like Northwestern, Northeastern, Smith, UNC, and the University of Kentucky. And that is what I thought that I would do, as well.That I failed was not for lack of trying. Once I had finished a book and gotten it accepted for publication (this was in my sixth year), I went back on the job market. I received a few interviews, but no offers. Then I went back the next year. And the next year. And the next. (Yale had an anomalous system; you could stay for a maximum of 10 years rather than the usual seven, with promotion to untenured associate after the sixth.) Here is a list of the schools I applied to: […]That’s 39 schools and 46 applications. Prestigious universities, public and private; non-prestigious universities, public and private; Canadian universities; liberal arts colleges. Institutions in the Northeast, the Midwest, the South, the West, and north of the border; schools urban, suburban, and rural. I would’ve gone just about anywhere. But with all that work and all that hope, I got a total of five interviews, two callbacks (the final stage in the hiring process), and zero offers.With a name like Yale on my CV, plus a decent publication record, I must have really screwed things up to have experienced such dismal fortune. And I did. Oh, I did.Let’s go back..
U Of Texas Endowment Blows Past Yale, Challenges Harvard As Richest In Nation, Thanks To Oil Investments - While ivy league universities like Harvard are busy virtue signaling about how they won't be including fossil fuel investments in their endowments, one university has been ignoring the ESG pressure - and has seen its endowment rise to the second largest in the nation as a result. In fact, not only is the University of Texas ignoring ESG guidelines in their investments, they actually "make about $6 million off a mineral-rich swath of land [they] manage in the US’s largest oil field," Bloomberg wrote this week. It leases the land to drillers, including ConocoPhillips, Continental Resources, and about 250 other oil companies, the report says. That land is set to post its best-ever annual revenue numbers this year as oil production soars. The incoming revenue is going to push the University of Texas' monster $42.9 billion endowment closer to Harvard's country-leading $53.2 billion. William Goetzmann, a professor of finance and management studies at Yale University’s School of Management, told Bloomberg: “The University of Texas has a cash windfall when everyone is looking at a potential cash crunch. Adjusting your portfolio for social concerns is not costless.” Harvard's endowment is expected to show losses this year, the report says, and its annualized 10 year returns as of June 2021 are "among the lowest of its peers" in the Ivy League. Yale used to be the second largest endowment, but it was passed last year by the University of Texas as oil prices rose.
Arkansas can’t ban treatment of transgender kids, court says - A federal appeals court on Thursday said Arkansas can’t enforce its ban on transgender children receiving gender affirming medical care. A three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a judge’s ruling temporarily blocking the state from enforcing the 2021 law. A trial is scheduled for October before the same judge on whether to permanently block the law. Arkansas was the first state to enact such a ban, which prohibits doctors from providing gender confirming hormone treatment, puberty blockers or surgery to anyone under 18 years old, or from referring them to other providers for the treatment. There are no doctors who perform gender affirming surgery on minors in the state. “Because the minor’s sex at birth determines whether or not the minor can receive certain types of medical care under the law, Act 626 discriminates on the basis of sex,” the court’s ruling Thursday said. The American Civil Liberties Union challenged the law on behalf of four transgender youth and their families, as well as two doctors who provide gender confirming treatments. Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson vetoed the ban last year, but GOP lawmakers overrode him to enact the law. Multiple medical groups, including the American Medical Association, oppose the ban and have said the care is safe if properly administered. The Justice Department has also opposed the ban as unconstitutional. Arkansas argued that the restriction is within the state’s authority to regulate medical practices. An attorney for the ACLU told the appeals panel in June that reinstating the restriction would create uncertainty for families around the state. Hutchinson vetoed the ban following pleas from pediatricians, social workers and the parents of transgender youth who said the measure would harm a community already at risk for depression and suicide. Hutchinson said the law went too far, especially since it wouldn’t exempt youth already receiving the care.
Some Rural Hospitals Are in Such Bad Shape, Local Governments Are Practically Giving Them Away -At a hospital in this rural community about a 90-minute drive northwest from Nashville, the X-ray machine is beyond repair.“This system is so old, it’s been using a floppy disk,” said Kyle Kopec, 23, marveling at the bendy black square that hardly has enough memory to hold a single digital photo. “I’ve never actually seen a floppy disk in use. I’ve seen them in the Smithsonian.”Not only is Kopec young, he had limited work experience in hospitals before helping lead a buying spree by Braden Health. His prior work experience includes a three-month stint as an intern in the Trump White House, on assignment through his volunteer position in the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary. He worked his way through college at Braden Health’s clinic in Ave Maria, Florida, and became a protégé of Dr. Beau Braden, the company’s founder. Now Kopec’s official title is chief compliance officer, second in command to Braden.The hospitals Braden Health is taking over sit in one of the worst spots in one of the worst states for rural hospital closures. Tennessee has experienced 16 closures since 2010 — second only to the far more populous state of Texas, which has had at least 21 closures.The local governments that own these facilities are finding that remarkably few companies — with any level of experience — are interested in buying them. And those that are willing don’t want to pay much, if anything.“When you’re on the ropes or even got your head under water, it’s really difficult to negotiate with any terms of strength,” said Michael Topchik, director of the Chartis Center for Rural Health, which tracks distressed rural hospitals closely. “And so you, oftentimes, are choosing whoever is willing to choose you.”At this point, large health systems have acquired or affiliated with the hospitals that have the fewest problems, Topchik said. And what’s left has been picked over by operators, some of which have gotten in trouble with insurers and even law enforcement for shady billing practices. “You can make it profitable,” Topchik said. “But it takes an awful lot to get there.”
Report: 16 Million Working-Age Americans Have Long COVID, Keeping Up to 4 Million Out of Work --Long COVID-19 is keeping between 2 million and 4 million Americans out of work, resulting in about $170 billion in lost wages annually, according to a new report. The report from the Brookings Institution estimates that 16 million “working-age” Americans between the ages of 18-65 currently have long COVID. "If long COVID patients don't begin recovering at greater rates, the economic burden will continue to rise," the report said. The estimate for lost wages “does not represent the full economic burden of long COVID, because it does not include impacts such as the lower productivity of people working while ill, the significant health care costs patients incur or the lost productivity of caretakers,” according to the report. With 10.7 million unfilled jobs in the U.S. as of June, the report’s high-end estimate would mean that long COVID is potentially responsible for over a third of the labor shortage. COVID-19 cases in the U.S. are hovering at an average of about 90,000 new infections per day – a number that is certainly an underestimate due to the use of at-home tests. With so many infections and reinfections, the number of people who suffer from long COVID shows no signs of slowing, and experts say the resources to handle the tens of millions of Americans with long COVID are insufficient. “These impacts stand to worsen over time if the U.S. does not take the necessary policy actions,” the report said. The report identifies five government interventions to “mitigate both the economic costs and household financial impact of long COVID:” better prevention and treatment options, expanded paid sick leave, improved workplace accommodations, wider access to disability insurance and enhanced data collection on long COVID’s economic effects. Long COVID is a “wide range of new, returning or ongoing health problems people can experience four or more weeks after first being infected with the virus that causes COVID-19,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Estimates of the prevalence of long COVID vary, but the high numbers signal that the condition will continue to be a challenge for public health policy and the economy. Federal government estimates found that nearly 1 in 5 adults who have had COVID-19 in the past were still experiencing at least one symptom of long COVID – fatigue, shortness of breath, brain fog, chest pain and headaches among others – as of mid-June. The number jumps to more than 1 in 3 when considering adults who have experienced the condition at any point in the pandemic after COVID-19 infection. A separate study recently found that about 1 in 8 adults who get infected with the coronavirus will develop symptoms of long COVID-19, though it didn’t include some symptoms – like brain fog – that have since been associated with long COVID.
Penn State receives $1.6 million grant to study the link between COVID-19 and cognitive decline - As populations around the globe age, dementia -; often caused by Alzheimer's disease and related disorders -; is a growing health issue for older adults worldwide. Although it may not seem like COVID-19 has much in common with these disorders, Penn State College of Medicine researchers say that these diseases may be linked to each other.A $1.6 million grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke will support research into whether COVID-19 contributes to the development of cognitive decline that may be part of the chain of events leading to dementia. Epidemiologists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that just under one third of all COVID-19 cases have occurred in individuals aged 50 years and older. This same group also is at increased risk for either having or developing a neurodegenerative disease. COVID-19 patients often report neurological symptoms like memory issues, "brain fog," and loss of smell and taste -; with some symptoms lasting months after diagnosis. Some research also suggests that these patients are at higher risk of being diagnosed with dementia following their acute infection. These and other reports have led to scientific speculation that COVID-19 infections may be contributing to premature cognitive decline, said the researchers. In the same way that loss of smell has signaled COVID-19 infection for some individuals, some scientists theorize that loss of smell also signals the beginning of neurodegenerative processes that lead to both Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases. This may come from a person's continued exposure to viruses and environmental toxicants that enter via the olfactory system (nose and nasal passages) -; a concept known as the olfactory vector hypothesis of neurodegenerative disease. SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is one example of a virus that enters the body via the olfactory system.The research team will collect information about COVID-19 infection history, vaccination status, ongoing environmental toxin exposure, medical history and other lifestyle factors from more than 500 participants of their past and ongoing research studies -; some with Parkinson's disease and related disorders and some who are healthy. Huang's team has data from these participants that were collected before the current pandemic. The team will use MRI brain scans to identify possible changes in brain anatomy similar to those that occur in Parkinson's disease, and also look for blood markers that occur in neurodegeneration.
First two years of the COVID-19 pandemic caused excess deaths in the United States - In a recent study posted to the medRxiv* pre-print server, researchers used seasonal autoregressive integrated moving averages (sARIMA) to estimate excess mortality, defined as the difference between the number of observed and expected deaths in the United States (US). The scientists calculated excess mortality stratified by age, region, gender, and ethnicity during the first two years of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. A detailed evaluation of all-cause excess mortality, defined as the difference between the number of observed and expected deaths in the US during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, stratified by age, sex, region, and ethnicity can provide an accurate representation of the population-level effects of the pandemic.In the present study, researchers retrieved the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) data from 2014-2022 to estimate excess mortality in the US during the first two years of the pandemic between March 1, 2020, and February 28, 2022. Additionally, they applied sARIMA to monthly mortality data between January 2015 and February 2020 to project the monthly number of expected deaths for March 1, 2020-February 28, 2022, normalizing the difference in days for each month.The researchers divided the two-year study period into six periods before determining expected deaths for each of the four US Census Bureaus by summing estimates from the nine US Census Divisions, determined by age and gender subgroup projections. Next, they added 72 components to create US-level estimates. For the ethnicity analysis, adequate data for monthly projects were available for non-Hispanic Black, non-Hispanic White, and Hispanic populations.For US-level ethnicity estimates, they summed 24 parts, with eight sARIMAs for each of the three ethnicity groups, in the age bands zero to 17, 18 to 49, 50 to 64, and ≥65 by gender. The team modeled state-level estimates reflecting the summation of age-specific component models for 37 states and inadequate age-specific data without age stratification for 14 states.The study highlighted the distinct regional and age-specific changes in all-cause excess mortality in the US during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. Regarding age-related effects, excess mortality from the ≥65-year-old demographic first transiently decreased. However, their share of deaths soon became the majority again, as younger groups began to receive vaccinations. Another likely reason was that the Delta variant decreased vaccine effectiveness against severe disease in older populations. Only during April and May 2021, adults ages 50-64 years i.e., a non-geriatric demographic, represented most of the excess mortality during the pandemic.Region-wise, the South suffered the most mortality burden from the pandemic, with 507,454 excess deaths, representing 22% higher than expected, than the Midwest, which had 17% higher than expected excess deaths. Indeed, the share of the South increased later in the pandemic period. Although the Northeast suffered more early in the pandemic, with a 20% increase in excess mortality, the South exceeded the Northeast, especially as vaccines became available, as also observed during national surveys evaluating vaccine adoption data.The study tracked the excess mortality toll with the infection waves, unbiased by labels of the cause of death. Thus, the results indicated that the excess deaths were related to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and were not a by-product of societal changes. Unfortunately, the pandemic also worsened the impact of structural racism in the US. The excess deaths were higher than the historical death rates observed in these groups, with the excess death rate of 458.3 per 100,000 in Black people and 298 per 100,000 in Hispanic people.In summary, the study results showed a more than 20% increase in all-cause deaths in the United States, resulting in nearly 1.2 million more deaths than expected in the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some age and ethnic groups suffered disproportionately; for instance, the young people, non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic people, and those living in the South showed a higher deviation in all-cause deaths relative to the historic US standards. Therefore, future pandemic planning should focus on mitigating the overall harm due to COVID-19 by specifically addressing populations at the highest risk.
New York experiences sharpest drop in life expectancy in the US - New data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Tuesday showed New York experienced the largest drop in life expectancy in the nation for its residents in 2020. The life expectancy for New Yorkers dropped by 3% from an average age of 80.7 in 2019 to 77.7 in 2020. The shocking 3-year drop represented the sharpest decrease between the years out of all 50 states and the District of Columbia, according to the CDC’s new National Vital Statistics Report. On the opposite side of the spectrum, Hawaii saw the smallest decline in life expectancy in 2020 – just .2% from 80.9 years to 80.7 years.In 2020, the Empire State placed 15 nationwide for life expectancy – Hawaii came in first regarding where people lived the longest – about 80.7 years, while Mississippi ranked last with a 71.9 average. Every state in the country and Washington, D.C., experienced a drop in life expectancy in 2020, mainly due to the sudden introduction of COVID-19 and “unintentional injuries,” such as drug overdoses, according to the report. But experts only anticipated a 1-year decline in New York, describing the 3-year drop in life expectancy as a “phenomenal change,” according to FOX 5 NY.
SARS-CoV-2 has evolved to make you sick, quicker -In a recent JAMA Network Open study, researchers systematically review existing data to assess the incubation periods of different severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) variants of concern (VOCs). Previous studies have estimated the mean SARS-CoV-2 infection incubation period; however, the reported incubation estimates vary based on the sample size, study design, data extraction period, and nations where the studies were conducted. Additionally, the incubation periods of SARS-CoV-2 Delta and Omicron VOCs differ from that caused by the ancestral Wuhan-Hu-1 or wild-type (WT) strain.A total of 5,012 records were identified in the databases, of which only 142 studies comprising 8,112 COVID-19 patients were considered for the final quantitative or meta-analysis. Of those included, 45, 82, and 15 studies were of strong, moderate, and weak quality, respectively. About 76% of the included studies were conducted in China, with 66% published between January and March 2020.Six, four, and three studies were conducted in South Korea, France, and Japan, respectively, whereas two studies were conducted in Singapore, India, Vietnam, and Australia. About 84% of the studies comprised patients the ancestral WT strain infections, 3.5% included patients with different strain infections, and 7.7% included patients with unknown strain SARS-CoV-2 infections.The overall pooled COVID-19 incubation period was 6.6 days and ranged from 1.8 and 18.9 days. Comparatively, the incubation periods of SARS-CoV-2 infections caused by the Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Omicron VOCs were documented in one, one, six, and five studies, respectively.The average incubation periods of SARS-CoV-2 infections were five, 4.5, 4.4, and 3.4 days for those caused by the Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Omicron VOCs, respectively. The average COVID-19 incubation periods were 7.4 days among individuals over the age of 60 years and 8.8 days among children younger than 18 years, 7.0 days among individuals with non-severe COVID-19, and 6.7 days among severe COVID-19 patients.COVID-19 incubation periods among elder individuals may be longer than the pooled incubation period due to slower and weaker type 1 interferon (IFN) immunological responses among elders. In addition, the lack of fever responses, non-specificity of illness presentations, and the presence of multiple comorbidities may contribute to delayed COVID-19 detection among older adults.COVID-19 incubation periods were shorter than the pooled period of COVID-19 incubation in children. This may be attributed to the fact that SARS-CoV-2-infected children typically present with mild COVID-19 symptoms without classical pulmonary pneumonia phenotype. Thus, COVID-19 symptoms could be confused with other diseases, thereby making COVID-19 difficult to detect in children.Nevertheless, children can transmit SARS-CoV-2 during the incubation period and may not accurately express COVID-19 symptoms. COVID-19 incubation periods were shorter than the pooled incubation period in severe SARS-CoV-2 infections, which may be related to the number of cells infected with SARS-CoV-2 in the initial stages.Overall, the study findings highlight SARS-CoV-2 evolution and the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants with differently enhanced virulence and transmissibility. Furthermore, COVID-19 incubation periods were gradually reduced from the Alpha VOC to the Omicron VOC.Evaluating the incubation periods of COVID-19 caused by different SARS-CoV-2 VOCs is essential to determine appropriate quarantine periods.
Regular physical activity may lessen Covid risks, study finds -Regular exercise lowers your risk of developing Covid-19 or falling seriously ill with the disease, with about 20 minutes a day providing the greatest benefit, a global analysis of data suggests.Regular physical activity is linked to a lower risk of Covid-19 infection, severity, hospitalisation and death, according to the new pooled data analysis of the available evidence published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.A weekly total of 150 minutes of moderate-intensity or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity physical activity appears to afford the best protection, the study suggests.“Regular physical activity seems to be related to a lower likelihood of adverse Covid-19 outcomes,” the team of Spanish researchers wrote. “Our analysis reveals that individuals who engage in regular physical activity have a lower likelihood of Sars-CoV-2 infection, Covid-19 hospitalisation, severe Covid-19 illness and Covid-19-related death than physically inactive individuals, independent of design and instrument used.”Experts know that regular exercise has a protective effect against the severity of respiratory infections.Regular physical activity is associated with a range of health benefits, including the reduction of the incidence of risk factors for adverse Covid-19 outcomes such as being obese or having type 2 diabetes.Due to the limitations of the analysis, however, the findings should be interpreted with caution, the researchers said.Previous research suggests that physical activity can lessen both the risk and severity of respiratory infections due at least in part to its ability to boost the immune system.
Research reveals cetylpyridinium chloride in mouthwash shows anti-SARS-CoV-2 effects - A recent study published in Scientific Reports has demonstrated the antiviral effectiveness of cetylpyridinium chloride against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection. Cetylpyridinium chloride is an ammonium compound commonly present in mouthwash. The study examined the antiviral effect of cetylpyridinium chloride on a range of SARS-CoV-2 strains, including wild-type SARS-CoV-2 and alpha, beta, and gamma variants. The plaque assay was conducted to examine viral infectivity in the presence and absence of the compound. The findings revealed that cetylpyridinium chloride at low concentrations (5 – 40 µg/ml) significantly suppresses the infectivity of all tested SARS-CoV-2 strains in a dose-dependent manner. The tested concentrations were lower than that used in commercially available mouthwash (50 µg/ml). The study highlights the potency of cetylpyridinium chloride in inhibiting SARS-CoV-2 and its variants even at low concentrations. The antiviral activity of the compound remains unchanged in human saliva. The study has tested the antiviral efficacy of a commercial mouthwash that contains a similar concentration of cetylpyridinium chloride as used in the study. The mouthwash exhibits similar or even better antiviral efficacy than pure cetylpyridinium chloride solution. This indicates that the other ingredients present in the mouthwash do not interfere with the anti-SARS-CoV-2 activity of cetylpyridinium chloride. Regarding mode of action, the study suggests that cetylpyridinium chloride exerts anti-SARS-CoV-2 activity most probably by denaturing viral proteins and not by disrupting lipid membrane. Overall, the study indicates that cetylpyridinium chloride-containing products can be used as a preventive measure to reduce the transmission rate and progression of SARS-CoV-2 infection. An ongoing clinical study is examining the effect of cetylpyridinium chloride on SARS-CoV-2viral load in the saliva of COVID-19 patients.
BA.5, BA.4.6 COVID variants continue US expansion | CIDRAP - Two Omicron subvariants continued to slowly spread in the United States, almost completely edging out BA.2, which became dominant in the spring, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said today in its latest update. BA.5 now accounts for 88.9% of sequenced samples, up slightly from 88% the previous week. Also, BA.4.6, which first gained traction in the central Midwest, gained more ground and now accounts for 6.3% of sequenced samples, up from 5.3% the week before. The central midwestern states, which include Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska, were the first to see growing proportions of BA.4.6 and are still seeing the highest percentage, with the subvariant making up nearly 16% of samples. However, the proportions of the subvariant are higher than the national average in eastern and southeastern states. As school resumes in some parts of the country, the trend with pediatric COVID-19 infections continues to fluctuate, as has the pattern for the general US population over the summer. In its latest weekly update, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) said nearly 80,000 infections in kids were reported over the past week, down for the second week in a row. The nation's 7-day average for new daily cases continues to fall slowly and is at 92,602, the lowest since mid-May, according to the New York Times tracker. The 7-day average for new daily deaths is 459. Following emergency use authorization (EUA) of mRNA COVID-19 vaccine in children as young as 6 months, Pfizer and BioNTech today updated its efficacy findings as part of an ongoing phase 2/3 trial of its three-dose primary series for kids aged 6 months through 4 years. Overall, the study suggests 73.2% efficacy, reinforcing initial findings. Pfizer said efficacy remained above 70% for kids under 2 and those ages 2 through 4 years. From sequencing of observed cases, most were the BA.2 Omicron virus. It said very few BA.4 and BA.5 cases occurred during the study period, leaving results against those subvariants inconclusive.
SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern emerging from chronic COVID infections, study shows --The coronavirus variants of concern are emerging from chronic, long-term COVID infections in people who may be immune comprised and unable to clear the virus, a new study strongly suggests. Frontiers in Virology published the findings by scientists at Emory University and the University of Oxford."Rather than evolving from transmission chains of acute COVID infections in hundreds of millions of people, our results show that the variants of concern come from rare cases when someone may have an active infection for months," says Daniel Weissman, a corresponding author and Emory professor of biology and physics focused on quantitative evolutionary theory.A key take-home message is that it is important to find these individuals who are chronically infected and provide support for them to recover. In many cases they may be asymptomatic and not even realize that they are infected with COVID although they are actively shedding the virus."Viruses like SARS-CoV-2 continuously evolve due to occasional mutations in the genetic code that may occur when they replicate. "When a virus copies itself, it doesn't always make perfect copies," Weissman explains. Usually, such random mutations do not benefit the virus or raise the concerns of scientists monitoring these changes. Occasionally, however, the mutations result in a variant of the virus that may make it more transmissible, more difficult to detect and treat, and even more lethal. The World Health Organization defines a SARS-CoV-2 variant of concern as one that is more likely to cause infections even in those who are vaccinated or in those who were previously infected. "During the first few months of the pandemic, it didn't look like the coronavirus was going to adapt into a variant of concern," Weissman says. "But then, boom, boom, boom! Not only did the coronavirus evolve into VOCs, it did it three times in quick succession in late 2020." The World Health Organization dubbed these first three variants of concern alpha, beta and gamma. Why had all three of these VOCs emerged at roughly the same time and apparently in three far-flung areas of the world? Another mystery was why large clusters of mutations occurred in the VOCs. "A key element that distinguished these VOCs from other lineages of virus that were circulating is that each of them has a vastly elevated number of mutations," Ghafari notes. "That's a major distinction point in evolutionary terms." Related Stories SARS-CoV-2 prime and booster vaccinations found to improve pregnancy and birth outcomes Researchers assess lutein nanodisks against ultraviolet light-induced retinal damage The risk of adverse reactions when herbal medications are taken with cancer drugs At least some of the mutations from the VOC had been detected in chronic cases of COVID, leading to the hypothesis that these long-term cases may be the source of the VOCs. The other main theory was that VOCs were emerging from sustained transmission of acute infections in areas of the world with poor genomic surveillance of the virus. Ghafari, Weissman and their collaborators were among the first teams to methodically test these theories surrounding the emergence of the alpha, beta and gamma VOCs. The researchers built a mechanistic, theoretical model to study the problem, using existing data and software they developed. The resulting model rules out the theory that the VOCs emerged from sustained transmission of acute infections and fully supports the theory that each variant evolved within a single individual with a chronic infection. The model shows how multiple mutations were needed, each of which may have been either neutral or slightly advantageous to viral fitness. In this way, a variant eventually acquires a constellation of mutations that allow it to become more transmissible. Although the current paper drew from data for the alpha, beta and gamma variants, the resulting theoretical model also explains the later independent emergence of the delta and omicron VOCs. Delta emerged in India in late 2020, rapidly sweeping through that country and spreading around the world. Delta subsided after omicron, which is not a descendent of the delta variant, emerged in South Africa in late 2021. Omicron quickly became the dominant global VOC.
Study finds Pfizer's antiviral has little or even zero benefit for younger adults, and WHO says BA.5 omicron subvariant accounted for 74% of cases in latest week -Paxlovid, the COVID-19 antiviral drug Pfizer, appears to offer little to no benefit to young people, although it does reduce the risk of hospitalization or death in older people, according to a new Israeli study. Data from a study involving 109,000 patients may raise questions about the US government’s use of Paxlovid, which has become a mainstream treatment for COVID-19 due to its convenience at home, according to The Associated Press.The Biden administration has spent more than $10 billion buying the drug and making it available in thousands of pharmacies as part of its “test and treat” initiative. Biden himself took Paxlovid during his recent fight against COVID.The researchers found that Paxlovid reduced hospital admissions among people aged 65 years and older by about 75% when taken shortly after infection. This is consistent with earlier results that were used to weight drug authorization in the US and other countries. But people aged 40 to 65 saw no measurable benefit, according to an analysis of medical records. The study has limitations due to its design, which collects data from a large Israeli healthcare system, rather than enrolling patients in a randomized controlled trial, the gold standard for medical research.“Paxlovid will remain important for people at highest risk for severe COVID-19, such as the elderly and people with weakened immune systems,” said Dr. David Bulvar, a researcher and physician at the University of Minnesota who was not involved in the study. AP. “But for the vast majority of Americans who are now eligible, it really doesn’t do much good.”Arepresentative of Pfizer declined to comment on the results, which were published in the New England Journal of Medicine.The news comes as the number of known U.S. cases of COVID-19 continues to decline, although the true numbers are likely higher than reported given how many people are being tested at home and no data is being collected.On Wednesday, the average daily number of new cases was 91,383, down 16% from two weeks ago, according to the New York Times tracker. The average daily hospitalization rate decreased by 8% to 39,443, and the average daily death rate decreased by 4% to 458.The World Health Organization said the number of deaths worldwide in the week to August 21 was down 9% from a week earlier, with deaths down 15%.The agency’s weekly epidemiological update showed that the BA.5 omicron variant has become dominant worldwide, accounting for 74% of cases sequenced into the global database, up from 71% a week ago.Overall, omicron variants accounted for 99% of the sequences reported worldwide in the past 30 days.
‘Most have thrown their hands up’: has the US forgotten about Covid? - Despite signs that indicate the latest Covid-19 surge is slowing down, an average of 400 deaths in the US is still reported on a daily basis. Various mask and social distancing mandates across the country are becoming anything but strictly enforced. ‘But as Americans and many of their elected officials go about their daily lives, many healthcare professionals still on the frontlines of the pandemic and severely affected Covid-19 patients are left wondering whether the rest of us are moving too quickly from the worst days of the pandemic.Have we simply forgotten about Covid-19?Data obtained earlier this month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reveals that the rate of new infections has been decreasing, with the country reporting an average of 107,000 new cases a day. This marks a 12% decrease compared to infection rates two weeks ago.Even though hospital admission rates have been increasing across the US this summer as a result of highly infectious variants, the amount of patients currently hospitalized with Covid-19 has plateaued at 43,000 patients,according to the Department of Health and Human Services. By contrast, more than 160,000 virus-positive patients were hospitalized during last winter’s surge. Nevertheless, the daily average of 400 deaths across the country since spring remain a concerning figure for healthcare officials.
Study suggests inclusion of the Omicron BA.5 strain in a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine would be beneficial in protection against this widely circulating variant --In a recent study posted to the medRxiv* preprint server, researchers explored neutralizing antibodies against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Omicron BA.1, BA.2, and BA.5 lineage infected patients.The team observed that 80 patients were unvaccinated, 100 patients were vaccinated with the COVID-19 messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) vaccines, and seven received the adenovirus vector vaccine before infection. The study results showed that unvaccinated SARS-CoV-2 Delta-infected individuals displayed a high neutralizing antibody response against the infecting Delta strain. Additionally, the Delta patients showed comparatively six-fold lower titers against WA1, 60-fold lower against BA.1, and 22-fold against BA.2. On the other hand, vaccinated patients exhibited neutralization titers that were comparable between WA1 and Delta. This indicated that memory B cells were released due to the WA1 vaccine. Furthermore, the neutralization titers were 17-fold lower against BA.1 and nine-fold against BA.2. Overall, the findings indicated that vaccinated and unvaccinated Delta patients elicited remarkably lower neutralizing titers against Omicron.The team also noted a distinct pattern among Omicron-infected individuals irrespective of their corresponding vaccination status, with a more robust neutralizing antibody response elicited against BA.1 and BA.2 infections. Although there were some differences between individual samples, a clear trend was observed depicting a more balanced and broader antibody response with neutralization titers comparable to that of BA.1, BA.2, and Delta.Moreover, while neutralization titers elicited against vaccine strain, WA1 was considerably higher than that of BA.1 and BA.2 variants among vaccinated Omicron-infected patients. Furthermore, the ratio of neutralization titers of BA.1 to that of WA1 was higher among Omicron patients than Delta patients from both vaccinated and unvaccinated cohorts.Moreover, among the Omicron-infected patients, the team observed detectable levels of neutralization of BA.5, which was lower than BA.1 and BA.2 in the vaccinated and unvaccinated cohorts. The noted reduction in neutralization activity against BA.5 infection in patients infected with BA.1 or BA.2 accounted for the inclusion of BA.5 in the COVID-19 vaccine. Overall, the study findings showed that SARS-CoV-2 Omicron infection of vaccinated or unvaccinated patients elicited a more balanced and proportional neutralizing antibody response to Omicron lineages, thus supporting the inclusion of Omicron lineage strain in the COVID-19 vaccine.
Pfizer Asks FDA to Authorize Updated COVID-19 Booster Shot That Targets Omicron Variant - Pfizer on Monday announced that it completed an application to the Food and Drug Administration for an omicron-specific COVID-19 booster shot for the majority of Americans. The company along with its partner BioNTech applied for an emergency use authorization for the shot designed to combat the omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 for everyone ages 12 and older. “Having rapidly scaled up production, we are positioned to immediately begin distribution of the bivalent Omicron BA.4/BA.5 boosters, if authorized, to help protect individuals and families as we prepare for potential fall and winter surges,” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said in a statement. BA.4 and BA.5 were responsible for more than 93% of new COVID-19 infections as of last week, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. FDA’s vaccine committee in June agreed that a change to COVID-19 vaccines that were designed for the original strain is necessary, with many citing waning immunity paired with rapidly emerging coronavirus variants as reasons for the decision. “Pre-clinical data showed a booster dose of Pfizer and BioNTech's Omicron BA.4/BA.5-adapted bivalent vaccine generated a strong neutralizing antibody response against Omicron BA.1, BA.2 and BA.4/BA.5 variants, as well as the original wild-type strain,” Pfizer said in a press release on Monday. A clinical study of the shot’s safety, tolerability and immunogenicity in individuals ages 12 and older is expected to start this month. The Biden administration has been gearing up for a fall vaccination campaign with the updated shots. Ashish Jha, the White House COVID-19 response coordinator, said last week that the shots will be available to teens and adults "in a few short weeks,” adding that they should "work much better at preventing infection transmission and serious illness" than the current vaccines. But experts aren’t sure how many people will be willing to get the shots, considering the majority of Americans are undervaccinated and only a third of people ages 50 and older who are eligible for a second coronavirus booster shot have gotten one.
Pfizer asks FDA to greenlight new omicron booster shots, which could arrive this fall - The U.S. is one step closer to having new COVID-19 booster shots available as soon as this fall. On Monday, the drugmakers Pfizer and BioNTech announced that they've asked the Food and Drug Administration to authorize an updated version of their COVID-19 vaccine — this one designed specifically to target the omicron subvariants that are dominant in the U.S. More than 90% of cases are caused by the BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants, which took off this summer, but the vaccines being used were designed for the original coronavirus strain from several years ago. Pfizer and BioNTech said they have submitted pre-clinical data on vaccine efficacy to the FDA, but did not share the data publicly. The new "bivalent" booster — meaning it's a mix of two versions of the vaccine — will target both the original coronavirus strain and the BA.4 and BA.5 omicron subvariants. If the vaccine is authorized by the FDA, distribution could start "immediately" to help the country prepare for potential fall and winter surges of the coronavirus, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said in a statement.
Pfizer says its COVID shots are 73 percent effective in children under 5 -Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine was 73 percent effective in protecting children younger than 5 as omicron spread in the spring, the company announced Tuesday. Vaccinations for babies, toddlers and preschoolers opened in the U.S. in June after months of delay. Only about 6 percent of youngsters ages 6 months through 4 years had gotten at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine by mid-August, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Health authorities authorities authorized tot-sized vaccine doses made by Pfizer and its partner BioNTech based on a study showing they were safe and produced high levels of virus-fighting antibodies. But there was only preliminary data on how that translated into effectiveness against symptomatic COVID-19. The new update analyzed COVID-19 diagnoses between March and June in Pfizer’s ongoing study of the three-dose vaccine. There were 21 COVID-19 cases among the 351 tots who got dummy shots — compared to just 13 among the 794 youngsters given three vaccine doses. The child cases primarily were caused by the BA.2 omicron version that was circulating at the time. Today, another omicron relative, BA.5, is causing most COVID-19 cases in the U.S. and much of the world. In older children and adults, the COVID-19 vaccines have been used long enough to prove that they remain strongly protective against severe disease and death even as the coronavirus mutates — while early protection against infection wanes. Still, scientists track that initial effectiveness rate as extra evidence of vaccine performance — and to look for signs of how they initially hold up against new mutants. Pfizer this week asked U.S. regulators to authorize modified vaccine doses that better match the newest omicron variants for people 12 and older as boosters this fall. The company said it also is developing updated shots for kids under 12.
COVID booster that targets omicron BA.5 under FDA review -Pfizer and German partner BioNTech have submitted their new COVID-19 booster – that targets the omicron subvariant BA.5 – to the Food and Drug Administration for emergency use authorization, the companies announced Monday. If the vaccine is authorized, Pfizer has “rapidly scaled up production” to immediately begin distribution “to help protect individuals and families as we prepare for potential and winter surges," Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said in a news release. The new boosters may be available “in a few short weeks” to anyone over the age of 12, said White House COVID-19 coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha in an interview with NBC News. How the new booster targets omicron subvariant BA.5 The updated booster is a bivalent vaccine containing mRNA from the original SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, which is already present in Pfizer’s first COVID-19 vaccine, combined with mRNA from the spike protein of the omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariant. The BA.5 subvariant makes up nearly 90% of new COVID-19 cases in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Given the ongoing evolution of SARS-CoV-2 and its variants, it’s of great importance that vaccines can be rapidly adapted to the major circulating omicron lineages,” said Dr. Ugur Sahin, BioNTech's CEO and co-founder. Members of the FDA’s advisory panel supported targeting omicron’s BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants in June after Pfizer had already tested a new version of its vaccine against the original omicron variant, BA.1. Those trials showed a vaccine containing both the BA.1 and the original SARS-CoV-2 strain generated up to a 10-fold increase in neutralizing antibodies against omicron, according to a press release in June. The company has tested the BA.5-specific vaccine only on mice, so far, and is relying on data from both the BA.1 human trials and the BA.5 mice trials for their submission for authorization. In the study, eight mice that were given the BA.5 booster dose about 100 days after receiving two doses of Pfizer’s original vaccine generated an immune response. “To rely only on mouse data (for authorization) would be unprecedented in my knowledge and would certainly raise eyebrows,” said John Moore, a vaccine and virology expert at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York. “It doesn’t mimic the human situation,” where many people were vaccinated more than a year ago and have since been boosted. In Monday's release, Pfizer-BioNTech said a clinical study looking at the updated booster in people over 12 will begin this month. A Pfizer spokesperson said data from that trial will be shared with regulators when available.
Secondary Syphilis Presentation and Urticarial Eruption After Moderna COVID-19 Vaccination -ABSTRACT: The diversity of the cutaneous manifestations of syphilis and the ability of the spirochete to evade diagnosis have been well documented by medical literature. However, what triggers the onset of secondary syphilis is not yet clear because of difficulties studying the bacterium. Our case describes the onset of a heterogeneous rash (or coexisting rashes) that presented the day after vaccination with the Moderna mRNA-1273 severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) vaccine. The potential etiologies of the patient’s rash: A vaccine reaction, reactivation of chronic spontaneous urticaria, or a physical sign of syphilis itself are then reviewed. The potential for the Moderna coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine to be the catalyst of this patient’s cutaneous manifestations of his immune system responses is also hypothesized.
Coronavirus dashboard for August 24: the post BA.5 wave respite -- In general, things are headed in the right direction for now in the pandemic. BIobot’s latest wastewater update from one week ago shows a 1/3rd decline in COVID particles nationwide. Here’s the regional breakdown: The West, spearheaded by CA, is down 50%, and the South 33%. The Midwest is down the least, perhaps due to the larger % of BA.4.6 in that area. Speaking of which, here is the CDC’s latest update on variant proportions: There has been virtually no change since one week ago. BA.5 makes up 90% of all cases, with BA.4 4%, and BA.4.6 6%. BA.4.6 makes up 16% of all cases in the Central Plains, up from 14% one week ago: BA.4.6 is not much of a factor elsewhere. With no new significant variant on the horizon at this point, cases have declined by about 1/3rd from their recent peak, to just over 80,000, while deaths (which lag) are still in the 575 range: With the exception of 2 months around mid year 2021, deaths had been above 1000 per day, and as high as 2700 per day, at all times since the start of the pandemic until this past spring. Hospitalizations have also started to decline, down over 15% since their recent peak: If hospitalizations and deaths follow the pattern in cases, hospitalizations should be down to about 32,500 in several weeks, and deaths should gradually decrease back to about 350 thereafter. Finally, some important demographic information. According to a study by the University of Washington, COVID remains a much more serious disease for the elderly, and for the unvaccinated. Here is the population-adjusted breakdown by age and vaccination status of hospitalizations: And here is the breakdown for deaths: The information was not calculated for younger age groups because deaths among them were relatively rare. Dr. Eric Topol also recently tweeted about the importance of older persons updating their vaccinations with booster shots: Hopefully once the Omicron-targeting boosters become available this autumn, the Biden Administration will ramp up exhortations to older persons to become fully boosted. In the meantime, for now there is a relative respite, which should last until either a new, fitter variant arrives, or recently acquired resistance through infection wanes.
COVID Variant Update: BA.5 Remains Dominant, New Subvariant Now 2nd-Most Prevalent – A COVID subvariant descended from the original omicron variant remains the most-prevalent strain of the virus in circulation, but there is a new version of COVID-19 that is now the second-most common in the United States. According to the latest estimates released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday, the BA.4.6 subvariant of COVID is now responsible for an estimated 6.3% of cases in the United States, surpassing the BA.4 variant that it descended from. The BA.4 variant, which began to emerge at around the same time as the BA.5 strain, now makes up 4.3% of U.S. cases, officials estimate. The BA.5 subvariant has been the dominant strain of COVID in the United States since early July, and although its share of cases has continued to increase, its growth has certainly started to slow in recent weeks. In all, the subvariant makes up an estimated 88.9% of cases in the U.S., up from the 88% mark that it achieved last week. According to public health officials, the BA.5 subvariant has shown an increased ability to maneuver around immunity gleaned from previous COVID infections and from the COVID-19 vaccine. It is also significantly more contagious than previous omicron variants.
What is the impact of the SARS-CoV-2 omicron wave in South Africa? - A study published in the journal Science Translational Medicine has described the transmissibility of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), population-level immunity, and the impact of the omicron wave in South Africa.The omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 was detected for the first time in South Africa in November 2021. Before its emergence, South Africa experienced three distinct waves dominated by wildtype SARS-CoV-2 with D614G mutation, beta variant, and delta variant, respectively.Compared to previously circulating viral variants, omicron exhibits a heavily mutated genome, making the variant immunologically superior to evade population-level pre-existing immunity (herd immunity) induced by prior infections and vaccination.In the current study, scientists have determined the long-term dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 in two household groups from a rural and an urban region in South Africa. Both groups were followed over 13 months.Specifically, the scientists have estimated the robustness of cross-reactive immunity induced by consecutive waves of SARS-CoV-2 variants. They have recreated the landscape of herd immunity in South Africa before the emergence of the omicron variant, as well as determined the impact of the omicron wave in the same population. The scientists developed mathematical models to evaluate the trajectory of omicron waves as well as the viral dynamics in the urban region.The model projections revealed that omicron has a growth advantage of 0.338 per day over delta. The basic reproduction number was also higher for omicron. As expected, a higher infection rate was observed during the omicron wave than during previous waves. More than 40% of the omicron infections were expected to be reinfections and vaccine breakthrough infections.Using a reference scenario for Omicron’s immune evasion characteristics, the impact of the omicron wave was estimated. The findings revealed that the ratio of omicron versus delta basic reproduction number is 2.4, the infection rate is 69%, the wave duration is 32 days, and the proportion of reinfections and vaccine breakthroughs is 68%.To understand the robustness of omicron-induced immunity against existing and future variants, mathematical models were developed to project the degree of protection under different exposure conditions (contact rates).Considering the contact rate of the delta wave, the models predicted that the degree of herd immunity would not be sufficient to prevent a recurring omicron epidemic unless previous omicron infections induce robust and durable protection. Considering a 100% higher contact rate, the models predicted that if it reemerged, omicron might cause outbreaks irrespective of the protection induced by prior omicron infections. Overall, these predictions indicate that an induction in contact rates may lead to the emergence of new waves caused by pre-existing or novel viral variants.
King County declares public health emergency over monkeypox outbreak -King County officially declared the local monkeypox outbreak a public health emergency on Friday afternoon, as infections continue to rise in Seattle and other parts of the state. “We are fortunate to have one of the best public health organizations in the nation right here in King County, and today’s action ensures they will have all the tools needed to take on the challenge of monkeypox,” King County Executive Dow Constantine said in a statement. “The health of our community is paramount, and responding quickly and nimbly to monkeypox will help keep more of us safe.” The local emergency proclamation will give Public Health — Seattle & King County more flexibility in hiring and contracting protocols, according to the statement. For example, it allows King County staff to authorize overtime and to make temporary staffing appointments to respond to the emergency. The proclamation went into effect immediately to support efforts to contain the virus, which can cause a rash, fever, headache, muscle aches, swollen lymph nodes and fatigue. It can take up to three weeks after being exposed to the virus before symptoms begin. As of Friday, Washington had counted 333 monkeypox infections, 275 of which were confirmed in King County, according to the state Department of Health. Two weeks ago, the state had confirmed 166 cases. Public health officials have also recorded 21 cases in Pierce County, seven in Snohomish County, five in Spokane County, five in Clark County and four in Yakima County, DOH said.
Japan and the state of the COVID pandemic: Lessons from the BA.5 surge - Considering the forever-COVID policy being adopted by almost every major industrial country across the globe, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus repeated his warning at last week’s press brief, stating, “We’re all tired of this virus and tired of the pandemic, but the virus is not tired of us.” The financial oligarchs and their political lackeys have essentially abrogated all mitigation measures against the continued spread of COVID. They have forced their populations to accept the SARS-CoV-2 virus as a permanent fixture of daily life. Approaching the end of the third year of the COVID pandemic, there have been close to 600 million infections reported, with almost 6.5 million deaths. However, the global excess deaths are fast approaching 23 million or 3.6 times higher than official figures. Though global infection rates are projected officially at around 650,000 per day, current estimates from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) are closer to 13.3 million per day, 20 times as high, underscoring the lack of testing and reporting that has become part and parcel of the efforts to conceal all relevant metrics—and dangers—from the working class. The WHO director-general added that weekly COVID deaths over the last month had reached 15,000, a figure “completely unacceptable when we have all the tools to prevent infections and save lives.” Given the changes in reporting criteria and database dismantling, it is not surprising that excess deaths, according to the Economist’s modeling, are running five to six times higher than official figures. Nonetheless, accepting these conservative official estimates would mean around three-quarter million people will succumb to COVID annually. Placing this figure into context by comparing it to HIV, global annual deaths from HIV are presently about 680,000, and in the last four decades, it has killed 40.1 million people. When weighed against another deadly contemporary pathogen, COVID is not mild by any yardstick. This makes Japan’s case illustrative of the dangers posed by the current deadly policies that have been adopted to ensure national economies remain unfettered by any public health concerns.
U.S. Monkeypox Cases Surpass 15,000, Most of Any Country - More than 15,400 cases of monkeypox have been reported in the U.S., according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It’s the highest total of any country. States that report the most cases include California, Texas, Florida, Georgia, New York and Illinois.Over the last week, the U.S. also saw the largest increase in monkeypox infections of any country, according to data from the World Health Organization.Globally, however, the number of reported new cases decreased last week compared to the week before, according to WHO. The 10 most affected countries are the U.S., Spain, Brazil, Germany, the U.K., France, Canada, the Netherlands, Peru and Portugal.WHO considers monkeypox to be a moderate global health risk. It declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern in July.Monkeypox is mostly spreading through close, physical contact among men who have sex with men, though experts warn that anyone can contract the virus. Symptoms include a rash, fever and headache among other things.Efforts at WHO are underway to rename monkeypox to align the disease name with “best practices.”“Current best practice is that newly-identified viruses, related disease and virus variants should be given names with the aim to avoid causing offense to any cultural, social, national, regional, professional or ethnic groups, and minimize any negative impact on trade, travel, tourism or animal welfare,” WHO said in a press release. Notably, attacks on monkeys have been reported in Brazil, leading WHO to warn against harming animals over the virus. But the name comes from the virus’ discovery in monkeys in a Danish laboratory in 1958, and it is present in many different animals, including most commonly in rodents.
The COVID lessons the U.S. still needs to learn to tackle monkeypox | PBS -- COVID-19 and monkeypox are pretty different diseases. But the parallels between the nation’s yearslong, languishing response to the coronavirus pandemic and the emerging monkeypox outbreak are many – and potentially agonizing. “Without even finishing the COVID pandemic, we’re already facing monkeypox,” said Dr. Caitlin Rivers, a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Health Security and a founding member of the CDC’s Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics. Health secretaries declared both viruses to be public health emergencies, inviting greater coordination, pushing for more urgent action and freeing up more funding and resources at the federal, state, local and tribal levels. But despite all that, the U.S. response to the monkeypox virus (or MPXV) has been criticized in ways that are hauntingly familiar, said Dr. Saskia Popescu, an infectious disease epidemiologist and assistant professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. “We’re seeing a lot of Groundhog Day,” she said. “The lessons we thought we’d learned with COVID haven’t made as much of a difference as we would have liked.” “We’re seeing a lot of Groundhog Day. The lessons we thought we’d learned with COVID haven’t made as much of a difference as we would have liked.” While COVID circulates through respiratory aerosols that linger in the air after someone coughs or sneezes, monkeypox is usually spread through close, physical contact, including sex, or shared clothes or bedding. When most of the confirmed MPXV transmissions were being identified among men who have sex with men, public health officials failed to work effectively with the LGBTQ community, Popescu said, just as they failed during the early days of coronavirus pandemic to include historically marginalized communities where infection rates, hospitalizations and deaths were disproportionately high. Fumbled messaging around prevention and interventions created avoidable confusion over what people need to do to protect themselves and others, especially when explaining nuanced risk and infectious diseases, said Dr. Joshua Barocas, who studies modeling of social determinants of health and disparities at the University of Colorado. From masks to vaccines to which patients are considered at risk, Barocas said some public health officials, including those in the federal government and at the CDC, used language that failed to acknowledge the unknown and what can happen when a highly dynamic virus shifts and changes the rules of engagement. That rigidity – sounding more sure of something than they really are – may serve short-term benefits, but in the long term, it can confuse and discourage the public from trusting updated advice, he said. “When we speak in absolutes and don’t give ourselves wiggle room, we trap ourselves in the corner,” Barocas said. He said he fears the United States already has. One grim reality of the competing crises is that the health care providers who are needed to protect the U.S. from these pathogens are exhausted, he said. While the Biden administration may tout bringing in more tests to detect MPXV and vaccines to prevent its spread, Barocas said, “you can’t run tests and you can’t provide treatment if you don’t have a workforce.”
As monkeypox spreads, we must not repeat the failures of COVID-19 and HIV - Monkeypox is a public health emergency in the United States, with some 15,400 cases recorded. The virus has rapidly become a globalized threat, with more than 43,000 cases reported across 95 countries. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak “a public health emergency of international concern,” its highest alert level. But as the alarm and case counts grow, it is increasingly clear that the U.S. and the global communities are repeating some of the hallmark failures of other global health crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the HIV/AIDS epidemic. From mounting stigma and misinformation, to botched testing and vaccine rollouts, to the widening inequities in care, the parallels between Monkeypox, COVID-19 and HIV/AIDS should cause officials to reevaluate and redirect their approach to this latest public health emergency. For example, many news reports refer to monkeypox as a sexually transmitted disease that only impacts the gay community. Both parts of this statement are false, yet the misinformation continues to reverberate in a disturbing echo of the discrimination against LGBTQ+ communities during the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Monkeypox is spread through close contact including, but not limited to, sexual contact — and anyone can contract the infection regardless of sexual orientation. Cases have also been reported by women, infants and incarcerated people. However, evidence of discrimination is emerging. For example, some commercial lab technicians have reportedly refused to draw blood from people who might have monkeypox. Currently, in most states the monkeypox vaccine is allotted to “high-risk populations.” For example, New York City’s criteria includes men who have sex with men and who have had “multiple or anonymous sex partners.” Ongoing stigmatization of one’s personal and intimate sex life could deter people from seeking testing or care for monkeypox. The approximate 21 days of isolation after infection is difficult and demoralizing for anyone, but particularly for those who cannot share or discuss their diagnosis. Currently, 98 percent of monkeypox cases are being reported in men who have sex with men. There is a clear imperative for health officials to develop monkeypox messaging and outreach not just for the LGBTQ+ community, but with the LGBTQ+ community. The early failings of COVID-19 vaccination practices are also appearing. Online portals to schedule monkeypox vaccinations have crashed. We are leaving behind the 21 million people in the United States who lack access to the internet. Offline and multilingual options to secure tests, vaccines and care are essential for any public health outreach.
Watch: CNN Tells Viewers Monkeypox Is Not Sexually-Transmitted - Despite vast amounts of data showing that the spread of Monkeypox is occurring predominantly among gay men, CNN went to great lengths to explain that it is absolutely NOT sexually transmitted. As reported here in The Scientific American, Monkeypox Is a Sexually Transmitted Infection, and Knowing That Can Help Protect People. The piece notes that “Black and Latino men who have sex with men are most vulnerable to monkeypox,” and cites data that finds “Outside Africa, 99 percent of the cases have been in men, and 92 to 98 percent have been in self-identified men who have sex with men.”“A study published in the BMJ in late July found 196 of 197 cases of MPX in London were in people who identified as men who had sex with men,” the article also notes.The evidence is so voluminous that the World Health Organisation is on the verge of classifying Monkeypox as an STI.The author of the article, Steven Thrasher warns that by “not naming, researching, preventing and addressing how transmission is happening,” people will be kept “from understanding how to prevent infection, allow unnecessary worry, and exacerbate racist and homophobic social determinants of health.”“In the past few months, there has been considerable backlash to naming MPX an STI [sexually-transmitted infection] out of the usually well-intentioned but ultimately misguided belief that doing so will increase stigma,” Thrasher also explains.And that’s where CNN comes in.The network’s national correspondent Dianne Gallagher lectured viewers Tuesday (albeit not that many of them) that “monkeypox is NOT a sexually-transmitted infection.”Gallagher added that”If the Biden administration wants its outreach to be a success, celebrating [pride] while educating, without discriminating, is the only way to approach it.”
Commercial Poultry Operation In California Detects First Bird Flu Case - The highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza outbreak continues to spread across North America, dashing hopes that warmer temperatures would halt the spread. The California Department of Food and Agriculture reported a commercial poultry flock of 34,000 birds in Fresno County detected bird flu. This is the first commercial flock infected in the state since the outbreak started in the US in January.The birds at the commercial broiler breeder in Fresno were immediately euthanized to protect surrounding commercial flocks. H5N1 infections in both wild bird species and poultry are continuing around the country at a time when the virus should've peaked because of warmer weather. So far this year, 40 million wild aquatic birds, commercial poultry, and backyard or hobbyist flocks have been infected by the deadly virus in 39 states. Here are the latest reported outbreaks with multiple cases up and down the West Coast. "Whether migratory birds will cause additional introductions in the fall is 'the million-dollar question,'" Bryan Richards, emerging disease coordinator at the US Geological Survey's National Wildlife Health Center, told Science. Even though infections began to decline before summer, Richards said bird flu could circulate year-round, posing a permanent threat to poultry farming. So what does this mean for consumers? We outlined months ago that US egg production plunged to a seven-year low as millions of egg-producing hens were euthanized to prevent further virus transmission, sending egg prices at the supermarket sky-high.
Study first to link weed killer Roundup to convulsions in animals - A recent report by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found more than 80 percent of urine samples from children and adults in the U.S. contained the herbicide glyphosate. A study by Florida Atlantic University and Nova Southeastern University takes this research one step further and is the first to link the use of the herbicide Roundup, a widely used weed killer, to convulsions in animals. Glyphosate, the weed killer component in Roundup, is the world's most commonly used herbicide by volume and by land-area treated. Glyphosate-resistant crops account for almost 80 percent of transgenic crop cultivated land, which has resulted in an estimated 6.1 billion kilos of glyphosate sprayed across the world from 2005 to 2014. Roundup is used at both industrial and consumer levels, and its use is projected to dramatically increase over the coming years. A major question, yet to be fully understood, is the potential impact of glyphosate on the nervous system. "It is concerning how little we understand the impact of glyphosate on the nervous system," said Akshay S. Naraine, MSc., project lead and a Ph.D. student at FAU and the International Max Planck Research School for Synapses and Circuits. "More evidence is mounting for how prevalent exposure to glyphosate is, so this work hopefully pushes other researchers to expand on these findings and solidify where our concerns should be." Results, published in Scientific Reports, showed that glyphosate and Roundup increased seizure-like behavior in soil-dwelling roundworms and provides significant evidence that glyphosate targets GABA-A receptors. These communication points are essential for locomotion and are heavily involved in regulating sleep and mood in humans. What truly sets this research apart is that it was done at significantly less levels than recommended by the EPA and those used in past studies. "The concentration listed for best results on the Roundup Super Concentrate label is 0.98 percent glyphosate, which is about 5 tablespoons of Roundup in 1 gallon of water," said Naraine. "A significant finding from our study reveals that just 0.002 percent glyphosate, a difference of about 300 times less herbicide than the lowest concentration recommended for consumer use, had concerning effects on the nervous system."
Baby mice with an older father cry differently, may have implications for neurodevelopmental disorders -- A baby's cry is a form of communication used to attract attention from adult caregivers, and every baby cries in a similar but distinct way. An international research team has studied the vocal behavior of baby mice, called pups, to determine how the age of the father affects the pups' vocal communication and body weight development. Their study will help them better understand vocal development in human babies. The team published their findings in the journal iScience on August 10, 2022. Research suggests that infant crying can serve as a marker of a baby's development. Altered crying in a baby may indicate a risk for autism spectrum disorder or other neurodevelopmental disorders. Researchers know that children with these disorders show particular crying patterns. However, scientists do not fully understand what makes the crying patterns of these children different. Recent studies have shown that advanced paternal age is a risk factor for neurodevelopmental disorders and lower body weight in the offspring. Wanting to better understand the connection between a father's age and vocal behavior in their offspring, a research team led by Professor Noriko Osumi, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine has conducted a study, using mice, to determine how paternal aging influences the vocal behavior of offspring. One of the team's main findings was that the advanced paternal age causes alterations in early vocal behavior and increases the number of offspring with atypical developmental patterns. "This vocal feature of pups born to aged fathers is similar to that of pups from autism spectrum disorder model mice. Moreover, pups born to young fathers showed a rich repertoire, while those born to aged fathers exhibited a limited repertoire," said Professor Osumi. In recent years, scientists have studied ultrasonic vocalizations in mice to learn more about the neurobiology of vocal communication. They know that when a pup is separated from its mother and littermates, it emits ultrasonic vocalizations consisting of various sound elements. When the mother hears these sounds, she responds by coming to retrieve the pup. This type of behavior in mice is similar to that of a human infant and mother. The researchers examined the ultrasonic vocalization consisting of syllables. Their analyses showed that in pups with advanced age fathers, the syllables were reduced in number and duration. The syllable composition was also altered, with a more limited syllable repertoire in the pups with advanced age fathers. In addition, they measured the body weight of the pups after they completed each ultrasound vocalization recording. Comparing the weights, the team discovered that the pups with the advanced age fathers had consistently lower body weight gain than pups with young fathers. In modern societies where humans are marrying and giving birth at older ages, advanced paternal age may represent a risk factor for neurodevelopmental disorders. This finding reiterates the clinical evidence that advanced paternal age is a risk factor for the atypical development observed in children with neurodevelopmental disorders and suggests that the effect of advanced paternal age could be detected in early infancy. As a next step, the team will be working to identify the neural basis governing ultrasound generation and the mechanisms by which advanced paternal age affects the offspring.
EPA expands PFAS crackdown with Superfund proposal - Two of the most notorious “forever chemicals” are being targeted for regulation under federal Superfund law — a major move that will have sweeping implications for industry as well as affected communities across the country. EPA today proposed designating two per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), as hazardous substances under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA), also known as the Superfund law. That move would unlock a major tool for regulators seeking to recoup costs from polluters as they progress with cleanup efforts at contaminated sites. “Communities have suffered far too long from exposure to these forever chemicals,” said EPA Administrator Michael Regan in a statement. “Under this proposed rule, EPA will both help protect communities from PFAS pollution and seek to hold polluters accountable for their actions.” The long-awaited proposal only targets two compounds, PFOA and PFOS, out of the larger family of chemicals, which includes thousands upon thousands. Both chemicals have been linked for years to a wide array of health impacts, including liver and kidney disease, reproductive issues and various cancers. Research on PFOA in particular has led the agency to deem it a likely carcinogen. The two substances are also set to be regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act in the next few years, but the Superfund designation is among the most dramatic steps taken by EPA as it seeks to rein in PFAS. The hazardous substance designation means that releases over an established threshold will trigger the intervention of federal regulators, who will then be empowered to investigate and, if necessary, require cleanup. Not all releases would lead to cleanup or placement on the National Priorities List, and some reporting could simply lead to better waste management practices. One of the biggest polluters in the line of fire is the Department of Defense, which contaminated military sites around the country with PFAS for decades. EPA also emphasized that it is not prioritizing smaller-scale polluters that may have unknowingly released the chemicals, but is instead targeting culprits “who have manufactured and released significant amounts of PFOA and PFOS into the environment.” In a notable additional step, EPA said it will issue an advance notice of proposed rulemaking soon to seek public input on designating other PFAS under Superfund law — a move that could ultimately bring other members of the chemical family under the statute. Regan was joined in his announcement by a slew of Democrats applauding the move, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware, who chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee. A Republican, Pennsylvania Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, also publicly endorsed the action, while some of the strongest words of support came from Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), who has spent years calling for PFAS regulations. “Forever chemicals are an urgent public health and environmental threat for communities across the country, including the ones I represent, and the number of contamination sites nationwide continues to grow at an alarming rate,” Dingell said.
EPA finally moves to label some ‘forever chemicals’ as hazardous - -For decades, Sandy Wynn-Stelt looked at the Christmas tree farm across the street from her home in western Michigan with delight. Only in recent years did she learn of the toxic “time bomb that nobody knew was sitting” on the land underneath those trees.Her town of Belmont is one of hundreds across the country contaminated with an omnipresent batch of dangerous chemicals known as polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. On Friday, the Biden administration proposed to classify two of the most common of these chemical compounds, which can persist in the environment for years, as hazardous substances.The long-awaited move from the Environmental Protection Agency is meant to spark the cleanup of scores of sites defiled by industrial compounds and make the public more aware of their presence. Used to make everyday products such as nonstick cookware, cosmetics, fabrics and food packaging, these types of chemicals pervade drinking water used by millions of Americans — and they’ve been linked to an array of illnesses, including cardiovascular problems and low birth weights.“It’s a very significant step,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a phone interview. The proposed rule “requires the polluter to pay for violating the law.”Still, people living near toxic waste and their advocates say the federal government under multiple administrations has been painfully slow to act, even as the health risks of PFAS become ever clearer.The agency is proposing to add two chemicals known as PFOA and PFOS to its official list of hazardous substances under the federal Superfund program, which cleans up toxic waste sites. The listing will make it easier for the federal government to compel polluters to pay to restore contaminated sites and funnel taxpayer money into projects if the culprits cannot be found.“There are hundreds of sites across the country where one or both of those have been detected,” said Erik Olson, a senior strategic director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an advocacy group. “What it means in the real world is that once they are listed, the EPA and the states have a lot more muscle to force cleanup.” Under the proposed rule, companies will need to report when the substances leach into the environment, even in relatively small quantities. The requirements will help public health officials track where the chemicals persist.Industry representatives argued that listing the two chemicals as hazardous and involving the federal government in more cleanups could complicate them.The EPA decision is “an expensive, ineffective and unworkable means to achieve remediation for these chemicals,” the American Chemistry Council, a trade group representing chemical makers, said in a statement. Among the most contaminated sites are areas outside military bases where airmen used flame retardants to quench jet-fuel fires. Under the EPA’s proposal, the military would need to take into account state laws when cleaning up PFOA and PFOS waste. In Michigan, the footwear maker Wolverine Worldwide dumped waste on the property eventually used to grow Christmas trees, said Wynn-Stelt, a psychologist who began advocating on the issue of PFAS after learning about the contamination near her home. Forever chemicals turned up in the drinking water from her private well and, eventually, her blood. She worries the exposure may have contributed to her husband’s death from liver cancer in 2016 as well as to her own diagnosis with thyroid cancer four years later.
Mercury … | Homeless on the High Desert, by Ten Bears -- Long as I can remember, pushing seventy years now, we’ve been admonished to don’t drink the water or eat the fish out of the Deschutes River, it has unhealthy levels of mercury in it. Grandma wasn’t talking about our teeth falling out in our twenties when she said,“it’s in the water.” Took a while to figure it out. First commercial enterprise in Central Oregon wasn’t logging or lumber, cattle or trapping. First commercial enterprise in Central Oregon was a mercury mine. The pall, when not a wood-smoke pall pumping its own mercury into the environment: the air we breathe, the dust, the fine powder stirred up by a hundred thousand people driving three hundred thousand cars we wipe from the mantel in the mornings, out of the refrigerator, or suck out of the dryer vents once a year. Mercury silicate. Central Oregon, all of Oregon is volcanic. Some of it quite young. Parts of Bend sit on fifteen hundred year old lava that isn’t quite “set”, is still “wet”, as if it were concrete. Lava. Crushed to gravel the roads, then further crushed by cars and trucks to stir up and … inhale. Breathe.The only thing we know about the aquifer is the water to replenish it has to percolate through thousands of feet of lava, of mercury silicate, to get there.This is why so many of us, so many of our children and grandchildren, our parents, grandparents, are on the spectrum. Why we’re drunks and meth-heads. Doesn’t help that Bend, home to my family for seven generations, is The Beer Brewing Capital of the World: got more breweries, got more brewing capacity per capita than anywhere else in the world. Actually has more bars, breweries, beerhalls and bordellos than Portland, five times the size of Bend. It’s like a great neon sign a’ flashing: We Are Drunk! And I have personally found meth, methamphetamine, laying in the street; recent reporting has had school-children finding in their front-yard. Beertown USA. Drunktown USA, meth-central, the crossroads of alcoholism and methamphetamine addiction. I didn’t know those two kids, but I’ve known the man accused of killing them since he was a kid, in grade-school. Contemperous with, went to school with my sons. Knew him in some of the work he did. This is hard, it breaks my heart. I don’t know, maybe it’s evil spirits, but there’s something wrong in Bend. It’s not a safe place..
'We needed a deal yesterday': Deadline passes without deal to save Colorado River. What now? - Trillions of gallons of water must be saved from the drying Colorado River to avoid the worst-case scenario brought on by drought, climate change and overuse, federal officials announced earlier this summer, setting a deadline for Aug. 15. Past that deadline, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation officials threatened to take control from the seven Western states depending on the river and make the cuts themselves. But the states didn't come up with a plan by Monday and the federal government didn't take over. And upstream states like Colorado are unwilling to pitch in further unless the biggest water users downstream—Arizona and California—go first and cut deep. "It's absurd to think we're going to get our farmers and ranchers and cities to take economic hits if all it means is it continues to fill swimming pools in Phoenix," Andy Mueller, general manager of the Colorado River District, told The Denver Post. Legal experts and water managers say that despite Reclamation's posturing earlier this summer, federal officials likely don't want to take control of the complicated situation any more than the states want to abdicate their own position. Informal negotiations on how to save more water are underway but Becky Mitchell, who is negotiating on Colorado's behalf as director of the state's Water Conservation Board, said there's no time to waste in starting a more formal process. She expects the states to officially convene before the end of the year. The sooner the better, experts agree, because the current impasse comes at a time when the path forward is narrowing quickly. One wrong step and the system collapses or devolves into a mess of lawsuits that would cost gobs of money and years of water use the West doesn't have to waste. Still, the upper-basin states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming appear to be holding fast to their message: They've learned to live within their means and so too must the lower basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada.
Tensions grow over lack of a water deal for the shrinking Colorado River - Two months ago, federal officials took the unprecedented step of telling the seven states that depend on Colorado River water to prepare for emergency cuts next year to prevent reservoirs from dropping to dangerously low levels. The states and managers of affected water agencies were told to come up with plans to reduce water use drastically, by 2 million to 4 million acre-feet, by mid-August. After weeks of negotiations, which some participants say have at times grown tense and acrimonious, the parties have yet to reach an agreement. The absence of a deal now raises the risk that the Colorado River crisis—brought on by chronic overuse and the West's drying climate—could spiral into a legal morass. Interior Department officials have warned they are prepared to impose cuts if necessary to protect reservoir levels. Managers of water agencies say they have been discussing proposals and will continue to negotiate in hopes of securing enough reductions to meet the Biden administration's demands, which would mean decreasing the total amount of water diverted by roughly 15% to 30%. But some observers worry the talks could fail, saying they see growing potential for federal intervention, lawsuits and court battles. "There are a lot of different interests at loggerheads. And there's a lot to overcome, and there's a lot of animosity," said Kyle Roerink, executive director of the Great Basin Water Network. The latest round of closed-door talks occurred Thursday in Denver. Participants said they wouldn't publicly discuss the offers of water reductions made so far, but they acknowledged those offers have amounted to far less than 2 million acre-feet. For comparison, the total annual water use of Los Angeles is nearly 500,000 acre-feet. Those involved in the negotiations say there have been difficult discussions among the states, and among urban and agricultural water districts. There have also been growing tensions between the states of the river's Lower Basin—California, Arizona and Nevada—and those of the Upper Basin—Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico and Utah. Roerink said that if the regional tensions and dividing lines continue and deepen alongside more dry winters, the Colorado River Basin seems headed for conflicts. "It's going to be a mess," Roerink said. "I don't see how we ever get over some of what I believe are irreconcilable differences among the states."
The Colorado River is in crisis. There are no painless solutions. - By the Editorial Board, The Washington Post - After 22 straight years of drought, the Colorado River is no stranger to crisis. But even by its standards, the outlook this summer is bleak. The nation’s two largest reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, are nearlythree-quarters empty. Satellite images show the river’s topography has changed dramatically since 2017, and scenes on the ground are no less shocking: stranded houseboats, dead plants and cracked lake beds.None of this should be a surprise. Scientists have warned for years that drought, fueled by climate change, and consistent overuse of the waterway would result in dangerous lows. This has devastating implications for the seven states and 30 tribes that rely on the river — and not just for water. Hundreds of hydropower dams in the river basingenerate electricity for millions of customers in the southwestern United States. Low water levels have already led to diminished production. It is clear drastic cuts in water use are needed — soon. Yet reaching an agreement on reductions has proved challenging. Water sharing between states is governed by a century-old compact. A 1944 treaty also requires the United States to send a certain amount of water to Mexico annually. These arrangements were based on optimistic projections of the river’s flow. With the river under strain, there simply is not enough water to distribute, according to historical quotas or even more recent guidelines.Some cuts came into effect this month for Arizona, Nevada and Mexico, per a 2019 contingency plan. But federal officials believe the system needs to conserve an additional 2 million to 4 million acre-feet in the next year to remain operational. The Bureau of Reclamation set an Aug. 16 deadline for states and tribal nations to come to a voluntary agreement, threatening federal intervention if they failed. Though that deadline passed without a deal, negotiations are continuing.Unilaterally imposing cuts would be politically tricky for any administration. A voluntary agreement, on the other hand, would guarantee buy-in from locals and be more likely to reflect their needs and expertise. But every day without an agreement is another in which too much water is drained. The Interior Department should prepare to step in if negotiations continue to produce nothing.Some states and localities have already started reimagining their water usage: Las Vegas, for example, has outlawed decorative turf, cutswimming pool sizes, invested in water recycling and curbed water budgets for golf courses. More cities must follow suit, while farmers will have to improve irrigation efficiency. The federal government has its own tools. The Interior Departmentcould factor evaporation into water-sharing guidelines and mandate stricter conservation practices for farms receiving federally delivered water. Congress also allocated $4 billion for drought relief in the Inflation Reduction Act. This could be used to compensate people for voluntary cuts and restore drought-affected environments. The bipartisan infrastructure package, moreover, included $8.3 billion for water programs, which should be invested in making the system more efficient — and finding alternatives to the old ways of supplying water to thirsty Americans, including water recycling and desalination. There are no simple, painless solutions. But by making some sacrifices now, parched states can avoid more difficult ones in the future — and ensure the Colorado River continues to sustain life and livelihoods across the western United States for decades to come.
Arid West starts dreaming about piping in water from afar - Even in the decades before the West plunged into a 22-year drought, the proposals to shift water from wetter states to more arid locations have never been in short supply. There was the submarine pipeline from Alaska to California. Towing Antarctic icebergs to make up for shortfalls in drinking water supplies. A pipeline from Lake Superior to Wyoming. And that one plan that more or less required an invasion of Canada. But those proposals — whether well-planned or bordering on fantasy — have never managed to gain traction. Despite that lack of success, as drought threatens key water supplies across the West like the Colorado River and Rio Grande basins, these ideas are again percolating. Could this period of rapidly increasing scarcity be the time when they’re more than just a mirage? “It’s always possible that if a large population of the South and West really wants the water, instead of living sustainably, someday there might be a transfer of water,” asserts author Dave Dempsey, who serves as a policy adviser to FLOW, For Love of Water. The Traverse City, Mich.-based group is a law and policy center focused on the Great Lakes. Earlier this year, Utah legislators approved a study of using the Pacific Ocean to refill the dwindling Great Salt Lake via pipeline. Dempsey likewise pointed to suggestions last year by an Idaho radio host who said the state should use its political influence to “borrow the Great Lakes.” “People look at a map and see a lot of water and say, ‘Why can’t we have that?'” . “It’s hard to come to the terms with the fact that there’s less water, and people want an easy fix,” explained John Fleck, director of the University of New Mexico’s Water Resources Program. “The pipelines seem like an easy fix because the people who suggest the idea don’t understand the scale — the giant, mammoth scale — of meaningful quantities of water,” he added. According to EPA, a typical family uses about 320 gallons of water daily, or about 1.3 tons of water by weight. The University of Wyoming’s Tom Minckley, a professor of geology and geophysics, likewise pointed to the energy that would be required to move vast quantities of water uphill, typically on a trajectory toward the Continental Divide.
Taps have run dry in a major Mexico city for months. A similar water crisis looms in the US, experts say - About 300 miles southwest of San Antonio, water taps have run dry in a major Mexico city. Thousands of residents wake up at dawn to check their taps and fill up containers. Others line up with large jugs, bottles and buckets at cisterns around the city, where fights have broken out when people try to jump the line. This is the scene in the industrial hub of Monterrey, Mexico—the nation's third largest city and one of its wealthiest. Officials there announced in early June they would restrict access to running water in and around the 5-million-person city, allowing only six hours of water access a day. Some neighborhoods didn't receive any water at all. The problem is dire: Two of the three main reservoirs serving the city are practically empty, a problem made even worse by an exceptionally dry spring and summer. Summer temperatures soar past 100 degrees most days, as residents grapple with the effects of a water shortage that's been a longtime coming, according to experts. But Monterrey isn't alone in its water crisis. Drought is sapping the water from huge swaths of North America and making it increasingly hard for humans to count on running water. Experts know some communities are more vulnerable than others, but the growing challenge remains the same: Keep the taps from running dry. "I hope that (people) realize the conditions experienced in Mexico are happening near their homes in the U.S.," said Heather Tanana, an assistant research professor at University of Utah's College of Law. In the U.S., many Native American tribes along the Colorado River Basin lack access to reliable water sources and clean drinking water, free of contaminants like uranium and arsenic. Some community members regularly travel long distances to haul water for everyday use. Other parts of rural America also struggle with reliable access to water. The town of Rawlins, Wyoming, saw taps run dry in March as the result of outdated infrastructure. In Utah, two towns last year halted construction because of a declining water supply. But those struggles are often overshadowed by the dramatic deterioration of water levels at Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the two largest reservoirs in the U.S. The drying lakes show the crisis is real, but most Americans remain comfortably insulated from concerns about drinking water—for now at least. Experts say that day-to-day comfort masks a looming problem. "There is a fundamental supply and demand imbalance where there is more demand from the river than the river can reliably supply in a given year,"
How Climate Change Spurs Megadroughts - On an afternoon in late June, the San Luis Reservoir, California’s sixth-largest and a source of water for millions of people, was just 40% full. Minerals deposited by the receding waters had turned the reservoir’s lower banks white, like the rings on a bathtub. Discarded clothing, empty bottles, and a lone shoe sat scattered across the newly exposed, parched ground. An interactive graphic in the visitor’s center reported that this year’s snowpack – which provides the water that travels from the Sacramento River Delta into the reservoir itself – was zero percent of the yearly average.Depending on how you look at it, California – and most of the American West – has either entered its third catastrophic drought of the past 10 years, or has been in a constant, unyielding “megadrought” since 2000. Reservoirs are emptying; lawns are turning brown; swaths of farmland that have coaxed lettuce, almonds, and alfalfa out of the dry ground for decades are going fallow. The Colorado River, which originates in the snow-capped Rocky Mountains and provides water to some 40 million people in the Southwest, has slowed to a trickle. That waterway also feeds the largest reservoir in the United States, Lake Mead, 40 miles east of Las Vegas, which in recent months has seen water levels so low that bodies have emerged from its shrinking, normally crystalline waters. The Bureau of Reclamation, the federal agency responsible for many supersized water projects, has asked states to cut their use of water from the Colorado River by 2 to 4 million acre-feet, an amount close to all the water that California receives from the Colorado in a single year. Throughout the West, anxiety about drought is as palpable as the dryness of the air; talk of water fills newspapers and conversations alike. “Aridification kills civilizations. Is California next?” read one Los Angeles Times headline in June. In February, scientists confirmed that the current, decades-long “megadrought” is the worst in 1,200 years. They also confirmed that rising temperatures – driven by human consumption of fossil fuels – were partly to blame.In one sense, the climate change link seems obvious. Since 1850, global temperatures have climbed 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit); in areas of the U.S. hit hardest by drought, the increase is even higher. Temperatures in California have risen about 3 degrees F since 1896; in Arizona, they have gone up by 2.5 degrees.But the connection between climate change and drought is not as straightforward as it seems. Some areas are likely to get wetter while others get drier. Still others may accumulate the same total rainfall, but in inconsistent patterns: More rain might fall in fewer, more intense bursts, followed by longer dry spells. “It’s complicated,” said Benjamin Cook, a climate scientist at NASA and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.But scientists can say some things with certainty. As the world gets hotter, soils are getting drier; it takes more and more precipitation to water the same crops and fill the same reservoirs. Rising temperatures, therefore, are digging the American West and other arid regions into a deeper and deeper hole. The more the world warms, the more rain will be needed to compensate, and that will force people to rethink how – and where – they will live and eat when the water dries up.LA County will experience triple the number of hot days by 2053, study says - Los Angeles County will experience triple the number of hot days per year by 2053, according to a new study. The county, where a typical hot day is just under 94 degrees, gets about seven days that exceed that per year, according to the report released this week by the First Street Foundation, a nonprofit, climate-focused research organization based in New York. By 2053, that number will jump to 21, the study found. Los Angeles County is up there with Del Norte and Orange counties as the areas in California that will see the most severe jump in hot days. The increase will result in freak infrastructure accidents and cost the state more than half a billion dollars in air conditioning consumption. "The results will be dire," First Street Chief Executive Matthew Eby said about the rise in severely hot days across the country. In 2053, California's Imperial County is expected to have 116 days in which the temperature exceeds 100 degrees. Riverside County is expected to have 55 days of triple-digit heat—the second highest number for a California county—according to the study. All areas of California, as well as the rest of the country, will see increased heat over the next 30 years, according to the report. The state will also see increasing numbers of heat waves—three straight days of the county's average hot day—which are worse on the West Coast. "The likelihood of a heat wave in California is much higher than the rest of the country," Eby said. The First Street study also suggests a steep increase in the number of Americans who will face days where the temperature goes above 125 degrees, including in places like Chicago. By 2053, more than 100 million Americans will deal with days that hot, whereas just over 8 million currently do, according to the study. The report refers to the counties that will experience a day over 125 degrees as the "extreme heat belt."
Flooding hits Dallas-Fort Worth as some areas receive more than 13 inches of rain - Thunderstorms hit the Dallas-Fort Worth area Sunday night into Monday and dropped massive amounts of rain in the span of 18 hours, inundating streets, flooding homes and forcing some drivers to abandon their vehicles in high water.Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins has declared a state of disaster in the region based on preliminary damage assessments, allowing the area to use available state resources to respond. Jenkins has also requested federal assistance.Gov. Greg Abbott also directed the Texas Division of Emergency Management to increase the readiness level of the state’s emergency operations center to support communities impacted by the flooding.The rainfall in some areas qualifies as a 1-in-1,000-year flood, which means that in any given year it has a 0.1% chance of happening. Such events could become more frequent in the coming decades as the effects of climate change worsen. Climate scientists have found that warming temperatures increases the frequency of bouts of extreme precipitation.The east side of Dallas received 13 to 15 inches of rainfall over the past 24 hours, according to a reading from Dallas Water Utilities. Most of the Dallas-Fort Worth area recorded 6 to 10 inches of rainfall. The flash floods, which in some cases are considered life-threatening, have prompted rescue efforts. The Dallas Fire Department alone has responded to hundreds of car crashes and other water-related emergencies since 6 p.m. on Sunday. Dallas emergency management officials are reporting high water over many roadways and are advising residents in the area against travel.
Record setting heavy rains cause flash flooding in Dallas, Texas August 21 and August 22, 2022 – Dallas, Texas is the latest area to receive record-setting rainfall leading to major flash flooding. Several precipitation records were broken according to the National Weather Service in Fort Worth, Texas. The heavy rainfall forced closures of roads and lead to major flooding all around the city.Radar estimates show areas receiving greater than 10″ of rainfall within a 24-hour period. The image below is from the Dallas Water Utilities Floodway Operations District. It is showing 24-hour rainfall around the city of Dallas as of Monday evening, Aug. 22. There are spots showing greater than a foot of rainfall.The National Weather Service in Fort Worth, Texas reported several records were broken. The 24-hour rainfall total between 2 p.m. on Aug. 21, 2022, through 2 p.m. on Aug. 22, 2022, totaled 9.19″. That is the second highest 24-hour total rainfall at the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport on record. It was only 0.38″ away from the heaviest 24-hour rainfall total of 9.57″ set in 1932.Daily rainfall records were broken on both days as well. The Dallas/Fort Worth airport reported 3.53″ of rain on Aug. 21 which broke the previous daily record of 2.25″ set in 1919 for that date.The daily rainfall record was also broken for Aug. 22. The previous record was 2.47″ set in 1916. The Dallas/Fort Worth airport recorded 5.66″ of rainfall on Aug. 22, 2022. That total also set a record for the highest single-day rainfall reported in Aug. Previously, the highest calendar day total rainfall was 4.28″ which fell on Aug. 28, 1946.The rainfall total for Aug. 2022 jumped to 10.08″ as of 2 p.m. on Aug. 22 which makes it the second wettest Aug. on record for the Dallas/Fort Worth area. If another 0.26″ of rain falls before the end of the month, it will become the wettest August on record. The current record for wettest Aug. in the Dallas/Fort Worth area is 10.33″ set in 1915.
Record Deluge Floods North Texas Roads, Rain Totals Nearing 15 Inches --Heavy rains across the drought-stricken Dallas-Fort Worth area on Monday caused streets to flood, submerging vehicles as officials warned motorists to stay off the roads and water seeped into some homes and businesses.Rainfall in North Texas from Sunday to Monday toppled a record set more than 100 years ago and came close to the record for the rainiest 24 hours ever recorded in DFW.The official National Weather Service record station at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport reported 9.19 inches of rain in the 24 hours ending at 2 p.m. Monday. That ranked second for the top 10 most rain over 24 hours in Dallas on record. The most was 9.57 inches that fell Sept. 4-5, 1932. By Monday afternoon, the rain had moved out of the area. Firefighters across Dallas County were hard at work blocking off impassable roads covered with high water and pulling stranded drivers to safety after nearly 15 inches of rain poured down through Monday morning.At about 9 a.m. Dallas police tweeted a list of dozens of locations where there were high water calls. Dallas Fire-Rescue said Monday evening that they have responded to 225 calls for help in high water since 6 p.m. Sunday.In Mesquite, one woman died after she was trapped inside her vehicle when it was swept by floodwaters off the road and underneath a bridge, firefighters said. Her death is the first flood-related fatality confirmed in the North Texas area.Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said on Twitter that based on preliminary damage assessments, he was declaring a state of disaster in Dallas County and requesting state and federal assistance. Meanwhile, police continue to warn drivers about numerous road closures due to flooding and urge drivers to never attempt to drive through high water.
Dallas area hit by 1-in-1,000-year flood; cars float in water-filled roads — Streets and highways around Dallas remained waterlogged Monday afternoon after flash floods struck the Dallas-Fort Worth area overnight, leaving at least one person dead. Signs of flooding lingered even after the rain mostly cleared from the metroplex.In Mesquite, southeast of Dallas, a body was recovered Monday afternoon from a vehicle in a creek. Elsewhere, authorities conducted water rescues and evacuated residents from flooded areas; cars remained abandoned, some parked on the sides of interstates, either flooded or damaged in crashes; numerous highway ramps and lanes were shut down. At the interchange of Interstates 30, 45 and 75 — a trouble spot on good days — flooding had traffic down to a trickle in one lane.In some isolated areas, the rainfall totals would be considered a 1-in-1,000-year flood — a remarkable reversal given the dramatic drought that Dallas had faced for months. Several rainfall gauges recorded more than 10 inches. A record-breaking 3.01 inches of rain was recorded in one hour at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.The downpour marked the latest such flood in the past few weeks across the United States. In one week alone, three 1-in-1,000-year rain events occurred, inundating St. Louis, eastern Kentucky and southeastern Illinois. The term, often considered controversial in part because it’s misunderstood, is used to describe a rainfall event that is expected once every 1,000 years, meaning it has just a 0.1 percent chance of happening in any given year — but such events can occur much more frequently.Nearly 8 inches of rain hit the Dallas-Fort Worth area in three hours, leading to flash flooding on Aug. 21. (Video: @weis_man) . Several water rescues were conducted early Monday across the Dallas-Fort Worth area. As of 1:30 p.m. local time, Dallas Fire-Rescue had responded to 195 high-water incidents, according to Jason L. Evans, a spokesperson with the city’s emergency management office. In Mesquite, firefighters were at a bridge Monday afternoon where the water had receded enough to reveal a car in the creek below. One body was recovered from the vehicle, according to Mesquite Fire Chief Rusty Wilson. Wilson added that rescuers had been called to the bridge after the driver, a woman, became unresponsive while on a call with family members. At Skyview Stables, a horse training facility east of Dallas in Forney, 26 horses were standing in 11 inches of water, and the rain wasn’t stopping. The road to the property is shut down, and only a groomer and McKinsey’s daughter are there.“We have no one to help bail out,” One rain gauge in Dallas County, where Dallas is located, tallied more than 14.9 inches of rain within a 12-hour period, nearly 50 percent of the rainfall recorded at that site this year. Such rates of precipitation are nearly impossible for soils — not to mention impervious paved surfaces — to absorb without runoff that can cause flash flooding.
Record rain is hitting drought-stricken areas. That’s not good news. --- On Monday morning, the Dallas-Fort Worth area awoke to disaster. Rain was pouring down at the rate of 2 to 3 inches per hour. Highways became lethal lagoons, brooks became basins, and thousands of people scrambled to higher ground. Just a day earlier, the city had been facing one of its worst droughts on record, with farmers forced to thin their herds as reservoirs rapidly shrank. Twenty-nine percent of the Lone Star State was encapsulatedwithin a top-tier level 4 out of 4 “exceptional” drought. Very dry conditions took a heavy toll on crops and forced widespread water restrictions.The extreme case of atmospheric caprice highlighted a growing issue plaguing communities across the United States and the world: weather whiplash.This summer, several locations around the United States have experienced these wild, rapid swings from one weather extreme to another. About half of the country has undergone at least a moderate drought this summer. Parts of the West, the Midwest and Texas have experienced exceptional and historic drought conditions.Then the storms came. On July 26 in St. Louis, a shocking 8.65 inches of rain fell to mark the city’s wettest day on record. The next day, in eastern Kentucky, rainfall rates topped 2 inches per hour and took the lives of 38 people. In August, eastern Illinois, Death Valley and Dallas also experienced significant or record-breaking rainfall. On Wednesday, flash flooding across central Mississippi swept away roads and prompted rescues.“It is unusual, especially on the extreme precipitation [and] flash flood side,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California at Los Angeles. “They’re not just beating a historical record by a marginal amount, but just completely blowing right past it and then some.”Yet he isn’t surprised: A warmer climate is driving precipitation to higher extremes in both flooding and drought.“The increase in both extreme precipitation events and in these wild swings between extreme precipitation and extreme aridity — this is how most people and most ecosystems on Earth are experiencing climate change,” Swain said.
Five 1,000-year rain events have struck the U.S. in five weeks. Why? - Five weeks. Five instances of 1,000-year rain events. If it seems like the weather across the Lower 48 as of late has been bonkers, you’re not imagining things. It’s been a maelstrom of weather extremes, a seesaw fluctuating wildly from significantly dry to record wet conditions.Parts of the United States, especially in the West, are gripped by an inveterate and devastating drought — yet many drought-stricken areas have experienced rare and extreme flooding over the summer, bringing fiercely different precipitation extremes to the region in a matter of hours.On Monday, parts of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex awoke to torrential downpours that dropped totals of 10 to 16 inches, bringing calamitous impacts and prompting widespread water rescues. Entire neighborhoods near the suburb of Mesquite were left beneath water, andat least one person died.What happened in the Dallas area came after the city and 29 percent of the state were gripped in a top-tier “exceptional” drought that impacted crops and drove water shortages. Some farmers were forced to thin their herds in a process called “culling,” according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. DFW International Airport was 11.11 inches behind for rainfall since Jan. 1.Then Monday became the airport’s wettest calendar day on record.The extreme rainfall in Dallas was a “1,000-year rain event,” an episode of flooding that has just a 0.1 percent probability of happening in any given year. It joins the company of 1,000-year rain events that struck Kentucky, St. Louis, eastern Illinois and Death Valley, Calif., since the end of July — all of which were experiencing abnormally dry conditions or in a severe drought beforehand.Droughts can often make flooding worse. They kill plants and leave the ground bare, reducing soil absorption. They also harden top soils, which makes it easier for water to run off. The extremely dry ground, combined with the rapid rainfall, can trigger widespread flooding.Historic floods are occurring more frequently as climate change brings heavier rainfall across the United States. While no single weather event is caused by mankind’s influence on the atmosphere, the weather facing the nation bears the fingerprint of a warming world. While it seems contradictory, both drought and flooding are closely tied to human-driven warming and are altering our environment and how we interact with it. We are witnessing firsthand the effects of ordinary weather events — a product of chaotic randomness and natural variability — supercharged by climate change.
Louisiana officials stall New Orleans flood funds over abortion - A Louisiana commission is withholding approval of New Orleans flood control funds over city officials’ opposition to the state’s strict abortion ban. The Louisiana State Bond Commission has twice voted to delay approval of a future $39 million line of credit for a power station to run New Orleans drainage pumps that would protect the city’s 384,000 residents from flooding and have been described as critical for the city’s ability to adapt to climate change. Both votes, each taken at times when New Orleans was under an active flood advisory, have been at the urging of Republican Attorney General Jeff Landry, who is enraged by city officials’ response to the near-total abortion ban. “This is them coming right out to the rest of the citizens of the state saying, ‘We don’t care what your law is,’” Landry said at yesterday’s commission meeting. Louisiana’s abortion ban does not include exemptions for rape or incest, and has forced closure of abortion clinics throughout the state, including in New Orleans. City officials have made their opposition clear, with the City Council passing a resolution this summer asking police, sheriff’s deputies and prosecutors not to enforce the ban. In response to the resolution, which has support from New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell, the sheriff said she would not accept inmates accused of violating the ban at the jail, and the district attorney said he would not prosecute abortion providers or patients. While New Orleans police officers have been directed to investigate alleged abortions and write reports about them, officers have also been instructed not to issue summons or make arrests. Landry called such moves a “dereliction of duty,” with the potential 2023 gubernatorial candidate telling the commission it should “use the tools at our disposal to bring them to heel, quite frankly.” The commission agreed, voting 7-6 yesterday to delay approving the line of credit another month and to send a letter to city officials asking them to appear at the next meeting and explain their position. The commission resisted Landry’s proposed motion to permanently withhold approval of the credit line until the New Orleans City Council rescinds the resolution. The vote was immediately decried by New Orleans officials, with City Council President Helena Moreno saying the city would not back down from its abortion stance. “The City of New Orleans will not prioritize targeting women and their doctors who are balancing what is best for the patient and gray areas of the law,” she said. She highlighted the case of a Baton Rouge woman who was denied an abortion despite her fetus having no skull — a fatal condition — as an example of the types of patients New Orleans is trying to protect. “The fact that the City of New Orleans is being punished for its careful consideration of new state laws is troubling and inappropriate,” she said. “In my opinion, all that has been accomplished by some members of the bond commission is to show that they do not care for the people of New Orleans, nor do they care and have compassion for women who are facing incredibly tragic circumstances.”
Floods create havoc in Pakistan, relief operations underway - Pakistan Today -The devastating floods continue to create havoc in Pakistan. The Federal Flood Commission on Monday predicted “very high to exceptionally high level flooding” in the hill torrents of the D.G Khan division, and rivers and nullahs of eastern Balochistan. According to the report of FFC, flows from the hill torrents of D.G. Khan division may raise flow at Taunsa Barrage up to high to very high flood level from August 23 to 26 2022. It also forecasted urban flooding in Sindh during the corresponding time. Moreover, the report also highlighted a fresh strong monsoon activity in Sargodha, Peshawar, Kohat, D.I Khan Divisions, South Punjab and Balochistan including the upper catchments of river Indus and Kabul from August 23 to 26. FFC advised concerned organizations to ensure all the precautionary measures and round-the-clock patrolling of river embankments and training works including irrigation and drainage network. Meanwhile, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government on Monday declared two districts D. I. Khan and Chitral as calamity-hit areas after flash floods unleashed by heavy rainfall and promised to announce special rehabilitation package for the affected areas soon. Chief Minister Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Mahmood Khan has directed concerned authorities to expedite relief and rescue operation in the calamity hit areas. “This year situation is worse than what it was in 2010 since the province received record-breaking monsoon rains,” he said, adding, “There is a crisis in Sindh as people of the province are in dire need of support.” Meanwhile, Indus River has been in high flood at Taunsa and Guddu barrages and medium flood at Sukkur Barrage, Flood Forecasting Division (FFD) said on Monday. The Indus River has been in high flood at Taunsa and Guddu barrages as widespread rainfall hits the country, the FFD said. The inflow of river water at Tarbela Dam has been measured 2,57,000 cusecs, while the discharge has been recorded 2,40,800 cusecs. The inflow of river water at Kalabagh has been measured 2,69,000 cusecs, while the discharge has been recorded 2,64,500 cusecs. The inflow of river water at Chashma has been gauged 3,40,800 cusecs, while the outflow has been measured 3,22,800 cusecs. Indus River has been in low flood at Tarbela, Kalabagh and Chashma waterworks. The river has been in high flood at Taunsa Barrage with inflow of the water has been measured 5,50,500 cusecs, while the discharge of water has also been recorded 5,50,500 cusecs. Indus river has also been in high flood at Guddu barrage with inflow of water measured 4,82,900 cusecs, while the outflow has been recorded 4,82,900 cusecs. \ Two army helicopters have joined rescue and relief operations in flood hit areas of Dera Ghazi Khan and Rajanpur districts of south Punjab on Monday, just a day after the DG Khan administration sought army’s help for flood-stranded people for delivery of food items and tents. Commissioner DG Khan Usman Anwar told media persons that aerial operation to provide aid to the stranded communities was necessary as the hill torrents had badly eroded the road communications infrastructure making access by road nearly impossible to some areas.
Officials: Floods kill 777 in Pakistan over last 2 months - ABC News -- Flash floods caused by abnormally heavy monsoon rains have killed 777 people across Pakistan over the last two months, officials said Monday, as rescuers backed by troops raced against time to evacuate thousands of marooned people. Since June 14, rain and flooding have affected 1.8 million people, and 317,678 of them were still living in relief camps across the country, according to the National Disaster Management Authority. It said out of the 777 killed, about 300 were reported since Aug. 1. Authorities are setting up more relief and medical camps in remote areas in flood-hit southwestern Baluchistan, southern Sindh and eastern Punjab provinces, where there is much damage. Authorities said they had dispatched food, tents and other essential items to almost all those areas, where flood-affected people were waiting for the much-need help for the past week. However, videos circulating on social media suggest many people were still waiting for aid in flood-hit regions. Floods have also damaged nearly 60,000 homes across Pakistan apart from washing away roads and damaging bridges. It has added problems for the rescuers to teach the flood-affected areas to help the victims. The monsoon season runs from July through September in Pakistan.
France’s river Loire sets new lows as drought dries up its tributaries - France's river Loire, famous for the hundreds of castles gracing its shores, is a shallow river at the best of times, but this year even its flat-bottom tourist barges can barely navigate waters greatly reduced by a record drought.Even some 100km from where the Loire empties into the Atlantic Ocean, sandbanks now stretch as far as the eye can see, large islands connect to the shore and in some places, people can practically walk from one side of the river to the other.The Loire valley - a Unesco World Heritage site famed for majestic chateaux such as Chambord, Chenonceau and Azay-le-Rideau - has suffered historically low water levels before, but this year's drought should be a wake-up call, said Mr Eric Sauquet."The Loire's tributaries are completely dried up. It is unprecedented," said Mr Sauquet, who is head of hydrology at France's National Institute for Agriculture, Food, and Environment (INRAE)."We have to worry about the Loire," he added.For river fish, the low water levels are disastrous. The shallow water loses oxygen as it heats up and makes them easy prey for herons and other predators. "Fish need water to live, cool water. When water levels get this low, their environment shrinks and they get trapped in puddles," Mr Sauquet said.River flow is at about 40 cubic metres per second - less than a 20th of average annual levels. It would be even lower if authorities did not release water from dams at Naussac and Villerest, built in the 1980s partly to guarantee cooling water supply to four nuclear plants built along the river.The four plants - at Belleville, Chinon, Dampierre and Saint-Laurent - have a combined capacity of 11.6 gigawatts, accounting for nearly a fifth of French electricity production.With several EDF plants already out of action for technical reasons and others operating at reduced capacity because of low river waters, closing one or more of the Loire plants could push power prices higher Europe-wide.Tourists and local residents marvelled but also fretted over the river's enormous exposed sandbanks.Sandbanks now stretch as far as the eye can see at the Loire river. PHOTO: REUTERS"Even in 1976, the water was never as low as this," said long-time riverside resident Brigitte Gabory Defois.Yet, days after major wildfires hit France, torrential rain flooded parts of the Paris metro and storms lashed southern France, while in some villages in the south, water was brought by trucks as natural springs have run dry. "Climate change is underway, it's undeniable... All users will have to rethink their behaviour with respect to water resources," Mr Sauquet said.
European drought unearths Nazi warships in Danube, historic ruins - One of the worst droughts on record in Europe has parched the continent’s major waterways, revealing relics such as a long-submerged village and World War II-era battleships.This week, low water levels on the Serbian section of the Danube River exposed a graveyard of sunken German warships filled with explosives and ammunition. The vessels, which emerged near the port town of Prahovo, were part of a Nazi Black Sea fleet that sank in 1944 while fleeing Soviet forces. More ships are expected to be found lodged in the river’s sandbanks, loaded with unexploded ordnance.A junior Serbian transport minister told local media there were about 10,000 explosive devices in the water.Europe's worst drought in years has exposed dozens of explosives-laden German warships sunk during World War II near Serbia's river port town of Prahovo. (Video: Reuters)Other ruins have also emerged around Europe as waters recede in the drought. In July, a Roman bridge built during the first century B.C. was uncovered in the Tiber River, and in August, a village that had been deliberately flooded in 1963 to build a dam appeared from the Belesar reservoir in Spain.The village is one of several sites submerged under reservoirs in Spain. A ghost town that had been flooded to build a dam on Spain’s border with Portugal emerged in February, revealing houses with windows and walls still intact.The drought has threatened shipping routes, food supply and electricity in Europe this summer. European Union researchers said earlier this month that nearly half of the continent is under “warning” conditions, which connote a severe drought and a major soil moisture deficit, The Washington Post has reported. This is not the first time most of the sites and relics have poked out of the water. The Nazi ships, for instance, also made an appearance during a 2003 heat wave. But the severity of this year’s drought has made the waterways particularly difficult to navigate, as the sunken boats pose a danger to fishing and shipping vessels that have to skirt the hulks to get by. Ships now have to squeeze through a 110-yard stretch of the Danube, nearly half the available waterway to which they once had access, according to Reuters. Officials estimate it will cost $30 million to remove more than 20 ships, ammunition and explosives, the newswire reported.
Europe's disappearing rivers illustrate multiple converging catastrophes - The levels of Europe's major rivers decline in the face of an extreme drought that has resulted in almost no rain for the last two months across much of Europe. The Rhine, the Loire, the Danube and the Po have all been hard hit. The fate of these rivers is intimately linked to Europe's energy, food, and transportation security. And the fate of both the rivers and the daily needs of Europeans are intimately bound up with the trajectory of climate change and resource depletion, especially of water and energy.For the Rhine, freight transportation has been curtailed as barges are unable to carry their maximum weight without scraping the bottom of the river in some places. The Rhine is a central artery for the transportation of food and fuel. Just as Europe needs more coal in the right places to generate electricity as Russian natural gas supplies have been curtailed, the cheapest way of moving coal has now become impaired. Trucks and trains are now being forced to carry more freight than normal, straining an already strained supply chain.The Po is flowing at one-tenth its normal volume. That's allowing seawater from the Adriatic to travel up the river and damage the rice crop that depends on the Po's fresh water for irrigation. Up to 40 percent of Italy's agricultural output comes from the Po valley.For the Loire, the major problem is heat. The river water is used to cool nuclear reactors along its course. But that water is now so warm that after absorbing heat from the reactors, the water cannot be cooled sufficiently before it is returned to the river so that it won't harm aquatic life. As a result, reactors were forced to reduce their power output. Recently, however, France's nuclear authority relaxed environmental rules in the wake of continued hot weather—weather that both increases the demand for electricity, especially for cooling, and makes it difficult to cool discharge water sufficiently. On top of this half of France's nuclear reactor fleet is out of service and undergoing routine maintenance just as the need for electricity has skyrocketed.Along the Danube, damage to wildlife habitat is becoming apparent. Shipping has halted on the German portion and is expected to halt on the Austrian portion of the river due to low water levels.Of course, all of this is taking place against the backdrop of the Russia-Ukraine war which has led to cuts in natural gas and oil flows from Russia to Europe. Previously, Russia was Europe's largest source of imported natural gas. The war has also reduced exports of wheat and sunflower oil from Ukraine. Ukraine had been the world's largest exporter of sunflower oil and the fifth largest exporter of wheat.In the wake of what's happening, Russia seems more secure than Europe, primarily because Russia is rich in the raw materials needed by modern society, especially fossil fuel energy. The German economy, on the other hand, has taken a body blow as a result of its dependence of imported energy, much of which was previously supplied by Russia. This is proof that all the technical, engineering and managerial skill for which German industry is known means little if the necessary resources upon which to apply those skills is lacking. And, the dearth of rain and low water in the Rhine are exacerbating an already bad situation for Germany.Nitrogen fertilizers essential to high crop yields are (or rather were) major Russian exports before war-related sanctions curtailed their availability.Food, energy and related prices such as fertilizer were already rising prior to the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war. The war and attendant sanctions accelerated that trend.In addition to the interlocking vulnerabilities of the food system to both climate change and to the partly human- and partly nature-induced input shortages such a fertilizer and fuel, the effect of climate change on crop yields and on transportation of bulk grains via major rivers makes clear that human society is facing multiple catastrophes at once.
Sudan says it won't retaliate over Ethiopia dam filling - Sudan on Thursday denied reports that it would take action after Ethiopia filled its Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), instead urging "cooperation" between impacted countries.Negotiations between Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan over the Nile river mega-dam, which Ethiopia began building in 2011, have been at a standstill for more than a year.In a statement carried by Arabic-language media, the Sudanese irrigation and resources ministry stressed the "necessity of cooperation and coordination", and said Ethiopia and downstream Egypt and Sudan needed to reach a binding agreement over the filling and operation of the dam.Egypt and Sudan view the GERD as a threat, saying it could deprive them of essential Nile water, while Ethiopia deems it essential for its electrification and development.Sudan has sought technical agreements with Addis Ababa to ensure that Sudanese dams are not negatively impacted by the dam.Last week, the head of a Sudanese technical delegation, Mustafa Hussein, was quoted by local media as saying that Sudan would take "necessary action" if the filling of the GERD impacted Sudan's dams or other uses of the Nile river water supply.The irrigation ministry said in its Thursday statement the reported comments were "misleading and incorrect information".
Most Bleak Federal Report Yet on High-Tide/Sunny-Day Tide Floods -The federal government’s eighth State of High Tide Flooding report is its starkest assessment yet detailing the upward trends of rising seas spilling into coastal cities.Scientists at NOAA’s National Ocean Service – the agency’s water counterpart to the National Weather Service – earlier this month reported threefold and fivefold increases since 2000 in sunny-day, high-tide flooding for the southeastern U.S. and western Gulf Coast, respectively. Despite an ongoing La Niña in the eastern Pacific, which can temporarily dampen sea levels along the U.S. coast, the frequency of relentless saltwater flooding – unrelated to extreme weather – has continued to accelerate across the U.S. in 2022.The report underscores an alarming growth of chronic sunny-day floods at nearly 100 tidal locations monitored by NOAA along the U.S. coastline, taxing the ability of modern infrastructure to adapt by gradualism to contain increasingly disruptive and destructive high tides. The latest outlook predicts sunny-day flooding – occurring now about once every other month at any given spot, averaged nationwide – to become as commonplace as every other day by the end of traditional 30-year mortgages originating today.Several factors affect differences in local sea-level rise, including sinking land and a slowing of the Gulf Stream current along the eastern seaboard, especially along the southern extension of the Gulf Stream known as the Florida Current.But even in places like South Florida, prone to both subsidence and fluctuations in the nearby Florida Current, government scientists estimate the vast majority – roughly 8 cm of the 11 cm rise over the past 20 years – are driven by warmer oceans and melting land ice from global climate change. The octopus in the parking garage may be the modern-day canary in the coal mine for rising seas, with marine life swept in with advancing tides and bubbling up through porous bedrock beneath.The latest report complements a sweeping NOAA Task Force report released last February updating sea-level projections for the U.S. coastline from climate change scenarios outlined in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report released last summer. These new updates, the first since 2017, increase scientific confidence into the next century of deleterious consequences to U.S. coastal communities and ecosystems unless comprehensive mitigation measures are taken. Nearly 40 % of the nation’s 330-plus million live in a coastal shoreline county on land comprising less than 10% of the total U.S. land area, excluding Alaska. In many hurricane- and storm surge-prone areas along the gently sloping Gulf Coast, population and attendant wealth have skyrocketed. In Collier County on Florida’s southwest coast, home to Naples and one of the country’s most prosperous communities, population has soared by nearly 1000% over the past 50 years. An estimated 40%of Florida’s population is at risk of storm surge flooding, with the highest concentration of per capita losses from storm surge along Florida’s southwestern shoreline.
August may pass without a single named storm in the Atlantic - Atlantic tropical storm and hurricane activity, thus far, has been strangely quiet — especially given forecasts for a busy season. Observed activity is barely 15 percent of what’s normal up to this point. With little activity of immediate concern on the weather maps (the National Hurricane Center is tracking two disturbances with small chances to develop), it’s tough not to wonder what’s up. So far, atmospheric ingredients simply haven’t gelled. But they still could, as we’re just now entering the peak of the season, which spans late August through early October. And, as Hurricane Andrew demonstrated 30 years ago, it takes only one storm for a quiet season to become a catastrophe.This year’s silent spell comes five years to the day since the landfall of Category 4 Hurricane Harvey near Rockport, Tex., in 2017. The system then transitioned into a stagnant tropical rainstorm that delivered catastrophic flooding around Houston. Harvey was a prelude to a devastating September that brought Irma, Maria and a slew of other storms.A named storm hasn’t roamed the Atlantic since Colin dissipated on July 3, and even that storm was a marginal one. Since that storm grazed the Carolinas’ coasts, the Atlantic Ocean has been dormant.The dearth of named storms is rare, but it’s not unprecedented.According to Philip Klotzbach, a hurricane researcher at Colorado State University, this marks the first time since 1982 that there hasn’t been a single named storm anywhere in the Atlantic between July 3 and the penultimate week of August. It’s happened five other times since 1950, making a quiet stretch this long leading up to peak season a roughly once-a-decade event.During that 1982 season, only six storms formed, and the United States never experienced a hurricane landfall. The season tied with 2013 for having the record fewest named storms in the satellite era.
Alaska’s snow crabs have disappeared. Where they went is a mystery. - The theories are many. The crabs moved into Russian waters. They are dead because predators got them. They are dead because they ate each other. But everyone agrees on one point: The disappearance of Alaska’s snow crabs probably is connected to climate change. Marine biologists and those in the fishing industry fear the precipitous and unexpected crash of this luxury seafood item is a harbinger, a warning about how quickly a fishery can be wiped out in this new, volatile world. Gabriel Prout and his brothers Sterling and Ashlan were blindsided. Harvests of Alaskan king crab — the bigger, craggier species that was the star of the television show “Deadliest Catch” — have been on a slow decline for over a decade. But in 2018 and 2019, scientists had seemingly great news about Alaska’s snow crabs: Record numbers of juvenile crabs were zooming around the ocean bottom, suggesting a massive haul for subsequent fishing seasons. Gabriel Prout, 32, and his brothers bought out their father’s partner, becoming part owners of the 116-foot Silver Spray. They took out loans and bought $4 million in rights to harvest a huge number of crabs. It was a year that many young commercial fishers in the Bering Sea bought into the fishery, going from deckhands to owners. Everyone was convinced the 2021 snow crab season was going to be huge. And then they weren’t there. Scientists, despite earlier optimistic signs, found that snow crab stocks were down 90 percent. The season opened and the total allowable harvest went from 45 million pounds to 5.5 million pounds. Commercial fishers couldn’t even catch that quantity. In October 2021, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game closed the king crab season entirely to harvesting, for the first time since the 1990s. Vegetable oil prices soar, far outstripping other food inflation Go to Joe’s Stone Crab in D.C. for an order of those sweet, luxurious crab legs and you’re likely to have palpitations: $199.95 for 1½ pounds of king crab. King crab is served chilled with drawn butter and is cracked tableside. But still, that price tag is startling. For restaurateurs seeking new sources to make up for Alaska’s shortfall, there’s an additional headache: The U.S. government in March banned imports of Russian fish and seafood products, along with other consumer items such as vodka and diamonds, as part of its expanding sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.
Three M-class solar flares – M2.1, M7.2 and M5.3 erupt from AR 3089 --Active Region 3089 (Beta) produced three M-class solar flares on August 26, 2022 – M2.1 at 10:55 UTC, M7.2 at 12:14 UTC, and M5.3 at 12:31 UTC. The region is still not in a geoeffective position and none of the flares produced today were associated with radio signatures that would suggest a significant coronal mass ejection (CME). However, this might change in the days ahead as the region rotates toward the center of the disk. There were 6 numbered sunspot regions on the Earth side of the Sun on August 26: Solar activity is expected to be low with a chance for M-class flares and a slight chance for an X-class flare through August 29.1 The geomagnetic field has been at quiet levels in 24 hours to 22:00 UTC on August 26. Solar wind speed peaked at 381 km/s at 12:00 UTC while the total IMF reached 7 nT at 19:57. The maximum southward component of Bz reached -4 nT at 04:29 UTC. Electrons greater than 2 MeV at geosynchronous orbit reached a peak level of 3 604 pfu. The geomagnetic field is expected to be at quiet to unsettled levels on August 27 and 28 and quiet to active levels on August 29. Protons have a slight chance of crossing the threshold through August 29.
Wave created by Tonga volcano eruption reached 90 meters—nine times taller than 2011 Japan tsunami - The initial tsunami wave created by the eruption of the underwater Hunga Tonga Ha'apai volcano in Tonga in January 2022 reached 90 meters in height, around nine times taller than that from the highly destructive 2011 Japan tsunami, new research has found. An international research team says the eruption should serve as a wake-up call for international groups looking to protect people from similar events in future, claiming that detection and monitoring systems for volcano-based tsunamis are '30 years behind' comparable tools used to detect earthquake-based events. By comparison, the largest tsunami waves due to earthquakes before the Tonga event were recorded following the Tōhoku earthquake near Japan in 2011 and the 1960 Chilean earthquake, reached 10 meters in initial height. Those were more destructive as they happened closer to land, with waves that were wider. Dr. Heidarzadeh says the Tonga tsunami should serve as a wake-up call for more preparedness and understanding of the causes and signs of tsunamis cause by volcanic eruptions. He says that "the Tongan tsunami tragically killed five people and caused large scale destruction, but its effects could have been even greater had the volcano been located closer to human communities. The volcano is located approximately 70 km from the Tongan capital Nuku'alofa—this distance significantly minimized its destructive power." "This was a gigantic, unique event and one that highlights that internationally we must invest in improving systems to detect volcanic tsunamis as these are currently around 30 years behind the systems we used to monitor for earthquakes. We are under-prepared for volcanic tsunamis." The research was carried out by analyzing ocean observation data recordings of atmospheric pressure changes and sea level oscillations, in combination with computer simulations validated with real-world data. The research team found that the tsunami was unique as the waves were created not only by the water displaced by the volcano's eruption, but also by huge atmospheric pressure waves, which circled around the globe multiple times. This 'dual mechanism' created a two-part tsunami—where initial ocean waves created by the atmospheric pressure waves were followed more than one hour later by a second surge created by the eruption's water displacement. This combination meant tsunami warning centers did not detect the initial wave as they are programmed to detect tsunamis based on water displacements rather than atmospheric pressure waves. The research team also found that the January event was among very few tsunamis powerful enough to travel around the globe—it was recorded in all world's oceans and large seas from Japan and the United States' western seaboard in the North Pacific Ocean to the coasts within the Mediterranean Sea.
Risk of volcano catastrophe 'a roll of the dice,' say experts - The world is "woefully underprepared" for a massive volcanic eruption and the likely repercussions on global supply chains, climate and food, according to experts from the University of Cambridge's Center for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER), and the University of Birmingham. In an article published in the journal Nature, they say there is a "broad misconception" that risks of major eruptions are low, and describe current lack of governmental investment in monitoring and responding to potential volcano disasters as "reckless." However, the researchers argue that steps can be taken to protect against volcanic devastation—from improved surveillance to increased public education and magma manipulation—and the resources needed to do so are long overdue. "Data gathered from ice cores on the frequency of eruptions over deep time suggests there is a one-in-six chance of a magnitude seven explosion in the next one hundred years. That's a roll of the dice," said article co-author and CSER researcher Dr. Lara Mani, an expert in global risk. "Such gigantic eruptions have caused abrupt climate change and collapse of civilizations in the distant past." Mani compares the risk of a giant eruption to that of a 1km-wide asteroid crashing into Earth. Such events would have similar climatic consequences, but the likelihood of a volcanic catastrophe is hundreds of times higher than the combined chances of an asteroid or comet collision. "Hundreds of millions of dollars are pumped into asteroid threats every year, yet there is a severe lack of global financing and coordination for volcano preparedness," Mani said. "This urgently needs to change. We are completely underestimating the risk to our societies that volcanoes pose." An eruption in Tonga in January was the largest ever instrumentally recorded. The researchers argue that if it had gone on longer, released more ash and gas, or occurred in an area full of critical infrastructure—such as the Mediterranean—then global shock waves could have been devastating. "The Tonga eruption was the volcanic equivalent of an asteroid just missing the Earth, and needs to be treated as a wake-up call," said Mani.
U.S. emissions up 2.5% in first half of year - U.S. greenhouse gas emissions rose 2.5 percent in the first half of the year, as more Americans hit the roadways and power sector demand for natural gas remained strong.American emissions have risen steadily since 2020, when pandemic-induced lockdowns prompted a crash in U.S. greenhouse gas output. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimated the country's energy-related carbon dioxide emissions were 2.46 billion tons in the first half of 2022, compared to 2.40 billion tons during the same period last year.The rebound underscores the challenge facing the Biden administration as it works to implement a sweeping new climate law, which includes $369 billion in clean energy tax incentives. Analysts said it likely would take time for incentives from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) to translate into cutting emissions. “The nature of siting, building and operating new wind and solar will take time,” said Dan Klein, an analyst who tracks energy markets and emissions at S&P Global Commodity Insights. “It will probably be a few years before forecasts for wind and solar start exceeding pre-IRA projections.”
Will the Inflation Reduction Act jumpstart carbon capture? --President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, into law last week, unleashing hundreds of billions of dollars in tax incentives and rebates to help companies and everyday people transition to clean energy. While some of the new subsidies will expand renewable technologies like wind and solar, the law also offers generous incentives for carbon capture and storage, or CCS — projects designed to trap carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel-fired power plants or other industrial facilities, and then pump the CO2 deep underground, preventing it from ever entering the atmosphere. CCS has long been controversial due to its high price tag, a history of failed projects, and the ways it enables continued fossil fuel use. There are only a handful of facilities currently capturing carbon in the U.S., and most captured CO2 gets buried in aging oil fields, where it benefits drillers by pushing more oil to the surface. Many climate advocates are skeptical that CCS can meaningfully cut emissions, or do so in a way that doesn’t harm neighboring communities. The Climate Justice Alliance, a coalition of 82 environmental justice groups, denounced the IRAin part because of its subsidies for carbon capture. But while electric utilities have a lot of options for producing carbon-free power — like solar, wind, and nuclear — experts say that in other carbon-intensive industries, CCS is the most promising climate solution. “The steel industry and cement, they don’t have a very practical decarbonization option without using carbon capture equipment,” said Matt Bright, the carbon capture policy manager at the nonprofit Clean Air Task Force. That’s because steel and cement plants release CO2 from chemical reactions, not just from burning fossil fuels. “All of a sudden, the one technology that’s really viable for them is within reach,” said Bright. The IRA makes key changes to 45Q, an existing tax credit for CCS, that make it much more lucrative and easier to access. Before, companies could earn up to $50 for every metric ton of CO2 sequestered — or $35 if they buried the CO2 in the process of oil extraction. Now, they can earn $85 or $60 per metric ton, respectively. (Note: The IRA tax credits also support a related technology called direct air capture, which removes carbon dioxide that has already been emitted from the atmosphere. However, this article is focused solely on carbon captured from polluting sources.) Companies will also have more time to develop projects. Previously they had to start construction on the capture equipment by 2026 — a tight deadline considering it can take two to three years to get financing together and complete initial project planning, according to Bright. Now the deadline is 2033. The IRA also opened the door for companies with smaller tax liabilities to take advantage of 45Q by allowing the tax credit to be collected as a direct cash payment, rather than a tax deduction, for the first five years a CCS project operates. After five years, the direct pay option will expire, but the credits can then be transferred to another company with a bigger tax liability in exchange for a check. A fourth change is that the IRA dramatically lowers the total amount of CO2 that a project has to capture each year to qualify for the tax credits. Bright said this would enable smaller facilities that emit less carbon to pursue CCS. However, there’s a chance this could lead to subsidies for large polluting plants that only capture a portion of their emissions.
Carbon Capture Plays an Outsized Role in the Inflation Reduction Act’s Emissions Reductions - The federal government released its first official analysis of the Inflation Reduction Act on Thursday, projecting that the new law will help the United States slash emissions roughly 40 percent below 2005 levels over the next eight years. It’s at least the fourth analysis to come to such a conclusion, which many experts say is a good sign those estimates could be more accurate than not. The legislation, which dedicates roughly $370 billion to addressing climate change and was signed into law by President Joe Biden earlier this week, marks the most substantial federal investment into reducing the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions. That money will be used for tax credits, rebates and other financial incentives to rapidly boost the nation’s development and adoption of clean energy, electric vehicles and other strategies to address global warming. But major questions remain over the models’ calculations, particularly when it comes to their assumptions about the outsized role carbon capture and storage technologies—or CCS—will play in the coming years. At least two of those models attribute between 10 and 20 percent of the additional emissions reductions they project through 2030 to the rapid scaling up and implementation of those technologies, according to a review of models’ data by Inside Climate News. In other words, at least 100 million metric tons—and potentially as much as 200 million metric tons—of carbon dioxide are expected to be removed from the operations of power plants and industrial facilities by the end of the decade, according to two separate analyses conducted by Princeton University and the think tank Rhodium Group. The Princeton analysis predicts 20 percent of the nation’s emissions reductions through 2030 will come from carbon capture technologies. Rhodium attributes about 10 percent to those efforts. The new federal analysis doesn’t publicly break down its calculations, but alludes to some of its projections coming from carbon capture and removal technologies. “We cannot overemphasize the transformative effect that the Inflation Reduction Act will have on the deployment of carbon capture technologies,” Matt Bright, carbon capture policy manager at the Clean Air Task Force, an environmental group that’s supportive of the technology, said in a statement. Given that the technologies are widely criticized for being inefficient, expensive and especially difficult to scale, however, the emissions reductions attributed to CCS could signify a notable flaw in the models’ projections and undercut the accuracy of their findings. Some critics also worry implementing the technologies could cost far more than the few billion dollars the federal government estimates it will spend on them through 2031. Attempts to scale up and prove the viability of carbon capture and storage technologies have so far proven problematic at best. CCS aims to capture CO2 emitted by power plants and other industrial facilities before it reaches the atmosphere and then store those emissions underground. Both the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, passed last year, put a substantial amount of federal dollars into the development of those technologies, which have gained broad political support in recent years. But the technologies remain highly controversial among environmental activists, some of whom say they’re a waste of time and money that could go toward more proven climate solutions, such as renewable energy. They also argue that technologies like CCS incentivize fossil fuel companies to continue producing and refining their planet-warming products, with the promise of capturing the emissions later, rather than more quickly transitioning to cleaner energy sources. It’s a point that Charles Harvey and Kurt House, who helped establish one of the nation’s first privately-funded CCS companies in 2008, reiterated in an opinion essay published in the New York Times on Tuesday, shortly after President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law. Any public investment in those technologies is “a counterproductive waste of money,” the two wrote in the op-ed, pointing to more than a dozen CCS projects in the U.S. that aimed to scale up the technology and prove its financial viability but eventually failed due to prohibitive costs—despite receiving billions of dollars in federal subsidies.
Southern Louisiana Pointed Out As Major CCUS Hotbed -A global energy data analytics and SaaS technology company Enverus has released a report stating that Southern Louisiana stood out among numerous locations considered for large-scale carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) projects around the world. Enverus’ subsidiary Enverus Intelligence Research (EIR) records document 10 million tons per annum of operational global sequestration capacity, which represents merely 3 percent of planned capacity. When evaluating sequestration locations, the report, and ranking considered reservoir quality and proximity to point source emissions and transportation as leading indicators. As a result, the Southern Louisiana Oligocene-Miocene, with its clean sand aquifers, stood out among numerous locations and is now deemed among the best storage reservoirs in the world by EIR. “With the recent, substantial uptick in CCUS project announcements across the lower 48, Southern Louisiana stands out as a major hotbed for current and future sequestration activity,” said Evan MacDonald, senior geology associate at Enverus. “To develop an idea of how these projects stack up in terms of storage potential, and to derive insights into future project potential, a firm understanding of the reservoir being injected into is essential. We aim to not only daylight and compare the projects that have been announced thus far but provide a look at opportunities that may lie in the near term, for future projects of their kind,” MacDonald added. Oil and gas supermajors like ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, and Equinor are leading the pack for global carbon dioxide sequestration capacity, while large independent operators like California Resource Corporation, Occidental, and Denbury have revealed plans to participate in both permanent storage and CO2-EOR operations. Kinder Morgan, Denbury, and Occidental hold the most operational CO2 pipe in North America and likely have the option to market near-term spare capacity to other companies as operations ramp. Given the world-class reservoirs and volume of cheap-to-abate emissions, EIR anticipates a race to locate the most competitive storage opportunities and associated value chain partners which could set off a rush now that the Inflation Reduction Act has become law.
Microsoft and Alaska Airlines working with startup to make clean jet fuel from carbon emissions - Sustainable aviation fuel, commonly called SAF, has so far been expensive to produce, but new startups are now creating clean fuels out of carbon at a much cheaper cost. Now, new tax credits for clean fuel production from the recently signed Inflation Reduction Act could propel these companies further faster. Most SAF is made out of carbon from organic vegetable oils, but Twelve, a chemical technology company based in Berkeley, California, is making fuel out of carbon dioxide. It just announced a collaboration with Alaska Airlinesand Microsoft to advance production and use of Twelve's E-Jet, a lower-carbon jet fuel."Our process takes CO2, water and electricity as inputs. We use the electricity to break apart CO2 and water, and then we have catalysts that recombine the elements to make new products. And one of the things that we can make is the building blocks for jet fuel," said co-founder and CEO Nicholas Flanders. The process, according to Flanders, is far cheaper than existing SAF production."The cost of renewable electricity has been falling over the last decade, so has the cost of CO2 capture, and so has the cost of electrolyzers, which is the technology that we use to transform CO2 and water into the building blocks for jet fuel," he said.Flanders says aircraft would not need to be changed in any way to accommodate the new fuel, which he said has 90% lower emissions than conventional jet fuel. That's huge for airlines trying to reach aggressive emissions goals.
Climate law seen driving 'demand destruction for fossil fuels' -The Inflation Reduction Act won’t just increase clean energy — it also will hasten the arrival of peak U.S. fossil fuel demand, experts say. And some maintain that peak could be reached as soon as 2025. The $370 billion in clean energy funding will rapidly scale up solar and wind to power the electric grid while ramping up the share of new vehicles that are electric. Zeke Hausfather, who leads climate research at Stripe, a financial services firm, said the effect of the new law will be “demand destruction for fossil fuels.” “We’re quickly going to reach a point where there is not enough demand for U.S. oil and gas. The production keeps decreasing, and if you get into a world of falling demand, it really changes the calculus in a lot of ways,” he said. Much of public attention has focused on the law’s power to transform the use of clean energy technologies, for good reason. There is plenty of room for growth in clean energy, which accounts for about 20 percent of American electricity generation, and electric vehicles, which constitute about 5 percent of new U.S. vehicle sales. The Inflation Reduction Act zeroes in on expanding both, which will quickly drive down demand. But it’s also important to note that the United States will soon turn a corner on fossil fuel demand, Hausfather said. That falling demand will blunt the law’s provisions that secure fossil fuel production, such as offshore oil and gas leasing, he said. And since basic economics hold that supply responds to demand, fossil fuel prices are also going to fall, making it less competitive to produce oil, Hausfather said. “If you’re an oil company and you’re trying to decide if you want to spend seven years developing an oil platform in the Gulf, that might not sound like a very safe investment in a world where 14 percent of new vehicle sales are electric,” he said. The Inflation Reduction Act is so transformative that without it, fossil fuel consumption — mostly natural gas — in the United States would continue rising, said Paulina Jaramillo, a professor of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University. “We would most likely not see peak fossil fuel consumption in the next 40 years without policy intervention,” she said. “If it’s left up to the normal forces, we would see an expansion of fossil fuel resources.”
The Inflation Reduction Act Could Push Power Grid Reliability Into a Tailspin - Marketed by its champions as the answer to America’s economic woes and energy-driven inflation, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is anything but. Its market destabilizing subsidies, additional taxes and support for further regulatory overreach could devastate the nation’s remaining coal fleet and consequently the reliability and affordability of the nation’s supply of power. American consumers are likely to pay far more for a power supply that is startlingly less reliable. Even before the IRA became law, the nation’s grid reliability experts and operators were sounding the alarm over the speed of the energy transition and the lack of guardrails to maintain reliability. John Moura, the director of reliability assessment and performance analysis at the North American Electricity Reliability Corporation (NERC), recently said, “there’s clear, objective, conclusive data indicating that the pace of our great transformation is a bit out of sync with the underlying realities and the physics of the system.” The IRA is now poised to supercharge some of the very dynamics already pushing the grid to the brink. Expansion of tax credits for intermittent electricity generation will only exacerbate the market distortions that have forced essential, fuel-secure, dispatchable coal generation off the grid in favor of capacity and enabling infrastructure that doesn’t yet exist and won’t for years. We must see the tenuous state of our energy supply and promised solutions as they are and not as we hope them to be. Grid-scale energy storage remains in its infancy. Expansion of the nation’s electricity transmission system to move renewable power to where it’s needed is not materializing at the speed and scale that matches the loss of our existing dispatchable generation. The U.S. natural gas system is also now stretched precariously thin, lacking the pipeline capacity in key regions to shoulder additional demand, especially in periods of biting cold or scorching heat. On top of these realities, add accelerating electric vehicle uptake. Power demand – once flat – is already beginning to soar in some regions of the country. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory projects that electrification of our energy systems means the U.S. must double its generating capacity by 2050. This is the energy future we must plan for.
Biden Prepares Actions to Cut Emissions After Signing Climate Bill - — Fresh off signing expansive climate legislation, President Biden and his administration are planning a series of executive actions to further reduce greenhouse gas emissions andhelp keep the planet from warming to dangerous temperatures, senior White House officials said.Mr. Biden is on track to deploy a series of measures, including new regulations on emissions from vehicle tailpipes, power plants and oil and gas wells, the officials said.In pushing more executive action, Mr. Biden is trying to make up for the compromises his party made on climate measures to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes the largest single American investment to slow global warming. Democrats had to scale back some of their loftiest ambitions, including by agreeing to fossil fuel and drilling provisions, as concessions to Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, a holdout from a conservative state that is heavily dependent on coal and gas.Gina McCarthy, the White House climate adviser, said that regulatory moves, combined with the new legislation and action from states, could help Mr. Biden meet his promise to cutgreenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent, compared to 2005 levels, by the end of the decade.The climate bill, she said, was “a starting point.”“The president has not chosen to just look at Congress, he’s chosen to recognize that he has presidential authorities and responsibilities under the law to keep moving this forward,” she said. “And he’s going to continue to use those.”Mr. Biden promised an aggressive set of executive actions to cut emissions as recently as last month, when it appeared the climate bill had stalled in the Senate. But even now that the bill has been revived and passed, several administration officials say he has not ruled out taking any of those unilateral moves.The move toward executive action comes less than two months after the Supreme Court limited the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate carbon emissions from power plants. The vote was 6 to 3, with the court’s liberal justices in dissent, saying that the majority had stripped from the E.P.A. “the power to respond to the most pressing environmental challenge of our time.”The ruling curtailed but did not eliminate the agency’s ability to regulate the energy sector, and the agency may still require measures like emission controls at individual power plants. But the court ruled out more ambitious approaches, like requiring utilities to switch from coal to wind or solar power.E.P.A. officials have said they are working to develop a new rule for coal-fired power plants as well as gas plants that will conform with the Supreme Court’s mandate, but have released no details about how the new policies would work.Ms. McCarthy noted the E.P.A. still has “broad authority” to regulate emissions from electricity generation. She also said the government is forging ahead with new regulations on soot and other traditional air pollutants, which will have the side benefit of cutting carbon emissions.
Will the EPA crack down on pollution from buildings? - The Clean Air Act gives the U.S. government broad power to protect public health by regulating major sources of pollutants. Rules developed under the law have, for example, required power plants to install filters and scrubbers to limit the release of sulfur dioxide and particulate matter. The Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, has also used the law to phase lead out of gasoline and issue vehicle standards to reduce tailpipe emissions. But there’s one significant source of pollution that the agency has so far ignored: all of the consumer appliances that burn natural gas or fuel oil in homes and businesses. The direct combustion of fossil fuels like these within the country’s buildings is responsible for roughly 10 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. On Tuesday, the Sierra Club and 25 other environmental and public health groups filed a petition asking the EPA to use its authority to crack down on fuel-burning appliances. “Emissions from buildings have a harmful, and frankly scary, impact on human health and contribute significantly to the climate crisis,” Amneh Minkara, the deputy director of the Sierra Club’s building electrification campaign, said in a written statement accompanying the announcement. “It is the duty of the EPA to keep the American public safe from breathing in these pollutants.” While the Department of Energy regulates many home appliances in order to promote the most energy-efficient models, there are no regulations that aim to mitigate the health effects of pollutants from these devices, like nitrogen oxides, or NOx — a precursor to smog. The petition asks the EPA to phase in NOx performance standards for furnaces and water heaters, eventually landing on a zero-emissions standard by 2030. This would effectively ban the manufacture of these appliances altogether, forcing building owners to purchase alternative heating devices powered solely by electricity, like heat pumps. Unlike the plumes of smoke seen over power plants or the black exhaust spewing out of a diesel truck, emissions from consumer appliances are largely invisible. But over the past several years, a growing body of research has shown that these sneaky releases cannot be ignored. One study published last year found that pollution from residential buildings in the U.S. now harms more people than that of power plants; it caused nearly 6,000 premature deaths in 2017 alone. A separate study published in the journal Science last year found that appliance-related pollution disproportionately affects people of color. (In an interview with Bloomberg, the lead author hypothesized that this may be related to the population density of urban areas, which are disproportionately inhabited by people of color.) The Sierra Club’s petition notes that the EPA’s own data shows that fossil fuel-fired heating appliances have higher cumulative NOx emissions than several of the pollution sources that the agency already regulates for NOx, including natural gas-fired power plants, oil refineries, and cement plants.
Texas bans financial companies from doing business with state agencies - Texas banned 10 financial firms from doing business with the state after Comptroller Glenn Hegar said Wednesday that they did not support the oil and gas industry. Hegar, a Republican running for reelection in November, banned BlackRock Inc., and other banks and investment firms — as well as some investment funds within large banks such as Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan — from entering into most contracts with state and local entities after Hegar’s office said the firms “boycott” the fossil fuel sector. Hegar sent inquiries to hundreds of financial companies earlier this year requesting information about whether they were avoiding investments in the oil and gas industry in favor of renewable energy companies. The survey was a result of a new Texas law that went into effect in September and prohibits most state agencies, as well as local governments, from contracting with firms that have cut ties with carbon-emitting energy companies. State pension funds and local governments issuing municipal bonds will have to divest from the companies on the list, though there are some exemptions, Hegar said. “The environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) movement has produced an opaque and perverse system in which some financial companies no longer make decisions in the best interest of their shareholders or their clients, but instead use their financial clout to push a social and political agenda shrouded in secrecy,” Hegar said in a written statement on Wednesday. New York-based BlackRock, which has publicly embraced investing more in renewable energy, criticized Hegar’s decision. “This is not a fact-based judgment,” a spokesperson for the company said in a written statement. “BlackRock does not boycott fossil fuels — investing over $100 billion in Texas energy companies on behalf of our clients proves that. “Elected and appointed public officials have a duty to act in the best interests of the people they serve,” the spokesperson added. “Politicizing state pension funds, restricting access to investments, and impacting the financial returns of retirees, is not consistent with that duty.” The other nine companies banned completely are: BNP Paribas SA, a French international banking group; Swiss-based Credit Suisse Group AG and UBS Group AG; Danske Bank A/S, a Danish multinational banking and financial services corporation; London-based Jupiter Fund Management PLC, a fund management group; Nordea Bank ABP, a European financial services group based in Finland; Schroders PLC, a British multinational asset management company; and Swedish banks Svenska Handelsbanken AB and Swedbank AB. The funds within larger companies are aimed at sustainable investing, such as Goldman Sachs’ “Paris-aligned Climate US Large Cap Equity ETF” and JP Morgan’s “U.S. Sustainable Leaders Fund.” Texas energy experts said the intent of the law, and Wednesday's announcement, was to punish financial firms that don’t want to invest in the backbone of Texas’ economy — oil and gas.The Lone Star Chapter of the environmental group Sierra Club said Hegar’s “climate-denying publicity stunt will be costly for taxpayers.” “Major financial institutions like the ones on this list are beginning to recognize that investments in fossil fuels bring significant risk in the face of an inevitable clean energy transition, and that addressing the financial risks of the climate crisis is essential to good business,” said Sierra Club Fossil-Free Finance Campaign Manager Ben Cushing. “The fact that the Texas Comptroller has arbitrarily picked a handful of companies that, despite their climate commitments, continue to have massive fossil fuel investments, shows that this is nothing more than a political stunt at Texas taxpayers’ expense.”
How a top US business lobby promised climate action – but worked to block efforts --Three years ago today, in a statement that would be described as “historic”, “monumental” and “revolutionary”, America’s most powerful and politically connected corporations promised to “protect the environment by embracing sustainable practices across our businesses”.The “Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation” came from the Business Roundtable, an influential Washington DC lobbying group whose 200-plus members include the chief executives of some of the world’s biggest companies, including Apple, Pepsi, Walmart and Google.Today, on the statement’s third anniversary, the Business Roundtable and its member CEOs continue to issue earnest statements about the climate crisis. But the organization is also working diligently – and spending liberally – to weaken efforts that would enable investors to hold companies accountable for their climate promises.An analysis by the Guardian found the lobby group has worked hard to protect a status quo in which corporations:
- Generate goodwill and positive PR by publishing bold climate goals, with little fear of being held accountable or legally liable for achieving those goals.
- Can choose to selectively disclose certain parts of their carbon footprint, or none at all.
- Are not required to reveal the greenhouse gas emissions generated throughout their supply chains – which, for most companies, make up the majority of their emissions.
- Make high-profile pledges to fight climate change, while paying to maintain memberships in the Business Roundtable and other trade associations that spend millions of dollars to lobby governments against meaningful climate action.
In public the Business Roundtable’s leaders are still committed to change. Doug McMillon, the CEO of Walmart and previous chair of the Business Roundtable, has called the climate crisis “one of the greatest challenges facing the planet today”. In a statement on the group’s website, Mary Barra, the CEO of GM and the Roundtable’s current chair, declared that “we must act” to tackle climate change. “Meeting the scope of this challenge will require collective global action – business and government,” Barra said.The challenge “isn’t the lack of business commitment” said Johnson Controls CEO George Oliver in a video published by the Business Roundtable in January. “What we need is to be aligned with the public sector to make sure that we’ve got the proper policies in place that will enable us to do what we do so well.”Yet when the US government has tried to put the “proper policies” in place, the Business Roundtable has worked to undermine those efforts.
Major Oil Firms Investing Just 5 Pct Of Record Profits In Renewables -Big energy companies are investing the equivalent of 5 percent of their record profits in green projects, an analysis by Channel 4 News, the main news program on UK television broadcaster Channel 4, revealed. Channel 4 News analyzed the accounts of four of Europe’s largest oil and gas companies – BP, Shell, TotalEnergies, and Equinor. In the first six months of this year, they made a total of more than $88 billion in pre-tax profits. BP invested just over $356 million into renewables and ‘low carbon’ in the first half of 2022 — equivalent to just 2.5 percent of its $14.5 billion profits. By comparison, it invested $4.5 billion in new oil and gas projects — more than 10 times its low carbon investments. Shell invested equivalent to 6.3 percent of its $20.3 billion profits into low carbon energy, investing nearly three times more in oil and gas. The Channel 4 analysis also found that all four companies were still investing more in fossil fuels than renewables and low-carbon energy. BP, Shell, and Equinor only publish figures on renewables investment alongside what they class as ‘low carbon’ energy — which can include more contested, non-renewable energy technologies. “What this shows is that their investment in renewables is a vanishingly small proportion of their overall investment, which is still very much focused on oil and gas.” “In the UK we don’t have any control, no matter how much oil and gas we produce domestically, over the price that we pay for it. And ultimately, we are in an energy affordability crisis,” Tess Khan, of green energy campaign group Uplift, told Channel 4 News. BP is planning low carbon investments of up to $6 billion by 2030. Shell says it will invest $24-$30 billion in UK energy in the next decade, more than 75 percent of it in low carbon energy. TotalEnergies says 25 percent of its investment will be in renewables up to 2025. Equinor aims for more than 50 percent of its investment to be in renewables and low carbon by 2030. It is worth noting that all four companies told Channel 4 News they would be increasing their investment in renewables.
Getting people to accept EVs may be harder than passing climate bill - As the White House relishes its victory after swaying a reluctant Congress to spend big on electric vehicles, it now confronts a much heavier lift: nudging tens of millions of skeptical motorists into the cars.The administration’s push to upend an entrenched culture of fossil fuel-powered motoring comes as electric cars are struggling to shake their image as a trophy of coastal elites, unreliable and a headache to charge. They are all perceptions GOP lawmakers are eagerly amplifying as they work to undermine the administration’s agenda.Federal agencies are scrambling to improve the driving experience and boost public confidence in the technology, funding a half million new chargers around the country and launching a new office focused on coordinating the EV transition. The climate bill President Biden signed Aug. 16 pairs lucrative incentives for car purchasers with rewards for carmakers that increase their production of EVs and move their production lines to the United States, giving the companies new motivation to embrace the transition and promote the vehicles.But adding to the administration’s challenge is that the vehicles are in such short supply that even enthusiasts are chafing at the wait lists and inflated prices.“It is going to be a tough few years,” said Gregory Pierce, co-director of the Luskin Center for Innovation at the University of California at Los Angeles. “There is just a shortage of EVs most people can afford, even when you stack all the incentives.”The mass adoption of electric vehicles will change everything we know about automobiles – from driving them to repairing them. But the shift will be bumpy. (Video: Lee Powell/The Washington Post, Photo: Brian Monroe/The Washington Post)The roadblocks to mainstream adoption of the cars are particularly daunting in states like West Virginia, where driver suspicion of the reliability of the technology is compounded by underinvestment in charging infrastructure.When Robert Fernatt gets asked how easy it is to drive across West Virginia in an electric car, the answer is frequently that you can’t.“It is just really tough,” said Fernatt, who heads the state’s chapter of the Electric Auto Association. A large swath of the state has no fast chargers capable of juicing anything other than a Tesla, a luxury car out of reach for most West Virginians.
California phasing out gas vehicles in climate change fight - — California set itself on a path Thursday to end the era of gas-powered cars, with air regulators adopting the world's most stringent rules for transitioning to zero-emission vehicles. The move by the California Air Resources Board to have all new cars, pickup trucks and SUVs be electric or hydrogen by 2035 is likely to reshape the U.S. auto market, which gets 10% of its sales from the nation's most populous state. But such a radical transformation in what people drive will also require at least 15 times more vehicle chargers statewide, a more robust energy grid and vehicles that people of all income levels can afford. “It’s going to be very hard getting to 100%,” said Daniel Sperling, a board member and founding director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis. “You can’t just wave your wand, you can’t just adopt a regulation — people actually have to buy them and use them." Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom told state regulators two years ago to adopt a ban on gas-powered cars by 2035, one piece of California's aggressive suite of policies designed to reduce pollution and fight climate change. If the policy works as designed, California would cut emissions from vehicles in half by 2040. Other states are expected to follow, further accelerating the production of zero-emissions vehicles. Washington state and Massachusetts already have said they will follow California’s lead and many more are likely to — New York and Pennsylvania are among 17 states that have adopted some or all of California’s tailpipe emission standards that are stricter than federal rules. The European Parliament in June backed a plan to effectively prohibit the sale of gas and diesel cars in the 27-nation European Union by 2035, and Canada has mandated the sale of zero-emission cars by the same year. California’s policy doesn’t ban cars that run on gas — after 2035 people can keep their existing cars or buy used ones, and 20% of sales can be plug-in hybrids that run on batteries and gas. Though hydrogen is a fuel option under the new regulations, cars that run on fuel cells have made up less than 1% of car sales in recent years.
Gas-Powered Car Ban in Massachusetts to Begin in 2035 – The state of California has taken a major step toward phasing out gas-powered vehicles, and Massachusetts is following suit.By 2035, all new cars sold in the state must run on electric or hydrogen power, after Governor Baker signed a climate change law earlier this month.The law includes a trigger, according to experts, that says that once California decided to implement zero-emission vehicles, Massachusetts must do the same. Since California made that decision Thursday, regulators here must now begin to work on the details and put auto dealers, along with the public, on notice that the change will be coming."California had to go first according to federal law, and now states can piggyback on to the California rule, which Governor Baker has pledged to do," Larry Chretien of the Green Energy Consumers Alliance said. "The legislature is now requiring that and so now the next step is for the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection to write the regulations that will make it happen."After California passed a law that will ban buying new, gas-powered cars by 2035, Massachusetts is following suit.This new rule will only apply to the sale of new vehicles. The goal of the law is to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase the number of electric vehicles on roadways. Experts say that while this rule is 13 years away, they hope it encourages change sooner.
Washington will no longer sell new gas-powered cars by 2035, Inslee says– On the heels of California announcing that all new cars, trucks and SUVs sold in the state must run on electricity or hydrogen by 2035, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee stated his state plans to do the same. Inslee tweeted California’s breaking news Wednesday and said Washington is ready to adopt the same regulations by the end of 2022 and has already set a law that requires all new car sales to be zero-emission by 2030. The 2020 passage of Senate Bill 5811 in Washington allows the state to adopt California vehicle emissions standards. “Now that California has completed rulemaking for 2035 and beyond, the state will move forward with adopting similar standards,” said Mike Faulk, Inslee’s press secretary. The Washington Department of Ecology will initiate the rulemaking to adopt the California standards. The state expects to open a public comment period on the topic in September. “This is a critical milestone in our climate fight, which is why Washington is poised to institute these same requirements by the end of the year. We look forward to partnering with other states and the Biden Administration to rapidly reduce the country’s primary source of greenhouse gas emissions,” Inslee said in a statement. The Washington State Auto Dealers Association said it supports the legislature’s goal of all-electric vehicle sales and remains committed to making the investments in training and infrastructure necessary to provide customers with the electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles the state will need to meet its goal.
Oregon plans to phase out new gas vehicles like Calif., Wash. — Both California and Washington signaled Thursday that they plan to adopt aggressive emissions targets over the next decade, such that new gas vehicles will be phased out entirely by 2035. While not necessarily at the same place in the process as its two neighbors, Oregon could follow suit in due time.KGW reached out to Gov. Kate Brown's office to ask what Oregon's plans were. In a statement, a spokesman said that the state is already in the process of developing its own regulations of this kind — "similar," at present, to California's."Governor Brown is committed to tackling the climate crisis with urgency, which is why under her leadership Oregon has taken a comprehensive approach to reducing carbon emissions and moving towards a clean energy future," said Charles Boyle, deputy communications director for Brown's office.A key part of the governor's climate plan has been focused on reducing emissions from the transportations sector, Boyle said, and Oregon has already set goals for electric vehicle adoption — particularly for those in rural communities, for people of color and those with lower incomes."Oregon was the first state in the nation to allow electric vehicle rebates for used car sales –– a policy recently adopted by the federal government in the Inflation Reduction Act and which makes electric vehicles more accessible to low- and middle-income families," Boyle said. Oregon recently hit a milestone of having 50,000 electric vehicles on the road. Meanwhile, the state submitted a 5-year plan for electric vehicle charging infrastructure, which is required under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
Wind turbine blades could be recycled into gummy bears, scientists say -The next generation of wind turbine blades could be recycled into gummy bears at the end of their service, scientists have said. Researchers at Michigan State University have made a composite resin for the blades by combining glass fibres with a plant-derived polymer and a synthetic one. Once the blades have reached the end of their lifespan the materials can be broken down and recycled to make new products including turbine blades – and chewy sweets. Wind power is one of the dominant forms of renewable energy. However, turbine blades, usually made of fibreglass, can be as long as half a football field and cause problems with disposal, with many discarded in landfills when they reach the end of their use cycle. To combat the waste, researchers designed a new form of resin. Digesting the resin in an alkaline solution produced potassium lactate, which can be purified and made into sweets and sports drinks. “We recovered food-grade potassium lactate and used it to make gummy bear candies, which I ate,” said John Dorgan, one of the authors of the paper. The alkaline digestion also released poly(methyl methacrylate), or PMMA, a common acrylic material used in windows and car taillights. On eating gummy bears that are derived from a wind turbine, Dorgan says “a carbon atom derived from a plant, like corn or grass, is no different from a carbon atom that came from a fossil fuel. It’s all part of the global carbon cycle, and we’ve shown that we can go from biomass in the field to durable plastic materials and back to foodstuffs.” He added: “The beauty of our resin system is that at the end of its use cycle, we can dissolve it, and that releases it from whatever matrix it’s in so that it can be used over and over again in an infinite loop. That’s the goal of the circular economy.”
Cracking down on coal ash: Tough talk and tough choices - In more than 700 spots nationwide, toxic coal ash is stored in ponds, dammed impoundments, landfills, and more unusual structures: a meteor crater, old limestone quarries, and the “Ash Island” rising in a lake popular with Tennessee boaters and swimmers. The vast majority of these coal ash repositories are contaminating groundwater with dangerous pollutants, according to monitoring data reported by companies andcompiled by environmental groups.Since federal coal ash rules took effect in 2015, many companies have seemingly flaunted provisions against storing coal ash in contact with groundwater, in flood zones, or other risky areas.In January the Environmental Protection Agency announced its intention to actually enforce the coal ash rules. But a months-long investigation by the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University reveals the enormity of the challenge.The EPA is largely reliant on state regulators and community groups for enforcement and vigilance. But state agencies thus far have largely approved companies’ coal ash management plans with seemingly little scrutiny. And even when state and federal regulators and companies work together to protect human health and the environment, there is no easy way to deal with nearly a billion tons of coal ash dumped over the last century, not to mention the more than 100 million tons of coal ash still being created each year. In June, E&E News published a leaked list of 160 sites where the EPA is investigating closure plans for unlined pits that could leave ash contaminating groundwater. Coal ash is almost always dumped near water bodies — rivers, lakes, and reservoirs — since it’s historically been held on the sites of coal plants that need water for cooling. Coal ash contaminants can easily leach into groundwater, polluting aquifers that serve municipal water systems and private wells. It can also flood or seep into water bodies. Companies are planning to close the great majority of coal ash impoundments in place, despite the fact that most of them are unlined, allowing the potential for ongoing groundwater contamination. In January, the EPA turned down requests from eight companies seeking an extension on an April 2021 deadline to stop putting coal ash in unlined impoundments. The denials mean those companies — like many others — need to start closing their coal ash pits, but how they close remains to be seen. Some of the EPA’s extension denials said companies did not adequately consider removing coal ash from pits and moving it to safer locations, but those decisions don’t prohibit the companies from closing ash ponds in place.
Tennessee Valley Authority is dumping coal ash on Black south Memphis -- It’s rare for a Black community to notch a win against a large industrial polluter, but that’s what happened on this city’s south side. Residents stood up to a proposal by two oil and gas industry giants to build a pipeline under their properties and forced them to back down. When the news broke last year in July, the rejoicing began. But it didn’t last long. Just two weeks after Valero Energy Corp. and Plains All-American abandoned their pipeline bid, the Tennessee Valley Authority announced its plan to truck millions of tons of contaminated coal ash through south Memphis for nearly 10 years and dump it in a landfill there. And there was nothing residents could do to stop it. What happened in south Memphis is another example of how industries constantly work to fight their way into communities of color already teeming with pollution — and get their way more often than not. By spring this year, earthmovers were crawling on a mountain of the toxic pollutant and dumping it into trucks with sealed cabins to protect the drivers against breathing it. Every weekday, the convoy rolls toward Interstate 55, starting a 19-mile procession to dump waste laced with mercury, arsenic and other contaminants at a landfill in south Memphis and cover it with dirt. Diesel trucks operated by a contractor, Republic Services, will make 240 trips per day to remove 3.2 million cubic yards of coal ash — about 4 million tons — through an environmental justice community that already faces heavy industrial pollution from nearby oil and gas refineries, pipelines, freeways, rail yards and trash dumps. Residents, conservationists and local politicians who oppose the plan say that the TVA — the nation’s largest public utility — failed to consult them adequately or seriously consider less harmful alternatives. In south Memphis, the coal ash convoy joins at least 22 other serious polluting industries, according to a University of Memphis study, creating a layering effect that has already led to much worse air quality and health outcomes than in most of the country. A natural gas plant has also recently joined the neighborhood, and there is a push to make the community’s victory over the pipeline short-lived. Excessive industrial pollution in Black, Indigenous and Latino communities across the country is pervasive. And recent studies show that negative health outcomes in these areas are directly linked to the ways that local governments and financial institutions adopted policies — known as redlining — that kept people of color confined to certain areas in cities, while supporting Whites who relocated to suburbs. South Memphis — broken up into historic and iconic communities such as Boxtown, Whitehaven and Westwood — already has some of the dirtiest air in Tennessee. Measurements of ozone and particulate matter, particularly from diesel trucks, are well above levels considered to be safe, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Deadly air pollutant ‘systematically and disproportionately’ harms Americans of color, study finds The lifetime cancer risk is abnormally high, and the life expectancy rate, 67 years, is low compared with the state average, 75 years. The average in Shelby County, where Memphis sits, surrounded by wealthier White suburbs, is 79 years.
Long burdened by a coal plant, South Memphis residents say no to coal ash in their backyard - Pearl Walker lives right next to the Interstate 55 exit on the south side of Memphis. Every day she watches over 100 rust-red trucks loaded with toxic coal ash from the nearby coal plant barrel past on their way to a local municipal landfill. The landfill is the final resting place for 3.5 million cubic yards of toxic coal ash — enough to fill two and a half Empire State Buildings — from the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Allen Fossil Plant. For decades residents have dealt with air pollution from the plant. When federal rules mandated the plant’s coal ash ponds had to close, residents made clear they wanted the ash removed from their community. But even as TVA held public meetings and told residents it was considering various options, the federal agency was already moving forward with its plans to haul coal ash to the South Shelby Landfill in South Memphis, documents obtained through a public records request showed. Coal-ash-laden trucks will traverse local streets for at least 8 years, under TVA’s plans, continuing a legacy of environmental injustice and lack of accountability, as many see it. Walker is concerned about diesel emissions from the trucks and the potential for coal ash to spill out in a crash. As an environmental justice advocate and long-time resident of the neighborhood known as Whitehaven, Walker feels disrespected by the agencies and elected officials who approved this plan. Toxic coal ash is stored at more than 700 sites nationwide. Groundwater has been contaminated at the majority of sites, according to environmental groups’ analysis of testing data reported by utility and power companies. Many of the pits are being closed leaving the ash in place, to the outrage of environmental activists. TVA, the federal utility that ran the Allen plant for six decades, decided to remove the ash from the Allen Plant and bring it to a landfill — generally considered the most environmentally safe option. But nationwide, minority and low-income neighborhoods are more likely to find municipal and hazardous waste landfills in their communities. TVA ultimately narrowed its options to seven landfills: the North Shelby and South Shelby landfills in Tennessee, the Tunica Landfill in Mississippi, the Arrowhead Landfill in Alabama, the Taylor County Disposal Landfill in Georgia, the Lee County Landfill in South Carolina, and the Laraway Recycling and Disposal Facility in Illinois.The seven sites had one thing in common: all were located in low-income and predominantly minority communities.
Historic coal ash: A threat to Lake Michigan and beyond -- At almost 300 sites on the Great Lakes and coast to coast, unregulated buried and landfilled coal ash is putting water supplies at risk, alleges a federal lawsuit filed August 25. This threat is in addition to contamination from up to 700 coal ash repositories that are covered by 2015 federal coal ash rules. The Environmental Protection Agency this year began enforcing these rules after years of inaction, but environmental groups in Illinois, Indiana, California, Tennessee and Washington D.C. that filed the new lawsuit are demanding the agency close the loophole that exempts inactive landfills and buried coal ash from the rules. They note that data reported by companies themselves shows that three-quarters of active coal ash landfills covered by the regulations are polluting groundwater with toxic compounds like arsenic and lithium. The lawsuit notes that inactive landfills are much less likely to be lined, hence the risk of contamination is likely even higher. The lawsuit is based in part on analysis of a trove of documents that companies filed with the EPA’s Office of Water in 2010. Earthjustice, the law firm representing the plaintiffs, says that along with pits constructed specifically to store ash; ash scattered or mixed with soil should legally qualify as a landfill, and should be regulated. They say such ash produced from burning coal for power in decades past poses a serious risk to groundwater and water bodies at places like Waukegan, on the shores of Lake Michigan in northern Illinois, and Michigan City, Indiana on the lake’s southern shore. “Before there were any regulations whatsoever for this stuff, they just kind of dumped it anywhere,” said Jenny Cassel, an attorney at Earthjustice, one of the organizations that filed the notice of intent to sue. “Near the coal plants, particularly next to the rivers, they would just find depressions in the ground or dig them and throw coal ash in.” The lawsuit, filed in federal district court in Washington D.C., demands that the EPA review the federal rules on coal ash, and add regulation of inactive landfills. Currently, coal ash ponds at coal plants that closed before 2015 are also exempt from the federal rules, but a 2018 federal appeals court decision means the EPA is mandated to draft regulations for such “legacy ash” ponds.
In the Finger Lakes, a cryptocurrency mining plant billed as ‘green’ has a dirty coal ash problem - The village of Dresden is nestled amid charming vineyards and the placid blue waters of Seneca Lake, the largest of Upstate New York’s Finger Lakes. Wineries, breweries, dairy farms, and state parks dot the lake’s shoreline, making it a picture-perfect vacation destination.But for local residents, the three auburn-colored smokestacks of Greenidge Generation’s plant towering above the trees are an unnerving reminder that their natural resources are at risk. The coal-fired power station closed in 2011 but was restarted in 2017 to “mine” cryptocurrency, an energy-intensive process using computer data servers. The plant is now powered by natural gas, but the toxic legacy of its decades of burning coal remains. Two million tons of toxic coal ash stored off-site and on-site have become the responsibility of the secretive cryptocurrency operation, and locals are not happy with how the company is managing the pollution. The Environmental Protection Agency has also expressed its displeasure, denying an extension the company sought to close its coal ash pond. A leaked EPA documentpublished by E&E News in June showed Greenidge first on a list of 160 coal ash sites that “potentially” have coal ash below the water table, meaning leaving the ash there — as Greenidge plans to do — would violate federal rules. When Gary McIntee moved to his lakeside house on Seneca Lake’s Perry Point in 2016, he had no idea that he would find it challenging to access clean drinking water. His home draws water directly from the lake, but water contaminated with heavy metals is dumped into a river that feeds the lake, so McIntee doesn’t feel confident that the water is safe to drink.He lives a mile from the power plant and cryptocurrency operation, that bills itself — ironically, as many locals see it — as “green.” The contamination comes in large part from wastewater from the coal ash leftover from the decades that the power plant burned coal to provide electricity for this region in the Finger Lakes. After the coal plant closed and its owner filed for bankruptcy, in 2014 it was bought by a private equity firm, Atlas Holdings LLC, that established a subsidiary called Greenidge Generation Holdings Inc. to run the plant and bitcoin mining. Greenidge and its attorneys did not respond to multiple requests for comments.
Coal ash near Illinois water wells to stay, despite residents' concerns - -Joliet, Illinois, a city of about 150,000 people southwest of Chicago, has long depended on a deep sandstone aquifer for drinking water – an increasingly strained resource that city officials hope to supplement with a billion-dollar pipeline from Lake Michigan.But while this highly publicized search for a new source of municipal water unfolds, some residents who rely on private well water face a different threat.Tucked behind a chain-link fence and shrouded by sprawling, overgrown vegetation is a former limestone quarry holding over six million tons of coal ash – a toxic byproduct of burning coal to generate electricity. Midwest Generation parent company NRG Energy is now in the process of closing the coal ash repository, and plans to do it in a way that experts fear could leave well water at risk into the future. In 2016, NRG’s nearby coal plants were converted to burn natural gas, but the coal ash accumulated over decades remains. At hundreds of sites nationwide, coal ash sits in such unlined pits, in most cases contaminating groundwater, according to a 2019 analysis of company data by the Environmental Integrity Project and Earthjustice. In January, the EPA announced its intent to enforce 2015 federal coal ash rules requiring coal ash pits to safely close and remediate contamination. NRG has proposed capping the quarry and leaving the ash in place, a closure method environmental groups say is dangerous — especially since NRG relies on pumps to keep contaminated groundwater from flowing toward homes and private wells. The groundwater connected to the quarry is separate from the deep aquifer that the city taps for its water. But environmental lawyers and many residents want NRG to remove the ash entirely and transport it to a landfill, as they have expressed in interviews and public meetings. NRG disagrees. “We did not hear residents of Joliet say that they preferred excavation and removal,” said NRG spokesperson Dave Schrader, in an email. “In fact, the Will County Environmental Network stated: ‘The Network believes that covering and maintaining the system design would be the best solution for the closure of this facility. We would be opposed to the removal of the ash for several reasons.’”Excavation and removal would require years of trucking, pollute the air and disturb neighborhoods, NRG said.
Rising waters, sinking feeling: From the Great Lakes to the Ohio River, climate change puts coal ash impoundments at risk --Just upstream of Alabama’s Mobile Bay sits a vast region of wetlands known as the Mobile-Tensaw Delta, home to one of the most diverse ecosystems in the United States. As well as 21 million cubic yards of wet coal ash. The J.M. Barry Power Plant has been a flashpoint between environmental advocates and the state utility, Alabama Power, for years. It is a case study in the continuing risks posed by coal ash disposal: 600 acres of wet coal ash that’s already leaching toxic metals like arsenic and cobalt into groundwater, sitting in an open pit, on a riverbank, in one of the rainiest places in the United States, 25 miles north of the hurricane-prone Gulf of Mexico. As of April 2021, 172 coal ash impoundments nationwide sat on land deemed vulnerable to floodwaters, according to Earthjustice’s Coal Ash Rule Compliance dataset. Based on data that companies with coal ash must report, these impoundments are in what the Federal Emergency Management Agency calls a “100-year floodplain” — meaning there’s a one-in-a-hundred chance the area is flooded each year. Scientists have warned that climate change will make these floods much more frequen in the future. Extreme weather events can cause floods that overtop or even cause impoundments to fail and spill coal ash into lakes and waterways, as was the case at North Carolina’s Lake Sutton during Hurricane Florence in 2018. And even without a catastrophic failure, flooding that raises the water table more than a few feet can inundate groundwater with toxic contaminants. The federal Environmental Protection Agency has mandated the closure of most unlined coal ash impoundments but largely given utilities broad leeway on when closure will occur or whether the ash will be removed or left where it is. There’s also evidence that the method for closing ash ponds preferred by most utilities, wherein ash ponds are dewatered and covered with an impermeable cover — known as “cap-in-place” — is ineffectual at preventing continuing contamination of waterways and groundwater. Advocates fear this could be the case at the Barry power plant in Mobile Bay, where the company plans to leave ash in place. “All of these environmental aspects put it in a really concerning location,” said Cassie Bates, program coordinator for local advocacy group Mobile Baykeepers. “Flooding of the river can be a great concern given we’re in coastal Alabama. Impacts from hurricanes and tropical storms are always imminent. The combination of these things make it not a really viable place to leave that much waste sitting on the side of the river.”
Germany To Prioritize Coal Shipments Across Rail Network Over Passenger Trains Amid Worsening Energy Crisis - The latest sign lawmakers in Europe's industrial heartland are preparing for what could be a disastrous winter of reduced natural gas supplies from Russia and record high electricity prices is a new proposal to prioritize Germany's rail network for coal shipments over passenger services, according to Bloomberg, citing local newspaper Welt am Sonntag. Even though Germany has promised to eliminate coal-fired power generation in the coming years, the historic energy crisis has made it more dependent on coal than ever as Russian flows of NatGas slump ahead of winter. Economy Minister Robert Habeck recently said increased reliance on coal is bitter but necessary. And we must give our readers a spoiler alert: there's no way Germany will eliminate coal as a power source by 2030. If anything, it will be more reliant on it than ever unless it extends the life of its nuclear power plants. "Priority is normally given to passenger transport in Germany, and timetables are geared toward it. As a result, there's a risk of chaos on the rails from making the change," Bloomberg said, citing the draft. There's a strong possibility the draft will be passed as a way to accelerate coal shipments via rail to power plants ahead of winter to ensure there are adequate supplies. Coal power generation is expected to soar in Europe's largest economy this winter as a move to boost energy security. The draft plan comes as German year-ahead power, a European benchmark, skyrocketed last week to a record 570 euros per megawatt-hour, with French prices rising as much as 3% to 720 euros. Coal prices in Europe also hit a record of 310 euros a ton.
Norsk Hydro Shuts Aluminum Plant as Europe’s Power Woes Deepen - Europe’s energy crisis has claimed another victim in the power-hungry metals industry, with Norsk Hydro ASA planning to shutter an aluminum smelter in Slovakia at the end of next month.Aluminum is one of the most energy-intensive metals to produce, and the closure of the Slovalco facility adds to growing signs of stress in Europe’s industrial economy as power prices surge to record highs. The region had already lost about half of its zinc and aluminum smelting capacity during the past year, mainly as producers dialed back output. Hydro and others are now moving to shut down plants entirely.
Top German Official Says Life Extensions For All Nuclear Power Plants Unlikely -- Europe's electricity prices jumped to a new record high on Monday. The energy crisis worsened as top German officials said extending the life of the country's last three nuclear power plants would do very little in resolving the energy crunch ahead of winter as Russia squeezes natural gas supplies. German media outlet Deutsche Welle reported German Economy Minister Robert Habeck spoke at the government's open-door day in Berlin on Sunday. The official said extending the lifespan of the three nuclear power plants would only save 2% of NatGas use. It's the "wrong decision given how little we would save," Habeck said. However, he said extending the lifespan of the Bavaria nuclear plant could be an option because it would supply much-needed power to a major manufacturing hub that relies heavily on NatGas-fired power plants and has limited coal-fired plants and low wind production. While this isn't the first time the government downplayed the possibility of extending the lifespan of the plants, comments last week from the government denied a WSJ report that indicated a possible extension.
In Stunning Post-Fukushima Shift, Japan To Build More Nuclear Power Plants -- Following the Fukushima disaster in 2011, nuclear power fell out of favor in Japan. But with global energy markets in turmoil and electricity bills skyrocketing, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is revisiting the debate over nuclear and perhaps the need to increase investments in next-generation power plants.FT reported Kishida had announced plans to examine the construction of new plants that would break more than a decade of energy policy following the Fukushima disaster, which led to an effort to eliminate nuclear. More recently, however, the Russian invasion of Ukraine disrupted global energy markets has forced Tokyo to reconsider nuclear because most of its energy needs are imported, with at least 9% of LNG from Russia. Kishida said energy officials would draw up concrete plans for future nuclear power plant projects by the end of this year. He also instructed officials to consider extending the lifespan of existing reactors beyond the current maximum lifespan of six decades. Japan's energy policy is coming out of a decade of paralysis. The prime minister announced the restart of some plants to ensure grid stability earlier this year. ... and here's where the ears of uranium bulls perk up: "Nuclear power and renewables are essential to proceed with a green transformation," Kishida said. "Russia's invasion changed the global energy situation."
What the climate bill does for the nuclear industry --The sweeping Inflation Reduction Act that President Joe Biden signed last week includes $369 billion in funding to help combat climate change. As part of that, the law includes significant help for the nuclear energy industry. Overall, the provisions in the law could decrease greenhouse gas emissionsby 37 to 41 percent under 2005 levels by the year 2030, according to an analysis by Energy Innovation, a policy modeling company. Some of the most widely touted provisions in the IRA include electric vehicle tax credits, and rebates for heat pump installation in homes and solar panel installation on home roofs. It also includes significant benefits for the nuclear industry, as energy generated with nuclear reactors generates no greenhouse gases. Nuclear advocates are celebrating the law as a win. "For years, the nuclear industry and advocates have been pushing for a more level playing field and equal treatment with other clean energy sources on a tax and federal subsidy basis," Brett Rampal, a nuclear energy expert, told CNBC. "The IRA creates a new future for clean energy technologies, including nuclear energy, that is a more level playing field and allows for technologies to compete on a more even basis as well as on their unique characteristics. This is definitely a win for nuclear energy." Here's an overview of how the climate bill will impact the nuclear sector.
Looking for jobs in all the wrong places: Ohio policymakers’ misguided belief in natural gas - Ohio Capital Journal -- If you’re looking for economic development that will deliver job growth, increase local commerce, and improve quality of life, you can’t do much worse than natural gas extraction, gas-fired power plants, and infrastructure. They don’t provide many jobs and they impose serious costs that discourage other kinds of job-creating economic activity. Apart from contributing to local and state tax revenues — contributions which are often undercut by tax subsidies and regulatory favors — about the only benefit of natural gas power generation is low-cost electricity, and if you check your electric bill, you’ll see that even that benefit is now being wiped out.This all seems hard to believe, what with governors and legislators lavishing incentives on these industries in the belief that by doing so they would create jobs and stimulate economic development. That was certainly true of an Ohio economic development officer I met with recently who talked excitedly about the new billion-dollar gas-fired power plant in Guernsey County. “Do you know what that means in jobs and commerce to a county with just 39,000 people?” she asked. Sadly, I did know and wondered if she was so dazzled by the amount of money being invested and the plant’s impressive size that she assumed it would have a commensurate economic impact. That’s how many politicians seem to evaluate projects before lavishing taxpayer money on them. For instance, state Reps. Jon Cross, R-Kenton, and Jay Edwards, R-Nelsonville, recently introducedHouse Bill 685, the ENERGIZEOhio bill, “…to promote the use of Ohio’s abundant natural gas energy resource” because, say the authors, “…too many communities across the state have been locked out of future job growth and economic development opportunities due to limited energy infrastructure to deliver Ohio’s natural gas to them.” “Future job growth and economic development?” Really? Let’s look at what natural gas economic development really looks like starting with that billion-dollar power plant in Guernsey County. The plant will employ 30 people, about as many as an average supermarket. Meanwhile, nearly all of the hundreds of millions dollars the plant will spend yearly to purchase natural gas from nearby wells will go to out-of-state investors. That’s because natural gas production, like the construction and operation of gas-fired power plants, is capital-intensive, leaving little money for jobs and wages. Even property owner royalties generally go to just a few local families who mostly save or invest the money rather than spend it locally. In other words, the billion-dollar power plant will do shockingly little to deliver jobs and commerce.
Riverbend Energy Group Wraps Up $1.8 Billion Sale of Nonop Shale Assets --Riverbend Energy Group recently completed the $1.8 billion sale of nonoperated portfolios, marking the successful monetization for Riverbend of three of Riverbend’s five active traditional energy portfolios. The transaction, previously announced in June, included its equity interests in Riverbend Oil & Gas VI LLC, Riverbend Oil & Gas VI-B LLC and Riverbend Oil & Gas VIII LLC. The buyer wasn’t disclosed. The divested portfolios represent a substantial, diversified asset base of nonoperated interests across the Bakken/Three Forks, Utica, Fayetteville and Haynesville. As of the effective date of May 1, these properties produced approximately 47,000 boe/d from over 11,000 wells, according to the release. Based in Houston, Riverbend is multi-faceted investment firm, utilizing risk-weighted deal evaluation processes to deploy capital into a variety of investment theses in the U.S. energy sector. Since 2003, the firm has successfully acquired, developed, and managed over $5 billion of total enterprise value across 10 asset portfolios.
Pennsylvania Natural Gas Production Dips for Second Consecutive Quarter - Unconventional natural gas production in Pennsylvania declined again in the second quarter, according to the state’s Independent Fiscal Office (IFO). The 0.9% year/year decrease to 1.836 Tcf marks the first time that production recorded a yearly decline in consecutive quarters since quarterly production data became available in 2015, IFO said. Production fell 0.6% in the first quarter of the year. However, growth in producing wells ticked up slightly in the second quarter after several years of consistent deceleration, IFO said. “Decelerating or flat growth in producing wells is due to less drilling activity in 2020 and 2021 and older wells that were shut in or plugged. The uptick in drilling in 2022 should lead to stronger growth in producing wells,” said the report, which was compiled by researchers Jesse Bushman and Rachel Flaug.There were 11,042 total producing wells in Pennsylvania in the second quarter of 2022, an increase of 4.4% from the prior year. Horizontal producing wells account for over 99% of production and recorded an annual increase of 4.8% in the state.There were 133 new horizontal wells spud in the second quarter, up 10.8% year/year. Preliminary data for the third quarter show that the number of wells spud in July and August is up 73.3% from the same period in 2021. Researchers attribute the recent uptick in drilling to elevated natural gas prices.Henry Hub averaged $7.39/MMBtu in the second quarter, its highest quarterly level since the third quarter of 2008 and up 156.8% year/year. Pennsylavnia’s second quarter average was $6.66, up 221.8% year/year. The Pennsylvania price is a weighted average of the Dominion South and Transco Leidy hubs.“Current forecasts project that prices will remain elevated in the short term due to global supply and demand pressures,” researchers said. North American prices have surged recently on the back of supply worries both domestically and abroad. Pennsylvania is the United States’ second-largest natural gas producer, after Texas. The states rounding out the top five are Louisiana, Alaska and West Virginia. Of those states, only Pennsylvania production is showing a decline. One of the reasons for this could be infrastructure constraints. The Appalachian Basin is the nation’s largest gas-producing region, with output of more than 35 Bcf/d. But over the last decade environmental groups have successfully stopped or slowed down pipeline projects and limited further growth in the Northeast.
As Pa. faces 'looming crisis' of new abandoned wells, state law will freeze well bonding rates for a decade - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette -Gov. Tom Wolf let a bill become law that freezes bonding rates for Pennsylvania’s conventional oil and gas wells for at least a decade at levels that have proven too low to prevent drillers from walking away from their cleanup obligations.House Bill 2644 became law late Monday without the Democratic governor’s signature as part of negotiations over the recently adopted state budget, his spokeswoman said.The bill, which was passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature, freezes bond amounts for conventional oil and gas wells at $2,500 per well, or less than 10% of expected cleanup costs if companies walk away without plugging them.For active wells drilled before 1985 — which number nearly 60,000, according to state records — the bond will remain zero.“The administration has serious concerns with the bill — concerns it expressed repeatedly to the Legislature as the bill was moving,” Mr. Wolf’s press secretary Elizabeth Rementer said. Still, the governor agreed to let it become law “as a result of divided government.”The bill forbids state environmental regulators from adjusting bond amounts over the next decade to reflect the true costs of plugging conventional wells that are abandoned by their owners.Previously, state law allowed the environmental rule-making board to adjust bonding levels every two years, but rates have remained the same since they were established for conventional -— that is, shallow, vertical wells — in 1985. Efforts to raise the bond amounts on conventional wells were rolled back by the Legislature in the 1990s and 2012.Pennsylvania oil and gas regulators have called the threat of new well abandonments a “looming crisis” that could cost taxpayers billions of dollars. That is on top of the estimated $6.6 billion it will cost to plug roughly 200,000 wells that were left unsealed by past operators over a century of drilling.Oil and gas well bonds are meant to act as a form of insurance against unfunded abandonment. The payments are forfeited to the state if an operator walks away without permanently sealing and restoring a well site.But because so many conventional wells in Pennsylvania are exempt from bonding requirements or qualify for discounted blanket bonds, the bonds on file amount to $15 per well, as of 2020, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.The average plugging cost for an abandoned conventional well in Pennsylvania is $68,000, according to a recent DEP application for federal infrastructure funds.
More concerns emerge for Pennsylvania's abandoned oil, gas wells -- In 2020, an employee for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection smelled crude oil while driving to work in the northwestern part of the state. Trusting his instincts, he asked agency crews to follow their noses. They found an old abandoned well leaking oil within 500 feet of a dozen year-round and seasonal residences. The oil was flowing directly into the South Branch of Tionesta Creek, which the state classifies as a cold-water, high-quality fishery, meaning it is among the most unpolluted in the state. DEP found no record of the well’s owner and had to use emergency funds to stop the oozing pollutant and its nuisance odors. Elsewhere, a well borehole filled with acid mine drainage was spewing poisonous iron-rich water into a tributary of the Susquehanna River. A garage in Armstrong County that was built over an unseen abandoned gas well blew up. These scenarios play out too often, say state environmental officials. The state has more than 200,000 wells that were constructed and abandoned by oil and gas companies — the most of any state in the nation. No one knows for sure just how many because some wells are so old that no records exist. The state did not require notification of wells until 1955. Often obscured by vegetation or located deep in the woods, more abandoned oil and gas wells are found all the time, often leaking oil and methane. Oil can be toxic to frogs, reptiles, fish, waterfowl and other freshwater life. Methane, a global-warming gas, is highly poisonous to aquatic organisms. One overarching issue is that even modern-day drillers in the state sometimes abandon wells without plugging them, a violation of state laws. Research of DEP records by David Hess, a former DEP secretary who publishes an environmental blog, showed that from 2016 through 2022, the agency issued 4,270 notices of violations to 256 oil and gas companies for abandoning wells without plugging them. Some abandoned hundreds of wells, records showed. DEP is working with many of the owners to plug them. If abandoned, the wells must be sealed at taxpayer expense. DEP estimates that it will cost $1.6 billion to plug and stop leaks on the 200,000 abandoned wells identified so far. Pennsylvania requires drillers to post a bond that helps cover any state-incurred costs for plugging abandoned wells. But the recent increased focus on the wells highlighted the fact that the bond covers only a fraction of the actual cost. The 1984 Oil and Gas Act requires drillers to post a bond of $2,500 per well. But DEP officials say the average plugging cost is $33,000. This summer, the state Environmental Quality Board, which issues all DEP regulations, agreed to consider a petition from environmental groups that called for increasing the bond to $38,000 per well. Before the board could take any action, the state legislature rushed through a law that blocks any increase in plugging bonding for 10 years.In addition, it continues to exempt the owners of conventional oil and gas wells drilled before 1985 — most of the wells currently in service — from having to pay a bond. Gov. Tom Wolf did not sign the law but allowed it to go into effect without a veto, reportedly as part of a trade to get education priorities into the state budget.
Biden admin deploys $560M to clean up orphaned oil wells - The Biden administration has awarded $560 million to plug orphaned oil and gas wells across 24 states, the largest single investment in oil field cleanup in history, officials said today. The funding is part of a $4.7 billion orphaned well program greenlighted by last year’s Infrastructure, Investment and Jobs Act. The bipartisan program offers grant dollars to qualifying states to pay for finding abandoned wells, tracking their methane releases, plugging them to stem polluting gases and restoring the land at the surface. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland today praised the Biden administration’s progress so far in building the first-of-its-kind program. “President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is enabling us to confront long-standing environmental injustices by making a historic investment to plug orphaned wells throughout the country,” she said in a statement. Historic oil and gas activity in regions like Appalachia and the West goes back more than a century, with many old wells lost. Additionally, oil and gas price busts have left more wells abandoned, their original drillers out of business or difficult to trace. When left unchecked, those wells can release greenhouse gases like methane and pose combustion risks. All told, states have flagged more than 10,000 high priority wells for cleanup, the first in line of a nearly 130,000 backlog of unreclaimed known well sites, Interior reported today. That number is expected to rise as federal funds bolster state efforts to identify hidden or lost orphans. Of the nearly two-dozen states receiving federal funds, Kentucky, Kansas and Oklahoma have more than 1,000 wells identified for plugging. But hundreds of wells have been found in states like Colorado, Illinois and Texas. The half-billion-dollar funding announced today will be spread across 22 states that have been allocated $25 million in initial grants. Two others — Arkansas and Mississippi — will receive $5 million each. Mississippi is aiming to create an inventory of its orphaned wells and kick off a program to track methane. Other states devoted to methane measurement before and after plugging are California and West Virginia. Meanwhile, Arkansas, Kansas, New Mexico and Ohio have said they will focus first on cleanup in disadvantaged communities, and Arizona, Louisiana and Montana have committed to hiring local, giving small businesses preference. Wyoming, which has been regularly plugging wells through a tax on industry for years, is also among the first states to receive grant money. It estimates some 300 jobs will be created by its upcoming plugging activity with federal funds. Today’s announcement is part of the $1.15 billion “phase one” of the national orphaned well program. An initial $33 million was also used recently to plug nearly 300 orphans on federal lands.
Biden Admin Urges Fuel-Export Cuts to Restock Northeast - The Biden administration is warning refiners that it may take “emergency measures” to address fuel exports as stockpiles of gasoline and diesel fuel remain near historically low levels in the Northeast. While East Coast gasoline and diesel inventories are well below normal, exports of US refined products are at an all-time high, the Energy Department wrote in a letter last week to refiners that included Exxon Mobil Corp., Valero Energy Corp., and Phillips 66. “It is our hope that companies will proactively address this need,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm wrote in the letter, which was also sent to BP America, Chevron Corp., Marathon Petroleum Corp. and Shell Plc. “If that is not the case, the administration will need to consider additional federal requirements or other emergency measures.” Emergency actions can be avoided if the industry prioritizes “building inventories during this critical window,” Granholm said in the letter, which was obtained by Bloomberg. The Biden administration is effectively asking refiners to prioritize American consumers over maximizing profits by supplying fuel-starved Europe, which is facing an unprecedented energy crunch after the invasion of Ukraine triggered US sanctions on Russian oil supply. While US retail gasoline prices have eased after hitting a record nationwide average above $5 a gallon in June, the White House remains under pressure to tackle inflation ahead of the midterm elections. US government officials said the administration isn’t actively considering export controls and the letter shouldn’t be construed as a direct threat to limit shipments abroad. An Energy Department official said emergency measures being taken included tapping a little-used emergency diesel fuel reserve, the Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve located in New England, which contains a cache of 1 million barrels of ultra-low sulfur distillates. Though US refineries are operating near capacity, the Biden administration is concerned that much of the fuel they’re producing is being exported rather than sent to the supply-constrained East Coast, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter. The White House’s perception is that the industry simply wants to shift the product to the market that pays the highest price, instead of helping the American consumer, the people said. However, the administration isn’t planning any export limits on crude or natural gas, according to the people. Granholm’s letter also comes ahead of the peak of Atlantic hurricane season, when storms can wreak havoc on US fuel supply. Though few storms have emerged so far, the most-active part of the season typically doesn’t begin until right around now.
Trouble on pipeline's path hits home for Manchin - — Becky Crabtree dreamed of her daughter living next door when she purchased a tract of land in this rural community near the George Washington and Jefferson National Forests. But those plans crumbled five years ago when Crabtree began battling the proposed Mountain Valley pipeline, a project Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chair Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) is now attempting to help push through to completion. The pipeline bisects Crabtree’s sheep pasture in southern West Virginia and the area where her daughter and son-in-law’s house would have been built. Designed to transport natural gas from West Virginia shale reserves to energy markets in mid-Atlantic states, the Mountain Valley pipeline has been mired in legal challenges since receiving approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in 2017. Earlier this month, Manchin released a framework for Congress to mandate completion of the pipeline as part of a broader permitting reform package (Energywire, Aug. 2). A new summary of potential legislation would also help the pipeline, although it does not mention it specifically, The Washington Postreported yesterday.To Manchin and other supporters of the 304-mile project, Mountain Valley exemplifies the nation’s inefficient and cumbersome permitting process, where pipelines and other critical energy projects are hindered by environmental opponents and permits revoked by the courts. But others who’ve followed Mountain Valley’s eight-year journey say it makes an argument for more robust environmental reviews for energy projects, not less strict ones, and showcases the delays that can occur when federal agencies cut corners. Slated to cross hundreds of waterways, meander over mountains and pass through more than a thousand parcels of private land in West Virginia and Virginia, the project’s history may offer lessons for the pipeline industry and agencies that review large energy projects, observers say. In a slew of recent decisions, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals tossed out approvals for the pipeline, which would also cross the Appalachian Trail and run through the Jefferson National Forest.The notion of Congress driving the completion of Mountain Valley has left Crabtree and other landowners feeling sidelined by their representatives. While the fate of a permitting reform package remains uncertain, Manchin’s office maintains that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and President Joe Biden agreed to advance the deal in exchange for Manchin’s support for the Inflation Reduction Act (Energywire, Aug. 2).“We understand politics. We understand you give a little, you take a little,” said Crabtree, a high school science teacher who’s running as a Democrat for a seat in the West Virginia House of Delegates. “It doesn’t feel particularly good to be the sacrificial lamb for this particular deal.”
Starting to Think Manchin's Side Deal is in Real Trouble -Bill McKibben -It’s starting to become clear that the “side deal” to permit pipelines and other fossil fuel projects that was put forth by Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer as an accessory to the Inflation Reduction Act (aka the ‘climate bill’) faces tougher-than-expected sledding in the Congress. Some of us started lobbying against the giveaways it proposed to the oil industry even before the IRA was signed, but now it appears that the agitation is growing—growing enough that what activists are calling a “dirty deal” may in fact be in danger.I talked at length this afternoon with Ro Khanna, who chairs the House Oversight Subcommittee on the Environment, and he was quite blunt. He called the side deal a gutting of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and said “that’s not going to happen. You’re not going to get progressive support for that.” In fact, he promised a September 15 hearing of his subcommittee to explore whether or not the fossil fuel industry actually wrote the language of the deal: an early draft circulating on Capitol Hill literally bore a watermark from the American Petroleum Institute.He pointed out that Raul Grijalva, chair of the Committee on Natural Resources, had written a letter to Speaker Pelosi saying such a deal was unacceptable. “I’m on that letter, many progressives will get on.” Manchin has said he was promised his deal would be attached to must-pass legislation, presumably the omnibus budget bill. “If that happened, you’d really have a mutiny among my progressive colleagues,” Khanna said.If the deal—which among other things could explicitly greenlight Appalachia’s Mountain Valley Pipeline boondoggle—did get added to the budget bill, and if Khanna was right that progressives objected, it might still pass if Republicans came on board to back it (that’s how big defense bills get passed each year over progressive objections). But Khanna said it would be “pretty unprecedented” to “come up with an omnibus budget bill that excluded a key caucus. It would split the party before a crucial midterm election,” creating a “media outcry.” It would be “a very divisive move. I’m not saying it’s impossible—we have to guard against it, and that’s why we’re mobilizing now.” “If this passes,” says Khanna, “it runs roughshod over these communities that have been fighting for five or ten years. There’s no way we can allow that kind of wholesale gutting to happen.”
FERC grants Mountain Valley Pipeline permit extension - The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has given the greenlight to a four-year extension to build the Mountain Valley Pipeline.MVP, which is being built and will be partially owned by Equitrans Midstream Corp. (NYSE: ETRN), will now have until Oct. 13, 2026, to put into service the 303-mile pipeline that will take Marcellus and Utica Shale gas through West Virginia and Virginia. The pipeline, which has been mired in legal and regulatory challenges that have delayed by five years the completion date, had asked for the extension in June. It's the second extension of construction for the pipeline.FERC's extension doesn't mean that construction can conclude: There are still permits that have to be received (and in some cases reapproved) as well as satisfying the overall stop-work order that FERC has on the project. The company has said it is working toward an operation date of the second half of 2023.But the commission said it was appropriate to extend the time period again and that the company had been working in good faith."Since the last grant of an extension of time, Mountain Valley has continued to actively pursue project construction and has engaged in whatever construction and restoration activities it was allowed to pursue," FERC said. "We consider it likely that, should Mountain Valley receive the required permits, those permits will undergo judicial review, which will take time to resolve." It also affirmed its findings on environmental analysis and public interest to continue to be valid. MVP and several other energy infrastructure projects got a big boost earlier this summer with the passage and signature of the Inflation Reduction Act after U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, won energy-friendly provisions.MVP said it was pleased with the ruling.But one of the organizations fighting MVP, Appalachian Voices, said FERC was ignoring the environmental damage that the pipeline construction was doing in West Virginia and Virginia. David Sligh, conservation director of Wild Virginia, called FERC's extension "the latest in a long line of irresponsible decisions.""The Commission has again favored the narrow interest of a profit-making corporation over the public interest," Sligh said. "Most appalling is FERC's refusal to acknowledge the changes the environment already caused by MVP or to base this decision on any rational assessment as to whether damage and destruction to our waters and peoples' lands will continue if MVP work is allowed to proceed."
FERC Gives MVP Another Four Years to Reach Finish Line - FERC has granted the heavily scrutinized Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) another four years to finish construction and enter service, a move that could augur well for the embattled natural gas project’s political and regulatory future. In an order filed Tuesday, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission gave MVP until Oct. 13, 2026, to complete what has proven to be a drawn-out construction process for the 300-mile, 2 million Dth/d Appalachia-to-Southeast natural gas conduit. After an earlier two-year extension issued in 2020, MVP had previously had until October to place the pipeline into service.The commissioners, led by Democratic Chairman Richard Glick, ultimately rejected assertions from project opponents that the agency should revisit its environmental review of the pipeline. MVP received a certificate order from FERC in 2017.“There has been no showing that the environmental effects of the project have changed materially since the Commission authorized the project,” FERC wrote. The order stated, however, that “the environment is subject to change, and that the validity of our conclusions and environmental conditions cannot be sustained indefinitely.”Commissioner James Danly of the Republican minority took issue with that language in particular, writing in a separate concurring opinion that such a statement “reinforces the Commission’s misguided view…that it may revisit determinations made in final, unappealable certificate orders.”FERC should take a “narrow” approach to considering requests for an extension of time and not overstep its legal authority, Danly argued.The latest FERC action follows the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, made possible after a compromise was reached with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), a supporter of MVP, which runs through part of his state. Management for MVP sponsor Equitrans Midstream Corp. recently pointed to the legislation as a positive for the project’s ambitions of reaching the finish line.Analysts at ClearView Energy Partners LLC in a recent note to clients alluded to Glick’s renomination process as another factor that could influence MVP’s regulatory future.With Manchin chairing the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, the ClearView analysts said they “did not expect” a confirmation hearing to be scheduled “prior to (constructive) action on the MVP certificate extension. Chairman Manchin is a vocal advocate for the project and has been actively pushing the White House and federal agencies beyond FERC to facilitate its completion by expeditiously addressing outstanding permits. “With this approval in hand, the path would appear clear for that nomination process to move forward.”
US Natural Gas Spikes 81% in 7 Weeks, Hits New 14-Year High, Unwinds Plunge in June and July by Wolf Richter - Here we go again. This morning, the notoriously volatile natural-gas futures, which have taken down numerous hedge funds over the years, jumped to nearly $10 per million Btu and currently trade at $9.75, the highest since July 2008, up 146% from a year ago, and up 350% from three years ago, topping off a series of spikes that started in early July, just when folks got used to the plunge in commodities prices.The price has now recovered all of its plunge that started in June 8, when a fire damaged and shut down the Freeport natural gas liquefaction plant in Texas, which cut LNG export capacity by 17%. The plant is scheduled to resume exports at partial capacity in October. The part of the plant that was damaged will take longer.The shutdown of the LNG export facility removed some demand from the US, and the plunge in price was a classic knee-jerk reaction that has now been unwound. Since the low point on June 30 ($5.39), the price has spiked by 81%.The June-July plunge in natural-gas futures prices had been one of the reasons cited why inflation in the US has peaked. Utility natural gas piped to homes accounts for about 1% of total CPI. In the July CPI reading, utility gas piped to the home fell by 3.6% from June, the first month-to-month decline since January, and a welcome relief after the spikes in the prior months, including +8.2% in June from May, and +8.0% in May from April.Spikes in futures prices don’t immediately translate into higher natural gas prices at home, but eventually they do. And this is another example of the game of inflation Whac A Mole, with price spikes popping up here and there all over again.Natural gas also feeds into electricity prices via power generators, into food prices via fertilizers made from natural gas, and into prices of all kinds of other products.The two-year surge in natural gas prices was powered by US exports of LNG, which have been booming, with new LNG export terminals coming online one after the other — seven since 2016. A small LNG terminal at Kenai, Alaska, has been operating for years. LNG exports added to demand for US natural gas and increasingly linked US natural-gas prices to global LNG prices.For operators of natural-gas-fired power plants, struggling to meet demand from air conditioning, the hit to natural gas export capacity this summer came just at the nick of time, and the plunge in the price of natural gas during the summer was a godsend. But that is now over.Exports of LNG have soared since 2016. The US also exports natural gas via pipeline to Mexico and to a smaller extent to Canada, but those pipeline exports have been roughly level over the past few years. What has added new demand on a large scale in the US are the LNG export terminals.The EIA has released LNG export data through May, which doesn’t yet include the potential decline in exports in June and July due to the shutdown of the Freeport LNG terminal. It will release June export data at the end of August: But even at today’s price, natural gas futures are a lot lower than they were during the spikes in 2005 and 2008, and just a tad above where they’d been in 2000. Back then, there was talk of natural gas shortages, and LNG import terminals were built to import expensive LNG to the US.This episode was followed by the boom in fracking, which turned the US into the largest natural gas producer in the world, which caused the price of natural gas in the US to collapse, sending into bankruptcy court many of the largest natural-gas frackers, including Chesapeake.And now the US natural gas market has been connected to global markets via large-scale export terminals that are arbitraging away much of the price difference between US natural gas and global LNG prices. So welcome to the new old world of higher natural-gas prices.Seen in this light, today’s price of natural gas in the US is not all that extraordinary, and it’s still a lot lower than in many other parts of the world:
U.S. natgas futures tease $10/mmBtu on sturdy demand, Europe crisis (Reuters) - U.S. natural gas futures jumped on Monday to within touching distance of the key $10 per million British thermal units (mmBtu) level, with gains driven by a strong demand outlook, record prices in Europe and concerns over availability of the fuel. Front-month gas futures rose 34.4 cents, or 3.7%, to settle at $9.680 per mmBtu, after jumping nearly 7% to $9.982, a 14-year high, earlier in the session. “This ($10) has been a long-awaited number,” Robert DiDona of Energy Ventures Analysis said. “We've had strong LNG demand and we've had a much warmer than normal summer, which has put continued pressure on our storage estimates, which we expect to finish below the five year average, so that has subsequently been resulting in a higher forward curve,” DiDona added. Global gas prices remained elevated near $84 per mmBtu in Europe and $57 in Asia. Russia will halt natural gas supplies to Europe for three days at the end of the month via its main pipeline into the region, state energy giant Gazprom said on Friday, piling pressure on the region as it seeks to refuel ahead of winter. “The fact that the strong (price) gains are developing amidst a little assistance from the weather factor suggests a strong underpinning in which record high European prices and major concerns over supply availability during the coming winter are keeping speculative shorts on the defensive,” analysts at energy consulting firm Ritterbusch and Associates said in a note. The average amount of gas flowing to U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) export plants held at 10.9 bcfd so far in August, the same as July. That compares with a monthly record of 12.9 bcfd in March. The seven big U.S. export plants can turn about 13.8 bcfd of gas into LNG.
Natural Gas Futures Plummet After Freeport Pushes Back Restart; Cash Remains Strong - In a huge blow to natural gas bulls licking their chops at the sight of $10 gas, Freeport LNG’s announcement that it would not begin initial production until November, rather than the October startup previously targeted, crushed futures. After surging to a $10.028/MMBtu intraday high, the September Nymex gas futures contract plunged 48.7 cents day/day to settle at $9.193. October futures tumbled 49.2 cents to $9.155. Spot gas prices continued to rise, however, with robust power burns driving demand. NGI’s Spot Gas National Avg. tacked on 18.0 cents to $9.245. What started out as the most promising run at $10 gas yet, Tuesday’s session took a dramatic turn in the afternoon after Freeport provided an update on the planned return of its liquefied natural gas export terminal off the upper Texas coast. In the update, Freeport said it expects initial production can begin in early- to mid-November, with a sustained level of at least 2 Bcf/d by the end of November. This would represent more than 85% of the facility’s export capacity. “What a market reaction,” said Enelyst managing director Het Shah of the post-Freeport price slide. September futures tumbled all the way to a $9.050 intraday low before rebounding. Still, the prompt closed the session on the lower end of the nearly $1.00 trading band. Freeport’s recovery plan would utilize the second loading dock as a lay berth until loading capabilities at the second dock are reinstated in March. At that time, the company expects to be capable of operating at 100% of capacity. Shah said the later timeline for a return of operations could shift 106 Bcf of gas back into storage, assuming Freeport ramps up one liquefaction train at a time. This would put inventories back on track to reach 3.4 Tcf at the end of October. Some estimates had shifted closer to 3.3 Tcf based on recent storage data. That said, the delayed restart does not bode well for Europe looking to import more LNG in preparation for the winter. Dutch Title Transfer Facility prices have surged higher since late last week after Russia’s Gazprom PJSC announced plans for a three-day shutdown of flows to Europe via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline. Cove Point LNG also is gearing up for annual scheduled maintenance in September. As such, the Freeport news could send TTF prices screaming even higher when European trading gets underway overnight, according to Shah. “Is that going to take Henry Hub back up?” One participant on the online platform Enelyst noted that, as it has many times before when reacting to headlines, the market would likely calm down and revisit the bullish scenario. After all, storage inventories remain well below average and are likely to remain so even with another month of Freeport being out of service. Production also remains a constant disappointment, failing to sustain recent highs for more than a few days.
USA Henry Hub Gas Prices Climb to Record High | Rigzone -U.S. Henry Hub prices have climbed to a record high, Rystad Energy analyst Lu Ming Pang highlighted in a market note sent to Rigzone on Wednesday. The commodity almost hit the $10 per MMbtu mark for the first time, Pang outlined, adding that Henry Hub has typically averaged about $2 to $4 per MMbtu in previous summers. “Prolonged abnormal weather and a high demand for LNG internationally has applied upwards pressure on prices,” Pang said in the note. “Mild weather in the past week has reduced gas-for-power demand for cooling, resulting in 5.4 billion cubic feet per day (Bcfd) taken off gas demand. Given that domestic natural gas production has decreased by only 1.1 Bcfd, it appears that Henry Hub prices are responding to the reverberations in Europe, as compared to domestic fundamentals,” Pang added. In the note, Pang highlighted that U.S. storage levels were at 2.519 trillion cubic feet full as of August 17, which he said is 367 billion cubic feet (Bcf) below the five-year average, and 296 Bcf below last year’s levels for the same period, “adding further pressure on refilling U.S. storages, which may keep Henry Hub prices high”. At the time of writing, the Henry Hub price was trading at $9.39 per MMbtu. Henry Hub was trading under $4 per MMbtu at the start of the year. In a separate market note sent to Rigzone last week, Pang said the heatwave across the U.S. in July had led to record Henry Hub prices of beyond $9.46 per MMBtu. According to scientists from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association’s National Centers for Environmental Information, July 2022 will go down in the history books as the third-hottest July on record for the United States. The average temperature across the contiguous U.S. last month was 76.4 degrees F (2.8 degrees above average), NOAA highlighted. July 1936 was the hottest on record and July 2012 was the second hottest, NOAA outlined. According to NOAA, Texas felt the brunt of the heat this year, “reporting its hottest July, May-July and April-July on record”.
U.S. natgas futures firm on elevated global prices (Reuters) - U.S. natural gas futures edged up on Wednesday, buoyed by elevated global gas prices which offset limited pressure from a delay in the restart of the Freeport export hub. Front-month gas futures rose 13.7 cents, or 1.5%, to settle at $9.330 per million British thermal units (mmBtu). Prices stabilized following a volatile session on Tuesday, when they hit $10 per mmBtu for the first time since 2008 before retreating on news of a delay in Freeport LNG’s fire-hit Texas plant's return to operation, which would continue to hit demand by hurting the country’s capacity to send the fuel abroad. U.S. prices continued to take cues from elevated global gas rates, with contracts at $80 per mmBtu in Europe and $56 in Asia, a likely positive driver for relatively less expensive U.S. gas exports. "A major component of what's directing U.S. gas prices is again what's happening in international markets, which are rallying from the Nord Stream 1 outage coming up at the end of August," Russian state energy giant Gazprom said last week the country would halt natural gas supplies to Europe for three days at the end of the month via its main pipeline into the region. The Freeport restart delay also compounded global supply woes to some extent. "Although such a delay may not appear to disrupt the fall balances appreciably, it does require a significant adjustment in expected storage levels heading into the next heating cycle" with the supply shortfall likely to be reduced to around 250 billion cubic feet (bcf) or less by late November versus north of 300 bcf previously, Ritterbusch and Associates said in a note. Elsewhere, gas production in Britain rose 26% in the first half of this year compared with the same period last year, an industry body said on Wednesday, as it cuts Russian energy imports in response to Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.
NYMEX Henry Hub futures market shrugs off oversized build to US natural gas storage | S&P Global Commodity Insights - The weekly US natural gas storage injection more than tripled in size from mid- to late August as milder weather across the eastern half of the US lowered cooling demand, easing the market's supply crunch. The US Energy Information Administration Aug. 25 announced a 60-Bcf injection to US inventories for the week ending Aug. 19, outpacing market expectations by 5-10 Bcf.The addition to stocks was 9 Bcf more than the S&P Global Commodity Insights' storage survey result anticipated, which called for an injection of 51 Bcf. The weekly build was 14 Bcf larger than the prior five-year average injection of 46 Bcf, and nearly double the volume injected during the corresponding week in 2021 when just 32 Bcf was added to US stocks. On Aug. 25, the soon-to-expire September futures contract traded in a narrow range during the morning session holding steady at around $9.30/MMBtu, apparently shrugging off the EIA's latest storage estimate.Over the past two trading days, the balance 2022 futures contracts have held steady in the low to mid-$9/MMBtu range, consolidating losses that came after the announcement of a delayed restart to operations at Freeport LNG on the afternoon of Aug. 23. With the October gas market now long an additional 2 Bcf/d in unexpected supply, the futures market has pulled back from recent record highs. During the seven-day period ended Aug. 19, injections in the East region recorded the largest weekly gain, more than quadrupling to a net total of 30 Bcf. In the Midwest, total injections were up 9 Bcf on the week to 30 Bcf. In the South-Central region, net storage activity flipped from a withdrawal of 8 Bcf to an injection totaling 5 Bcf, EIA data showed.During the reference week, population-weighted temperatures across the Northeast dropped by more than 4 degrees Fahrenheit, with Texas registering a similar drop on the week. In the Midwest, a milder air mass ushered in temperatures nearly 3 F cooler. According to Platts Analytics, US gas-fired power burn demand dropped by more than 5.2 Bcf/d during the week to an average of 40.9 Bcf/d.For the week already in progress, hotter weather in the Northeast has lifted power burn demand there by nearly 1.3 Bcf/d, while net changes in other regions appear mostly neutral on balance. According to current projections, the EIA is likely to announce a slightly smaller injection to gas storage for the week ending Aug. 26, somewhere in the range of 52-58 Bcf, Platts Analytics data shows. This fall, the prospect of refilling US gas storage at an average or even above-average pace now looks more promising with the addition of some 60 Bcf in supply from lost feedgas demand at Freeport LNG. Over the balance of the current injection season, even average weekly builds to US stocks would leave pre-winter inventories at a concerningly low level below 3.3 Tcf. According to forecasts from Platts Analytics, the US industry is on target to finish the current injection season just above that level with a projected 3.3-3.4 Tcf in the ground.
Natural Gas Futures Fail to Sustain Momentum as Shoulder Season Nears - Natural gas futures seesawed in and out of the green on Friday as traders weighed soaring global prices and the specter of light supplies for the coming winter against relatively benign near-term weather patterns. The September Nymex gas futures contract ultimately settled at $9.296/MMBtu, down 7.9 cents day/day. October shed 7.5 cents and closed at $9.269. NGI’s Spot Gas National Avg. slid 4.0 cents lower to $8.815. Despite the late-week finish in the red, prices remain lofty by historical standards and analysts say much remains on bulls’ side. European and Asian natural gas prices spiked over the past week amid intensifying global competition for fuel as countries across the northern hemisphere try to prepare for the coming winter. U.S. LNG exports have played a key role in helping to meet global demand this year. American liquefied natural gas facilities are operating at or near capacity, and this is expected to continue even after the Freeport LNG plant returns to service later this year after a fire in June. The demand driving that consistent level of exports has created a foundation for strong U.S. prices. “Near-term fundamentals are supportive, with LNG feed gas reaching an eight-week high at 11.5 Bcf/d,” EBW Analytics Group’s Eli Rubin, senior analyst, said Friday. Europe was already increasingly dependent on U.S. exports amid depleted supplies on the continent in recent years. Russia’s war in Ukraine amplified the problem. Russia’s Gazprom PJSC in July cut gas deliveries via the Nord Stream 1 (NS1) pipeline to 20% of capacity, citing turbine repair delays that it blamed on Western sanctions against the Kremlin because of the war. Then, earlier this month, Gazprom said it would halt all gas flows to Europe via NSI for three days beginning Wednesday (Aug. 31). It cited needed maintenance, but the announcement sparked new worries about the continent’s reliance on Russia and its ability to store enough gas to heat homes and power industrial production this winter. The crisis could intensify as Asian countries increasingly vie for LNG, pushing up prices. The North Asian spot LNG benchmark hit a five-month high in the past week. In recent days, the European benchmark Dutch Title Transfer Facility set records, surging past the $90 mark. The bullish global demand picture, however, failed to outshine domestic forecasts for relatively mild late season weather after scorching hot conditions much of the summer. “Overall, weather patterns are viewed as seasonal much of the next 15 days, besides brief stronger heat early” in the week ahead, NatGasWeather said Friday. Still, “while weather patterns aren’t nearly as hot and intimidating as they’ve been, wind energy generation has been exceptionally light and is aiding stronger demand than what normally would be expected.”
As The U.S. Races Toward 30 Bcf/D Of LNG Exports, What Could It Mean For Upstream Markets?? - The momentum for U.S. LNG right now is powerful. With Europe’s efforts to wean itself off Russian natural gas boosting long-term LNG demand and Asian consumption expected to grow even further, there has been a strong push for new LNG projects in North America. So far, that has helped propel two U.S. projects, Venture Global’s Plaquemines LNG and Cheniere’s Corpus Christi Stage III, to reach a final investment decision (FID). With these two projects getting a green light, total export capacity in the U.S. will be at least 130 MMtpa — or 17.3 Bcf/d — by mid-decade. That top-line export capacity could be much higher, however. There are currently eight U.S. Gulf Coast pre-FID projects with binding sales agreements, and a handful of projects that are fully subscribed in credible non-binding deals. If all those projects go forward, it would add a staggering 86 MMtpa (11.4 Bcf/d) of export capacity to the U.S., pushing the total toward 30 Bcf/d, or 225 MMtpa. In today’s RBN blog we look at U.S. LNG under development, how high export capacity could go, and the implications for the U.S. natural gas market.The U.S. currently has 90.85 MMtpa (12 Bcf/d) of operational capacity at LNG export facilities, including Calcasieu Pass, which is still commissioning its last few trains but is expected to be fully in service soon. Beyond those, there are three projects that have taken FID and are under construction along the U.S. Gulf Coast — Plaquemines (seeJump in the Line) and Corpus Christi Stage III (see Jump in the Line, Part 2) both recently got their final go-aheads, as we mentioned in the intro, and ExxonMobil and QatarEnergy's Golden Pass, which took FID back in early 2019 and is expected online in 2024. [There are also projects under construction in Canada and Mexico (see our Go West series).] Beyond the Gulf Coast projects that have taken FID, there are several hoping to capitalize on the current market momentum. At RBN, we evaluate prospective LNG export projects based on their commercial, regulatory and infrastructure/feedgas progress and, from there, put them into three categories: probable, possible or speculative. In the possible category we further break this down into three tiers of likelihood based on how close they are to FID. Our full account of all projects and the progress they’ve made toward FID is available in the LNG Voyager Quarterly Report, the latest of which was released earlier this month. Prior to this year, the lowest tier in the possible category — Tier 3 — was by far the most numerous category. There were plenty of LNG projects announced but very few with a genuine shot at a near-term FID. Most had made just a little progress, usually on the regulatory front, but it didn’t seem likely that many, if any, would ever take FID. Now we have eight land-based U.S. Gulf Coast projects that we categorize as probable (dark orange diamonds and project names in Figure 1) or possible (Tier 1, light orange; Tier 2, yellow), not to mention other offshore projects (the topic of an upcoming blog) and projects in Mexico and Canada. When you evaluate each of these individual projects on its own merits, a strong case for FID can be made for every one. But together, as a big picture, we’re talking about 86.1 MMtpa (11.4 Bcf/d) of new export capacity in a very small geographic footprint. It’s an almost unthinkable amount of LNG. The lines between the categories — differentiating what will be built and what won’t — and even the lines between FID and not — are blurring, but it’s increasingly looking like most of these projects, and potentially others out there, will go forward. And, as we mentioned in the introduction, that will have a significant impact on the U.S. natural gas value chain — from upstream to downstream — particularly on the Gulf Coast.
Freeport LNG Start Date Pushed Back -Freeport LNG Development L.P. has announced that it has completed a “detailed assessment” of alternatives for resuming operations at its liquefaction facility following an incident at the site on June 8. In a statement posted on its website, the company noted that it has identified a recovery plan for reinstatement of partial operations that it believes ensures the long-term safety and integrity of the facility, provides recovery execution certainty, and minimizes procurement and performance testing risks. The company said it is anticipated that initial production can commence in early to mid-November and ramp up to a sustained level of at least two billion cubic feet per day by the end of November, which Freeport highlighted represents over 85 percent of the export capacity of the facility. The company said the recovery plan will utilize Freeport LNG’s second LNG loading dock as a lay berth until loading capabilities at the second dock are reinstated in March 2023, “at which time we anticipate being capable of operating at 100 percent of our capacity”. Freeport conceded that typical construction risks could impact the recovery plan. The company also revealed that it has engaged Kiewit Energy Group Inc to perform the engineering, procurement, and reconstruction activities necessary to implement Freeport LNG’s recovery effort. “Freeport LNG continues to coordinate closely with representatives of the Pipeline Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the U.S. Coast Guard and other applicable regulatory agencies to implement its recovery plan and corrective measures to ensure a safe and confident resumption of operations,” Freeport said in a company statement. Earlier this month, Freeport revealed that it and the Pipeline Hazardous Materials Safety Administration had entered into a Consent Agreement related to the June 8 incident at Freeport LNG’s liquefaction facility. The obligations under the Consent Agreement are intended to ensure that Freeport LNG can safely and confidently resume initial LNG production and thereafter ultimately return to full operation of all liquefaction facilities, Freeport noted at the time. Back in June, Freeport highlighted that it was estimated that the resumption of partial liquefaction operations would occur in early October 2022. At the time, the company was also continuing to target year-end for a return to full production.
Fire at Biggest USA Midwest Refinery - An outage at the largest US Midwest refinery is raising wholesale fuel prices regionally just as the agricultural sector gears up for its busiest time of year. BP PLC shut two crude units at its 435,000 barrel-a-day Whiting, Indiana, refinery after a fire Wednesday, Wood Mackenzie’s Genscape said. The fire occurred in the power house and caused a loss of cooling water, which could lead to damaged equipment, according to a person familiar with operations. A prolonged shutdown of the plant, which supplies gasoline, diesel and jet fuel to most of the region’s major distribution centers, could tighten fuel markets just as farmers in the nation’s breadbasket prepare for harvesting season. Diesel demand typically starts to rise this time of year because it’s used for heating and to fuel big machinery. Mid-continent distillate inventories, which include diesel, are at their lowest seasonally since 2006, and gasoline stockpiles are the least since 2014, according to government data. Diesel for prompt delivery traded at a 5-cent per gallon premium over early September deliveries, according to a broker. Gasoline delivered into Michigan jumped 10 cents a gallon on news of the outage as well. A lengthy shutdown could divert crude to the storage depot in Cushing, Oklahoma. Inventories at the hub, the delivery point for benchmark US crude futures, have already risen for eight straight weeks and the prospect of further builds are weighing on futures and physical crude markets. In the oil futures market, the US crude futures prompt spread contracted sharply, with the gap between the October and November contracts narrowing by 10 cents. WTI’s discount to international benchmark Brent crude weakened for the same reason, traders said. The units shut include Pipestill 12, the region’s largest crude unit with a capacity of 255,000 barrels-a-day, and the 70,000 barrel-a-day Pipestill 11A. Pipestill 12 processes as much as 90% heavy Canadian crude that’s piped in from the oil sands. If the fire damage is confined to a control panel, restart of the units could begin as soon as this weekend with a return to normal operations as soon as early next week. The fact that a 102,000 barrel-per-day coker, which supports Pipestill 12, is still running may indicate a short downtime is expected.
US Strategic Oil Reserves Hit Lowest Level Since 1985 on Biden Releases -- The US's strategic oil reserves fell to their lowest level in 37 years last week as the releases ordered by President Joe Biden continued. Strategic petroleum reserve (SPR) stockpiles fell to 453.1 million barrels in the week to Friday, according to Department of Energy data. That's the lowest level since January 1985. Stockpiles have fallen by more than 160 million barrels this year after the White House ordered the release of record amounts of crude oil in an effort to cool sky-high gasoline prices and tamp down on inflation. Biden said in March that the US would release 1 million barrels of oil a day for six months as energy prices spiked in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine — which adds up to about 180 million barrels. The White House then said in late July the US would release another 20 million barrels. Meanwhile, the US has pushed for other countries to release oil from their strategic reserves in an effort to boost supply and cool the pressure in the market. In March, the International Energy Agency said non-US member countries would open up an additional 60 million barrels. Analysts have said the releases have contributed to the sharp fall in oil prices seen over the last two months, although the key driver has been fears about a global economic slowdown. Brent crude oil has lost around 20% from its June highs, while WTI crude, the US benchmark price, has dropped around 24%. That decline has brought US gasoline prices down from above $5 a gallon in June to $3.89 on Tuesday, according to AAA. "The combined international agreements will result in an estimated 260 million barrels of supply released to the global market by October," Thomas Feltmate, senior economist at TD Economics, said in a note earlier this month. "Its impact on prices can't be understated." The US strategic petroleum reserve is kept in huge underground salt caverns at four major facilities in Texas and Louisiana. When the US releases oil from the reserves, the Department of Energy sells the crude in an auction to the highest bidder. At its peak in 2009, the SPR held 727 million barrels of crude oil. The US consumed about 20 million barrels of oil a day on average in 2021, according to the Energy Information Agency, while it produced around 11 million barrels a day. The Biden administration is proposing to refill the stockpiles under a plan that is likely to see it order 60 million barrels this fall, for delivery at an unspecified time in the future.
Onshore Drilling Rig Use To Increase Over The Next Five Years --The specialist energy market research and consultancy firm Westwood Global Energy has revealed a healthy recovery roadmap for the global land rig market, driven by higher commodity pricing and mounting pressures around energy security. Westwood expects many regions to recover from the dramatic global downturn throughout 2020 better than previously expected. In 2020, levels reached a low of around 39,000 wells drilled onshore globally, but activity in 2022 is expected to reach 49,600 before climbing to around 60,000 wells in 2026. The increase in drilling demand combined with higher commodity pricing has seen land drilling rig dayrates increase in several regions. The US has seen dayrates increase by 25 percent over 2022, with average dayrates for the second quarter of 2022 reaching $26,500. Other regions such as the Middle East have more stable pricing due to longer-term contracts and the presence of large National Oil Company-owned rig fleets. As operators focus on developing more complex reservoirs, growing demand for super-spec automated rigs in the US has also meant that these units are reaching dayrates in the mid-$30,000s due to tight supply. Outside of the US, countries such as Colombia and Oman are also experiencing high demand for high-spec rigs, with Colombia seeing dayrates reaching $45,000 for units with automation capabilities. “It’s encouraging to see the market begin to get back on its feet after the setbacks from 2020 and 2021, but there will still be a significant oversupply of rigs globally, which we expect to see throughout the forecast period.” “The need for greater domestic energy production to ensure the security of supply has no doubt had an impact on the speed of recovery that we’re seeing in comparison to last year’s forecast. The sanctions imposed on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine have led to higher-than-expected oil and gas prices, supporting rig demand globally.”
Oil and Gas Recruiters Talk Staff Shortage -There’s a dearth of immediately available candidates. That’s what Amanda McCulloch, the chief executive of TMM Recruitment – which works with employers in the north-east of Scotland and is predominantly focused on business support functions and onshore engineering and trades roles - told Rigzone when asked if there is a staff shortage in the oil and gas industry. “Resourcing at short notice or for temporary assignments is particularly difficult and if a long-term contract role can be offered as staff, we’re encouraging employers to consider this option,” McCulloch said. “All our recruitment specialisms are reporting candidate shortages and with more job opportunities than people have experienced in the last five to seven years, salary expectations have shifted upwards,” the chief executive added. When asked which workers are particularly in demand, McCulloch noted that recruiters are among the most sought-after professionals right now, adding that “that’s a reflection of higher recruitment volume in an environment of low candidate availability”. “Reflecting a renewed focus on compensation and training there’s a positive shift in enquiries for people with this specialist knowledge,” McCulloch said. The TMM Recruitment representative highlighted that there’s a shortage across IT disciplines from software developers, business analysts, data science and cyber specialists to system specific technical experts. “Contracts, tendering and commercial advisors are in high demand and in accountancy and finance it is treasury, tax, compliance, corporate finance and cost controller roles that are challenging to fill,” McCulloch said. “It’s also worth noting the sustained demand for marketing, communications and environmental professionals since before the end of the pandemic. At the executive level I’m working on board appointments directly associated with the energy transition, diversification and commercializing technology in PE backed SMEs,” McCulloch added.
Oil and gas wastewater violations by XTO Energy results in $1.7M fine - An international oil and gas company agreed to pay $1.77 million in fines to New Mexico regulators for violations in its wastewater operations in the Permian Basin. XTO Energy was first issued four notices of violations by New Mexico’s Oil Conservation Division (OCD) in February for violating state regulations at water disposal facilities south of Malaga. The facilities were injecting oil and gas wastewater, known as produced water in industry terms brought to the surface with oil and gas and high in salt and other toxic chemicals. They were found in violation of reporting the amount of water injected, or notifying the state when injection commenced. More:$110 million sale of Permian Basin assets continues oil and gas growth in New Mexico, Texas To dispose of produced water, energy companies like XTO often pump it back into the shale formations it came from and are required by the State of New Mexico to report volumes of water injected and when operations begin. The notices issued to XTO reported the company had failed to do so, initially incurring fines up to about $2.2 million. More:Ronchetti oil and gas rebate an expensive campaign promise or giving power to New Mexicans? Disposal injection is closely regulated in southeast New Mexico’s Permian Basin as the practice was recently linked to increasing earthquakes along the border to Texas in both states. After being notified of OCD’s discovery of the violations, XTO audited all of its water injection sites in New Mexico, finding other similar violations, per the OCD’s announcement. Courtney Wardlaw, spokesperson for XTO’s parent company ExxonMobil said none of the violations were linked to induced seismicity and the deficiencies in the operations were fixed. More:Vasquez to balance oil and gas and the environment. Will it get him elected to Congress? “We have fully implemented the needed corrective actions in New Mexico. We’ve been operating in New Mexico for quite some time, and we make a priority for the safety of our workforce and the environment in those communities in which we operate.”
Could protecting a rare bird threaten oil drilling in new Mexico? --Republican congressional leaders including New Mexico’s U.S. Rep. Yvette Herrell are fighting a proposal to provide federal protections to the lesser prairie chicken in multiple western states, arguing such government action would stymie oil and gas and other industries in the region. In June 2021, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed designating the species as “endangered” in a southern population zone, encompassing southeast New Mexico and West Texas – the Permian Basin region known as the U.S.’ most active oilfield. A northern population of the chicken was proposed for a “threatened” designation, covering the northern Texas panhandle, and areas of Kansas, Colorado and Oklahoma. More:Oil and gas impacts lead to lawsuit for federal action on lesser prairie chicken protection An endangered designation means a species’ extinction is imminent, and entails the federal government restricting some land uses and activities that would kill individual chickens while also requiring the government to devise a plan to recover the species' population. Threatened status means a species is likely to meet the standards for threatened soon, and the federal government takes similar but less-restrictive steps to prevent that elevation of status. If either a listing as endangered or threatened was ultimately made, Herrell said it would prove damaging to the oil and gas industry in New Mexico, which is contained within her southern Second Congressional District, and a key driver of the state’s economy. Her comments came during a recent hearing on endangered species of the all-Republican Congressional Western Caucus discussing the impacts of federal conservation efforts on industry. Herrell herself was recently named ranking member of the House Oversight Committee’s environmental subcommittee and is an ardent supporter of oil and gas and opponent of increased government regulations. She’s up for reelection in November, running against Democrat former-Las Cruces City Councilor Gabe Vasquez, and energy and its impact on the environment was a central theme of both campaigns. “Unfortunately, the Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed to list the lesser prairie chicken as endangered in my district, which is both unfair and unjustified,” Herrell said. “A listing would also have a negative impact on industries both vital to New Mexico’s economy and our national security like energy production and agricultural operations.”
Judge revives block on Biden leasing pause - A federal judge has barred the Biden administration from pausing new oil and gas leases on federal lands in 13 Republican-led states.The ruling follows a decision this week from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that struck down an order requiring the Interior Department to continue lease sales. The appeals court ruled that the mandate issued last year by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana “lacked specificity” and sent the matter back to the lower bench to decide if the Biden administration had authority to pause lease sales (Greenwire, Aug. 17).The day after the 5th Circuit opinion was released, Judge Terry Doughty of the Louisiana District Court — the same judge who issued the preliminary injunction against Interior last year — ruled that the leasing moratorium was “beyond the authority of the President of the United States.”The pause comes from Executive Order 14008, which President Joe Biden issued on Jan. 27, 2021, to address climate change. A section of that order required Interior to stop all new oil and gas lease sales until it could review the environmental impacts of the program.Legal observers have noted that the Biden administration was unlikely to revive the moratorium after Interior issued its analysis of the program’s impacts in November 2021 and after committing to leasing requirements under the newly passed Inflation Reduction Act (Energywire, Aug. 18).Doughty, a Trump appointee, ruled that Biden’s pause violated the Mineral Leasing Act (MLA) and Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA), which set rules for federal onshore and offshore energy development.“Even the President cannot make significant changes to the OCSLA and/or the MLA that Congress did not delegate,” Doughty said in the ruling.The legal challenge against Biden’s executive order was brought by a coalition of 13 states led by Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry (R). Landry’s office did not respond to request for comment in time for publication.
Interior denies it ignored impact of 3,500 oil, gas permits on climate - (Reuters) – The Biden administration has widely denied allegations it violated environmental review laws when approving thousands of oil and gas drilling permits, including a failure to consider how greenhouse gas emissions affect climate change. Will do US Department of the Interior on Monday pushed back On claims it shied away from obligations under the National Environmental Policy Act and other laws to consider how permits for more than 3,500 oil and gas wells could contribute to climate change, as noted by the Center for Biological Diversity and others. Conservation groups made the allegation in June. Complaint, In a 50-page response, the government dismissed the groups’ claims in broad strokes, repeatedly asserting that a series of allegations made by the group – including “a growing body of scientific literature” showing That greenhouse gases cause climate change—and that the crisis is primarily driven by the burning of fossil fuels—were “vague and ambiguous”. The government said it lacked “knowledge and sufficient information” to form an opinion on those claims. But according to Bret Hartl, director of government affairs for the Center for Biological Diversity, the lack of data is part of the point of the lawsuit. The government’s approach to allowing it fails to take a look at the cumulative impacts of oil and gas drilling on federal lands, so it may be difficult to draw a straight line between the damages of the program and climate change, he said. “In general, it is a mess. The way the government has looked at leasing as well as permitting is a mess and remains a mess because the answer to the question is never – who we What’s the harm in doing that and what’s the harm in that big sense of climate change? A spokesman for the Interior Department declined to comment on the matter, but confirmed that approval is under way under the Biden administration. The Center for Biological Diversity and WildEarth Guardians, which is represented by the Western Environmental Law Center, targeted at least 3,535 permits in New Mexico’s Permian Basin and Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, which they said during Biden’s first 16 months. in the U.S. accounted for three quarters of all onshore drilling approvals.
Cleanup continues at site of Yellowstone park gasoline spill - (AP) — Cleanup continued Monday after a fuel pup trailer rolled onto its side in Yellowstone National Park last week and spilled gasoline, park officials said. The accident, which happened at about 4 a.m. Friday on U.S. Highway 191 in the western side of the park, spilled 4,800 gallons of gasoline onto the roadway and into a wetland adjacent to the highway, the Environmental Protection Agency said. While the wetland feeds into nearby Grayling Creek, there had been no reports of gasoline reaching the creek. Crews were working Monday to clean up fuel, pump contaminated water and excavate contaminated soil in and around the wetland, said Katherine Jenkins, a spokesperson for the EPA. Park law enforcement cited the truck driver for failure to maintain control
Oilfield wastewater spill reported in northwest North Dakota --State regulators are investigating the spill of oilfield wastewater from a broken pipeline in northwestern North Dakota. Karl Rockman, of the state Department of Environmental Quality, said Hess Corp., the pipeline's owner, reported the saltwater spill near Ray on Aug. 15, and estimated its size at 8,400 gallons. Rockman said Monday the spill now appears to be at least 100 times that. It was not immediately known what caused the leak to the pipeline. Agency officials were on scene to oversee the cleanup and investigate the spill, said Rockman, director of the department's division of water quality. Rockman said it was unknown if any drinking water sources were threatened, or how much land was affected. Saltwater is an unwanted byproduct of oil and gas development and is considered an environmental hazard by the state. It is many times saltier than sea water and can easily kill vegetation exposed to it.
AG Ferguson joins other western states in requesting to halt expansion of methane gas pipeline – Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson joined other Western state’s attorneys general on Monday in filing a motion to stop the expansion of a methane gas pipeline that would run from Canada to California. Gas Transmission Northwest asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to expand its capacity to transport methane gas in a pipeline that runs through the Pacific Northwest, including near Spokane and North Idaho. Gas Transmission Northwest is a pipeline run by Canada-based TC Energy, which also is in charge of the Keystone pipeline system through the northern United States. Ferguson, along with attorneys general in Oregon and California, filed a motion to intervene and protest the expansion. “This project undermines Washington state’s efforts to fight climate change,” Ferguson said in a statement. “This pipeline is bad for the environment and bad for consumers.” The motion says Washington, Oregon and California are concerned with the environmental impact that the pipeline expansion will have, including an increase in air pollution and possibly increasing risks to those who are already disproportionately affected by climate change. The pipeline expansion would transport about 150 million cubic feet per day of additional methane gas from Canada for sale in Washington, Idaho, Oregon and California, according to Ferguson’s office. It would emit about 3.47 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent each year for the next 30 years, according to his office. “The reality is, when we expand gas infrastructure, it’s all too often minority, low-income, and Indigenous communities that pay the price,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement. “I urge FERC to address the deficiencies in its environmental review and comply with the law.” Ferguson claims that the company is using “faulty assumptions” about the demand for methane gas in the next three decades. The motion says there is “no public necessity” for the increased pipeline capacity as many state policies are already working to reduce regional demand for methane.
Oil spill settlement reached with California businesses — A pipeline operator said Thursday that it has reached a settlement with Southern California tourism companies, fishermen and other businesses that sued after a crude oil spill off the coast last year near Huntington Beach. Amplify Energy Corp., which owns the pipeline that ruptured and faces a criminal charge for its oversight, said in a statement that claims have been settled in the class-action lawsuit filed by businesses affected by the October spill of about 25,000 gallons (94,600 liters) of crude into the Pacific Ocean. The company did not say how much the businesses would be paid but said its insurance policies will cover the cost of the settlement, which would still need to be approved by a federal court. “Although we are unable to provide additional detail at this time, we negotiated in good faith and believe we have come to a reasonable and fair resolution,” Martyn Willsher, Amplify’s president and chief executive, said in the statement. The pipeline rupture sent blobs of crude washing ashore in surf-friendly Huntington Beach and other coastal communities. While less severe than initially feared, the spill about 4 miles (6.4 kilometers) offshore shuttered beaches for a week and fisheries for more than a month, oiled birds and threatened wetlands that communities have been striving to restore. Attorneys for the businesses that sued said in a statement that the settlement includes monetary relief but they didn't provide details. The agreement doesn’t apply to the operators of ships accused of dragging anchors in the harbor and causing damage to the pipeline months before the spill. “All rights to continue pursuing claims against the ship related entities are expressly reserved by both the Class Plaintiffs and the Amplify entities,” the statement said. The settlement also doesn't resolve Houston-based Amplify's claims against an organization that helps oversee marine traffic. Amplify contends that two ships during a January 2021 storm dragged their anchors across the pipeline that carried crude from offshore oil platforms to the coast. Amplify also faces a criminal charge related to the pipeline leak. U.S. prosecutors charged Amplify and two of its subsidiaries with illegally discharging oil and claimed the companies failed to respond to eight leak detection system alarms over a 13-hour period that should have alerted them to the spill. Amplify has said workers believed they were false alarms.
Calif. poised to ban sales of new gas-fueled cars by 2035 - California regulators are poised to approve a groundbreaking rule that would effectively ban sales of new gas-fueled passenger vehicles starting in 2035.The California Air Resources Board (CARB) is scheduled to vote today on its “Advanced Clean Cars II” proposal, which would require that automakers offer only electric and other zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) in the state by that 2035 deadline.Automakers must hit other clean car benchmarks along the way, including ensuring that 35 percent of new cars are ZEVs by 2026, and 68 percent are ZEVs in 2030. Only used gas-fueled cars would be sold in the state after 2035.“California now has a groundbreaking, world-leading plan to achieve 100 percent zero-emission vehicle sales by 2035,” said Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who in a 2020 executive order asked CARB for the regulation. “It’s ambitious, it’s innovative, it’s the action we must take if we’re serious about leaving this planet better off for future generations.”The proposed rule would also require automakers to give warranties ensuring 70 percent of EV battery health for eight years or 100,000 miles. There are also requirements to standardize battery health measurements and mandates for battery labeling, aimed at aiding battery recycling.The likely decision potentially has reverberations beyond the nation’s most populous state. California officials hope that the 17 states that follow California’s existing ZEV mandate will adopt the 2035 edict. That action is already underway in some states, including Massachusetts, where Gov. Charlie Baker (R) recently signed legislation to phase out sales of gas-fueled cars by 2035.That Massachusetts law can’t take effect until California acts, said Bill Magavern, policy director at the Coalition for Clean Air. California is the only state that has an EPA waiver from the national vehicle emissions standard, as long as its regulation is tougher. Massachusetts and other states must follow either the national standard — or California’s stricter one. California also will need to secure a new EPA waiver for the Advanced Clean Cars II mandate, because it’s a new program.In addition to Massachusetts, New York and Washington also have said they will ban sales of new gas cars after 2035.Magavern said California “will kind of be a demonstration that this transition is happening. We’ve already seen a lot of signs of that, but I think this will actually be the most tangible sign.”
Is NEPA a winning strategy to fight oil and gas? - Environmentalists have long used four letters — NEPA — to force greenhouse gas disclosures about fossil fuel plans on public lands. But as the massive Willow oil and gas project in Alaska shows, the National Environmental Policy Act may not be enough to stop proposals even as Democrats’ political commitments and climate policies aim to reduce federal drilling.A draft environmental review recently released by the Biden administration found that Willow could drive as much as $18 billion in climate damages. That finding came on the heels of a federal judge vacating the project’s Trump-era approval over an earlier climate analysis deemed insufficient under NEPA. But the new carbon cost estimates produced by the Biden administration are just one factor in determining whether the White House ultimately approves — or rejects — Willow.Legal analysts say that’s because NEPA has its limits. It demands robust analysis, but it can’t force an administration to make a particular decision.“NEPA, for all its benefits, doesn’t mandate outcomes. All it mandates is that an agency accurately disclose the impacts — the environmental impacts — of a project,” said Jeremy Lieb, a senior attorney for Earthjustice, one of the organizations that got the Willow project approval revoked on climate grounds.Willow, backed by Houston-based ConocoPhillips, highlights a long struggle by environmental groups to make climate change central to decisions about fossil fuel development on public lands. The project also underscores the legal constraints faced by climate organizers who ultimately want to retire oil and gas drilling on federal lands — an action that may have to come from the White House or Congress rather than the courts.The Biden administration hasn’t yet revealed its plans with Willow. A public comment period on the draft environmental review ends this month.Over a 30-year lifetime, Willow could generate some $10 billion in public revenues by producing from a 600-million barrel reserve, according to ConocoPhillips. The company had pushed to begin construction during the winter of 2021, before being stymied by courts. Company leadership has since stressed that the company needs federal approval before reaching a financial close and moving the project forward. The project’s supporters, who include union workers, state and local political leaders and Alaska Native corporations, are now hoping for a final decision this year in time for construction during the Arctic’s narrow window for operations — when it’s cold enough for ice roads to protect the sensitive tundra.
Oil and gas industry contracts in North America down a decrease in July 2022 - Oil and gas contracts in North America registered a decrease of 10% in July 2022 with 138 contracts, when compared with 153 contracts in the previous month, according to GlobalData’s oil and gas contracts database.The activity marked an increase of 17%, when compared with the last 12-month average of 118 contracts. Looking at contracts by country, the US led the activity in July 2022 with 127 contracts representing a 92% share of all the oil and gas contracts, followed by Canada with seven contracts and a 5% share and Mexico with two contracts and a 1% share. It saw a decrease of 9% over the previous month’s total of 139 contracts and an increase of 25% when compared with the last 12 month-average 102 contracts in the US.
Peru Updates Spill Figure: It Rises To 11,900 Barrels – Peru updated the number of oil spilled in the Pacific in front of a Repsol refinery on Friday and nearly doubled the previous amount, indicating they added up to at least 11,900 barrels to a tragedy that It has been described as “the worst environmental disaster in its capital in recent decades.” A Peruvian judge banned the Spanish Repsol’s local director, Jaime Fernández-Cuesta, three managers and a state official from leaving the country for 18 months after being investigated for an alleged offense of environmental pollution. Environment Minister Rubén Ramírez told reporters that “the new estimate is 11,900 barrels,” at least 1.8 million liters of oil, and said that figure could rise. Repsol later provided a lower figure than the official one and calculated the spill at 10,396 barrels. Ramírez indicated that the oil slick spread over 44 linear kilometers of coastline and contaminates a total of more than 116 square kilometers between sea and land, an area slightly larger than Paris. After the spill on January 15, Repsol reported that seven gallons – about 26.5 liters – three days later, 6,000 barrels had been spilled. During the day, the Italian company that owns the ship “Mare Doricum” – from which crude oil was unloaded when a strong wave was attributed to an underwater volcanic eruption near Tonga – said on Friday Said they were shifting to another ship. The rest of its oil tanker cargo was anchored in the port of El Callao. Peru has banned the Italian ship owned by Fratelli d’Amico Armatori SpA from setting sail and indicated that it would have to pay $37.5 million in bail if the ship decides to leave the country.
Pacific Ocean: Peru sues Repsol with $4.5bn over sweeping oil spill in Pacific Ocean - In January this year, Peru experienced a catastrophic oil spill which left the beaches contaminated along the coastlines in Lima. The nation's consumer protection agency has now filed a civil lawsuit and sought damage costs amounting to $4.5 Billion- $1.5bn for the locals and $3bn for the environmental deterioration. The leak was estimated from 10,000 barrels causing grievous environmental damage and cessation of marine lives in and around the area. Peru recalls the incident as one of the greatest eco-catastrophes recently, although Repsol has dismissed its accountability for the occurrence. At the very beginning, the refinery blamed it on waves stirred by a volcanic emission in Tonga. But a probe revealed that a pipeline in Repsol's name that runs underwater catalyzed the incident. It happened when Mare Doricum, an Italian tanker, arrived at Repsol to unload. However, Repsol has rebuffed the lawsuit stating that it lacks merit and the sum is unreasonable. So far, numerous locals and fishermen have lost their livelihoods to the disaster, as recorded by the Peruvian Environment Ministry. Indecopi alleged that the destructive effects of the spill are still felt by the people inhabiting and working in the region. Therefore, m must put the situation to the right. The head of the Indecopi stated that they are doing their utmost to make Repsol compensate for the population living within 150Km of the contaminated waters. The investigation proceedings began in January to look into Repsol's conduct, and four of their executives were prohibited from exiting the land for the subsequent 18 months. Repsol, in the month of May, claimed that it cost them $150m to cleanse the spill.
UK Offshore Drillers Could Go On Strike If Pay Conditions Are Not Met -UK workers' union Unite has started a ballot for over 300 offshore drilling and contract maintenance workers covered by the United Kingdom Drilling Contractors Association (UKDCA) on strike action. The ballot opened on August 22 and will close on September 27. It follows Unite members rejecting a 5 percent pay offer. It is worth noting that the UKDCA covers around 600 workers including several major offshore contractors including Archer, Maersk, Transocean, and Odfjell. “Unite’s UKDCA members are always the first to suffer when there is a downturn offshore and the last to benefit when there is an upturn – that is if they even benefit at all. UKDCA drill crews have had no meaningful pay increase for several years despite the consistently high price of oil and gas, and record operator profits. Our members have their union’s full support in fighting for better jobs, pay, and conditions offshore,” Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said. Earlier this month Unite accused BP of ‘unfettered profiteering’ as the oil and gas giant reported its biggest quarterly profit for 14 years which hit $8.45 billion between April and June – more than three times the amount it made in the same period last year. “Inflation stands at a forty-year high and it’s expected to rise further with energy bills having risen by 54 percent. Drilling companies have major problems in retaining and re-employing experienced drill crew, yet they want to pay our members a pittance. Unite always remains open to meaningful dialogue and we urge the UKDCA to get back round the table before the dispute escalates to strike action,” Vic Fraser, Unite’s industrial officer, added.
Gas prices in Europe have risen to $2,700 on news about PP-1 - The price of gas in Europe during the first hour of trading at the p’ increased by 8% more on Friday, and on the previous day it exceeded $2,700 per 1000 gas. cube m on the background of information to Gazprom about the supply of gas pipeline Pivnichniy Potik-1. About the data of the London Stock Exchange ICE on the evening of April 19. So , the rate of spring f’future on the TTF hub in the Netherlands grew to $2712 per 1 yew. cube m, or 261 euros per MW year. This year, Gazprom has announced that the supply of gas by Pivnichny Stream-1 will be completed from 31 sickles to 2 spring through the repair of a single gas-pumping unit, which was left in operation. “The complex of regulatory work will be carried out in conjunction with the technical maintenance contract with the facsimiles of Siemens”, – The technical maintenance of the unit will need to be carried out for 1000 years. After the completion of the work, in case of technical failures, the gas transportation unit will be renewed up to 33 million cubic meters. m for mining.
European gas prices surge as Russian pipeline maintenance fuels fears of a total shutdown -European natural gas prices surged on Monday after Russia's state-owned energy giant Gazprom said it would shut down Europe's single biggest piece of gas infrastructure for three days from the end of the month.The unscheduled maintenance works on the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which runs from Russia to Germany via the Baltic Sea, deepen a gas dispute between Russia and the European Union and exacerbate both the risk of a recession and a winter shortage. The front-month gas price at the Dutch TTF hub, a European benchmark for natural gas trading, jumped 19% on Monday to reach 291.5 euros ($291.9) per megawatt hour.The contract closed on Friday at a record high of 244.55 euros per megawatt hour, registering its fifth consecutive weekly gain.Gazprom said Friday that the shutdown was because the pipeline's only remaining compressor required servicing. Gas flows via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline will be suspended for the three-day period from Aug. 31 to Sept. 2.Gazprom said gas transmission would resume at a rate of 33 million cubic meters per day when the maintenance work is completed "provided that no malfunctions are identified."The announcement of the temporary shutdown comes as European governments scramble to fill underground storage facilities with natural gas supplies in a bid to have enough fuel to keep homes warm during the coming months.Russia has drastically reduced natural gas supplies to Europe in recent weeks, with flows via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline currently operating at just 20% of the agreed-upon volume.Moscow has previously blamed faulty and delayed equipment for the sharp drop in gas supplies.Germany, however, considers the supply cut to be a political maneuver designed to sow uncertainty across the bloc and boost energy prices amid the Kremlin's onslaught against Ukraine. Until recently, Germany bought more than half of its gas from Russia. And the government of Europe's largest economy is now battling to shore up winter gas supplies amid growing fears that Moscow could soon turn off the taps completely. What's more, Europe's race to save enough gas comes at a time of skyrocketing prices. The surge in energy costs is driving up household bills, pushing inflation to its highest level in decades and squeezing people's spending power.
Europe’s Gas Price Is Now Equivalent To $410 Per Barrel Of Oil -Heatwaves this summer and expected natural gas shortages this winter are driving gas prices higher and higher.Europe’s benchmark gas prices surged by 14% in just three days to a fresh record-high, continuing the upward trend from recent weeks, as gas demand for power generation is high amid heatwaves and Russian pipeline supply remains at low levels, while the EU scrambles to fill gas storage ahead of the winter that would see energy and gas rationing, industries shutting down production, and households paying sky-high prices for heating and electricity. Europe is in the most precarious position, but natural gas prices are rallying in the United States and Asia, too. Gas demand for power is high, and production is flat in America, while major Asian buyers are back on the LNG market to secure supplies for the winter.As LNG is now a global commodity, benchmark gas and spot LNG prices are soaring all over the world. And they could jump even higher when the heating season approaches.Europe’s benchmark gas prices at the Dutch TTF hub rallied 14% between Monday and Wednesday, jumping by 6% on Wednesday at a new record of $240 (236 euro) per megawatt-hour. Gas prices have already doubled since June, when Russia first reduced supply via Nord Stream, the key pipeline carrying gas to Europe’s biggest economy, Germany.The European gas benchmark now trades at what would be an equivalent of $410 per barrel of crude oil, which highlights “the debilitating economic impact on the region,” Ole Hansen, Head of Commodity Strategy at Saxo Bank, said this week.Such record gas prices are hitting industries in Germany and the rest of Europe, with companies announcing production halts or curtailments “until further notice” amid soaring energy costs. Industries have warned that reduced production and operations could lead to a collapse of supply and production chains. Governments are scrambling to secure enough gas for the winter while walking a tight rope between alleviating the cost burdens on households and avoiding an industrial collapse and a wave of bankrupt energy companies.As a result of the gas crunch and a heatwave constraining supply and output from other fuel sources, year-ahead electricity prices continue to soar in Europe, with German power prices, the European benchmark, jumping to over $508 (500 euro) per megawatt-hour on Tuesday—a new record.Despite faster storage builds than usual, Germany will only have enough natural gas to cover two and a half months of consumption this winter if Russia completely suspends deliveries, Klaus Müller, the president of Germany’s energy regulator, told Bloomberg this week.“The burden of high gas and oil prices will actually mean that we are going to see some steep contraction in the European economies next year,” Amrita Sen, director of research at Energy Aspects, told Bloomberg on Wednesday.European prices are at record highs and at around seven times higher than U.S. benchmark prices. But the U.S. prices at Henry Hub have surged, too, to the highest they have been in 14 years. This is the result of flattish domestic production, strong gas demand from the power sector in heatwaves, and lower than normal stocks in storage, despite the outage at the Freeport LNG export terminal, which has made available more gas for domestic consumption. The Freeport LNG outage prompted a 39% decline in Henry Hub prices in June. But in July, higher-than-normal temperatures across much of the U.S. resulted in strong gas demand in the power sector, which absorbed much of the Freeport LNG-related surplus and kept natural gas inventories from rising faster, the EIA said last week. Moreover, natural gas price volatility reached an all-time high in Q1 2022, the EIA noted.
Gas, coal prices double 6 months into Russia-Ukraine war --Natural gas and coal prices on global markets reached record levels six months into the Russia-Ukraine war. Natural gas prices in Europe increased by about 127.6% in the six months since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war. The price of natural gas per megawatt-hour for March contracts in Europe, trading on the Netherlands-based virtual natural gas trading point (TTF), reached €128.31 ($128.36) on Feb. 24, at the start of the war. However, the price for September futures contracts, which opened at €272 ($272.12) per megawatt-hour on Wednesday, ended the day at €292.15 ($292.32) per megawatt-hour. The EU's post-war sanctions, the reduction in fossil fuels imported from Russia and reduced gas flow to Europe ramped up prices. The EU aims to reduce natural gas imports by two-thirds by the end of the year to wean off Russian gas dependence. Russian energy company Gazprom announced on June 14 that gas shipments to Europe via the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline would drop from 167 million cubic meters to 100 million cubic meters. As of June 16, the company announced that only up to 67 million cubic meters of natural gas would be supplied daily through the line. In its release on July 27, Gazprom said it would reduce the daily natural gas delivery capacity to Europe via the Nord Stream pipeline to 20%. As recent as Aug. 19, Gazprom confirmed that natural gas deliveries through the said line would be under maintenance and not operate between Aug. 31 and Sept. 2. The price of March contract coal traded on the API2 Rotterdam Coal Futures Market was $192.35 on Feb. 24 but rose to $376.95 on Wednesday, showing an increase of 96% over six months. The price of coal hit its highest closing price since the war at $398.45 on March 2. Imports of coal from Russia were completely halted under sanctions that came into effect on Aug. 10. Before the war, Russia's share of the EU's coal imports amounted to around 45%. Supply concerns on global markets pushed coal prices higher after Russia, one of the world's largest coal-producing countries, entered the war. International benchmark Brent crude closed the day on Aug. 24 at $101.75 a barrel for a 2.7% increase from Feb. 24, the first day of the Russia-Ukraine war when it traded at $99.08 a barrel. American benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) also increased 1.7% during the same period. Earlier last month, EU leaders agreed on the sixth sanctions package that calls for a 90% reduction in Russian oil imports by the end of 2022. The plan also includes phasing out Russian crude oil supplies by Dec. 5 and the supply of refined products by Feb. 5. EU states agreed to ban seaborne oil transport, partially exempting pipeline oil as some member countries, including Hungary, particularly opposed the oil import ban via the Druzhba pipeline. This pipeline transports Russian oil to refineries in Poland, Germany, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Recent data shows the EU has so far failed to crash the Russian economy using oil embargoes despite the EU importing 25% of its oil from Russia.
EU Eyes Emergency Talks on Energy Crisis --European Union energy ministers may hold an emergency meeting to discuss the spike in power markets as leaders strike a more urgent tone on the unfolding crisis. The Czech Republic, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency, is considering calling a gathering to debate the idea of capping electricity prices, the CTK newswire cited Industry Minister Jozef Sikela as saying. He added the Czechs would favor an EU-wide price limit but gave no details on the potential new measures. Europe is grappling with the worst energy crisis in decades, with spiking costs of gas and electricity driving inflation and threatening to drag economies into recession. European power prices have soared in the past weeks with Russian gas supply cuts in the wake of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. “If you have a European market and a problem for all of Europe, then the simplest approach is to seek a solution on a European level,” Sikela said. “We have to look whether this situation continues and escalates further.” In reference to the possible ministerial meeting, French government spokesperson Olivier Veran told reporters Wednesday that France “in general” is aligned with EU energy policies. But he stressed that doesn’t necessarily mean Paris will back the “logic” of a European energy price cap. France’s situation is different from other European countries thanks to government measures that have offered the country better protection against inflation, Veran said.
European gas prices surge as Russia announces Nord Stream 1 shutdown -European natural gas prices surged on Monday after Russia's state-owned energy giant Gazprom said it would shut down Europe's single biggest piece of gas infrastructure for three days from the end of the month.The unscheduled maintenance works on the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which runs from Russia to Germany via the Baltic Sea, deepen a gas dispute between Russia and the European Union and exacerbate both the risk of a recession and a winter shortage.The front-month gas price at the Dutch TTF hub, a European benchmark for natural gas trading, jumped 19% on Monday to reach 291.5 euros ($291.9) per megawatt hour.The contract closed on Friday at a record high of 244.55 euros per megawatt hour, registering its fifth consecutive weekly gain.Gazprom said Friday that the shutdown was because the pipeline's only remaining compressor required servicing. Gas flows via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline will be suspended for the three-day period from Aug. 31 to Sept. 2.Gazprom said gas transmission would resume at a rate of 33 million cubic meters per day when the maintenance work is completed "provided that no malfunctions are identified."The announcement of the temporary shutdown comes as European governments scramble to fill underground storage facilities with natural gas supplies in a bid to have enough fuel to keep homes warm during the coming months.
European Power Prices Skyrocket as Natural Gas Supply Fears Keep Driving Records - The cost of electricity has surged to record highs across Europe, following a meteoric rise in natural gas prices that could pave the way for painfully high consumer rates across the continent through the winter and well beyond. Electricity futures across much of the continent jumped above 600 euros/MWh this week, an exponential gain from the roughly 20-30 euros/MWh average over the last decade. In a note on Wednesday, Rystad Energy analysts wrote that records have been broken on an hourly and daily basis throughout the month. “Should the current trend continue, then winter power prices will be punishing for European consumers large and small,” said Rystad analyst Fabian Rønningen. German and French power prices hit fresh highs as the week came to an end. French year-ahead power surged past 1000 euros/MWh Friday for the first time ever.The power crisis has unfolded in tandem with soaring natural gas prices as Russia has curbed exports to the continent. The benchmark Dutch Title Transfer Facility again set records Friday, when contracts through the remainder of the year finished above $100/MMBtu amid ongoing fears there won’t be enough gas to go around this winter. Rønningen noted that natural gas is the marginal producer of electricity in most European nations, meaning power and gas contracts are usually highly correlated. The European power crisis has been gaining momentum throughout the summer. French nuclear availability issues, depleted hydro reservoirs due to drought and declining output at aging nuclear and coal plants have exacerbated the situation along with low wind output. Analysts at Engie EnergyScan said this week that fundamentals are unlikely to change anytime soon given hot forecasts, calm weather conditions further curbing wind and the anxiety gripping the market over whether Russia will further cut deliveries next month. The situation has grown so dire that European energy ministers are again reportedly considering an emergency summit to address the snowballing crisis.
Bidding War Between Asia and EU on Who Gets Most USA LNG -There’s basically a bidding war now between Asia and Europe on who gets the most U.S. LNG. That’s what Matteo Illardo, a Europe analyst with RANE, said in an audio clip sent to Rigzone this week, adding that production is “almost at maximum level in the U.S.”. Asked if a bidding war has implications for inflation for the U.S., Asia and elsewhere, Illardo said, “that’s definitely driving prices high”. “In the end, this is also causing disruptions, for instance, in countries that do not get their gas, because on the one hand, the bidding war means that Europe gets its LNG and gets it at high prices and who does not get the LNG not only has higher energy prices overall, but also has not enough supplies maybe to power industries such as the textile industries in South Asia that basically employ most of the workforce there,” Illardo said. “So, it does have second order implications that go even beyond inflation, but definitely it does keep prices even higher,” he added. In the audio clip, Illardo stated that the U.S. is definitely increasing supplies of LNGs to Europe and highlighted that the U.S. “is one of the suppliers in which Europe is now relying the most to get its LNG, together with Qatar in the Middle East”. In its latest short term energy outlook (STEO), the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) confirmed that, in the first half of 2022, the U.S. became the largest LNG exporter in the world. The EIA forecasted in its August STEO that U.S. LNG exports will average 11.2 billion cubic feet per day for all of 2022, which the organization highlighted is a 14 percent increase from 2021, and 12.7 billion cubic feet per day for all of 2023.
Quebec can meet Europe's gas needs: producers - - The Canadian province of Quebec has enough natural gas to meet European demand, but any plan to ship compressed natural gas (CNG), in the near term, or LNG in the longer term, would require the Quebec government to drop its Bill 21 legislation banning the production of natural gas in the province, according to executives with gas assets in the province.Utica Resources CEO Mario Levesque, in an August 24 statement, and Questerre Energy CEO Michael Binnion, on August 23, were responding to comments from Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau earlier this week suggesting that the distance from potential east coast LNG facilities to western gas fields made new gas export prospects challenging.“The business case for Quebec gas is crystal clear,” Levesque said. “Quebec has enormous quantities of natural gas (about 20% of Canada’s total recoverable gas), enough to replace all Russian imports into Germany for 20 to 40 years.”Most of Quebec’s gas reserves are located in the Utica shale basin, which covers a wide swath of the St Lawrence Lowlands, and are in close proximity to existing deep water ports.And Questerre Energy’s reserves – a resource estimated at some 6 trillion ft3 – are located within 10 km of a fully permitted, but still unsanctioned, export facility at Becancour, Binnion said.“As the producer of the natural gas, we can deliver to the export facility directly, eliminating the risks of securing sufficient and reliable supply to meet long-term supply contracts,” he said. “The business case is established for our company which previously made a final investment decision supported by independent reports to proceed with the production of natural gas.”Both executives pointed out that a Quebec LNG export facility would be much closer to Europe than other terminals in Qatar or even the Cove Point LNG facility in Maryland, on the US east coast.“The fact is that Quebec gas is the key for Canada to be able to step up to its responsibility of helping Europe in this difficult time,” Levesque said. “Other sources of Canadian gas are far from Atlantic ports and it is a long, complex and expensive process to build the required infrastructure to transport these products to Europe.”He agreed with Trudeau’s desire, expressed in the midst of German chancellor Olaf Scholz’s visit to Canada, to ramp up natural gas production to help Europe, and offered a three-point plan: rapidly increase Quebec natural gas production, begin exports of CNG to Germany within the next 18 months – each CNG ship would be able to deliver about 20bn ft3/year – and develop the Becancour LNG facility to produce 1-2 trillion ft3/year of LNG, equivalent to 100% of Germany’s imports from Russia and more than a third of all European consumption of Russian gas.“This would require the lifting of the Quebec government’s new law banning the production of hydrocarbons – a law which makes no sense, particularly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” Levesque said.Questerre’s Binnion added that Quebec can also help fulfill Trudeau’s goal of exporting hydrogen to European markets through its Clean Gas project, as-yet unsanctioned in the wake of Quebec’s ban on gas production. “By eliminating the emissions from production and utilising new carbon technology, we can use this Clean Gas to produce zero-emissions hydrogen as well as ammonia for export,” he said. “This is consistent with the new hydrogen pact signed by G7 countries earlier this year, including Canada and Germany.” Utica Resources and Questerre Energy are each pursuing legal challenges to Bill 21.
Sending Canadian LNG to Germany is ‘doable,’ Trudeau says - — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says exporting liquified natural gas from Canada’s east coast to Germany could ease Europe’s gas crunch. The prime minister’s remark in Montreal on Monday raised eyebrows given the lack of export facilities in Atlantic Canada. Three days ago, he suggested there’s “not a whole lot” Canada can do in the short term to boost energy supplies in Europe. But on Monday at a joint press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Trudeau said, “It’s doable, we have infrastructure around that.” He didn’t offer a timeline when asked for one. Scholz is on a three-day visit to Canada with Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck and a business delegation that includes CEOs from Volkswagen AG and Mercedes-Benz. Doable doesn’t mean realistic given that Europe wants to slash Russian gas purchase by two-thirds by the end of the year. Trudeau said weak business cases have kept proposed export facilities from moving forward, adding that Canada’s east coast is “a long way from the gas fields in Western Canada.” He said the priority is on immediate solutions and existing infrastructure. “Right now our best capacity is to continue to contribute to the global market to displace gas and energy that then Germany and Europe can locate from other sources,” Trudeau said. Earlier this year, Canada responded to the energy crisis created by Russia’s war in Ukraine with a pledge to drum up oil and gas production by the equivalent of up to 300,000 barrels per day by the end of the year. But because Canada lacks coastal export facilities, nearly all of its oil and gas goes to one market, the United States. The Canadian government’s promise to send oil and gas to Europe requires companies to send shipments from the U.S. Gulf Coast.
Russia LNG Plant Scraps Cargo to Asia Buyer -Russia’s push to consolidate control over its natural gas is beginning to curb supply to customers in Asia, the first tangible example Moscow’s move to nationalize Sakhalin is affecting shipments to the region. Sakhalin Energy LLC, the new operator set up by Moscow to tighten ownership over the liquefied natural gas facility in Russia’s Far East, scrapped a shipment to at least one Asian customer due to payment issues as well as delays signing revised contracts, according to traders with knowledge of the matter. Moscow transferred the ownership of the plant to Russia-based Sakhalin Energy from a Bermuda-based entity on Aug. 19 and customers were asked to commit to new deals and send payments to banks in Moscow from that date. Few buyers have signed the revised contracts, which could threaten the flow of gas to markets including Japan and South Korea, the traders said. Any disruption to natural gas shipments risks exacerbating a supply crunch gripping Asia, which is grappling with surging power bills and higher inflation. Missed deliveries could cause blackouts this winter in Japan, which is the biggest buyer of Sakhalin gas and typically gets about 9% of its LNG needs from the project. “Without Sakhalin, North East Asia will have to drag more cargoes away from Europe, intensifying the scramble for gas between Asia and Europe heading into winter that could send LNG prices to unprecedented levels,” said Saul Kavonic, an energy analyst at Credit Suisse Group AG. Dutch natural gas futures, the benchmark for Europe, rose as much as 2.6% as of 7:21 a.m. in London, to almost $80 a million British thermal units. Increased competition between East Asia and Germany to keep the lights on and industry going could result in prices exceeding $100 per million Btu, according to Kavonic. President Vladimir Putin has been tightening his grip over Russian energy assets, and has also limited flows into Europe in what’s been widely viewed as the use of natural resources as a weapon. Gas prices from Asia to Europe have surged as energy-starved customers rush to ensure supply before the key winter heating season.
Iran And Russia Move To Create A Global Natural Gas Cartel - The US$40 billion memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed last month between Gazprom and the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) is a stepping stone to enabling Russia and Iran to implement their long-held plan to be the core participants in a global cartel for gas suppliers in the same mold as the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) for oil suppliers. With a foundation in the current Gulf Exporting Countries Forum (GECF), this ‘Gas OPEC’ would allow for the coordination of an extraordinary proportion of the world’s gas reserves and control over gas prices in the coming years. Occupying the number one and number two positions in the world’s largest gas reserves table, respectively – Russia with just under 48 trillion cubic meters (tcm) and Iran with nearly 34 tcm – the two countries are in an ideal position to do this. The Russia-Iran alliance, as evidenced in the most recent multi-faceted MoU between Gazprom and the NIOC, wants to control as much of the two key elements in the global supply matrix – gas supplied over land via pipelines and gas supplied via ships in liquefied natural gas (LNG) – as possible. According to a statement last week from Hamid Hosseini, chairman of Iran’s Oil, Gas, and Petrochemical Products Exporters’ Union, in Tehran, after the Gazprom-NIOC MoU had been signed: “Now the Russians have come to the conclusion that the consumption of gas in the world will increase and the tendency towards consumption of LNG has increased and they alone are not able to meet the world’s demand, so there is no room left for gas competition [between Russia and Iran].” He added: “The winner of the Russia-Ukraine war is the United States, and it will capture the European market, so if Iran and Russia can reduce the influence of the United States in the oil, gas and product markets by working together, it will benefit both countries.” The Gazprom-NIOC MoU, as initially analyzed by OilPrice.com, contains four key elements that are geared towards the build-out of a ‘Gas OPEC’. One element is that the Russian state-backed gas giant has pledged its full assistance to the NIOC in the US$10 billion development of the Kish and North Pars gas fields with a view to the two fields producing more than 10 million cubic meters of gas per day.A second element is that Gazprom will also fully assist with a US$15 billion project to increase pressure in the supergiant South Pars gas field on the maritime border between Iran and Qatar.A third element is that Gazprom will provide full assistance in the completion of various liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects and the construction of gas export pipelines.The fourth element is that Russia will examine all opportunities to encourage other major gas powers in the Middle East to join in the gradual roll-out of the ‘Gas OPEC’ cartel, according to a senior source who works closely with Iran’s Petroleum Ministry. “Gas is widely seen as the optimal product in the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy, so controlling as much of the global flow of that will be the key to energy-based power over the next ten to twenty years, as has already been seen on a smaller scale in Russia’s hold over Europe through its gas supplies,” he added.
France 'preparing to secure Yemeni gas facility' for exports: report - France could be gearing up to help protect a gas facility in Yemen to allow for exports in a bid to cut Europe's reliance on Russia, according to an ex-Yemeni foreign minister. Abubaker Alqirbi tweeted in Arabic on Tuesday that "information is coming in" about "preparations being made to export gas from the Balhaf facility" and that this "could be the reason for events in Shabwa" and moves made by France. Yemeni government forces recently clashed with UAE-backed southern separatist forces in gas-rich Shabwa province, where Balhaf is located, last week, leading to dozens of civilian and combatant casualties. Drones and artillery, believed to belong to the UAE, have fired on government positions located on an important road between Ataq and a city in the neighbouring province of Hadramaut, according to pan-Arab news website Arabi 21. France is negotiating with countries in the region and factions participating in Yemen's war, according to the information cited by Alqirbi. The aim is to see gas exports restart at Balhaf "in light of increased international gas prices and to reduce Russian pressure on Europe". This has been a major concern since Russia invaded Ukraine in February. Paris could "provide protection for the facility through the French Foreign Legion" – part of the country's military in which foreign citizens serve. The key Balhaf gas facility has been turned into a base by UAE troops, who have not allowed exports of the fossil fuel, Arabi 21 said. Mohammed Saleh bin Adyo, the former governor of Shabwa governor, urged the soldiers leave the site on more than one occasion while he was in office. The UAE, while officially part of the Saudi-led coalition, has pursued its own agenda in Yemen. It now wants to bring more territory under the control of militias it backs, analysts believe. The UAE supports the Southern Transitional Council and other separatist groups which seek to establish an independent state in Yemen's south.
Global LNG Investments To Peak At $42 Billion In 2024 - As the global energy crisis deepens and countries scramble to secure reliable energy sources, investments in new LNG infrastructure are set to surge, reaching $42 billion annually in 2024, Rystad Energy research shows. These greenfield investments are 200 times the amount in 2020 when just $2 billion was invested in LNG developments due to the pandemic. However, project approvals after 2024 are forecast to fall off a cliff as governments transition away from fossil fuels and accelerate investments in low-carbon energy infrastructure. The new LNG projects are driven mainly by a short-term increase in natural gas demand in Europe and Asia due to Russia’s war in Ukraine and ensuing sanctions and restrictions placed on Russian gas exports. Spending on greenfield LNG projects this year and next will stay relatively flat, with $28 billion approved in 2021 and $27 billion in 2022. Investments sanctioned in 2023 will show a modest increase, nearing $32 billion, before peaking at $42 billion in 2024. After this date, investments will decline and drop back near 2020 levels to reach $2.3 billion in 2029. Despite an expected jump in 2030 when project announcements are forecast to total nearly $20 billion, investment in greenfield LNG is unlikely to ever return to 2024 levels as countries scale up investments in low-carbon technologies. Natural gas is a core component of many countries’ power generation systems and, although there is a determination to reduce fossil fuel dependency and transition to a low-carbon power mix, demand for LNG is set to grow over the short term. Global gas demand is expected to surge 12.5% between now and 2030, from about 4 trillion cubic meters (Tcm) to around 4.5 Tcm. Gas demand in the Americas will remain relatively flat up to 2030. In contrast, on the back of strong economic growth and pro-gas policies from governments, regional demand in Asia and the Pacific will soar, growing 30% from about 900 billion cubic meters (Bcm) to around 1.16 Tcm by 2030. The Americas – primarily the US – will account for 30% of cumulative gas demand by 2030, while Asia-Pacific will account for 25%. Helped by this new infrastructure, total LNG supply is expected to almost double in the coming years, growing from around 380 million tonnes per annum (Mtpa) in 2021 to about 636 Mtpa in 2030, with several major LNG projects already underway or in the pipeline. LNG production is predicted to peak at 705 Mtpa in 2034.
Kazakhstan’s oil exports via Russian terminus disrupted for fourth time this year - Fresh speculation that the Kremlin is tampering with Kazakhstan’s oil exports has arisen with an announcement that shipments of flows from the CPC pipeline have been disrupted for the fourth time this year.Reuters reported on August 23 that the disruption at the pipeline terminus in Novorossijsk on Russia’s Black Sea coast could run to at least a month but added that, in the meantime, one of the facility’s three export berths still functional would work in “intensive mode” and continue to transfer 60-70% of total capacity.Kazakhstan is dependent on the CPC pipeline—run by the Caspian Pipeline Consortium—for the export of around four-fifths of its crude oil. There continues to be a lot of industry talk that post-Soviet Kazakhstan, which has stopped well short of expressing any support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, is being taught a ‘who’s boss’ lesson by Moscow, which can also exert control over the Novorossijsk export platforms as part of a manipulation of world oil markets, should it so wish. The terminal handles about 1% of global oil supply.CPC reported damage at "the attachment points of underwater sleeves to buoyancy tanks" as the reason for the suspension of oil loadings at two of the three single mooring points (SPMs) at the Novorossijsk terminal. It said the damage may have been caused by "exceptionally difficult weather conditions" last winter.The three disruptions to oil shipments from Novorossijsk that preceded this latest one involved the shutting down of two SPMs due to alleged storm damage in March; export suspension attributed to mine-clearing operations on the seabed in June; and alleged oil spill concerns that led to a Russian court ordering CPC to halt shipments for 30 days. The court order was, however, quickly reversed on appeal and never came into force. The latest CPC disruption comes amid Russia’s plans to close down the Nord Stream gas pipeline for three days between August 31 and September 2, in a move that will put further strain on the European gas market. Russia’s TASS news agency reported that while performing scheduled maintenance on the two closed SPMs, divers discovered cracks in subsea hose attachments to buoyancy tanks. CPC said it then contacted the SPM manufacturer and an organisation that supervises the safe operation of equipment, the ABS classification society. It said they "strongly recommended that the operation of the SPMs should be suspended until the buoyancy tanks are replaced". CPC said it was currently looking for an entity to replace the buoyancy tanks. No timeline for the relaunch of the SPM operations has been provided.
CPC says fixing equipment at two mooring points will take a month each - — Russian and Kazakh oil exports via the Caspian Pipeline Consortium's (CPC) Black Sea terminal face at least one month's disruption each once repairs begin on two of its three single point moorins (SPMs), CPC confirmed on Aug. 23. Oil exports via the two SPMs have been suspended due to equipment damaged by bad winter weather, CPC said Aug. 22, confirming a Reuters report on Saturday. The CPC’s Marine Terminal has had SPM-1 and SPM-2 in operation since 2002 and 2014, respectively. An oil loading system consists of subsea and sea surface equipment, including a subsea pipeline, a pipeline end manifold, suction anchors, anchor chains, subsea hoses and SPM. While performing scheduled maintenance this month on SPM-1 and SPM-2, divers discovered cracks in subsea hose attachments to buoyancy tanks (a buoyancy tank is a hollow air-filled vessel designed to keep subsea hoses in a necessary configuration). There is no threat to the flora and fauna of the Black Sea, CPC said, and the integrity of the equipment remains intact. A crack was found on a joining plate connecting some subsea hose piping on a buoyancy tank of SPM-1. Another crack was found on an identical joining plate on a buoyancy tank of SPM-2. A swivel joint was found to be displaced at the location of a crack (see photos to the right). Due to the damage discovered on subsea equipment, CPC immediately contacted the SPM manufacturer, IMODCO, and an organization that supervises safe operation of equipment, the ABS classification society, for consultations whether the equipment could continue to be operated, providing comprehensive information about the defects found. These entities strongly recommended that the operation of the SPMs should be suspended until the buoyancy tanks were replaced. The ABS classification society, in particular, stressed that exceptionally adverse weather conditions had been observed during the 2021-2022 winter season, which could have caused the damage that was discovered. As a reminder, it was the abnormal storms that caused the damage to some sections of floating hoses in March of this year.The CPC Marine Terminal is temporarily loading crude oil by using only SPM-3. The use of the single SPM will allow to meet shipper nominations with reduced volumes.
Sudan offers more oil blocks to Russian company -- Sudan has offered more oil blocks to Russia’s Zarubezhneft oil company, at the end of a three-day visit of a high-level government delegation to Moscow. The two countries also agreed to enhance cooperation and expand trade in several other sectors. On Wednesday, Sudanese-Russian technical talks began in Moscow, in preparation for meetings of the Russian-Sudanese intergovernmental commission on Friday.The Undersecretary of the Ministry of Minerals, Mohamed Saeed Zeinelabdeen affirmed Sudan's readiness to enter into new partnerships with Russia, the Sudan News Agency (SUNA) reported on Thursday. El Tahir Mohamed Abulhasan, Director of the Oil Exploration and Production Administration at the Sudanese Ministry of Oil, said at plenary session of the Russian-Sudanese intergovernmental commission on Thursday that they discussed Zarubezhneft's proposal for investments in Sudan.“We previously provided several blocks for development, and now we have added more, in regions with gas and oil potential. I think by October we will pass on the necessary information so that they can start looking at these areas," he stated. At the end of the joint meetings on Friday, he confirmed the deal.The Interfax Information Services Group on Thursday cited Dmitry Semyonov, head of the Russian Energy Ministry's International Cooperation Department, who said that “the number of oil blocks for development by our Zarubezhneft company, together with Sudan's Energy and Oil Ministry and state company Sudapec, was increased.“We also agreed with companies to discuss expanding cooperation in the oil sector beyond just production, to look at oil recovery technologies, associated gas utilisation, oil refining, petrochemicals and training,” he said.
Mystery Supertanker Awaits Fate After Seizure - An oil supertanker that Nigeria tried to seize has been stuck off the coast of nearby Equatorial Guinea for more than 10 days, where it was impounded by local authorities. The Nigerian navy said that its counterparts in Equatorial Guinea arrested the Heroic Idun on Aug. 12, four days after the same vessel allegedly tried to load a cargo of crude unlawfully from the deep-water Akpo field operated by TotalEnergies SE. The ship lacked the necessary clearance and left Nigerian waters before being intercepted by the Equatoguinean military, the navy said on Aug. 19. The Nigerian navy said that the ship was on hire to trading giant Trafigura Group, but that appears to not be the case, according to a person familiar with the matter. The tanker was on lease to BP Plc from Mercuria Group at around the time the navy tried to seize it on April 8, according to another person with knowledge of the situation. For its part, Europe’s biggest oil company said it hired the Heroic Idun to collect an Akpo cargo ten days after the Nigerian navy interrogated the ship but booked another carrier after the Idun was “unable to perform the lifting.” One potential explanation for the controversy is that the ship didn’t have the right paperwork at the time it arrived. Loading programs show the cargo belonged to Prime Oil & Gas Cooperatief UA, which owns a 16% interest in the Total-operated license that contains the Akpo field. Prime declined to comment. Total “is not involved,” a spokesman said by email. “At no time was crude volumes transferred” to the vessel, the company said. Equatorial Guinea is conducting its own investigation and Nigeria has started diplomatic procedures to take control of the tanker, which is currently anchored off the coast of Luba, the Nigerian navy said.
1, 086 oil spills recorded in 7 years in Bayelsa – NOSDRA -- The National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) on Wednesday said a total of 1,086 oil spills were recorded in Bayelsa from 2015 to February 2022. Mr Idris Musa, Director-General, NOSDRA, made this known when delegations from Connected Development (CODE) and OXFAM paid an advocacy visit to his office in Abuja. The visit was to discuss some challenges witnessed in oil-bearing communities. Musa said that out of the 1, 086 oil spill incidents recorded in Bayelsa, 917 were as a result of sabotage in the form of third party breakage of pipelines with hacksaw or outright blowing up of the pipelines. He said that communities in the area must protect oil installations and tackle such vandals, as their silence was causing harm to their environment. “You see we cannot keep running away, I gave you the statistics now that we recored 1, 086 oil spill in Bayelsa from 2015 to February 2022, that is 84.4 per cent; that means we need to do something . “It is not about experts, if I came from a community for instance, and then an expert will come and aid me to break a pipeline in my community that will spill oil into my water, will I then drink it and do other domestic chores? “We need to speak to these issues, we have done that consistently with evidence, what we call Disaster Risk Reduction programme for communities, telling them why they do not need to vandalise oil facilities. “So CSOs also have to wake up and interface with these communities, let everybody check his own part and do the right thing, that is what I will advocate, the blame is not just on oil companies.
India's crude oil production falls 3.76 percent in July - India's crude oil production stood at 2453.19 thousand metric tonnes (TMT) in July 2022, which is 3.76 per cent lower than the production of July 2021 and 5.57 per cent down when compared with the target for the month, according to the official data released on Tuesday. Cumulative crude oil production during April-July, 2022 was 9912.42 TMT, which is 2.17 per cent lower than the target for the period and 0.50 per cent lower than production during the corresponding period of last year, according to data released by the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas. Crude oil production by ONGC (Oil and Natural Gas Corporation) in the nomination block during July 2022 was 1636.56 TMT, which is 3.36 per cent lower than target of the month and 1.70 per cent lower when compared with production of July 2021. Cumulative crude oil production by ONGC during April-July, 2022 was 6606.19 TMT, which is 1.12 per cent lower than the target for the period but 1.99 per cent higher than the target for the period and production during the corresponding period of last year respectively. Reasons for shortfall in production include: natural decline in production from Gandhar in Ankleshwar; ceasure of high potential wells in Geleki field in Assam; closure of wells due to DAB issues; less contribution from PEC fields in Jorhat and restriction on drilling activities due to socio-political issues in Cauvery. Crude oil production by OIL (Oil India Ltd) in the nomination block during July 2022 was 263.70 TMT, which is 8.11 per cent lower than the target of the month but 4.12 per cent higher when compared with production of July 2021. Cumulative crude oil production by OIL during April-July 2022 was 1037.55 TMT, which is 4.94 per cent lower than the target for the period but 4.21 per cent higher when compared to production during the corresponding period of last year. Reasons for shortfall in production are: less than planned contribution from workover wells and loss due to miscreant activities in Main Producing Area (MPA). Crude oil production by Pvt/JVs companies in the PSC/RSC regime during July 2022 was 552.92 TMT, which is 10.45 per cent lower than the target of the reporting month and 12.34 per cent lower than the month production of July 2021. Cumulative crude oil production by Pvt/JVs companies during April-July 2022 was 2268.68 TMT, which is 3.87 per cent and 8.86 per cent lower than the target for the period and production during the corresponding period of last year respectively.
Egypt and Jordan tackle oil spill from ro-ro in Red Sea - Authorities in Egypt and Jordan are dealing with an oil spill from a ro-ro in the Red Sea. The fuel leaked from the 190-lane-metre Flower of Sea (built 1987), polluting parts of the Aqaba coast and waters in nearby countries, Jordanian officials said on Tuesday. The incident is believed to have occurred a week ago and oil has since been washing up on Egyptian beaches. No information has been given about the size of the spill. Nidal Al Majali, an official at the Aqaba Economic Zone, told the state-owned Egyptian newspaper paper Al Dustoor that government teams have been working to “isolate and remove the pollution” from the Aqaba container terminal and from other parts of the 26km coastline. Al Majali said the spill was due to a “fault” in the fuel tanks of the vessel “while it was docking in Jordanian territorial waters”. “The continued emergence of oil spots is due to changes in the direction and speed of the wind,” the official added. “Some spots have been seen on the shores of neighbouring countries,” he said. One eye-witness reported feeling oil on his feet while kitesurfing in Jordan, but said most of the fuel appeared to have been blown by strong winds to Egypt. “One can smell it in the water deep offshore,” he said. A European resident in the Egyptian resort of Dahab, 100km from Aqaba across the Red Sea, said she had been seeing oil spots washed on to the shore. Many swimmers emerged from the sea with large black stains on their skin, she said. “Volunteers are cleaning since a week here and they are not done,” she added. “Dahab is hardly the only place where it washed up and we don’t know if the patch in Jordan is under control.” The vessel is listed as operated by Sea Gate Management of Egypt, which could not be contacted. The ship has six port state control detentions on its record since 2014. The latest was in Aqaba in December 2021. The Flower of Sea was held for a day with 17 deficiencies. Grounds for detention related to inoperative or inadequate fire alarms, and faults with emergency lighting.
Gulf of Aqaba hit by oil spill from cargo ship off Jordan's Red Sea shore - A fuel oil spill from a ship has polluted parts of the Aqaba coast and waters in nearby countries, Jordanian authorities said on Tuesday.The spill, which officials say occurred a week ago and has been washing up Egypt's shoreline, comes less than two months after a chlorine gas explosion at the Aqaba port killed 13 people.The authorities have not given any information on the size of the spill.Pollution is a sensitive topic in Jordan and Egypt, which depend on their sea outlets to attract tourists not only to beaches and reefs but also as a gateway to archaeological and other sites.Nidal Al Majali, an Aqaba Economic Zone official, told the state-owned paper Al Dustoor that government teams have been working to “isolate and remove the pollution” from the Aqaba container terminal and from other parts of the 26-kilometre coastline.“Work is ongoing to deal with oil spill since seven days,” he said. A beach in the Egyptian Red Sea beach town of Dahab where traces of crude oil were found following an oil spill near the Jordanian port city of Aqaba. Photo: Egypt's Ministry of Environment.He said the spill was due to a “fault” in the fuel tanks of a vessel he identified as Flower of Sea“while it was docking in Jordanian territorial waters”.“The continued emergence of oil spots is due to changes in the direction and speed of the wind,” Mr Al Majali said.“Some spots have been seen on the shores of neighbouring countries,” he said.The Marine Vessel Traffic tracking website shows the vessel's last position 12 days ago in the Gulf of Suez and heading to Aqaba.It lists the vessel as a cargo ship designed to carry cars and other wheeled machines. It was built in 1987 and flies the flag of Palau, a small island country east of the Philippines.A Jordanian businessmen who had just returned to Amman after kitesurfing in Aqaba said he felt the fuel oil on his feet but most of it appeared to have been blown by strong winds to Egypt.“One can smell it in the water deep offshore,” he said, adding that the beaches were full.Aqaba, which has a 190,000 population, is just north of Saudi Arabia and faces Israel and Egypt. It is Jordan’s only sea outlet.
Iran to start extracting oil from field shared with Saudi Arabia - On Saturday, an Iranian official unveiled plans for the development of an oil field that straddles the maritime border with Saudi Arabia in the Persian Gulf within the next three years. He added that a contract will be awarded for the first phase of development works at Esfandiar oilfield, which is connected to Saudi Arabia’s Umm Lulu oil field. Alireza Mehdizadeh, who leads the Iranian Offshore Oil Company, said a drilling rig and four production wells have been planned for the first phase of the development project in Esfandiar, which is located 95 kilometers to the southwest of the Iranian island of Kharg and is estimated to have more than 500 million barrels of oil. "The fluid mixture produced in the oilfield will be processed in the nearby Abuzar oilfield before it is transferred to Kharg Island," Mehdizadeh added. He said Iran also plans to drill an exploration well in Esfandiar to obtain more information about the structure of the oil reservoir and to have a better analysis of the next phases of the development project in the field.
Kuwait rejects gas contract extension for two firms - Kuwait has refused to extend two gas contracts for the US-based Schlumberger and Kuwait-based Spetco International Petroleum Company after both firms were late in completing the projects, a local newspaper reported on Monday. The state-owned Kuwait Oil Company, the OPEC member’s upstream investment arm, had requested the extension from the Central Agency for Public Tenders (CAPT), the Arabic language daily Alrai said, quoting official sources. But CAPT rejected the request for renewing the contracts which involve the installation of production equipment in Jurassic fields in North Kuwait, it said. The two companies have already paid “penalties” for a delay in completing the projects and they asked for an extension to avert further penalties, the paper said. “CAPT refused to extend the contracts for the two firms although part of the contract has not been completed,” the paper added without providing further details.
IEA Raises 2022 Global Oil Demand Estimates to 99.7m bpd – - The International Energy Agency (IEA) has raised its forecast for world oil demand in 2022 to 99.7 million barrels per day in 2022 and 101.8 million bpd in 2023.. In its latest Oil Market Report (OMR), the organisation which provides data, forecasts and analysis on the global oil market, stated that the projection was hinged on soaring oil use for power generation and gas-to-oil switching by many countries. On the back of skyrocketing gas prices, many countries have found a veritable alternative in the deployment of crude oil products, raising the consumption of the black gold. “World oil demand is now forecast at 99.7 million bpd in 2022 and 101.8 million bpd in 2023,” the IEA report stated. Although the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has recently increased member countries’ quota marginally, Nigeria has continued to lead underperforming nations in Africa. In July, the country produced a miserly 1.083 million bpd as against the 1.826 million bpd allocated to it by the international oil cartel, a shortage of almost 800,000 bpd. To curb oil theft which has been blamed for the inability to drill more crude, there has recently been massive deployment of the military in the Niger Delta. At a time the international price of crude oil has exceeded $100 for months, the country has been unable to take advantage of the high prices, a development that has negatively affected the economy. In addition, the federal government appears to have realised the futility of deploying only official forces to carry out surveillance activities on the pipelines, with the recent deal with an ex-militant, Mr Government Ekpemupolo, also known as Tompolo, valued at about N4 billion monthly. When President Muhammadu Buhari took over government in 2015, he had insisted that it was a shame that regional warlords were the ones protecting the assets when Nigeria has a capable military.
Global Oil Production: OPEC+ missed output targets by 2.9 mn bpd in July: Sources -- OPEC+ produced 2.892 million barrels per day (bpd) below their targets in July, two sources from the producer group said, as sanctions on some members and low investment by others stymied its ability to raise output. Compliance with the production targets stood at 546% in July the sources said, compared with 320% in June, when the supply gap stood at 2.84 million bpd. OPEC+, which groups the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies led by Russia, agreed to increase output by 648,000 bpd in each of July and August, as they fully unwind nearly 10 million bpd of cuts implemented in May 2020 to counter the COVID-19 pandemic. The group agreed this month to increase production targets by another 100,000 bpd in September, under pressure from major consumers including the United States which are keen to cool prices. Only Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are believed to have some spare capacity and will be able to increase production in a meaningful way. Global oil production spare capacity, mainly concentrated in the two Gulf producers, is already at historical lows.
OPEC chief says blame policymakers, lawmakers for oil price rises - Policymakers, lawmakers and insufficient oil and gas sector investments are to blame for high energy prices, not OPEC, the producer group’s new Secretary General Haitham Al Ghais told Reuters on Thursday. A lack of investment in the oil and gas sector following a price slump sparked by COVID-19 has significantly reduced OPEC’s spare production capacity and limited the group’s ability to respond quickly to further potential supply disruption. The price of Brent crude came close to an all-time high of $147 a barrel in March, after Russia’s ordering of troops into Ukraine exacerbated supply concerns. While prices have since declined, they are still painfully high for consumers and businesses globally. “Don’t blame OPEC, blame your own policymakers and lawmakers, because OPEC and the producing countries have been pushing time and time again for investing in oil (and gas),” Al Ghais, who took office on Aug. 1, said in an online interview. Oil and gas investment is up 10% from last year but remains well below 2019 levels, the International Energy Agency said last month, adding that some of the immediate shortfalls in Russian exports needed to be met by production elsewhere. The OPEC official also pointed the finger at a lack of investment in the downstream sector, adding that OPEC members had increased refining capacity to balance the decline in Europe and the United States. “We are not saying that the world will live on fossil fuels forever … but by saying we’re not going to invest in fossil fuels … you have to move from point A to point B overnight,” Al Ghais said. OPEC exists to ensure the world gets enough oil, but “it’s going to be very challenging and very difficult if there is no buy-in into the importance of investing,” he said, adding that he hopes “investors, financial institutions, policymakers as well globally seriously take this matter (to) heart and take it into their plans for the future.”
Oil Firms After Nord Stream Closure Spiked EU Gas Prices - Oil futures moved mixed early Monday following last week's announcement Russia's energy company Gazprom plans to temporarily throttle a key natural gas pipeline to the European Union in a move that sent European gas futures to record highs at the start of the week and deepened concerns over inflation and recession for the 27-nation economic bloc. Soaring prices for natural gas and electricity forced some industrial operators in Europe to announce shutdowns this summer, including energy-intensive production of metal, pulp, and paper. The industrial shutdowns ahead of the winter months could spell an inflation disaster for the European continent, with consumer prices already rising at a record pace of 8.9%. Dutch Title Transfer Facility gas futures spiked over 12% on Monday to euro288/MWh, up 50% since the beginning of the summer, while year-ahead baseload power prices in Germany and France climbed to a new record of euro775/MWh and euro624/MWh, respectively. Volatility in European energy markets follow an announcement from Gazprom that it plans to shut down the Nord Stream gas pipeline for three days between Aug. 31 and Sept. 2 for "maintenance." Once maintenance is completed Russia says gas flow will be restored to the current level of 33 million cubic meters per day which is around just 20% of the capacity. The temporary closure wasn't previously announced and comes just weeks after the 760-mile Nord Stream pipeline, which connects Russia's prolific Siberian gas fields with Germany under the Baltic Sea, was shut for 10 days of annual maintenance in July. After the work ended, Gazprom restored gas flow, but only to 40% of the pipeline's capacity. It later cut flows to 20% of capacity, saying it couldn't maintain normal flow without a turbine that the German government claims Russia is refusing to take. At this point, Nord Stream pipeline operates with a single functioning turbine at the Portovaya compressor station. Markets are now more skeptical than ever that Russia will maintain its European gas flows this winter that is pushing prices higher with intermittent interruptions seen before completely cutting off exports. EU gas storages are now around 76% full, broadly in line with their historical average for this time of year. In early trading, NYMEX September West Texas Intermediate traded little changed near $90.79 barrel (bbl) ahead of expiration Monday afternoon, with the October contract expanding its discount to $0.38 bbl. ICE October Brent futures slipped to $96.65 bbl. NYMEX September RBOB declined 1 cent to $3.0070 gallon, while the NYMEX September ULSD contract added 5.92 cents to $3.7597 gallon.
Oil Falls 4% On Concerns Economic Slowdown May Dent Fuel - Oil prices fell on Monday in volatile trading, ending three days of gains, on fears aggressive US interest rate hikes may lead to a global economic slowdown and dent fuel demand. Brent crude futures for October settlement fell $3.99, or 4.1 per cent, to $92.73 a barrel by 1411GMT. US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude for September delivery — due to expire on Monday — was down $3.77, or 4.1 per cent, at $87. The more active October contract was down $3.73 cents, or 4.1 per cent, at $86.71. “Choppy trade continues. There remain many factors influencing the oil price right now from a tight market to a diminishing growth outlook and a potential Iran nuclear deal,” Pressuring prices were worries over slowing fuel demand in China, the world's largest oil importer, partly because of a power crunch in the southwest. Beijing cut its benchmark lending rate on Monday as part of measures to revive an economy hobbled by a property crisis and a resurgence of COVID-19 cases. Also pushing down prices, the dollar index rose to a five-week high on Monday. A stronger U.S. currency is generally bearish for the market because much of the world's oil trade is conducted in dollars. Investors will be paying close attention to comments by Fed Chair Jerome Powell when he addresses an annual global central banking conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on Friday. Meanwhile, the leaders of the United States, Britain, France and Germany discussed efforts to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the White House said on Sunday, which could allow sanctioned Iranian oil to return to global markets. High natural gas prices exacerbated by reduced supply from Russia is strengthening oil demand, said Ole Hansen, head of commodity strategy at Saxo Bank. “While funds continued to sell crude oil in anticipation of an economic slowdown, the refined product market was sending another signal with refinery margins on the rise again, partly due to surging gas prices making refined alternatives, such as diesel, look cheap,” Supply worldwide remains relatively tight, with the operator of a pipeline supplying about one per cent of global oil via Russia saying it will reduce output again because of damaged equipment.
Oil Spikes After Saudi Prince Hints At Shift In OPEC+ Strategy -- For almost two months we have been highlighting the dramatic (and growing) disconnect between physical and paper (futures) markets in the oil sector. It appears that Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman has finally recognized this as an issue. The implicit leader of OPEC said “extreme” volatility and lack of liquidity in the futures market are disconnecting prices from fundamentals and may force OPEC+ to act. “The paper and physical markets have become increasingly more disconnected,” he said in response to written questions from Bloomberg News. While futures prices are tumbling, in the physical realm, inventories of energy and metals continue to fall from already uncomfortably low levels as demand remains above supply in all cyclical commodities, except iron ore. Timespreads, the single most accurate measure of underlying fundamentals, trade at unprecedented levels of backwardation, irrespective of the price sell-off. Prince Abdulaziz said futures prices don’t reflect the underlying fundamentals of supply and demand, which may require the group to tighten production when it meets next month to consider output targets. “Witnessing this recent harmful volatility disturb the basic functions of the market and undermine the stability of oil markets will only strengthen our resolve,” he said. These headlines sent the front-month WTI future rebounding from the 'Iran deal imminent' plunge...As we noted previously, Goldman was all over this disconnect and has been buying every barrel of oil it can find..."this latest commodity sell-off is completely delinked from physical fundamentals and driven by financial liquidation."In a response to questions from Bloomberg, Prince Abdulaziz responded in writing: In OPEC+ we have experienced a much more challenging environment in the past and we have emerged stronger and more cohesive than ever. OPEC+ has the commitment, the flexibility, and the means within the existing mechanisms of the Declaration of Cooperation to deal with such challenges and provide guidance including cutting production at any time and in different forms as has been clearly and repeatedly demonstrated in 2020 and 2021.Soon we will start working on a new agreement beyond 2022 which will build on our previous experiences, achievements, and successes. We are determined to make the new agreement more effective than before. Witnessing this recent harmful volatility disturb the basic functions of the market and undermine the stability of oil markets will only strengthen our resolve.
Oil Pares Losses After Warning from Saudi Oil Minister - Oil clung to $90 at the conclusion of a volatile session after Saudi Oil Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman warned the disconnect between the futures market and supply fundamentals may force OPEC and its allies to act. West Texas Intermediate pared more than $4 of losses intraday to settle above $90 a barrel, still finishing cents below the previous session. The Saudi oil chief warned that “extreme” volatility and lack of liquidity in the futures market are moving prices in ways that don’t conform to fundamental supply-and-demand factors. The divergence may prompt the OPEC+ alliance to act, Bloomberg News reported. So far this month, prices have swung within a range of about $13. Prince Abdulaziz represents the largest oil producer in OPEC+ and is arguably the most important player in the 23-nation alliance. He said futures prices don’t reflect the underlying fundamentals of supply and demand, which may require the group to tighten production when it meets next month to consider output targets. “The Saudis just reminded oil markets that they still run the show,” said Ed Moya, senior market analyst at Oanda. “OPEC+ is not happy with how oil market fundamentals are nowhere being reflected with current prices. It seems energy traders should prepare for enhanced volatility going forward and that the Saudis may look to do whatever it takes to keep prices supported here.” Prices fell earlier in the session after US President Joe Biden spoke with leaders from France, Germany and the UK about reviving a nuclear deal with Iran, a step that probably would allow more crude shipments by the OPEC nation. After surging in the first five months of the year, crude’s rally has been thrown into reverse, with losses deepening in the summer trading months. The selloff, which has been intensified by below-average trading volumes, may alleviate some of the inflationary pressures coursing through the global economy that have spurred central banks, including the US Federal Reserve, to hike rates. WTI for September delivery, which expires Monday, fell 54 cents to settle at $90.23 a barrel in New York. The more-active October settled little changed at $90.36 a barrel. Brent for October settlement dropped 24 cents to settle at $96.48 a barrel. Additionally, China was said to be planning a series of special loans to ramp up support for its beleaguered property market, the latest sign of the world’s largest crude importer moving to shore up its economy. The apparent need for such stimulus has exacerbated fears of a global slowdown.
Oil Rallies After Saudi Arabia Signals Output Cut in September -- New York Mercantile Exchange oil futures rallied in early trade Tuesday, sending the new front-month West Texas Intermediate contract above $92 barrel (bbl) following remarks from Saudi Arabian oil minister Prince Abdelaziz Bin Salman hinting at a possible shift in OPEC+ production policy as a response to the recent fall in oil prices, citing a growing disconnect between what the prince called a volatile and illiquid futures market and underlying fundamentals. OPEC+ may be forced to agree to a cut in crude production at its Sept. 5 meeting to realign the paper market with underlying fundamentals, according to Bin Salman. In a written response to Bloomberg News, the oil minister said, "The paper market fell into vicious circle ... amplified by the flow of unsubstantiated stories about demand destruction, recurring news about the return of large volumes of supply, and uncertainty and ambiguity about the potential impacts of price caps, embargoes, and sanctions." Brent futures, the international price benchmark for crude oil, fell more than 20% since early June when it traded around $125 bbl, dragged lower by real-time data showing demand contraction in three major global economies -- China, European Union, and the United States. In August, European manufacturing contracted for a second consecutive month according to overnight data released from the Eurozone, with business activity stuck in a downturn midway through the third quarter. China's economy suffered a shock slowdown this summer amid its zero-COVID policy that has led to ongoing disruptions to business activity. These bearish factors are likely to linger if not accelerate heading into the fourth quarter. Bin Salman called the oil market's logic misplaced, suggesting limited spare capacity from OPEC+ producers should be the guide for the market. "The markets are ignoring OPEC+'s limited spare capacity and the risk of severe disruptions. Soon we will start working on a new agreement beyond 2022 which will build on our previous experiences, achievements, and successes. Witnessing this recent harmful volatility disturb the basic functions of the market and undermine the stability of oil markets will only strengthen our resolve," stated the oil minister. Further supporting the oil complex early Tuesday is dimming optimism over multinational nuclear talks with Iran, with U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price indicating reaching an agreement with Tehran is "highly uncertain" adding that "gaps remain." Should the agreement materialize, it could lift sanctions on at least 1 million barrels per day (bpd) in crude oil exports from Iran, according to several estimates. Ambiguity remains, however, over how much oil Iran could bring to market in the short-term, with some analysts suggesting tapping into offshore oil storage could at least provide Europe with a cushion as they face uncertainty over energy supplies this winter. Near 7:30 a.m. EDT, WTI October futures added $1.39 to trade near $91.75 bbl, and Brent rallied to $97.74 bbl, up $1.26. NYMEX September RBOB futures gained 1.54 cents to $2.8966 gallon, while the September ULSD contract added 2.11 cents to near $3.7973 gallon.
Oil Jumps; OPEC Cuts-Scare Fills Void of Iran Deal in the Works -- Crude prices jumped almost 4% Tuesday as the bulls played up for a second day remarks by Saudi Arabia's Energy Minister Abdulaziz bin Salman that the kingdom could cut production "anytime" at the OPEC+ oil producing coalition that it controlled. Abdulaziz had been responding to written questions put forth by Bloomberg when he said that, and the timing was convenient enough to snuff out a selloff that had been choking longs in the market since the start of the week. Iran, meanwhile, dropped another bomb -- metaphorically -- on the market when it gave up a key condition barring the inspection of its sites that it had previously insisted on during negotiations aimed at reinstating its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. The agreement from seven years ago is critical to ending U.S. sanctions on Iranian oil exports, to pave the way for Tehran's legitimate return to the oil market. Previously, Iran had demanded that as a condition of re-entering the nuclear deal. Effectively what that meant is that Iran had less to hide from the IAEA amid accusations that the Islamic Republic had amassed enough capacity, including uranium enrichment, at those sites to build an atomic bomb. For the record, Tehran has maintained that its nuclear program was for civil uses like power generation and not for making weapons. Saudi Arabia, Israel and other arch rivals of the Islamic Republic, of course, do not believe that story. There's another reason why the Saudis do not want the nuclear deal reinstated for Iran: The potential of an oil glut that could cause within OPEC+. Industry sources estimate that Iran could bring an additional one million barrels per day or more into the market. Some say that's a drop in the bucket for the output OPEC+ has already lost from Western sanctions on Russian oil exports triggered by the Ukraine war. But with a likely U.S. recession that could spill over into Europe, the additional barrels from Iran might end up as oversupply, especially if oil imports from top buyer China continue to suffer as they had over the past month. Still, the narrative of a nuclear deal reinstatement for Iran was overpowered by the threat the Saudis could muscle in on OPEC+, forcing it to slash production to mitigate the barrels Tehran would bring. "A weakening U.S. economy should be bad news for oil, but today’s soft economic readings suggest that OPEC+ will easily be able to justify production cuts soon," said Ed Moya, analyst at online trading platform OANDA. West Texas Intermediate, the benchmark for U.S. crude, settled up $3.38, or 3.7%, at 93.74 a barrel. WTI fell to as low as $86.60 on Monday. WTI remains down almost 6% since the start of August, extending the back-to-back loss of more than 7% in July and June. Brent, the London-traded global benchmark for crude, settled up $3.53, or about 3.7%, at $100.23. Brent is down more than 8% since the start of August, after a 6.5% drop in July and slide of more than 4% in June.
OPEC Deepens Support for Saudi Call to Consider Action - OPEC’s united front on possible action grew stronger, as more nations endorsed Saudi Arabia’s view that supply curbs may be needed to stabilize world oil markets. Within 48 hours of comments from Saudi Arabian Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman that OPEC might have to curtail production, fellow members Iraq, Algeria, Kuwait, Equatorial Guinea and Venezuela released statements expressing their support. Further endorsements came on Thursday from Libya and Congo. Oil markets are suffering a “disconnect” as international futures contracts -- which have tumbled in recent months -- fail to accurately reflect the fundamentals of supply and demand, Prince Abdulaziz said in an interview on Monday. The result has been “extreme” volatility in prices, he added. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its partners are prepared to reduce output in order to bring the two sides of the market back into equilibrium, the prince said. Messages of support have appeared from Baghdad to Caracas. Crude traders were surprised by the pivot from the Saudis, which have been under pressure from the US to help tame gasoline prices by opening the taps. President Joe Biden had been hopeful of action following a visit to the kingdom last month, but Riyadh and its OPEC+ partners responded with a token hike of just 100,000 barrels a day. OPEC+ is also having to contend with the prospect of renewed exports from member nation Iran, which is edging closer to resurrecting an international nuclear accord that could remove US sanctions on its oil trade. At the same time, EU measures are set to squeeze supplies from OPEC+ member Russia in protest over its invasion of Ukraine. Clarity should come on Sept. 5, when the 23-nation OPEC+ alliance is due to hold its next meeting.
WTI Holds Gains After 2nd Large Weekly Draw In A Row - Oil prices ended higher on the day, despite another Iran-nuke-deal headline (supply) and ugly economic data (demand) as OPEC+ sources confirmed the cartel's willingness to shift to production cuts in the case of an Iran deal in order to recouple physical and futures markets.“Oil continues to march higher today as the market digests comments regarding potential cuts from OPEC+,” .“Market observers will also be closely watching US inventory reports to see if the recent strength in gasoline demand has held up.”Adding further support to prices, Kazakh oil exports may be disrupted for months due to damaged moorings. API:
- Crude -5.632mm (-3.2mm exp)
- Cushing +679k
- Gasoline +268k
- Distillates +1.05mm
After the prior week's large crude draw, analysts expected another sizable draw last week and according to API's report, they are right with a larger than expected 5.632mm barrel draw. Cushing stocks rose and product inventories built... WTI was hovering around $93.50 ahead of the API data and limped modestly lower after the print... In the US, gasoline prices are on their longest run of declines since 2015, potentially easing some of the inflationary pressures on the country’s economy. However, that slide may soon come to an end as wholesale gasoline and crude prices have decoupled higher...
Oil prices fall as fears of imminent OPEC+ output cut recede - Oil prices fell on Wednesday, taking a breather from a nearly 4% surge the previous day on receding fears of an imminent output cut by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies, a group known as OPEC+. Global benchmark Brent crude futures fell 21 cents, or 0.2%, to $100.01 a barrel by 0114 GMT, after rising 3.9% on Tuesday. The U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures contract was down 10 cents, or 0.1%, at $93.64 a barrel, having jumped 3.7% the previous day.Both contracts soared on Tuesday after de facto OPEC leader Saudi Arabia flagged the possibility of introducing cuts to balance a market it described as "schizophrenic", with the paper and physical markets becoming increasingly disconnected.But potential OPEC+ production cuts may not be imminent and are likely to coincide with the return of Iran to oil markets should that country clinch a nuclear deal with the West, nine OPEC sources told Reuters on Tuesday.A senior U.S. official told Reuters on Monday that Iran had dropped some of its main demands on resurrecting a deal."Tuesday's rally was overdone as many investors knew it would take several months for Iranian oil to flow into the international market even if an agreement to revive Tehran's 2015 nuclear deal was made, meaning OPEC+ would not trim output so quickly," "Still, there is not much room for the market's downside due to robust heating fuel demand for the winter," he said, citing that the recent rally in the U.S. heating oil market and surging natural gas prices boosted expectations for stronger heating oil demand and tighter crude supply. U.S. gas prices shot above $10 for the first time in about 14 years due to a surge in prices in Europe, where tight supplies persist. Underlining tight supply, U.S. crude stockpiles fell by about 5.6 million barrels for the week ended Aug. 19., according to market sources citing American Petroleum Institute figures on Tuesday, against analysts' estimate of a drop by 900,000 barrels in a Reuters poll. But gasoline inventories rose by about 268,000 barrels, while distillate stocks increased by about 1.1 million barrels.
Brent oil climbs above $100 a barrel amid talk about OPEC output cuts -(Reuters) -Benchmark Brent oil climbed above $100 a barrel on Wednesday after Saudi Arabia suggested this week that OPEC could consider cutting output in response to poor liquidity in the crude futures market and fears about a global economic downturn. Brent for October settlement reached a three-week high, trading up $1.30, or 1.3%, at $101.52 a barrel by 0850 GMT. U.S. crude was up $1.18, or 1.3%, at $94.92 a barrel. Contracts for both crudes soared on Tuesday after Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman flagged the possibility of cutting production amid poor futures market liquidity and macro-economic fears. OPEC sources later told Reuters any cuts by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, known as OPEC+, were likely to coincide with a return of Iranian the market should Tehran secure a nuclear deal with world powers. A U.S. official said on Monday that Iran had dropped some of its main demands on resurrecting a deal. OPEC+ is already producing 2.9 million barrels per day less than its target, sources said, complicating any decision on cuts or how to calculate the baseline for an output reduction. "The oil price and supply outlook suggest that an OPEC+ cut is not currently warranted," PVM analyst Stephen Brennock said, outlining possible threats to supply underpinning the market. "Global oil supply could take a hit as peak U.S. hurricane season approaches," he said. "Elsewhere, future supply outages in Libya cannot be discounted while Nigeria's oil fortunes show little sign of improving." U.S. crude stockpiles fell by about 5.6 million barrels for the week ended Aug. 19, according to market sources citing American Petroleum Institute figures. Analysts had estimated a drop by 900,000 barrels in a Reuters poll. Market participants will be watching Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell's speech at the Jackson Hole central bank symposium on Friday. He is expected to stress the Fed's focus on controlling inflation.
WTI Slides Despite US Crude Production Cut, Gasoline Demand Tumbles - Oil prices have extended gains this morning, after last night's API-reported crude draw and yesterday's OPEC+ headlines.“The stakes are very high and will test European resolve for inflicting pain on Russia at the cost of their economy,” “Buyers of Russian crude are playing the game to get the cheapest crude without drawing the ire of the US and Europe.”The potential revival of a nuclear deal with Iran, which could lead to a surge in exports from the OPEC producer, had weighed on the market recently. A senior US House Republican demanded that Congress be given a chance to review any agreement as Tehran and Western powers inch toward an accord."A nuclear deal with Iran would likely mean only modest increases to global supply — under 200,000 barrels — over the next 12 months. But demand may fall sharply if emerging markets, especially China, face extended economic pressure."Will the official data confirm API's bullish view. DOE:
- Crude -3.28mm (-3.2mm exp)
- Cushing +426k
- Gasoline -27k
- Distillates -662k
The official data confirmed API's crude draw - slightly bigger than expected - but it also showed draws in products (API showed builds). Stocks at the Cushing hub rose for the 8th straight week... Last week saw the biggest ever weekly draw from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, at 8.1 million barrels. Adding that to the headline draw in commercial crude stockpiles, total nationwide crude inventories (including commercial stockpiles and oil held in the SPR) fell by 11.4 million barrels in the week to August 19. That’s the biggest drop in total nationwide crude stockpiles since April. US Crude Production slipped lower for the 2nd straight week... Bloomberg reports that gasoline demand on a weekly basis dropped off sharply, continuing a streak of higher-than-usual volatility. The four-week demand rolling basis fell by 2.24% as well to 8.86m b/d, barely above the same time in 2020.
WTI Near $95 as Inventories Fall, US Output Hits 12M Bpd -- West Texas Intermediate and ULSD futures and Brent crude settled Wednesday's session with gains between 1.5% and 4.5%. The gains came amid a one-two punch of a sharp drop in U.S. commercial crude oil inventories along with a record surge in fuel exports from the U.S. Gulf Coast while soaring natural gas and power prices across the European Union fueled by the anticipated shutdown of the key pipeline from Russia lent further support to the complex. The Energy Information Administration inventory report released mid-morning Wednesday was mixed-to-bearish for the oil complex, showing commercial crude-oil inventories declined by a larger-than-expected 3.3 million barrels (bbl) for the third week of August, not due to strong demand domestically but rather an increased pull on U.S. barrels from European and Asian buyers ahead of the winter months. Details of the report revealed that over past two weeks U.S. oil exports climbed to 4.5 million barrels per day (bpd), compared with an average 3 million bpd a year ago. On a four-week average basis, U.S. exports were around 1 million bpd more compared with the same period last year. Industry analysts expect shipments will average above 4 million bpd over the next few months and into next year, which should continue to support the recovery of the U.S. oil patch. Surprisingly, domestic operators scaled back production by 100,000 bpd last week to 12 million bpd, which is still 1.1 million below the pre-pandemic high of early March 2020. In the gasoline complex, however, EIA's data showed a sharp decline in gasoline demand of 914,000 bpd for an average pace of consumption at 8.434 million bpd, bringing the four-week average to just 8.9 million bpd -- a full 7% below last year's level. The incoming data poured some cold water on hopes that falling prices at the gas pump might incentivize some Americans to take more road trips before summer ends. The American Automobile Association found that almost two-thirds of U.S. adults have changed their driving habits or lifestyle since March, with the top two changes used to offset high gas prices are driving less and combining errands. The bearish development left gasoline inventories little changed from the previous week at 215.6 million bbl compared with analyst expectations for inventories to have decreased by 1.1 million bbl. . At settlement, WTI October futures added $1.15 to $94.89 per bbl, and October Brent rallied above $101 per bbl, up $1 per bbl from Tuesday's close. NYMEX September RBOB futures declined 13.23 cents to $2.8007 per gallon, while the September ULSD contract advanced 17.13 cents for a $4.0132-per-gallon settlement..
Oil prices ease on possible Iran oil exports, rising interest rates -- Oil prices eased on Thursday in volatile trade as investors braced for the possible return of sanctioned Iranian oil exports to the market and on worries that rising U.S. interest rates would weaken fuel demand. The prospect that the OPEC+ producer group could curb oil supplies limited the decline in oil prices. Brent crude fell 4 cents to $101.18 a barrel by 11:41 p.m. EDT 1541 GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude fell 33 cents, or 0.4%, to $94.56 a barrel. Talks between the European Union, the United States and Iran UPDATE 4-Iran reviews U.S. response to EU nuclear text for revival of 2015 pact - Reuters to revive the 2015 nuclear deal are continuing, with Iran saying it had received a response from the United States to the EU's "final" text to resurrect the agreement. Investors also were waiting for scheduled remarks on Friday by U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, who is expected to Kansas City Fed's Economic Policy Symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. "The (market) is a little bit concerned about what Jerome Powell is going to say tomorrow about rising interest rates," Powell is expected to summarize where the Fed stands in its fight to control inflation, including information about its rate-path hike in the long and short-term. Limiting the downside for oil prices were comments on Monday by Saudi Energy Minister https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/saudi-says-opec-has-options-confront-market-challenges-including-cutting-output-2022-08-22 Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman that helped push prices to three-week highs, when he flagged the possibility that OPEC+ could cut production. Falling U.S. crude and product stockpiles also helped support prices. Oil inventories fell by 3.3 million barrels in the week to Aug. 19 to 421.7 million barrels, steeper than analysts' expectations in a Reuters poll for a 933,000-barrel drop. The bullish impact was countered by a drawdown in gasoline inventories that was less than expected, reflecting weak demand. U.S. gasoline stocks fell by 27,000 barrels in the week to 215.6 million barrels. Analysts had forecast a 1.5 million-barrel drop.
Oil Spikes After Local Media Reports 'No Iran Nuclear Deal' - Iran's Foreign Ministry has announced that it has received the White House response to its earlier in the week submission of a finalized nuclear deal text. Al-Arabiya and other regional outlets are reporting that the US has rejected the additional conditions put in place by Iran, meaning there's no deal. "It has also said Iran should not be allowed to enrich uranium beyond purity level of 4%, Al-Arabiya reports," according to early unconfirmed reports. "The US has rejected all the additional conditions requested by Iran, and urged Iran to lift any restrictions on international inspections," regional source Iran International writes. Oil prices are spiking on the breaking news...The US State Department earlier announced that "Our review of Iran's comments on the EU's proposed final text has now concluded. We have responded to the EU today. We have conveyed our feedback privately to the EU. But we’re not going to detail that feedback today."Tehran has further announced it is reviewing the US response and plans to issue formal notification to the European Union once the review is complete. As we predicted, it does not appear any final deal is on the horizon this week (or likely ever), given the trajectory of things, including - it should be mentioned - rare US airstrikes on "Iranian-backed" groups in Syria on Tuesday.As it stands, the longer the can gets kicked down the road, and more and more conditions are made firm and out in the open - most especially the disagreement over international inspections, which Iran has demanded be dropped - the more likely there will continue to be no deal.
Oil Ends Below $100 Again as Biden Admin to Okay an Iran Deal in U.S. Interest -- The White House says an Iran nuclear deal that’s good for the United States will be good for the Biden administration. And that was good enough to send oil tanking back to below $100 a barrel on Thursday. “If it is in our best interests, the U.S. will agree to the Iran deal,” White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre told a media conference Thursday as the back-and-forth effort to revive Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with global powers went forth again, threatening to deliver an additional one million barrels per day of crude into the market should Tehran win reprieve from U.S. sanctions. The White House’s latest response to the negotiations around Iran forced Brent crude to settle down $1.88, or 1.9%, at $99.34 per barrel as the London-traded global benchmark for oil gave up its tenuous hold in the $100 territory it had occupied for just two days. Prior to Thursday’s slide, Brent reached as high as $102.45 over the past week, rallying in five sessions out of six, after hitting a six-month low of 91.71 on Aug. 16. New York-traded West Texas Intermediate, the benchmark for U.S. crude, settled down $2.31, or 2.4%, at $92.52 per barrel. Like Brent, WTI had risen in five of the past six sessions, climbing from a six-and-a-half month low of $85.73 on Aug. 16 to $95.73 earlier on Thursday. “Granted that there’s been a lot of back-and-forth on Iran over the 20 months of this administration and even now, there’s no guarantee that the deal will be restored,” said John Kilduff, founding partner at New York energy hedge fund Again Capital. “But the latest noises on this that have emerged from both the White House and Tehran have been positive, and that’s a negative for oil prices if it means having what could be a ballpark figure of some million additional barrels per day landing on the market.” Prior to the White House’s comment on Thursday, the State Department said the United States has conveyed its official response to the European Union’s proposal to salvage the seven-year-old agreement. Iran also confirmed that it had received the U.S. response. "The careful study of the views of the American side has started and Iran will share its comments with the coordinator upon completion of the review," said a spokesman for Iranian Foreign Minister Nasser Kanaani. The nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, is critical to ending U.S. sanctions on Iranian oil exports and allowing Tehran's legitimate return to the export market for oil. Talks between Iran and global powers, led by the EU, have dragged on for 20 months since President Joe Biden entered office. Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump was the one who canceled the 2015 agreement in 2018, putting sanctions on Iran. For the record, Tehran has maintained that its nuclear program was for civil uses like power generation and not for making weapons. Saudi Arabia, Israel and other arch rivals of the Islamic Republic, of course, do not buy that story.
Oil prices dip after US Fed chair Powell warns of economic pain ahead (Reuters) -Oil prices edged lower in see-saw trading on Friday, as investors digested warnings from the head of the U.S. Federal Reserve that there is no quick cure for inflation. The U.S. economy will need tight monetary policy "for some time" before inflation is under control, which means slower growth, a weaker job market and "some pain" for households and businesses, U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said. Still, data has shown some small decline in inflation, with the Fed's closely watched personal consumption expenditures price index falling in July to 6.3% on an annual basis, from 6.8% in June. Inflation expectations based on the University of Michigan's measures also eased in July. But "a single month's improvement falls far short of what the Committee will need to see before we are confident that inflation is moving down," Powell said, referring to the central bank's policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee. "The market is concerned that Powell sounded a bit more hawkish when it came to inflation," Brent crude futures fell 1 cent to $99.33 a barrel by 1:13 p.m. EDT (1713 GMT). U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures fell 33 cents to $92.19 a barrel. Both contracts rose and fell by $1 throughout the session. Overall, Brent was on track for a weekly gain of around 2.6%, while WTI was set to rise 1.5%. Some European Central Bank policymakers want to discuss a 75 basis point interest rate hike at a Sept. 8 policy meeting, even if recession risks loom, as the inflation outlook is deteriorating, five sources with direct knowledge of the process told Reuters. Price losses were limited as OPEC's de facto leader Saudi Arabia on Monday flagged the possibility of production cuts to offset the return of Iranian barrels to oil markets should Tehran clinch a nuclear deal with the West. On Friday, the United Arab Emirates became the latest OPEC+ member to state it is aligned with Saudi Arabia's thinking on crude markets, a source with knowledge of the matter told Reuters. "The impression remains that Saudi Arabia is not willing to tolerate any price slide below $90. Speculators could view this as an invitation to bet on further price rises without the need to fear any more pronounced price declines," Commerzbank said in a note. In U.S. supply, the oil drilling rig count, an indication of future production, rose by 4 to 605 in the week to Aug. 26, Baker Hughes Co said on Friday.
Oil prices rise on signals OPEC might cut output **Oil prices ended higher on Friday, boosted by signals from Saudi Arabia that OPEC could cut output, but trading was volatile as investors digested and ultimately shrugged off warnings from the head of the U.S. Federal Reserve about economic pain ahead. Brent crude futures rose $1.65 to settle at $100.99 a barrel. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures rose 54 cents to settle at $93.06 a barrel. Both contracts rose and fell by $1 throughout the session. Overall, Brent gained 4.4% for the week, while WTI was set to rise 2.5%. The United Arab Emirates became the latest OPEC+ member to state it is aligned with Saudi Arabia's thinking on crude markets, a source with knowledge of the matter told Reuters. On Monday, Saudi Arabia flagged the possibility of production cuts to offset the return of Iranian barrels to oil markets should Tehran clinch a nuclear deal with the West. "The impression remains that Saudi Arabia is not willing to tolerate any price slide below $90. Speculators could view this as an invitation to bet on further price rises without the need to fear any more pronounced price declines," Commerzbank said in a note. Oil prices briefly fell after Fed Chair Jerome Powell said tight monetary policy may be in store "for some time" to fight inflation, meaning slower growth, a weaker job market and "some pain" for households and businesses. Data has shown some small decline in inflation, with the Fed's personal consumption expenditures price index falling in July to 6.3% on an annual basis, from 6.8% in June. Inflation expectations based on the University of Michigan's measures also eased in July. But "a single month's improvement falls far short" of what the Fed needs to see, Powell said. "The market is concerned that Powell sounded a bit more hawkish when it came to inflation," said Phil Flynn, an analyst at Price Futures group in Chicago. Meanwhile, some European Central Bank policymakers want to discuss a 75 basis point interest rate hike at a Sept. 8 policy meeting, even if recession risks loom, as the inflation outlook is deteriorating, five sources with direct knowledge of the process told Reuters. In U.S. supply, the oil drilling rig count, an indication of future production, rose by 4 to 605 in the week to Aug. 26, Baker Hughes Co said on Friday. Money managers raised their net long U.S. crude futures and options positions in the week to Aug. 23 by 24,215 contracts to 179,039, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said on Friday.
Oil Posts Weekly Gain as Saudi Warning Lingers Over Market -- Oil rose this week with Saudi Arabia’s warning that supply cuts may be warranted overshadowing multiple bearish developments. West Texas Intermediate futures settled at $93.06 a barrel on Friday for a 2.5% weekly gain. Prices have been buoyed since the Saudi oil minister said the OPEC+ alliance may limit production to stabilize a volatile market. Meanwhile, the US central bank probably will continue raising interest rates to combat inflation, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell signaled. Higher rates are typically seen as damaging to energy demand. “Powell reminded Wall Street that restrictive policy is required but we are not there yet, so recession fears and a deteriorating crude demand outlook is not warranted yet,” said Ed Moya, senior market analyst at Oanda. Oil has lost almost a quarter of its value since June on escalating concerns over a global economic slowdown, but seems to have found a floor around $90 a barrel this month. The prospect of a revived nuclear deal with Iran, which could lead to a surge in crude exports, has added to bearish sentiment recently. With inflation still rampant, Fed officials revived concerns Friday that they would take continue to move aggressively to slow the economy. “Restoring price stability will likely require maintaining a restrictive policy stance for some time,” Powell said in remarks prepared for a policy forum in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. “The historical record cautions strongly against prematurely loosening policy.”
Yemen’s HSA pledges $1.2m to UN drive to avert tanker oil spill – Middle East Monitor --Yemen's HSA Group, on Thursday, became the first private entity to pledge funds for a United Nations operation to avoid an oil spill from a tanker stranded off the coast of Yemen, as the UN urgently tries to secure an initial requirement of $80 million, Reuters reports. The international organisation, which has so far raised over $60 million, has warned that the "Safer", stranded since 2015 off a Red Sea oil terminal, could spill four times as much oil as the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster near Alaska. HSA, Yemen's largest private company, announced a $1.2 million donation towards initially offloading the tanker, which holds 1.1 million barrels. "Given that there remains a large funding shortfall, and time is running out, HSA believes that the private sector must step forward," Nabil Hayel Saeed Anam, Managing Director of HSA's Yemen operations, said in a statement. The UN has raised $64 million, including the HSA pledge, and more than $142,000 through a public crowd-funding drive initiated in June and which will be re-launched later this month, a UN spokesperson told Reuters in response to a query. The "Safer" threatens an environmental disaster for Yemen, which is already grappling with a dire humanitarian crisis due to a seven-year war, and across the Red Sea. The UN says the cost of a clean-up alone would be $20 billion.
U.S. strikes back at Iran-backed groups in Syria as skirmishes intensify - The U.S. military launched additional retaliatory strikes on Iran-backed forces in Syria on Thursday, in the latest back-and-forth with militants that American officials said were being directed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. In the latest skirmish, the militants planned to launch additional rockets on U.S. personnel, Defense Department officials said, but U.S. forces prevented the attack by striking the militants with AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, AC-130 gunships and M777 artillery. In total, the strikes this week killed four enemy fighters and destroyed seven enemy rocket launchers, according to a release from U.S. Central Command. Iran-affiliated forces have recently stepped up low-level attacks on U.S. forces in Syria, including one incident on Aug. 15 when they launched rockets at the Green Village base near the Iraqi border. The Biden administration responded to that attack with precision airstrikes in Deir ez-Zor, Syria, on Tuesday that targeted infrastructure facilities used by groups affiliated with the IRGC. In retaliation, the militants launched rocket attacks on two separate sites in northeastern Syria that wounded three U.S. service members on Wednesday. At roughly 7:30 p.m. local time, rockets landed inside the perimeter of Mission Support Site Conoco, and a further barrage later landed in the vicinity of Mission Support Site Green Village, the military said. One U.S. service member in Conoco was treated for a minor injury and returned to duty, while two others are under evaluation for minor injuries. U.S. forces initially responded to the Wednesday strikes using attack helicopters, according to Central Command. The response destroyed three vehicles and equipment used to launch some of the rockets. Congress has not authorized the use of military force in Syria, but U.S. troops have been in the country for several years and have often been targeted by Iran-backed militias. Those attacks have prompted counter-fire from the U.S. that lawmakers believe is consistent with President Joe Biden’s Article II constitutional authorities and doesn’t require explicit authorization. Top Democrats have indicated so far that they support the latest effort. House Armed Services Chair Adam Smith (D-Wash.) called it a “self-defense operation” that shows the U.S. can respond swiftly to terrorism threats around the world. And Speaker Nancy Pelosi lauded Biden for what she said was “a necessary, proportionate measure to defend U.S. personnel.”
Putin allows inspectors to visit Russia-held nuclear plant - Russian President Vladimir Putin has agreed for a team of independent inspectors to travel to the Moscow-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant via Ukraine, the French presidency said on Friday. The apparent resolution of a dispute over whether inspectors travel to the plant via Ukraine or Russia came as a senior US defence official said Ukraine's forces had brought the Russian advance to a halt. According to French President Emmanuel Macron's office, Putin had "reconsidered the demand" that the International Atomic Energy Agency travel through Russia to the site, after the Russian leader himself warned fighting there could bring about a "catastrophe". It specified that Putin had dropped his demand that the IAEA team travel to the site via Russia, saying it could arrive via Ukraine. The UN nuclear watchdog's chief, Rafael Grossi, "welcomed recent statements indicating that both Ukraine and Russia supported the IAEA's aim to send a mission to" the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. The agency was "in active consultations with all parties" towards sending one as soon as possible, Grossi said.. Meanwhile, UN chief Antonio Guterres urged Moscow's forces occupying the Zaporizhzhia plant in south Ukraine not to disconnect the facility from the grid and potentially cut supplies to millions of Ukrainians. A flare-up in fighting around the Russian-controlled nuclear power station -- with both sides blaming each other for attacks -- has raised the spectre of a disaster worse than in Chernobyl. The Kremlin said earlier that Putin and Macron agreed that the IAEA should carry out inspections "as soon as possible" to "assess the real situation on the ground". Putin also "stressed that the systematic shelling by the Ukrainian military of the territory of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant creates the danger of a large-scale catastrophe", the Kremlin added. The warning came just a day after Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Guterres, meeting in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, sounded the alarm over the intensified fighting, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged the United Nations to secure the site. The Turkish leader said: "We are worried. We do not want another Chernobyl," referring to the 1986 nuclear disaster, while Guterres cautioned that any damage to the plant would be akin to "suicide".
The assassination of Daria Dugina and the US-NATO war in Ukraine - On Saturday, Daria Dugina, daughter of Russian nationalist public intellectual Aleksandr Dugin, was assassinated by a car bomb that blew up her Toyota Land Cruiser on a highway west of Moscow, Russia. Russian news media stated that people close to Dugin believed that he had been the intended target of the bombing that killed his daughter. The BBC reported that he had planned to travel in the same car as his daughter and changed vehicles only at the last minute. Within hours of the attack, the US media hastened to deny the obvious conclusion that this assassination was connected to the ongoing war between the United States and Russia in Ukraine. The New York Times assured its readers that “there was no evidence that the attack was connected to the war in Ukraine.” What an absurd lie! The assassination carries the stench of the Ukrainian secret police and their CIA handlers. Both the evidence of history and the logic of contemporary developments lead to the inescapable conclusion that the assassination of Dugina was a political crime, bearing the fingerprints of Washington, calculated to provoke a wider war. The involvement of Washington in such a scenario is not only plausible; it is the political default hypothesis, that which must be assumed to be true unless otherwise proven false. The entire history of US imperialism is one of assassinations and wars instigated by the US intelligence agencies. Four days before the murder, the Times was enthusiastically describing the methods of assassination and car bombing being used by the Ukrainian secret forces. In an article headlined, “Behind Enemy Lines, Ukrainians Tell Russians ‘You Are Never Safe’,” the paper reported how Ukrainians would infiltrate Russian held territory to plant explosives and “assassinate officials.” The Times described in detail how a right-wing Ukrainian operative planted a car bomb “wrapped in tape with the sticky side facing outward, into a wheel well.” On another occasion, they “placed a bomb under the driver’s seat, rigged to explode when the engine started.” Such assassinations were favored by Washington, and the bombings, the Times reported, were designed to “signal to Western donors that Ukraine is successfully rallying local resources in the war.” Ukraine would do nothing that might jeopardize American support. The conflict in Ukraine is a war run by the CIA and funded by the Pentagon. The question raised by the Moscow car bombing of Daria Dugina is: Precisely what roe did Washington play in this event?
Peru asks Indonesia to investigate death of Harvard trans student - The death of a Harvard transgender student in Indonesian custody has caused uproar in his native Peru and the United States, with authorities in Lima pressing for an investigation into the circumstances of his detention and death after the public backlash.Rodrigo Ventosilla, a 32-year-old public administration graduate student, died on Aug. 11, five days after he was detained on the resort island of Bali for alleged possession of marijuana, Reuters reported.Ventosilla, a transgender man who was on honeymoon with his partner, died due to “failure of bodily functions” after taking medication that had not been confiscated by authorities, Bali police told Reuters. Ventosilla’s spouse was separately detained but has been released, according to the Crimson, Harvard’s student newspaper.Local law enforcement said that the case is closed, but Ventosilla’s family said in a statement shared by activists that he was a victim of “police violence,” and “racial discrimination and transphobia.” They also claim that he was denied access to legal counsel while in detention and that he had been carrying prescribed mental health medication. Harvard’s Kennedy School, where Ventosilla was a student, urged an “immediate and thorough investigation” into “very serious questions that deserve clear and accurate answers.”Balinese police did not immediately return requests for comment on Saturday. Indonesia — the world’s largest Muslim-majority country — has a long history of gender diversity, and the tourism-dependent island of Bali is relatively queer-friendly, said Andreas Harsono, a Jakarta-based researcher at Human Rights Watch. But LGBTQ citizens are accorded limited rights and same-sex partnerships are not legally recognized. In recent years, the LGTBQ community has also been subject to a crackdown under public obscenity and pornography laws as the government courts socially conservative voters.
The Bank of England Increasing Interest Rates to 4% – As Markets Expect – Could Be Enough To Bring the Whole Economy Down -The FT noted this morning that “Financial markets are betting the Bank of England will more than double interest rates by May next year.” That means rates of 4% are being pencilled in. This is another catastrophe in the making… Bank of England base rates matter. They establish the basis for all other interest rates in the UK – with mortgage rates being part of this – but many other loans also have their rates changed when this one does. So what would the impact of an increase in Bank of England base rate to 4% be on top of all the other crises that we face? I am just going to look at the resulting mortgage issues for now.The Office for National Statistics say that there are 6.8 million owner-occupied households in the UK with a mortgage; rather surprisingly a smaller number than the 8.8 million homes owned outright.Total mortgages outstanding were about £1,630 billion in March 2022 according to the Bank of England. That is £239,700 per household with a mortgage, near enough.Most people on fixed rate mortgage deals were paying between 1.5% and 1.7% before current rate rises. Interest rate rises of 1.65% have changed this. It’s very hard to find a decent mortgage deal for less than 3.5% now, and many are higher.In other words, rate rises are flowing straight through the system, with a margin for error being added in lenders’ favour.Assuming a person who has been on fixed rate comes off their deal next spring and by then Bank of England rates have risen to 4%, meaning mortgage rates are likely to be around 5.5%, and maybe more, what will that mean for their mortgage costs?Currently, assuming interest only payments on £239,700 at 1.7% (and I am rounding here) the cost will be around £4,080 a year, or £340 a month.If the deal was a rather more sensible repayment mortgage the cost would increase to £14,150 a year at 1.7% over 20 years, or £1,180 a month.Now move to 5.5% and the repayment only mortgage now costs £1,100 a month – an increase of £760 a month, or £9,120 a year.Looking at the repayment option (which wise people might have) the cost would be £1,650 a month or £19,800 a year, an increase of £470 a month.On top of energy, food and other price increases these costs are simply not affordable. For very large numbers of households this will be the moment when they admit that paying for the house they always thought to be theirs might not be possible.To put this bluntly, there is a massive risk of mortgage default if this were to happen next year: already tough times would become impossible for many households.Now let’s look at this from the bank side. If we split the difference on the cost increase noted above and assume everyone will eventually pay the average increase of £615 a month on 6.8 million mortgages, this comes to £50.2 billion of extra income for banks each year.What is the extra cost to the banks? Mortgages are refinanced by banks: they borrow money for shorter terms than they lend it. This means that their costs of providing these mortgages will rise.However, assuming there are no mortgage defaults (a very big assumption) please do not have not a shadow of a doubt that additional profit margins will be earned by banks as a result of this massive increase in mortgage rates: that’s the way the system works. And then there is another dimension to this. The biggest asset after mortgages that many banks now have is the cash that they hold on deposit with the Bank of England. In 2008 these balances amounted to around £40 billion. Now they are well over £900 billion.
