Geothermal Core revolutionizes renewable energy source…

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Geothermal Core is a game changer. Its innovative approach to harnessing the Earth's heat promises to provide a sustainable and reliable energy source for future generations…

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Source: Geothermal Core/Editing by Germán & Co

By Germán & Co, Karlstad, Sweden, June 12, 2023

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…“Iceland is far from the economic and geopolitical challenges faced by their counterparts in the Baltic Sea region. The complexity and intelligence behind the creation of our biospheres and humanity's conception are fascinating. Ecosystem diversity is endlessly fascinating, but many mysteries remain. Iceland brings together different paradigms. During summer, the "midnight sun" occurs when the solar constellation emits intense light, causing continuous daylight for twenty-four hours. Unconventional to outsiders. The bright stream of light fades in autumn and disappears in winter, leaving eternal darkness that can trouble the soul. We explored environmental biodiversity. Iceland is habitable in the Arctic. This remote rock near the North Pole has abundant geothermal energy from active volcanoes. The island’s caverns hold a force that fractures the ground and creates geysers. Hot water and steam spew high. Iceland's geothermal energy makes it self-sufficient in electricity. The delta's biodiversity supports human life in an otherwise uninhabitable environment. Iceland's small population of 400,000 people is one of the happiest societies on Earth.

Germán & Co

https://energycentral.com/c/og/fischer-vs-spassky-draw-game-no-20-reykjav%C3%ADk-1972

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In this matter, "The Florence Declaration", WORKING TOGETHER TO PROMOTE GEOTHERMAL ENERGY TOWARDS A SUSTAINABLE ENERGY FUTURE, signed in the city of Florence in Italy on September 11-12, 2017, by political leaders from 25 nations, is a significant step in addressing climate change. The declaration aims to increase geothermal power generation by 500% globally by 2030. Geothermal energy accounts for just 0.3% of global renewable energy capacity. Reducing emissions can save costs. Geothermal energy adoption is hindered by geography and finances. Geothermal power plants rely on natural hydrothermal reservoirs, limiting their potential to specific regions. Funding challenges have impeded progress in geothermal energy initiatives in the Asia-Pacific region. IRENA's report suggests transparent regulations and better capital access for exploration and drilling to create a stable environment Geothermal energy is believed to have originated during the early stages of the Earth's formation, approximately 4.5 billion years ago, which coincided with the creation of the solar system. Geothermal energy is commonly recognized as a sustainable and eco-friendly energy source due to its inherent connection with the natural processes of the Earth. The geothermal industry has undergone significant development since the establishment of the first commercial geothermal plant in Italy in 1904. Geothermal resources exist in various forms, such as dry steam, hot steam, hot water, and hot rock. Various types of geothermal plants have been developed and implemented based on the unique characteristics of each geothermal resource. Single-flash for renewable energy developers and investors. Addressing these issues can unlock geothermal energy's potential as a sustainable source and contributes to global greenhouse gas emission reduction.

Before discussing Joy's journey in the Geothermal Core, I would like to address two current aspects of the sector that I recently discussed with Matt Chester of EnergyCentral.

Dr. Jay Patel

Chairman & CEO

…”In a world full of bad news. Hasty decisions made to weather the current situation may be attributed to these challenges. The world has changed drastically, and it is difficult to imagine a return to the past. Our lives, work, and relationships have been permanently altered, and we are struggling to adapt. It is crucial to be cautious, especially when following trends. One scenario resulted from a political mistake regarding energy infrastructure… This reminds us to prioritize safety and well-being by making wise choices.

G&C: Please, Jay, share some information about yourself and your perspective on the current and future state of the industry…

JP:

How and when was Goethermal Core created?

JP:

GEOTHERMAL CORE PROJECT MAP

G&C: What can you tell us about current and future projects?

JP:

What do you think is the biggest challenge facing the industry? Low-Carbon Electricity is Expected to Cover New Power Demand in 2030 and 50? Is it possible?

JP:

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News round-up, April, 27, 2023

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Most read…

Rooftop Solar: Ain’t No Sunshine

Enphase points out rising interest rates and new net metering rules in California are casting a shadow over rooftop solar growth prospects

Higher interest rates have made rooftop solar a much harder sell in states with lower utility rates.

WSJ Jinjoo Lee, April 26, 2023

Why resuming tariffs on Chinese solar firms threatens U.S. climate goals

An increasing number of Democratic lawmakers are supporting a proposal to reverse President Biden's temporary hold on crushing taxes on specific imports of solar energy.

Analysis by Maxine Joselow with research by Vanessa Montalbano, April 27, 2023

Colombia’s President Replaces Market-Friendly Finance Minister in Cabinet Reshuffle

The changes come in the wake of the breakup of his governing coalition and prompt the peso to weaken

WSJ By Juan Forero, April 26, 2023 

The EU lacks a credible economic security strategy

The bloc needs to develop a strategy that anticipates future threats and leverages its most valuable security asset — its position as the largest economy in the world.

POLITICO EU BY TOM KEATINGE, APRIL 27, 2023 

The North Seas can be the world’s biggest power plant

Tomorrow, we will be taking another crucial step toward a green and independent Europe.

POLITICO EU BY ALEXANDER DE CROO, MARK RUTTE, XAVIER BETTEL, EMMANUEL MACRON, OLAF SCHOLZ, LEO VARADKAR, JONAS GAHR STØRE, RISHI SUNAK AND METTE FREDERIKSEN, APRIL 23, 2023 

The Climate Crisis Gives Sailing Ships a Second Wind

Cargo vessels are some of the dirtiest vehicles in existence. Can a centuries-old technology help to clean them up?

The era of sailing ships may seem like a distant memory, but it's important to remember that they were only partially replaced by diesel vessels. The Avontuur, a sailing schooner constructed in 1920 by a Dutch shipyard, is a prime example. Despite being over 90 years old, the Avontuur operated as a passenger liner on the Dutch coast in 2012. However, the United Nations issued a climate assessment that year, warning that the planet was heading towards a future of extreme weather conditions and disasters caused by intensifying heat waves, fires, and storms. We must take action and end our reliance on fossil fuels before it's too late.

Germán & Co

The New Yorker By Pagan Kennedy, April 27, 2023

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Andrés Gluski, CEO of energy and utility AES Corp

How can strategic investment achieve both economic growth and social progress?… What is the role of renewable energy and battery storage in achieving the goals of the low-carbon economy?…

The AES Corporation President Andrés Gluski, Dominican Republic Minister of Industry and Commerce Victor Bisonó, and Rolando González-Bunster, CEO of InterEnergy Group, spoke at the Latin American Cities Conferences panel on "Facilitating Sustainable Investment in Strategic Sectors" on April 12 in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

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Today's events

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Today's events 〰️

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Image: PHOTO: RICK BOWMER/ASSOCIATED PRESS/ Editing by Germán & Co 

Rooftop Solar: Ain’t No Sunshine

Enphase points out rising interest rates and new net metering rules in California are casting a shadow over rooftop solar growth prospects

Higher interest rates have made rooftop solar a much harder sell in states with lower utility rates.

WSJ Jinjoo Lee, April 26, 2023

The U.S. rooftop solar business has grown with two essential catalysts: Low interest rates, which make such installations affordable for consumers, and state-level policy that handsomely rewards households with such solar systems for selling excess solar energy back to the grid. Both of those are going in exactly the wrong direction at the moment.

Enphase ENPH -25.73% Energy, a company that manufactures micro-inverters for rooftop solar panels and energy storage systems, confirmed their direction on its earnings call late Tuesday. Its stock fell 24% in morning trading, dragging down other solar company stocks. SunPower and SolarEdge Technologies SEDG -10.43% were each down about 10% on Wednesday morning.

Cold PlungeStock price performanceSource: FactSet

SunPowerSolarEdge TechnologiesEnphase EnergyApril 20April 26-30-20-10010%

The company itself had solid high-level numbers to report for its first quarter: Total revenue was roughly flat compared with a quarter earlier, largely as Wall Street analysts expected. Net income was 46% higher than what analysts had penciled in. Revenue guidance for the second quarter, though, was weaker than their expectations, and commentary about the U.S. market was a sobering reminder of near-term challenges for the solar industry.

Enphase said its sell-through of micro inverters in the U.S. was 21% lower in the first quarter compared with the previous quarter, which was worse than the typical seasonal decline of 15%. Sell-through was particularly weak in states with lower utility rates such as Texas, Florida and Arizona, according to the company. In such states, higher interest rates have made rooftop solar a much harder sell to households compared with states in the Northeast where utility rates are higher. The recent banking turmoil has also raised financing costs and tightened credit standards for solar loans, according to a recent report from Zoë Gaston, analyst at research firm Wood Mackenzie.

Another source of uncertainty comes from California, the largest rooftop solar market. The state last year changed the way rooftop solar customers get compensated from selling excess solar energy back to the grid. The new rule—known as net energy metering 3.0—effectively reduced the amount rooftop solar customers get for selling excess energy by 20%-30%, according to ClearView Energy Partners. In the near-term, the change actually boosted demand in California as customers rushed to install solar systems before the new rules kicked in for solar systems. The older, more generous solar rates still apply to systems for which interconnection applications were submitted before April 15. Wood Mackenzie expects the U.S. residential solar market to contract by 3% in 2024, which would be the first full year affected by California’s new rules. 

Enphase thinks these challenges are temporary and said California’s policy change should boost its energy storage business over the long term. Notably, under the new rules, the rate that solar or solar-plus-storage customers receive is based on the avoided cost to utilities, or the marginal cost utilities would avoid if these home energy systems provided power instead of themselves. In peak air-conditioning months, such as August and September, when energy demand stays high in the evening while supply is tight after the sun goes down, homes with battery storage would benefit from higher compensation.

That may be true but, as Enphase itself says, it could take time for customers to realize that benefit. Meanwhile, there is no visibility on when interest rate hikes will pause. As long as those two shadows persist, investors will find it difficult to focus on the glimmering, long-term promises to solar offered by the Inflation Reduction Act.

The Inflation Reduction Act’s Bait and Switch

Sensible energy policies would avert the economic harm the measure’s climate extremism could inflict.

WSJ By John Barrasso, April 20, 2023

Promise one thing, deliver another. It’s a tactic Democrats have used time and again: the bait and switch.

Last year, Democrats enacted their reckless green spending spree, and labeled it the Inflation Reduction Act. Starting with the name, just about every assurance Democrats made about the bill is false. Among other claims, the White House asserted that spending a tidal wave of taxpayer money would reduce the deficit, lower costs for families, grow the economy and create jobs.

Will it? Thanks to recent modeling results from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, we can say with confidence the answer is no. The Energy Information Administration is one of the world’s premier energy modeling institutions. Every year it issues a “business as usual” reference forecast that includes, to the extent possible, all current laws and rules affecting the energy sector. It also issues forecasts based on different policy, economic and technology assumptions.

Among the many scenarios the Energy Information Administration just released was one without the Democrat law (“No IRA”) and one in which businesses and consumers make full use of the law’s provisions (“High IRA Uptake”). The one with the Democrats’ energy and climate plans fails to produce a stronger economy, more jobs or more disposable income. That’s not what the sales pitch said.

The good news is that there is a way to expand our economy, help American families thrive and begin to tackle our enormous budget deficit. The Energy Information Administration examined what might happen in a future with significantly greater oil and natural gas output (“High Oil and Gas Supply”).

Compared with the High IRA scenario, the results are astonishing. From 2023 to 2050, the high oil and gas supply case produces $35 trillion more in total gross domestic product. That’s more than the entire federal debt of $32 trillion.

The federal government typically collects about 20% of GDP in revenue. That greater growth would translate into an additional $7 trillion in federal tax revenue through 2050. That’s 2.5 times the amount in the Social Security trust fund at the beginning of 2023.

Compare this to the spending binge Democrats rammed through Congress. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget tallied up the costs and found the law will add more than $4.8 trillion to deficits between 2021 and 2031.

Despite Democrat promises, it turns out going green means going further into the red. With Social Security and Medicare facing fiscal challenges, climate extremism will only make addressing our fiscal problems worse.

The benefits of a robust oil and gas sector don’t stop with GDP and revenue. Energy Information Administration data show the average number of U.S. jobs would be 4.5 million higher each year compared with the High IRA case. Families and businesses would enjoy lower prices for electricity, gasoline, diesel, home heating oil, natural gas and propane. Disposable income would average $645 billion more per year. Carbon-dioxide emissions from energy would be 11% lower in 2050 than in 2022.

The president’s blind loyalty to climate extremists is driving him to shut down conventional energy production and deny the American people its benefits. The president let slip during his State of the Union speech that he believes we’ll need oil and gas only for another decade. His climate envoy John Kerry offered seven or eight years.

They’re living in a fantasy world. In the real world, every reputable energy forecast shows that people will use huge amounts of oil, gas and coal at least to 2050.

Someone will have to supply that energy to a growing world. America is perfectly positioned to do so. We can do it more cleanly, more efficiently and more securely than anyone else. Russia, Venezuela, Iran and Saudi Arabia will fill whatever void we leave.

Forecast models don’t provide answers. They provide insights. The key insight from the Energy Information Administration’s modeling—and one that has been consistent over the years—is that a strong, vibrant oil and gas sector is vital to a healthy U.S. economy. It underpins growth. It’s a source of revenue. It stimulates job creation. It lowers energy costs for families. It enhances our competitiveness. It advances our geopolitical interests.

The Biden administration brags about erecting obstacles to traditional energy production. It is trying to ban gas stoves, eliminate conventional cars, and end the use of fossil fuels. The goals are completely unrealistic, but the policies have dramatic and negative consequences for our economy and security.

The permitting reform and energy bills Sen. Shelley Moore Capito and I will introduce and similar legislation the House just passed will help revive the “all of the above” energy strategy that has served the country so well.

One of America’s biggest economic and geopolitical assets is its energy resources. It’s time we put them back to work.

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Image: A solar farm near Deport, Tex., on March 5, 2022. (Cooper Neill for The Washington Post)

Why resuming tariffs on Chinese solar firms threatens U.S. climate goals

An increasing number of Democratic lawmakers are supporting a proposal to reverse President Biden's temporary hold on crushing taxes on specific imports of solar energy.

Analysis by Maxine Joselow with research by Vanessa Montalbano, April 27, 2023

Good morning and welcome to The Climate 202! Below, we have an exclusive on a new permitting proposal from Reps. Sean Casten (D-Ill.) and Mike Levin (D-Calif.).

A growing number of congressional Democrats are backing a measure that would undo President Biden’s temporary pause on crushing tariffs on certain solar imports.

It’s the latest example of how mounting anti-China sentiment in Washington has scrambled traditional political alliances and unnerved America’s clean-energy sector, we report with our colleague Evan Halper.

The outcome of the unfolding political drama could have major consequences — not just for solar energy companies, but also for homeowners hoping to add solar panels to their roofs, motorists wanting to charge electric vehicles with clean power and utilities trying to reduce their carbon footprints. 

China dominates solar supply chains. Figures provided by the research firm BloombergNEF show that Chinese companies make more than 95 percent of the wafers and ingots essential to assembling solar panels.

The details

The measure would undo Biden’s two-year suspension of the tariffs, which apply to solar cells and panels made by Chinese companies but sold out of Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. 

• The White House announced the suspension last summer in an effort to reassure the domestic solar industry, which had been paralyzed by a Commerce Department investigation into alleged tariff dodging by Chinese cell- and panel-makers.

• But in December, Commerce issued a preliminary finding that the Chinese manufacturers were, in fact, dodging tariffs. In response, a bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced a resolution to overturn Biden’s pause, saying China needed to be punished for circumventing U.S. trade law.

• The measure was introduced using the Congressional Review Act, which allows lawmakers to nullify the administration’s decisions with a simple majority vote within 60 legislative days. 

Many lobbyists and analysts expect the measure to garner the 60 votes needed to pass the Senate — requiring at least 11 Democrats to support it. 

While Biden has vowed to veto the resolution if it reaches his desk, the solar industry and its allies fear that supporters could reintroduce the proposal as an amendment to must-pass legislation.

“I’m worried that if you give them 60 [votes] in the Senate, Republicans will keep coming back for more bites at the apple,” said a House Democratic aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly. “They’re going to find every possible way to make us take hard votes on that.”

Democratic defections

The resolution — which could pass the House as soon as today — has put some Democrats in the awkward position of defying the president.

• Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr. (D-Pa.), who represents a battleground state where Biden won by 80,555 votes in 2020, said in an interview that he would vote for the resolution because “China’s got to be held accountable.”

• Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) — another red-state Democrat who is up for reelection in 2024 — said Wednesday he would vote to restore the tariffs. “The Chinese government will do anything to undermine American manufacturing, and would like nothing more than to kill the American solar manufacturing industry before it takes off,” Brown said in a statement.

• Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), one of the most protectionist senators, told reporters he would also vote for the proposal to support “red, white and blue manufacturing jobs.”

And Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), who chairs the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said he was fed up with U.S. reliance on China for its energy transition. “I cannot fathom why the Administration and Congress would consider extending that reliance any longer and am proud to join this CRA to rescind the rule,” he said in a statement. 

The consequences

If tariffs were reimposed, leaders in the U.S. solar industry say the impact on jobs and climate targets would be devastating.

• The Commerce investigation carries the threat of retroactive tariffs. That means if the two-year pause is lifted, U.S. solar developers could be forced to pay $1 billion in retroactive fees, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. 

• The resulting uncertainty in the industry would eliminate 30,000 well-paying jobs and $4.2 billion in domestic investment, the group has estimated, while 4 gigawatts of solar projects would be canceled, increasing planet-warming carbon emissions by 42 million metric tons.

“I would have to lay off thousands of people,” said George Hershman, CEO of SOLV Energy, a San Diego-based developer of large solar projects around the nation. 

“When you are talking about jobs that cost $300 million to $400 million, you can’t stop and start them easily,” he added. “I don’t know why anyone would support this.”

On the Hill

Reps. Sean Casten (D-Ill.) and Mike Levin (D-Calif.) today will unveil a discussion draft of legislation aimed at accelerating the permitting process for clean energy and transmission lines while ensuring community input, according to a copy of the proposal shared first with The Climate 202.

The lawmakers, who co-chair the House Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition’s task force on clean-energy deployment, say they’re hoping to juice permitting negotiations after Democratic leaders tried unsuccessfully to pass a permitting bill from Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) last year.

“We were very frustrated that the only vehicle that was being discussed for permitting reform was the Senate Manchin package, which frankly has got a lot of completely unnecessary oil and gas provisions,” Casten told The Climate 202. “There has never been a proper package with the right policies.”

The Clean Electricity and Transmission Acceleration Act differs significantly from Manchin’s measure as well as the permitting provisions in House Republicans’ energy package, which passed the chamber last month and primarily focused on boosting fossil fuel projects.

The legislation would accomplish the following goals, according to a section-by-section summary from Casten’s office:

• Give the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission siting authority for national interest transmission lines, or those that cross at least two states and have a capacity greater than 1,000 megawatts.

• Establish an Office of Electricity Transmission at the commission.

• Authorize $2.1 billion to address the shortage of electricity transformers through the Defense Production Act.

• Require federal agencies to hold multiple hearings in environmental justice communities on proposals that affect them.

Casten expressed confidence that these proposals could garner broad support within the Democratic conference, although he acknowledged that most Republicans would probably reject them in favor of the GOP energy package.

“We’ll see what happens on the politics,” he said. “But you’ve got to define what your policy goals are.”

The Senate on Wednesday voted 50-49 to advance a GOP-led effort to revoke the Environmental Protection Agency’s new rule aimed at slashing tailpipe pollution from heavy-duty trucks, Rachel Frazin reports for the Hill.

Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) was the only Democrat to vote with Republicans on the Congressional Review Act resolution. 

Proponents of the rule argue that curbing nitrogen oxide pollution from trucks can help protect public health and prevent childhood asthma cases. But critics say it would increase burdens on the trucking industry and worsen inflation. 

Despite the resolution’s approval, President Biden said Wednesday he would veto it if it landed on his desk. And the effort is unlikely to receive enough Democratic support to gain the two-thirds majority needed to override a veto.

House Republicans on Wednesday approved a bill that would raise the debt ceiling, slash federal spending and repeal some of President Biden’s programs to combat climate change, The Washington Post’s Tony Romm, Marianna Sotomayor and Leigh Ann Caldwell report. 

The 217-215 vote escalated a high-stakes feud with the White House, with as few as six weeks left before the government could default. The bill would roll back many of the clean-energy tax credits created by the Inflation Reduction Act, including those for electric vehicles and wind and solar energy. 

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) — who on Tuesday threatened to vote against the bill because of concerns about scrapping clean-energy subsidies — ultimately supported the measure. Midwestern Republicans also backed the bill after GOP leadership agreed late Tuesday to restore tax credits for corn-based ethanol and other biofuels.

The only four Republican defections were Reps. Matt Gaetz (Fla.), Tim Burchett (Tenn.), Ken Buck (Colo.) and Andy Biggs (Ariz.), all members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus.

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on Wednesday voted along party lines to advance the nominations of two of President Biden’s top picks for key Environmental Protection Agency roles, months after deadlocking on both. 

By a vote of 10-9, the panel approved the nomination of Joseph Goffman to helm the agency’s Office of Air and Radiation, which he has led on an acting basis since January 2021. The panel deadlocked 10-10 on the nomination in November, with Republicans criticizing Goffman’s role in writing the Obama-era Clean Power Plan that aimed to significantly cut planet-warming pollution from power plants.

Lawmakers also approved the nomination of David Uhlmann, Biden’s pick for the EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, by voice vote. The office holds companies accountable when they violate the nation’s environmental laws.

In addition, the committee on Wednesday approved bipartisan legislation to improve the nation’s recycling and composting systems. The Recycling and Composting Accountability Act is co-sponsored by Chair Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.), ranking member Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) and Sen. John Boozman (R-Ark.). 

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Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country

…Armando Rodríguez, vice-president and executive director of the company, talks to us about their projects in the DR, where they have been operating for 32 years.

More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

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Image: President Gustavo Petro has seen some of his signature proposals stall in Congress or run into political opposition.

PHOTO: OLIVER CONTRERAS/BLOOMBERG NEWS/ Editing Germán & Co

Colombia’s President Replaces Market-Friendly Finance Minister in Cabinet Reshuffle

The changes come in the wake of the breakup of his governing coalition and prompt the peso to weaken

WSJ By Juan Forero, April 26, 2023 

BOGOTÁ, Colombia—Colombian President Gustavo Petro, a leftist who has pressed for broadscale social reforms in eight months in office, replaced his market-friendly finance minister on Wednesday amid the breakup of his congressional coalition.

José Antonio Ocampo, a Columbia University professor who was seen by the markets as a stabilizing force, was replaced as finance minister in a cabinet shuffle that saw seven ministers ousted. The shake-up weakened the long-battered Colombian peso and sent bonds tumbling.

The Colombian stock market’s benchmark Colcap index fell 1%, and the peso weakened 3.1% to 4,641 against the U.S. dollar from 4,496 on Tuesday.

“This is going to generate uncertainty and lots of nervousness in the markets,” said Daniel Mejía, an economist at Los Andes University. “The departure of Ocampo is a very serious development for the Colombian economy.”

José Antonio Ocampo was replaced as Colombia’s finance minster on Wednesday.

The removal of ministers in the 19-member cabinet came as Mr. Petro, a former leftist guerrilla, has seen some of his signature proposals stall in Congress or run into political opposition.

A ruling coalition that had included centrist and conservative parties had crumbled in recent weeks as the president pressed for broad changes in a healthcare system that polls showed most Colombians favor. Other far-reaching proposals by Mr. Petro include starting peace talks with armed groups, undertaking a land redistribution for poor farmers, transitioning from oil to renewable energy, and a pension overhaul.

In a statement posted on his Twitter page, the 63-year-old leader said officials “will persist with our program and our vocation for big national accords.”

“We reaffirm our commitment to remain loyal to the popular mandate we have received,” he said in the statement, “and we have decided to create a cabinet to redouble our agenda for social change for the great majority of citizens.”

Ricardo Bonilla, who headed the finance department for Bogotá when Mr. Petro was mayor, is the new finance minister. Mr. Petro also replaced his ministers of interior, agriculture and health, sectors the president has said need far-reaching changes to improve the lives of poorer Colombians. Mr. Petro had already won approval for higher taxes, and has called for more spending on the poor.

Mr. Bonilla said via Twitter that he would “maintain economic stability.”

A longtime aide to Mr. Petro, Mr. Bonilla was known as having a steady hand during his time in Bogotá City Hall. But Sergio Guzmán, director of the political consulting firm Colombia Risk Analysis, said the markets may question him in his new role and whether he can damp inclinations Mr. Petro might have to increase spending.

“Will Ricardo Bonilla be able to stand up to the president and say no when proposals imply economic risk?” Mr. Guzmán said. “I think the markets don’t perceive Bonilla as independent, as having the political clout to be able to say no to Petro.”

*—Jenny Carolina González and Anthony Harrup contributed to this article.

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Image: The key lesson for the EU from previous financial crisis is the importance of developing an overall economic security strategy | Yuri Kadobnov/AFP/ Editing by Germán & Co

The EU lacks a credible economic security strategy

The bloc needs to develop a strategy that anticipates future threats and leverages its most valuable security asset — its position as the largest economy in the world.

POLITICO EU BY TOM KEATINGE, APRIL 27, 2023 

Tom Keatinge is the founding director of the Center for Financial Crime and Security Studies at the Royal United Services Institute.

In the summer of 2014, newspaper headlines were unanimous: Western nations had responded to the Kremlin’s annexation of Crimea and its complicity in shooting down a Malaysian passenger airliner in Ukrainian airspace by imposing sweeping economic sanctions against Russia. The reality of the European Union’s actions, however, is rather different.

The EU provides a handy timeline of the restrictive measures it’s imposed on Russia over the past nine years — and it is a record of inaction and failure.

Compared to the sanctions imposed over the past 12 months to “cripple the Kremlin’s ability to finance the war,” the 2014 measures were far from sweeping. And, in a lesson for today’s political leaders, interest in maintaining economic pressure on Russia and its war machine evaporated quickly, with key members of the bloc doubling down on economic engagement with its belligerent neighbor, perpetuating a misconstrued notion of Wandel durch Handel, or “change through trade,” instead.

It was an approach that left Russia’s military with continued capacity to develop weaponry, import needed components and stock its arsenal for the onslaught on its peaceful neighbor, despite clearly failing to meet President Vladimir Putin’s ambitions. But just imagine the extent to which eight years of properly implemented and maintained economic restrictions on Russia’s military could have neutered the Kremlin’s aspirations in Ukraine.

And here lies the EU’s central failing — it manages from “crisis to crisis.” Radical thinking and remediation only occur when vulnerabilities are exposed and action is forced upon Brussels.

Consider the series of steps taken by the European Commission on a topic like money laundering, triggered in the main by revelation and scandal. Changes and improvements are only a function of milestone events like the Panama Papers — leaked documents on offshore entities and the financial activities of politicians — or the exposure of extreme failings, such as the case of the Danske Bank Estonia scandal.

Similarly, in confronting Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the EU has been running fast just to stand still. Eurocrats and their counterparts across member countries hurried to design and agree on a raft of sanctions packages, which are genuinely sweeping. Meanwhile, with the appointment of a sanctions envoy and having recognized that member country implementation and third country compliance aren’t yet what they should be, revisiting the substance of last year’s work is now an important task for 2023.

But, again, all of this is reactive. New structures, directives and regulations are built on the ashes of disaster. However, managing from crisis to crisis isn’t a strategy — it’s a sign of failure.

So, what should the EU do? What lessons should it learn from the last 12 months of frantic activity?

The key lesson is the importance of developing an overall economic security strategy —one that not only ensures the reliability of the supply chains the EU counts on, but one that recognizes and leverages the bloc’s position as the largest economy in the world, the top trading partner for 80 countries and the world’s largest trader of goods and services.

This is an unrivaled position, yet a security strategy based on the EU’s economic dominance is absent.  And while championing “openness” is to be applauded, it can become an existential vulnerability when accompanied by naivety.

The key lesson is developing an overall economic security strategy that recognizes the bloc’s position as the world’s largest trader of goods and services | Adrian Dennis/AFP via Getty Images

Of course, some member countries have already gone ahead with this, weaning themselves off Russian energy supplies, “de-Russifying” their economies to the greatest extent possible without waiting for Brussels to lead. But a fragmented, ad hoc and reactive response to such future security crises will once again expose the EU as weak and unprepared.

And on no topic is the issue of economic security more pressing than it currently is with China.

The magnitude of economic connections between the EU and China makes the failure to prioritize the development of an economic security strategy — even if it means reversing the EU’s dearly held vision of being an open and competitive economy — grossly irresponsible. EU leaders should be engaging with like-minded partners — notably the United States — to develop a collaborative economic security strategy that leverages the strengths and opportunities each has to offer — not taking sycophantic and grandstanding trips to Beijing.

And while, for some, government involvement in the private sector might herald a return to the inept government-led industrial strategies of the 1970s and early 1980s, economic security in the 21st century is going to require close collaboration between policymaking and private sector investment. The instincts of the profit-centered industrialist are going to need to be guided by smart, forward-thinking government policies, which incentivize investment decisions that don’t expose a nation to unacceptable economic security risks.

From critical minerals to foreign direct investment and technology supply chains, security — and partnership with allies — should be at the center of decision-making. And it shouldn’t be merely defensive either.

Utilizing their wealth and trading opportunity, Western nations should be securing expanded alliances around the world with countries facing an “East vs. West” choice. Yet, the harsh reality is that while the EU has vacillated, China has forged economic alliances in its favor across the world, and Russia has secured support — or at least acquiescence — via its provision of security.

So, yes, 2023 should be about ensuring the greatest possible restrictions are placed on the Russian economy and its ability to fund and resource its illegal war in Ukraine. But it should also be about thinking ahead, learning lessons from failed policy and ensuring the EU develops an economic security strategy that anticipates future threats and leverages its most valuable security asset — namely, its position as the largest economy in the world.

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Image:  Off-shore wind turbines in the North Sea are essential to reach global climate goals | Pool photo by Christian Charisius/AFP/ Editing by Germán & Co

The North Seas can be the world’s biggest power plant

Tomorrow, we will be taking another crucial step toward a green and independent Europe.

POLITICO EU BY ALEXANDER DE CROO, MARK RUTTE, XAVIER BETTEL, EMMANUEL MACRON, OLAF SCHOLZ, LEO VARADKAR, JONAS GAHR STØRE, RISHI SUNAK AND METTE FREDERIKSEN, APRIL 23, 2023 

Alexander De Croo is the prime minister of Belgium. Mark Rutte is the prime minister of the Netherlands. Xavier Bettel is the prime minister of Luxembourg. Emmanuel Macron is the president of France. Olaf Scholz is the chancellor of Germany. Leo Varadkar is the prime minister of Ireland. Jonas Gahr Støre is the prime minister of Norway. Rishi Sunak is the prime minister of the United Kingdom. Mette Frederiksen is the prime minister of Denmark.

We need offshore wind turbines— and we need a lot of them.

We need them to reach our climate goals, and to rid ourselves of Russian gas, ensuring a more secure and independent Europe.

Held for the first time last year, Denmark, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands came together for the inaugural North Sea Summit in the Danish harbor town of Esbjerg, setting historic goals for offshore wind with the Esbjerg Declaration. It paved the way for making the North Seas a green power plant for Europe, as well as a major contributor to climate neutrality and strengthening energy security.

This Monday, nine countries will meet for the next North Sea Summit — this time in the Belgian town of Ostend — where France, Ireland, Luxembourg, Norway and the United Kingdom will also put their political weight behind developing green energy in the North Seas, including the Atlantic Ocean and the Irish and Celtic Seas. Together, we will combine and coordinate our ambitions for deploying offshore wind and developing an offshore electricity grid, putting Europe on the path toward a green economy fueled by offshore green power plants.

Collectively, our target for offshore wind in the North Seas is now 120 gigawatts by 2030, and a minimum of 300 gigawatts by 2050 — larger than any of the co-signatories’ existing generation capacity at a national level. And to deliver on this ambition, we are committing to building an entire electricity system in the North Seas based on renewable energy by developing cooperation projects.

This is a massive undertaking and a true example of the green transition in the making. It also requires huge investments in infrastructure, both offshore and on land.

It presents us with a political and environmental dilemma as well: We are facing a climate crisis at the same time some of our ecosystems are in decline, and offshore wind is an integral part of both climate action and safeguarding our energy security. Thus, time is of the essence, and we must follow up on the progress already made on reining in the burden of bureaucracy for renewable projects.

We cannot wait years for permitting processes while global temperatures rise, and autocratic regimes have the power to turn the lights off in our living rooms and halt production in our industries. Instead, we must work toward rapid deployment of offshore wind, while making every effort to safeguard our healthy and robust marine ecosystems for future generations.

Crucially, the green transition is also a cornerstone for maintaining our competitiveness in the global economy. And while the North Seas will be a major provider of clean, affordable energy for our industries and businesses in the form of electricity and hydrogen, we must ensure we don’t simply move from one dependence to another. As such, we need to make space for European value chains when it comes to green tech and diversify our sources of critical raw materials for wind turbines, batteries and the like. We will work together within NATO and the European Union to increase the security of offshore and underwater infrastructure, stepping up efforts to react effectively to growing traditional and hybrid threats.

Tomorrow, we will be taking another crucial step toward a green and competitive Europe, with even more turbines spinning in the North Seas. And every turbine gets us closer to a green future.

We know the way — now, it’s a matter of picking up the pace.

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Image: Germán & Co

Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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Image: NATO needs to address the fact that deterrence can no longer be seen as just a bipolar equation when it comes to nuclear weapons | Sean Gallup/Editing by Germán & Co

Facing Europe’s nuclear necessities

Deterrence can no longer be seen as just a bipolar equation — and it’s time NATO addresses this fact.

POLITICO EU BY MAXIMILIAN TERHALLE AND KEES KLOMPENHOUWER, APRIL 22, 2023 

Maximilian Terhalle is a visiting professor of strategic studies at the London School of Economics (LSE IDEAS). Kees Klompenhouwer is a former Ambassador of the Netherlands.

The euphoria in NATO surrounding Finland’s new membership demonstrates a grim reality: Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine has searingly exposed Europe’s strategic vulnerability.

It is clear now that the West’s war efforts thus far would have been inconceivable without the United States, and Russia’s shrill nuclear rhetoric has been slowly degrading the Continent’s long-standing political unwillingness to address the nuclear elephant in the room.

With only a handful of strategic thinkers engaged with the nuclear problem, for years this issue has gone largely unnoticed, and curiously, former U.S. President Donald Trump’s departure from power has faded his threats to leave NATO from European memory. As the 2024 U.S. presidential election may once again result in an isolationist Republican victor, however, doubts regarding Washington’s nuclear defense commitment to Europe may well soon return.

Meanwhile, China’s revisionist ambitions — a bipartisan concern for the U.S. — are stretching America’s role of security guardianship to an extent that the U.S. could eventually be obliged to make some hard choices. And as intimated by former Defense Secretary James Mattis’s succinct response of “No, Sir!” when asked whether America could fight two major wars simultaneously, these choices wouldn’t be to the advantage of European security.

As such, deterrence can no longer be seen as just a bipolar equation — and it’s time NATO addresses this fact.

In 2011, as part of the “New START” nuclear arms reduction treaty — which imposed limits on deployed long-range nuclear weapons — both Russia and the U.S. had agreed on an equal number of said strategic arms. However, not only is this treaty set to expire by 2026, but Russian President Vladimir Putin recently suspended it.

In addition, China is currently aiming to increase the total number of nuclear warheads at its disposal from 400 to 1,000 in the next few years, it’s nuclear rise thus starting to shape a tripolar set of deterrence equations. This isn’t only undermining the notion of nuclear strategic parity and making U.S. deterrence much more difficult to manage, but it’s also contributed to the demise of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which had limited the number of short- and intermediate-range — or sub-strategic — nuclear weapons in Europe, and a similar fate may now await the New START treaty too.

At the same time, Russia has been modernizing its sub-strategic nuclear arsenal as well, and consolidating its nuclear superiority when it comes to Europe. While Moscow now has 2,000 tactical nuclear warheads targeting the Continent; Europe has at its disposal merely 100 U.S. free-fall bombs that can be delivered by so-called dual-capable aircrafts (DCA) — i.e. fighter jets that could carry nuclear bombs into Russia. Otherwise, the United Kingdom has some 225 strategic nuclear warheads carried by submarines, while France has 290 strategic nuclear warheads of which approximately 50 are medium-range air to surface missiles (ASMP) — but that’s it.

Moreover, Russia has now developed a hypersonic glide missile that’s nuclear capable and with a range of 2,000 kilometers, against which there is apparently no current effective defense.

Crucially, this combination of China’s aggressive nuclear weapons program, Russia’s growing sub-strategic nuclear superiority over Europe, and possible renewed American isolationism would spell the erosion of the U.S. nuclear umbrella’s global credibility, pushing nations in East Asia and Europe to come up with national solutions — something that would effectively spell the end of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which is the cornerstone of nuclear arms control.

This means that China is essentially changing the strategic calculations that NATO allies have to make.

Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine has searingly exposed Europe’s strategic vulnerability | Alexander Nemenov/AFP via Getty Images

As U.S. and Chinese political rhetoric have escalated, diplomatic relations between the two great powers have dangerously deteriorated. China now also appears determined to exercise sovereign control over Taiwan and the Western Pacific — something that will be difficult to deter. And though neither side is yet militarily ready for a direct confrontation, if diplomacy and statecraft fail, a military confrontation over Taiwan will become more likely — not least since the U.S. president has pledged to intervene directly in such a case, despite formally recognizing China’s sovereignty over Taiwan.

In such a scenario the U.S. would then have to withdraw military assets from Europe, and European allies would be called upon to provide the bulk of the conventional force in the European theater to defend and deter against Russia.

Thus, NATO now needs to think much harder about how to prepare the alliance prior to such a worst-case scenario, and this reevaluation needs to include the question of what the alliance should do in the nuclear realm — a question so far left untouched.

And critically, rethinking NATO’s nuclear strategy in this way will likely lead to the alliance abandoning some of the axioms it now holds.

For instance, based on global American strategic supremacy, the very idea of autonomous European defense has long been considered detrimental to the vital transatlantic link. However, with global strategic challenges growing fast, this principle is no longer tenable. And while addressing this will be a major political challenge, there’s an undeniable need for a new approach that strengthens NATO by compensating for foreseeable gaps in the transatlantic nuclear deterrence posture.

Three mutually reinforcing paths could provide a way forward here: First, upgrading the U.S. contribution to European sub-strategic nuclear deterrence, modernizing weapons and enlarging the number of DCA-capable nations in Europe. Second, starting a new dialogue on how the independent French and British deterrents could fit into this strategy. And third, nonnuclear European allies’ strengthening their conventional forces to support NATO’s overall deterrence strategy, including the link to U.S. nuclear deterrence.

Given today’s growing challenges, now is the time for NATO to adapt its concept of “peace through strength.” And in order to do so, it must rethink its nuclear deterrence strategy — there is no time to waste.

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Image: Illustration by Owen D. Pomery

The Climate Crisis Gives Sailing Ships a Second Wind

Cargo vessels are some of the dirtiest vehicles in existence. Can a centuries-old technology help to clean them up?

The era of sailing ships may seem like a distant memory, but it's important to remember that they were only partially replaced by diesel vessels. The Avontuur, a sailing schooner constructed in 1920 by a Dutch shipyard, is a prime example. Despite being over 90 years old, the Avontuur operated as a passenger liner on the Dutch coast in 2012. However, the United Nations issued a climate assessment that year, warning that the planet was heading towards a future of extreme weather conditions and disasters caused by intensifying heat waves, fires, and storms. We must take action and end our reliance on fossil fuels before it's too late.

Germán & Co

The New Yorker By Pagan Kennedy, April 27, 2023

In February, 1912, Londoners packed a dock on the River Thames to gawk at the Selandia, a ship that could race through the water without any sails or smokestacks. Winston Churchill, then the minister in charge of the British Royal Navy, declared it “the most perfect maritime masterpiece of the twentieth century.” But, as the Selandia continued its journey around the world, some onlookers were so spooked that they called it the Devil Ship.

The Selandia, a Danish vessel that measured three hundred and seventy feet, was one of the first oceangoing ships to run on diesel power. So-called devil ships inaugurated a new age of petroleum on the high seas; by the twenty-first century, nearly ninety per cent of the world’s products spent time on diesel-powered vessels. The shipping industry created a mind-bending supply chain in which an apple from halfway around the world often costs less than one from a nearby orchard.

Diesel ships never entirely stamped out the sailing ships that once reigned supreme, however. In 1920, a Dutch shipbuilder fashioned a sailing schooner named the Avontuur and put it to work carrying cargo, which it did for the rest of the century. By 2012, the Avontuur was ferrying passengers on the Dutch coast; at more than ninety years old, it probably seemed destined for a maritime museum or a scrap heap. But that year a United Nations climate report warned that the planet was careening toward an era of extreme weather and disasters, in which escalating heat waves, fires, and storms could become the norm. Humans had the power to avert these crises—but only if they took rapid action to end their dependence on fossil fuels.

Two years later, Cornelius Bockermann, a German sea captain who had worked with oil companies, bought the Avontuur and made it the flagship of a company called Timbercoast. His mission was to eliminate pollution caused by cargo shipping. Bockermann had witnessed the harms of diesel ships; on the high seas, beyond the reach of most environmental regulations, the descendants of the Selandia burn millions of gallons of thick sludge left over from the oil-refining process. The shipping industry, he knew, was one of the dirtiest on the planet, spewing roughly three per cent of the world’s climate pollution—as much as the aviation industry. After having the Avontuur restored, he captained the ship, hired a small crew, recruited some volunteer shipmates, and put the vessel back to work. It could carry only about a hundred tons of cargo—a tiny amount compared with the more than twenty thousand tons that a container ship can carry—but customers hired Timbercoast to deliver coffee, cocoa, rum, and olive oil.

Bockermann’s company is one of several founded on a provocative idea: What if shipping’s history could inspire its future? For centuries, the cargo industry ran on clean wind power—and it could again. As the climate crisis has escalated, and the pandemic has exposed weaknesses in global supply chains, the movement to decarbonize shipping has spread. What was once the dream of a few enterprising idealists has become a business opportunity that startups and sprawling multinationals alike are chasing.

Christiaan De Beukelaer, an anthropologist who was researching the nascent field of eco-friendly shipping, came aboard the Avontuur as a shipmate in February, 2020. He was about three weeks into his voyage when, on March 17th, the ship’s temperamental dot-matrix printer spewed out an emergency message that Bockermann had sent from shore. “The world as you know it no longer exists,” the dispatch said. Coronavirus lockdowns had shut borders and ports in dozens of countries. De Beukelaer and the rest of the crew were now marooned indefinitely aboard the Avontuur.

In the Gulf of Mexico, they rediscovered the difficult realities of wind-powered transport. “We were going around in circles, taking the sails down and up again because of the squalls,” De Beukelaer told me. The ship zigzagged for weeks, and supplies dwindled. After the fruits and vegetables were gone, the crew ate short rations. The cook worried that they’d run out of gas for the stove. But elsewhere, the pandemic was revealing just how vulnerable the entire shipping industry might be.

In 2020, with so many ports clogged and ships stuck at sea, store shelves emptied, and customers waited months for items such as cars and refrigerators. The following year, the Ever Given, a container ship about the size of the Empire State Building, ran aground in the middle of the Suez Canal. It delayed shipping traffic between Europe and Asia for months, a seeming metaphor for a world held hostage by diesel-guzzling behemoths. Oil prices rose while tankers, carrying almost ten per cent of the world’s daily oil consumption, waited their turn. A meme christened the ship the Least Fucks Ever Given.

Shipping’s sudden visibility reinvigorated activist organizations, which have long pressured cargo owners to clean up their operations, De Beukelaer told me. Members from the environmentalist group Extinction Rebellion spun off a political-art collective called Ocean Rebellion; its inaugural demonstration projected messages like “TAX SHIPPING FUEL NOW” onto the side of a cruise ship. In 2021, a consortium of climate and public-health groups launched the Ship It Zero campaign, calling on big retailers, including Target and Walmart, to transport their products with cargo carriers that are “taking immediate steps to end emissions,” and to “sign contracts now to ship your goods on the world’s first zero-emissions ships.”

In January, De Beukelaer published “Trade Winds,” a book about his five months at sea during the pandemic. His story doubles as a plea to clean up the shipping industry. It takes “fifty thousand Londons worth of air pollution,” he writes, to ship eleven billion tons of cargo each year—about one and a half tons for each person on the planet. In his view, consumers and corporations must take responsibility for the environmental mayhem that they cause. And they can start to do that, he writes, if sailing ships make an epic comeback.

For wind power to push the shipping industry forward, it will need to reach the biggest players in the business. In 2018, Cargill, the largest privately held American company, pledged to cut its direct greenhouse-gas emissions by ten per cent within seven years. Five months later, the company’s maritime division, which manages a fleet of about six hundred ships, announced a CO2 Challenge. Inventors around the world were invited to propose novel ways to reduce carbon emissions of cargo vessels.

Cargill transports more than two hundred million tons of cargo, including soybeans, fertilizers, and iron ore, each year. It’s not easy to decarbonize such a sprawling business; in 2017, Cargill’s global operations emitted as much as several million cars. That same year, an environmental group, Mighty Earth, reported that the company was fuelling deforestation in South America, by buying soybeans in places where megafarms were swallowing woodlands. Because forests store carbon, deforestation has a major carbon footprint. (Cargill once pledged to eliminate deforestation from its supply chains by 2020, but says it is now working toward a target of 2030.)

The CO2 Challenge identified other areas in which Cargill could reduce its climate pollution. “We opened it up to everyone out there,” Jan Dieleman, the head of the division, told me. “We got something like a hundred and eighty ideas, including some crazy ones.” One proposal suggested freezing CO2 emissions into dry ice. Another recommended nuclear-powered ships. A third went so big on batteries that it left little room for cargo. Some of the winning entries sounded as daffy as the rejects. One of them, from a startup called BAR Technologies, imagined airplane-style wings rising nearly a hundred and fifty feet from the deck of a cargo ship.

The idea of powering ships with rigid wings dates back at least to the nineteen-sixties, when an English aeronautics engineer named John Walker spent his weekends in a cranky, old yacht. One day, he was hopping around the cockpit, trying to coax the mainsail to swing into position, and he failed to notice that a rope had wrapped around his ankles. When the sail caught the wind, the rope pulled him into the air. After that humiliating incident, he began to wonder why sailboats had evolved so little in hundreds of years. Wasn’t there some way to improve on this messy system of ropes and booms?

In 1969, news footage showed Walker—a trim and bearded Old Spice sort of man—at the helm of what he called the Plane-Sail Trimaran. Piloting the boat, he once said, felt like flying a plane. Where the mainsail should have been, four rigid sails stuck straight up into the air, like window blinds turned vertically; each one had the shape of an airfoil and generated forward thrust. They also allowed him to carve the wind with more control than a cloth sail would allow: instead of turning the entire boat at an angle to catch the wind, by either tacking or jibing, Walker could simply spin a crank, and the wings above his head would swivel into a configuration that would drive the boat forward, sideways, or even in reverse. He became obsessed with his creation. “My wife complained that I’m not the man she married and she is right,” he told a reporter, in 1970.

During the energy crisis of the nineteen-seventies, Walker wondered whether his winged yacht could also help to solve environmental problems. He founded a company called Walker Wingsails, built demonstration vessels, and, in 1989, advertised a “wingsail cruising yacht” with “fingertip control by a single person.” His vision of no-emissions shipping now seems far ahead of its time. “Using only the free clean ocean winds, the Walker wingsail technology can make a valuable contribution to the control of pollution and the greenhouse effect,” the ad declared. In 1991, the New York Times deemed his winged innovation “the most radical sailboat to ever slip into the harbor.” But not all the reviews were positive. A few years later, when a sailing magazine questioned the performance of his wings, Walker sued for libel and became tangled up in a high-profile case. Though he eventually won, his company went bust.

Around the turn of the twenty-first century, boat designers experimented with winglike sails for a different reason: they wanted to break speed records on racing yachts. Competitors in the America’s Cup, the most prestigious U.S. yacht prize, showed that a combination of rigid wing sails and hydrofoils, which work like underwater airplane wings, propels the yachts along the surface of the water. The winged catamarans, which looked like seabirds skimming for fish, proved to be so blazingly fast that in 2010 the Cup put them into a class of their own. After the Cup banned competitors from testing out their models in water tanks or wind tunnels, many of the teams embraced computer modelling and created elaborate simulations of yachts gliding across virtual oceans.

In advance of the 2017 America’s Cup, a British team hired a group of engineers and created one of the world’s most powerful wing sails. Their entry lost the race, but the designers weren’t ready to part ways and instead spun off BAR Technologies. The team decided, “We’re not going to lose all these great people, and we’re not going to lose all these simulation tools,” John Cooper, the company’s C.E.O., told me. A year later, it won a contract with Cargill to fit its proprietary wing sails, WindWings, onto a bulk carrier.

A diesel ship retrofitted with wing sails could reduce its fuel consumption by as much as thirty per cent, according to a BAR Technologies simulation. When I ran that figure by Elizabeth Lindstad, a chief scientist at sintef Ocean, an independent think tank that advises maritime companies, she described it as optimistic but possible, at least along trade routes with the right wind conditions. Paul Sclavounos, a professor of naval architecture and mechanical engineering at M.I.T., agreed. Savings on that scale, he said, could reshape the economics of shipping. Many multinational companies, including Cargill, lease their vessels from shipbuilders and pay for fuel expenses. It can cost more than twenty-four thousand dollars per day to fuel a bulk carrier; a company that adds wing sails to one ship could save thousands per day, and “pay back its investment in a year or two,” Sclavounos told me. The wings could then provide decades of propulsion for only the price of maintenance. “It’s clearly a relatively inexpensive technology,” he said. “It makes a lot of sense.”

Wind propulsion will help some ships more than others. Container ships are responsible for about twenty-three per cent of shipping emissions, according to a report from the International Council on Clean Transportation, but it’s difficult to squeeze sails onto a deck that’s cluttered with metal boxes. In contrast, bulk carriers, which are responsible for roughly nineteen per cent of shipping emissions, are perfect laboratories for wind propulsion, thanks to their open decks and relatively small size. The same goes for more specialized vessels that carry vehicles such as cars, trucks, and trains. These Ro-Ro ships—short for “roll on, roll off”—don’t need any help from cranes when they sail into port, and they tend to stash their cargo in a hold, leaving plenty of room on deck for sails.

Of course, you can’t just slap an airplane wing onto the deck of a ship and expect it to work. Airplane wings provide lift, but rely on jet engines to provide thrust; a wing sail, in contrast, must provide thrust of its own. Engineers are now studying how many wings they can cram onto the deck of a ship, and how high they can go without threatening the stability of the vessel. Some are building wing sails that fold or telescope so that they don’t bump into bridges or cranes. Cargill plans to try out its first set of WindWings on a commercial route in early July; BAR Technologies is also installing WindWings on a ship owned by Berge Bulk this year. Cooper told me, “If you fast-forward three or four years, we’re looking at building hundreds of wings.”

Adiesel ship that’s retrofitted with wing sails will pollute much less than its peers—but it still won’t be clean. “We know that wind alone is not going to bring us to zero carbon,” Dieleman told me. In the future, ships will likely need to swap out dirty fuels for alternatives with low carbon footprints. Cargill has four vessels in production that run on methanol, which produces far lower emissions at sea. At the moment, though, most of the methanol on the market is “brown,” Dieleman said—in other words, made from fossil fuels. Bio-methanol can be made from agricultural waste or seaweed, and another fuel, green hydrogen, can be generated from water and clean electricity. But they are still a kind of Unobtanium, because no one has yet figured out how to produce trillions of gallons at low cost.

Then again, why not rethink cargo ships entirely—from the keel up—so as to squeeze as much power as possible from the wind? Lindstad, the scientist at sintef Ocean, and her research partners have argued that the ships of the future should combine wind propulsion with slender hulls that reduce drag. They estimate that some vessels designed in this way could cut down fuel use by as much as fifty per cent. Cargo ships may also need to chart new courses, following trade winds that were largely ignored in the age of diesel.

A few months ago, I travelled to Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, a Canadian port town known for its fisheries and shipyards, to meet Danielle Southcott, a sustainable-shipping entrepreneur who’d recently moved there. On the day we met, in a loft that serves as an event space, she was introducing her company, Veer Group, to about fifty people, mostly from the local shipping community. The crowd was a blur of leather jackets, scruffy beards, interesting glasses, and knit caps: artsy, but also appropriately attired to carve a mizzenmast or hack some barnacles off a hull. Southcott, at thirty-three, fit right in—she wore all black, and her long, dark hair curtained her face each time she glanced down at her notes.

When she flashed a rendering of a sailing ship onto the screen, I could sense the collective puzzlement in the room. It looked like the ghost of a traditional three-masted clipper, with no visible cables or ropes.

A man raised his hand. “I don’t see any rigging,” he said.

Southcott explained that Veer was using a sailing system called the DynaRig, which had been tested on two luxury yachts, the Maltese Falcon and the Black Pearl. Though the sails are made from cloth rather than rigid panels, they have something in common with wing sails: they’re shaped much like broad airplane wings and are controlled through a computer. Each mast can rotate more than a hundred and eighty degrees.

The ideal cargo for Veer’s first ship, Southcott said, would be something like designer shoes: they have high markups and low weights, and customers pay a premium for the latest and greatest. Imagine the fashionistas, she went on, who would pay upmarket prices for net-zero delivery. According to design plans, the ship could attain speeds of eighteen knots, or more than twenty miles per hour, on wind alone. As she explained her stiletto-heeled business model to her steel-toe-boot audience, the mood seemed to shift from skepticism to glee. She was questioning a basic assumption in the shipping industry—the cheaper, the better—and imagining a new one: the better, the better.

Later that evening, some audience members decamped to a creaky wooden pub called the Knot, and I eavesdropped as two master mariners vented about the shoddiness of container ships. The ships would be more fuel efficient with rounded hulls, they observed, but they’re built like steel boxes to save money. The think tank at the bar agreed that a Veer-style ship would work just fine from a technical standpoint—one guy even assured Southcott that gantry cranes, which pluck boxes off of ships, would be able to maneuver around masts without knocking them over. But they wondered whether she could build a business in an industry that usually competes on rock-bottom prices.

In Southcott’s telling, the key variable for upscale retailers is not cost but speed. She’d learned that lesson in 2021, she told me, when she was running a company that built wooden sailing ships for freight delivery. Her potential clients were eager to lease a net-zero cargo vessel—but not if it plodded along so slowly that it added days or weeks to the delivery date. So she contacted a friend at Dykstra Naval Architects, a Dutch firm that designs classic and modern yachts. Southcott brought preliminary renderings of a Veer ship, to be built from composite materials and steel, to the cop26 climate conference, in Glasgow. Soon after she announced her venture, she raised six hundred thousand dollars from four investors. She used the money to hire Dykstra engineers to draw up technical plans for the first ship, and to assemble a startup team.

Southcott told me that her investors have now pledged more than two million dollars, enough for her to seek financing from a bank and submit bids to shipyards that could build Veer’s first ship. She hopes to build it in a country where she can use “green steel,” which is manufactured without fossil fuels. If she succeeds, she’ll be working in a new slice of the shipping sector—one that’s far smaller than the world of container ships and bulk carriers, but one with a clearer path toward zero emissions. The C.E.O. of Dykstra, Thys Nikkels, told me that, with souped-up sails and turbines that can charge batteries, it’s already possible to build a speedy ship with a small footprint. “On a sailing yacht, that’s quite feasible,” he said. “But it hasn’t been done on a commercially operated cargo vessel.”

There’s at least one other direction in which cargo ships could innovate: up. “The higher you go, the higher the wind velocity,” Mikael Razola, the technical director at Oceanbird, a Swedish company affiliated with the shipping company Wallenius Marine, told me. Oceanbird researchers have used lidar imaging to map wind pressure from the surface of the ocean to an altitude of nearly seven hundred feet. The company has designed wings for a Ro-Ro ship, set to launch next year, that will be outfitted with six towering wing sails that reach more than one hundred and thirty feet into the air. The wings will be paired with a special lightweight hull that is aerodynamic and reduces drag. The company claims that the design will reduce the ship’s emissions by a striking sixty per cent. But the trade-off for that efficiency is speed: on existing routes, the car carrier with sails will take days longer than other ships.

In February, I opened my laptop and beamed into a factory outside of Shanghai, where workers were hurrying to build WindWings for Cargill’s fleet. A representative of Yara Marine Technologies, which is leading the installation, had agreed to a virtual tour of the factory on the condition that I refrain from quoting the “cameraman”—a factory worker who walked me around the facility with his phone. As it turned out, the language barrier was big enough that my guide communicated mostly through gestures. He started his tour by pointing his phone at a simplified diagram of the wings, which looked like the instructions for some ikea furniture. A mast—basically, a metal tube with arms—would be fitted with panels to catch the wind; this assembly would sit on a swivelling base that could turn the wings around. The ikea vibes ended there. When my guide pointed his phone up, I saw the huge steel frame of a WindWing waiting to be filled with hydraulic piping and wiring for sensors, which will detect air pressure.

The guide walked me to a welding platform, where workers scurried around a mast that had been tipped onto its side. Laid horizontally, the steel frame turned into a kind of enormous hallway, with eight or ten feet of headroom for the welders who worked inside it. As I watched a man in white coveralls climb into the base of one of the masts, its scale sank in. The man looked like an action figure. The tour continued to a nearby dock, where the masts would be fitted onto ships. The wings would be so immense that they would block the sight lines across the deck, so, rather than navigating with the naked eye, the crew would depend on digital cameras.

One chapter in “Trade Winds,” De Beukelaer’s book about his voyages on the Avontuur, is titled “Ship Earth.” The planet, he writes, has something in common with a seagoing vessel. Earth is always at risk of a new emergency, and its inhabitants have little choice but to work together with finite resources. He quotes Ellen MacArthur, a British sailor who once set a world record for the fastest round-the-world voyage on a solo sailboat. “Your boat is your entire world,” MacArthur later said. “What we have out there is all we have. There is no more.” After retiring from sailing, in 2010, she created a foundation committed to creating a circular economy, which aims in part to eliminate waste and climate pollution.

De Beukelaer told me that when wind waylaid the Avontuur in the Gulf of Mexico, the crew agonized about dwindling supplies and looked for unconventional ways to use what they had. They tried reinforcing a sail with glue. They scoured the deck with a thermometer, looking for places where they might try solar cooking. When that failed, the bosun fashioned insulation pads for their cooking pots, which stretched out their limited supply of gas. At the end of their six-month voyage, the crew of the Avontuur published a joint statement. “We have learned—by stitching a patch on a torn sail, splicing together a frayed rope, being creative with limited resources—that nothing is ever truly broken,” they wrote. “Solutions and innovations abound when your whole world is contained within a steel hull.” 

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News round-up, April, 26, 2023

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Most read…

A new front in the water wars: Your Internet use

In the American West, data centers are clashing with local communities that want to preserve water amid drought

WP By Shannon Osaka, April 25, 2023

Eyes on the prize: Lula’s outbursts won’t deter EU from chasing Mercosur deal

Brazilian leader’s erratic geopolitics are testing the nerves of EU trade negotiators.

POLITICO EU BY CAMILLE GIJS AND SARAH ANNE AARUP, APRIL 25, 2023 

Belgium's De Croo: 'It's time for Europe to move away from a purely national approach on energy'

Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, who is hosting a summit of North Sea countries in Ostend on Monday, promotes coordinated development of renewables

LE MONDE By Jean-Pierre Stroobants(Brussels, Europe bureau) ,  Published on April 24, 2023

Who are the candidates for the 2024 US presidential election?

There are already seven candidates vying for the Democratic and Republican nominations, including frontrunners Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

Le Monde with AFP, Published yesterday at 11:27 pm (Paris)

Inside Biden’s Renewed Promise to Protect South Korea From Nuclear Weapons

President Biden’s emphasis on America’s willingness to defend South Korea is a striking admission that North Korea’s arsenal is here to stay

NYT By David E. Sanger and Choe Sang-Hun, April 26, 2023

France to continue subsidizing electricity bills until 2025

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire announced the extension as the country's electricity providers continue to suffer the effects of Russia's war in Ukraine.

Le Monde with AFP, TODAY

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Andrés Gluski, CEO of energy and utility AES Corp

How can strategic investment achieve both economic growth and social progress?… What is the role of renewable energy and battery storage in achieving the goals of the low-carbon economy?…

The AES Corporation President Andrés Gluski, Dominican Republic Minister of Industry and Commerce Victor Bisonó, and Rolando González-Bunster, CEO of InterEnergy Group, spoke at the Latin American Cities Conferences panel on "Facilitating Sustainable Investment in Strategic Sectors" on April 12 in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

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Today's events

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Today's events 〰️

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Image: By Germán & Co 

A new front in the water wars: Your Internet use

In the American West, data centers are clashing with local communities that want to preserve water amid drought

WP By Shannon Osaka, April 25, 2023

When Jenn Duff heard that Meta, the parent company of Facebook, wanted to build yet another data center in Mesa, Ariz., she was immediately suspicious. “My first reaction was concern for our water,” Duff said. The desert city of half a million residents was already home to large data centers owned by Google, Apple and other tech giants, and Duff, a city council member, feared for the city’s future water supply.

“It’s not like we’re sitting fat and happy in water,” she said. “We’re still constantly looking at the drought situation.”

Mesa is only one of many cities and towns in the West wrestling with the expansion of water-guzzling data centers. For years, data centers have come under scrutiny for their carbon emissions. But now, as a “megadrought” continues to ravage the Southwest and the Colorado River dwindles, some communities charge that the centers are also draining local water supplies.

In The Dalles, Ore., a local paper fought to unearth information revealing that a Google data center uses over a quarter of the city’s water. In Los Lunas, N.M., farmers protested a decision by the city to allow a Meta data center to move into the area.

In a small Dutch town, a fight with Meta over a massive data center

More than 30 percent of the world’s data centers are located in the United States; the power required to run those centers already accounts for about 2 percent of the nation’s electricity use. As the data storage requirements of the planet escalate — and as water becomes scarcer because of climate change — these operations may attract greater scrutiny.

It’s common to think of the stuff of digital life — the photos, the videos, the webpages, the e-books, the reams and reams of data — as somehow lighter than air, existing in “the cloud” or zipping along global wireless networks. The reality, however, is much more concrete. The dozens of zettabytes of data produced every year (a zettabyte is a gigantic unit of data, equal to about 250 billion DVDs) are increasingly stored in thousands of data centers around the world, where massive servers keep the internet afloat.

Those servers require a great deal of energy and produce a great deal of heat. Without adequate cooling, the servers can overheat, fail or even catch fire. Companies can either use traditional air conditioning to cool the servers, which is expensive, or use water for evaporative cooling. The latter is cheaper, but it also sucks up millions of gallons of water. A large data center, researchers say, can gobble up anywhere between 1 million and 5 million gallons of water a day — as much as a town of 10,000 to 50,000 people.

According to a Virginia Tech study, data centers rank among the top 10 water-consuming commercial industries in the United States, using approximately 513 million cubic meters of water in 2018. Much of that water use comes from electricity use — coal, nuclear and natural gas plants take water to operate, and hydropower also consumes water — but about a quarter is due to using water for direct cooling.

The researchers also found that a lot of data centers operate where water is scarce.

Part of the problem is that tech companies put many of these centers in areas where power is cheap and low-carbon — such as Arizona or other states with plentiful solar or wind power — to help meet their own climate targets. Water in those regions is scarce. Meanwhile, areas where water is plentiful, like in the East, have higher-carbon sources of power.

“You have to think about how much of the western United States is water-stressed,” said Landon Marston, a professor of water resources engineering at Virginia Tech and one of the study’s authors. California, for example, has at least 239 data centers; desert Arizona has at least 49.

Ben Townsend, Google’s global head of infrastructure and water strategy, said there is a trade-off between using more water for cooling, thus saving precious drops, and using more energy for cooling through traditional air conditioning, which emits more greenhouse gases. The right combination depends on where the center is located.

Compared with agriculture and urban demands, data centers take up a small proportion of the West’s water. But in small towns and rural areas, the proportion can seem much larger, and spark conflict. In The Dalles, Google was embroiled in a 13-month legal fight to keep the water usage of its local data centers private. Eventually, the company disclosed that its data centers now consume more than 25 percent of the town’s supply. Google then became the first company to publicize its data centers’ water usage worldwide.

John DeVoe, adviser for the environmental group WaterWatch of Oregon, worries that data centers in The Dalles are taking away precious water that could be used to help support species in nearby wetlands and rivers. “It’s an already difficult situation where too much water is promised to too many interests,” DeVoe said. “And now you have a new use coming in and saying, ‘Hey, we want our share too.’”

In the nearby Cascade Locks, Ore., residents are also pushing back against a proposed data center that they worry will raise electricity rates and suck up precious water.

The good news is that data centers’ efficiency has improved dramatically over the past decade or so. In the mid-2000s, Marston said, researchers projected that data center electricity use would expand to take up huge proportions of the world’s electricity demand. But while data centers’ workloads increased fivefold between 2010 and 2018, their electricity consumption only increased 6 percent.

Still, as the world lives more and more online, data storage requirements are climbing. Newsha Ajami, director of urban water policy at Stanford University’s Water in the West center, said even if data centers’ water use is relatively small, the region’s long-term megadrought means every use is up for debate. “We have really limited amounts of water,” she said. “Every drop counts.”

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Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country

…Armando Rodríguez, vice-president and executive director of the company, talks to us about their projects in the DR, where they have been operating for 32 years.

More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

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Image: Germán & Co by Shutterstock

Eyes on the prize: Lula’s outbursts won’t deter EU from chasing Mercosur deal

Brazilian leader’s erratic geopolitics are testing the nerves of EU trade negotiators.

POLITICO EU BY CAMILLE GIJS AND SARAH ANNE AARUP, APRIL 25, 2023 

BRUSSELS — The European Union might have been put out by the latest anti-Western antics of Brazil's maverick president, but that's not going to deter it from pushing ahead to conclude a trade deal with Latin American countries that’s been in the making for decades. 

The EU is on a charm offensive as Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva tours Portugal and Spain — part of a courtship that seeks to mark progress on a deal with the Mercosur trading bloc at a major EU-Latin America summit in Brussels in July.

Lula's behavior of late has hardly helped the cause: He had been due to welcome European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen a couple of weeks back, but instead flew to China. There, he railed against the West in general, and the United States in particular, calling on Washington to "stop encouraging war” in Ukraine. Lula's comments triggered a storm of criticism from Washington and Brussels, amid concern that that the West had lost the Brazilian leader just months after he returned to power.

But in the corridors of power in Brussels, diplomats say the public acrimony won’t be enough to derail the crucial trade deal.

“Obviously, it is important to push back strongly against any comments that would look to question the realities of the war in Ukraine, wherever they come from," said one EU diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to freely discuss sensitive topics. “However, the EU doesn’t take such big decisions based on issues like this. Mercosur is an important long-term strategy.”

Europe sighed with relief after Lula won reelection last year to lead Brazil — which with its GDP of $1.6 trillion is the region's largest economy — hoping this would put an end to the tumultuous years under far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro.

Lula is being hosted on his Iberian tour by two of the staunchest supporters of the EU-Mercosur agreement. On the Portugal leg of the visit, he signed a dozen business deals. He was due to attend a business forum in Madrid on Tuesday before meeting Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on Wednesday.

Won't let you go

“Now that Brazil is back, we won't let Brazil go,” said Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa after meeting with Lula. “Brazil can also always count on Portugal as a spearhead in the work we must continue to complete the EU-Mercosur agreement.”

Madrid, for its part, aims to strengthen the EU’s economic ties with Latin America during its turn at the helm of the Council starting in July.

“Lula will find [it] hard to explain his position in EU capitals, but the finalization of the EU-Mercosur association agreement will continue — and other issues, like agriculture or the environment, rather than Ukraine, will become the real stumbling blocks,” said Oscar Guinea from Brussels-based think tank ECIPE.

Support in the EU for Mercosur is not, however, unanimous: France and Austria are among the countries that expressed skepticism on the proposed trade deal at a summit of EU leaders last month. Their longstanding pushback is motivated by concerns over deforestation in the Amazon as well as fears of a surge in agricultural imports.

Securing an accord with the Mercosur countries — Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay — thereby winning a market of over 260 million people would be a welcome boost for Brussels, which is ramping up so-called values-based trade with like-minded partners around the world to cut the EU's trade dependency on countries like Russia and China.

Intensified talks between EU and Mercosur negotiators are scheduled in the coming months in the hopes of touting significant progress on the deal at the July summit.

But trip-ups could still jeopardize the deal. Chief negotiators were supposed to meet in person in Buenos Aires last week, but the visit was canceled at the last minute. The Mercosur side still needs to formulate its counterproposal to the EU’s sustainability side-letter, which is a key condition laid down by EU trade chief Valdis Dombrovskis for closing the deal.

Balancing act

The EU is keen to point out that it's not the only entity with its eyes set on Latin American markets.

“If we don't negotiate that agreement ourselves, the Chinese and other powers will come in and do it,” said a senior EU official who was not authorized to speak publicly on the topic.

China is now Brazil’s No. 1 trading partner; it was a sign of the new geopolitical pecking order that Lula decided to visit Beijing earlier this month rather than host von der Leyen in Brasília.

While in Beijing, Lula made clear that he doesn’t see the world as Washington does. 

“Every night I ask myself why all countries have to base their trade on the dollar,” Lula said, adding that Brazilian-Chinese ties would be crucial to building “new geopolitics.”

In Portugal over the weekend, the Brazilian leader stressed the so-called neutral stance of his country on the war, and said that he didn’t want to “please anyone”; just “build a path for peace in Ukraine.”

Lula’s statements “are perceived in different ways in Europe and in Latin America and in Brazil,” pointed out Lucia Ortiz from the nongovernmental organization Friends of the Earth Brazil. She added that Lula’s comments stress his willingness to engage Brazil in “a diversity of relationships in terms of trade, cooperation with different states, more multilateralism.”

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking ahead of the July summit.

The agreement “will give us a stronghold, not just from a trade point of view [but] from a geostrategic point of view, into that region,” the senior EU official said. “If we don't manage to conclude this agreement — well, others are waiting. And the Chinese are already formally or informally voicing their interest to conclude [an] agreement.”

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Image: Belgium's Prime Minister Alexander De Croo speaks during a plenary session of the Chamber at the Federal Parliament in Brussels on April 20, 2023. NICOLAS MAETERLINCK / AFP

Belgium's De Croo: 'It's time for Europe to move away from a purely national approach on energy'

Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, who is hosting a summit of North Sea countries in Ostend on Monday, promotes coordinated development of renewables

LE MONDE By Jean-Pierre Stroobants(Brussels, Europe bureau) ,  Published on April 24, 2023

Flemish liberal Alexander De Croo, 47, has been leading a seven-party Belgian coalition government since 2020. On Monday, April 24, he is to host a summit of North Sea countries in Ostend with representatives of France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Denmark, Netherlands, Norway and Luxembourg. The European Commission will also take part.

What is the objective of this meeting?

The primary goal is to move from announcements to action, and from innovation to industrialization, in the field of renewable energy. This field is now of geostrategic importance. The nine countries concerned must agree on the objectives to be achieved, the standardization and the interconnection processes. It is time for Europe to use all the advantages of its size and to move away from a purely national logic in the field of energy.

Did the war in Ukraine accelerate this project?

The conflict has obviously turned energy policy into a major geopolitical issue. And, furthermore, securing energy infrastructure has become a key issue. The crisis we have experienced was caused by our dependence on fossil fuels produced by a country with which we have a fundamental disagreement. Exploiting Europe's technological leadership is the only way to protect ourselves against exorbitant price increases: Renewable energy is one of our best weapons for this. In my country, which has a small maritime area and only 67 kilometers of coastline, it covered almost a quarter of consumption in February.

The North Sea energy infrastructure has apparently already been the target of Russian espionage...

Yes, and Belgium is, more generally, a central location for political and military decision-making. We are aware of this special role. In particular, we plan to double the number of our intelligence services during this legislature in order to safeguard all our institutions and those based here. The recent exposure of the scandal of alleged corruption in the European Parliament by foreign states is a case in point. Like other countries, we have already expelled Russian diplomats.

Ukraine is demanding more resources and the translation of European commitments into action, particularly with regard to weaponry. Is the European Union procrastinating so as not to show its differences?

The unity that we have displayed displeases Russia, which did everything it could, long before the war, to try to break it. And it cannot be denied that our Ukrainian partner has a tendency to push us to go further, which means that we sometimes take the time to think about aligning our positions. There may of course be differences between us, but we can be proud of the action we are taking and will take in the long term. It is understandable that President Volodymyr Zelensky is calling for more weapons faster. But we must constantly find a balance between his demands and our own security and strategic imperatives. This is not easy.

Do you believe in the possibility of a negotiated solution to this conflict?

My hope is that this war will end as soon as possible and any ending includes the element of negotiation. But it is understandable that Ukraine does not consider negotiation when it has lost a large part of its territory. Let us not forget, on the other hand, what history teaches us: wars sometimes end because of unforeseeable events.

The conflict has upset the balance between Europe, the United States and China. How does your country position itself?

My priority is the affirmation of a common, clear European position, without constant reference to others. The European Union is a world leader in all areas except the military. This is an area in which it is being remobilized, however, and this should lead to a rebalancing within NATO. The transatlantic relationship remains essential in my view, and we share fundamental values with the US, not with China.

The balance between China and Taiwan is delicate. I think it must be respected and if it is disturbed, the Europeans should react.

One of the problems facing Europe and Belgium – especially in Flanders, where the far right is on the rise – is getting people to stick to a political project. Do you have any remedies for this?

The financial crisis, the pandemic, the energy crisis and the climate-related crises have led to the collapse of our certainties, the migration issue has fueled extremist discourses, and our societies are complex. But do we believe that authoritarian regimes offer better results than democratic states in terms of mutual respect, prosperity and solutions? Democratic countries do not wage war. As for the disaffection of public opinion, for me, it is a motivating factor. The coalition that I lead will show in the coming year, before the elections, what it is capable of. We have 400 days left to provide answers and concrete solutions.

With a surge of the extreme right in Flanders, and of the extreme left in Wallonia, will your country play out a new and prolonged crisis in 2024 once again?

This country cannot afford to engage in another round of institutional debate while the world moves on. Our priorities are to get our public finances in order, increase employment and maintain an innovative industry. Anything else would be a waste of time.

But in Flanders, nationalist parties are claiming that Belgium will not escape its problems without a new major negotiation between its communities...

It is a simplistic discourse that leads them to hide behind a supposed impossibility not to act. They talk about the risk of blockage, whereas their goal is precisely to organize this blockage.

I know France well and I have a good perception of the French protest fiber, which sometimes leads the population to oppose things that, from a foreign point of view, do not seem staggering. And then they find solutions.

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Image: / US President Joe Biden boards Air Force One at the Delaware Air National Guard Base in New Castle, Delaware, on January 15, 2023, en route to Atlanta, Georgia. BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI / AFP/ Editing by Germán & Co

Who are the candidates for the 2024 US presidential election?

There are already seven candidates vying for the Democratic and Republican nominations, including frontrunners Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

Le Monde with AFP, Published yesterday at 11:27 pm (Paris)

With the two candidates from the United States' previous election now campaigning for the next one, the 2024 US presidential election could be a rematch of 2020. Former Republican President Donald Trump has been in the running since the fall, while current Democratic President Joe Biden announced on Tuesday, April 25 that he would run for reelection.

With just over a year and a half to go before the election set for November 5, 2024, the number of primary candidates for the two major US parties keeps getting bigger. In any case, the Biden and Trump candidacies appear, for the time being, to be the strongest. For the Democrats, there doesn't appear to be a credible alternative to Biden while on the Republican side, Trump, although somewhat weakened, is still the man to beat.

Below, Le Monde gives an overview of the profiles of the seven declared candidates, and of two others who could potentially change the odds on the Republican side, more than five hundred days before the election.

Among Republicans

Donald Trump, the outrageous ex-president with a myriad of legal problems

Aged 76, the 45th president of the United States (2016-2020) officially declared his candidacy on November 15, 2022. Surrounded by investigations into his financial affairs, his pressuring of election officials in Georgia during the 2020 election and even his management of White House archives, he is throwing himself headlong into his new election campaign, regularly decrying "a witch hunt" against him. He recently became the first former president to face criminal indictment.

While still very popular with many parts of the American public, his new campaign effort could be stymied within the Grand Old Party itself, where dissenting voices have been growing since 2020.

His age – he will be 82 at the end of his term if elected in 2024 – is also seen as problematic, along with his repeated outbursts that, over time, have grown tiresome to some conservative voters. In the absence of a strong opponent, he remains the top-polling Republican for the moment.

Nikki Haley, a former Trump loyalist who advocates change

The former governor of South Carolina (2011-2017) and former US ambassador to the United Nations (2017-2018) was the first Republican to officially enter the race for the presidential nomination against Trump on February 14 at a rally in Charleston, South Carolina.

At 51, the self-assured conservative was a loyal ally of the US president, whom she served as chief of staff for two years. However, she has decided to take a step back and present herself as an alternative to Trump.

In her announcement speech, she called, among other things, for generational change. She is also banking on potential interest from minority voters, as her party is dominated by white male figures. She offers a certain sophistication in terms of appearance and speaking that sets her apart from the more virulent Trump supporters in Congress.

Ron DeSantis, the main challenger, not yet announced

Many skeptical Republicans are pinning their hopes on the possible candidacy of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who, at only 44 years old, is seen as the rising star of the hard right. He could be the most serious challenger to Trump in the Republican camp but has not yet announced his candidacy.

In 2018, the former naval officer was narrowly elected to lead the southern US state after receiving an endorsement from Trump, whose ideas he shares – although at times he is critical of his excesses. Since then, he has distanced himself and gained in popularity by repeatedly making ultra-conservative strides on education and immigration.

"I've only begun to fight," he said in early November, after his comfortable re-election to the top job in his state, which fueled speculation. However, a formal announcement of candidacy is not expected before the summer.

Mike Pence, Trump's former right-hand man, expected to announce

After years of unwavering loyalty to President Trump, his former vice president, Mike Pence, changed his tune after the assault on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021, when the former president publicly pressured him to not certify the results of the 2020 presidential election.

The 63-year-old evangelical Christian, a fervent opponent of abortion, now seems determined to enter the race for the White House. He is traveling across the country, regularly speaking in states that could make a difference in the Republican primary.

While he has not yet formally announced his candidacy, he said he would make his final decision within "weeks, not months," with an announcement expected "well before the end of June," according to an interview with CBS on April 22.

The 'minor' candidates: Vivek Ramaswamy and Asa Hutchinson

Vivek Ramaswamy, a 37-year-old multimillionaire entrepreneur and author, has become known for his "anti-woke" positions and his strong conservative stance. In particular, he denounced what he calls a "national identity crisis" in the United States. He announced his candidacy on February 21 on the set of FoxNews, the show of the conservative channel's recently departed star anchor, Tucker Carlson.

Former Arkansas governor (2015-2023) Asa Hutchinson, 73, who has been a candidate since April 2, is one of the few Republican elected officials who have dared to openly criticize Trump, particularly during the 2020 election. The conservative former governor has a strong anti-abortion stance and signed a law banning abortion, even in cases of rape or incest, in his state in 2021.

Among Democrats

President Joe Biden, candidate for a second term at 80

After months without any real suspense, Biden officially announced that he is running for a second term on Tuesday, April 25, in a video published across his social media accounts. The current American president, already the oldest who has ever held office, would complete his second term at the age of 86 if re-elected in 2024. A point that raises concerns and is especially used as a political argument by his Republican opponents, who seize on every opportunity to criticize his sometimes slurred speech, public gaffes or moments of confusion.

Nevertheless, Biden has tried to be reassuring, presenting himself, since his inauguration, as dynamic and resilient while not hesitating to prove his "good health" through medical check-ups.

In this new campaign, Biden is betting above all on continuity, repeating his desire to restore the "dignity" of the "forgotten" working class America, part of which Trump has been able to seduce. He is counting in particular on his favorable economic record, as well as on his initiatives in the areas of employment, health care and education to achieve re-election. He is also the defender of individual rights and freedoms for all, including women and minorities, and presents himself as a bulwark for American democracy.

While Democrats have been waiting for him to officially declare his candidacy, no serious candidate has emerged to challenge the incumbent's leadership internally.

The 'minor' candidates: Robert Kennedy Jr. and Marianne Williamson

Robert Kennedy Jr., the son of former Attorney General Robert Kennedy and nephew of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, declared his candidacy for the Democratic nomination at a rally in Boston, Massachusetts, on Wednesday, April 19. The 69-year-old environmental lawyer is a controversial figure, and for good reason: since 2005, he has been known as an activist and spokesperson for vaccine conspiracy theories, linking autism to one of their components.

Marianne Williamson, 70, re-entered the race for the 2024 Democratic Party nomination on March 4 after briefly running in the previous presidential election. A best-selling author of books on spirituality and personal development, she is best known for being Oprah Winfrey's spiritual advisor and is regularly noted for her lyrical rants about the power of "love." During her few months of campaigning in 2019-2020, she had advocated for the creation of a State Department of Peace, promoted questionable healthcare practices and denounced Trump's success as a "symptom" of America's malaise, among other things.

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Image: Germán & Co

Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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Image: A South Korean news program displaying a North Korean missile test.Credit...Lee Jin-Man/Associated Press

Inside Biden’s Renewed Promise to Protect South Korea From Nuclear Weapons

President Biden’s emphasis on America’s willingness to defend South Korea is a striking admission that North Korea’s arsenal is here to stay

NYT By David E. Sanger and Choe Sang-Hun, April 26, 2023

*David Sanger has covered the North Korean nuclear program since the late 1980s. Choe Sang-Hun covers South Korean politics and security

WASHINGTON — In the four years since President Donald J. Trump’s leader-to-leader diplomacy with Kim Jong-un of North Korea collapsed after a failed meeting in Hanoi, the North’s arsenal of nuclear weapons has expanded so fast that American and South Korean officials admit they have stopped trying to keep a precise count.

North Korea’s missile tests are so frequent that they prompt more shrugs than big headlines in Seoul.

So when President Biden welcomes President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea to the White House on Wednesday, only the second state visit of Mr. Biden’s presidency, there will be few pretenses that disarming North Korea remains a plausible goal.

Instead, American officials say, Mr. Biden’s most vivid commitment to Mr. Yoon will focus on what arms control experts call “extended deterrence,” renewing a vow that America’s nuclear arsenal will be used, if necessary, to dissuade or respond to a North Korean nuclear attack on the South.

The emphasis on deterrence is a striking admission that all other efforts over the past three decades to rein in the Pyongyang’s nuclear program, including diplomatic persuasion, crushing sanctions and episodic promises of development aid, have all failed. It is also intended to tamp down a growing call in South Korea for its own independent arsenal, on the very remote chance that North Korea would make the suicidal decision to use a nuclear weapon.

The North’s arsenal will hardly be the only topic under discussion during Mr. Yoon’s visit. He and Mr. Biden will also celebrate the 70th anniversary of the alliance between their countries, commitments for more South Korean investment in manufacturing semiconductors and plans to bolster Seoul’s always-fraught relationship with Japan.

But the rapid expansion of North Korea’s capabilities is a subject of perpetual mutual concern for both countries. At a recent security conference held by the Harvard Korea Project, several experts said they believed Mr. Kim’s goal was to approach the size of Britain’s and France’s arsenals, which hold 200 to 300 weapons each.

Mr. Biden and Mr. Yoon are expected to hold out the possibility of pursuing a diplomatic solution toward what a succession of administrations have called the “complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” But the North, administration officials say, has declined to respond to a series of public and private messages from Mr. Biden and his aides.

And what seems irreversible now is North Korea’s entrenched and advanced program.

With China expanding its arsenal to 1,500 weapons by around 2035, according to Pentagon estimates, and Russia threatening to use tactical weapons in Ukraine, “this is not an external environment in which it’s easy to have a conversation with North Korea,” said Victor Cha, a professor at Georgetown University who directed policy toward the North during the George W. Bush administration. “They look around their neighborhood and they say, ‘I don’t think so.’”

Mr. Trump vowed “fire and fury like the world has never seen” when North Korea greeted his presidency with missile launches; he ultimately tried the innovative approach of direct diplomacy with Mr. Kim. He emerged at one point predicting that Mr. Kim would begin disarming within six months and declaring at another that the North was “no longer a nuclear threat.” The arsenal just kept growing.

On Friday, North Korea’s foreign minister, Choe Son-hui, repeating a line that has been uttered by her government frequently in recent months, said the North’s status “as a world-class nuclear power is final and irreversible.”

Few experts believe the shift in rhetoric or the threats about first strikes indicate a greater willingness by the North to employ nuclear weapons. The response would be devastating. But gone are the days when American officials thought that the arsenal was a bargaining chip, something to be bartered away for trade deals, or for the string of hotels that Mr. Trump said America would help build on the North Korean beaches.

There was a mistaken belief, said Joseph S. Nye, who oversaw one of the first intelligence estimates of North Korea for the U.S. government, “that they would try to cash in their chips and get something” for the nuclear weapons. But rather than developing the country, he said at the Harvard conference, the North’s highest goal was “to preserve the dynasty,” and that meant holding on to the arsenal, and expanding it.

North Korea’s new confidence in expanding the arsenal, American officials said in interviews, is partly explained by a change in the relationship with China. Previously, the United States worked with Beijing — the supplier of critical energy and trade to the North — to rein in the country. In the mid-2000s, the Chinese even hosted the so-called six-party talks — North Korea, along with Japan, Russia, the United States and South Korea — to resolve the nuclear issue. When Pyongyang conducted nuclear tests, Beijing often voted for sanctions, and imposed a few.

Now, rather than view North Korea as an unruly, angry neighbor, China has welcomed it, along with Russia and Iran, as part of what White House officials call a coalition of the aggrieved. While Chinese officials presumably fear North Korea’s nuclear tests could go awry, creating a radioactive cloud, it appears perfectly happy to have the North unsettling the United States and its allies with regular missile tests.

Pyongyang’s most recent tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles — including one powered by solid fuel, which makes it quick to roll out of hiding and launch — suggest that North Korea can now almost certainly reach American territory, even if its ability to hit specific targets is imprecise. And over the past year, the North has enshrined its nuclear capability in its laws and started talking about its first-strike capabilities, rather than casting its arsenal as purely defensive.

On March 27, North Korea also released photos of Mr. Kim inspecting Hwasan-31, a small standardized nuclear warhead kit that can be mounted on its various nuclear-capable missiles and drones.

If the module was a real thing, the photos mean that the North is showing off an ability to mass-produce standardized nuclear warheads, said Hong Min, an expert on North Korean weapons at the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul. Mr. Kim has also called for mass-producing nuclear warheads for an “exponential” increase in the country’s nuclear arsenal. Last month, he ordered his government to step up the production of weapons-grade nuclear materials.

South Korean officials said that some of the North’s claims, like the purported capabilities of its underwater drones and supersonic missiles, were exaggerated. The reaction in Washington and Seoul has been to vow to strengthen their alliance — made easier by the fact that Mr. Yoon takes a far more hawkish view of how to deal with the North than did his predecessor, Moon Jae-in, who visited Mr. Biden in May 2021.

So the two leaders are expected to speak at length, publicly, about “extended deterrence,” with Mr. Biden offering more regular, visible visits of nuclear-armed submarines and aircraft to South Korea, bolstering the recently reinstated and expanded joint military exercises. (The exercises were variously suspended and scaled down under Mr. Trump.)

Kim Tae-hyo, a deputy national security adviser for Mr. Yoon, said that a top agenda item at the summit was how to boost South Korean confidence in Washington’s commitment to protect its ally with its nuclear umbrella. But Korean officials say that is more dependent on their confidence in the sitting American president — and whether, in the midst of a North Korean attack on the South that employed tactical nuclear weapons, Washington would be willing to take the risk to enter nuclear combat.

Mr. Biden’s words at a news conference on Wednesday will be picked apart for what they may, or may not, say about his determination to take the risks of nuclear engagement.

A new cyberinitiative will also be announced: The North funds the nuclear program with thefts of cryptocurrency and attacks on central bank reserves, and the South, though it rarely discusses it, has developed a skilled offensive cybercorps loosely based on the U.S. Cyber Command.

Outsiders will also be looking for signs of temporary or permanent damage from the leaks of Pentagon and C.I.A. documents in recent weeks that made clear the United States was listening in on top South Korean national security officials as they debated whether to send artillery rounds to Ukraine. The revelation was highly embarrassing for Mr. Yoon, because it suggested an absence of trust by his biggest ally.

But officials say they believe Mr. Yoon will move past it, celebrating cultural ties with the United States and booming investment by South Korean companies in semiconductor plants.

There is one thing South Korean officials say they will not ask for: a return of American tactical nuclear weapons to their country. They were withdrawn in 1991.

Mr. Yoon’s aides say they do not want them back.

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Image: Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire arrives at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) headquarters in Washington, DC, on April 12, 2023. STEFANI REYNOLDS / AFP/ Editing by Germán & Co

France to continue subsidizing electricity bills until 2025

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire announced the extension as the country's electricity providers continue to suffer the effects of Russia's war in Ukraine.

Le Monde with AFP, TODAY

The French government will continue subsidizing electricity bills into 2025 as prices suffer from Russia's invasion of Ukraine and part of the country's nuclear reactor fleet remaining offline, the finance minister said on Friday, April 21. With bills still "very high" compared to late 2021, "I'm giving us two years to end" electricity subsidies by early 2025, Bruno Le Maire told broadcaster LCI – a day after vowing to slash France's debt and deficits with cuts to public spending.

State-owned energy firm EDF produced its lowest amount of electricity in 30 years last year, as many nuclear reactors – the heart of France's energy system – have been taken offline due to corrosion discovered in emergency cooling systems. Energy prices have also been mounting across Europe from the throttling of the flow of Russian gas since Moscow attacked Ukraine last year.

Increases in electricity bills have been less sharp in France thanks to government subsidies, at 4% in 2022 and 15% this year – at a projected cost of €45 billion in 2023. But Le Maire said there was "no longer a need to keep up" subsidies for gas, as prices have fallen back, vowing to end them this year.

The finance minister had on Thursday said it was time to cut public spending to rein in annual budget deficits and France's overall debt, one of the highest burdens in the 27-member European Union.

Both figures had swollen from Paris' "whatever it takes" response to the coronavirus crisis and the energy price surge. "It's vital to speed up debt reduction" between now and the end of President Emmanuel Macron's second term in 2027, Le Maire insisted in an interview with regional daily Courrier Picard.

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News round-up, April, 25, 2023

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Most read…

The Climate Solutions We Can’t Live Without

The climate crisis is full of interconnected problems—but some are more connected than others. A former energy secretary, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, lamented at the time, "We are a major superpower with a third-world electrical grid."

NEW YORKER By Daniel A. Gross, April 24, 2023

Geopolitical tensions are a new obstacle to restructuring the debt of poor countries

China has become the largest creditor for low-income countries. Finding agreements to reduce the debts of nations in severe difficulty requires a consensus among creditors – but they all have different strategies.

Le Monde by Julien Bouissou Published yesterday at 7:06 pm (Paris)

Floating wind power gains traction but can it set sail?

In 2023 will determine just how successful this is if the next decade is to see the acceptance of floating offshore wind and its rise into a leading market.

REUTERS By Nina Chestney and Susanna Twidale

Argentina's lithium pipeline promises 'white gold' boom as Chile tightens control

According to Benjamin Gedan, head of the Latin America program at The Wilson Center, "Argentina's lithium sector has grown through a decentralized, pro-market strategy." In contrast, Bolivia's lithium sector "repeatedly stopped as a result of heavy governmental control."

Reuters By Lucila Sigal, Today

Putin ally: We are probably on verge of a new world war

MOSCOW, April 25 (Reuters) - An ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that the world was probably on the verge of a new world war and the risks of a nuclear confrontation were rising.

Reuters

American takeover of French nuclear firm raises concerns in Paris

French government looks to prevent France-based Segault from falling under US ownership via a takeover deal.

POLITICO. EU BY GIORGIO LEALI, APRIL 21, 2023

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Andrés Gluski, CEO of energy and utility AES Corp

How can strategic investment achieve both economic growth and social progress?… What is the role of renewable energy and battery storage in achieving the goals of the low-carbon economy?…

The AES Corporation President Andrés Gluski, Dominican Republic Minister of Industry and Commerce Victor Bisonó, and Rolando González-Bunster, CEO of InterEnergy Group, spoke at the Latin American Cities Conferences panel on "Facilitating Sustainable Investment in Strategic Sectors" on April 12 in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

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Today's events

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Today's events 〰️

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Image: Germán & Co by Shutterstock

The Climate Solutions We Can’t Live Without

The climate crisis is full of interconnected problems—but some are more connected than others. A former energy secretary, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, lamented at the time, "We are a major superpower with a third-world electrical grid."

NEW YORKER By Daniel A. Gross, April 24, 2023

The biggest blackout in U.S. history began on a warm Thursday afternoon in August, 2003. In the span of seven minutes, it spread to at least eight states and the Canadian province of Ontario, an area in which some fifty million people lived. In New York City, elevators froze between floors. One woman in midtown walked down eighteen flights of stairs, collapsed, and could not be resuscitated. Transit workers hustled thousands of panicked passengers out of dark subway tunnels. That evening, the city’s skyline was dark; in satellite photographs, a shadow appeared to have fallen across swaths of the Northeast.

Immediately, people theorized about the origins of the breakdown. Canadian officials blamed power plants in New York State; New York officials argued that the blackout had begun somewhere west of the Ontario power system. But neither of these hypotheses could fully explain why thousands of miles of electrical wires had suddenly gone dark. “We are a major superpower with a third-world electrical grid,” Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico, a former energy secretary, complained at the time. Representatives for utility companies pointed specifically to overtaxed transmission lines, which carried power between different parts of North America. “If there had been more lines available at the time that this event occurred, it’s possible they could have absorbed the load and kept the failure from spreading,” one observed.

“We’ve got excess power in upstate New York, but there’s no way to get it to New York City because of the bottlenecks,” another said.

A joint U.S.-Canada report ultimately concluded that the outage had likely originated with some overgrown trees in northern Ohio. On warm days, the metal in wires tends to heat up and expand, and, that afternoon, a warm line sagged into a tree branch. This tripped the line and caused a short circuit to ground; the local utility company wasn’t alerted because its alarm system was broken. So many other power lines were close enough to capacity that the rerouted electricity overloaded and tripped them, and, by 4:06 p.m., power could no longer flow to the south of the state. Instead, it went northwest, to Michigan, where it overloaded more lines; to the east, a cascade of failures extended all the way to Massachusetts and New York. By 4:13 p.m., hundreds of power plants were shutting down. The blackout inflicted billions of dollars in economic damage, and a study later found that it contributed to about a hundred excess deaths.

In any complex system, there are points of special weakness. Problems in those places cause many more problems. Those weaknesses, however, can also present opportunities: strengthen the right spots, and everything gets easier. More than a year before the blackout, a Department of Energy report addressed to President George W. Bush had identified fifty places in the eastern U.S. where a power surge could overwhelm overtaxed lines. “These bottlenecks,” the authors wrote, “increase the risk of blackouts.” The upside was that power companies and government agencies could focus their efforts on the weakest links. But the report also described the obstacles to this rational course. A decade earlier, utilities had proposed adding a power line between West Virginia and Virginia—a connection that could make a “cascading outage” across the eastern U.S. less likely. At the time, the project was still waiting for final approval from state regulators and the U.S. Forest Service. (It was approved several months later, and then it took an additional three years to construct.)

The 2003 Northeast Blackout has something to teach us about the challenge of climate change. Right now, the planet is getting warmer, and unprecedented heat waves, floods, and fires are claiming lives and livelihoods. There’s hardly any time left to pivot away from fossil fuels and toward clean power sources like wind and solar. And, in this effort, there are weak points—problems that are causing many more problems.

One such area is the grid itself. There still aren’t enough lines connecting windy, sunny places to locales that need the most electricity; meanwhile, the grid is so delicately balanced that many clean-energy projects now wait about four years, in an “interconnection queue,” simply to be plugged in. The grid has become a bottleneck in the fight to protect the climate. Other bottlenecks can be found in our daily lives and our global economy. We will need to swap out our dirty stoves and heaters for cleaner ones—but we can’t make these kinds of upgrades without training more electricians and plumbers. We will need to drive more electric cars—but we can’t power them until we can responsibly mine and recycle enough lithium for the batteries. We need to get our methane emissions under control—but it’s difficult to plug the leaks without new tools to show us where the gas is coming from. There’s a general principle at work here: if we’re quick to find and fix the bottlenecks, progress is possible. If we can’t fix them, we face a breakdown.

Afew years ago, a report funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation investigated the prototypical bottleneck: the traffic jam. Historically, Americans have blamed traffic on a lack of capacity—“not enough lanes” or “too many cars.” As a result, the authors argued, we have often tried to “build our way out” by widening entire highways at enormous expense. But bad traffic often starts with a local logjam—for example, at a single place where three lanes narrow into two—and then cascades across the system. This means that the government doesn’t need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on major highway projects. Instead, it can spend, perhaps, a million dollars to widen a bottleneck with an additional lane. Better yet, it can do what the Texas Department of Transportation did to a bottleneck on U.S. Route 183, in North Austin: spend fifty-five thousand dollars to restripe the road, so that two lanes become three. “If it was this easy and this cheap, what took you so long?” one local asked, when the traffic dissipated.

Bottlenecks, according to the report, are often the places where targeted efforts can make the most difference. Turn this lens onto the energy system and new insights may come into view. In many parts of the U.S., it’s clear from the line to join the grid that there’s an abundance of wind and solar and battery projects. For that reason, a million dollars might be better spent on electrical-system upgrades than on new subsidies to incentivize clean-energy projects. A subsidy primarily benefits the project that receives it, but even a small improvement in the interconnection queue could benefit all the projects that are waiting in line. Likewise, if you’re in the mood to badger your lawmakers about something, consider badgering them about whichever government agencies are standing in the way of new transmission lines. On a national level, the Biden Administration could staff up federal agencies that review permits, such as the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the U.S. Forest Service; the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which already approves regional natural-gas pipelines, could be empowered to approve regional transmission lines. It’s also possible to find routes around the bottlenecks: it’s sometimes argued that clean-energy projects shouldn’t pool their electricity on a rickety grid in the first place, and should instead power local microgrids, such as university campuses or apartment complexes.

The theory of bottlenecks could amount to a hopeful strategy for supercharging the fight against climate change. The basic principle is to look for the sources of gridlock in the system, and to focus on restoring flow before worrying about individual cars. A functional citywide composting system is worth far more than a few isolated piles of food scraps; similarly, a new car-charging station, in a neighborhood where it’s hard to find one, could cut emissions more than any one person’s pledge to drive less. These structural changes will not come easily, but they can help us focus our efforts. A city or state that wants to spur rooftop solar should look for where the longest lines are forming: if solar panels are piling up in warehouses because customers can’t afford them, subsidies might help; if those who’ve bought panels are waiting months for an someone to hook them up, the government could consider launching a free certification program for solar installers, or a clean-energy vocational scholarship through a local trade school. And, if the longest lines are for permits at city hall, then maybe it’s time to hire more office workers. “An hour lost at a bottleneck is an hour lost for the entire system,” Eliyahu M. Goldratt, a business consultant and process theorist who authored several novels about management—among them “It’s Not Luck,” “Necessary but Not Sufficient,” and “Isn’t It Obvious?”—once wrote.

Over time, if clean-energy investments are successful, the bottlenecks will move. After America has trained a million new tradespeople, we might find ourselves waiting on solar companies to build new factories. When the interconnection queue shrinks to one year, it might be time to badger your legislators about wind and solar projects, not wires. The same logic can also be applied to fossil-fuel infrastructure, but in the opposite direction. One argument for protesting against oil and gas pipelines is that they’re bottlenecks. This is also why climate activists were so disappointed when the Biden Administration approved ConocoPhillips’s sprawling Willow oil project, in Alaska: red tape might have been enough to keep that oil in the ground.

Other breakthroughs have the potential to cascade across large sectors of the economy. If shipping companies succeed in decarbonizing cargo ships, some of the dirtiest vehicles on earth will get a little less dirty, and the carbon footprint of virtually every consumer will go down. A small advance in cooling technology, like a cheaper heat pump or a superefficient air-conditioner, will be multiplied by the billions of people who will need one as the planet warms. And, given that many machines, from heat pumps to cars, will be in service for decades to come, a dollar spent on research and development is probably worth a lot more today than years from now. Of course, pessimistic scenarios flow from these same principles, too: even a step in the right direction may be meaningless if a bottleneck later stops you in your tracks. “An hour saved at a non-bottleneck is a mirage,” Goldratt warns.

Not so long ago, coverage of the climate focussed on the small signs that big changes were coming. The trees were blooming a few weeks early; the butterflies had moved north; the sand on the beach was washing away. These stories were necessary but not sufficient. Nowadays, we are more likely to report that the trees are burning and the butterflies are dead. When the crisis is in the present tense, as it is now, and the window for halting it is slamming shut, all we can aim for is action. If this decade is our last best chance to avert the worst consequences of climate change, how should we spend it?

In this week’s digital issue, inventive and passionate people try to solve a hard problem—maybe the hardest problem—in surprising ways. They look for bottlenecks and try to alleviate them. Because the fight against climate pollution is hamstrung by the difficulty of detecting emissions, they set out to launch a satellite that can essentially catch polluters red-handed. Because enormous solar farms often can’t be constructed without the buy-in of local people, they imagine new models that can win community support. Because the melting of certain ice sheets will have outsized consequences, they try to figure out if it’s possible to save some. These stories don’t aim to bear witness or raise awareness. They start from the premise that the planet does not care whether we care—only whether we act, and act quickly, in useful places.

The interventions considered in these stories reveal something about the architecture of our global problem. Here’s how the pipes and walls and wires fit together; here are the doorways you can walk through; here are the places that can catch fire, and the extinguishers that can put those fires out—and the exits, when all else fails. If a building’s weakest link is its single exit, it’s unwise to begin by widening the upstairs hallway. We can build a second exit. We can look for better ways to wire, and for materials that will not burn, and for walls that could become doorways. We can find the fixes that make other fixes possible. 

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Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country

…Armando Rodríguez, vice-president and executive director of the company, talks to us about their projects in the DR, where they have been operating for 32 years.

More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

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Image: Germán & Co by Shuttersstock

Geopolitical tensions are a new obstacle to restructuring the debt of poor countries

China has become the largest creditor for low-income countries. Finding agreements to reduce the debts of nations in severe difficulty requires a consensus among creditors – but they all have different strategies.

Le Monde by Julien Bouissou Published yesterday at 7:06 pm (Paris)

The debt that most threatens rich countries is not so much theirs as that of poor countries. At least 54 countries are over-indebted or nearly over-indebted. If nothing is done to lighten their burden, the situation could deteriorate and resemble that of the 1980s and 1990s. The consequences are well known: rampant inflation, riots, political instability and stunted development. The widening gap between rich and poor could add to geopolitical tensions in an already unstable world.

Debt is not just an abstract, painless string of numbers. It is because of debt that subsidies on food purchases in Pakistan have been removed, that the Laos health budget has been cut, and that 56,000 Sri Lankan children suffer from severe malnutrition. The United Nations Development Programme has calculated that the 25 most indebted countries now allocate 20% of their tax revenues to debt repayment.

The new context of geopolitical fragmentation complicates debt restructuring. The profile of creditors has changed in recent decades. The members of the Paris Club (22 countries, including the United States, France and the United Kingdom) held 39% of the debts of low-income countries in 1996, whereas they hold only 11% of the total today. New countries have emerged, primarily China, which has become the largest creditor for half of the low-income nations. According to the AidData lab at the US University of William & Mary, it has lent $843 billion (€770 billion) in the past 20 years. This reconfiguration "adds to debt restructuring difficulties," reads an International Monetary Fund (IMF) study published in April, as "non-Paris Club creditors have often provided debt treatment to debtor nations on a case-by-case basis."

Fragmentation

China's debt is no longer just a problem for poor countries but for the whole world. For restructuring to take place, all creditors must agree. This is where the difficulties begin. As Kristalina Georgieva, the head of the IMF, explained in early April, geopolitical fragmentation "will make it harder to resolve sovereign debt crises, especially if key official creditors are divided along geopolitical lines."

Western countries, especially the United States, accuse Beijing of slowing down negotiations. In February, at a meeting of G20 finance ministers in Bengaluru, India, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen called on China to participate more fully "in meaningful debt treatments for developing countries and emerging markets in distress." Among the points of disagreement, Beijing is said to require that international financial institutions, like the IMF and the World Bank, participate in restructuring efforts by waiving part of their debts and renouncing their status of "preferred creditor" which allows them to be repaid before others.

But Western countries are opposed to this, arguing that the World Bank could see its rating downgraded and no longer be able to lend to countries at low rates. Beijing adds that it is being asked to apply rules that were put in place without it 30 years ago, and points the finger at the responsibility of private creditors. This is not wrong: the latter hold 19% of the outstanding debt of poor countries, compared to 8% 25 years ago. It is no longer a few banks that only needed to be brought together to obtain an agreement on a restructuring plan, but much more numerous bondholders who are reluctant to make concessions.

Survival

The IMF adds that "new debt instruments used by low-income countries tend to be increasingly risky and difficult to restructure," especially when they are not reflected in public accounts or are backed by commodities or infrastructure. A common restructuring framework was put in place by the G20, in order for China and the Paris Club to find an agreement, but without success. As economist Brad Setser wrote in a blog post published by the US think tank Council on Foreign Relations, "no framework for coordination among official creditors can work if official creditors don't have enough in common to work together."

While creditors are negotiating, countries that are close to or already in default, such as Tunisia, Ghana and Egypt, are fighting for their survival. Zambia has been negotiating a deal on its debt for two and a half years now. Restructuring forces countries to cut spending and resort to emergency loans at high rates. "I don't think we'll have many defaults, because it's very expensive for governments," said Masood Ahmed, president of the US-based think tank Center for Global Development, in January.

A payment default risks downgrading the sovereign rating and increasing the cost of borrowing on the markets for governments. "The payment of unsustainable debt service will lead to development crises rather than debt crises," concluded Ahmed. In other words, a deep crisis that will result from cuts in social and infrastructure spending by governments. If they don't come to an agreement as soon as possible, China, the United States and Europe will bear a heavy responsibility for the delay in development in countries that are home to one-fifth of the world's inhabitants.

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Image: Hywind Tampen floating wind farm structures are being assembled at the Wergeland Base in Gulen, Norway, June 7, 2022.  Ole Jorgen Bratland – Equinor/Handout via REUTERS/ Editing by Germán & Co

Floating wind power gains traction but can it set sail?

In 2023 will determine just how successful this is if the next decade is to see the acceptance of floating offshore wind and its rise into a leading market.

REUTERS By Nina Chestney and Susanna Twidale

LONDON, April 24 (Reuters) - After a bumper year for floating offshore wind farm tenders, the nascent industry is poised for explosive growth in the coming decade as countries strive to cut their carbon emissions.

But it's unlikely to be all plain sailing.

Rising costs and supply chain bottlenecks have hit some projects and without investment in infrastructure to launch the vast turbines and tow them to sea, hopes of harnessing the full power of the ocean's winds to hit climate targets could be dashed, industry experts say.

"If the next decade is to see the adoption of floating offshore wind, and its growth into a leading market, the work that we do in 2023 will dictate just how successful this is," said Felipe Cornago, commercial director offshore wind at BayWa (BYWGnx.DE), which is developing a wind farm off Scotland.

About 80% of the world's offshore wind power potential lies in waters deeper than 60 metres, according to the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC), meaning floating turbines will be vital for some countries with little space left on land and steep coastal shelves to decarbonise their power sectors.

Winds are stronger and more continuous further out to sea so floating turbines can generate more power than those fixed to the seabed near to shore - and they less visible from the coast, reducing the risk of resistance from local communities.

By the end of 2022, plans for about 48 gigawatts (GW) of floating wind capacity around the world were in place, nearly double the amount in the first quarter last year, according to Fitch Solutions, with European companies driving the expansion.

Since then, new tenders have been launched in Norway and more are planned this year - but so far there are only just over 120 megawatts (MW) in operation worldwide.

Consultancy DNV forecasts that about 300 GW will be installed by 2050, representing 15% of all offshore wind capacity, but wind turbine makers are already struggling to meet rising demand due to rising inflation and raw material costs.

BOTTLENECKS AND COSTS

The largest project to date, the 88 MW Hywind Tampen project being developed by oil and gas company Equinor (EQNR.OL) off Norway, was meant to be fully commissioned in 2022 but delays due to some steel parts not being of sufficient quality for four of the towers has pushed the start to later this year.

Last year, oil company Shell (SHEL.L) and state-owned Chinese energy company CGN dropped a plan for a floating wind project off France's Brittany coast, citing inflation and supply chain problems among other reasons.

GWEC said supply bottlenecks for turbines and components could continue or even be compounded by incentives in the United States for low-carbon energy deployment, as well as increased demand in China, Europe and emerging markets.

As most commercial-scale floating wind farms are only expected to be up and running from 2030, there could be time for such problems to be resolved, said Francesco Cacciabue, partner and CFO at renewable energy investor Glennmont Partners.

At the moment, technology costs for floating wind are far higher than for fixed turbines but companies hope to reduce those costs sharply as larger projects come on stream.

According to DNV, the average levelized cost of energy (LCOE) - which compares the total lifetime cost of building and running a power plant to its lifetime output - for floating wind was about 250 euros per megawatt hour (MWh) in 2020, compared with around 50 euros/MWh for fixed turbines.

But by 2035, the LCOE for floating wind is expected to fall to about 60 euros/MWh.

"For floating, the expectation is that it will sell power at a higher price than fixed-foundation offshore wind for several years while it industrialises and gets to a point where it can compete on a like-for-like basis," said Jonathan Cole, chief executive of Corio Generation, part of Macquarie's (MQG.AX) Green Investment Group.

OFFSHORE PLANS

Norway's Equinor kick-started the floating wind industry after two of its oil and gas engineers saw a marker buoy they thought could be a structure to hold a floating turbine.

The company installed a pilot floating turbine in 2009 and has seen costs fall by 70% from the demonstration project to its 30 MW Hywind Scotland project. It expects a further 40% cost reduction for Hywind Tampen.

"It's about having larger turbines which are more efficient offshore," said Steinar Berge, head of floating wind at Equinor.

"The journey going forward is more reliant upon putting full-scale projects into action because then you will see much more innovation and investments in the supply chain which will drive costs further down," he said.

Still, higher costs in the medium term haven't dulled investor appetite for tenders. For some countries, floating wind might be the best option due to their seabed conditions, such as Japan, South Korea and the west coast of the United States.

"These are huge areas with the energy demands to match their huge populations, and they have a mandate to decarbonise as quickly as possible," said Cacciabue at Glennmont Partners.

The United States wants to develop 15 GW of floating offshore wind capacity by 2035 and its Wind Shot research and development programme hopes to cut the cost to $45/MWh by 2035.

Japan wants to install up to 10 GW of offshore wind capacity by 2030, and up to 45 GW by 2040, including floating. It plans to set a specific target for floating wind this year. South Korea, meanwhile, is aiming for 9 GW of floating wind by 2030.

Several countries in Europe have also set targets such as Spain which is seeking up to 3 GW of floating capacity by 2030.

PORTS AND SHIPS

Floating offshore wind farms are made up of huge turbines installed on floating platforms anchored to the seabed with flexible anchors, chains or steel cables.

But at the moment, there are at least 50 designs under development, so narrowing down the concepts is important for standardisation and enabling mass production, experts say.

They believe that can be achieved, as many oil companies have significant expertise operating in deep waters such as Shell, Equinor, BP (BP.L) and Aker Solutions (AKSOA.OL) - and some are teaming up with renewable developers to bid in floating wind tenders.

For now, Equinor's Berge said one of the biggest challenges was having enough large ports to assemble the turbines and move them out to sea. Many of his peers agree.

According to a DNV survey of 244 experts, the biggest supply chain risk they identified was having enough suitable ports, followed by the availability of installation vessels.

Ports where towers measuring more than 150 m to the centre of the rotor and their giant floating bases can be manufactured and assembled are ideal - and they will also need enough access channels, berths, land areas and storage space for handling large, heavy structures, experts say.

But in many countries, such ports are sorely lacking.

Britain aims to have 5 GW of floating wind installed by 2030 but a report by the UK Floating Wind Offshore Wind Taskforce, said 34 GW could be installed by 2040 if ports were upgraded.

It said up to 11 ports will need to be transformed into hubs to enable the roll-out of floating offshore wind at scale - along with investment of at least 4 billion pounds ($5 billion).

Britain's Crown Estate will launch a tender for 4 GW of floating wind in the Celtic Sea off Wales this year but said the area had the potential to produce more than 20 GW.

While Britain wants to lead the world on floating wind, some experts say South Korea could be the real winner given its existing ports and large-scale engineering capacity.

"South Korea will be commercial the quickest," said Cole at Corio Generation, which has 1.5 GW of floating wind under development there. "People want to buy low-carbon products so how South Korea produces its electricity and how it will decarbonise is a really important thing for the entire economy."

Another issue is the lack of vessels needed to tow structures to their offshore sites, install them and connect the turbines to the onshore power grid.

"Even the largest vessels from the oil and gas industry have limited capacity for efficient installation of the latest floating wind farms," said DNV.

Reporting by Nina Chestney and Susanna Twidale; Additional reporting by Charlie Devreux in Madrid, Yuka Obayashi in Tokyo, Heekyong Yang in Seoul, Nichola Groom in Los Angeles; Editing by Veronica Brown and David Clarke

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Image: A brine pool used to extract lithium is seen at a salt flat of Cauchari Olaroz, near Susques, Argentina, November 8, 2017. REUTERS/Juliana Castilla/ Editing by Germán & Co

Argentina's lithium pipeline promises 'white gold' boom as Chile tightens control

According to Benjamin Gedan, head of the Latin America program at The Wilson Center, "Argentina's lithium sector has grown through a decentralized, pro-market strategy." In contrast, Bolivia's lithium sector "repeatedly stopped as a result of heavy governmental control."

Reuters By Lucila Sigal, Today

BUENOS AIRES, April 24 (Reuters) - In Argentina's mountainous north, a strong pipeline of lithium projects close to coming online looks set to unlock a wave of production that could see its output of the key electric vehicle battery metal as much as triple within the next two years.

The world’s fourth largest producer of the silvery-white metal sits within the so-called "lithium triangle" and has been luring investment from Canadian to Chinese mining firms with a regional and market-led model, even as a wave of resource nationalism has spread in the region.

Neighboring Chile, the region's top lithium producer, last week unveiled plans for a state-led public-private model, spooking investors. Bolivia has long maintained strict control over its huge though largely untapped resources, while Mexico nationalized its lithium deposits last year.

In Argentina, despite state energy firm YPF (YPFD.BA) starting to explore for lithium last year, the sector has largely been driven by private enterprise and regular approvals of new projects as the government has looked to bring in more export dollars through mining, a rare bright spot amid economic turmoil.

"Argentina has granted concessions to projects for the last 10 years," said Franco Mignacco, president of Argentina's Chamber of Mining Business. "That's why today we have this level of lithium investment and development and the chance of growth."

Mignacco estimated that Argentina's current 40,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate production could triple by 2024-2025 to 120,000 tonnes, which could take it past China and closer to Chile which currently produces some 180,000 tonnes per year.

That would be driven by new projects coming online on top of the two currently in production. The country has six lithium projects under construction and 15 in the advanced exploration or feasibility stage, Mignacco said.

That contrasts with Chile, where the industry is dominated by established players SQM (SQMA.SN) and Albemarle (ALB.N), with few new projects underway. In Bolivia the government only recently okayed a new project by a Chinese consortium.

Argentina's production boost would come from the expansion of the only two producing operations - U.S. firm Livent's Fénix project in Catamarca and Australian Allkem Ltd's (AKE.AX) Salar de Olaroz mine in Jujuy - both expected to double output to 42,500 tonnes in the years ahead.

These would be joined by the Cauchari-Olaroz project, owned by China's Ganfeng Lithium Co (002460.SZ) and Canada's Lithium Americas Corp (LAC.TO), which in the second half of 2023 is set to begin production with capacity for 40,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate.

'PRO-MARKET STRATEGY'

Argentina, Bolivia and Chile together sit atop half of the world's resources of the mineral under otherworldly salt flats in the high-altitude Andean plains.

But strategies for developing it are diverging.

"Argentina's lithium sector has thrived through a decentralized, pro-market strategy," said Benjamin Gedan, director of the Latin America program at The Wilson Center, adding in contrast Bolivia's lithium sector had "repeatedly stalled as a result of excessive state control."

Chile, he said, may have found a "savvy middle ground" with its public-private model, which would hand the state majority control over all new lithium projects in a nationalist shift, but would still give private enterprise a key role to play.

The wave of resource nationalism had prompted some talk amongst officials of a potential OPEC-style lithium cartel in the region, though analysts see it as unrealistic given the diverse industry models and levels of development.

Argentina, meanwhile, faces challenges including economic turmoil with high inflation and capital controls which complicate business, while the country is headed for general elections in October creating political uncertainty.

Its lithium pipeline, though, may keep the sector bubbling and even gaining ground on rivals. Overtaking neighbor Chile would be highly unlikely but some analysts were aiming high.

"Chile today produces and exports much more lithium than Argentina," said Natacha Izquierdo, analyst at consultancy ABCEB. "But if the projects we have here today come to fruition, Argentina could overtake it."

Reporting by Lucila Sigal; Additional reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Adam Jourdan and Marguerita Choy

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Image: Germán & Co

Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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Image: Deputy head of Russia's Security Council Dmitry Medvedev listens during an interview with Russian media at a residence outside Moscow, Russia, March 23, 2023. Sputnik/Yekaterina Shtukina/Pool via REUTERS

Putin ally: We are probably on verge of a new world war

Reuters

MOSCOW, April 25 (Reuters) - An ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that the world was probably on the verge of a new world war and the risks of a nuclear confrontation were rising.

"The world is sick and quite probably is on the verge of a new world war," Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Putin's powerful security council, told a conference in Moscow.

He said such a new world war was not inevitable but the risks of a nuclear confrontation were growing and more serious than concerns about climate change.

Putin says the world faces the most dangerous decade since World War Two. He casts the war in Ukraine as an existential battle with an aggressive and arrogant West, and has said that Russia will use all available means to protect itself against any aggressor.

The United States and its allies have condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine as an imperial land grab. Ukraine has vowed to fight until all Russian troops withdraw from its territory, and says Russian rhetoric on nuclear war is intended to intimidate the West into curbing military aid.

Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Alison Williams

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Image: Bruno Le Maire's quest for a French buyer might be a tough mission to accomplish | Teresa Suarez/EPA-EFE/ Editing by Germán & Co

American takeover of French nuclear firm raises concerns in Paris

French government looks to prevent France-based Segault from falling under US ownership via a takeover deal.

POLITICO. EU BY GIORGIO LEALI, APRIL 21, 2023

PARIS — France's feisty Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire has another opportunity to pick a fight with Washington as a sensitive investment screening case is about to land on his desk.

The French government wants to prevent nuclear-submarine parts supplier Segault from falling into American hands just as France and the U.S. are experiencing new tensions over the Inflation Reduction Act, a $369 billion package of green subsidies and tax breaks that Paris and Brussels slammed as a protectionist move in breach of global trade rules.

The two countries have seen an ebb and flow in tensions in recent years that reached worrying levels back in 2021, when the U.S. infuriated France by snatching away a multibillion-euro submarine contract Paris had signed with Canberra. 

Now, the American takeover of the small France-based company with less than 100 employees, which was virtually unknown to most French people until a few weeks ago, is turning into a test of France's industrial sovereignty ambitions.

Segault's current owner, Canada’s industrial valves group Velan, is being bought by American industrial machinery giant Flowserve in a takeover deal announced earlier this year. Segault supplies components for nuclear-propelled submarines built by state-owned shipbuilder Naval Group and also makes industrial valves that are used on France’s flagship Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier. If the deal goes through, Segault would become American-controlled, raising concerns in Paris' halls of power that Washington would then have access to strategic French technology. 

The deal has become a hot political issue in recent weeks, with right-wing MPs urging Le Maire to block the American buyer, and with a surprise left-wing candidate emerging as a bidder.

The government is currently “looking for a French buyer,” according to a spokesperson for France’s defense ministry, who declined to comment on offers received so far, noting that the French economy ministry has the final word on it.

Under French law, the economy ministry must be informed of the takeover of companies in strategic sectors in order to green-light or veto deals. The government confirmed that Segault's takeover falls within the scope of France’s investment screening powers and will be examined as soon as it is officially notified to French authorities.

Investment screening decisions are first assessed at the technical level within France’s powerful economy ministry, known as Bercy, but they also have a political dimension as they are ultimately taken by the economy minister himself via a decree. In the past, Le Maire has not hesitated to use his veto powers for politically sensitive cases, turning investment screening cases into political battles. In a bid to cast himself as a defender of French industrial jewels, Le Maire widened the scope of investment screening powers in 2019, during his first term.

As in many other EU countries, the scope of France's veto powers was further extended during the coronavirus pandemic, to prevent the risk that companies weakened by the crisis could be bought by foreign investors. Those new powers, which were meant to be temporary, have been repeatedly extended amid the economic crisis linked to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The Segault case is also seen as an opportunity for Paris to show its muscle.

For socialist Michel Sapin, who served several times as France’s finance and economy minister, the deal gives the government an opportunity to present itself as a defender of national gems by taking “a braggart position on re-industrialization and industrial sovereignty” that, according to him, has not been backed up by action so far. 

“We can’t deny that we have some irritants with Americans, especially the IRA in this phase,” said Macron’s ally Marie-Pierre Vedrenne, vice chair of the European Parliament’s trade committee, while noting that France’s investment screening won’t discriminate against U.S. buyers. 

But Macron's allies were also quick to insist that Paris’ efforts to take Segault away from its American buyer was not a protectionist attempt to block a U.S. investment.

“The criteria won’t be friendship or mistrust toward Washington,” said a French minister, who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, adding that “the context” should not prevent Paris from “controlling some sovereignty aspects” of the deal.  

For Vedrenne, Macron's ally in the European Parliament, "the Americans are first of all in a mindset of prior defense of their interests and we see it with this case … sovereignty is at stake so we have to be vigilant whatever the nationality [of the buyer] is, even if it is an ally, because the defense of the French interests must be examined above all.”

Despite some displays of friendship, tensions between Paris and Washington have risen at a steady pace over recent months and increased after French President Emmanuel Macron told POLITICO that Europe should not be “America’s followers” when it comes to China policy. 

Le Maire has also been particularly harsh with the U.S., accusing Washington of using Russia’s war in Ukraine to establish “economic domination” and of breaching WTO rules with its massive subsidy package, the Inflation Reduction Act. Earlier this month, he said that Europe should, much like the the U.S. and China, put first its own industrial interests and stop obeying the free-trade dogma. 

Earlier in the month, as he visited Washington, he accused "some" in the U.S. of applying double standards when it comes to trade with China. "I see that the volume of trade between China and the United States has never been so high ... we are asking Europe to give up trade that has increased between the United States and China. We don't want to be the village idiots, who get screwed and let other powers trade with China while we would no longer have the right to do so," the minister said.

Should France decide to veto the deal, Segault could be carved out from Flowserve's acquisition of Velan. However it is unclear whether the American buyer would still be interested in buying Velan without Segault.

Le Maire's quest for a French buyer might be a tough mission to accomplish.

Another former economy minister and “Made in France” champion, socialist Arnaud Montebourg urged Le Maire to block the deal earlier this month and offered to buy Segault together with the help of Pierre-Edouard Stérin, a businessman who in the past has been close to far-right former presidential candidate Eric Zemmour.

A person with direct knowledge of the file but who was not authorized to speak publicly said that it is unlikely Le Maire would back Montebourg's offer.

Elisa Braun contributed reporting.

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News round-up, April, 24, 2023

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Dear friends:

Although the human being is the result of the fusion of male and female gametes, two people are inevitably needed for procreation.  However, due to this dual nature and the fact that we build our lives within a tribe, humans are inclined to become selfish, possessive, and jealous of their territory, which takes them further away from their beginnings.

However, I have had the great fortune to have the support of human beings who are far from insignificant and who persevere in their human vocation. Today is the day of the moon; it could be just another Monday that begins the so-called "week," but this lunar day of April 24, 2023, invokes gratitude within me.  Therefore, I want to recall the philosophical writings of St Thomas Aquinas on appreciation – or "moral debt" as he called it.  From the bottom of my heart, I thank Bernerd, Juan Ignacio, Ricardo, Bredyg, Armando, Gonzalo, Madelka, Mayka, Paula, Matt, and those who remain in the inkwell for the journey of memory.

Finally, I want to share some indicators—just cold numbers—of what this blog has achieved in its short life.  We have more than 250K on Twitter and 200K on LinkedIn, and at Energy Central, we have 61K readings with a 96K reputation – reaching the number 12 spot among top influencers, all thanks to you.

I wish you the best and, above all, good health.

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Source: EnergyCentral

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Most read…

EPA plan would impose drastic cuts on power plant emissions by 2040

A long-awaited climate rule, which is sure to face legal challenges, would push plants that burn fossil fuels to use carbon-capture technology or hydrogen

WP; By Timothy Puko, TODAY

Tech Billionaires Bet on Fusion as Holy Grail for Business

Avalanche Energy, a Lowercarbon Capital venture, recently closed a $40 million Series A financing. CEO of Avalanche Energy, Robin Langtry, stated that the business focuses on fast developing and testing remote systems using equipment readily available in the marketplace, such as an ultrahigh vacuum chamber bought on eBay.

Germán & Co

Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates are among titans chasing almost Iimitless energy source

WSI By Jennifer Hiller, April 23, 2023 

Biden is running out of time to avoid calamitous debt ceiling outcomes

The GOP’s willingness to court economic disaster without major spending cuts leaves White House aides in a bind

WP, by Jeff Stein, April 22, 2023

Wall Street starts to fear a debt limit crisis

The government has until the summer to strike a deal…

WSJ By BEN WHITE, SAM SUTTON and ELEANOR MUELLER, 04/24/2023

The Battle of the Generals

A Bloody Turn in Africa's Story of Hope

Two rival generals have sparked a war that has buried hopes for a peaceful and democratic fresh start in Sudan. The activists who once brought down the dictatorship are now fearing for the future – and for their lives.

By Heiner Hoffmann und Fritz Schaap in Nairobi, Kenya, 22.04.2023

How Mexico Became the Biggest User of the World’s Most Notorious Spy Tool

A Times investigation reveals the story behind how Mexico became the first and most prolific user of Pegasus. It’s still using it, despite promising to stop.

NYT By Natalie Kitroeff and Ronen Bergman, Natalie Kitroeff reported this article from Mexico City, and Ronen Bergman from Tel Aviv. April 18, 2023

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Andrés Gluski, CEO of energy and utility AES Corp

How can strategic investment achieve both economic growth and social progress?… What is the role of renewable energy and battery storage in achieving the goals of the low-carbon economy?…

The AES Corporation President Andrés Gluski, Dominican Republic Minister of Industry and Commerce Victor Bisonó, and Rolando González-Bunster, CEO of InterEnergy Group, spoke at the Latin American Cities Conferences panel on "Facilitating Sustainable Investment in Strategic Sectors" on April 12 in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

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Today's events

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Today's events 〰️

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Image: Steam rises from Duke Energy’s Marshall Power Plant in Sherrills Ford, N.C., in November 2018. (Chris Keane/Reuters)/ Editing by Germán & Co

EPA plan would impose drastic cuts on power plant emissions by 2040

A long-awaited climate rule, which is sure to face legal challenges, would push plants that burn fossil fuels to use carbon-capture technology or hydrogen

WP; By Timothy Puko, TODAY

The Biden administration is preparing to unveil a proposal to require power plants to drastically reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions by 2040, another attempt to regulate one of the country’s biggest contributors to climate change after the Supreme Court struck down the first effort, according to three people familiar with the plans.

If implemented, the Environmental Protection Agency would set limits so stringent that fossil-fuel-burning power plants probably would have to use technology to capture their carbon dioxide emissions from their smokestacks or switch to other fuels to comply, according to the three people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a plan that is not yet public. The proposal is still under final analysis at the White House and could change before the EPA completes and announces it.

The limits could nearly eliminate emissions from fossil-fuel burning plants after the most stringent standards go fully into effect, the people said. Another source familiar with the proposal said that there will be significant cuts to emissions from these plants, but potentially not as dramatic or extreme as others have suggested.

The EPA has been planning an announcement for the coming days, but final details are in flux, and a formal proposal could be more than a week away, according to several people familiar with the planning. Turning that proposal into a final rule package would be likely to take months more, and, according to two of the people familiar with the details, many of the proposal’s most stringent standards would not take effect until the 2030s, giving industry years to come into compliance gradually.

Although its greenhouse-gas emissions have been declining, the electric-power sector remains the country’s second-largest contributor to climate change, being responsible for a quarter of such emissions nationwide in 2021, according to EPA data. That has long made power plants a top target for climate regulations, and President Biden has previously promised to eliminate their emissions by 2035.

The Supreme Court has loomed over the effort. It ruled last year that the EPA during the Obama administration had exceeded its authority by building the first attempt at such regulations around a new system to push power companies to switch fuels across their fleets, and replace coal with cleaner options. The updated rules that Biden has promised have been held up for months in part because the agency has been trying to craft them in accordance with that decision so they might survive a conservative-majority court.

The administration’s plan is to stick with rules that apply within a plant’s fence line, with limits on the amount of what each plant can emit, according to four people familiar with the effort. They will be applied through rules for new gas-fired plants, and existing gas-and-coal-fired plants, those people said.

The policy would not mandate any type of technology or fuel, according to the three people familiar with the latest details. But they said the limits it sets would be so stringent that to meet them, fossil-fuel-burning plants most likely would need to use carbon-capture technology or be capable of switching to use hydrogen, which burns without greenhouse-gas emissions.

Some of these details were previously reported by the New York Times.

“EPA cannot comment because the proposals are currently under interagency review,” agency spokeswoman Maria Michalos said in an emailed statement. “But we have been clear from the start that we will use all of our legally-upheld tools, grounded in decades-old bipartisan laws, to address dangerous air pollution and protect the air our children breathe today and for generations to come.”

What is Willow? How an Alaska oil project could affect the environment.

The agency has been issuing a raft of new rule proposals just in recent weeks as it attempts to fulfill Biden’s big climate promises before he faces reelection. The administration spent most of its first year pushing its climate agenda through legislation, and now that Congress approved nearly $370 billion in new climate spending, Biden officials are trying to finish accompanying regulations before Republicans have a chance to take power and undo them.

Fossil-fuel advocates — including several Republican-led states — have vowed to fight these moves in court. And if Republicans take majorities in Congress, they could also use the Congressional Review Act to repeal any regulations that weren’t finalized within 60 legislative days of it being implemented.

Many of the new proposals aim to reduce air pollution and greenhouse-gas emissions from the power sector. Just last week the EPA announced the strictest restrictions ever on emissions for cars and trucks, the country’s largest source of planet-warming emissions. It has also promised later this year to finish a proposed rule on the oil and gas industry’s emissions of methane, which traps roughly 85 times more heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.

Researchers who model emissions say that this collection of regulations is essential for meeting Biden’s commitment to cut total U.S. emissions in half from 2005 levels by 2030. Last year’s climate spending bill, called the Inflation Reduction Act, would get the country on course to reduce emissions by up to 42 percent by that target date. The executive actions on power plants, vehicles and methane would take it most of the rest of the way, another 6 percentage points of reduction, according to analysis released last month by the Rhodium Group.

But environmental groups are concerned the specifics of the EPA’s power-plant proposal may not be strong enough, and are planning to push for faster timelines, according to two people familiar with the response granted anonymity to speak about plans that aren’t yet public. Several leading environmental groups declined to analyze the proposal Saturday, saying they would need to wait until the EPA makes details public.

Urgency will be a top concern, and a 2040 timeline does not match Biden’s initial promise to zero out the sector’s emissions by 2035, said John Paul Mejia, national spokesman for the Sunrise Movement. He also noted concerns about any plan that relies on carbon capture and hydrogen technology, which are opposed by environmental justice groups that advocate for minority and poor communities and say those technologies are ways to sustain historical polluters like the oil and gas industry.

“This is a step in the right direction, but it needs to be much more stringent,” Mejia said. “This proposal should be in line with the scale of ambitions that were promised to us.”

Fossil fuels — almost exclusively gas and coal — still accounted for roughly 60 percent of the country’s electricity last year, according to Energy Department data. Utilities have been moving to zero-emissions sources, mostly wind and solar, retiring a lot of fossil fuels, especially coal, and that trend shows signs of slowing. After retiring about 11 gigawatts of coal-fired capacity annually from 2015 to 2020, the industry plans to shutter 8.9 gigawatts this year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

To help them reduce their emissions, Congress has provided subsidies to develop carbon-capture technology and make it more profitable. A federal tax credit provides as much as $180 per metric ton for businesses that use it. The Inflation Reduction Act also boosts by 70 percent the tax credit for the troubled legacy carbon capture technologies oil and gas companies have traditionally used to get more oil out of the ground, increasing it to $60 per ton.

Changes like those factor into EPA rulemaking. If the technology needed to comply is cheaper and more efficient, the agency can use that in its rulemaking to raise standards on the basis that it should be easier for businesses to meet them.

The agency is also factoring in flexibilities for plants, according to two people familiar with the details. Targets will vary at each plant based on size and use, and some coal-fired plants scheduled to retire in the coming years may not have to meet the new standards at all, the people said.

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Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country

…Armando Rodríguez, vice-president and executive director of the company, talks to us about their projects in the DR, where they have been operating for 32 years.

More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

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Image: Billionaires, clockwise from lower left, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Marc Benioff, Vinod Khosla and Peter Thiel. PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY EMIL LENDOF/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL; PHOTOS / Editing by Germán & Co

Tech Billionaires Bet on Fusion as Holy Grail for Business

Avalanche Energy, a Lowercarbon Capital venture, recently closed a $40 million Series A financing. CEO of Avalanche Energy, Robin Langtry, stated that the business focuses on fast developing and testing remote systems using equipment readily available in the marketplace, such as an ultrahigh vacuum chamber bought on eBay.

Germán & Co

Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates are among titans chasing almost Iimitless energy source

WSI By Jennifer Hiller, April 23, 2023 

Sam Altman became a tech sensation this year as the CEO of OpenAI, the artificial-intelligence startup that seems pulled from science fiction. 

But Mr. Altman, who has been among Silicon Valley’s most prominent investors for more than a decade, has placed one of the biggest bets of his career on a company that might be even more futuristic: a nuclear-fusion startup called Helion Energy Inc. 

He is one of a number of tech founders and billionaires who hope to harness the process that powers the sun and stars to deliver almost limitless energy. Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, Bill Gates and Marc Benioff are among those betting that the decadeslong goal of building fusion reactors is now within years of being reality.

Mr. Benioff calls fusion a “tremendous dream.”

“It’s the holy grail. It’s the mythical unicorn,” said Mr. Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce Inc., who invested in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology spinout called Commonwealth Fusion Systems, which aims to create compact power plants. Mr. Gates is also an investor. 

Fusion has long been seen as a clean-energy alternative to sources that burn fossil fuels and release greenhouse gases. Other technologies and applications being developed in the race for fusion power include powerful magnets, better lasers or radiation therapy for cancer research.

Fusion, Mr. Benioff added, “has no limits if you can get it to work.”

Developers mostly in the U.S., Canada and Europe have been riding a wave of momentum since August 2021, when scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory came close to achieving more energy in a fusion reaction than was put in with lasers, a goal known as net gain.

Many grew to believe that a breakthrough was imminent. It came in December when the national lab achieved net gain for the first time.

Nuclear fusion occurs when two light atomic nuclei merge to form a single heavier one. That process releases huge amounts of energy, no carbon emissions and limited radioactivity, but companies would have to sustain fusion reactions and engineer a way to turn that energy into net power. 

The old saw about fusion is that it is a mirage years away and always will be. It is a long-shot bet even with the high-risk world of venture funding. 

Mr. Benioff said he was persuaded by Vinod Khosla, the Sun Microsystems co-founder who was an early investor in private fusion, historically the province of academia and national labs.

Mr. Khosla’s interest hinged on the ability to build a large high-temperature superconducting electromagnet. He spent 15 months on due diligence and hired three teams to evaluate the design before investing. 

He thinks that several fusion designs should be tested and is investing in another firm, Realta Fusion, a spinout from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Even if one of them can work, the planet is much better off is how I look at it,” he said.

As an investor, Mr. Khosla sees fusion this way: “Financially either you lose one times your money or you can make a thousand times your money,” Mr. Khosla said. “That’s the math of fusion.”

Industrial firms, major oil companies and sovereign-wealth funds are backing efforts along with the Department of Defense, which is in search of a toaster-sized power system for satellite propulsion.

“There’s a reasonable probability at least one, maybe two companies will demonstrate fusion conditions in this decade,” said Ernest Moniz, who is the chief executive of the nonprofit research group Energy Futures Initiative and a former U.S. Energy Secretary.

Mr. Moniz, a physicist, said that improvements in large-scale machine learning have sped experiments and helped several companies achieve or approach the extreme temperatures and pressures needed for fusion reactions.

Firms and their backers see parallels with recent advances in artificial intelligence, which also requires colossal amounts of computing power to run models.

Mr. Altman, whose company OpenAI is behind the viral artificial-intelligence chatbot ChatGPT, has put $375 million into Helion.

Everett, Wash.-based Helion uses a technology called magneto-inertial fusion and aims to prove it can produce net electricity next year. 

At Helion, Mr. Altman is more than a passive investor. “I send people for him to vet and interview,” said Helion Chief Executive David Kirtley.

Some Helion employees have started using ChatGPT to see how it can speed up engineering work, Mr. Kirtley said. Other investors, including Mr. Thiel’s Mithril Capital, have previously joined calls to help Helion negotiate with suppliers.  

The Fusion Industry Association, based in Washington, D.C., has tracked more than $5 billion in private funding, with seven firms raising at least $200 million. Around 75% of fusion fundraising has happened since 2021, according to PitchBook.

A company called Lowercarbon Capital, founded by early Twitter and Uber venture investor Chris Sacca, launched a fusion fund last year with investors that include endowments, corporations and family offices.

Clay Dumas, a founding partner, said Lowercarbon Capital was persuaded that fusion was at a turning point because regardless of the design, firms were notching technical milestones.

“Growing access to computational power and breakthroughs in materials science were accelerating their progress faster than anyone expected,” Mr. Dumas said.

Lowercarbon Capital’s investments include Avalanche Energy, which has closed a $40 million Series A round. Avalanche Energy CEO Robin Langtry said the company is focused on small systems it can build and test quickly with commercially available equipment, including an ultrahigh vacuum chamber purchased on eBay.

“We want to build the smallest fusion reactor in the world. Then we’re talking about a project that’s maybe tens of millions of dollars, not billions, and you could actually do it with a small team,” he said.

Air Force Maj. Ryan Weed, a plasma physicist and test pilot with the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit, which contracted with the company, said that testing such an approach 20 years ago might have cost $50 million, but much of the work can now take place on a computer at minimal cost.

The DIU wants a nuclear power source that could provide electrical power out of a device the size of a toaster oven or microwave some time in the next five years, said Mr. Weed, who pointed to a need for small satellite propulsion systems in cislunar space, the area between Earth and the moon.

Do you think fusion will be the next business breakthrough? Join the conversation below.

Achieving fusion is so difficult that firms are developing other products as they test machines. That intellectual property has value independent of fusion, said Adam Rodman, founder of the hedge fund Segra Capital Management LLC, which invested in Canadian company General Fusion. Mr. Bezos, founder of Amazon Inc., has also backed General Fusion.

Technologies will eventually need to show a path to profit and not just scientific breakthroughs.

“A lot of these are not businesses—they are tech developers,” said Barbara Burger, who is former president of Chevron Technology Ventures and holds several advisory and board positions. “Until you have revenue, you don’t have a business.” 

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Image: President Biden listens during a climate forum at the White House on Thursday. The administration faces a looming deadline to find a way to get Congress to raise the U.S. debt limit. (Elizabeth Frantz for The Washington Post)/ Editing by Germán & Co

Biden is running out of time to avoid calamitous debt ceiling outcomes

The GOP’s willingness to court economic disaster without major spending cuts leaves White House aides in a bind

WP, by Jeff Stein, April 22, 2023

President Biden is running out of time and options to avert an unprecedented default on the federal debt, as House Republicans make increasingly clear that they are willing to court economic catastrophe unless they secure major policy concessions from the White House.

Since Republicans took control of the House in January, Biden’s top aides have expressed confidence both privately and publicly that they can force the GOP to raise the limit on federal borrowing without even partially acquiescing to conservative demands to cut spending.

House GOP unveils bill to cut spending, lift debt ceiling. Here’s how?

But so far, that strategy does not seem have worked. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) released a plan on Wednesday that his caucus broadly backed, and GOP leaders hope to pass it in the House next week. There’s little indication yet that Republicans will break off and agree to lift the debt ceiling without conditions, as Biden insists. And attempts by the administration to enlist corporate executives to build pressure haven’t yielded much either, at least not yet.

Instead, many GOP lawmakers appear to be prepared to allow the nation to default without major spending cuts and policy changes — setting up what appears to be a choice between two outcomes that White House officials consider unacceptable.

“At this point, there is no indication whatsoever that moderate Republicans would agree to lift the debt limit with no reforms from the administration,” said Brian Riedl, a policy analyst at the Manhattan Institute, a center-right think tank. “I don’t see that happening. They would be crucified within their own caucus.”

Inside the White House, the GOP’s hardening position on the debt limit has been met with anger and frustration. Biden aides adamantly reject the idea they should agree to anything resembling the spending cuts and policy changes that McCarthy has put forward — both because they oppose the substance of the ideas and because they do not want to reward the GOP for what they regard as its efforts to take the U.S. economy hostage. Biden aides are further frustrated by claims that the GOP has a popular mandate behind it, since Republicans failed to retake the Senate and only captured the House by a handful of seats.

One person familiar with the White House’s thinking, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations, emphasized that House Republicans would be forced to go on record supporting McCarthy’s bill, which would impose new work requirements, reduce the number of Internal Revenue Service agents and block Biden’s move to cut student debt — measures the administration believes will prove highly unpopular with the American public.

Analysis: So much for that promise: Debt bill talks again done in the backroom

Biden has welcomed the possibility of negotiations with McCarthy on government spending levels — talks that could resolve the debt ceiling debate while allowing the administration to claim it is not negotiating over the nation’s spending limit. The person familiar with the White House’s thinking said “they are going to have to start having conversations on budget and spending, as the president has all along.” The president told congressional Democrats earlier this week that the administration is ready for a separate negotiation with Republicans over the budget, according to a White House statement.

“Let’s be clear about the Speaker’s position: unless the President and the Senate agree to their entire reckless agenda, they are going to crash the economy. That’s not just unreasonable — it’s dangerous,” White House spokesman Michael Kikukawa said in a statement. “The President has been clear: we must avoid default — that’s nonnegotiable — but he will gladly have a separate conversation about the budget with congressional leaders.

If Congress doesn’t increase the limit on how much the Treasury Department can borrow, the federal government will not have enough money to pay all its obligations by as early as June. Such a breach of the debt ceiling — the legal limit on borrowing — would represent an unprecedented breakdown, which economists believe could spark a global financial panic and lead to a recession in the United States.

White House aides have held numerous internal strategy meetings that have explored the potential downsides of trying to lift the debt ceiling unilaterally, without Congress, according to three people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private deliberations. Many economists believe such any such move could lead to a permanent increase in U.S. borrowing costs, because investors would demand higher interest rates for buying U.S. bonds of legally dubious status.

Mint the coin? Buy back bonds? 7 ‘gimmicks’ for dodging the debt limit.

Democratic officials have cited as a hopeful precedent the dynamics of past debt ceiling fights, in which pressure from business executives forced the GOP to lift the limit.

“If we do actually start to get close to the drop dead date, and you can’t pay the bills, I’m sure we’ll see a reaction in financial markets and people will put pressure on Republicans for trying to wreck the economy,” said Dean Baker, a White House ally and economist at the Center for Economic Policy Research, a left-leaning think tank. “If we get to that point, you’ll see them backing down.”

And yet, with as few as six weeks to go, little evidence has materialized to suggest that will happen. Financial markets have thus far shrugged off the debt ceiling drama, with almost no discernible movement even in the price of U.S. Treasury bonds. The relative calm in markets has, in turn, relieved pressure on lawmakers to act — which could increase the odds Congress fails to lift the debt limit in time.

Fiscal crisis nears as McCarthy takes debt ceiling plan to Wall Street

“I don’t think lawmakers act until they get calls from investors and others in the business community saying: ‘What are you doing?’ But we’re not hearing those voices yet, because they think lawmakers have always done the right thing and acted just in time,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics. “It’s a very dangerous drama playing out here.”

The administration’s attempts to enlist the support of business executives may also prove unsuccessful. White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients has personally asked top business leaders to advocate for a solution to the debt ceiling debate, according to two people familiar with the matter, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private remarks. But corporate America doesn’t have as much clout with the GOP as it did in the Obama years, and it’s not clear such measures will be effective with the House conservatives who nearly derailed McCarthy’s leadership bid earlier this year.

“What are we going to do, call them and say, ‘Hey, the debt limit is important?’ They know it’s important,” said one business executive who had been asked by administration officials to press the GOP on the matter, speaking on the condition of anonymity to reflect private conversations.

White House aides may have less time than they anticipated. An economic slowdown could lead to less revenue coming into the Treasury Department, which would hasten the deadline. While acknowledging the data was preliminary, Goldman Sachs analysts said earlier this week that “weak” tax collections in April suggested that the debt limit could be reached in the first half of June, earlier than initially forecast.

Biden aides want to force GOP to abandon debt limit threats

The war of words between the Democratic president and the Republican speaker of the House has become increasingly pitched — and occasionally petty.

On Wednesday, McCarthy said Biden is “giving America’s debt the Southern border treatment — ignore it and hope it goes away.” For his part, Biden is increasingly accusing McCarthy of being reckless with the credit of the United States, beholden to MAGA extremists and misleading Americans about his plan. Last month, McCarthy offered to bring “soft food” to a meeting with Biden at the White House to entice him into a confab about the debt ceiling, an apparent dig at the 80-year-old president’s age.

On Wednesday, it took Biden all of 72 seconds to get through introductory remarks before dinging McCarthy.

“I’m here in this union hall with you when, just two days ago, the speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, went to Wall Street to describe the MAGA economic vision for America,” he said, the first of five times that he’d mention McCarthy by name.

Some Democrats say House Republicans face even more political backlash in a debt ceiling breach than Biden, arguing the president is right to hammer the GOP over its proposed spending cuts. Traditionally, Democratic candidates have had low approval ratings on the economy, but a GOP-caused default could give them an opening to change that, said Celinda Lake, a pollster who worked for Biden in 2020.

“We have a huge advantage in selling this contrast,” Lake said. “If Republicans get blamed for shutting down the economy, that will change the dynamics.”

But other Biden allies point out that the economic devastation from a default could persist into next year, affecting the 2024 presidential election. Presidential approval ratings tend to be closely tied to economic performance, and the long-feared recession could materialize if the U.S. government suddenly can’t pay its bills.

“The two endpoints on the spectrum of outcomes — the full GOP policy wish list on the one hand, or a catastrophic default on the other — are both totally unacceptable to them,” said one person in communication with senior White House officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to frankly describe private conversations. “But no progress has been made on making sure there’s a resolution that’s between those two options.”

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Image: How Wall Street investors react to a possible default is crucial because they’re the ones who finance the country’s enormous debt. | Bebeto Matthews/AP Photo/ Editing by Germán & Co

Wall Street starts to fear a debt limit crisis

The government has until the summer to strike a deal…

WSJ By BEN WHITE, SAM SUTTON and ELEANOR MUELLER, 04/24/2023

NEW YORK — For months, Wall Street has barely focused on the possibility that the government might default on its debt. It’s paying attention now.

As the drop-dead date to raise the nation’s $31.4 trillion debt ceiling looms with no deal in sight, traders and executives are starting to get nervous that President Joe Biden and Republicans won’t resolve the impasse until it’s too late. That’s sparked increasing concern about a potential threat that could rock markets and tilt the world’s largest economy into recession.

“There is this view in D.C. that the market isn’t freaking out enough, and that may be true to an extent,” said Alec Phillips, chief political economist at Goldman Sachs. “But I’ve been dealing almost exclusively with this issue the last few weeks, and there is actually more concern now than even in 2011,” when Standard & Poor’s downgraded U.S. debt during a similar standoff. “It’s just that nobody knows when it’s going to happen or what to do about it.”

How Wall Street investors react to a possible default is crucial because they’re the ones who finance the country’s enormous debt by buying the securities that Treasury sells to fund the government. If they shy away from the market, interest rates could skyrocket, squeezing the government, businesses and consumers.

That’s why their level of confidence can serve as the strongest force to drive Washington partisans to make a deal.

Schumer: GOP risks ‘economic disaster’ over debt ceiling

For most of this year, many on Wall Street assumed that lessons learned from the 2011 crisis — including voters furious over declines in their retirement accounts as stocks plunged — would prevent such an event from happening again. That faith is starting to fade.

“Debt ceiling negotiations are essentially nowhere,” Brian Gardner, chief Washington policy strategist at investment bank Stifel, wrote in a note to clients. Gardner added that while a last-minute deal could certainly emerge, “the GOP’s narrow majority and the Speaker’s tenuous political position make the pathway to an agreement more uncertain than usual.”

To be clear, it’s nowhere near all-out panic. The government has until the summer to strike a deal, when the Treasury Department is likely to run out of room to keep paying the nation’s bills and servicing its existing debt.

But signs of stress are piling up, especially after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy came to the New York Stock Exchange on April 17 to make the GOP case that any hike in the borrowing limit must come with significant spending cuts. That’s something the White House and congressional Democrats say they won’t consider.

The shift from general nonchalance to rising concern can be seen in an obscure corner of the markets: the soaring cost of insuring against exposure to U.S. debt through instruments called credit default swaps, which mitigate risk for large holders of Treasury securities.

The cost of insuring against a U.S. default rose to its highest level in over a decade on Thursday as JPMorgan analysts said there was a “non-trivial risk” of at least a technical default on the government’s debt in which the nation runs out of borrowing ability for even a short period before a deal is reached.

Manchin: Holding the debt ceiling 'hostage' doesn't work

Darrell Cronk, chief investment officer of Wells Fargo’s wealth and investment management division, said his biggest worry is that the “X-Date” — the moment when emergency moves to forestall default are exhausted — gets pulled forward to early-to-mid June with 2022 tax receipts likely weak after a brutal year for markets.

Goldman Sachs researchers said they also expect a much shorter timeline due to a steep reduction in capital gains revenue. And McCarthy’s hardline position — as well as questions about whether he can unify House Republicans over any strategy at all — have amped up alarms. “People seem to be dug in a little bit more in the trenches,” Cronk said.

“People seem to be dug in a little bit more in the trenches.”

Darrell Cronk, chief investment officer, Wells Fargo wealth and investment management division

Some bank executives said they are growing more concerned about the state of play in Washington but remain unsure how to inject themselves into the debate. Speaking out would be unlikely to sway hard-line conservatives, they fear, given that such calls would probably be dismissed as special pleading by rich Wall Streeters.

So for now, they are mostly issuing anodyne statements arguing for the importance of not allowing the U.S. to default, in a bid to nudge the two sides toward a solution.

Following McCarthy’s address, congressional Republicans urged bankers to press Biden to engage with the GOP.

“Obviously, people [on Wall Street] are worried,” Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio said in an interview. “We’ll just say, ‘Look, it’s a two-party system. And Kevin McCarthy gets to make the first shot across the bow, but they need to put pressure on Joe Biden, to the extent they’re able to, to actually come to the negotiating table.’”

Rep. Warren Davidson of Ohio said he’s telling bankers that “the only way that we’re going to not default later is if we start taking corrective action now.”

“Joe Biden’s plan is to not take corrective action now,” said Davidson, a member of the House Freedom Caucus. “That’s a nonstarter. We’re not going to move his ‘no action now’ bill,” he said, referring to Democrats’ hopes of passing a “clean” debt limit hike with no spending cuts.

Democrats expressed frustration that the financial world hasn’t exerted more pressure on Republicans.

“Wall Street and business need to start getting energized and put pressure on Republicans to do what we’ve done all these years, which is pay for the debt that we incurred and not hold the American people hostage,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Senate Banking Chair Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said he was confident Wall Street would eventually speak up. “But I think that it’s telling that McCarthy went to Wall Street to talk about all this because he’s Wall Street’s guy,” Brown added. “So we’ll see.”

Meanwhile, concerns over the impact that a nasty fight over the debt limit could have on the economy are showing up on bank earnings calls.

Goldman CEO David Solomon identified uncertainty over the debt limit as a potential source of volatility during the bank’s call on Tuesday. An hour earlier, responding to a question from POLITICO, Bank of America CFO Alastair Borthwick told reporters he didn’t have much to say on the status of non-existent negotiations between the White House and McCarthy.

“Obviously, we’re all hoping that gets resolved successfully,” he added.

Citi CEO Jane Fraser said her bank believes it’s “now more likely that the U.S. will enter into a shallow recession” later this year. “The biggest unknown,” she told analysts on the bank’s recent earnings call, is “how the debt ceiling plays out.”

BlackRock Vice Chair Philipp Hildebrand warned at the Bloomberg New Economy Gateway Europe Forum on Thursday that default would undermine “a basic anchor” of the world’s financial system and “must not happen.”

“All we can do is to pray that everyone in the United States understands how important the sanctity of the sovereign signature of the leading currency, of the leading bond market, of the leading economy in the world is,” Hildebrand said.

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Image: Germán & Co

Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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Image: Fighting in Khartoum: Large parts of the city are no without electricity and water. Foto:
Abdullah Moneim / dpaREUTERS/Christian Mang/ Editing by Germán & Co

The Battle of the Generals

A Bloody Turn in Africa's Story of Hope

Two rival generals have sparked a war that has buried hopes for a peaceful and democratic fresh start in Sudan. The activists who once brought down the dictatorship are now fearing for the future – and for their lives.

By Heiner Hoffmann und Fritz Schaap in Nairobi, Kenya, 22.04.2023

A dull bang, first further away, then louder and louder. Shadin Alfadil is still in bed when she begins hearing the sounds early on Saturday morning. But she's already familiar with it from the demonstrations she has regularly been attending for more than four years now.

She has heard it immediately before fellow campaigners, friends, collapsed dead, their blood spilling out on the asphalt. She knows what gunshots sound like. And she knows all too well what they can do.

Alfadil, a young Sudanese woman with a serious face and a firm voice, reaches for her smartphone, with new messages constantly popping up on the screen. "Shots fired downtown." Or later: "Airstrikes in Khartoum." She related her story in a telephone interview with DER SPIEGEL.

Shadin Alfadil: "We had to prevail with the revolution."

It is, for now, the nadir in the history of a revolution that filled not just Sudan, but the whole world with hope. It has been four years since Alfadil first joined thousands of others on the streets of Khartoum in a death-defying act of protest. Starting in December 2018, the Sudanese wrote one of the most impressive chapters of the Arab democracy movements for their country - one which has been ravaged by massacres, famine and crises over the years. They managed to achieve what no one had believed possible: They protested until they drove dictator Omar al-Bashir from office. After 30 years of dictatorship, democracy suddenly seemed within reach. Sudan had become emblematic of what can be achieved through peaceful resistance.

Since then, though, hopes for democracy have been further and further destroyed by the country's powerful military. And now, those dreams could be buried for good in a hail of bombs.

Fighting in the Backyard

Alfadil has shifted into emergency gear. With the violence spreading, she checked her supplies of food and water on Monday. And quickly realized that she wasn't in good shape. It was still Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, during which many of the faithful eat only after sundown and with only scant supplies of food at home. "I try not to get too full so that the supplies will last for a while," she told DER SPIEGEL by phone on Monday. "We haven't had any running water since yesterday."

Alfadil speaks fluent English and works for an international organization. But none of that is of any help to her now. The fighting outside her door continues, and few in Khartoum dare to go outside. She says that one of her parents' neighbors was shot to death on Sunday.

Since the early hours of Saturday morning, Africa's third-largest country has been in a state of war. There is fighting in almost all parts of the country, with two rival generals and their armies facing off against each other. On one side is Sudan's regular armed forces, commanded by the de facto president, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. On the other is the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), under the command of his deputy Lieutenant General Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, known as Hemeti. Hemeti's forces are estimated to include around 100,000 fighters.

A Failed Transition of Power

It is a power struggle between two men, a civil war without civilians, being waged entirely by the military - but with heavy weapons, artillery and fighter jets. By Thursday, hundreds of people had already died, and thousands were injured. The Khartoum airport has been badly damaged and there are no more scheduled flights. Fighter jets circle overhead and shells are exploding in the middle of residential areas. Those who can have been fleeing the city, and the rest, like Shadin Alfadil, have entrenched themselves in their apartments and basements.

It was supposed to be a month of hope. An agreement had been signed back in December according to which Burhan and Hemeti agreed to hand over power to a civilian-led government. It was supposed to have happened on April 11.

It could have been a new attempt to finally complete the revolution. That, at least, is what people like Alfadil had hoped.

For that to happen, though, the two men would have had to reach agreement on how to combine their two forces, a step that is a key part of the agreement. Burhan wanted to integrate the RSF into the regular army within two years. But Hemeti had insisted on a 10-year transition period. The question of what the future command structure should look like also produced irreconcilable differences, as did the prospect that they could eventually be tried for crimes themselves. Out of fear of losing their own influence, the generals turned on each other.

Pressure from Abroad

It's hard to say who has the upper hand in the fighting. Sudan expert Alex de Waal, director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University near Boston, sees the army as having an advantage, at least in the short term. But therein lies another danger. "I think they will try to press their advantage and keep fighting, and the window of opportunity for negotiations will pass," he says. But winning, de Waal is certain, is something the army cannot do, at least not across the entire country.

He argues that Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, countries that wield a fair amount of influence in Sudan, need to quickly move to exert pressure. "With every day that passes without them (the regional powers) getting their act together, the dangers escalate because the conflict becomes more complex. And then it will become a long and complicated, multi-sided civil war."

Shadin Alfadil huddled in her apartment over the ensuing days as shots continued to be fired outside and artillery and fighter jets turned buildings into rubble. The life story she has to tell is one that is closely tied to her country's recent history. In telephone conversations, she spoke about her hopes for change, the myriad setbacks and her firm conviction to never give up.

A Victorious Revolution

Alfadil was there in December 2018, in her early 30s at the time, when thousands took to the streets to protest against Bashir. She didn't want to spend her whole life in an authoritarian country with rigid moral norms, oppressed by a violent leader. "We wanted to fight for freedom," she says. The protests went on for four months. Finally, on April 11, 2019, jubilation broke out and activists embraced each other on the streets when the military turned on Bashir and arrested him. "That was a moment of hope," Alfadil says. "I believed in a better Sudan." But the euphoria didn't last long. The military showed no interest in relinquishing power.

Two generals are now determining the country's fate: Burhan and Hemeti. But the power struggle currently plunging the country into chaos began taking shape behind the scenes quite some time ago. Many observers already saw Hemeti as the country's true strongman back in 2019.

His career as a brutal commander began in 2003, during the rebellion in Darfur, which saw African-descended groups there rise up against the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum. Dictator Bashir mobilized Arab youth to put down the uprising, which led to the emergence of the notorious Janjaweed militias. Hemeti became one of their most important commanders.

During the first, particularly brutal, years of the war in Darfur, several hundred thousand civilians were killed and more than 2 million people displaced. Hemeti's Janjaweed rode into villages, slaughtered the inhabitants, raped the women, robbed and looted. The International Criminal Court later issued an arrest warrant against Bashir in connection with these crimes, including genocide.

Looting, Murders and Mass Rapes

Hemeti acted brutally, but more than anything else, loyally. Bashir thus put him in charge of the newly established Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in 2013, and Hemeti took many of his old fighters with him to the new unit. The RSF went on to commit looting, murder and mass rape in a number of regions in the country. Bashir had created an uncontrollable monster.

The dictator transformed the troops into a kind of bodyguard to protect him from protests – even more importantly, though, from coup attempts by the army. Alongside the army and the intelligence service, the RSF became a third power within the Sudanese security apparatus. When revolution swept the country in 2018, Hemeti used it to his advantage, abandoning his loyalty to the dictator and baking his ouster.

When the protests continued even after Bashir's overthrow, Burhan and Hemeti finally agreed to a compromise and created a transitional council. They promised change, but activist Alfadil and her fellow campaigners didn't trust them. The protesters once again took to the streets. Hemeti quickly showed his true face. On June 3, 2019, RSF units burned down protesters' tents, shot indiscriminately into the crowd and beat up participants. More than 100 people died, with many bodies simply being thrown into the Nile River. "I was also attacked," Alfadil says. "But we didn't give up. We had to prevail with the revolution."

After months of negotiations, a council was again formed, this time called the Sovereign Council, staffed half by civilians and half by the military. Free elections were to finally to be held at the end of this transition.

A State within the State

From the beginning, though, the military part of the newly created transitional government showed little interest in actually pursuing reform: The generals were afraid of losing their power – and their access to money. Because in Sudan, the army is basically a state within the state: High-ranking military officers are often firmly established in the business world and they rake in huge amounts of money thanks to widespread corruption. Among his business interests, for example, Hemeti works together with mercenaries of Russia's Wagner Group at his gold mines.

What followed were ups and downs, a tug-of-war for power, until, on October 25, 2021, the army and the RSF staged another coup and dissolved the interim government. They were still working side by side at the time.

The old familiar pattern quickly reestablished itself: Shadin Alfadil and her fellow campaigners took to the streets, and again people died. In the end, the generals again promised a transition to civilian rule.

But in the first months of this year, tensions between the two men increased. Hemeti sought to present himself as a true supporter of democracy and the possible next leader of Sudan and forged an alliance with a coalition of civilian political parties. But Burhan apparently feared Hemeti's growing power. When the RSF moved more units into Khartoum last week, it was apparently one provocation too many.

A Humanitarian Disaster

On Tuesday, the fourth day of the war, the situation for Shadin Alfadil grew increasingly fraught. She lives alone, and her concerns began mounting. What do I do if I get caught up in it? If a bullet hits me? How long will it take before someone finds me? The power went out for hours. It was becoming increasingly clear that a humanitarian catastrophe was developing. The World Food Program has suspended its operations after three of its staff members were killed. Looting took place at the warehouses of other humanitarian organizations. Even before the conflict, more than a third of the population had been dependent on aid.

On Tuesday evening, even though a time had been agreed for DER SPIEGEL to speak to her by phone, Alfadil could no longer be reached. A cease-fire was supposedly in place to enable people to flee or obtain basic necessities, but the fighting continued unabated, and in some parts of the city, it is growing even fiercer.

Eyewitnesses have shared accounts of bodies in the streets that haven't been recovered for days, of the stench of decay, of looting RSF units.

Holding Doctors Against Their Will

Various medical organizations have reported that most hospitals are no longer in operation and that the health-care system in Khartoum is on the verge of collapse.

Some hospitals have been bombed, reports doctor Sara Mohamed, while others lack medical staff. In addition, the doctors' committee made a serious mistake, publishing the names of hospitals that were still in operation. "Shortly after that, the RSF deployed and occupied them because they didn't know how else to take care of their wounded," Mohamed says. She says a doctor friend had just managed to escape, but others were still being held.

The situation is terrible, she says. "There are no words for it. I don't know if I will ever see my family again."

On Wednesday morning, activist Alfadil finally wrote a message, apologizing for her silence. She says she sufferred a mental breakdown. Two hours later, we held a phone call, but it lasted only two minutes and 20 seconds. Her voice sounded different than it had in the previous days - filled with fear. "I can only stay on for a second," she says, "we have to escape." She said a projectile had landed in her yard and exploded, instantly killing the gardener, the guard and one of her friends. "It's so random, there are no targets here," Alfadil says.

Fleeing Khartoum

She takes her sister and her sister's mother-in-law with her, and they drove two hours south, out of Khartoum, through the fighting. But as they guided themselves to safety, fearing for their lives, other activists were already beginning to organize again. They created WhatsApp groups where people needing help can put in requests, and help is then organized for them.

Videos are circulating on Facebook showing activists spray-painting walls with antiwar graffiti. Fighting can be heard in the background. Men singing songs against military rule. The civilian resistance is back in action. Shadin Alfadil is certain: She, too, will join the protests on the streets again. "Whoever wins this war threatens to become Sudan's new dictator," she says. "And one thing is clear to us: We will never accept a dictator again. Never!"

But experts are critical. Alan Boswell, responsible for the Horn of Africa at the International Crisis Group think tank, says: "It's the absolute nightmare scenario for the transition to democracy." Boswell says the intention of the two sides at the moment is clear: "They want to resolve the conflict militarily." But Boswell believes it is highly unlikely that either side can win the war.

It seems just as unlikely, though, that they will be able to find a compromise. The two sides are also fighting each other in the crisis-ridden region of Darfur. Experts are closely watching the escalation there with great concern. "Darfur is going to become a world of hurt. We'll probably see huge devastation and really scary amounts of potential carnage there, which is where Hemeti's stronghold is," Boswell says. The potential for terrible bloodshed, he adds, is high.

Alfadil finally arrived in the southern part of the country on Wednesday night after making her way by car through the fighting. On Thursday morning, she sent two short messages on WhatsApp: "super exhausted," followed by, "It's very safe here." No shots and no bombs. It's a calm that should be prevailing across the country following agreement on a third cease-fire, but in Khartoum, it hasn't held once again. Alfadil is tired. She has no idea what to do next. She does know one thing, though: Giving up isn't an option.

*With additional reporting by Mohamed Alamin

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Image: The NSO Group, the manufacturer of Pegasus spyware, is housed in a few top floors of this building complex in Israel.Credit...Amit Elkayam for The New York Times/ Editing by Germán & Co

How Mexico Became the Biggest User of the World’s Most Notorious Spy Tool

A Times investigation reveals the story behind how Mexico became the first and most prolific user of Pegasus. It’s still using it, despite promising to stop.

NYT By Natalie Kitroeff and Ronen Bergman, Natalie Kitroeff reported this article from Mexico City, and Ronen Bergman from Tel Aviv. April 18, 2023

The Israelis had come to Mexico to clinch a major sale: The Mexican military was about to become the first client ever to buy their product, the world’s most advanced spyware.

But before they could close the deal, an argument erupted over price and how quickly the spy tool could be delivered. A Mexican general overseeing the negotiations called for a pause until later that evening, according to two people present and a third with knowledge of the talks.

“We’ll pick you up at your hotel and make sure to arrange a better atmosphere,” they recalled the general saying.

That night, a convoy of cars arrived at the Israeli executives’ hotel and took them to a new spot for the fateful negotiations: a strip club in the heart of Mexico City.

The general’s security team ordered all the other clientele to leave the club, the three people said, and the talks resumed.

It was in that dark cabaret in March 2011, among women dancing onstage and shots of tequila, that the most powerful cyberweapon in existence got its start.

The spyware, known as Pegasus, has since become a global byword for the chilling reach of state surveillance, a tool used by governments from Europe to the Middle East to hack into thousands of cellphones.

No place has had more experience with the promise and the peril of the technology than Mexico, the country that inaugurated its spread around the globe.

A New York Times investigation based on interviews, documents and forensic tests of hacked phones shows the secret dealings that led Mexico to become Pegasus’ first client, and reveals that the country grew into the most prolific user of the world’s most infamous spyware.

Mexico went on to wield the surveillance tool against civilians who stand up to the state — abuses the country insists it has stopped. But The Times found that Mexico has continued to use Pegasus to spy on people who defend human rights, even in recent months.

Many tools can infiltrate your digital life, but Pegasus is exceptionally potent. It can infect your phone without any sign of intrusion and extract everything on it — every email, text message, photo, calendar appointment — while monitoring everything you do with it, in real time.

It can record every keystroke, even when you’re using encrypted applications, and watch through your phone’s camera or listen through its microphone, even if your phone appears to be turned off.

It has been used to fight crime, helping to break up child-abuse rings and arrest notorious figures like Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the drug lord known as El Chapo.

But it has also been deployed illegally, again and again, with governments using Pegasus to spy on and stifle human rights defenders, democracy advocates, journalists and other citizens who challenge corruption and abuse.

Alarmed at how Pegasus has been used to “maliciously target” dissidents across the globe, the Biden administration in 2021 blacklisted NSO Group, the Israeli company that manufactures the spyware.

Soon after, Israel’s defense ministry — which must approve the export of Pegasus to other nations — said it would ban sales to countries where there was a risk of human rights violations.

Yet, despite ample evidence of Pegasus abuses in Mexico, the Israeli government has not ordered an end to its use in Mexico, according to four people with knowledge of the contracts for the technology.

In fact, Mexico’s military is not only Pegasus’ longest-running client, the four people say, but it has also targeted more cellphones with the spyware than any other government agency in the world.

And the spy tool continues to be deployed in the country, not just to combat crime.

After the revelations that Pegasus had been wielded against government critics tarred his predecessor, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who came to office in 2018, promised to stop what he called the “illegal” spying of the past.

He did not. Previously undisclosed tests show that, as recently as the second half of 2022, Pegasus infiltrated the cellphones of two of the country’s leading human rights defenders, who provide legal representation to the victims of one of the most notorious mass disappearances in Mexican history.

A military patrol last year in Michoacan, Mexico. The Mexican military has used spyware to track down leaders of drug cartels, but has also used it to spy on human rights defenders, a Times investigation found.Credit...Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times

The military has a history of human rights abuses, and its role in the mass disappearance has been a focus of the investigation for years. As new allegations against the military surfaced in the case last year, the two advocates were targeted by Pegasus repeatedly, according to forensic testing conducted by Citizen Lab, a watchdog group based at the University of Toronto.

The Mexican military is the only entity in the country currently operating Pegasus, the four people familiar with the contracts said.

The Israeli defense ministry declined requests for comment. The Mexican defense ministry would not discuss the recent hack but said it followed the government’s position, which asserts that intelligence gathering is “in no way aimed” at invading the private life of political, civic and media figures.

This was the second wave of attacks on the phone of Santiago Aguirre, one of the human rights defenders. He had been targeted with Pegasus during the previous administration, too, Citizen Lab found.

“This government made so many promises that things would be different,” Mr. Aguirre said. “Our first reaction was to say, ‘This can’t be happening again.’”

A spokesman for the Mexican president declined to comment. In a statement, NSO Group said it “adheres to strict regulation and cannot disclose the identity of its customers.” The company challenged the conclusiveness of Citizen Lab’s forensic analyses, while Citizen Lab said it had no doubts about its findings.

To verify whether Pegasus hacked the two Mexican human rights advocates in recent months, NSO Group said it would need to be “given access to the data.” But the advocates said they were not willing to give the government’s spying partner any more of their private information.

Pegasus’ beginnings in Mexico have long been shrouded in secrecy. After the night at the strip club, the Israeli executives of NSO Group, then a fledgling start-up, returned to Tel Aviv with the outlines of their first sale. The next step was an actual contract.

So, a few months later, a team of NSO representatives returned to Mexico to show off the spyware to some of the most powerful people in the country.

On May 25, 2011, Eran Reshef, an Israeli defense industry executive who helped broker the deal, said in an email to NSO’s chairman and its two founders that “the demo to the Secretary of Defense and President will take place next Friday,” referring to the president at the time, Felipe Calderón, and his secretary of defense, Guillermo Galván Galván. A copy of the email surfaced in an Israeli lawsuit over commissions from the sale of Pegasus to Mexico.

Two of the people at the demonstration said it had taken place on a sprawling military base on the outskirts of Mexico City, where the first Pegasus machine would be installed.

Fearing leaks, the Mexican Army made the Israeli executives wait in a tiny room where cleaning supplies were kept so no one would see them before they made their presentation. An armed soldier was stationed outside the door.

When Mr. Calderón and Mr. Galván Galván arrived, they sat in front of large screens on the wall — and watched a phone get hacked, the attendees said.

Udi Doenyas, the chief technology officer of NSO Group who invented the Pegasus architecture and led the team that wrote the code behind the first version of the spyware, confirmed that he had connected the Pegasus system to a screen and handed a BlackBerry phone to senior Mexican officials. He asked them to use it.

As they did, the phone showed no signs of being compromised, but the Pegasus system methodically began extracting every piece of data, beaming it onto the screen for all to see.

This was the spyware’s superpower: the sneak attack.

Miguel Ángel Sosa, a spokesman for Mr. Calderón, acknowledged that the former president had paid a visit to a military facility, where he was “given various presentations about the tasks” being carried out, “including the gathering of information and intelligence.”

But he said Mr. Calderón was never informed whether the spyware was eventually purchased, and that the former president was never told — “nor did he inquire” — what tools were used to capture criminals.

At the time, Mexico desperately needed a way to reliably crack into BlackBerry phones, a device of choice for the nation’s fearsome drug cartels. From the start of his term in 2006, Mr. Calderón had pushed a so-called kingpin strategy for confronting organized crime, focusing on the groups’ top leaders.

Pinpointing the drug lords required technology that allowed spies to follow their location constantly. The criminals were careful, former law enforcement officials said, moving around and shutting down their phones to avoid being captured.

“It didn’t give you enough time to launch an operation,” said Guillermo Valdés, the former director of CISEN, which was the country’s equivalent of the C.I.A., from 2007 to 2011. “If someone turned off his phone, we no longer knew where he was.”

Up to that point, Mexico had relied heavily on the United States.

“The pressure on the military to raise its game in terms of intelligence capabilities was intense,” said Alejandro Hope, a former intelligence officer during the Calderón administration. A potential draw of Pegasus, he said, is that it would give Mexico its own capabilities.

“They no longer wanted to be dependent on the Americans,” Mr. Hope said.

The military signed the contract to buy the spyware soon after the demonstration.

In September 2011, about 30 NSO employees, most of the company’s staff, flew to Mexico to set up Pegasus, test it and instruct a team of about 30 Mexican soldiers and officers how to operate the technology, according to three people familiar with the installation. The Mexican unit chosen to operate it was called the Military Intelligence Center, a secretive arm of the army about which little has been made public.

Once the Mexicans were ready to run Pegasus on their own, a short ceremony took place that December as a way of “handing over the keys,” two of the people said.

A document from 2019, unearthed in an enormous hack of Mexican military emails last year, indicates that the Mexican intelligence center is housed in a horseshoe-shape complex. Three people familiar with it say commanders can watch through internal glass walls as information unspools on huge screens.

In a 2021 document, also made public by the hack, the army says that one of the main risks facing the center is “that the activities carried out by this center are revealed to the public.”

Pegasus was quickly embraced by the Mexican authorities, and after Enrique Peña Nieto took office as president in 2012, two more government agencies bought it: the attorney general’s office and CISEN, according to Mexican officials and three people with knowledge of the contracts.

Within a few years, the spyware began infiltrating the phones of some of Mexico’s most prominent human rights lawyers, journalists and anti-corruption activists — surveillance that strayed far from the agreement with the Israelis to target serious crime and terrorism.

Condemnation came swiftly from at home and abroad, and the scandal clung to Mr. Peña Nieto for the rest of his presidency. In all, Mexico has spent more than $60 million on Pegasus, according to Mexican officials, citing spending by past administrations.

The Mexican military has acknowledged having Pegasus only from 2011 to 2013. But a group of independent experts investigating the disappearance of 43 students who were planning to attend a protest said the military had Pegasus when they were abducted in 2014, and was spying on the phones of people involved in the crime on the night the events unfolded.

It is not clear why the military was spying, but the intelligence was not used to help find the students, the experts said.

After Mr. López Obrador took office in 2018, he dissolved the federal police and replaced the Mexican spy agency with a new entity.

From 2019 through today, only the military has had Pegasus, four people with knowledge of the contracts say. And during that time, the spyware has continued to be deployed against journalists, human rights defenders and an opposition politician, according to Citizen Lab’s analyses.

Under Mexican law, government entities need a judge’s authorization to spy on private communications. But in public disclosures, the military has said it has not made any request to do that kind of surveillance in recent years.

On a Thursday afternoon last December, Mr. Aguirre got an email that read like something out of a spy novel.

“Apple believes you are being targeted by state-sponsored attackers who are trying to remotely compromise the iPhone associated with your Apple ID,” said the message, which was reviewed by The Times. “These attackers are likely targeting you individually because of who you are or what you do.”

In 2021, Apple announced it would begin sending warnings like this to users whose cellphones had been hacked by sophisticated spyware. The email went on to say that “sensitive data” on Mr. Aguirre’s phone may be compromised, “even the camera and microphone.”

Mr. Aguirre, the executive director of the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center, had been targeted years earlier with Pegasus.

His stomach sank thinking of government spies poring over his entire digital life, from messages with torture survivors to family photos with his young daughter.

Then it hit him: Others might be compromised, too.

He ran down the hall to the office of María Luisa Aguilar, the lead advocate handling the group’s international work. She had gotten the same email.

The two advocates contacted the Mexican digital rights group known as R3D, which had their phone data analyzed by Citizen Lab. It confirmed that both were hacked multiple times by Pegasus from June through September 2022.

“In the eyes of the armed forces, we represent a risk,” Ms. Aguilar said. “They don’t want to lose the power they have accumulated.”

*Natalie Kitroeff reported from Mexico City, and Ronen Bergman from Tel Aviv. Natalie Kitroeff is The Times’s bureau chief for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. @Nataliekitro

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News round-up, April, 20, 2023

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Most read…

Fox News Remains an Aberration in American Journalism

“People inclined to believe that all news organizations deliberately lie to build their audience may not consider Fox’s actions to be the least bit aberrant. But if that were true, there would be a lot more trials like the one that almost happened in this case. In fact, there have been very few media trials in recent years…

NYT By David Firestone, April 19, 2023, Mr. Firestone is a member of the editorial board.

Climate: EU on track to meet Paris Agreement goals

On Tuesday, the European Parliament adopted several bills reforming the European carbon market. Some environmental aspects of the Green Deal are much less advanced.

LE MONDE By Virginie Malingre(Brussels, Europe bureau),  Published yesterday at 3:01 pm (Paris)

Why China’s police state has a precinct near you

Recently arrested New York City Chinese “police station” operators are the tip of a global iceberg of Beijing’s overseas repression operations.

POLITICO. com By PHELIM KINE, CRISTINA GALLARDO and JOSEPH GEDEON, 04/19/2023 

G7 vows more effort on renewables but sets no coal phaseout deadline

Group aims to boost its solar power capacity by 1 terawatt and offshore wind by 150 gigawatts by 2030.

POLITICO.COM BY EDDY WAX, APRIL 16, 2023

Oil prices at three-week low as strong dollar, rate hikes weigh

Following a 2% fall on Wednesday, both benchmarks are at their lowest since late March, just before a surprise OPEC+ production cut announcement.

Reuters By Shadia Nasralla, Editing by Germán & co

NATO chief visits wartime Ukraine ahead of counteroffensive

On St. Michael's Square in the nation's capital, Stoltenberg lay a wreath in memory of Ukrainian service members who had died while engaged in combat in the country's east and looked over captured Russian armored vehicles.

REUTERS By Gleb Garanich, EDITING by Germán & Co

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Andrés Gluski, CEO of energy and utility AES Corp

How can strategic investment achieve both economic growth and social progress?… What is the role of renewable energy and battery storage in achieving the goals of the low-carbon economy?…

The AES Corporation President Andrés Gluski, Dominican Republic Minister of Industry and Commerce Victor Bisonó, and Rolando González-Bunster, CEO of InterEnergy Group, spoke at the Latin American Cities Conferences panel on "Facilitating Sustainable Investment in Strategic Sectors" on April 12 in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

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Today's events

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Today's events 〰️

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Image: NYT/Drew Angerer/Editing by Germán & Co

Fox News Remains an Aberration in American Journalism

“People inclined to believe that all news organizations deliberately lie to build their audience may not consider Fox’s actions to be the least bit aberrant. But if that were true, there would be a lot more trials like the one that almost happened in this case. In fact, there have been very few media trials in recent years…

NYT By David Firestone, April 19, 2023, Mr. Firestone is a member of the editorial board.

The decision by Dominion Voting Systems on Tuesday to settle its defamation suit against Fox News is no doubt a disappointment to the many people who have been viciously demeaned and insulted by the network’s hosts over the years and who now won’t get to see those hosts writhe on the witness stand as they are forced to admit their lies. But the settlement is also a lost opportunity for the profession of journalism.

A six-week trial, especially if it ended in a victory for Dominion, could have demonstrated to the public in painstaking detail what an abject aberration Fox has become among American news organizations. In-person testimony would have illustrated what the pre-trial evidence had begun to show: that Fox hosts and executives knew full well that the conspiracy theories they peddled about the outcome of the 2020 election were false, but they broadcast them anyway to hang on to viewers who didn’t want to hear the truth. A loss by Fox, with a staggering damage award, would have demonstrated that its behavior was so exceptional and outrageous that it had to be punished.

People inclined to believe that all news organizations deliberately lie to build their audience may not consider Fox’s actions to be the least bit aberrant. But if that were true, there would be a lot more trials like the one that almost happened in this case. In fact, there have been very few media trials in recent years — usually in the single digits each year, according to one study — compared with the thousands of civil trials each year. Most defamation cases are dismissed before they ever get near a trial, in part because the plaintiff could not come close to proving a news organization met the “actual malice” standard set out in the landmark New York Times v. Sullivan case of 1964, but also often because the plaintiff couldn’t even convince the judge that the defamatory material was false. News organizations also win dismissals by persuading judges that the material at issue was a legitimate opinion or was a “fair report” of allegations made at a public meeting or trial.

Fox couldn’t persuade a judge of any of those defenses. In fact, the judge in this case, Eric Davis, ruled in March that it “is CRYSTAL clear that none of the statements relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true” — a decision that was a huge setback for Fox and may have led to its eagerness to settle the case.

Most defamation cases that are not dismissed are settled before trial, and the Dominion case essentially fits that pattern even though a jury had already been selected. But the size of the monetary settlement that Fox must pay, $787.5 million, also makes it a huge outlier. The next-largest publicly disclosed settlement of a defamation case against a major news organization was reached in 2017, when ABC News settled a case for at least $177 million. (Alex Jones, who was ordered last year to pay over $1.4 billion to families of victims in the Sandy Hook shooting, is not part of a legitimate news organization.)

Still, nothing would have compared with a full-length trial in this case and a victory for Dominion, which many legal experts said was a strong possibility. That kind of defeat for a major news organization almost never happens, and the reason is that unlike their counterparts at Fox, journalists in conventional newsrooms don’t actually plot to deceive their audiences. They might make mistakes, they might be misled by a source or cast a story in a way they later regret, but with very rare exceptions they don’t deliberately lie.

The emails and text messages demonstrating Fox’s knowing deceit, which came out in pre-trial discovery, were shocking both in their cynicism and in their deviation from industry norms. Vociferous press critics on the right and the left will scoff at this notion, but the fact is that journalists in functional newsrooms want to tell the truth. And they do so not because they fear getting sued but because that’s why they got into the business. I’ve worked for more than four decades in six American newsrooms, large and small, and the pattern of behavior shown by Fox would have been unthinkable in any of them at any time.

That’s why a loss by Fox would not have raised significant press freedom issues, nor would it have increased the threat that journalists would regularly be sued for defamation. Because of the Sullivan case, news organizations are protected from libel judgments if they do not recklessly disregard the truth or engage in actual malice, which almost all newsrooms scrupulously avoid doing. Fox, however, sped right past those red lights, got caught and then spent an enormous amount of money to avoid the stain of a potential guilty verdict and the spectacle of its chairman, Rupert Murdoch, testifying to its dysfunction. (The company again demonstrated its disdain for the truth by issuing a statement on Tuesday afternoon saying the settlement demonstrated its “commitment to the highest journalistic standards.”) A second chance at clarity is coming with a libel suit against Fox by a different voting-technology company, Smartmatic. Maybe this time the opportunity to perform a public service by conducting a trial will outweigh the temptation of a Fox settlement offer.

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Image: Rep. Mike Gallagher, chair of the House Select Committee on China, said in a statement that the Chinese police outposts raise the risk of the U.S. becoming “a hunting ground for dictators.” | Alex Wong

Why China’s police state has a precinct near you

Recently arrested New York City Chinese “police station” operators are the tip of a global iceberg of Beijing’s overseas repression operations.

POLITICO. com By PHELIM KINE, CRISTINA GALLARDO and JOSEPH GEDEON, 04/19/2023 

Beijing has been operating an overseas police station in New York. And London. And Rome. And Tokyo. And Toronto.

The Department of Justice’s indictment of two Chinese citizens this week for using the unlawful Chinese police station in Manhattan to go after dissidents highlights the growing tentacles of Beijing’s overseas operations, which it uses to harass and silence critics around the world.

The network also shows the extent to which Beijing has managed to conduct influence campaigns inside Western countries and violate others’ sovereignty while mostly evading law enforcement.

Security agencies across Europe and the Americas are investigating more than 100 facilities that an advocacy organization exposed in September as overseas outposts of China’s security apparatus. In the U.S., that includes at least two others besides the one targeted this week.

“These secret police stations reveal the CCP’s blatant disregard and disrespect for the American rules and privacy,” said Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), chair of House Foreign Affairs Committee, using the abbreviation for the Chinese Communist Party. McCaul urged the Biden administration to “root out these encroachments on U.S. sovereignty.”

Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), chair of the House Select Committee on China, said in a statement Tuesday that the Chinese police outposts raise the risk of the U.S. becoming “a hunting ground for dictators.”

Here’s what we know about the network of Chinese police stations across the world:

It’s a sprawling network

The Spain-based nonprofit advocacy organization Safeguard Defenders published data from China’s Ministry of Public Security in September that revealed that Beijing had announced its “first batch” of “30 overseas police service stations in 25 cities in 21 countries.” By December, Safeguard Defender’s tally of such facilities had grown to more than 100 in countries including the U.S., Canada, Nigeria, Japan, Argentina and Spain.

The stations appear to provide civilian cover for Chinese government operations deemed too risky for official Chinese diplomats to pull off. They provide toeholds in neighborhoods with large ethnic Chinese and Asian communities — the Manhattan facility was in Chinatown — that allow those operatives to function with relative anonymity.

They’re a “perfect platform to advance operations that are favorable to Chinese government interests, including misinformation and disinformation,” said Heather McMahon, a former senior director at the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, which monitors the intelligence community’s compliance with the Constitution and relevant laws. Safeguard Defenders has reported that one of the purposes of these stations has been to “persuade” Chinese citizens who are implicated in crimes to return to China.

Authorities in at least five countries have confirmed that at least some of these are indeed Chinese government operations that violate laws barring the activities of foreign police personnel inside their borders. Investigations into other outposts are ongoing in countries including the United Kingdom, Japan and the Netherlands, but there have been no arrests of individuals connected with those operations.

It’s unclear how extensive the network is and whether the Safeguard Defenders’ report — and follow-up by individual governments confirming the existence of such outposts — has prompted Beijing to scale back the program to avoid detection.

The European offensive is underway, and embattled

Revelations about dozens of unlawful Chinese police facilities in Europe prompted Italian EU Parliament member Alessandra Basso to ask the European Commission in December if there was an EU-wide strategy “to close down these police stations and put an end to their activities.” The response: EU member states are on their own in probing “any alleged violation of their laws or … internal security occurring on their territory,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said in a statement published last month.

EU governments are doing precisely that, with limited success. The German government revealed last month that Beijing was refusing to comply with Berlin’s demands for the shutdown of two unlawful Chinese police stations in the country. Greek police announced in December that they were investigating a similar operation in downtown Athens. Dutch media reported in October the existence of two unlawful Chinese police outposts, prompting denials from Beijing and a Dutch government pledge to probe those allegations. That same month the Irish government ordered the closure of a similar facility in Dublin.

But activists say that’s inadequate given the scale of the problem. Many European governments are clearly “not taking this issue seriously at all,” argued Safeguard Defenders Campaign Director Laura Harth.

Harth criticized the “absence of a strong and unified public message” from affected countries “on the illegality of these operations and the measures or investigations in place to counter these activities.”

Complicating the situation: Chinese law enforcement has legal footholds in Italy, Croatia and Serbia through deals that allow for “the stationing and deployment of Chinese police officers” in those countries. Those Chinese police deploy on joint patrols with local counterparts in areas that attract large numbers of Chinese tourists. But that declaration — signed by EU lawmakers from countries including Germany, France, Denmark and Estonia — urged EU countries to reconsider such agreements “with a country disrespecting human rights, the rule of law and democratic values.”

In the U.K., where at least three alleged Chinese police stations are reportedly operating, police investigations continue, Home Office Minister Chris Philp said Wednesday.

Alicia Kearns, a Conservative MP who chairs the House of Commons foreign affairs committee, said she is “exasperated that six months since this issue was first raised in the House, that members are still needing to ask the government why Chinese police stations are operating in at least three locations on U.K. soil.”

“These stations are a very real example of transnational repression being conducted by an authoritarian state, and the government must take action to shut down these stations immediately,” she added.

U.S. officials and policymakers have been worried about American outposts for awhile

Gallagher, the House China committee chair, held a press conference outside the now-abandoned Chinese police outpost in New York in February and warned of “at least two more on United States’ soil.” Safeguard Defenders has reported the existence of a second such facility in an unidentified location in New York City and another in Los Angeles.

FBI Director Christopher Wray told a Senate hearing in November that he was aware of such an operation in New York City and was “very concerned” about it. That culminated with the arrest Monday of Chinese nationals Lu Jianwang and Chen Jinping for conspiring to act as Chinese government agents.

That same day, the Department of Justice charged 44 individuals — including 40 members of China’s Ministry of Public Security and two officials from the Cyberspace Administration of China — with “transnational repression offenses targeting U.S. residents.” Those suspects “created and used fake social media accounts to harass and intimidate PRC dissidents residing abroad and sought to suppress the dissidents’ free speech,” said a DOJ statement published Monday.

'The time to act is now': Rep. Gallagher previews first House hearing on China

It’s an issue north of the U.S. border, too

Safeguard Defenders has reported four such locations in the Toronto area, three in the Vancouver area and two more were found unlisted in the Montreal area. And allegations last month that Beijing meddled in Canada’s federal elections in 2019 and 2021 have made China’s potential malign activities in the country a hot-button issue.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police have since begun a nationwide investigation into foreign interference following the report’s findings, including into the Wenzhou Friendship Society in British Columbia.

Canada, unlike the United States, doesn’t force foreign agents to register with the government. But amid growing calls for change following the recent bombshell reports of China’s alleged interference, Canada’s Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino announced that the Liberal government has started consultations running until early May to consider establishing its own registry system.

Beijing is in denial mode

Beijing denies that it operates unlawful overseas police outposts. Instead it insists it operates “service centers” where Chinese people residing abroad can “get their driver’s licenses renewed and receive physical check-ups,” the spokesperson for the U.S. embassy in Washington, D.C., Liu Pengyu, said in November.

On Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin called the U.S. allegations “slanders and smears … There are simply no so-called ‘overseas police stations.’”

The FBI is on the hunt for more such facilities

There are concerns on Capitol Hill that the existence of such outposts goes beyond just one location in Manhattan.

“Today’s arrests are only the tip of the iceberg,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla) tweeted on Monday.

The FBI is clearly not stopping at the arrests of Chen and Lu in New York City’s Chinatown. The agency has a dedicated transnational repression website where the public can report such unlawful activities.

“We’re increasingly conducting outreach in order to raise awareness of how some countries harass and intimidate their own citizens living in the U.S.,” the FBI said in a statement.

And the New York City and DOJ indictments Monday suggest that the authorities are closing in on any remaining Chinese unlawful police outposts.

Christopher Johnson, a former senior China analyst at the CIA, argued that the investigations simply need to be allowed to run their course.

The U.S. government should “not overly freak out about these police stations — where we discover them we should roll them up and prosecute,” said Johnson, now the head of the China Strategies Group political risk consultancy. “But there’s no need to paint [them] as an existential threat to U.S. freedom and democracy.”

Finding and shuttering these outposts is tricky

China’s unlawful police outposts aren’t easy to find.

Beijing positions them inside what appear to be legitimate businesses or organizations that provide them a front to conduct their operations. They operate discreetly and don’t advertise their actual purpose. Members of local communities who are aware of such facilities are hesitant to contact authorities for fear of possible Chinese government reprisals against them in the U.S. or against family members in China.

“I think there are definitely more, it’s just that they’re not listed on some public website,” said Human Rights Watch senior China researcher Yaqiu Wang.

Some in Europe hope the indictments in New York will help spur more action globally.

Reinhard Bütikofer, chair of the European Parliament’s China relations delegation, said Europe should “take advantage” of the opportunity that the U.S. action in New York offers to rally democracies together and “show China its limits.”

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Image: Germán & Co

Climate: EU on track to meet Paris Agreement goals

On Tuesday, the European Parliament adopted several bills reforming the European carbon market. Some environmental aspects of the Green Deal are much less advanced.

LE MONDE By Virginie Malingre(Brussels, Europe bureau),  Published yesterday at 3:01 pm (Paris)

The European Union has taken a crucial step on its road to reaching carbon neutrality by 2050. In Strasbourg, the European Parliament on Tuesday, April 18, adopted several bills at the heart of the legislative package designed to bring Europe in line with the Paris Agreement. They still need to be validated by the member states on April 25, but, barring any surprises, this should be a mere formality.

On Tuesday, MEPs first ratified the reform of the carbon market (known as "ETS" for Emissions Trading System), in which energy companies and polluting industries (cement, steel and aluminum) trade allowances to pollute. When it was created in 2005, it was decided that emissions would decrease by 43% over the course of 25 years in order to raise the price of the ton of CO2 and encourage industries to emit less. It is now agreed that they will have to have fallen by 62% between 2005 and 2030 and that free allowances will eventually disappear.

What's more, the carbon market's scope will be expanded: It will eventually cover 65% of Europe's CO2 emissions, compared to 40% today. Not only will it be extended to the maritime sector and intra-European flights, but a second carbon market, known as "ETS 2," will also be created, which will affect consumers at the pump and on their electricity bill.

Opposition of the French Greens

Fearing that Yellow Vests would take hold of all European traffic circles as they did in France over a proposed carbon tax, some MEPs and member states, including France, nevertheless obtained changes to the Commission's initial proposal.buildings and road transport fuels, but with a cap set at €45 per ton of CO2 until 2030.

"Then the Commission will have to make a new proposal," said Pascal Canfin, MEP in the Renew group and chairman of the European Parliament's environment committee, who was opposed to the Commission's proposal. He said that "the amended scheme will have no impact on the purchasing power of the French" because the price of a ton of CO2 in France is €44.60.

The French Greens and their colleagues from La France Insoumise (LFI, radical left) do not see things the same way and remain opposed to the final compromise. "Nothing has been learned from the Yellow Vests movement," said Manon Aubry (LFI), president of The Left group in the European Parliament. "The French Greens were the only Greens to vote against the reform of the carbon market," pointed out Canfin.

In order to help member states support households and micro-businesses in this transition, the Europeans have decided to create a Social Climate Fund in 2026, with a budget of €86.7 billion, which will be financed mainly by the revenues of the ETS 2.

'The first climate-neutral continent'

On Tuesday, MEPs also gave the green light for the carbon border tax starting in 2026, which will subject the most polluting imported products to a levy if they are not manufactured under the same environmental conditions as their European competitors. This unprecedented measure, which France has been calling for for a very long time – President Jacques Chirac (1995-2007) supported such a project – will provide European manufacturers and energy companies with the conditions for fair competition.

"Together, we will make Europe the first climate-neutral continent," said Commission President Ursula von der Leyen again on Tuesday. One thing is certain: The Europeans have shown a rare speed in fulfilling their commitment to the Paris Agreement. In less than two years, they have almost completed the legislative package presented by the Commission on July 14, 2021.

Of the 14 legislative proposals, 12 have now been adopted or are in the process of being adopted. Others are on the way: the development of renewable energies, a country-by-country description of the energy savings to be made by various sectors, and the phasing out of internal combustion engines for cars.

Ultimately, only the reform of energy taxation, which requires a unanimous vote by the 27 member states, is likely be left on the drawing board. "We have raised the level of ambition. The legislative package being adopted will allow us to reduce CO2 emissions by 57% by 2030, when the Commission was counting on a drop of at least 55%," said Canfin.

Devices dedicated to the environment

However, these bills, which focus on the fight against global warming, are only part of the European Green Deal, which brings together some 50 draft directives and regulations. The Commission's more recent proposals to improve the energy performance of buildings and to end the use of internal combustion engines in buses and trucks should also reduce CO2 emissions. The U-turn made by Germany, which, after having validated the end of combustion engines for cars in 2035, went back on its commitments before changing its mind once again, shows the sensitivity of these issues.

The Commission has also provided for a series of measures devoted to the environment, to fight against pollution and the decline in biodiversity. Some – such as legislation on nature restoration, air quality, animal welfare and packaging – are still under negotiation in the European Parliament and the Council. Others – on soil health, waste and the revision of the chemicals regulation (Reach) – are being written at the Commission. "We still have a mountain to climb," said the deputy director of the Commission's directorate-general for environment, Patrick Child, on March 22.

Several of these bills concerning agriculture, livestock and fisheries are particularly difficult to negotiate at the moment. "For these sectors, the debate remains very polarized. We have been able to make progress on the decarbonization of industry, energy and transport because we have been able to find a path with the economic actors concerned, a common roadmap," said Canfin.

Systematic obstruction

But that is not all. In the European Parliament, the conservatives in the European People's Party (EPP) are putting up more and more resistance. They argue that the war in Ukraine and the accompanying inflationary context justify a moratorium on a series of legislative projects. Some conservatives, led by the German Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Spanish People's Party (PP), are even systematically obstructing.

"The EPP's political project is to unite the right" with the far right, said Stéphane Séjourné, president of the liberal group Renew, on Tuesday. This weakens von der Leyen's parliamentary majority, which was built around the EPP, the Social Democrats (S&D) and Renew, and reduces its ability to adopt ambitious reforms on the environment.

This is especially true as the window of opportunity is narrowing, with the European elections, scheduled for May 2024, approaching. "Some member states may be tempted to delay negotiations and wait for the election of the next Parliament, in the hope that it will be less favorable to environmental protection," Spanish Socialist MEP Javi Lopez told the website Contexte on 22 March. The next few weeks will be crucial in this respect.

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Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country

…Armando Rodríguez, vice-president and executive director of the company, talks to us about their projects in the DR, where they have been operating for 32 years.

More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

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Image: POLITICO.COM, Editing by Germán & Co

G7 vows more effort on renewables but sets no coal phaseout deadline

Group aims to boost its solar power capacity by 1 terawatt and offshore wind by 150 gigawatts by 2030.

POLITICO.COM BY EDDY WAX, APRIL 16, 2023

The Group of Seven richest countries set higher 2030 targets for generating renewable energy, amid an energy crisis provoked by Russia's war on Ukraine, but they set no deadline to phase out coal-fired power plants.

At a meeting hosted by Japan, ministers from Japan, the U.S., Canada, Italy, France, Germany and the U.K. reaffirmed their commitment to reach zero carbon emissions by the middle of the century, and said they aimed to collectively increase solar power capacity by 1 terawatt and offshore wind by 150 gigawatts by the end of this decade.

"The G7 contributes to expanding renewable energy globally and bringing down costs by strengthening capacity including through a collective increase in offshore wind capacity ... and a collective increase of solar ...," the energy and environment ministers said in a 36-page communiqué issued after the two-day meeting.

"In the midst of an unprecedented energy crisis, it's important to come up with measures to tackle climate change and promote energy security at the same time," Japanese industry minister Yasutoshi Nishimura told a news conference, according to Reuters.

The ministers' statement also condemned Russia's "illegal, unjustifiable, and unprovoked" invasion of Ukraine and its "devastating" impact on the environment. The ministers vowed to support a green recovery and reconstruction in Ukraine.

They also published a five-point plan for securing access to critical raw materials that will be crucial for the green transition.

Before the meeting, Japan was facing criticism from green groups over its push to keep the door open to continued investments in natural gas, a fossil fuel. The final agreed text said such investments "can be appropriate" to deal with the crisis if they are consistent with climate objectives.

The ministers' meeting in the northern city of Sapporo comes just over a month before a G7 leaders' summit in Hiroshima.

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Crude oil storage tanks are seen in an aerial photograph at the Cushing oil hub in Cushing, Oklahoma, U.S. April 21, 2020. REUTERS/Drone Base/Editing by Germán & Co

Oil prices at three-week low as strong dollar, rate hikes weigh

Following a 2% fall on Wednesday, both benchmarks are at their lowest since late March, just before a surprise OPEC+ production cut announcement.

Reuters By Shadia Nasralla, Editing by Germán & co

TOKYO, April 20 (Reuters) - Oil prices fell to their lowest in about three weeks on Thursday, depressed by a firmer dollar and rate hike expectations which outweighed lower U.S. crude stocks.

Brent crude futures were down $1.12, or 1.4%, to trade at $82.00 a barrel at 0819 GMT. West Texas Intermediate crude (WTI) futures dropped $1.02, or 1.3%, to $78.14 a barrel.

Both benchmarks, following a 2% fall on Wednesday, are at their lowest since late March, just before a surprise OPEC+ production cut announcement, although not all gains from that move have been wiped out yet.

The U.S. dollar index has moved up around 0.3% this week so far, on course for its strongest week since late February. A strengthening greenback makes oil more expensive for holders of other currencies.

U.S. economic activity was little changed in recent weeks, according to a Federal Reserve report.

Fed policymakers have signalled they are nearing the end of what has been the most aggressive spate of policy tightening in 40 years, with most pencilling one last quarter-percentage-point hike.

On the other side of the Atlantic, persistent double-digit inflation in Britain has bolstered expectations of a further Bank of England rate hike.

Meanwhile, U.S. crude stockpiles fell by 4.6 million barrels as refinery runs and exports rose, while gasoline inventories jumped unexpectedly on disappointing demand, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). ,

The crude stockpile decline was far steeper than analysts' and the American Petroleum Institute's estimates.

On the supply side, oil loading from Russia's western ports in April is likely to rise to the highest since 2019, despite Moscow's pledge to cut output, trading and shipping sources said.

Pakistan has placed its first order for discounted Russian crude under a new deal which could cover 100,000 barrels per day, the country's petroleum minister said.

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Image: Germán & Co

Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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Image: REUTERS/Christian Mang/Editing by Germán & Co

NATO chief visits wartime Ukraine ahead of counteroffensive

On St. Michael's Square in the nation's capital, Stoltenberg lay a wreath in memory of Ukrainian service members who had died while engaged in combat in the country's east and looked over captured Russian armored vehicles.

REUTERS By Gleb Garanich, EDITING by Germán & Co

[1/5] NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg visits the Wall of Remembrance to pay tribute to killed Ukrainian soldiers, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine April 20, 2023. REUTERS/Gleb Garanich

KYIV, April 20 (Reuters) - NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg visited Kyiv on Thursday for the first time since Russia's full-scale invasion, showing the military alliance's support for Ukraine as it prepares to launch a counteroffensive.

Stoltenberg laid a wreathe to honour Ukrainian soldiers who have been killed fighting in the east of the country, and reviewed captured Russian armoured vehicles on the capital's St Michael's Square.

Ukrainian leaders and NATO officials did not immediately make any announcements about the trip. Wartime visits by foreign officials are often shrouded in secrecy but top leaders visiting Kyiv often hold talks with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

Stoltenberg began his unannounced trip at a vital juncture in Russia's almost 14-month-old invasion which has killed thousands, uprooted millions, destroyed cities and devastated the Ukrainian economy.

After weathering a Russian winter and spring offensive that has made only small advances in the east, Ukraine now hopes to retake land in its south and east in a counteroffensive in the coming weeks or months.

After paying his respects to Ukrainian soldiers, the NATO secretary-general got into a car and drove off after the event, a Reuters photographer said.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has supported Ukraine throughout the war, with member states sending weapons but not fighting troops. Kyiv has repeatedly called for more weapons from its allies.

Ukraine sees its future in the alliance and last September announced a bid for fast-track membership after the Kremlin said it had have annexed four Ukrainian regions that its troops have partially occupied.

Moscow regards NATO as a hostile military bloc bent on encroaching on what it sees as its sphere of influence. Ukraine gained independence from the Russia-led Soviet Union in 1991.

Russia did not immediately comment on Stoltenberg's visit.

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News round-up, April, 19, 2023

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Words from the editor…

Food shortages, moldy apartments, a lack of medical workers: The United Kingdom is facing a perfect storm of struggle, and millions are sliding into poverty. There is little to suggest that improvement will come anytime soon. 

Spiegel.de

How do you describe the ludicrous maze through which Britain's current economic situation is wandering, growing more wretched by the day, unable to find a haven from which to emerge?

All this shame on the day of a pompous royal coronation…

Two artistic facts give us a possible explanation for this bizarre circumstance…

The enigmatic British artist Banksy's work "Love Is in the Bin," originally titled "Girl with Balloon," was resold.  It was partially shredded after being purchased at a Sotheby's auction in 2018.  After competition from a total of nine bidders, it was bought by a client over the phone for a price that beat Banksy's previous auction record of $23.2 million.  Banksy's Red Balloon Girl self-destructed after selling for £1 million at Sotheby's in 2008.

The other explanation can be found in the absurd but hyper-real chapter 41 of Hopscotch by Brussels-born Argentinian writer Julio Cortazar…

Oliveira spends the afternoon in his apartment, where the sun is scorching, the heat is out of control, and he tries to straighten crooked nails for no apparent reason.  To make matters worse, he has run out of -mate- and is tempted to wake Traveler, who is asleep in the other room. He is bored to death and needs the company of Traveler, who eventually wakes up. He asks him for grass and nails, though he cannot explain what he needs them for. While he waits, Horacio tries to write some games. Traveler arrives with the nails, but he forgets the -mate- but he thinks throwing them from window to window is risky as his aim could be better. So they decide to make planks to build a bridge and put the nails to good use. They set about building the absurd bridge, but the big problem was how to tie the planks connecting the two windows if they came from different places. Hammering in the air is a challenging task.

Hence, it is difficult to conclude that the world is mad… No easy task for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

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Most read…

The UK Faces a Steep Climb Out of a Deep Hole

Food shortages, moldy apartments, a lack of medical workers: The United Kingdom is facing a perfect storm of struggle, and millions are sliding into poverty. There is little to suggest that improvement will come anytime soon.

Spiegel by Jörg Schindler in London, 18.04.2023

US urges NATO vigilance for signs Russia could use nuclear weapon in Ukraine

Putin denies having any intention of employing nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

By REUTERS, Published: APRIL 19, 2023 

India Is Passing China in Population. Can Its Economy Ever Do the Same?

India has a young, vast work force that is expanding as China’s ages and shrinks. But the country’s immense size also lays bare its enormous challenges.

NYT By Mujib Mashal and Alex Travelli Reporting from New Delhi, April 19, 2023

China readies supersonic spy drone unit, leaked document says

THE DISCORD LEAKS | China’s cutting-edge drone could give it a surveillance advantage during a possible military confrontation over Taiwan

TWP by Christian Shepherd, Vic Chiang, Pei-Lin Wu and Ellen Nakashima April 18, 2023 

German cabinet approves bill to phase out oil and gas heating systems

At a press conference, Economy Minister Robert Habeck assured reporters that the finance was guaranteed. Habeck declined to provide an estimate of the cost to the government, only saying that it would be "modest."

Reuters by Riham Alkousaa, and Markus Wacket, 

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“We’re living in a volatile world…

it’s easy to get distracted by things like changeable commodity prices or a shortage of solar panels. But this wouldn’t be true to our purpose – we can’t allow ourselves to lose sight of our end goal; said Andres Gluski, CEO of energy and utility AES Corp

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Today's events

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Today's events 〰️

Image: by Germán & Co

The UK Faces a Steep Climb Out of a Deep Hole

Food shortages, moldy apartments, a lack of medical workers: The United Kingdom is facing a perfect storm of struggle, and millions are sliding into poverty. There is little to suggest that improvement will come anytime soon.

Spiegel by Jörg Schindler in London, 18.04.2023

In the innermost chambers of the old palace, Britannia is still just as large as it once was. Vast paintings stretching up to the ceiling narrate the glorious triumphs of a stupendous global empire – of battles against the Danes, Napoleon, the Spanish Armada, of the subjugation of India and the settling of America.

Those wishing to enter Westminster Palace, for centuries the seat of British Parliament, must pass by bronze statues of pioneers, commanders and thinkers – Walpole, Gladstone, Lloyd George, Thatcher – and a life-sized Winston Churchill, who still seems to be watching over the lower house, once destroyed by German bombs.

With every echoing step, British parliamentarians are reminded by these weighty premises of their own importance.

It is rather rare, however, that one of them makes their way from the halls of parliament into the underworld of the old palace, which was once built on a swampy island in the Thames. Here, in the low-ceilinged, labyrinthine catacombs, the foundation of Britannia’s democracy is literally rotting away, largely out of sight and out of mind. Most of the structure is contaminated by asbestos, while thick tangles of cables hang chaotically from the ceiling and pipes suddenly come to an end, seemingly in the middle of nowhere.

Gas, power and water lines – all bunched together – run for several kilometers through the damp cellars. The fire alarm has been triggered more than 40 times here in the last 10 years, and fire experts are allegedly on patrol in the building 24 hours a day.

Seven years ago, an internal report outlined a "substantial and growing risk of … a catastrophic event," and the 1,000-room neo-Gothic monument with its 100 staircases is long overdue for a comprehensive renovation. It would take decades to complete and cost up to 22 billion pounds. But thus far, the honorable members of parliament have been unable to agree on when and how.

Instead, inside the gold, brocade and hardwood-trimmed imperial halls upstairs, the country’s representatives continue to put on a show of democracy week after week while a time bomb continues to tick below them.

The old palace, in fact, has become a perfect symbol for the United Kingdom of today.

Boarded Up Windows

Things aren’t going well for the United Kingdom these days. For the past several months, the flow of bad news has been constant, the country’s coffers are empty, public administration is ineffective and the nation’s corporations are struggling. As this winter came to an end, more than 7 million people were waiting for a doctor’s appointment, including tens of thousands of people suffering from heart disease and cancer. According to government estimates, some 650,000 legal cases are still waiting to be addressed in a court of law. And those needing a passport or driver’s license must frequently wait for several months.

Boarded up windows and signs reading "To Let" and "To Rent" have become a common sight on the country’s high streets, while numerous products have disappeared from supermarket shelves. Recently, a number of chains announced that they would be rationing cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers for the foreseeable future.

"Whereas the number of billionaires in the UK – at 177 – is higher than it has ever been, millions of Britons have slid into poverty."

Last year, 560 pubs closed their doors forever, with thousands more soon to follow, according to the industry association. Without Oxfam, the Salvation Army and other charitable organizations that operate second-hand stores, numerous city centers would have almost no shops left at all.

Last week, the International Monetary Fund forecast that in no other industrialized nation would the economy develop as poorly as in Britain this year. Even Russia is expected to end up ahead of the UK.

One Pound Wonders

Whereas the number of billionaires in the UK – at 177 – is higher than it has ever been, millions of Britons have slid into poverty. Newspapers and television channels are full of cheap recipes and shows like Jamie Oliver’s "£1 Wonders." Since December, hardly a day has passed without a strike by bus drivers, medical workers, teachers, public servants, university employees or rail workers. Last week, assistant doctors across the country went on strike for four days, with the media calling on the populace to avoid all activities that could result in injury.

For many, the situation is reminiscent of the 1970s, when high debt, punishing inflation and widespread protests brought the country to its knees – leading Henry Kissinger, who was U.S. secretary of state at the time, to grumble from across the Atlantic: "Britain is a tragedy, reduced to begging, borrowing and stealing."

To be sure, after two years of pandemic and one year of war, the rest of Europe isn’t doing particularly well either. But nowhere is the feeling of having "lost the future" stronger than in Britain, according to the public opinion pollsters from Ipsos. In 2008, the year of the banking and financial crisis, 12 percent of people in the UK believed that their children would be worse off than them. Now, that number is 41 percent, Ipsos has found.

One significant reason for that pessimism is the fact that many simply no longer trust their speechifying politicians in Westminster to get much done. The Tory party, which has been in power now for a dozen years, has gone through four prime ministers since 2016 alone.

And even if the fifth in the series, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, is doing all he can to leave behind the period of sloganeering and slapstick, the UK isn’t likely to recover from his predecessors any time soon. Particularly not from Boris Johnson, who still refuses to admit any personal responsibility for the plight in which Britain finds itself and continues to bleat in a huff from the sidelines.

Even as his country slid further and further into the abyss, Johnson spent years absorbing all political momentum like a black hole, instead throwing his energy into projects like bringing back imperial measurements, announcing his intent to build a sinfully expensive royal yacht named Britannia and convincing the populace that he was building a "global," or even a "galactic Britain," a reference to the country’s budding space program.

Yet in early January, when the first 11 satellites ever to be launched from British soil were to head into space from Cornwall, the mission failed, and they ended up in the Atlantic instead. Excitement about the launch had been limited anyway, with an earthly populace that would have been happy with functioning school toilets.

Even before the failure, the Economist wrote: "A country that likes to think of itself as a model of common sense and good-humored stability has become an international laughing stock." No longer is it a single government or political party that seems dysfunctional, the magazine intimated, "Britain itself can seem to be kaput."

The question is: Who broke it? Was it just the pandemic and the warmonger to the east, as the current government never tires of insisting? Or did the unstoppable decline of the kingdom perhaps begin much earlier? On the search for answers to these questions, it is helpful to take a trip to the edges of a now modestly sized empire – to the people who no longer expect much from the political classes in faraway London.

"You probably won’t believe this, but this used to be one of our most fashionable areas," says Simon Cartmell, as he comes to a stop on Bond Street in Blackpool one Wednesday morning in winter. A cold wind is blowing in from the Irish Sea and the drizzle is falling almost horizontally, but Cartmell, a friendly 50-year-old wearing a colorful scarf, can’t stop gushing about times past. "There were banks, boutiques, an old bingo parlor, a cinema, and right there, the red-brick building, was once a busy hotel."

Over the phone, Cartmell – head of the local employment agency – had said: "Come to Bloomfield." This neighborhood in the south of the city, one of the poorest not just in the city, but in the entire country, is, he continued, the best place to see what has happened to Blackpool. "Just a couple of paces away from the sea, and you’re already in the middle of a Dickens novel."

Countless shops have closed their doors in recent years, with only bargain stores, cheap supermarkets and fast-food chains remaining. Almost all of the empty lots are filled with trash, while signs on the walls announce the spaces as perfect for advertising.

The people here have lost a lot over the years, but not, apparently, their sense of humor. Entire streets are lined with bed-and-breakfasts bearing names like Sweet Dreams Hotel, Fortuna House, Great Escape Hotel and Hollywood Apartments, even as most of them have become home to welfare recipients.

The local pub is called Last Resort. Even the screeching of the seagulls sounds like a sarcastic commentary on the current times.

When Prince William and his wife Kate visited the place a few years ago to show solidarity with the poor, the local community garden was quickly replanted, says Cartmell. They wanted to present at least a little bit of the town’s past glory to the royal couple.

Yet no matter how hard one might try, it is impossible to deny the dismal reality of Blackpool’s present. This "Las Vegas of the North" may still attract more than a million visitors every summer who relive their childhoods between the glaring neon of the beach promenade and the Pleasure Beach amusement park. But the "Golden Mile" has long since declined into a crumbling Potemkin façade along which gleamingly modern street cars – funded by the EU – run.

The city’s decline came in waves. Like other cities in northern England, Blackpool profited many centuries ago from the British empire’s involvement in trading slaves and other wares. The wealth of Lancashire County, where Blackpool is located, was primarily the result of the local textile industry. Following the deindustrialization of the north, mass tourism kept the city’s 140,000 residents afloat for a time. But budget airlines soon began flying to sunny southern destinations, and Blackpool has had a hard time competing.

And since then, the place has been left largely to its own devices. The young and energetic have left, while many who failed to make it elsewhere have come to Blackpool for old times' sake.

The city was already on its knees when the conservative-liberal government of David Cameron announced an era of austerity in order to recoup the fantastical sums the government had injected into the banking industry during the financial crisis. And there was hardly another area of the country that was hit as hard by the savings measures as Lancashire. Blackpool had to slash far more than a billion pounds in public spending, and there was little left over for the poor. The city then had to close its doors to holidaymakers for two years during the pandemic.

Today, Blackpool is a place of records. No other city in the country is home to as many run-down neighborhoods. The life expectancy of male residents is just under five years below the national average, while that for women is almost four years lower. Almost one in five residents suffers from what local doctors call "shit life syndrome," while anti-depressants are prescribed here twice as often as in the rest of the country.

Brexit, this grandiose promise of restoring lost greatness, found a willing audience in Blackpool, ready to grasp onto any straw – as was the case across northern and central England, where production had plunged over time and hardly anything grew in its place. Aside from inequality.

"If you are poor, sick, weak or tired, don’t come to Blackpool," says Simon Cartmell at the end of his stroll through the present. "Nobody will help you here." Nor will the 40 million pounds pledged by the government in London to the university as part of a national Leveling Up Fund – money intended to create a carbon-neutral campus. "It’s like giving a beggar 10 pounds after taking his house."

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak took it upon himself to personally announce the windfall for Blackpool and several additional municipalities in the north a few weeks ago, and even flew into the airport in Blackpool for the event. Cartmell, who is running as the local Labour Party candidate in the next parliamentary elections, was in front of the airport to shoot a campaign video.

As he was waiting, he says a construction worker suddenly appeared with a shovel and a bucket to fill in a pothole in the airport’s access road. "And 90 seconds before Sunak’s limousine drove past, the road was once again in passable condition."

Pain Pills and Yorkshire Tea

It’s one of those days when Jo McReynolds doesn’t know what to do first. On the screen in front of her is a seemingly endless list of food items. Thirty trays of bread, two pallets of mixed vegetables, hundreds of cans of chicken tikka masala, 600 kilograms of Maris Piper potatoes, 52 packages of frozen buttermilk scones, 144 cartons of veggie meat, 200 crates of yogurt, 318 packets of Caesar dressing – and those are just the items that came in early that morning.

Ideally, most of it should be shipped today. McReynolds laughs. "I begin each day with a nervous breakdown, and things get worse from there," she says. On her desk in Hall 2 is a tabloid newspaper with Putin’s face on the cover, pain pills and a package of Yorkshire tea.

A blond, 62-year-old with a nasal piercing and wearing a reflective vest, Jo McReynolds is the manager of the FareShare outlet in Birmingham. To fight both food waste and hunger, FareShare collects food that is no longer completely fresh, but which has not yet expired, from supermarkets and producers, distributing it to schools, food banks and other facilities. When McReynolds started as a volunteer 10 years ago, FareShare had six small outlets in the UK, but it now runs 30 regional centers with 1,500 employees and around 5,000 volunteer assistants.

Feeding the needy has turned into big business.

In the Nechells district north of the Birmingham city center, McReynolds now oversees four brick warehouses filled to the roof with nonperishable food. Forklifts are in constant motion as they load up delivery vans, while countless, mostly good-natured workers are bustling about in their reflective vests marked with the words: "Food Hero."

The Nechells site processes six to eight tons of food every single day, with the daily nationwide total in December reaching 3,300 tons – a new record. And they still aren’t able to keep up with demand. The waiting list, says McReynolds, is longer than her forearm. "It is frightening. For Christ's sake, we can send people to the moon, but we aren’t able to feed our own people."

Hunger has been the focus of numerous recent stories coming out of the United Kingdom. Stories about a government that was planning on making cuts to the school dinners program before a football star intervened. About how even UNICEF stepped in to help feed children in a country with the sixth largest economy in the world. And about the skyrocketing popularity of Asian instant noodles, popular because they are filling and cheap, and because they take almost no time to cook – a huge advantage given that spiking energy prices have made electricity unaffordable for many Britons.

Indeed, in addition to the almost 3,000 food banks in the country – more than three times the number found in the much larger country of Germany – facilities in the UK like churches, museums, public libraries and schools opened up "warm banks" around the country this winter. The needy can also go to baby banks to pick up free diapers and formula, bedding banks for mattresses and down comforters, and fuel banks to receive vouchers for coin-operated gas and electric meters. The Blue Cross also introduced the country’s first pet-food banks this winter so that people with nothing could at least keep their dogs and cats.

And in some places, community centers have turned into multi-banks, where the needy can go to find all of the things they might be short on in one place.

The New Hutte Neighbourhood Centre in Knowsley, a 10-minute train ride from Liverpool, is one such a place. On a recent chilly Tuesday, 69-year-old Linda was there, wearing short, raspberry red hair and a leopard-patterned shirt that was far too thin for the weather. On Tuesday, the former school offers free lunch, and Linda has learned how to make her money go a long way. A former elderly care nurse, Linda tried to apply for state aid, but she was told that her 700-pound pension was 29 pence over the limit.

Since then, she’s been going to the New Hutte on Tuesdays, to the food bank at St. Hilda’s on Fridays, and to the one at St. Mary’s on Saturdays. She also frequents the Asda supermarket, where a bowl of soup and a cup of tea costs just one pound. "This is a good community," says Linda, who hardly cooks at all anymore and only turns on the heat when her youngest grandson is visiting. But she doesn’t want to complain and talks about her life as though discussing some distant relative. "Things are a bit upside-down at the moment," she says, but at least she has friends and a place to live. "And next Tuesday, they’re serving curry with rice. I’m already looking forward to it."

Killed By Mold

Someone has put up Union Jack bunting in front of the house where two-year-old Awaab died – almost as if they wanted to say: This, too, is the UK. The plastic flags are the only color on the dirty-white facade of the four-story residential block, a structure which looks exactly like all the other blocks that make up Freehold Estate in the town of Rochdale. There are no markers, no flowers and no sign to commemorate what happened here, just outside Manchester.

Awaab Ishak died shortly before Christmas 2020. But the country where he lived only took notice of his death last November. As part of a court case relating to the death, it became widely known that Awaab’s parents, who are from Sudan, had been complaining for years about the damp walls and black mold in their apartment.

Their landlord, Rochdale Bouroughwide Housing, denied all responsibility, saying that the mold was likely the product of the renters' questionable "lifestyle" and should be painted over. That ignorance cost the two-year-old his life, as the court found. Awaab died due to "prolonged exposure to mold" in an apartment that was "not fit for human habitation." The furious coroner asked: "How in the UK in 2020 does a two-year-old child die from exposure to mold in his home?"

According to research conducted by the renter rights organization Shelter, such subpar conditions are far from uncommon in the country, with 2 million apartments allegedly in a similarly miserable and unhealthy condition. Yet they remain occupied, since in the vast majority of the cases, the only alternative would be homelessness. No other country in Europe faces such a severe housing shortage, and those most frequently affected are people with low incomes or no income at all. In England alone, hundreds of thousands of men and women are waiting for the council housing to which they are legally entitled – and more than 30,000 of them have been waiting for 10 years or more.

The situation is largely the result of the vast wave of privatizations set off by the administration of Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, with municipalities across the country selling their housing inventory to investors. The loss of public housing accelerated again during the financial crisis in 2008/09.

Construction continued throughout the ensuing years, of course, but little heed was paid to what the country actually needed. Whereas London is now home to almost 3 million square meters of empty office space – the equivalent of 25 Westminster Palaces – countless people in Briton are competing tooth and nail for whatever apartment they can find, even if it is drafty and moldy.

Just as is the case in Blackpool, Knowsley and so many other places in the country, Rochdale – population 200,000 – also had little choice. City officials had to cut the budget by 183 million pounds in accordance with the austerity plans imposed by London following the financial crisis. Freehold Estate, with its regiments of housing blocks, was privatized in 2010.

One evening in winter, Terry Williamson – whose name has been changed for this story – is standing in front of a fenced-in playground at the estate with her 20-month-old son. Pointing to a soccer-ball sized patch of moss on the wall of a nearby building, she says: "That’s what it looks like in my kitchen, too." Nobody, she says, was surprised by the news of Awaab’s death. "We all live in the same holes. It’s disgusting."

She says she has complained to the landlord on several occasions – about the fact that the heating unit in the bedroom is becoming dislodged; about the newly installed window that is too small, leaving a gap in the wall. "Nobody cares," says Terry, adding that she would move out immediately if she had somewhere else to go.

She doesn’t think that Awaab’s death will change anything, either, even if a government minister from London showed up in Rochdale once the case started receiving publicity. Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Michael Gove, a member of the Conservative Party, toured Freehold Estate last November, expressing his disgust at the situation and announced that landlords would henceforth be forced to make improvements. The regulations, he insisted, would soon be outlined in "Awaab’s Law."

Gove insisted that a lack of money would not be accepted as an excuse. "It is a basic responsibility of the local authority ... to make sure that people are in decent homes," he said. "All this what-aboutery. Do your job, man!"

The Ambulance Arrived 15 Hours Late

It was early on a Monday morning when David Wakeley stumbled and fell on his patio in the small town of Indian Queens. The 87-year-old, already weakened by prostate cancer, broke seven ribs and a hip. His family called the ambulance at 7:34 p.m.

When it still hadn’t arrived after several hours, Wakeley’s son used tarps, a toy soccer goal and three umbrellas to shelter his father, who was still in too much pain to move, from the wind and rain. He emptied his father’s catheter several times during the night – until the paramedics finally arrived on Tuesday morning, 15-and-a-half hours after the first call went out.

The images of Wakeley’s makeshift shelter triggered widespread anger in the UK. But not for long. It was quickly replaced by anger over similar cases across the country as winter began. Images of ambulances lined up in front of countless hospitals where every single bed was occupied; reports of nurses mounting IKEA hooks on the walls in hospital hallways to be able to administer IV drips to patients; photos of a three-year-old suffering from scarlet fever and croup who finally fell asleep on plastic chairs in the waiting room, 22 hours after her parents had first called the ambulance and five hours after she had finally made it to the hospital.

The media has been rife with such reports in recent months. The National Health Service (NHS), an element of Britain’s identity on par with the BBC and the Premier League, is sinking into chaos. In December, heart attack patients were forced to wait an average of 93 minutes for the paramedics to arrive – a record. Some 54,000 hospital patients had to be parked in hallways because there were no free beds – a record. Experts believe that there are hundreds of preventable deaths in the country each week – you guessed it, a record.

Government ministers insist that the pandemic is to blame, but at most, that is only half true. Even long before 2020, London had been cutting the NHS budget, and the number of hospital beds in the country was falling. Britain spends 21 percent less on healthcare than France, and 39 percent less than Germany.

Once Brexit became reality, the country experienced an exodus of workers from other EU countries that affected all industries – including the NHS. Today, around a tenth of all healthcare jobs are unfilled. And those who are still working in the industry are at the ends of their ropes.

One of them is Kim Gordon. It’s an ice-cold Tuesday in February, and Gordon is standing on Headley Way in Oxford holding a to-go cup of coffee and a protest poster. Every few seconds, she waves at trucks, buses and cars that honk at her in encouragement. Around a hundred meters behind her is the vast, gray structure of John Radcliffe Hospital, where the photo of the young, scarlet fever patient on plastic chairs was taken. The hospital is considered to be one of the best in Britain, but today, many of its workers are out on strike.

Gordon, 56, has been working as a nurse for 39 years, and can still remember times when it was difficult to find a job in the field. "Today, people are leaving in droves. They’re already stressed before they even start."

She says she understands quite well why that is. For at least the last 10 years, the NHS has been consistently going downhill. "We haven’t been taking lunch breaks for a long time. We work 10 hours or more at a time and still only manage to do the bare minimum." If there are any beds available at all, they’re only for the direst cases, she says, and there is a shortage of important drugs. "Allegedly because of Brexit," Gordon says. During the pandemic, she says, she and several of her colleagues were even assigned tasks normally taken care of by doctors. "But of course without paying us even a penny more."

But this strike, the first one she’s ever participated in, is about more than just money for her, says Gordon. It’s about a vital profession, about her patients, and about the future. "There’s something rotten here," she says. "Nothing is as it used to be."

The longer she speaks, the more it seems as though she’s actually talking about the entire country. A country in which the famous wartime propaganda maxim "Keep Calm and Carry On" – one which tourists still like to take home on souvenir mugs – is no longer really a serious option for an increasing number of Britons.

It is a country which, thanks to its universities, its thinkers and its cultural importance, has so many opportunities, yet which makes so desperate little out of them. And that is mostly due to the fact that for decades, it has been essentially standing still, seeking its salvation in the very financial industry that collapsed so spectacularly 15 years ago, creating a situation in which billions were squandered – billions which are still lacking today.

This country was already on its knees before Brexit, before the endless phase of political trench warfare and before the pandemic.

And now, it seems as though it has dialed 999 and is waiting in vain for the paramedics to show up.

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RS-24 Yars ballistic missile system at a military parade on Red Square, 2016 / (photo credit: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS/WWW.KREMLIN.RU) 7 Editing by Germán & Co

US urges NATO vigilance for signs Russia could use nuclear weapon in Ukraine

Putin denies having any intention of employing nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

By REUTERS, Published: APRIL 19, 2023 

The US and its NATO allies must remain alert for signs Russian President Vladimir Putin could use a tactical nuclear weapon in a "managed" escalation of his war in Ukraine, the second-highest US diplomat said on Tuesday.

Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman issued the warning during the opening session of an annual NATO arms control conference that was being held in North America for the first time since its inception in 2004.

"We have all watched and worried that Vladimir Putin would use what he considers a non-strategic tactical nuclear weapon or use some demonstration effect to escalate, but in an managed risk escalation," Sherman said. "It is very critical to remain watchful of this."

Putin's March 25 announcement that Russia is preparing to station tactical nuclear weapons in neighboring Belarus "is his effort to use this threat in a managed way," Sherman said.

Tactical nuclear weapons are designed for battlefield gains or for use against limited military targets.

Ukrainian serviceman reacts as he throws a grenade during a training, amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in Donbas region, Ukraine April 8, 2023. (credit: Yan Dorbronosov/Reuters)

Russia denies intending to use nuclear weapons

Putin denies having any intention of employing nuclear weapons in Ukraine, where his forces for months have been bogged down in fierce fighting that has been costly for both sides.

Belarus, which shares a border with Ukraine and NATO members Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, provided a staging ground for part of the Russian force that invaded Ukraine in February 2022 in a failed bid to overrun the country.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who joined Sherman in opening the conference, called Putin's plan to place tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus part of a years-long pattern of "dangerous, irresponsible nuclear rhetoric" that intensified with "the brutalization of Ukraine."

The alliance, he said, is "monitoring very closely what they (Russia) are doing."

Sherman said the United States would continue to "downgrade" intelligence for sharing with NATO's other 30 members "so that everyone knows...where we stand."

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Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country

…Armando Rodríguez, vice-president and executive director of the company, talks to us about their projects in the DR, where they have been operating for 32 years.

More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

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Image: NYT, Editing by Germán & Co

India Is Passing China in Population. Can Its Economy Ever Do the Same?

India has a young, vast work force that is expanding as China’s ages and shrinks. But the country’s immense size also lays bare its enormous challenges.

An auto rickshaw factory in Aurangabad, India, on Tuesday.Credit...Atul Loke for The New York Times

NYT By Mujib Mashal and Alex Travelli Reporting from New Delhi, April 19, 2023

India’s leaders rarely miss a chance to cheer the nation’s many distinctions, from its status as the world’s largest democracy to its new rank as the world’s fifth-largest economy, after recently surpassing Britain, its former colonial overlord. Even its turn this year as host of the Group of 20 summit is being celebrated as announcing India’s arrival on the global stage.

Now, another milestone is approaching, though with no fanfare from Indian officials. The country will soon pass China in population, knocking it from its perch for the first time in at least three centuries, data released by the United Nations on Wednesday shows.

With size — a population that now exceeds 1.4 billion people — comes geopolitical, economic and cultural power that India has long sought. And with growth comes the prospect of a “demographic dividend.” India has a work force that is young and expanding even as those in most industrialized countries, including China, are aging and in some cases shrinking.

But India’s immense size and lasting growth also lay bare its enormous challenges, renewing in this latest spotlight moment a perennial, if still uncomfortable, question: When will it ever fulfill its vast promise and become a power on the order of China or the United States?

“The young people have a great potential to contribute to the economy,” said Poonam Muttreja, the executive director of the Population Foundation of India. “But for them to do that requires the country to make investments in not just education but health, nutrition and skilling for employability.”

There also need to be jobs. That’s a longstanding deficiency for a top-heavy and at times gridlocked economy that must somehow produce 90 million new jobs before 2030, outside agriculture, to keep employment rates steady. Even in the years immediately before the pandemic, India was falling far short of that pace.

In China, a shrinking and aging population will make it harder to sustain economic growth and achieve its geopolitical ambitions to surpass the United States. But in previous decades, when it was still growing, it found its way to transformative growth through export-driven manufacturing, like smaller East Asian countries did before it.

India has yet to be able to replicate that formula or to come up with one of its own that can achieve more than incremental gains.

India’s infrastructure, while vastly improved from where it stood a few decades ago, remains far behind China’s, hindering foreign investment, which has stagnated in recent years. Another major problem is that only one in five Indian women are in the formal work force, among the lowest rates anywhere and one that has actually declined as India has gotten more prosperous. Apart from quashing the aspirations of the country’s hundreds of millions of young women, keeping them out of formal jobs acts as a terrible brake on the economy.

“In terms of education, employment, digital access and various other parameters, girls and women do not have equal access to life-empowering tools and means as the boys and men have,” Ms. Muttreja said. “This needs to change for India to truly reap the demographic dividend.”

India’s economy has been growing much faster than its population for a generation, and the proportion of Indians living in extreme poverty has plummeted. Yet most Indians remain poor by global standards. To enter the top 10 percent by income, an Indian need make only about $300 a month. Famines are a thing of the past, but more than a third of all children are malnourished.

The country’s economic shortfalls, which have bred fierce competition even for the lowest-level jobs and stoked impatience among an aspirational Indian middle class, bring the risk of instability as dreams and realities diverge.

The rate of development across the huge country remains widely unequal, with some Indian states akin to middle-income nations and others struggling to provide the basics. The distribution of resources is increasingly becoming a tense political issue, testing India’s federal system.

When Gayathri Rajmurali, a local politician from the southern state of Tamil Nadu, found herself in India’s north for the first time this year, the disparity shocked her. “The north, they are behind 10 to 15 years to our places,” she said, pointing to indicators like basic infrastructure and average income.

And then there is the combustible environment created by the Hindu-first nationalism of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling party, as his support base has sped up a century-old campaign to reshape India’s pluralist democratic tradition and relegate Muslims and other minorities to second-class citizenship. Demographic numbers are part of the political provocation game, with right-wing leaders often falsely portraying India’s Muslim population of 200 million as rising sharply in proportion to the Hindu population as they call on Hindu families to have more children.

Mr. Modi and his lieutenants say India is heading in only one direction: Up. They point to the undeniable gains in a country that has quadrupled the size of its economy within a generation.

Among major economies, India’s is projected to be the fastest-growing this year, with the World Bank expecting it to expand 6.3 percent in the new fiscal year after a sharp downturn early in the pandemic. A rapid increase in public investment is still improving the country’s lagging infrastructure. It has multiple dazzling tech start-up scenes and a technologically savvy middle class, and its unique system of digital public goods is lifting up the marginalized. Its culture, from popular films to a rich tradition of music, will only grow in influence as it expands its reach to new audiences.

And now it has an enviable demographic profile, with people in their most economically productive years represented in the largest numbers. While China’s extended “one-child policy” has resulted in a steep decline in population that could put dire strain on its economy, similar extreme measures in India, like forced sterilization, were short-lived.

Instead, India addressed its fears of overpopulation and reduced the growth rate through more organic and gradual ways, including serious efforts to promote contraception and smaller families. As mass education has spread, especially among girls and women, the fertility rate has dipped to just above the level required to maintain the current population size.

And India is increasingly looking to capitalize on China’s economic and diplomatic difficulties to become a higher-end manufacturing alternative — it is now producing a small share of Apple’s iPhones — and a sought-after geopolitical partner and counterweight.

“India’s time has arrived,” Mr. Modi recently declared.

Parallels

As India passes China in population — the new U.N. figures show that India has surpassed mainland China and will move past the mainland and Hong Kong combined next year — the two countries are estranged, in part over a series of clashes on their shared Himalayan border.

But not long ago, Mr. Modi saw China as a nation much like his own, striving to reclaim lost glory and a fairer place in the new world order, with lessons to offer about the pursuit of prosperity.

As a state and national leader, he has met with Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader, at least 18 times — they have shared fresh coconuts as well as a seat on a swing and many waterfront and garden strolls. Beyond Mr. Modi’s penchant for the strongman power that is typical of China’s one-party rule, analysts say the Indian leader was looking to Beijing for something more fundamental: solutions to the problems posed by a huge population.

The two nations share several historical parallels. The last time they traded places in population, in the 18th century or earlier, the Mughals ruled India and the Qing dynasty was expanding the borders of China; between them they were perhaps the richest empires that had ever existed. But as European powers went on to colonize most of the planet and then industrialized at home, the people of India and China became among the world’s poorest.

As recently as 1990, the two countries were still on essentially the same footing, with a roughly equal economic output per capita. Since then, China has shaken the world by creating more wealth than any other country in history. While India, too, has picked itself back up in the three decades since it liberalized its economy, it remains well behind in many of the most basic scales.

Today, China’s economy is roughly five times the size of India’s. The average citizen of China has an economic output of almost $13,000 a year, while the average Indian’s is less than $2,500. In human-development indicators, the contrast is even sharper, with infant mortality rates much higher in India, life expectancy lower and access to sanitation less prevalent.

The divergence, analysts say, comes down largely to China’s central consolidation of policy power, serious land reform, an earlier start in opening up its economy to market forces starting in the late 1970s, and its single-minded focus on export-led growth. China took the first-mover advantage and then compounded its dominance as it pursued its plans relentlessly.

India started opening its quasi-socialist economy nearly a decade later. Its approach remained piecemeal, constrained by tricky coalition politics and the competing interests of industrialists, unions, farmers and factions across its social spectrum.

“There is that element where China is a natural role model — not for its politics, but for the sheer efficiency,” said Jabin Jacob, a professor of international relations and governance studies at Shiv Nadar University near New Delhi.

The world now has a radically different power structure than it did in 1990. China has already made itself the world’s factory, all but closing off any path India could take to competitive dominance in export-driven manufacturing.

A “Make in India” campaign, inaugurated by Mr. Modi in 2014, has been stuttering ever since. Wage costs are lower in India than in China, but much of the work force is poorly educated, and the country has struggled to attract private investment with its restrictive labor laws and other impediments to business, including lingering protectionism.

To become as rich as China, economists say, India needs to either transform its development model radically — doing whatever it takes to become a center for globalized light manufacturing — or chart a path no other country has tried before.

Where India has found success is in the higher-value range of services. Companies like Tata Consultancy Services have become world leaders, while plenty of multinational firms like Goldman Sachs have more of their global staff working from India than anywhere else in the world.

But service-sector growth can go only so far in reaping India’s promise of a demographic dividend, or blunt the peril of an unemployment crisis. Hundreds of millions of people can’t find jobs or are underemployed in work that pays too little. In the state of Andhra Pradesh, for example, 35 percent of university graduates are estimated to be unemployed, unable to find work commensurate to their credentials.

Nowhere is the competition for jobs clearer than at the coaching centers that train young Indians for the employment entrance exams at government agencies. These jobs are still coveted as private sector work remains limited and less stable.

Dhananjay Kumar, who runs a coaching center in Bihar, India’s poorest state and its youngest, with a median age of 22, estimated that 650,000 students will apply for just 600 or 700 jobs in the national civil service this year. The civil service is a tiny part of the work force, but it is prestigious — in part because it comes with job security for life. Most applicants spend years, and a big chunk of their family’s savings, and still fail to make the cut.

Mr. Kumar’s own parents worked on a small farm and never learned to read or write. After excelling in school, he trained for the civil service exams but ended up landing work overseas, at Lloyds Bank in Britain, after learning computer coding along the way.

He sees the irony in his current business endeavor, training others for a line of work that did not pan out for himself.

“Here there is no enterprise, no companies,” Mr. Kumar said. For any young person, “the question comes, ‘What next? What can I do?’”

Models

The lessons Mr. Modi is taking from China are most apparent in his push for infrastructure development, investing heavily in highways, railways and airports to improve supply chains and connectivity.

India has quintupled its annual spending on roads and railways during Mr. Modi’s nine years in power. In some weeks, he has been able to preside over ribbon cuttings at a new airport, a new highway and a new rail service.

But, analysts and critics say, what also drew him to Beijing was his aspiration for something approaching authoritarian power. Mr. Modi’s firm grip over the country’s democratic pillars at the expense of the opposition — highlighted by the recent ouster from Parliament of his most famous adversary, Rahul Gandhi — has pushed the country closer to a one-party state.

As Mr. Modi has boxed in opponents, cowed the press and overwhelmed independent elements of civil society, his government has lashed out at expressions of concern from abroad as evidence of a colonial plot to undermine India or a lack of understanding of India’s “civilizational” approach — both elements that diplomats had long heard in China’s own defensiveness.

All the while, the increasing militancy of his Hindu nationalist supporters, as arms of the state hang back and give perpetrators a free pass, exacerbates India’s religious fault lines and clashes that threaten to disrupt India’s rise.

The perpetual potential for conflagration was on display in recent weeks in episodes of violence across half a dozen states, particularly in West Bengal in the country’s east, as celebrations of the birthday of the Hindu deity Ram coincided with Ramadan.

Even as the state hosted events to celebrate India’s G20 presidency, violence there raged for days as Hindu and Muslim groups clashed, with the police shutting down the internet and carrying out marches to quell the clashes.

In Bihar, a third of those detained in connection with the violence were teenagers.

Shyam Saran, a former Indian foreign secretary, argued that India would in the end resist further centralization of power and remain democratic. That, he said, is the only way to keep India intact as a wildly diverse nation across languages, religions and caste distinctions.

“The very plurality of the country is like a safety valve,” he said.

As India’s democracy has eroded, Western powers have remained largely silent, prioritizing trade deals and courting India as a security ally. But deep down, diplomats say, there is a growing discomfort. Increasingly, many countries are drawing a distinction between engaging with India on issues such as trade and embracing India as a partner with shared values.

That could pose a problem for an India whose appeal as an alternative to China is in part a reflection of its position as the world’s largest democracy — a distinction that Mr. Modi lauds regularly even as he tightens his grip on power.

It is uncertain how much this moment, geopolitically and demographically, will turn into a lasting pivot toward India, bringing with it expanded economic opportunity for its vast work force.

Even as India tries to align its growing technological and economic capacity to capitalize on the Western tensions with China, it is determined to stick to its neutrality and maintain a balancing act between the United States and Russia. There is also the question of whether the West’s shift from China, the linchpin of the global economy, is a temporary recalibration or a more fundamental one.

In the end, Mr. Saran sees a tremendous opportunity.

“China took advantage of a favorable geopolitical moment to really transform itself by having access to technology, to capital, to markets led by the United States. It took advantage of that to build itself up,” Mr. Saran said. “This could be that moment for India.”

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Beijing made clear its ambition to deploy advanced drones in 2019 when two jet-black drones were paraded through Tiananmen Square. Few analysts considered the drones fully operational at the time. (Greg Baker/AFP/) / Editing by Germán & Co

China readies supersonic spy drone unit, leaked document says

THE DISCORD LEAKS | China’s cutting-edge drone could give it a surveillance advantage during a possible military confrontation over Taiwan

TWP by Christian Shepherd, Vic Chiang, Pei-Lin Wu and Ellen Nakashima April 18, 2023 

Beijing made clear its ambition to deploy advanced drones in 2019 when two jet-black drones were paraded through Tiananmen Square. Few analysts considered the drones fully operational at the time. (Greg Baker/AFP/Getty Images)

The Chinese military could soon deploy a high-altitude spy drone that travels at least three times the speed of sound, according to a leaked U.S. military assessment, a development that would dramatically strengthen China’s ability to conduct surveillance operations.

A secret document from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which has not previously been reported, shows the Chinese military is making technological advances that could help it target American warships around Taiwan and military bases in the region.

The document features satellite imagery dated Aug. 9 that shows two WZ-8 rocket-propelled reconnaissance drones at an air base in eastern China, about 350 miles inland from Shanghai. The drones are a cutting-edge surveillance system that could help China gather real-time mapping data to inform strategy or carry out missile strikes in a future conflict.

The assessment says the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had “almost certainly” established its first unmanned aerial vehicle unit at the base, which falls under the Eastern Theater Command, the branch of the Chinese military responsible for enforcing Beijing’s sovereignty claims over Taiwan.

The Washington Post obtained the assessment of the WZ-8 program from a trove of images of classified files posted on Discord, a group chat service popular with gamers, allegedly by a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard.

The Defense Department declined to comment. China’s Ministry of National Defense did not respond to a faxed request for comment.

Other documents in the trove detail a number of disclosures about Chinese spying and military modernization, including intelligence that revealed the existence of additional Chinese spy balloons and an assessment that Taiwan is ill-prepared to prevent early Chinese air superiority during an invasion.

This image is part of the leaked classified material that was circulated in a Discord chatroom and obtained by The Washington Post. The Post informed the Defense Department that this imagery would be published with this story. A document, marked secret, highlights capabilities and notional flight paths of China's supersonic reconnaissance drone, along with satellite images of its home base at Liuan Airfield. (Obtained by Washington Post)

This latest revelation about the advancement comes as intensifying military aggression around Taiwan has heightened concern about a Chinese invasion on the self-governed island democracy.

CIA Director William J. Burns has said Chinese leader Xi Jinping wants the PLA to be capable of seizing Taiwan by 2027, although he added that this does not mean Xi will order an attack at that time.

Taiwan highly vulnerable to Chinese air attack, leaked documents show

Beijing introduced the WZ-8 drones in 2019 when two of the jet-black aircraft were paraded past Tiananmen Square during celebrations for the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the Communist Party-run People’s Republic of China. Few analysts considered the drones fully operational at the time.

Also included in the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s assessment are possible flight paths for the drone as well as for the twin-engine H6-M Badger bomber used to launch it. After taking off from its home air base, the warplane would fly to just off China’s east coast before releasing the stealthy drone, which could then enter Taiwanese or South Korean airspace at a height of 100,000 feet and fly three times the speed of sound. The document does not detail how the drone is propelled but says “engine features are primarily associated with rocket fuel.”

A map of projected routes, labeled “not necessarily authoritative,” suggests ways the drone’s “Electro-optical” cameras and sensors could gather intelligence on Taiwan’s main island and the western side of South Korea including Seoul, the capital city. The use of synthetic aperture radar would allow it to map territory at night and foggy weather.

The drone’s primary use won’t be against Taiwan but against the United States and its military bases in the Pacific, said Chi Li-pin, director of the aeronautical systems research division at the National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology, Taiwan’s military-run weapons developer. “It’s a weapon for anti-access and area denial,” he said.

Chi added that the aircraft does not currently appear to be designed to launch attacks, but he noted modifications could allow it to conduct strikes in future. “It is difficult to detect and intercept. The existing U.S. air-to-air weapons aren’t good enough,” he said.

Dean Cheng, a nonresident senior fellow with the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, said the disclosure shows China is developing a capability to monitor the entire Indo-Pacific region. “This is not just aimed at the United States or South Korea,” said Cheng, who had not seen the documents. “Japan has to worry about it. India has to worry about it. All Southeast Asia has to worry about it.”

China, he noted, is creating a range of high-tech systems for military use — from hypersonic weapons that can use drone reconnaissance for anti-ship purposes to antisatellite weapons that they could use to try to blind the United States. “Individually, none of these things are game-changers,” he said. “Taken together, we’re looking at a PLA that is developing a reconnaissance strike complex: Find the enemy, hit the enemy, kill the enemy.”

Leaked secret documents detail up to four additional Chinese spy balloons

The airfield described in the document as “Liuan” appears to be a base in Dushan County of Lu’an city, according to coordinates in the document. (The first Chinese character in Lu’an is often pronounced ‘liu’ but it is ‘lu’ in this instance.)

It was originally built in 1970, part of leader Mao Zedong’s campaign to move crucial industries and military installations into mountainous regions, prompted after relations with the Soviet Union soured and left China’s communist leadership feeling vulnerable to attack. The hangars of the original air base, known then as the 8301 airfield, were burrowed into the hillside and had steel-plated doors that were 12 inches thick, according to Chinese state media.

A review of satellite imagery publicly available on Google Earth and provided to The Post by Planet Labs shows the base has expanded multiple times in recent years, with at least 18 new structures constructed after August 2020. Beginning in late February 2022, new, significantly wider thoroughfares that lead into the hills south of the runway were constructed. In some places, the new clearing is about 130 feet wide.

A satellite image taken on April 17 shows the expansion of an air base in the Chinese city Lu'an. (Planet Labs)

Enthusiasts who use open-source material to track the Chinese air force believe the base is home to a regiment of the Eastern Theater’s 10th bomber division, the branch most likely to conduct air attacks if China launches a full-scale assault on Taiwan.

Joseph Wen, a Taipei-based independent analyst who tracks military installations in China, says that the base was abandoned for years. It was even used as a filming location for a patriotic action film about the Sino-Japanese War.

But there have been clear signs since 2019 that the base has been brought back into service. Wen has tracked a flurry of construction activity, included widening the paths that lead to the southern cavern entrance to nearly 130 feet. The wingspan of the bomber plane used to launch the drone is 108 feet.

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Image: Germán & Co

Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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German Economy Minister Robert Habeck attends a news conference to present a planned reform to the law on householding heating in Berlin, Germany, April 19, 2023. REUTERS/Christian Mang

German cabinet approves bill to phase out oil and gas heating systems

At a press conference, Economy Minister Robert Habeck assured reporters that the finance was guaranteed. Habeck declined to provide an estimate of the cost to the government, only saying that it would be "modest."

Reuters by Riham Alkousaa, and Markus Wacket, 

Berlin's ruling coalition last month agreed that almost all newly installed heating systems in Germany should run on 65% renewable energy from 2024, both in new and old buildings.

The plan is part of Germany's ambition to become climate neutral by 2045 as the construction sector was responsible for 112 million tonnes of greenhouse emissions last year or 15% of the country's emissions.

Houses could also use heat pumps that run on renewable electricity, district heating, electric heating or solar thermal systems as acceptable alternatives to fossil fuel heating, according to the bill, which was seen by Reuters.

The policy has met resistance from within Chancellor Olaf Scholz's coalition, with critics calling it too costly and a burden on low- and medium-income households and tenants.

Such a shift could cost Germans around 9.16 billion euros ($10 billion) annually until 2028, the draft bill showed. The costs would fall to 5 billion from 2029 as Berlin expects renewable energy expansion and a ramp up of heating pumps production to make the switch cheaper.

The government will offer a subsidy of 30% for residential properties occupied by owners and 10% extra if the owners opt for an earlier climate-friendly heating switch than required by law, regardless of the household income.

Homeowners who receive income-related welfare benefits could get 20% extra subsidy for the switch.

The money will come from the Climate and Transformation Fund, a supplementary budget to push green investments, with some 180 billion euros earmarked for 2023 to 2026.

"The financing is secured," Economy Minister Robert Habeck told journalists in a news conference presenting the bill. Habeck declined to give a figure of how much this would cost the government but the sum would be "moderate".

The bill gives some exemptions, for instance for homeowners who are over 80 years old and living in hardship.

Those who violate the new rules face a fine of 5,000 euros, said the draft law, which will be now be debated in parliament.

Germany's push to phase out gas in heating became more urgent after Moscow's invasion of Ukraine prompted Berlin to halt Russian fossil fuel imports.

Heating uses up more than 40% of Germany's annual gas consumption as almost half of the country's 41 million households heat with natural gas while almost 25% use heating oil.

"We're starting comparatively late with this. Other countries have done this earlier," Habeck said, citing the heating sector in Scandinavian countries that are much less reliant on fossil fuel to keep their homes warm.

The bill means Germany would have to shut down more than 90% of its 500,000-km (310,685-mile) gas distribution network in the next 20 years, a study by Agora think-tank showed on Tuesday.

Around 78% of Germans are against the planned law, a survey by Forsa pollster published by ntv and RTL broadcasters showed on Wednesday. About 62% of those surveyed expect heating bills to rise after a switch to renewables, the poll showed.

Germany's association of local utilities, VKU, said the law was an "emotional roller coaster" as the time given for the changes it required was too short.

"The deadlines should therefore be extended. At least transitional periods are urgently needed," VKU said in a statement.

Environmental group Greenpeace called the bill a "milestone" for climate protection in Germany, and was long "overdue".

"In this way, Germany can achieve the climate protection goals in the future, which the building sector has exceeded for three years," it said.

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News round-up, April, 18, 2023

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Report says vaccine research, other ‘circumstantial evidence’ point to laboratory leak as source of pandemic.

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What Dominion Has to Prove in Its Case Against Fox News

Did the hosts of the country’s most popular cable news network know that Trump’s lies about the election were untrue?

The New Yorker by Clare Malone, April 17, 2023

Analysis: Norway crude mops up in Europe as Russia's Urals heads east

The EU embargo imposed in December on Russian seaborne oil imports has allowed other oil-producing countries to enter Europe. It is now the primary raw material for refineries in Germany, Poland, and Finland.

Reuters editing by Germán & Co

India and China snap up Russian oil in April above 'price cap'

The latest data from Refinitiv Eikon suggest that Russian Urals oil cargo loaded in the first half of April is mostly heading to India's and China's ports.

Reuters

The power of a volcanic eruption: This one was bigger than any U.S. nuclear blast

A new study estimated the Tonga volcanic explosion was 15 megatons, equivalent to 15 million tons of TNT

TWP by Kasha Patel, Updated April 14, 2023 

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“We’re living in a volatile world…

it’s easy to get distracted by things like changeable commodity prices or a shortage of solar panels. But this wouldn’t be true to our purpose – we can’t allow ourselves to lose sight of our end goal; said Andres Gluski, CEO of energy and utility AES Corp

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Today's events

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Today's events 〰️

A campus of the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China, in 2020.
PHOTO: HECTOR RETAMAL/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/Editing by Germán & Co

Covid Emerged as Chinese Lab Faced Biosafety Issues, Senate Republican Study Finds

Report says vaccine research, other ‘circumstantial evidence’ point to laboratory leak as source of pandemic.

WSJ By Warren P. Strobel and Michael R. Gordon, April 17, 2023 

WASHINGTON—A Chinese laboratory conducting advanced coronavirus research faced a series of biosafety problems in November 2019 that drew the attention of top Beijing officials and coincided with the Covid pandemic’s emergence, according to a new report being released by Senate Republicans on the pandemic’s origins.

The report, released Monday by a Republican member of the Senate Health Committee, a final version of which was viewed by The Wall Street Journal, charts a confluence of unexplained events in that month and concludes the pandemic more likely began from a lab accident than naturally, via an animal infecting humans.

Based on the work of a team of specialists, the 300-page document draws on open source reporting, including medical studies, scientific journals and numerous Chinese government documents.

It estimates that the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes Covid, first emerged between Oct. 28 and November 10, 2019—weeks earlier than the Chinese government’s timeline and close to that of an earlier assessment from the U.S. intelligence chief. 

White House Says U.S. Not Ready to Reach Consensus on Covid Origins

A Chinese researcher affiliated with the People’s Liberation Army apparently began work on a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 in November 2019, the report says, citing the time needed for research that went into filings for a patent in February 2020. It notes that November 2019 is “before the known outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic” and suggests some in China had earlier knowledge of the virus.

Around the same time, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, in the Chinese city where the pandemic began, put unusual emphasis on raising its biological safety protocols, according to the report. Steps included a visit from Beijing by a high-ranking biosafety official, remedial biosafety training courses for staff and urgent measures to procure new safety equipment.

After 18 months of research, the team that worked on the Senate report acknowledged it were unable to definitively pinpoint the source of the pandemic, which has killed 6.9 million people worldwide.

Many previous pandemics began when a pathogen-carrying animal or animals infected humans, known as zoonotic transmission. Some scientists say that is how the Covid pandemic began, including some who note that genetic sequences done in 2020 indicate raccoon dogs, which are susceptible to Covid-19, were present at a Wuhan market.

The Senate committee investigators examined both hypotheses. “The preponderance of circumstantial evidence, however, supports an unintentional research-related incident,” said the Senate report. 

“Even though there seems to be precedence for these events to be zoonotic, the evidence just doesn’t support it, and what evidence there is seems to be contrary,” said Robert Kadlec, a biodefense expert and former Health and Human Services assistant secretary in the Trump administration who oversaw the research.

Dr. Kadlec led a team that included an epidemiologist, biodefense experts, lawyers and a State Department China specialist. They were aided by an outside advisory group that included retired intelligence officials, three former directors of U.S. national laboratories, and others.

Arguments over Covid’s origins have become highly politicized between virologists and other scientists who cite evidence pointing to a natural spillover and some researchers, members of the national security community and politicians, especially Republicans, who cite other evidence that they say indicates a laboratory leak. The divisions, and a lack of transparency from Beijing, have hobbled efforts to determine how the virus first infected humans. Knowing the disease’s genesis, researchers on both sides say, might be critical in preventing or curbing future pandemics. 

“It is not beyond a shadow of a doubt, but there certainly is a preponderance of evidence that shows that this virus originated from an unintentional lab leak in Wuhan, China,” said Sen. Roger Marshall (R., Kan.), who is releasing the report. “We won’t be able to prove this in a criminal trial. But I do think there’s enough evidence, if this was a civil case, that we would convince a jury,” said Mr. Marshall, a member of the Health Committee.

The committee’s Democratic majority, led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) didn’t respond to requests for comment.

China’s National Health Commission didn’t respond to a request for comment.

China has disputed that the virus could have leaked from one of its labs and has suggested it emerged outside China. Beijing has limited access by investigators with the World Health Organization and declined to turn over some information requested by the global public health agency.

The Senate report expands on an interim version last October that also backed a research-related source for the pandemic.

The office of Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines office recently sent an expanded intelligence report to Congress that gives more detail on why the Energy Department shifted its view to conclude, with low confidence, that the pandemic likely arose from a lab leak, people familiar with the classified document said. The Journal first reported the Energy Department change in February. 

The Energy Department reached its conclusion that the Covid-19 pandemic probably arose from a laboratory leak because of new intelligence about work being done with the virus at China’s Center for Disease Control in Wuhan, the people familiar said. 

The Federal Bureau of Investigation also supports a lab leak with medium confidence, a judgment made as part of an assessment the Biden administration ordered in 2021. The FBI, however, focused on coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, not the China CDC, the people familiar said.

Four other U.S. intelligence agencies lean toward the natural-transmission theory with low confidence. Despite their differences, all of the intelligence agencies assess that the hypotheses that Covid-19 arose through a laboratory-associated incident or exposure to an infected animal are each “plausible,” Ms. Haines office said in an unclassified version of the 2021 assessment. 

The new Senate report looks at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, or WIV, which has long been a target of lab-leak proponents because of the extensive coronavirus research being conducted there under biosafety conditions that Western experts consider inadequate.

“China’s progress in biosafety advanced slower than its aspirations for and research of highly pathogenic microorganisms,” the report says. “It is evident that the convergence of sophisticated coronavirus research, government demands for scientific breakthroughs and biosafety problems at the WIV appears to have peaked in the late-summer or early-fall of 2019.”

A senior Chinese biosecurity official traveled from Beijing to the Wuhan Institute on Nov. 19, 2019, bearing instructions from China’s leadership on the “complex and grave situation facing (bio) security work,” the report says, citing the WIV’s own reports. That session was immediately followed by a 2 ½-day remedial biosecurity training course for the WIV and other research institutes in Wuhan, it says.

On the day of the official’s visit, the report says, the WIV issued a short-notice procurement for an air incinerator to address “some problem or failure” with a biosafety autoclave, a machine designed to kill microorganisms via heat and pressure. That was one of numerous procurement notices and patent applications issued in 2019 to address apparent shortcomings in biosecurity, it says.

The report also cites an increase in cases of flulike illness in Wuhan in October and November 2019 that tested negative for influenza, drawing from Chinese epidemiological data and observations by the U.S. consulate in Wuhan. 

At that time, satellite imagery showed an increase in vehicles parked at major hospitals in the city, an indicator that has often been associated with higher hospital occupancy rates. These, the report says, may have been unrecognized initial cases of Covid-19, which didn’t burst into full view until December.

How does the report from the Senate Health Committee change your views on the origins of Covid-19? Join the conversation below.

In early November 2019 “all the guards go up” at the WIV, said Larry Kerr, a former HHS and intelligence official who served as an outside adviser to the study. That, he said, was followed by actions “you normally would not see in a laboratory environment.” 

The report says that Zhou Yusen, a scientist and member of the Chinese military, filed a patent for a Covid-19 vaccine on Feb. 24, 2020, a month after China locked down Wuhan because of the outbreak. 

The patent includes data from blood tests on mice done for vaccine-related experiments, the report said. It said that based on interviews with U.S. vaccine developers, the effort detailed in Dr. Zhou’s work “represents at least two to three months of vaccine development work.” Dr. Zhou later died of unknown causes.

Moderna Inc. began work on its Covid-19 mRNA vaccine in January 2020, once the genetic sequence of the new virus was published, and had initial batches made within weeks.

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Dominion says people at Fox News—including well-known hosts, like Sean Hannity, and the very top brass, Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch—knew that the statements were false.Photograph by Mark Peterson / Redux

What Dominion Has to Prove in Its Case Against Fox News

Did the hosts of the country’s most popular cable news network know that Trump’s lies about the election were untrue?

The New Yorker by Clare Malone, April 17, 2023

Downtown Wilmington was already lousy with reporters when the news broke, on Sunday evening, that the Dominion v. Fox trial would be delayed by a day. That afternoon, in an office building across from the courthouse, I caught a glimpse of Michael Wolff—“journalist enfant terrible and New York media scenester”—who is rumored to be working on a book about Fox News, picking up his press pass. In the lobby of my hotel—where Dominion’s lawyers are said to be staying—the check-in line was filled with harried men in typical reporter uniforms of button-downs and slacks. Late-night lobby talk was about what time to wake up in order to secure a spot in the courtroom. All this, even though we knew there’d be no real action; the Wall Street Journal had even reported that settlement talks between Fox and Dominion were taking place, and that Dominion seemed to have softened its position. (The company is apparently not seeking lost-profit damages, which Fox said would lower Dominion’s claim, bringing it closer to a billion dollars in damages, as opposed to the $1.6 billion that Dominion has long contended it is due.)

A few things had already been squared away in Dominion v. Fox. One was that, in the aftermath of the 2020 election, Fox had aired falsehoods about the voting-systems company, claiming that its machines had flipped votes to Joe Biden. In a summary judgment released on March 31st, Judge Eric Davis of the Delaware Superior Court agreed with Dominion’s lawyers, writing that “the evidence developed in this civil proceeding demonstrates that [it] is CRYSTAL clear that none of the Statements relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true.” The emphatic bold capitalization was the judge’s own, and the ruling was seen as a clear setback for Fox. Davis sent the case onward to a jury trial to determine whether the network had acted with “actual malice.”

Actual malice is the legal standard for defamation that was outlined in the landmark Supreme Court decision New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. In this case, Dominion must prove that Fox aired untruths “with reckless disregard”—which can be established if Dominion proves that Fox News “entertained serious doubts as to the truth of [the] publication” or if they had a “high degree of awareness of [its] probable falsity.” That’s a notoriously difficult standard to prove, since it requires some insight into the mind-set of the people or organization that put out defamatory information. And news outlets devote a great deal of time and resources to protect themselves from defamation suits.

Fox News certainly had the infrastructure in place to, theoretically, prevent outright lies from making it to air. The network has a fact-checking-and-research department, known as the Brain Room, and its prominent hosts are supported by teams of producers and editors. Its executives are looped into conversations about coverage. But, in the weeks leading up to the trial, a deluge of texts and e-mails from Fox executives, hosts, and show staff members, which was made public in discovery, revealed a corporate culture that seemed to prioritize appealing to an increasingly hard-right segment of its audience over the actual practice of journalism. “Getting creamed by CNN!” Rupert Murdoch wrote to Fox News’ C.E.O., Suzanne Scott, in the days after the network called the election for Joe Biden. “Guess our viewers don’t want to watch it.” The Fox star Tucker Carlson wrote to a producer that the network was “playing with fire” and risked losing the trust of its viewers. “With Trump behind it,” he wrote, “an alternative like newsmax could be devastating to us.” Such revelations led to a gleeful frenzy of coverage about the network, but now, in Wilmington, specific facts must be proven.

The actual-malice section of the Dominion brief gives a good idea of how the company’s courtroom strategy will play out. Dominion lists twenty instances of alleged defamation, which the lawyers say occurred across Fox’s Web site, social media, and six of its shows—“Lou Dobbs Tonight,” “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo,” “Justice With Judge Jeanine,” “Fox & Friends,” “Hannity,” and “Tucker Carlson Tonight”—and at the direction of people at Fox News who Dominion says knew that the statements were false and let them air anyway. Those people include not just well-known hosts but their producers, network executives, and the very top brass: Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, the father-and-son duo that controls Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corp.

The Murdochs’ decision-making power at Fox News has been a hotly contested pretrial subject. A pivotal contention made by Dominion is that the network aired lies about the voting-machine company with the implicit approval of Fox Corp’s most senior decision-makers. Parts of Rupert Murdoch’s own deposition seemed to support that argument; when asked if he could have ordered Fox News to keep Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell—the two lawyers for the Trump campaign who spread lies about Dominion on Fox shows—off the network, Murdoch said, “I could have, but I didn’t.” Last week, it was reported that Murdoch was expected to testify in the early days of the trial—an outcome that Fox News’ legal team had wanted to avoid. In March, Fox’s lawyers suggested that Murdoch shouldn’t have to testify, given covid concerns. Davis, the judge, rejected the request, noting that Murdoch, who is ninety-two, had recently announced both his fifth engagement (which reportedly lasted only two weeks) and travel plans to Los Angeles, Montana, London, and New York. “Don’t make me look like an idiot,” Davis told the Fox lawyers. (A Wilmington attorney who’s argued before Davis told NPR that the judge was a bit like Cool Hand Luke—“In court, he never shows any emotion, and I mean that in a good way”—so the harsh rebuke was notable.)

Reckless: Life and Love in an Underwater City

Then, in pretrial hearings last week, Davis excoriated Fox’s lawyers for failing to disclose key information in a timely fashion, including the fact that Rupert Murdoch is a corporate officer at Fox News. Fox’s defense attorneys have long argued that Murdoch, though a chair of Fox’s parent company, had little to do with the day-to-day running of the network. In light of the disclosure, Dominion’s lawyers claimed that they had been litigating under a false premise and that they should have been able to access more documents in discovery pertaining to Murdoch. Davis said that Fox’s lawyers have “a credibility problem” and that he would likely appoint a special master to investigate Fox’s handling of the discovery process; he also said that he had previously sought clarity about Murdoch’s role at Fox News and never heard back from their legal team. “This is very serious,” Davis said. “By the way, omission is a lie.” (Fox has since apologized for the confusion.)

Dominion’s lawyers also complained that they were still learning of pertinent information not from Fox but from media reports and from court filings in a separate case. According to the Washington Post’s Erik Wemple, Dominion cited an NPR report from last week that said Fox’s chief political anchor, Bret Baier, “repeatedly sought to devote an hour-long Sunday evening special following the 2020 elections to set out and debunk the leading myths bolstering Trump’s baseless claims of fraud,” but network executives never gave him a final answer on the pitch. Dominion reportedly told the judge that they had not received any documents from Fox related to this incident. Nor, they said, had Fox informed them of the existence of tapes of Giuliani speaking with Bartiromo, which have been cited in a harassment and toxic-work-environment lawsuit against Fox News filed by Bartiromo’s former producer, Abby Grossberg. Grossberg said that she had surrendered that evidence to Fox, but that it apparently hadn’t shown up in the discovery process for Dominion. (Fox said they “produced the supplemental information from Ms. Grossberg” when they first learned of its existence.)

Grossberg, who is likely to appear as a witness for Dominion, is a curious figure in the whole saga. A former producer for Bartiromo, she is one of the individuals listed by Dominion as personally responsible for allowing defamatory statements on air. In recent weeks, Grossberg publicly claimed that Fox’s lawyers had coached her to give misleading answers in her deposition, including a statement that the show did not have an obligation to correct false information presented by a guest. Grossberg has since said that she “had been conditioned and felt coerced to give this response that simultaneously painted her in a negative light as a professional.” (Fox has called the claims of coaching Grossberg into making misleading statements “patently false.”) She told NBC’s Cynthia McFadden that she was “bullied,” and has generally framed her involvement as a case of sexist scapegoating to spare male higher-ups. But Grossberg’s own messages reveal that she was, at least occasionally, sympathetic to the election-fraud narrative. In texts with Bartiromo, she called the former Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams a “lunatic” and said that former Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler had been too “timid” in talking about purported voter fraud. Grossberg shared a video of the former Trump national-security adviser Michael Flynn pushing fraud claims and wrote “he’s brilliant.” While Grossberg’s workplace allegations are genuinely alarming—routine antisemitism and liberal use of the C-word to describe women—she herself seemed at home in the Fox culture of being only loosely tethered to the truth.

Even without damaging witnesses like Grossberg, Fox was already hobbled going into the trial. Judge Davis has ruled that the network can’t argue that it covered the lies about Dominion because Trump’s fixation on supposed voter fraud made them newsworthy. Davis also said Fox couldn’t argue it was not liable because guests like Powell said the defamatory statements, not its own hosts. “It’s a publication issue, not a who-said-it issue,” he said, meaning, a news outlet bears the ultimate responsibility for what makes it onto air.

In a statement on Friday, Fox seemed to be positioning its defense under the banner of the First Amendment: “Dominion’s lawsuit is a political crusade in search of a financial windfall, but the real cost would be cherished first amendment rights.”A Fox spokesperson also pointed to data showing that the network’s ratings have been unaffected by the case and that Dominion had outperformed revenue forecasts for 2022, casting doubt on the company’s requested damages. It was, perhaps, an indication that the network has shifted its focus to mitigating its financial exposure in the case.

At 6:30 a.m. on Monday, there were already a dozen reporters and professional line-waiters sitting on a marble bench outside the court. Television crews were setting up their shots, with bright lights that made for a harshly artificial morning sun. Around 9 a.m., Davis—tan with very white hair and thin-rimmed glasses—walked into the courtroom. He spoke to two lawyers and nine or so rows of media. “This is not a press conference,” Davis said, “I don’t do that.” He spoke so quietly that the whole room seemed to lean in simultaneously, straining to hear him over their deafening typing. Wolff, seated in the first row of spectators, cupped his hands around his ears. “This is not unusual,” the judge said of the delay. Most trials lasting longer than two weeks—this one is scheduled for six—have some delay of one kind or another. He then sidebarred with the two attorneys, with white noise playing over a speaker so reporters couldn’t hear what was going on, and adjourned for the day. Barring a settlement, proceedings are set to start again at 9 a.m. on Tuesday. ♦

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A view of the Johan Sverdrup oilfield in the North Sea, January 7, 2020. Carina Johansen/NTB Scanpix/via REUTERS / Editing by Germán & Co

Analysis: Norway crude mops up in Europe as Russia's Urals heads east

The EU embargo imposed in December on Russian seaborne oil imports has allowed other oil-producing countries to enter Europe. It is now the primary raw material for refineries in Germany, Poland, and Finland.

Reuters editing by Germán & Co

MOSCOW, April 18 (Reuters) - The clear winner in the race to replace Russian oil at Europe's refineries is Norway's Johan Sverdrup crude, according to Refinitiv Eikon data and traders.

Johan Sverdrup was launched in 2019, making it a relative newcomer compared to Russia's Urals grade.

Initially sold mostly to Asia, an EU ban on Russian seaborne oil imports imposed in December has opened up the European market where the medium sour grade has become a primary feedstock for refiners in countries such as Germany, Poland and Finland.

It is now the Russians who have to pay for the longer voyages to Asia, where India and China continue to buy, while Johan Sverdrup has become one of the most desirable crudes in northwest Europe.

Johan Sverdrup and Urals are both medium-sour grades with high diesel yields, with the Norwegian grade very close in quality to its Russian competitor and a lower sulphur content.

European refiners import a wide variety of grades from around the world including sweet crude from Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Africa, for example, for producing naphtha and gasoline.

"Johan Sverdrup has become a key element in Europe's oil industry, effectively replacing Urals as the medium sour grade of reference," said Viktor Katona, lead crude analyst in Kpler.

Poland's imports of Johan Sverdrup via the port of Gdansk in March jumped to record of more than 8 million barrels, Refinitiv Eikon data showed.

Poland stopped receiving Russian oil in February, with top refiner PKN Orlen ending its only remaining supply contract with Tatneft.

PKN Orlen's Mazeikiu refinery in Lithuania is also ramping up Johan Sverdrup purchases, taking at least two cargoes this month totalling about 1.2 million barrels.

The grade also now accounts for at least a half of Finland's monthly oil imports, the Refinitiv Eikon data showed.

Johan Sverdrup exports by country

Demand has supported Johan Sverdrup differentials on a free on board (FOB) basis which firmed shortly after the EU embargo on seaborne Urals, and jumped to a premium to dated Brent for a while in February, traders said.

PRODUCTION LIMIT

Norway's Equinor (EQNR.OL) can currently produce 720,000 barrels per day (bpd) of Johan Sverdrup but has said it would explore the possibility of raising output to 755,000 bpd.

While Europe boosts its buying, Johan Sverdrup shipments to Asia have fallen off sharply.

In 2021 Asian demand topped 100 million barrels versus just 2 million barrels shipped so far this year, Refinitiv Eikon data showed.

Urals crude is taking up the slack in Asia, with sales increasing 10 fold in 2022 and further this year.

Urals sales in Asia have already matched half of last year's volume, pointing to record shipments in 2023, the data showed.

Some Russian crude still reaches Europe, as well. Bulgaria received an EU waiver to continue imports of Urals crude while Slovakia, Hungary and Czech Republic continue to import via the Druzhba pipeline.

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Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country

…Armando Rodríguez, vice-president and executive director of the company, talks to us about their projects in the DR, where they have been operating for 32 years.

More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

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Flue gas and steam rise out of chimneys and smokestacks of an oil refinery during sunset on a frosty day in the Siberian city of Omsk, Russia, February 8, 2023. REUTERS/Alexey Malgavko/Editing by Germán & Co

India and China snap up Russian oil in April above 'price cap'

The latest data from Refinitiv Eikon suggest that Russian Urals oil cargo loaded in the first half of April is mostly heading to India's and China's ports.

Reuters

MOSCOW, April 17 (Reuters) - India and China have snapped up the vast majority of Russian oil so far in April at prices above the Western price cap of $60 per barrel, according to traders and Reuters calculations.

That means the Kremlin is enjoying stronger revenues despite the West's attempts to curb funds for Russia's military operations in Ukraine.

A G7 source told Reuters on Monday the Western price cap would remain unchanged for now, despite pressure from some European Union countries, such as Poland, to lower the cap to increase pressure on Moscow.

The advocates of the cap say it reduces revenues for Russia while allowing oil to flow, but its opponents say it is too soft to force Russia to backtrack on its activities in Ukraine.

The latest data from Refinitiv Eikon suggest Russian Urals oil cargoes that loaded in the first half of April are mostly heading to India's and China's ports.

India accounts for more than 70% of the seaborne supplies of the grade so far this month and China for about 20%, Reuters calculations show.

Meanwhile, lower freight rates and smaller discounts for Urals against global benchmarks nudged the daily price of the grade back above the cap earlier in April from a period of trading below.

India and China have not agreed to abide by the price cap, but the West had hoped the threat of sanctions might deter traders from helping those countries buy oil above the cap.

Average discounts for Urals were at $13 per barrel to dated Brent on a DES (delivered ex-ship) basis in Indian ports and $9 to ICE Brent in Chinese ports, according to traders, while shipping costs were $10.5 a barrel and $14 a barrel respectively for loadings from Baltic ports to India and China.

That means the Urals price on a free on board (FOB) basis in Baltic ports, allowing about $2 per barrel of additional transport costs, has been slightly above $60 per barrel so far in April, Reuters calculations show.

Shipping costs have come down significantly in recent weeks as Russian port ice conditions eased and more tankers became available.

Freight rates for Urals cargoes loading in Baltic ports for delivery to India have eased to $7.5-$7.6 million from $8-$8.1 million two weeks ago, two traders said.

The cost of tanker shipment from Baltic ports to China was $10 million, down from nearly $11 million a couple of weeks ago, they added.

During winter, freight costs for Urals cargoes jumped above $12 million for both India and China.

Lower freight costs suggest Russian oil suppliers have secured enough vessels even given long distances, the traders said.

Meanwhile, output cuts announced by the OPEC+ group of oil producers at the start of April have also boosted values for various grades around the world, including Urals.

Urals prices in Indian ports had traded at a discount of $14-$17 per barrel to dated Brent on a DES basis in March, while the price at Chinese ports was around $11 per barrel against ICE Brent.

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Overview of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Haʻapai volcano before the main eruption. (Satellite image ©2023 Maxar Technologies. EDITING BY GERMAN & CO

The power of a volcanic eruption: This one was bigger than any U.S. nuclear blast

A new study estimated the Tonga volcanic explosion was 15 megatons, equivalent to 15 million tons of TNT

TWP by Kasha Patel, Updated April 14, 2023 

A previous version of this article incorrectly stated the 15-megaton blast as 15,000 tons. The article has been corrected.

The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Haʻapai undersea volcano eruption in 2022 was larger than any natural explosion in the past century or even any U.S. nuclear explosion, according to a study released Friday in Science Advances. It rivals the massive Krakatau volcanic explosion near Indonesia in 1883 that took more than 36,000 lives, though the Tongan volcanic explosion in the southwest Pacific caused four deaths.

“The only way you can make an explosion of this size is with a hydrogen bomb,” said Sam Purkis, lead author of the study and marine geoscientist at the University of Miami. “This is way off the charts of anything” in human experience.

Using satellite data, field observations and drone mapping, the team created a simulation of the eruption and resulting tsunami waves to provide a new detailed look of the explosive event. They found tsunami waves reached heights of 45 meters (148 feet) on Tonga’s Tofua Island and up to 17 meters (56 feet) on Tongatapu, the country’s most populated island and site of its capital Nukuʻalofa. The study also showed why the tsunami was particularly damaging but how it could have been much worse.

Since the Jan. 15, 2022, eruption, researchers have uncovered several records reached during the event. It released the most water vapor into the atmosphere by a volcano on record, enough to fill 58,000 swimming pools, which may temporarily warm the climate in years to come. It set a world record for highest volcano plume in the satellite record, sending ash 36 miles high into the atmosphere, surpassing what many scientists had considered physically feasible. It triggered the fastest atmospheric waves ever observed at 720 mph, circling the planet at least six times.

Weeks after the eruption, co-author Shane Cronin from the University of Auckland and his colleagues visited the area to examine the damage on the ground. Climbing mountainsides and using drone imagery, they found downed trees and vegetation high along the coast.

“For the first time now, we can really confirm on the ground that this happened,” said Purkis, chief scientist at the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation that helped gather data of the underwater terrain for the model as well. “It’s an event which is unique in modern history.”

On Jan. 15, witnesses reported hearing two blasts shortly before 5 p.m. local in Nuku‘alofa, about 40 miles away from the submarine volcano. Plumes began rising like an umbrella over the island within 30 minutes. Despite the sounds and visible plume, Purkis said these two blasts were probably small and did not trigger any meaningful tsunami. Then, two more much louder booms were reported. This time, the blasts triggered damaging tsunami waves on the western coast and city center of Nuku‘alofa.

But then came the fifth — and most powerful — blast.

Running simulations and gauging pressure changes from broken windows on surrounding islands, the team estimated the strength of the last blast wave to be 15 megatons (equivalent to 15 million tons of TNT). That’s roughly equivalent to the largest nuclear test performed by the United States.

The last blast was so large that it physically displaced large amounts of seawater, creating the massive local tsunami. If you were theoretically at the center of the blast when it occurred, you would have then been standing on dry seafloor, Purkis said. The simulation suggests that one minute after the blast, the displaced wave was 85 meters high — “mind boggling and hard to believe,” he said. By the time it reached Tonga’s Tofua Island, the team’s ground observations showed that the wave was 45 meters high, although Purkis said that might be an underestimate.

The team found that the shallower waters toward the shore played an important part in slowing down and dampening the waves. As the water moves toward the shore, it drags along the sea floor and slows down. It’s the same reason big surfer waves further out in the ocean don’t knock us off our feet on shore. One by one, the waves from each blast slowed down as they reached the coral reef platforms but remained circling in the shallow water. But Purkis said the waves from the different blasts caught up with one another, prolonging the tsunami risk.

The most powerful blast, Purkis explained, was created by seawater infiltrating into the hot magma and exploding, created a steam-generated eruption. The first four blasts probably fractured the rocks, so that a huge quantity of water could infiltrate the magma chamber and create the incredibly large fifth blast.

While not addressed in this new study, other researchers have hypothesized what caused the series of blasts to occur. Volcanologist Melissa Scruggs and her colleagues propose a “magma hammer,” or magma rushing up and hitting the volcano, then dropping back down into the magma chamber several times. Scruggs said the sudden rise of magma was caused by a sudden drop of pressure, which was observed in the seismic record at the time of the largest eruption.

“This seismic signature isn’t common for volcanic eruptions, and has never been described before,” Scruggs, a researcher at University of California at Santa Barbara, said in an email. “This isn’t to say it’s never happened, just that our scientific instruments have never recorded such a signature.”

Scruggs also points out that the volcano started erupting in December, but scientists don’t know what initially triggered the beginning of the eruption. Purkis said, “This is just what volcanoes do.” He said they occasionally come to life, and magma starts moving around in the plumbing of the beast.

Co-author Dan Slayback said he was surprised at “simply how an event of such magnitude can appear with little apparent warning.” Smaller eruptions had been occurring since December 2021 but had slowed down by mid-January.

“I don’t think anyone particularly foresaw the big bang on the [Jan.] 15,” said Slayback, a research scientist at NASA. He called the event a 1-in-500-year eruption for this region.

Given the magnitude and duration of the event, Purkis said the death toll could have been a lot worse, as with Krakatau. Yet he credits a quick response from the community and a low number of tourists in the area because of the coronavirus pandemic. It also happened during the day when people were out and about. The main city in Tonga is also sheltered behind an island in a lagoon, which provided protection from an incoming tsunami.

“This was a very serious event, but won’t be remembered in the same way as Krakatau. But that’s a good thing,” Purkis said.

The study “did exceptional work moving the research on the 2022 local tsunami forward,” said coastal engineer Ignacio Sepulveda Oyarzun, who was not involved in the study. He commended the authors’ use of information from citizens, such as the report of blasts and plume timing and broken glass, to constrain the model.

“I did not know about the tsunamigenic potential of a possible fifth blast,” said Sepulveda Oyarzun, a professor at San Diego State University, who has been studying the mechanism of even farther-reaching tsunami waves from the volcanic eruption, which led to two deaths in Peru and damage as far away as California and New Zealand.

“The effort for understanding volcanic-induced tsunamis extend beyond Tonga, since 1883 for the Krakatau tsunami,” he said. “Ultimately, our goal is to clearly understand these tsunamis and to develop predicting tools which will be of great utility for early warning systems and community preparedness.”

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Image: Germán & Co

Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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News round-up, April, 17, 2023

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Most read…

Economy stumbled after banking crisis, stirring renewed recession fears

The White House sees resilience in labor market, dismisses concerns

TWP by David J. Lynch, April 16, 2023

How Europe Can Best Stand Up To China

Europe has a plan for dealing with China without betraying our interests. Unfortunately, the leaders of Germany, France and other countries have so far failed to adopt it.

A DER SPIEGEL Editorial By Georg Fahrion in Beijing

G7 ministers set big new targets for solar and wind capacity

As part of a commitment made last year to reach at least a "predominantly" decarbonized power sector by 2035, the countries are prioritizing "concrete and timely efforts" towards speeding the phase-out of "domestic coal power generation."

REUTERS by Katya Golubkova, and Yuka Obayashi/Editing by Germán & Co

Brazil's Lula discusses joint Russia war mediation with China and UAE

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said the two countries and others should join a 'political G20' to try to end the war, and accused the West of prolonging the conflict.

Le Monde with AFP, published yesterday at 3:17 pm (Paris)

Russia's Gazprombank deepens ties with Indian banks for bilateral trade

Gazprombank is the third-largest lender in Russia and a crucial link in the country's energy trade.

REUTERS by Nidhi Verma, Editing by Germán & Co

Saudi Arabia, U.A.E. Scoop Up Russian Oil Products at Steep Discounts

Despite U.S. objections, petroleum-rich Gulf countries are capitalizing on cut-rate prices

TWSJ by  Benoit Faucon and Summer Said, April 17, 2023 

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“We’re living in a volatile world…

it’s easy to get distracted by things like changeable commodity prices or a shortage of solar panels. But this wouldn’t be true to our purpose – we can’t allow ourselves to lose sight of our end goal; said Andres Gluski, CEO of energy and utility AES Corp

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Today's events

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Today's events 〰️

A strong U.S. job market has supported steady consumer spending in the face of higher interest rates. (Matt Rourke/AP) / Editing by Germán & Co

Economy stumbled after banking crisis, stirring renewed recession fears

The White House sees resilience in labor market, dismisses concerns

TWP by David J. Lynch, April 16, 2023

A strong U.S. job market has supported steady consumer spending in the face of higher interest rates. (Matt Rourke/AP)

The U.S. economy wobbled in the weeks following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, as consumers spent less, factories slowed their assembly lines and the nation’s bankers grew more cautious in making loans.

If those trends continue, the recession that many analysts have predicted for much of the past year will finally arrive in the coming months.

But throughout the recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, the $26 trillion U.S. economy has defied the odds, minting new jobs at a remarkable pace and avoiding the oft-predicted downturn. Like a prizefighter absorbing a punch, it may yet recover its balance and persevere.

The news on Friday, however, was not great. Retail sales fell for the second straight month, as Americans bought fewer cars, clothes and pieces of furniture. Manufacturing output dipped. And commercial bank lending rose only slightly after two weeks of declines. New business loans in March increased by just $30 billion, the smallest monthly gain since mid-2021, when the pandemic was gathering force, according to the Federal Reserve.

“I think it’s increasingly likely we’ll end up with some form of recession,” said Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY Parthenon. “We’re seeing more and more evidence of a slowdown in economic activity.”

Global economy faces weakest growth patch since 1990s

Aftershocks from the recent banking turmoil make a recession more likely, Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, the nation’s largest bank, told analysts Friday. The sudden failure of two U.S. banks and the takeover by a European rival of Credit Suisse, a global titan, left other institutions more cautious about extending credit.

“Obviously, there's going to be a little bit of tightening,” he said. “So I just look at that as a kind of a thumb on the scale. It just makes the finance conditions be a little bit tighter, increases the odds of a recession.”

That view is shared by Fed staff economists, who anticipated a “mild recession starting later this year,” according to minutes of the central bank’s March 21-22 meeting, which were released this month. Citing fallout from banking industry woes, Fed experts said the economy was slowing faster than they had anticipated in January.

Their forecast of continued softening was not enough to keep the Fed from raising interest rates again. Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell has said higher credit costs will reduce the pressure on prices by slowing business activity and cutting demand for labor.

The Fed has raised rates over the past year from near zero to almost 5 percent, its fastest such move since the early 1980s. So far, the labor market has been resilient, adding more than 1 million new jobs over the past three months and driving unemployment among African Americans to a historic low.

But as the full effects of higher interest rates make themselves felt, workers will pay the price. Employment in construction — among the industries most sensitive to credit costs — fell last month for the first time since the end of 2021.

Over the next year, the Fed anticipates the unemployment rate rising to 4.6 percent from the current 3.5 percent. Some economists worry the Fed will overdo its monetary tightening, just as more Americans are starting to enjoy the benefits of a full-employment economy.

“If we get a recession, it is the Fed’s fault,” said William Spriggs, chief economist for the AFL-CIO. “There is nothing else on the horizon that gets us a recession.”

The economy has shrugged off earlier bouts of weakness, including in 2022 when it shrank for two consecutive quarters to open the year. New jobs remained abundant during that period and growth swiftly resumed.

Likewise, even as analysts mark down their expectations for corporate earnings this year, some businesses remain upbeat. At Delta Air Lines, executives told investors last week that they anticipate strong consumer travel demand this summer.

“We see strength in all of our core hubs,” said Glen Hauenstein, Delta’s president.

Heartland lawmakers push bans on Chinese purchases of American farmland

Economists at Goldman Sachs said Friday that they see just a 35 percent chance of recession in the next 12 months. The latest inflation report — showing prices rising at a 5 percent annual pace — means the Fed will probably raise interest rates at its May meeting and then pause, the bank said.

For the past three years, as the economy has weathered a global pandemic, war in Europe and the highest inflation in 40 years, forecasts have often missed the mark.

But so far this year, the stock market has been largely unfazed by recession fears. The S&P 500 index has gained more than 7 percent.

Biden administration officials also insist the economy is not flagging. In public appearances this month, officials said the banking system remained sound in the wake of Silicon Valley Bank’s failure; inflation is cooling; and the labor market is strong.

Latest crisis to hit U.S. economy illustrates the costs of complacency

The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s real-time tracker pegs first-quarter growth at an annual rate of 2.5 percent.

“Recent economic indicators are not consistent with a recession or even a prerecession,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Thursday.

The bond market, however, has been flashing a warning. Short-term bonds offer investors a higher yield, or interest rate, than do longer-term securities, suggesting that investors anticipate an eventual recession.

Friday’s report card on the nation’s factories also reflected weakening. Manufacturing output in March dropped 0.5 percent from February, with motor vehicle factories particularly hard hit. The dip suggests that U.S. production has gained little from China’s reopening, Capital Economics said in a client note.

The economy’s performance for the rest of this year hinges on two players: the consumer and the banks.

Consumer spending accounts for nearly 70 percent of the economy. For much of the pandemic, Americans stuck at home splurged on purchases of electronics, furniture, clothes and other goods. As the nation reopened for businesses, they began devoting more of their money to in-person experiences, such as restaurant dining and visits to movie theaters.

At first, government stimulus payments enabled consumers to accumulate $2.4 trillion in above-trend savings, according to Daco’s estimate. That pile of excess cash now is down to about $1.4 trillion and the share of consumers who are delinquent on their credit cards is rising, meaning the end of the consumption boom is drawing near.

Just when it will arrive is unclear. Despite the head winds, consumers have more money in their pockets as a result of the strong labor market. Inflation-adjusted disposable income has increased for eight consecutive months, its best streak in almost five years.

“A recession is still very far from inevitable,” said Jason Furman, who was President Barack Obama’s top economic adviser. “In the U.S., real incomes actually are growing even as consumers run out of excess savings. Labor earnings are rising in a way that can support consumption.”

No place to hide for global investors facing mounting political risks

The big worry now is how banks react to the turmoil that convulsed the industry after the March 10 collapse of SVB, followed two days later by the failure of another midsize institution, Signature Bank of New York.

The worst fears of an unchecked financial contagion have eased. The rush by depositors’ to move their money from similarly sized banks to one of the industry’s giants, such as JPMorgan Chase or Citigroup, has tapered off. And bank demand for emergency Fed loans fell for the fourth straight week, as worries about broader problems eased.

The economic damage from the banks’ missteps could prove more consequential.

Even before the crisis erupted, lenders had begun tightening their credit standards. In the weeks since the failures, commercial banks have cut back on lending.

In the last three weeks, commercial loans fell by more than $94 billion, according to Fed data. Much of that reflects a bookkeeping change related to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s seizure of the failed institutions. But about $34 billion probably reflects an actual drop in lending.

Small businesses already are feeling the first squeeze from the credit crunch. In March, 9 percent of business owners said loans were harder to obtain, the highest figure in several years, according to the National Federation of Independent Business. Credit is available but at interest rates around 8 percent.

Some tightening by banks would help the Fed fight inflation. But if banks tighten too much, economic growth could sink.

Investors expect the Fed to raise rates at its May meeting and then stop. The extent of any emerging credit crunch could determine whether the market is correct.

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French President Emmanuel Macron in Beijing with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Foto:Thibault Camus / AFP / Editing by Germán & Co

How Europe Can Best Stand Up To China

Europe has a plan for dealing with China without betraying our interests. Unfortunately, the leaders of Germany, France and other countries have so far failed to adopt it.

A DER SPIEGEL Editorial By Georg Fahrion in Beijing

There it is, finally: a strategic blueprint on how Europe should deal with authoritarian China. And what does one of the most powerful men on the Continent do with it? He torpedoes it, at least for now.

Officials in Beijing courted French President Emmanuel Macron last week, and he returned the favor with remarks that delighted his authoritarian hosts. On his return flight to Paris, he warned that Europe cannot allow itself to degenerate into a vassal of the United States. A possible escalation of the Taiwan conflict, he said, is "not ours," sending a devastating message. His China trip turned into a debacle.

But Macron had been accompanied to Beijing by a woman who at least knows how things could have been handled. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen recently gave a remarkable speech  in which she sketched the outlines of a modern China policy more clearly than any leading European politician has done before her.

Whereas Germany has for too long believed the China would transform itself into a liberal state through trade, von der Leyen recognizes the country is "becoming more repressive at home and more assertive abroad." She sees how relentlessly China is in its desire to make the world increasingly dependent on it. And she is right to say that state and party leader Xi Jinping wants to transform the international system with the goal of placing China at its center.

Wisely, von der Leyen’s conclusion is not that Europe should adopt the American concept of "decoupling." An economic decoupling would neither be desirable nor feasible, at least not with a daily trade volume of almost 1 billion euros and thousands of European companies operating their own subsidiaries and factories in China. Not every screw or kitchen appliance traded with China immediately endangers Europe’s interests.

Rather than "decoupling," von der Leyen is calling for "de-risking," the reduction of risks arising from dependencies. It’s a clever device that allows Europe to keep open its dialogue with China. And, of course, the cultural, scientific and political exchange must also continue.

In sensitive areas like quantum computing, artificial intelligence and biotechnology, the EU should not cooperate with China.

Europe should impose higher barriers in areas where China violates free competition or there are sensitive security issues. Companies that are provided with unfair subsidies must be barred from doing certain business in the EU. In sensitive areas like quantum computing, artificial intelligence and biotechnology, the EU should not cooperate with China.

The European Commission president is also right to question the previously negotiated investment agreement. Rather than deeper ties with China, what is needed is closer cooperation with other countries similar to the EU member states. This is the only way that Europe’s economy can open itself up to new sources of raw materials and markets.

So, if the EU wants to gain "strategic autonomy" vis-à-vis China, as Macron is calling for, then he should simply take his cue from von der Leyen.

Leaders in other European capitals could be bolder when it comes to going up against Xi Jinping. But their fear of being punished by Beijing runs too deep. China is very skillful at playing to the appetites of individual prime ministers and presidents. They are too tempted to create advantages for their own industry. Corporate bosses’ influence on governments is also too considerable. Volkswagen, BMW, Daimler and BASF, in particular, have exposed themselves to the Chinese market to a frightening extent and are unlikely to be able to do much extract themselves.

Allowing China to access critical infrastructure in Germany is the complete opposite of a "de-risking" strategy.

For Europe to adopt a strong position vis-à-vis Beijing, it needs to act in a united and disciplined manner. But Macron’s trip to China demonstrates once again that this is precisely what is lacking. From the Germans, too.

During his inaugural visit to Beijing in November, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz managed to find clear words on Taiwan and the human rights violations in Xinjiang. Yet he still considers the plan by the Chinese shipping company Cosco to acquire part of the Port of Hamburg to be perfectly acceptable. Allowing China to access critical infrastructure in Germany is the complete opposite of a "de-risking" strategy.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, who arrived in China on Thursday, is taking a harder line, but she has proven unable to prevail against Scholz. The disunity within the German government is another reason why a smart European China policy is failing.

The EU cannot afford to be wayward on this issue. Because one thing should be clear to everyone: The strong man on the other side, Xi Jinping, knows exactly what he wants.

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Japan's Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Yasutoshi Nishimura, Environment Minister Akihiro Nishimura and other delegates attend the photo session of G7 Ministers' Meeting on Climate, Energy and Environment in Sapporo, Japan April 15, 2023, in this photo released by Kyodo. Mandatory credit Kyodo via REUTERS

G7 ministers set big new targets for solar and wind capacity

As part of a commitment made last year to reach at least a "predominantly" decarbonized power sector by 2035, the countries are prioritizing "concrete and timely efforts" towards speeding the phase-out of "domestic coal power generation."

REUTERS by Katya Golubkova, and Yuka Obayashi/Editing by Germán & Co

SAPPORO, Japan, April 16 (Reuters) - The Group of Seven rich nations on Sunday set big new collective targets for solar power and offshore wind capacity, agreeing to speed up renewable energy development and move toward a quicker phase-out of fossil fuels.

But they stopped short of endorsing a 2030 deadline for phasing out coal that Canada and other members had pushed for, and left the door open for continued investment in gas, saying that sector could help address potential energy shortfalls.

"In the midst of an unprecedented energy crisis, it's important to come up with measures to tackle climate change and promote energy security at the same time," Japanese industry minister Yasutoshi Nishimura told a news conference.

"While acknowledging that there are diverse pathways to achieve carbon neutral, we agreed on the importance of aiming for a common goal toward 2050," he said.

G7 ministers finish two days of meetings on climate, energy and environmental policy in the northern Japanese city of Sapporo on Sunday. Renewable fuel sources and energy security have taken on a new urgency following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

"Initially people thought that climate action and action on energy security potentially were in conflict. But discussions which we had and which are reflected in the communique are that they actually work together," said Jonathan Wilkinson, Canada's minister of natural resources.

In their communique, the members pledged to collectively increase offshore wind capacity by 150 gigawatts by 2030 and solar capacity to more than 1 terawatt.

They agreed to accelerate "the phase-out of unabated fossil fuels" - the burning of fossil fuels without using technology to capture the resulting C02 emissions - to achieve net zero in energy systems by 2050 at the latest.

On coal, the countries agreed to prioritise "concrete and timely steps" towards accelerating the phase-out of "domestic, unabated coal power generation", as a part of a commitment last year to achieve at least a "predominantly" decarbonised power sector by 2035.

Japan's Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Yasutoshi Nishimura, Environment Minister Akihiro Nishimura and other delegates attend the photo session of G7 Ministers' Meeting on Climate, Energy and Environment in Sapporo, Japan April 15, 2023, in this photo released by Kyodo. Mandatory credit Kyodo via REUTERS

Canada was clear that unabated coal-fired power should be phased out by 2030, and Ottawa, Britain and some other G7 members committed to that date, Canada's Wilkinson told Reuters.

"Others are still trying to figure out how they could get there within their relevant timeframe," Wilkinson said.

"We are trying to find ways (for) some who are more coal-dependent than others to find technical pathways how to do that," he said.

'HUGE STATEMENTS'

"The solar and wind commitments are huge statements to the importance that they will rely on the energy superpowers of solar and wind in order to phase out fossil fuels," said Dave Jones, who is head of data insights at energy think tank Ember.

"Hopefully this will provide a challenge to Japan, for which offshore wind is the missing part of the jigsaw that could see its power sector decarbonise much quicker than it thought possible."

Host country Japan, which depends on imports for nearly all its energy needs, wants to keep liquefied natural gas (LNG) as a transition fuel for at least 10 to 15 years.

The G7 members said investment in the gas sector "can be appropriate" to address potential market shortfalls provoked by the crisis in Ukraine, if implemented in a manner consistent with climate objectives.

They targeted 2040 for reducing additional plastic pollution to zero, bringing the target forward by a decade.

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Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country

…Armando Rodríguez, vice-president and executive director of the company, talks to us about their projects in the DR, where they have been operating for 32 years.

More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

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Image: Germán & Co by Shutterstock, São Paulo, Brasil - 08, 20, 2022

Brazil's Lula discusses joint Russia war mediation with China and UAE

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said the two countries and others should join a 'political G20' to try to end the war, and accused the West of prolonging the conflict.

Le Monde with AFP, published yesterday at 3:17 pm (Paris).

UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan and Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva at an reception at Qasr al-Watan in Abu Dhabi, on April 15, 2023. RYAN CARTER / AFP

Brazil's president on Sunday, April 16, said he had discussed joint mediation for Russia's war in Ukraine with China and the United Arab Emirates, accusing the United States and Europe of prolonging the conflict.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who was wrapping up an official visit to China and the UAE after returning for a third term in office, said the two countries and others should join a "political G20" to try to end the war.

The veteran leftist, who has faced accusations of being overly cosy with Russian President Vladimir Putin, also remarked that the war was caused "by decisions made by two countries."

"President Putin doesn't take any initiatives to stop the war. (President Volodymyr) Zelensky from Ukraine doesn't take any initiatives to stop the war," Lula, speaking through an official translator, told reporters in Abu Dhabi. "Europe and the US continue to give their way of contribution to continue the war. So they have to sit around the table and say, 'That's enough'."

While in China, Lula accused Washington of "encouraging" the war by supplying weapons to Ukraine. He also lashed out at the dollar's dominance in global trade, calling for a new currency for transactions between the BRICS countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

Biofuel deal

The 77-year-old said he spoke to UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Chinese President Xi Jinping about forming a group of countries to mediate, styled after the G20 group of advanced economies.

"The G20 was formed to bail out the (world) economy that was in crisis," Lula said. "Now it's important to create another kind of G20 to end this war and establish peace. This is my intent and I think that we'll manage to have great success."

"Yesterday I talked to the sheikh about the war. I talked to Xi Jinping about the war. And I think that we're meeting a set of people that prefer to talk about peace than war. And so I think we're going to have success."

Lula said he had already discussed his initiative with US President Joe Biden, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron and the leaders of some South American countries.

Despite his comments about the US, the 77-year-old, who returned to power in January after serving two terms from 2003 to 2010, is also seeking closer ties with Washington. His visit to China and the UAE, postponed by a bout of pneumonia, came after a meeting with US President Joe Biden in February.

Unlike Western powers, neither China nor Brazil has imposed sanctions against Moscow over Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The UAE has maintained a neutral stance in the conflict.

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A view shows a board with the logo of Gazprombank at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) in Saint Petersburg, Russia June 16, 2022. REUTERS/Anton Vaganov/File Photo, EDITING BY GERMAN & CO

Russia's Gazprombank deepens ties with Indian banks for bilateral trade

Gazprombank is the third-largest lender in Russia and a crucial link in the country's energy trade.

REUTERS by Nidhi Verma, Editing by Germán & Co

A view shows a board with the logo of Gazprombank at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) in Saint Petersburg, Russia June 16, 2022. REUTERS/Anton Vaganov/File Photo

NEW DELHI, April 17 (Reuters) - Russia's Gazprombank has expanded its links with banks in India to expedite trade between the two countries in national currencies, a key executive told Reuters on Monday, as Russia this year has become the biggest supplier of oil to India.

Trade between India and Russia has surged since the West imposed sanctions against Russia for its invasion last year of Ukraine, which has altered flows of oil and other goods.

"We worked hard to establish our level of partnership with Indian banks and our representatives here worked hard," Elena Borisenko, deputy chairman of the board of management of Gazprombank, told Reuters on the sidelines of an India-Russia business dialogue event in New Delhi on Monday.

"Now we have infrastructure, we have payments from banks ... it is much better than it was three months ago," she added.

Gazprombank is Russia's third-largest lender by assets and a key conduit of the Russian energy trade.

Due to higher purchases of oil, the trade balance is tilted increasingly in favour of Russia. That balance could be improved through Russian companies investing in infrastructure projects in India, Borisenko said.

"We are hoping that it (trade) will be better, it will be improving, and ... payments between Russia and Indian will be more and more in national currencies," the executive said.

India last year implemented a broader framework to facilitate overseas trade in rupees and since then many foreign banks, including Gazprombank and other Russian institutions, have opened vostro accounts with Indian banks.

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Image: Germán & Co

Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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At Fujairah, the United Arab Emirates’ main oil-storage hub, Russia now accounts for more than one in 10 barrels of gas oil. PHOTO: KARIM SAHIB/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/Editing by Germán & Co

Saudi Arabia, U.A.E. Scoop Up Russian Oil Products at Steep Discounts

Despite U.S. objections, petroleum-rich Gulf countries are capitalizing on cut-rate prices

 TWSJ by  Benoit Faucon and Summer Said, April 17, 2023 

As Russia scours the globe for buyers of its energy products, it is finding eager trade partners in an unlikely place: The oil-rich petrostates of the Persian Gulf.

Since Western sanctions over the war in Ukraine cut off Russia from many of its established trading partners, state companies from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have stepped in to take advantage of discounted prices for Russian products, according to oil executives and industry analysts. 

Despite U.S. objections, the Gulf countries are using the discounted Russian products internally, including for consumption and refining purposes, and exporting their own barrels at market rates, boosting their profits. 

The Gulf countries, especially the U.A.E., have also become key storage and trading hubs for Russian energy products that can’t be as easily shipped around the globe because of the war.

The counterintuitive shift, in which countries with the world’s largest reservoirs of oil are eager buyers of more, is an illustration of the unexpected consequences of Western sanctions and another example of the U.S.’s waning influence over the Middle East. 

Russian oil exports to the U.A.E. more than tripled to a record 60 million barrels last year, according to data-commodity provider Kpler. By contrast, Russian oil exports to Singapore, another large trading hub, only rose 13% to 26 million barrels in 2022, according to Kpler.

Russia now accounts for more than one in 10 barrels of gas oil stored in Fujairah, the U.A.E.’s main oil-storage hub, second only to Saudi Arabia, according to Argus Media, a market-data provider.

Russia is shipping 100,000 barrels a day to Saudi Arabia, according to Kpler, compared with virtually none before the war. That would equate to more than 36 million barrels annually.

The Saudi and Emirati trade in Russian oil and fuel products has drawn scrutiny from U.S. officials, who argue that it undermines Western efforts to tighten the screws on the Kremlin’s revenue streams.

The Treasury’s Undersecretary Brian Nelson toured the Middle East in February to try to persuade countries such as Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E., and Turkey to enforce the Western sanctions against Russia.

The U.S. Treasury and Saudi royal court didn’t return requests for comment, while the Emirati Foreign Ministry said it couldn’t immediately comment.

There are no signs yet that the Gulf countries are turning off the spigot of Russian oil, analysts say.

Saudi Arabia is increasingly pursuing a nationalist energy policy that takes precedence over U.S. concerns. Saudi and its allies earlier this month announced an oil production cut aimed at boosting prices, going against U.S. objections that higher prices aid the Russian war machine. 

The U.A.E. has adopted a neutral stance in the war, despite its longstanding security partnership with the U.S. After the Ukraine invasion, Dubai and other emirates have become an international hub of choice for many Russian companies and wealthy individuals seeking to run their businesses and protect their money while avoiding sanctions.

But the oil trade is perhaps the most sensitive aspect of the burgeoning bilateral relationship.

Because of price caps and other sanctions, Russia’s flagship Urals crude has typically traded at a discount of over 30% to benchmark Brent in recent months. 

The arbitrage available for Gulf countries is especially pronounced in refined products such as naphtha, fuel oil and diesel. They are abundant in the Gulf “so the only reason for importing from Russia is to capitalize on the price difference,” said Elshan Aliyev, head of the Mideast Gulf product department at Argus.

Russian naphtha and diesel respectively sell $60 and $25 a ton below their equivalent produced in the Persian Gulf, he said.

In the past year, Saudi Arabia has ramped up its diesel exports to France and Italy, two countries that previously relied largely on Russia for their motor fuel, Kpler data shows.

Moscow is “pretty much satiating the [Saudi] domestic market with discounted transportation fuels and freeing up volumes for subsequent diesel exports elsewhere,” said Viktor Katona, a Russia-focused analyst at Kpler. 

On March 12, Saudi national oil company Saudi Arabian Oil Co., or Aramco, reported record annual profit of $161 billion for 2022, the largest ever by an energy firm. That included a 27% boost to profits for the state-run giant’s refining unit.

Aramco declined to comment. 

Meanwhile, the U.A.E. has become a major storage and re-export hub for Russian oil products, while some traders are making a brisk business shipping Moscow’s cargoes to other destinations using the Gulf nation and its financial system as a base. 

Private trading firms import from Russia to the U.A.E. mostly for re-export purposes to Pakistan and Sri Lanka or East Africa, said Mr. Aliyev.

Some of Russia’s discounted oil cargoes are scooped up by Emirati state-run companies, including five shipments of gasoline to the Dubai-based Emirates National Oil Co. since December. In November, a cargo of 700,000 barrels of Arctic crude oil loaded by Russian government giant Gazprom PJSC was delivered to a refinery of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., which is owned by the emirate, Kpler data shows. 

ENOC and ADNOC didn’t return requests for comment.

Some transactions appear to be designed to be discreet, avoiding the scrutiny of banks and insurers involved in the trade and also because dealing with Russia is politically sensitive. 

Aramco has often been buying oil cargoes that were initially sold by Rosneft Oil Co., a Russian oil company sanctioned by the U.S. But the shipments were carried through transshipments in the Mediterranean, sometimes using Emirati intermediaries and then stored in the U.A.E. rather than delivered directly to Saudi Arabia.

Last year, Rosneft was the main source of Russian oil products entering the U.A.E., Kpler data shows. The Russian state-controlled company, which is headed by key Putin ally Igor Sechin, has been accused by Ukraine of supplying subsidized fuel to Russian forces fighting in Ukraine. Rosneft has denied the allegation.

Aramco has been buying Russian fuel oil using Fujairah, rather than Saudi ports, according to a Saudi official and Kpler data.

In a case in point, a vessel loaded a cargo of vacuum gas oil—a precursor of gas oil—owned by Rosneft in the Russian Black Sea port of Tuapse on Sept. 11, according to data from Kpler, MarineTraffic and OPIS.

Rosneft then sold its cargo of 207,000 barrels to an intermediary company, U.A.E.-based Tejarinaft FZCO, which transferred it to an Aramco-chartered tanker offshore Kalamata, Greece, on Sept. 19, according to Kpler. The Saudi oil giant then stored the shipment at a commercial storage tank in Fujairah on Nov. 8, the data shows.

Tejarinaft and Rosneft didn’t return a request for comment.

Companies that trade mostly or exclusively Russian products have also set up shop in the trading hubs of the Emirates despite the shipments taking place elsewhere. 

Coral Energy and Petroruss, which are both registered at the Dubai Multi Commodities Center, have handled dozens of shipments from the Russian Black Sea to Turkey, Tunisia and even Europe since the war started, according to commodity-data providers Kpler and OPIS.

Coral, which has previously said it would stop handling Russian oil at the start of 2023, and Petroruss didn’t return a request for comment.

OPIS is an energy-data and analytics provider that is part of News Corp’s Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal.

Last year, Russia’s largest oil-tanker company, Sovcomflot, transferred its operations to Dubai away from St. Petersburg in Russia and Cyprus, which is enforcing European Union sanctions.

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News round-up, April, 14, 2023

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Editor's thoughts…

In fact, has globalization failed?

Regarding yesterday's statements, in Shanghai, Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva assents to common BRICS currency to counter US dollar dominance.

Brazil's President, Lula da Silva, called his BRICS counterparts, including Russia, India, China, and South Africa, other than Brazil, to replace the US dollar with their currencies. Lula's comments come amid efforts by India, China, and Russia to set up streams for trade in their money and expanding calls amongst BRICS nations to launch a potential common currency mechanism to trade amongst themselves. "Why can't we do trade based on our currencies," he added. "Why can't a bank like that of the BRICS have a currency to finance trade relations between Brazil and China, between Brazil and other countries? It's difficult because we are unaccustomed [to the idea]. Everyone depends on just one currency," Lula said further, adding an apparent Brazilian consent to the calls for a common BRICS currency for trade amongst themselves.

Bloomberg and wionews, today 

——————————————————-

In this matter, Professor of Harvard Kennedy School, economist Dani Rodrik says policymakers must rethink neoliberal economic orthodoxy to build a more resilient, equitable, and sustainable global economy. For more than a quarter century, economist and Harvard Kennedy School professor Rodrik has been ringing alarm bells about the dangers of globalization. And for a long time, it didn’t seem like a whole lot of people were listening. Now as record economic inequality, a climate in crisis, and global financial shocks from to the COVID pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have exposed the vulnerabilities and shortcomings of unchecked globalism and neoliberal orthodoxy about the primacy of markets, Rodrik may be having the world’s least-satisfying “I told you so” moment.

FEATURING DANI RODRIK

JUNE 30, 2022

www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty-research/policycasthe

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Most read…

Global Economic Chiefs Split Over Rich-World Call for Resilience

-- Global finance chiefs, gathering in Washington little more than a year after the shock Russian invasion of Ukraine, are drawing sharply different conclusions about the biggest risks to the outlook, in a split showcasing the rising role of geopolitical struggles in the world economy.

Bloomberg by Enda Curran, Fri, April 14, 2023

Brazil's president wants to end dollar dominance and backs calls for BRICS nations to use their own currency

"Why can't we do trade based on our own currencies?" , he said.

BLOOMBERG, Filip De Mott, Apr 13, 2023

What we know about 21-year-old accused of leaking top-secret documents

The FBI arrested Jack Texeira, a 21-year-old member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, on suspicion of leaking classified information…

TWP By Ben Brasch, April 13, 2023 

Why Latin American Leaders Are Obsessed With TikTok

Several leaders use the app to publish brief videos of their travels, interactions with the public, and public addresses, frequently putting to songs currently trending on the social media

TIME BY VERA BERGENGRUEN, APRIL 13, 2023 

OPEC+ cuts risk oil supply deficit, threaten economic recovery - IEA

The outlooks for global oil production and consumption have recently been a point of contention between OPEC+ and the IEA…

REUTERS By Noah Browning, editing Germán & Co

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“We’re living in a volatile world…

it’s easy to get distracted by things like changeable commodity prices or a shortage of solar panels. But this wouldn’t be true to our purpose – we can’t allow ourselves to lose sight of our end goal; said Andres Gluski, CEO of energy and utility AES Corp

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Today's events

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Today's events 〰️

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Global Economic Chiefs Split Over Rich-World Call for Resilience

-- Global finance chiefs, gathering in Washington little more than a year after the shock Russian invasion of Ukraine, are drawing sharply different conclusions about the biggest risks to the outlook, in a split showcasing the rising role of geopolitical struggles in the world economy.

Bloomberg by Enda Curran, Fri, April 14, 2023

The key takeaway among rich, democratic nations: the need for more “resilience” in supply chains, to ensure their economies are better insulated from risks ranging from war and pandemics to attempts at coercion by authoritarian regimes. But others, including the International Monetary Fund, are warning against a “fragmentation” of the global economy into competing blocs that hurts growth.

Group of Seven finance ministers and central bank governors invoked the terms “resilient” and “resilience” a total of 15 times in their joint statement after meeting on Wednesday.

“All countries are going to want to have more resilient supply chains in a much less stable world — the lesson of Ukraine was that energy dependence on Russia was probably a mistake,” UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt told reporters Thursday. “We want to make sure that it’s not just energy dependence, but technology dependence, critical-minerals dependence, all sorts of other dependences” that are addressed, he said.

Hunt’s G-7 colleague, German Finance Minister Christian Lindner, described the danger as “cluster risk” — where there’s over-reliance on trade and investment in one location. Trade relations with China, for example, “must not become a cluster risk — which is why diversification is necessary,” he told reporters Thursday.

But the danger of this new push by democratic economies to shift supply chains toward themselves — something US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen calls “friendshoring” — is a separation of the global economy into blocs, leading to less efficiency and ultimately less development.

That was the warning sounded by Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the IMF, which together with the World Bank is hosting spring meetings of world economic policymakers this week in the US capital.

The security of global supply chains “is taking a new higher priority” in economic discussions and decision making, Georgieva told reporters on Thursday. “The question is, can we be more determined to enhance security of supplies but not push the world that far that we are into a second cold war.”

While “resilience” is the new mantra of the US and its allies, “fragmentation” is the feared result among observers including Georgieva. “Getting on a path of less fragmentation in the world economy is good for everybody,” she said last week.

‘Fracturing’ Ties

The key source of that fragmentation risk is the ever-escalating tensions between the US and China, the world’s biggest and second-largest economies.

“That’s the key relationship in the world” and “that is fracturing,” Raghuram Rajan, a former IMF chief economist, said on Bloomberg Television Thursday on the sidelines of the meetings. “That is important for the rest of the world — because if you have to choose sides, countries will be in a very, very difficult position.”

That position wasn’t lost on Moroccan Finance Minister Nadia Fettah Alaoui.

“Countries like Morocco will suffer from fragmentation,” she said Thursday. “We have to push to avoid this.”

No More ‘Chinas’

Making things all the worse is a much weaker trend-growth rate for the global economy. Part of that is because major nations including China, Japan and some euro-zone members are seeing working-age populations shrink. Productivity growth rates have weakened compared with past decades. And the IMF also this week warned that high levels of debt leave the world more vulnerable.

While this year, China’s reopening will offer a burst of growth that may help support the world expansion, its medium-term trend pace of 5% or weaker is notably down from pre-pandemic rates.

“We don’t have any Chinas anymore that are growing at very high rates,” Gita Gopinath, who’s now Georgieva’s top lieutenant after previously serving as IMF chief economist, said on Bloomberg TV. “So for the global economy as a whole, we don’t have very large engines of growth.”

“The IMF is exactly right, longer-term growth looks a lot worse,” Rajan said.

So much worse that the IMF says the five-year outlook for the world is the worst in their projections, which date back to 1990. That year was effectively the book-end of the last Cold War: a year before the collapse of the Soviet Union, which helped to usher the rapid integration of once-Communist nations into a new, rapidly globalizing economy.

Today, intensifying geopolitical competition is seen also in the battle for investment dollars and disputes over debt.

The Washington meetings featured limited progress over resolving debt overhangs for Zambia and other frontier economies, with China — the world’s largest official creditor to the developing world — reluctant to accede to terms that G-7 members are insisting on.

China’s Moves

China instead is focused on strengthening its own supply chains and financial ties with the developing world — a push on display this week as it plays host to Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Amid the impasse in debt talks in Washington, Shanghai witnessed the swearing in of one of Lula’s predecessors, Dilma Rousseff, as head of the New Development Bank. The NDB is one of a number of multinational institutions and forums China has built as it places less emphasis on legacy organizations set up in an era of US domination.

Back in the US capital, the fracturing of the world order was also seen in the G-20 finance ministers failing to issue a communique — continuing the discord faced by the group since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Some developed-world policymakers are attendant to the risks even as they seek to shift supply chains. French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said, “We need a common strategy to avoid that fragmentation and to keep the door open for stronger cooperation.”

But others were direct about the threats they see. Canadian Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland in a Wednesday speech underscored, “These strategic vulnerabilities to authoritarian economies put our own security in jeopardy.”

--With assistance from Christopher Condon, Maria Tadeo, Brian Platt, Eric Martin, Tom Keene, Jonathan Ferro, Lisa Abramowicz, Toru Fujioka, Kamil Kowalcze, Viktoria Dendrinou, Jorge Valero and Philip Aldrick.

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Image: Germán & Co by Shutterstock, São Paulo, São Paulo, Brasil - 08, 20, 2022

Brazil's president wants to end dollar dominance and backs calls for BRICS nations to use their own currency

"Why can't we do trade based on our own currencies?" , he said.

BLOOMBERG, Filip De Mott, Apr 13, 2023

Brazil President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has urged developing nations to find an alternative currency to the dollar, denouncing the central role of the greenback in global trade. 

Thursday's comments, from a speech made during this week's state trip to China, lend another voice to growing de-dollarization rhetoric from leaders of BRICS countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.

"Why can't we do trade based on our own currencies?" he said, per The Financial Times. "Who was it that decided that the dollar was the currency after the disappearance of the gold standard?"

Speaking at the New Development Bank of Shanghai, Lula called for BRICS nations to establish a common currency to with which they could transact. 

"Why can't a bank like that of the BRICS have a currency to finance trade relations between Brazil and China, between Brazil and other countries? It's difficult because we are unaccustomed [to the idea]. Everyone depends on just one currency."

Last year, BRICS countries were reviewing a new currency based on a basket of member currencies. The idea sprung out of incentives to move away from dollar dependence, which proved detrimental after Russia was cut off of its dollar reserves, due to its invasion of Ukraine.

And in January, in another bid to move away from the dollar's dominance, Lula announced that Brazil and Argentina were looking into the development of a common currency.

His stance also represents warming ties between China and Brazil, as Lula attempts a multilateralist approach to foreign affairs. For instance, while maintaining good relations with the US, Brazil has recently agreed to using the yuan in cross-border transactions with China.

Though it's been floated that such changes imply an important shift in the currency regime, a number of analysts have found the so-called de-dollarization of global trade highly improbable. While the dollar may weaken as the world's go-to currency, there are no likely alternatives that would be able to completely replace it.

Even the Chinese yuan, whose role in trade finance has more than doubled since the Ukraine war, is a poor contender. Not only is it virtually pegged to the dollar, China's tight control of it keeps it from adhering to free market flows.

The prospect of Brazilians casting the dollar off in the near future is also unlikely, FT reported, as the currency holds a crucial role in commodity markets and industries that Brazil is heavily involved in.

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Undated image of Jack Teixeira. Officials say Teixeira, a National Guard technology support staffer, is suspected of mishandling U.S. military security secrets. (Obtained by The Washington Post), editing by Germán & Co

What we know about 21-year-old accused of leaking top-secret documents

The FBI arrested Jack Texeira, a 21-year-old member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, on suspicion of leaking classified information…

TWP By Ben Brasch, April 13, 2023 

Authorities on Thursday arrested a 21-year-old member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard suspected of leaking a trove of classified military intelligence in a case that has transfixed much of official Washington for the past week.

The arrest of Jack Teixeira follows The Post’s account of how detailed intelligence documents about an extraordinary range of subjects found their way onto Discord, an online chat platform popular with gamers, before they circulated across the internet.

Here’s what you should know about Teixeira.

Undated image of Jack Teixeira. Officials say Teixeira, a National Guard technology support staffer, is suspected of mishandling U.S. military security secrets. (Obtained by The Washington Post)

Who is Jack Teixeira?

• Teixeira is stationed at Otis Air National Guard Base in Cape Cod, Mass., according to his military records.

• The base is home to the 102nd Intelligence Wing, whose website describes the 102nd’s mission as to “provide world wide precision intelligence and command and control along with trained and experienced Airmen for expeditionary combat support and homeland security.”

• Teixeira’s military record indicates that he enlisted in the National Guard on Sept. 26, 2019.

• Teixeira was mobilized for federal active duty last fall, Nahaku McFadden, a spokesperson for the National Guard Bureau, told The Post.

• His family lives in Dighton, Mass. — about 35 miles south of Boston.

• Some members of the Discord group showed The Post video of Teixiera shouting racist and antisemitic slurs before firing a rifle.

• A friend who spoke with The Post described Teixeira as patriotic, a devout Catholic and a libertarian with an interest in guns and doubts about America’s future.

What kind of information was leaked?

• The leaked documents included the whereabouts and movements of high-ranking political leaders and tactical updates on military forces along with geopolitical analysis and insights into foreign governments’ efforts to interfere with elections.

• The leak, per The Post, revealed how the United States gathers foreign intelligence — not just on Russia’s military and spy agencies but also partners like Ukraine and Israel in addition to key allies in Asia, such as South Korea.

Who leaked the documents?

Jack Teixeira, a young member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, was arrested Thursday in the investigation into leaks of hundreds of pages of classified military intelligence. The Washington Post reported that the individual who leaked the information shared documents with a small circle of online friends on the Discord chat platform.

What do the leaked documents reveal about Ukraine?

The documents reveal profound concerns about the war’s trajectory and Kyiv’s capacity to wage a successful offensive against Russian forces. According to a Defense Intelligence Agency assessment among the leaked documents, “Negotiations to end the conflict are unlikely during 2023.”

What else do they show?

The files include summaries of human intelligence on high-level conversations between world leaders, as well as information about advanced satellite technology the United States uses to spy. They also include intelligence on both allies and adversaries, including Iran and North Korea, as well as Britain, Canada, South Korea and Israel.

What happens now?

The leak has far-reaching implications for the United States and its allies. In addition to the Justice Department investigation, officials in several countries said they were assessing the damage from the leaks.

Where did the documents go?

• Documents were initially posted to a Discord server named “Thug Shaker Central.”

• Roughly two dozen mostly men and boys formed the invitation-only group on Discord in 2020 with a shared love of guns, military gear and God.

What about Teixeira’s time with the Massachusetts Air National Guard?

• The Post has reported that Teixeira’s military record shows him as an Airman 1st Class with no commendations except for an Air Force Achievement Medal — a routine award given widely to airmen.

How would he allegedly have access to such sensitive information?

• Teixeira’s security clearance level isn’t clear, but he did have access to an internal Defense Department computer network for top secret information called the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System (JWICS), a U.S. official familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity as the investigation proceeds told The Post.

• Access to JWICS would have given Teixeira the ability to read and potentially print records classified at the same level as many of the leaked documents, per the official.

• Teixeira told members of his online group that he worked as a technology support staffer at a base on Cape Cod, and that this was how he was able to access classified documents, one member of the Discord server told The Post.

• National Guard units perform some support services for active-duty units, including intelligence support for the Joint Staff, one U.S. official told The Post.

Who can access classified information?

• Thousands of military personnel and government employees, working entry-to-low-level positions, could plausibly have access to classified documents like the ones he allegedly shared, according to U.S. officials and experts who have seen the documents reported in the media.

• The military regularly entrusts young people with classified information and elevated responsibilities, Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder said Thursday. “Think about a young combat platoon sergeant, and the responsibility and trust that we put into those individuals to lead troops into combat,” he said. “It’s called military discipline.”

Devlin Barrett and Shane Harris contributed to this report.

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Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country

…Armando Rodríguez, vice-president and executive director of the company, talks to us about their projects in the DR, where they have been operating for 32 years.

More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

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France's nuclear push is raising hackles with other EU countries — led by Germany — that want the power source eliminated | Guillaume Souvant/AFP/ Editing by Germán & Co

Paris to Berlin: Stop fighting nuclear and help save the planet

Renewables won’t win the war on climate change alone, says the man Macron has tasked with overseeing an atomic energy revival.

POLITICO. EU BY GABRIEL GAVIN, APRIL 11, 2023

Efforts to block nuclear energy from the EU's green power plans could undermine the fight against climate change, France's atomic energy czar warned as Germany prepares to shut down its final three nuclear reactors this weekend.

Joël Barre, who was announced in October as the boss of France's effort to build new nuclear plants, said building more reactors and extending the lives of existing ones is essential to cutting down on the use of fossil fuels — a job that has seen him dubbed “Monsieur Nuclear” by the press.

“If we don’t invest, we clearly face a cliff-edge as our reactors currently in service will see the end of their life between 2040 and 2050,” Barre told POLITICO.

Last year, French President Emmanuel Macron pledged as many as 14 new reactors would be built as part of a “renaissance” of the atomic energy industry, which generates around 70 percent of the country’s electricity. Barre’s team is now working on the construction of six advanced EPR2 reactors, to be built between 2035 and 2042 — ensuring that gas and coal-fired electricity doesn't surge when old reactors are shut down.

That's leading to frequent showdowns between the pro and anti-nuclear camps; March saw two such scraps.

One was over the EU's flagship Net-Zero Industry Act, setting targets for technologies deemed necessary to decarbonize the bloc’s economy. The spat over nuclear delayed the proposal and the end result was a fudge, with atomic power not included in a list of “strategic net-zero technologies” while elsewhere in the text, the definition of net-zero technologies included "advanced technologies to produce energy from nuclear processes with minimal waste from the fuel cycle" and "small modular reactors."

A similar battle overshadowed the EU's call to boost renewable energy targets by 2030, with France winning a marginal victory that allows nuclear in limited circumstances.

Nuclear push

Barre made it clear Paris isn't going to give up the fight.

“We want to have a strategy for nuclear in Europe,” he said. “And on the other hand, countries, mostly Germany, but also Austria and Luxembourg, are opposed to nuclear energy and this is a pity. We need to continue to try to overcome such opposition within the EU.”

He argued that atomic energy does have a role to play as the Continent races to decarbonize.

“I don’t understand the position of Germany because I don’t believe at all that up to the middle of the century they will be able to carry out a zero-carbon strategy based solely on renewable sources,” Barre said.

French President Emmanuel Macron pledged as many as 14 new reactors would be built as part of a “renaissance” of the atomic energy industry | GUillaume Souvant/AFP via Getty Images

However, critics say the French argument is undermined by the problems facing EDF, the government-controlled utility that runs the country's nuclear fleet.

“Just looking at France, half the French reactor fleet has been offline in 2022; EDF is essentially bankrupt — it’s €64 billion in debt and Macron has been forced to fully nationalize it,” said Paul Dorfman, an associate fellow at the University of Sussex’s Science Policy Research Unit.

EDF has been hit by a number of technical problems this year after faults were found at a number of its power plants. More than a dozen reactors have been taken offline while engineers carry out inspections and conduct emergency repairs and, in March, a major crack was reported at its Penly plant in the north of the country triggering a wave of new repairs that required specialists to be brought in from the U.S.

Clean power

Those championing investing more in renewables say that problems with existing reactors, plus delays and cost-overruns in building new ones, don't make it an attractive option, and nuclear should be seen as a transition technology rather than the future of clean power.

“Renewables can be put down much quicker than reactors. The key problem for nuclear is it’s too late — we don’t have the time, we don’t have the resources,” said Dorfman.

But scrapping nuclear power — especially existing plants, as Germany has done — carries its own problems, said Leon Cizelj, professor of nuclear engineering at University of Ljubljana and president of the European Nuclear Society.

"The 20 years long and very costly experiment with renewables without nuclear in Germany did not reduce the carbon footprint of German electricity production,” he said.

He also warned that unless the EU starts to invest in research and develop supply chains for new and existing nuclear power, the bloc's atomic industry will decay.

Barre insisted that nuclear does have a future.

"We cannot carry out consolidated, strong energy policy in Europe without being based on a mix of energy sources — on one side renewables and on the other side nuclear," he said. "We have to oppose efforts to say there is just one solution — we need a mix."

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Screenshots of videos posted On TikTok in March by President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, and President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela/ EDITING BY GERMAN & CO

Why Latin American Leaders Are Obsessed With TikTok

Several leaders use the app to publish brief videos of their travels, interactions with the public, and public addresses, frequently putting to songs currently trending on the social media

TIME BY VERA BERGENGRUEN, APRIL 13, 2023 

Hands held behind their heads, the prisoners in the video sprint down metal steps and into a massive concrete building. As dramatic music plays, the camera pans over thousands of men, arrayed in neat rows, clad only in white shorts, their heads shaved and bodies tattooed. High definition close-ups show their eyes glinting as they press their foreheads to their knees, before they are herded out by armed guards.

The footage shows the round-up of thousands of gang members in El Salvador’s newly opened “mega prison.” It’s not typical fare for TikTok, the video-sharing app that first became popular with teenagers for its viral dance challenges. But a pair of highly produced videos, posted by El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, showing the #GuerraContraLasPandillas—the war on gangs—have garnered 25 million views on the app since being posted in the past two months, with thousands of comments in more than a dozen languages expressing their admiration. “I wish you were the president of the entire world,” one user wrote in a comment liked 16,000 times.

Bukele’s use of TikTok is part of a regional trend. While President Joe Biden and his European counterparts have stayed away from TikTok, blocking it from government devices and weighing an outright ban due to national security concerns about its Chinese ownership, Latin American heads of state are embracing the massively popular platform more than ever. As of April 12, six of the top 10 world leaders on TikTok are from Central and South America. “Almost every single Latin American leader is on the app, and you can see the impact in the figures,” says Matthias Lüfkens, a former head of digital media at the World Economic Forum who tracks world leaders’ social media accounts.

“They’re not following the U.S. lead of banning TikTok. They’re all in, [and] embracing the songs and the memes, which is very rare for any European politicians.”

Latin American heads of state have long been early adopters of new social-media platforms. Now they have seized on TikTok as a less formal, more effective tool for all sorts of political messaging. In Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro has been using the platform to share bite-sized pieces of propaganda on the alleged successes of his socialist agenda, among dozens of videos of himself dancing salsa. In Ecuador, Argentina and Chile, presidents use the app to give followers a view behind the scenes of government. In Brazil, former President Jair Bolsonaro and his successor Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva have been competing for views in the aftermath of a contested election. Many leaders use the app to post short clips of their public speeches, interactions with citizens and travels, often set to songs trending on the app.

While politicians in the U.S. and Europe have raised concerns about the app, Latin American leaders don’t see China as an adversary in the same way, says Iria Puyosa, a senior research fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab who is an expert on social media and political conflict in Latin America. China has invested heavily in the continent over the past two decades and forged close economic and security ties with most Latin American countries. It’s South America’s top trading partner, as well as a key source of both lending and direct foreign investment.

“They see China as a partner,” Puyosa says. “This a way to reach people where the people are—people who distrust the news and are disengaged by electoral politics.” In much of the West, TikTok is the subject of political suspicion; in Latin America, it’s a cornerstone of political strategy.

None have done this more effectively than El Salvador’s Bukele. With 5.6 million followers, he is the most popular head of state on the app—no small feat for the leader of a Central American country with a population of 6.3 million. The son of a wealthy businessman, Bukele started his career in public relations, working for his family’s advertising firm. Since being elected in 2019, at age 35, he has set up a slick digital operation to manage his image and publicize his policies, from an experiment to adopt Bitcoin as the national currency to the declaration of a state of emergency to crack down on the gangs that have terrorized the country for decades. It has helped Bukele notch an approval rating that hovers around 90%.

TikTok is a large part of the alternative media landscape Bukele has built since his inauguration, tightly controlling and often manipulating the information disseminated through TV shows, video streaming sites, social media, and paid Internet trolls, experts say. TikTok can be easier to manipulate than other social platforms, says Alberto Escorcia, a Mexican social media analyst whose analysis of Bukeke’s profiles found an “overwhelming” amount of manipulation to shape public opinion. “A small army of operators can quickly inflate the statistics to appear in the TikTok recommendations algorithm.” (TikTok did not return a request for comment.)

This isn’t a new tactic in Latin America. Ecuador became an early pioneer in Twitter troll farms in 2013, when a company tied to then-president Rafael Correa began to monetize them by hijacking trending topics. Since then, digital armies have become a lucrative business from Brazil to Mexico, especially around presidential elections. Digital staffers who worked for other Latin American campaigns, including former Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, “helped advise Bukele in the creation of this massive communications strategy,” says Escorcia.

His counterparts across the continent are using the app in different ways. The drama of Brazil’s contested presidential election has given way to a split-screen of TikTok accounts, with Bolsonaro (5.3 million followers) and Lula (4.3 million followers) both highly active in different ways. During his three-month self-imposed exile in Florida, Bolsonaro released a stream of videos, set to emotive music, that showed lines of supporters waiting to shake his hand or take a photo. In others he is giving speeches at right-wing events in the area, touting his accomplishments and vowing to return to his country. But mostly he posts humanizing, light-hearted videos—getting a haircut, cooking hot dogs in a suburban kitchen, playing with dogs and children.

“Bolsonaro was the first Brazilian president to adopt a 100% online communication strategy,” says Karina di Nubila, a lawyer and researcher at the University of Valladolid in Spain. He is using TikTok as the “soundtrack” of his comeback, says Di Nubila. “He is creating a plot: the story of the hero, the populist leader, charismatic, loved by Brazilians, who lost the election in an unfair, coup-like and fraudulent way, but who, despite everything, will not abandon his people.” On March 30, a video of his return to Brazil was viewed almost two million times.

Since his inauguration, Lula’s account has been posting frequent videos of him fulfilling presidential duties: waving atop a Brazilian-made submarine, opening health clinics, showing off tropical produce, meeting world leaders. Many of them are set to TikTok trends and popular songs, with one describing his agenda of “putting food on the table of the Brazilian people” and “job opportunities for all” as his “vibe.”

Across Brazil’s northwestern border, Venezuela’s Maduro has posted more than 90 videos on TikTok this year alone. Some are short political sound bites set to music; others show ordinary antics, like playing with a 360-degree camera in his office, or feature the president dancing. In one recent video that garnered 3.4 million views, he’s being smothered by four golden retrievers as he fruitlessly commands them to sit. The Venezuela shown through Maduro’s TikTok is vibrant and thriving—a far cry from the reality of an economy in shambles, rampant hyperinflation, and an ongoing humanitarian crisis in which most of the country struggles to afford food or access basic medicines. “We have to win the battle every day, with intelligence,” Maduro said in a speech last month. “You know how one wins this? On TikTok.”

Other Latin American leaders use the app to showcase their policies. Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso, who has 1.3 million followers, speaks directly to the camera, showing the opening of housing projects and hospitals. Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s videos largely consist of clips of his speeches set to music and scenes from his daily activities. Chilean President Gabriel Boric has an account with 638,000 followers with a more somber tone, in which he shows himself visiting disaster zones and meeting with citizens. Boric, who won the presidency in 2021 at just 35, “is doing this very serious, staid thing, talking about his policy in a very formal way,” says Puyosa.

“I guess he doesn’t need to overdo it—he’s already cool.”

Latin American governments’ embrace of TikTok stands in increasingly stark contrast to the U.S. and Europe, where leaders have never had much enthusiasm for the platform. The U.S. government is clearly aware of its reach: Americans make up the world’s largest TikTok audience, with 150 million users. When the war in Ukraine broke out last year the White House hosted TikTok influencers for a briefing, acknowledging the app as a dominant source of news and information. Biden’s staff also plans to enlist hundreds of TikTok creators as part of the digital strategy for his expected re-election campaign in 2024.

But long-held fears over the app’s data access and Chinese ownership have mounted in recent months. In a high-profile hearing in March, FBI Director Christopher Wray warned that TikTok “screams national security concerns.” Since then, the app has been banned from government devices in the U.S., U.K., Canada, the European Union, and an expanding list of other European countries. Several European government officials deleted accounts, including the Czech government, the European Commission, and Latvia’s foreign minister, who cited “security reasons.” Despite having an account set up under former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the U.K.’s official 10 Downing Street account hasn’t posted since last summer.

One exception is French President Emmanuel Macron, who launched his TikTok account in July 2020 and has amassed 4 million followers with well-lit videos where he speaks to the camera and answers user comments. Even so, France banned TikTok on government devices last month.

“In the U.S. and in Europe, there is this disconnect right now, where you have the government saying no TikTok on government phones, and there’s a conversation around national security, but we still haven’t addressed the fact that governments are pretty out of touch with populations and the public,” says Jiore Craig, who oversees election research at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank that focuses on online disinformation. “Are you doing social media because you have to, or are you doing social media because you understand why it’s important?”

For many leaders in Latin America, the answer is clear—and already yielding results. In recent months, Bukele has begun adding English subtitles to his videos as he works to grow a global audience of admirers and uses the app to hit back at critics abroad. “Where did they get this sudden love for El Salvador?” he says in one TikTok, translated into English on the screen, addressing human rights organizations’ concerns over the sprawling new prisons he has highlighted in his videos.

“Up until recently, they couldn’t find it on a map.”

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Image: Germán & Co

Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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The OPEC logo pictured ahead of an informal meeting between members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in Algiers, Algeria, September 28, 2016. REUTERS/Ramzi Boudina/File Photo/ Editing by Germán & Co

OPEC+ cuts risk oil supply deficit, threaten economic recovery - IEA

The outlooks for global oil production and consumption have recently been a point of contention between OPEC+ and the IEA…

REUTERS By Noah Browning, editing Germán & Co

LONDON, April 14 (Reuters) - Output cuts announced by OPEC+ producers risk exacerbating an oil supply deficit expected in the second half of the year and could hurt consumers and global economic recovery, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Friday.

OPEC+ and the IEA have jousted in recent months over their outlooks for global oil supply and demand.

Consumer countries represented by the IEA have argued that tightening supplies drive up prices and could threaten a recession, while OPEC+ blames Western monetary policy for market volatility and inflation which undercuts the value of its oil.

"Oil market balances were already set to tighten in the second half of 2023, with the potential for a substantial supply deficit to emerge," the IEA said in its monthly oil report.

"The latest cuts risk exacerbating those strains, pushing both crude and product prices higher. Consumers currently under siege from inflation will suffer even more from higher prices."

Global oil supply/demand

Supply/Demand Balance

OPEC+ called its surprise cut decision a "precautionary measure" and in a monthly oil report published on Thursday OPEC cited downside risks to summer oil demand from high stock levels and economic challenges.

The IEA said it expected global oil supply to fall by 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) by the end of the year citing an expected production increase of 1 million bpd from outside of OPEC+ beginning in March versus a 1.4 million bpd decline from the producers bloc.

Rising global oil stocks may have influenced the OPEC+ decision, the IEA added, noting the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) industry stocks in January hit their highest level since July 2021 at 2.83 billion barrels.

The demand picture will be skewed between lacklustre growth in OECD countries and rebounding demand led by China after the relaxation of its COVID-19 restrictions, the IEA said.

World Total Oil Demand

Meanwhile Russian oil exports in March hit their highest levels since April 2020 on robust oil product flows, the IEA said, despite a seaborne import ban from the European Union and a price cap sanctions policy spearheaded by the United States.

Russia's March revenue rose by $1 billion month on month to $12.7 billion, but was still 43% lower than a year earlier partly due to capped prices on its seaborne oil exports.

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News round-up, April, 13, 2023

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Words from the editor…

Unfortunately, not all the news that has kept people awake over the past three years has been positive; the recent leak of the Pentagon Papers portends another year of pain and suffering for humanity.

The documents reveal profound concerns about the war’s trajectory and Kyiv’s capacity to wage a successful offensive against Russian forces. According to a Defense Intelligence Agency assessment of the leaked documents, “Negotiations to end the conflict are unlikely during 2023.”

The Washintong post

And as if the future wasn't already unclear enough, I'll leave you with the words of energy historian and vice chair of S&P Global, Daniel Yergin:

“If China does start shipping weapons to Russia, we’ll see a strong reaction that can have quite a big impact on the world economy,” .

POLITICO.COM

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Most read…

No Russia-Ukraine peace talks expected this year, U.S. leak shows

The war is expected to spill into 2024 with neither side notching victory and both refusing to negotiate, U.S. intelligence officials surmise

TWP by John Hudson, April 12, 2023 

Poland’s Morawiecki plays Europe’s anti-Macron in Washington

The Polish PM is stressing that Warsaw is Washington’s crucial European ally.

POLITICO.EU BY JAN CIENSKI, APRIL 13, 2023 

Column: Peak emissions hopes to be tested as China & Europe crank output

Power emissions may worsen before they improve due to the synchronized recovery of economic activity in China and Europe this year, even though renewables are undoubtedly gaining market share at a record pace in every relevant power sector.

REUTERS By Gavin Maguire, editing by Germán & Co

Oil stable as market weighs tight supply against U.S. recession risk

However, the bank sector's stress, according to the minutes of the Fed's most recent policy meeting, might push the country into a recession, which would reduce demand for oil.

REUTERS By Rowena Edwards, editing by Germán & Co

Natural gas exporters skirt Washington’s scrutiny of China

Lawmakers are eying links between the U.S. and China, but there’s little desire to curb U.S. gas shipments that are expected to help drive the industry’s domestic growth.

POLITICO.COM By BEN LEFEBVRE and ZACK COLMAN, 04/13/2023 

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“We’re living in a volatile world…

it’s easy to get distracted by things like changeable commodity prices or a shortage of solar panels. But this wouldn’t be true to our purpose – we can’t allow ourselves to lose sight of our end goal; said Andres Gluski, CEO of energy and utility AES Corp

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Today's events

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Today's events 〰️

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Image: Germán & Co, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky by Shutterstock

No Russia-Ukraine peace talks expected this year, U.S. leak shows

The war is expected to spill into 2024 with neither side notching victory and both refusing to negotiate, U.S. intelligence officials surmise

TWP by John Hudson, April 12, 2023 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky speaks with the media during a joint news conference at the White House in December during a high-stakes visit to Washington. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)

The grinding war between Ukraine and Russia is expected to bleed into 2024 with neither side securing victory yet both refusing to negotiate an end to the conflict, according to a Defense Intelligence Agency assessment that is among the highly sensitive U.S. government materials leaked online and obtained by The Washington Post.

The analysis concludes that, even if Ukraine recaptures “significant” amounts of territory and inflicts “unsustainable losses on Russian forces,” an outcome U.S. intelligence finds unlikely, the nation’s gains would not lead to peace talks.

“Negotiations to end the conflict are unlikely during 2023 in all considered scenarios,” says the document, which has not been disclosed previously.

A leak of dozens of classified U.S. military documents has stunned U.S. officials and allies, and has led to a Justice Department investigation.

The assessment, based on close U.S. scrutiny of each side’s troop counts, weaponry and equipment, could galvanize the war’s critics who have called on major powers such as the United States and China to push for Kyiv and Moscow to reach a settlement and end a conflict that has displaced millions and left hundreds of thousands dead or wounded.

Asked about the DIA’s assessment, a U.S. official said the decision on when to negotiate is up to President Volodymyr Zelensky and the Ukrainian people, underscoring what has been a hands-off approach to mediation espoused by the administration since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022. The United States will continue to stand with Kyiv and provide it with the equipment and weapons that will bolster its position at the negotiating table, whenever that day comes, the official said.

What to know about the Discord leaks

Dozens of highly classified documents have been leaked online, revealing sensitive information intended for senior military and intelligence leaders. In an exclusive investigation, The Post also reviewed scores of additional secret documents, most of which have not been made public.

Where did they come from?

The top-secret documents appear to be — at least partly — from the Pentagon and many seem to have been prepared for senior military officials. Post reporting revealed that a man in his early to mid-20s allegedly shared them with members of an invitation-only Discord group.

What do the leaked documents reveal about Ukraine?

The documents reveal profound concerns about the war’s trajectory and Kyiv’s capacity to wage a successful offensive against Russian forces. According to a Defense Intelligence Agency assessment among the leaked documents, “Negotiations to end the conflict are unlikely during 2023.”

What else do they show?

The files include summaries of human intelligence on high-level conversations between world leaders, as well as information about advanced satellite technology the United States uses to spy. They also include intelligence on both allies and adversaries, including Iran and North Korea, as well as Britain, Canada, South Korea and Israel.

What happens now?

The leak has far-reaching implications for the United States and its allies. In addition to the Justice Department investigation, officials in several countries said they were assessing the damage from the leaks.

The document leak, which first came to authorities’ attention last week, has provided extensive insight into U.S. intelligence activities worldwide and exposed the national security establishment’s deep misgivings about the war’s trajectory. Many of the classified assessments that have surfaced thus far date to February and March, first appearing on the Discord messaging platform before spreading elsewhere online. Both the Pentagon, where many of the leaked materials appear to have originated earlier this year, and the Justice Department have said they are investigating the matter.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment. Spokespersons for the Russian and Ukrainian governments did not respond to requests for comment.

Beyond forecasting a costly open-ended conflict, the newly disclosed document also predicts how Ukrainian and Russian military leaders will respond to battlefield challenges, and it anticipates that the year will end with the two sides achieving only “marginal” territorial gains as a result of “insufficient troops and supplies for effective operations.”

Such a stalemate, where neither side achieves a decisive advantage, is described in the document as “the most likely scenario.”

For the Ukrainian side, an ongoing war of attrition will lead to frustration within the country and “criticism” about how the war is conducted, “making leadership changes more likely,” the document says.

It is unclear if the document is referring to leadership changes in a political or military context. Zelensky remains broadly popular in Ukraine, but tensions exist between his office and Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, head of Ukraine’s armed forces, whom some in Kyiv view as a political threat.

A stalemate also will result in Ukraine enacting the “full mobilization” of its remaining eligible population, the document predicts, sending more young men to the front lines. At the same time, Ukraine probably will intensify its reliance on strikes in Russian territory, the document says, a dynamic that has disquieted some U.S. officials fearful that such attacks could compel President Vladimir Putin to escalate the conflict or give China cause to begin providing lethal support to Russia.

Olena Maltsev weeps over the grave of her 20-year-old son, Vladyslav Maltsev, a Ukrainian soldier buried at the cemetery in Dnipro, Ukraine. (Heidi Levine for The Washington Post)

For the Russian side, the stalemate will force Moscow to employ “degraded reserves due to dwindling combat power,” the document says. The Kremlin also is likely to “accelerate” efforts to integrate captured territories into Russia.

“It’s always been a race to see who runs out of resources first,” said Heather Conley, a Europe scholar and president of the German Marshall Fund.

She said she agreed with the U.S. intelligence contention that negotiations would begin only after one side is “exhausted,” a prospect that appears far off.

Jeff Rathke, a scholar at Johns Hopkins University and former U.S. diplomat, said the assessment “reflects a sobriety about the likelihood of either side being able to mount or to mass decisive military power in places where it can achieve strategic effect.”

The newly disclosed document also analyzes what might result from Russia or Ukraine achieving a “decisive advantage” on the battlefield. In the event that Russia deals a significant blow against Ukraine and captures more territory, Moscow is likely to “posture forces to achieve further objectives, such as regime change” in Ukraine, it says.

Regime change appeared to be the goal of Russia’s invasion, but its forces were thwarted in their blundering attempt to sack the capital.

Russian President Vladimir Putin addresses a crowd at Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow on Feb. 22. (For The Washington Post)

In the scenario in which Ukraine gains a decisive advantage, however, U.S. intelligence believes that Kyiv is likely to “conduct riskier offensive operations for additional gains.” In response, Russia could be expected to “increase nonconventional attacks on Ukraine,” though, importantly, “nuclear use remains unlikely,” the document says. Officials predict that, rather than giving up, the Kremlin would opt to announce a “new national mobilization” to sustain further combat operations.

U.S. officials have cautioned that such analysis related to the war in Ukraine is fluid, and the materials that leaked may lack nuance the United States has gleaned in the days since they were drafted. The newly disclosed document acknowledges that the stalemate it describes as the most likely scenario by year’s send may not hold if there are “substantive improvements to Ukrainian or Russian military capabilities.”

Both sides are preparing for fighting to escalate as warmer weather arrives, though officials in Kyiv and personnel on the war’s front lines have complained about logistical backlogs responsible for slowing promised deliveries of Western arms. Several nations, including the United States, committed battle tanks and other armored vehicles to Ukraine over the winter while initiating new training pipelines aimed at teaching advanced combat tactics to thousands of Ukrainian soldiers.

All the while, what remains very consistent in the Biden administration’s position on Ukraine is its deep skepticism about peace negotiations. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has openly questioned the value of permanent or temporary armistice agreements, telling members of the U.N. Security Council in February that they “should not be fooled by calls for a temporary or unconditional cease-fire.” Russia, he said then, will use “any pause in fighting to consolidate control.”

Blinken has also criticized countries for urging both sides to negotiate, pointing out that Russia is the aggressor and Ukraine has every right to fight to regain its territory.

Publicly, neither Russia nor Ukraine has ruled out negotiations, but their demands are leagues apart.

The 10-point peace plan Zelensky released last year demands the full withdrawal of Russian troops “from the territory of Ukraine,” including Crimea, the peninsula Putin annexed illegally in 2014 that now serves to facilitate the resupply of his forces inside Ukraine.

Moscow, meanwhile, has insisted that Ukraine must acknowledge the new “territorial realities,” which has been interpreted to mean that Zelensky and his Western backers must recognize the regions of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, which Russia does not even fully control, as Russian territory, a non-starter for Ukraine as well as the United States.

China proposed a 12-point peace plan for the conflict with criteria that few found objectionable, but it has gained little traction since it was introduced in February.

Samuel Oakford contributed to this report.

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According to Poland’s PM Mateusz Morawiecki, Emmanuel Macron’s talks of distancing the EU from America “threatens to break up” the block | Ludovic Marin/AFP, editing by Germán & Co

Poland’s Morawiecki plays Europe’s anti-Macron in Washington

The Polish PM is stressing that Warsaw is Washington’s crucial European ally.

POLITICO.EU BY JAN CIENSKI, APRIL 13, 2023 

There’s an Emmanuel Macron-shaped shadow hovering over this week’s U.S. visit by Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.

In contrast to the French president — who in an interview with POLITICO tried to put some distance between the U.S. and Europe in any future confrontation with China over Taiwan and called for strengthening the Continent’s “strategic autonomy” — the Polish leader is underlining the critical importance of the alliance between America and Europe, not least because his country is one of Kyiv’s strongest allies in the war with Russia.

“Instead of building strategic autonomy from the United States, I propose a strategic partnership with the United States,” he said before flying to Washington.

In the U.S. capital, Morawiecki continued with his under-the-table kicks at the French president.

“I see no alternative, and we are absolutely on the same wavelength here, to building an even closer alliance with the Americans. If countries to the west of Poland understand this less, it is probably because of historical circumstances,” he said on Tuesday in Washington.

Unlike France, which has spent decades bristling at Europe’s reliance on the U.S. for its security, Poland is one of the Continent’s keenest American allies. Warsaw has pushed hard for years for U.S. troops to be stationed on its territory, and many of its recent arms contracts have gone to American companies. It signed a $1.4 billion deal earlier this year to buy a second batch of Abrams tanks, and has also agreed to spend $4.6 billion on advanced F-35 fighter jets.

“I am glad that this proposal for an even deeper strategic partnership is something that finds such fertile ground here in the United States, because we know that there are various concepts formulated by others in Europe, concepts that create more threats, more question marks, more unknowns,” Morawiecki said. “Poland is trying to maintain the most commonsense policy based on a close alliance with the United States within the framework of the European Union, and this is the best path for Poland.”

Fast friends

Poland has become one of Ukraine’s most important allies, and access to its roads, railways and airports is crucial in funneling weapons, ammunition and other aid to Ukraine.

That’s helped shift perceptions of Poland — seen before the war as an increasingly marginal member of the Western club thanks to its issues with violating the rule of law, into a key country of the NATO alliance.

Warsaw also sees the Russian attack on Ukraine as justifying its long-held suspicion of its historical foe, and it hasn’t been shy in pointing the finger at Paris and Berlin for being wrong about the threat posed by the Kremlin.

“Old Europe believed in an agreement with Russia, and old Europe failed,” Morawiecki said in a joint news conference with U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris. “But there is a new Europe — Europe that remembers what Russian communism was. And Poland is the leader of this new Europe.”

That’s why Macron’s comments have been seized on by Warsaw.

According to Poland’s PM Mateusz Morawiecki, Emmanuel Macron’s talks of distancing the EU from America “threatens to break up” the block | Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images

“I absolutely don’t agree with President Macron. We believe that more America is needed in Europe … We want more cooperation with the U.S. on a partnership basis,” Marcin Przydacz, a foreign policy adviser to Polish President Andrzej Duda, told Poland’s Radio Zet, adding that the strategic autonomy idea pushed by Macron “has the goal of cutting links between Europe and the United States.”

While Poland is keen on European countries hitting NATO’s goal of spending at least 2 percent of gross domestic product on defense — a target that only seven alliance members, including Poland, but not France and Germany, are meeting — and has no problem with them building up military industries, it doesn’t want to weaken ties with the U.S., said Sławomir Dębski, head of the government-financed Polish Institute of International Affairs.

He warned that Macron’s talks of distancing Europe from America in the event of a conflict with China “threatens to break up the EU, which is against the interests not only of Poland, but also of most European countries.”

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Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country

…Armando Rodríguez, vice-president and executive director of the company, talks to us about their projects in the DR, where they have been operating for 32 years.

More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

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The sun rises behind windmills at a wind farm in Palm Springs, California, February 9, 2011. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson, editing by Germán & Co

Column: Peak emissions hopes to be tested as China & Europe crank output

Power emissions may worsen before they improve due to the synchronized recovery of economic activity in China and Europe this year, even though renewables are undoubtedly gaining market share at a record pace in every relevant power sector.

REUTERS By Gavin Maguire, editing by Germán & Co

LITTLETON, Colorado, April 12 (Reuters) - An upbeat report this week by think tank Ember revealed that a record 12% of global electricity was generated by renewable sources in 2022, and declared that fossil fuel emissions may soon steadily decline as more renewable supply capacity emerges.

Climate trackers have cheered the report, which was based on deep dives into power generation trends across several major economies, and incorporated detailed solar and wind capacity development pipelines in all key regions.

Yet while there is no question that renewables are gaining market share at a record pace in every power sector that matters, power emissions may still get worse before they get better thanks to the synchronised revival of economic activity in China and Europe this year.

Industries in both regions were impaired in 2022 by repeated COVID-19 lockdowns in China and a power crisis in Europe, which resulted in sharp cuts to their combined industrial output.

Even so, China and Europe still lifted fossil fuel power emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) to a record 5.99 billion tonnes in 2022, Ember data shows, which is a testament to their combined polluting heft even during times of economic distress.

Power sector emissions from fossil fuels

In 2023, the economies of China and Europe are expected to return to growth paths as factories and production lines dial up output from the subdued levels of last year, resulting in higher overall energy use.

With global natural gas markets still disrupted following Russia's invasion of Ukraine last year, power producers in China and Europe are likely to struggle raising electricity generation totals without resorting to the increased use of coal.

That may lift emissions even higher, and confound expectations for drops in fossil fuel pollution levels going forward.

CLIPPED BY COVID

China's protracted lockdowns to stem the spread of COVID-19 resulted in the Chinese economy expanding by only 3% in 2022, which was well short of the government target of around 5.5% and the second-weakest growth rate since 1976.

Strict movement curbs and distancing requirements forced capacity reductions in factories, offices and industrial plants throughout the country, which in turn resulted in a decline in industrial energy demand in the world's top polluter.

However, that trend is expected to reverse in 2023 after Beijing eased movement restrictions and unveiled a slew of stimulus measures aimed at reviving economic activity.

Signs are emerging that the revival is already underway, with the latest domestic air travel volumes jumping to their highest since mid-2021, and international travel numbers to their highest since early 2020.

China air travel volumes

Output of a slew of key industrial inputs, including resins, acids and ethylene, have also risen sharply in China in anticipation of greater demand from manufacturers and other downstream users.

China output of industrial inputs

To help feed this widespread revival in activity, China's imports of thermal coal climbed to new highs in the first quarter, which suggests increased coal emissions are likely over the coming months as the economy gathers further momentum.

GERMANY DRIVES EUROPE'S RECOVERY

Data on German industrial activity is also showing growth in early 2023, and is likely indicative of a broader revival in Europe's industrial momentum.

German production of steel, chemicals and fertilizers have all climbed in early 2023 after having fallen precipitously during 2022 when power prices surged.

Output of key German industries

German production of new cars - a bellwether metric of the industrial health of Europe's largest economy - has also risen from last year's lows, although total car output remains well shy of previous peaks.

Germany new car production

European governments are trying to aid the recovery through supportive fiscal and monetary policies, which should spur growth through other parts of the economy in due course.

However, the region's power producers are likely to struggle to lift power generation totals from non-emitting sources due to stunted hydro and nuclear output totals so far in 2023.

That suggests that as industrial momentum gathers further steam, power producers may need to increase fossil fuel use alongside the record deployment of renewable energy supplies to keep up with the rising energy demand.

Alongside the increased coal burning fuelling the industrial recovery in China, more fossil-based power generation in Europe is likely to steer overall power emissions to new highs in 2023, providing a wake up call to those who hope that power sector pollution is primed to head lower from now on.

The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters.

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The sun is seen behind a crude oil pump jack in the Permian Basin in Loving County, Texas, U.S., November 22, 2019. REUTERS/Angus Mordant/File Photo/Editing by Germán & Co

Oil stable as market weighs tight supply against U.S. recession risk

However, the bank sector's stress, according to the minutes of the Fed's most recent policy meeting, might push the country into a recession, which would reduce demand for oil.

REUTERS By Rowena Edwards, editing by Germán & Co

LONDON, April 13 (Reuters) - Oil prices were stable on Thursday as the market weighed the prospect of tight supply against possible recession in the United States, the world's largest oil consumer.

Brent crude fell 7 cents, or 0.08%, to $87.26 a barrel by 0935 GMT. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) was unchanged at $83.26.

Both benchmarks had risen 2% on Wednesday to their highest in more than a month as cooling U.S. inflation spurred hopes that the U.S. Federal Reserve will stop raising interest rates.

However, minutes from the Fed's last policy meeting indicated that banking sector stress could tip the economy into recession, which would weaken U.S. oil demand.

"Global economic growth is fragile and inflationary pressure could easily become elevated again," said Tamas Varga of oil broker PVM.

The market is still reeling from the shock decision by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its allies, together known as OPEC+, to increase its production cut targets.

While the executive director of the International Energy Agency expects the move to tighten supply in the second half of the year and push oil prices higher, the International Monetary Fund on Tuesday highlighted the risk this poses to global economic expansion.

For every 10% rise in the price of oil, IMF models show a 0.1 percentage point reduction in growth and a 0.3 percentage point increase in inflation, said IMF chief economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas said.

Investors will be looking for direction from the OPEC monthly oil market report due at 1130 GMT on Thursday.

Markets on Wednesday shrugged off a small build in U.S. crude oil stocks, attributing it in part to a release of oil from the U.S. emergency reserve and lower exports at the start of the month.

The Biden administration plans to refill the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve soon and hopes to do it at lower oil prices, U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said on Wednesday.

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Image: Germán & Co

Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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More than 12 percent of seaborne liquefied natural gas cargoes out of the U.S. went to China in 2021, second only to South Korea, according to Energy Information Administration data. | Cliff Owen/AP Photo

Natural gas exporters skirt Washington’s scrutiny of China

Lawmakers are eying links between the U.S. and China, but there’s little desire to curb U.S. gas shipments that are expected to help drive the industry’s domestic growth.

POLITICO.COM By BEN LEFEBVRE and ZACK COLMAN, 04/13/2023 

The United States’ booming natural gas export industry is trying to stay out of the fray of rising tensions between the U.S. and China. And it’s getting cover from an unusual quarter: some of Beijing’s critics in the GOP.

U.S. lawmakers of both parties are pursuing tough-on-China bills after a spate of conflicts involving spy balloons, TikTok and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s recent visit to Russia. But executives at companies that sell liquefied natural gas are going to Congress with a contrary message: If the United States wants more of its gas to flow overseas, Chinese yuan will have to be part of the equation.

One reason is that contracts with Chinese buyers are critical to the gas industry’s hopes of securing billions of dollars in bank financing for planned export facilities, industry analysts said. Lack of financing led to delays in construction of new gas projects that could export as much as 21 billion cubic feet a day, a volume that if completely built would triple current U.S. capacity, according to figures from the Energy Information Administration.

“Is China still critically important in signing long-term agreements to help secure funding for those projects?” said Charlie Riedl, executive director for the Center for Liquefied Natural Gas trade association. “The answer is absolutely yes.”

Representatives from the group have met with senators to make the case that China is a crucial market for U.S. energy shipments, Riedl said.

Some of the GOP’s biggest China hawks, like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), are holding their fire when it comes to the LNG trade.

Cruz told POLITICO that “China poses the greatest geopolitical threat” to the U.S. and touted the dozens of bills he’s filed to address the risks. On LNG trade, though, the Texas Republican sees less of an issue.

“Individuals and companies can do business with China. We are not boycotting the nation as a whole,” Cruz said.

For some Republicans, U.S. LNG exports represent an opportunity to exert influence.

“If you want to think of it geopolitically, why wouldn’t we want China dependent on our natural gas for their own economy?” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said in a recent CNBC interview. “Would the world not be safer and would we not be stronger? Why wouldn’t we create more American jobs at the same time?”

But Sen. Marco Rubio, the Florida Republican who is a senior member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has questioned whether the United States should be exporting so much of its gas to a geopolitical rival when tensions between the two countries are rising fast, according to industry executives who were not authorized to discuss the conversations with the media.

Rubio told POLITICO that his concerns about trade with China go beyond LNG, and the U.S. needed to think strategically about the fuel.

“We have to be able to provide for our own energy, and I think in our policies, if we’re going to engage geopolitics in it, it should ensure that we prioritize allies over adversaries,” he said.

Chinese companies have signed major U.S. supply contracts in recent years, including in February when China Gas Holdings agreed to two contracts for one million metric tons of gas a year each from LNG supplier Venture Global. One contract would take gas from the company’s existing export facility in Calcasieu Pass, La., and the second from another facility still under development.

China has become one of the largest buyers of U.S. natural gas. More than 12 percent of seaborne LNG cargoes out of the U.S. went to China in 2021, second only to South Korea, according to EIA data. China’s appetite for U.S. gas dropped sharply in 2022 as shipments were diverted to Europe and amid China’s domestic pandemic-driven lockdowns, but is expected to ramp back up as its economy restarts.

Rubio’s arguments have alarmed some industry officials. But so far he’s on his own — his Republican colleagues in the Senate don’t see a place for Congress or the federal government to step in and steer cargoes away from China when it has become a major financier facilitating U.S. natural gas production and exports.

Sen. Marco Rubio told POLITICO that his concerns about trade with China go beyond LNG, and the U.S. needed to think strategically about the fuel. | Francis Chung/POLITICO

That’s even as GOP lawmakers decry Chinese involvement in clean energy projects in the United States, including Rubio’s targeting of a battery factory Ford Motor Co. plans to build in Michigan that would have used some Chinese technology.

“It’s a free country. People can sell [gas] wherever they want to sell it,” Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho), the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told POLITICO. “They’ll sell it to probably the person who pays the most for it. Free markets work wonderfully — as long as the government stays out.”

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said in an interview that Chinese buyers are inking LNG contracts the same way others do — China gets guaranteed shipments at a certain price by providing upfront capital. That, in turn, helps U.S. companies build export terminals, which drives demand for more U.S. drilling in places like Louisiana and Texas.

“Right now China is a frenemy,” he said. “If they — just like India, South Korea, Japan, the EU — are purchasing or buying, helping to pay for the capitalization of LNG export terminals, well, that’s a good thing. That’s an international norm. I’m OK with that.”

So far, Rubio hasn’t offered specific legislative language that would limit energy exports to China, said one industry official who was granted anonymity to describe private discussions with lawmakers.

But the fact that Republicans and Democrats seem to be in a competition to prove their tough-on-China bonafides is worrying businesses, the industry official said.

“Every industry is sweating the growing bipartisan anti-China consensus,” the industry official said.

Cruz also said LNG would likely bring climate and environmental benefits to China by displacing coal.

China approved construction of 106 gigawatts of coal-fired power in 2022 — equivalent to more than half the entire U.S. coal-fired fleet — according to a recent report by research groups Global Energy Monitor and the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.

Still, the industry remains concerned that the U.S.-China relationship could deteriorate further, particularly as the two remain far apart on issues such as Taiwan and Ukraine. If things get much worse, the global economic reaction could make demand for gas from anywhere start to crumble, said Daniel Yergin, an energy historian and vice chair of market analysis firm S&P Global.

“If China does start shipping weapons to Russia, we’ll see a strong reaction that can have quite a big impact on the world economy,” Yergin said.

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News round-up, April, 11, 2023

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Quote of the day…

…”An unexpected and ill-timed —Black Swan— puts the Pentagon in a major bind.

Germán & Co

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Most read…

U.S. in crisis mode with allies after Ukraine intel leak

Officials in London, Brussels, Berlin, Dubai and Kyiv questioned Washington about how the information ended up online.

Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh said in a statement that the administration has assembled an interagency team “focused on assessing the impact these photographed documents could have on U.S. national security and on our allies and partners.”

REUTERS By ERIN BANCO and ALEXANDER WARD, 04/10/2023 

Egypt secretly planned to supply rockets to Russia, leaked U.S. document says

President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi in February planned to produce 40,000 rockets for Russia and instructed officials to keep production and shipment secret ‘to avoid problems with the West’

The Washington Post by Evan Hill, Missy Ryan, Siobhán O'Grady and Samuel Oakford, April 10, 2023

Exxon Deal Hunt Signals Possible Shale M&A Wave

Drillers are flush with cash, and their concerns about inventories and high costs are seen leading to deals

WSJ by Benoît MorenneFollow and Collin EatonFollow, April 11, 2023

Exclusive: Russia starts fuel supplies to Iran by rail -sources

Russia and Iran are subject to Western sanctions; as a result, they are developing closer connections to support their economies and thwart the sanctions, which both Moscow and Tehran view as unjustifiable.

Reuters, editing by Germán & Co

Mexican Government to Buy Power Plants From Spain’s Iberdrola

Acquisition will increase the state-owned utility’s share of the country’s electricity generation to 55%

Iberdrola said it would continue to develop renewable energy in Mexico with the backing of the Mexican government.

TWP by Anthony Harrup, April 4, 2023 

Ukraine cities pounded, US scrambles to find source of leaked documents

“This could be the result of the leak of classified material from the US…

REUTERS By Pavel Polityuk, NOW

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“We’re living in a volatile world…

it’s easy to get distracted by things like changeable commodity prices or a shortage of solar panels. But this wouldn’t be true to our purpose – we can’t allow ourselves to lose sight of our end goal; said Andres Gluski, CEO of energy and utility AES Corp

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Today's events

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Today's events 〰️

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U.S. in crisis mode with allies after Ukraine intel leak

Officials in London, Brussels, Berlin, Dubai and Kyiv questioned Washington about how the information ended up online.

Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh said in a statement that the administration has assembled an interagency team “focused on assessing the impact these photographed documents could have on U.S. national security and on our allies and partners.”

REUTERS By ERIN BANCO and ALEXANDER WARD, 04/10/2023 

Editing by Germán & Co

Senior U.S. officials are racing to placate frustrated and confused allies from Europe to the Middle East to Kyiv following the leak of highly classified information about the war in Ukraine and other global issues.

After the news of the leak broke last week, senior intelligence, State Department and Pentagon officials reached out to their counterparts to quell worries about the publishing of the intel, according to four officials — an American, two European and one Five Eyes member — familiar with those conversations.

One said that members of the Five Eyes — the intelligence consortium of the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand — have asked for briefings from Washington but have yet to receive a substantive response. Inquiries have been sent separately to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Meanwhile, officials in London, Brussels, Berlin, Dubai and Kyiv questioned Washington about how the information ended up online, who was responsible for the leak and what the U.S. was doing to ensure the information was removed from social media. They also questioned whether the Biden administration was taking steps to limit the distribution of future intelligence. As of Monday morning, U.S. officials had told allies the administration was investigating and that they were still trying to understand the full scope of the leak, the European officials said.

Kirby: ‘We don’t know’ if Ukraine document leak is contained

Ukraine has long worried about information it shares with the U.S. spilling out into the open. “This case showed that the Ukrainians have been absolutely right about that,” said one of the European officials, who like others was granted anonymity to speak about the sensitive leak. “Americans now owe the Ukrainians. They have to apologize and compensate.”

The saga has left the U.S. relationship with its allies in a state of crisis, raising questions about how Washington will correct what officials worldwide view as one of the largest public breaches of U.S. intelligence since WikiLeaks dumped millions of sensitive documents online from 2006 to 2021.

The distress over the leak is particularly problematic because the majority of the documents focus on the war in Ukraine — an effort the U.S. has repeatedly said hinges on collaboration among allies in NATO, Europe and elsewhere.

“The manner of the leak and the contents are very unusual,” said a former U.S. intelligence analyst who focused on Russia. “I can’t remember a time when there was this volume of a leak and this broad of a subject matter of authentic information that was just put on social media rather than say, the Snowden files, that went through a group of journalists first.”

The Pentagon, CIA, ODNI, and FBI declined to comment.

More than 100 U.S. intelligence documents were posted on Discord, a secure messaging app, as early as March 2 and contained sensitive, classified information about the war in Ukraine, Russian military activity, China and the Middle East. The photographed papers, which appeared to have been folded over and then smoothed out, contained top secret information, including from the Central Intelligence Agency.

POLITICO’s review of the documents shows some that appear to have been assembled into a briefing packet by the Joint Staff’s intelligence arm, known as J2, with summaries of global matters pulled from various U.S. intelligence systems. Some of the documents contain markings in the corners that correspond with specific wires with information that appear to be compiled in summary form — a practice often used by individuals inside the government to prepare briefing packets, the former U.S. intelligence analyst said.

It’s still unclear the extent to which the documents have been altered — and by whom. The documents posted in March do not appear to show any glaring alterations, but when some of those were reposted on Discord in April, at least one paper appears to have been altered to show significantly inflated Ukrainian death tolls.

Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh said in a statement Sunday that the administration has assembled an interagency team “focused on assessing the impact these photographed documents could have on U.S. national security and on our allies and partners.” She confirmed that U.S. officials had engaged with “allies and partners” across the globe, adding that the department was still assessing the “validity” of the documents posted to social media.

It’s unclear who from the Biden administration is involved in that interagency effort. The senior U.S. official said only the highest levels of government were in discussions about how to manage the leak. Even those senior officials who work on Ukraine and Russia policy and on portfolios that pertain to countries mentioned in the documents did not know as of Sunday how the administration would respond.

“I have no idea what the plan is,” another senior U.S. official said. “I’d like to know myself how we’re going to handle.”

Meanwhile, in Kyiv where military leaders are busy preparing for a spring counteroffensive, senior officials blamed Russia for the leak and characterized it as a disinformation campaign.

“It is very important to remember that in recent decades, the most successful operations of the Russian special services have been carried out in Photoshop,” Andriy Yusov, the representative of the Ukrainian Defense Intelligence Main Directorate, said on Friday — adding that a preliminary analysis of the documents showed “distorted figures” on losses suffered by both Russia and Ukraine.

A senior Ukrainian lawmaker said the leak was “not seen as a big issue here.”

But elsewhere in Ukraine in the senior national security ranks, officials were angered by the leak, according to one of the European officials. While the documents are dated and likely have no immediate impact on the country’s battlefield operations, the publishing of the information was viewed internally as an embarrassment and potential long-term security problem for Ukraine’s military commanders.

It’s unclear the extent to which the U.S. will alter its intelligence sharing on the Ukraine war in the days and weeks ahead.

The U.S. has made it a habit of sharing intelligence with Ukraine and European allies since 2022. In the months leading up to the war, the U.S. intelligence community shared information with allies to build a coalition of support for Kyiv and to prepare targeted sanctions on Russian government entities and businesses. Senior U.S. officials have heralded that strategy as a major success — one that allowed the U.S., its allies in Europe and in Kyiv to better prepare for the eventual Russian assault.

Veronika Melkozerova contributed to this report.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin and Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi enter a hall during their meeting in Sochi, Russia, on Oct. 17, 2018. (Pavel Golovkin/AP)

Egypt secretly planned to supply rockets to Russia, leaked U.S. document says

President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi in February planned to produce 40,000 rockets for Russia and instructed officials to keep production and shipment secret ‘to avoid problems with the West’

The Washington Post by Evan Hill, Missy Ryan, Siobhán O'Grady and Samuel Oakford, April 10, 2023

President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi of Egypt, one of America’s closest allies in the Middle East and a major recipient of U.S. aid, recently ordered subordinates to produce up to 40,000 rockets to be covertly shipped to Russia, according to a leaked U.S. intelligence document.

A portion of a top secret document, dated Feb. 17, summarizes purported conversations between Sisi and senior Egyptian military officials and also references plans to supply Russia with artillery rounds and gunpowder. In the document, Sisi instructs the officials to keep the production and shipment of the rockets secret “to avoid problems with the West.”

The Washington Post obtained the document from a trove of images of classified files posted in February and March on Discord, a chat app popular with gamers. The document has not been previously reported.

What to know about the Pentagon leak

Dozens of highly classified U.S. military and intelligence documents have been leaked online, revealing a detailed picture of the war in Ukraine, as well as analysis and sensitive information on Russia and other countries — from classified sources. The leak has far-reaching implications for the United States and its allies. Here’s what we know.

Where did they come from?

The top-secret documents appear to be — at least partly — from the Pentagon. Many seem to have been prepared for Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other senior military officials, though hundreds of others may have had access. The files include reports from across the U.S. intelligence community, including from the CIA, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, FISA court warrants and more.

What do the leaked documents reveal about Ukraine?

The documents contain assessments of the progress of war in Ukraine, including precise battlefield tactical information. They reveal profound concerns about Ukraine’s readiness to withstand a Russian offensive, but also show the extent to which the United States has infiltrated the Russian military, allowing the administration to warn Ukraine about upcoming attacks.

What else do they show?

The files include summaries of human intelligence on high-level conversations between world leaders, as well as information about advanced satellite technology the United States uses to spy. They also include intelligence on both allies and adversaries, including Iran and North Korea, as well as Britain, Canada, South Korea and Israel.

Who leaked the documents?

We don’t know who leaked the documents or why, but the Justice Department has said it is investigating the leak. The documents initially appeared in early March on a now-shuttered Discord server; then several of the images were posted on Twitter. Some versions appear later to have been digitally manipulated to inflate Russian military strength.

What happens now?

In addition to the Justice Department investigation, officials in several countries said they were assessing the damage from the leaks.

The disclosure comes as Russia is fighting a war with Ukraine, in which both sides are seeking resupply of depleted arsenals.

In response to questions regarding the document and the veracity of the conversations it describes, Ambassador Ahmed Abu Zeid, spokesman for Egypt’s Foreign Ministry, said that “Egypt’s position from the beginning is based on noninvolvement in this crisis and committing to maintain equal distance with both sides, while affirming Egypt’s support to the U.N. charter and international law in the U.N. General Assembly resolutions.”

“We continue to urge both parties to cease hostilities and reach a political solution through negotiations,” he said.

A U.S. government official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to address sensitive information, said: “We are not aware of any execution of that plan,” referring to the rocket export initiative. “We have not seen that happen,” the official added.

Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh noted that the Justice Department has opened a probe into the leak of classified documents.

U.S. agencies investigate Pentagon leak

U.S. national security agencies are investigating after dozens of highly classified U.S. military and intelligence documents were leaked online a month ago. (Video: Reuters)

Providing arms to Russia for its war in Ukraine would represent a potentially explosive gambit for Egypt, a nation that, despite deepening ties with Moscow, remains deeply invested in its partnership with the United States, which for decades has provided the country more than $1 billion a year in security aid. The document does not explicitly say why Russia is interested in acquiring the rockets, but its military has been expending huge amounts of ammunition in the war, and the U.S. government has claimed that North Korea is clandestinely supplying Russia with artillery rounds and that China is considering doing the same.

Egypt and other American partners in the Middle East have attempted to stay on the sidelines of Western nations’ standoff with Russia over Ukraine, seeking a potential hedge against America’s declining role in the region and new means to ensure their economic and military security. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has raised commodity prices globally and put serious pressure on Egypt, the world’s top importer of wheat, which has received more than 80 percent of its wheat from Russia and Ukraine in recent years.

“Egypt is one of our oldest allies in the Middle East,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who serves on the Senate Foreign Relations and Appropriations committees. “If it’s true that Sisi is covertly building rockets for Russia that could be used in Ukraine, we need to have a serious reckoning about the state of our relationship.”

Sarah Margon, director of U.S. foreign policy at the Open Society Foundations and the Biden administration’s onetime nominee for the State Department’s top human rights post, said that “an intentional sale and delivery of rockets to the Russian government, which has committed such explicit war and other atrocity crimes, is just beyond the pale, especially for an ostensibly close U.S. ally.”

The revelations in the document, if true, raise the question of whether the United States “should continue to defend and support” Egypt if Sisi’s government is seeking a sale that would “serve Cairo’s immediate needs but is likely to have serious negative global impact,” she said.

Michael Hanna, director of U.S. programs at the International Crisis Group, noted that the Biden administration has been leading Western efforts to deny Russia and its mercenaries technology and arms needed for its war in Ukraine and punishing American adversaries such as Iran and North Korea who have done so.

“The idea that it would be Egypt in this role — that’s an embarrassment to the U.S.,” he said.

The document describes Sisi issuing instructions on Feb. 1 for keeping the supply of rockets secret in order “to avoid problems with ‘the West,’” telling a person referenced only as Salah al-Din that factory workers should be told the projectiles are intended for the Egyptian army. Salah al-Din is probably Mohamed Salah al-Din, the minister of state for military production. The gunpowder offered to Russia would come from Factory 18, the document said, which is the name of a decades-old chemical manufacturing plant.

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Exxon Mobil’s search for deals in the Permian Basin points to a coming boom in acquisitions. PHOTO: KATHLEEN FLYNN/REUTERS

Exxon Deal Hunt Signals Possible Shale M&A Wave

Drillers are flush with cash, and their concerns about inventories and high costs are seen leading to deals

WSJ by Benoît MorenneFollow and Collin EatonFollow, April 11, 2023

Exxon Mobil Corp.’s XOM -0.44% hunt for a blockbuster deal in U.S. shale could kick off a bonanza of deal-making in the oil patch as drillers look to put large war chests of cash to work.

The oil giant has held preliminary talks with Pioneer Natural Resources Co. PXD 5.79% , a Texas fracker with a roughly $52 billion market capitalization, about a potential acquisition, The Wall Street Journal reported last week. Exxon, which has been on the prowl in the Permian Basin for months, has also discussed a potential deal with at least one other company, the Journal reported.

Such a transaction would send the strongest signal yet that drillers in the Permian, the hottest U.S. oil field, are set to bulk up through acquisitions. Oil companies boast healthy balance sheets that give them the stomach and means to shop for targets. 

The Journal reported there is no formal process between Exxon and Pioneer, and any deal, if it happens, likely wouldn’t come together until later this year or next year. On Monday, the first day of trading since the Journal’s story, Exxon’s stock dropped less than 1% while Pioneer’s stock jumped about 6%.

The shale industry has shifted from the rapid growth it pursued for more than a decade to a mature business underpinned by fiscal restraint and hefty investor payouts. But shale companies are contending with dwindling drilling locations. Drilling for new oil discoveries has fallen out of favor with investors, leaving many companies with few options other than to acquire rivals to extend their runway. 

“We think generally, there’s more consolidation that’s needed in our business,” ConocoPhillips Chief Executive Ryan Lance told analysts in February.

Wall Street plowed money into several American frackers on Monday, including APA Corp. , Coterra Energy Inc. and Diamondback Energy Inc., adding $7 billion to the collective market value of the 20 largest independent U.S. oil-and-gas companies. Shale stocks climbed even though oil prices declined about 1% Monday because investors were largely betting on an increase in oil mergers and acquisitions, said Neal Dingmann, an analyst at Truist Securities. 

Thirst for growth led to a mergers-and-acquisitions boom in U.S. shale in the past decade. Between 2014 and 2019, the sector saw an average of 407 deals—not restricted to M&A—each year, with a total annual value averaging about $90 billion, according to investment bank Mizuho Securities.

But the pace of M&A slowed down after the pandemic gutted oil demand and stung companies’ balance sheets. Drillers also tightened their belts to meet investors’ demands for cash returns. There were, on average, 180 deals a year between 2020 and 2022 for $59 billion a year, according to Mizuho. 

Now, producers have deep coffers at their disposal to pursue deals. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year sent global prices soaring to more than $127 a barrel, translating into windfall profits for oil and gas. 

The 10 largest U.S. publicly traded shale companies as of the end of last year earned more than $70 billion in profits in 2022, according to FactSet. Exxon netted $55.7 billion in profits, while Chevron Corp. raked in $35.5 billion. 

The next wave of oil deal-making is likely to be set in the Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico, say energy analysts and executives. Oil giants such as Exxon and Chevron favor the region for shale wells that produce rapidly and don’t bind the companies to decadeslong megaprojects that have fallen out of favor with some investors who fear a future decline in oil demand.

If an oil major such as Exxon or Chevron snapped up a big Permian company, “that could obviously ignite a speculative boom,” said Adam Rozencwajg, a managing partner at investment firm Goehring & Rozencwajg.

Exxon has invested heavily in the Permian over the past decade, and continues to call it a key source of growth, alongside its massive oil discoveries in Guyana. The company produced about 550,000 barrels a day on average last year in the Permian, and said it plans to increase its output there to 1 million barrels a day by 2027.

But as the region matures, firms have been wrestling with disappointing wells. The average Permian well produced 5% less oil per lateral foot in 2022 compared with the previous year, according to research firm Enverus. In one part of the Permian, Exxon’s 2022-vintage wells were 8.4% less productive than the prior year, according to Enverus data analyzed by JPMorgan Chase.

In addition to less-productive wells, operators are contending with shrinking inventories of drilling locations. Public companies and private operators in the Permian have less than eight years of their best locations remaining, investment bank Raymond James Financial estimated last year. 

The double whammy creates incentives for companies to merge to gain new drilling opportunities and create economies of scale, executives and investors said. 

Also whetting producers’ appetite for deals is inflation, which has blunted companies’ deployment of capital. The price of labor, steel and equipment has shot up, prompting companies to increase their spending by about 20% this year from 2022 without reaping additional barrels. 

Nabbing a competitor allows drillers to augment production while keeping costs in check, said Muhammad Laghari, a senior managing director at investment bank Guggenheim Securities. 

“M&A is probably right now, in this inflationary environment, the most cost-efficient way to increase your cash flow per share,” he said. 

While oil-price volatility in recent months complicated deals, the U.S. oil benchmark has dropped roughly $43 from its peak last June and is now in the $70 to $80 range, which supports negotiations between sellers and buyers, analysts said. Exxon CEO Darren Woods said on an earnings call in January that the company is looking for opportunities in the Permian but it is difficult to buy at the peak of a commodity cycle.

Some analysts say consolidation in the Permian could contribute to a slowdown in activity there because public companies—the most likely acquirers—have been more conservative with their drilling programs than private operators.

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Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country

…Armando Rodríguez, vice-president and executive director of the company, talks to us about their projects in the DR, where they have been operating for 32 years.

More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

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A view shows a local oil refinery in Omsk, Russia June 6, 2022. Picture taken June 6, 2022. REUTERS/Alexey Malgavko

Exclusive: Russia starts fuel supplies to Iran by rail -sources

Russia and Iran are subject to Western sanctions; as a result, they are developing closer connections to support their economies and thwart the sanctions, which both Moscow and Tehran view as unjustifiable.

Reuters, editing by Germán & Co

MOSCOW, April 11 (Reuters) - Russia started fuel exports to Iran by rail this year for the first time after traditional buyers shunned trade with Moscow, according to three industry sources and exports data.

Russia and Iran, both under Western sanctions, are forging closer ties in order to support their economies and to undermine Western sanctions which both Moscow and Tehran cast as unjustified.

Western sanctions on Russian oil products over what Moscow calls its "special military operation" in Ukraine have reshaped global fuel markets with tankers taking longer routes and suppliers choosing exotic destinations and ways of transportation.

Iran has been under Western sanctions for years with limited access to global markets.

The oil ministries of Russia and Iran did not reply to requests for comment.

Last autumn Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak announced the start of swap supplies of oil products with Iran, but actual shipments only started this year, Reuters sources said.

In February and March Russia supplied up to 30,000 tonnes of gasoline and diesel to Iran, two sources familiar with the export data told Reuters.

A third source confirmed the trade but was not able to confirm the volumes.

All the volumes were supplied by rail from Russia via Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. One of the sources said that some gasoline cargoes were sent on from Iran to neighbouring states, including Iraq, by truck.

Iran is an oil producer and has its own refineries, but recently its consumption had exceeded domestic fuel production, especially in its northern provinces, a trader in Central Asian oil products market said.

Russia had supplied small volumes of fuel to Iran by tanker via the Caspian Sea, as was the case in 2018, two traders familiar with the matter said.

Russian oil companies are currently interested in exporting diesel and gasoline to Iran by rail as exports by sea face high freight rates and a price cap imposed by the G7 countries.

However the rail exports face bottlenecks along the route, the sources said.

"We expect fuel supplies to Iran to rise this year, but we already see several issues with logistics due to rail congestion. That may keep exports from booming," one of the sources familiar with supplies to Iran said

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Iberdrola said it would continue to develop renewable energy in Mexico with the backing of the Mexican government. PHOTO: VINCENT WEST/REUTERS

Mexican Government to Buy Power Plants From Spain’s Iberdrola

Acquisition will increase the state-owned utility’s share of the country’s electricity generation to 55%

Iberdrola said it would continue to develop renewable energy in Mexico with the backing of the Mexican government.

TWP by Anthony Harrup, April 4, 2023 

MEXICO CITY—The Mexican government reached an agreement to buy 13 power-generation plants from Spanish electricity company Iberdrola SA for around $6 billion, the latest bid by Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to recover state share of the industry, the government and the company said.

Mr. López Obrador, whose government has been in disputes with Iberdrola in recent years, met in Mexico City on Tuesday with Iberdrola executives.

“We’ve had our differences, but everything can be resolved through dialogue,” Mr. López Obrador said.

Iberdrola Chairman Ignacio Galán said that given the Mexican government’s energy policies, the company looked for a solution that was good for Mexico and for the interests of Iberdrola shareholders.

“Our wish is to continue collaborating with Mexico—we’ve been doing this for 22 years—in the way that the Mexican government wishes,” he said.

Iberdrola, the largest private electricity generation company in Mexico, said the agreement is for 8,539 megawatts of capacity, including 8,436 megawatts of gas-fueled generation and 103 megawatts of wind power. Iberdrola said it would continue to develop renewable energy in Mexico with the backing of the Mexican government.

“The company continues to be the main private generator of renewable energy in Mexico, aligning with its decarbonization commitments,” Iberdrola said.

The Finance Ministry said the acquisition will be made through an investment vehicle that is majority owned by the country’s national infrastructure fund and managed by Mexico Infrastructure Partners, an investment fund manager. The plants will be operated by state electricity utility Comisión Federal de Electricidad, which will increase its share of overall electricity generation in Mexico from 39% to 55%.

“It strengthens the state’s participation in electricity generation to meet its responsibility of guaranteeing energy supply and price stability for Mexicans,” the ministry said.

Since taking office in 2018, Mr. López Obrador has sought to undo many of the changes made under his predecessor that opened Mexico’s oil and electricity sectors to greater private and foreign investment. Mr. López Obrador suspended new oil block auctions on taking office. In 2021, state oil company Petróleos Mexicanos bought Royal Dutch Shell’s 50% stake in the joint-venture Deer Park refinery in Texas.

Changes made in electricity laws and other government actions in favor of the CFE and Pemex led the U.S. Trade Representative’s office last year to seek consultations under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, questioning their consistency with Mexico’s commitments under the pact. Canada has also challenged Mexico’s energy policies.

Failure to reach an agreement could lead the U.S. to request a dispute resolution panel under the USMCA, which could eventually lead to the U.S. imposing import tariffs on a range of Mexican products.

—Sabela Ojea contributed to this article.

Write to Anthony Harrup at anthony.harrup@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications
Iberdrola will sell gas-fueled power plants with capacity of 8,436 megawatts. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said the capacity was 8,463 megawatts. (Corrected on April 5.)

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Image: NUCLEAR RUSO, editing by Germán & Co

Ukraine cities pounded, US scrambles to find source of leaked documents

“This could be the result of the leak of classified material from the US…

REUTERS By Pavel Polityuk, NOW

KYIV, April 11 (Reuters) - Russian forces pounded frontline cities in eastern Ukraine with air strikes and artillery attacks, while U.S. officials stepped up efforts to locate the source of a leak of classified U.S. documents, including those on Ukrainian counter-offensive plans.

The Russians pressed on with their offensive in the eastern Donetsk region where several cities and towns came under heavy bombardment, Ukraine's general staff said on Tuesday.

Ukrainian forces repelled several attacks, it said, as the Russian military kept up its effort to take control of Bakhmut.

A top Ukrainian commander accused Moscow of using "scorched earth" tactics.

"The enemy switched to so-called scorched earth tactics from Syria. It is destroying buildings and positions with air strikes and artillery fire," Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander of Ukraine's ground forces, said of Bakhmut.

The battle for the small and now largely ruined city on the edge of a chunk of Russian-controlled territory in Donetsk has been the bloodiest of the 13-month war as Moscow tries to inject momentum into its campaign after recent setbacks.

Both sides have suffered heavy casualties in the Bakhmut fighting, but Syrskyi said: "The situation is difficult but controllable."

The head of the Moscow-controlled part of Donetsk, Denis Pushilin, said Russian forces now held 75% of the city, though he cautioned it was too early to talk about Bakhmut's fall.

Moscow's military was also targeting the city of Avdiivka.

"The Russians have turned Avdiivka into a total ruin," said Pavlo Kyrylenko, Donetsk's regional governor, describing an air strike on Monday that destroyed a multi-storey building.

"In total, around 1,800 people remain in Avdiivka, all of whom risk their lives every day."

In Chasiv Yar, the first major town to Bakhmut's west, few buildings remain intact and those queuing for food and other aid do not even flinch at the sound of artillery.

"It used to be scarier, but now we have got used to it," said 50-year-old humanitarian volunteer Maksym. "You don't even pay attention," he added, his words nearly drowned out by the sound of explosions.

As the battles ground on, U.S. broadcaster CNN said Ukraine was forced to amend some military plans ahead of its long-anticipated counter-offensive because of the leak of dozens of secret documents.

U.S. officials are trying to trace the source of the leak, reviewing how they share secrets internally and dealing with the diplomatic fallout.

The documents detail topics such as information on the Ukraine conflict, in which Washington has supplied Kyiv with huge amounts of weapons and led international condemnation of Moscow's invasion.

Asked about the report, Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak said Kyiv's strategic plans remained unchanged but that specific tactics were always subject to change.

Some national security experts and U.S. officials have said they suspect the leaker could be American, but have not ruled out pro-Russian actors.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on the leak, but said: "There is in fact a tendency to always blame everything on Russia. It is, in general, a disease."

HOT ON THE EASTERN FRONT

A Ukrainian counter-offensive has long been expected after months of attritional warfare in the east.

A Russian winter offensive failed to make much progress, and its troops have made only small advances at huge cost.

The Ukrainian defenders have also taken heavy casualties.

Syrskyi said Moscow was sending in special forces and airborne units to help their attack on Bakhmut as members of Russia's private mercenary Wagner group, who have spearheaded the Bakhmut assault, were exhausted.

Reuters could not verify the battlefield accounts.

Ukraine's general staff said Russian forces had made unsuccessful advances on areas west of Bakhmut while shelling many towns and villages, including Bakhmut and Chasiv Yar.

Ukrainian forces repelled 52 enemy attacks, it said.

Donetsk is one of four provinces in eastern and southern Ukraine that Russia declared annexed last year and is seeking to fully occupy in what appears to be a shift in its war aims after failing to overrun the country after its February 2022 invasion.

Control of Bakhmut could allow Russia to directly target Ukrainian defensive lines in Chasiv Yar and open the way for its forces to advance on two bigger cities in the Donetsk region - Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.

Last week, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said troops could be withdrawn if they ran the risk of being encircled. Kyiv and the West say the now smashed city of Bakhmut has only symbolic importance.

Additional reporting by Ron Popeski, Nick Starko and Tom Balmforth; Writing by Angus MacSwan, Andrew Cawthorne, Arshad Mohammed and Shri Navaratnam; Editing by Rosalba O'Brien and Clarence Fernandez

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Image: Germán & Co

Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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News round-up, April, 10, 2023

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Quote of the day…

“Europeans cannot resolve the crisis in Ukraine; how can we credibly say on Taiwan, ‘watch out, if you do something wrong we will be there’? If you really want to increase tensions that’s the way to do it,” he said. 

ABOARD COTAM UNITÉ (FRANCE’S AIR FORCE ONE) — Europe must reduce its dependency on the United States and avoid getting dragged into a confrontation between China and the U.S. over Taiwan, French President Emmanuel Macron said in an interview on his plane back from a three-day state visit to China. / POLITICO.EU

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Most read…

Europe must resist pressure to become ‘America’s followers,’ says Macron

The ‘great risk’ Europe faces is getting ‘caught up in crises that are not ours,’ French president says in interview.

POLITICO.EU bY JAMIL ANDERLINI AND CLEA CAULCUTT, APRIL 9, 2023 

China’s new world order is taking shape

Macron gave Xi the optics he sought: A clear reminder to the United States — who Xi obliquely referred to as a domineering “third party” — of the gap between its hawkish stance on China and the more perhaps equivocating posture of many in Europe.

TWP, analysis by Ishaan Tharoor, Columnist, April 10, 2023

Analysis: Europe facing costly winter without enough long-term LNG deals

Europe made the majority of purchases on the spot market, where prices are far higher than those agreed upon in long-term contracts preferred by seasoned purchasers like China. The International Energy Agency estimates that the cost of its LNG imports will more than treble to almost $190 billion in 2022.

REUTERS by Marwa Rashad and *Ron Bousso, TODAY

How the Latest Leaked Documents Are Different From Past Breaches

The freshness of the documents — some appear to be barely 40 days old — and the hints they hold for operations to come make them particularly damaging, officials say.

NYT by *David E. Sanger, April 9, 2023

The Belgian Towns Producing Their Own Green Power

Energy prices in Europe have skyrocketed in the last year. But not in some towns in Belgium, where consumers have joined together to form co-ops and are generating their own sustainable electricity. It is a popular, and growing, model in Europe.

Spiegel, by Jan Petter in Eeklo, Belgium, 06.04.2023, 

Analysis: Western curbs on Russian oil products redraw global shipping map

As a result of the European Union ban on Russian fuel that started on Feb. 5, tankers carrying clean oil products such as gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and naphtha are travelling between 16 and 18 days to bring Russian supplies to Brazil or U.S. cargoes to Europe, according to two shipping sources.

REUTERS by Mohi Narayan and Jonathan Saul, TODAY

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“We’re living in a volatile world…

it’s easy to get distracted by things like changeable commodity prices or a shortage of solar panels. But this wouldn’t be true to our purpose – we can’t allow ourselves to lose sight of our end goal; said Andres Gluski, CEO of energy and utility AES Corp

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Today's events

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Today's events 〰️

"The great risk” Europe faces is getting "caught up in crises that are not ours," says Macron | Ludovic Marin/ AFP/ POLITICO.EU

Europe must resist pressure to become ‘America’s followers,’ says Macron

The ‘great risk’ Europe faces is getting ‘caught up in crises that are not ours,’ French president says in interview.

POLITICO.EU bY JAMIL ANDERLINI AND CLEA CAULCUTT, APRIL 9, 2023 

ABOARD COTAM UNITÉ (FRANCE’S AIR FORCE ONE) — Europe must reduce its dependency on the United States and avoid getting dragged into a confrontation between China and the U.S. over Taiwan, French President Emmanuel Macron said in an interview on his plane back from a three-day state visit to China.

Speaking with POLITICO and two French journalists after spending around six hours with Chinese President Xi Jinping during his trip, Macron emphasized his pet theory of “strategic autonomy” for Europe, presumably led by France, to become a “third superpower.”

He said “the great risk” Europe faces is that it “gets caught up in crises that are not ours, which prevents it from building its strategic autonomy,” while flying from Beijing to Guangzhou, in southern China, aboard COTAM Unité, France’s Air Force One.

Politico by Stuart Lau

Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party have enthusiastically endorsed Macron’s concept of strategic autonomy and Chinese officials constantly refer to it in their dealings with European countries. Party leaders and theorists in Beijing are convinced the West is in decline and China is on the ascendant and that weakening the transatlantic relationship will help accelerate this trend.

“The paradox would be that, overcome with panic, we believe we are just America’s followers,” Macron said in the interview. “The question Europeans need to answer … is it in our interest to accelerate [a crisis] on Taiwan? No. The worse thing would be to think that we Europeans must become followers on this topic and take our cue from the U.S. agenda and a Chinese overreaction,” he said.

Just hours after his flight left Guangzhou headed back to Paris, China launched large military exercises around the self-ruled island of Taiwan, which China claims as its territory but the U.S. has promised to arm and defend. 

Those exercises were a response to Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-Wen’s 10-day diplomatic tour of Central American countries that included a meeting with Republican U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy while she transited in California. People familiar with Macron’s thinking said he was happy Beijing had at least waited until he was out of Chinese airspace before launching the simulated “Taiwan encirclement” exercise. 

Beijing has repeatedly threatened to invade in recent years and has a policy of isolating the democratic island by forcing other countries to recognize it as part of “one China.”

Taiwan talks

Macron and Xi discussed Taiwan “intensely,” according to French officials accompanying the president, who appears to have taken a more conciliatory approach than the U.S. or even the European Union.

“Stability in the Taiwan Strait is of paramount importance,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who accompanied Macron for part of his visit, said she told Xi during their meeting in Beijing last Thursday. “The threat [of] the use of force to change the status quo is unacceptable.”

Xi responded by saying anyone who thought they could influence Beijing on Taiwan was deluded. 

Macron appears to agree with that assessment.

“Europeans cannot resolve the crisis in Ukraine; how can we credibly say on Taiwan, ‘watch out, if you do something wrong we will be there’? If you really want to increase tensions that’s the way to do it,” he said. 

“Europe is more willing to accept a world in which China becomes a regional hegemon,” said Yanmei Xie, a geopolitics analyst at Gavekal Dragonomics. “Some of its leaders even believe such a world order may be more advantageous to Europe.”

In his trilateral meeting with Macron and von der Leyen last Thursday in Beijing, Xi Jinping went off script on only two topics — Ukraine and Taiwan — according to someone who was present in the room.

“Xi was visibly annoyed for being held responsible for the Ukraine conflict and he downplayed his recent visit to Moscow,” this person said. “He was clearly enraged by the U.S. and very upset over Taiwan, by the Taiwanese president’s transit through the U.S. and [the fact that] foreign policy issues were being raised by Europeans.”

In this meeting, Macron and von der Leyen took similar lines on Taiwan, this person said. But Macron subsequently spent more than four hours with the Chinese leader, much of it with only translators present, and his tone was far more conciliatory than von der Leyen’s when speaking with journalists.

‘Vassals’ warning

Macron also argued that Europe had increased its dependency on the U.S. for weapons and energy and must now focus on boosting European defense industries. 

He also suggested Europe should reduce its dependence on the “extraterritoriality of the U.S. dollar,” a key policy objective of both Moscow and Beijing. 

Macron has long been a proponent of strategic autonomy for Europe | Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images

“If the tensions between the two superpowers heat up … we won’t have the time nor the resources to finance our strategic autonomy and we will become vassals,” he said.

Russia, China, Iran and other countries have been hit by U.S. sanctions in recent years that are based on denying access to the dominant dollar-denominated global financial system. Some in Europe have complained about “weaponization” of the dollar by Washington, which forces European companies to give up business and cut ties with third countries or face crippling secondary sanctions.

While sitting in the stateroom of his A330 aircraft in a hoodie with the words “French Tech” emblazoned on the chest, Macron claimed to have already “won the ideological battle on strategic autonomy” for Europe.

He did not address the question of ongoing U.S. security guarantees for the Continent, which relies heavily on American defense assistance amid the first major land war in Europe since World War II.

As one of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and the only nuclear power in the EU, France is in a unique position militarily. However, the country has contributed far less to the defense of Ukraine against Russia’s invasion than many other countries.

As is common in France and many other European countries, the French President’s office, known as the Elysée Palace, insisted on checking and “proofreading” all the president’s quotes to be published in this article as a condition of granting the interview. This violates POLITICO’s editorial standards and policy, but we agreed to the terms in order to speak directly with the French president. POLITICO insisted that it cannot deceive its readers and would not publish anything the president did not say. The quotes in this article were all actually said by the president, but some parts of the interview in which the president spoke even more frankly about Taiwan and Europe’s strategic autonomy were cut out by the Elysée.

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Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian holds hands with his Saudi Arabian counterpart, Prince Faisal bin Farhan al-Saud, and Chinese counterpart, Qin Gang, in Beijing on Thursday. (Ding Lin/Xinhua News Agency/AP)

China’s new world order is taking shape

Macron gave Xi the optics he sought: A clear reminder to the United States — who Xi obliquely referred to as a domineering “third party” — of the gap between its hawkish stance on China and the more perhaps equivocating posture of many in Europe.

TWP, analysis by Ishaan Tharoor, Columnist, April 10, 2023

It was a bumper week for diplomacy in Beijing. Chinese President Xi Jinping accompanied his French counterpart, President Emmanuel Macron, on a three-day visit to the Chinese capital and the southern metropolis of Guangzhou. Escaping, if briefly, from the fiery protests taking place in his own country, Macron was received by adoring, excited crowds of students at Guangzhou’s Sun Yat-sen University. In between grand receptions and formal tea ceremonies, the two leaders saw a slate of French companies and Chinese state-run firms clinch some major business deals.

Macron gave Xi the optics he sought: A clear reminder to the United States — who Xi obliquely referred to as a domineering “third party” — of the gap between its hawkish stance on China and the more perhaps equivocating posture of many in Europe. It was less clear what Xi gave Macron politically: The French president urged Xi to bring Russia “to reason” over its invasion of Ukraine, but that was met by boilerplate rhetoric and little indication of the needle of the conflict being moved in any significant direction.

In what was framed as a joint call with France, Xi urged for peace talks to resume soon and called “for the protection of civilians,” while also reiterating that “nuclear weapons must not be used, and nuclear war must not be fought” over Ukraine. That latter point marked perhaps the biggest distance between Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has periodically rattled the nuclear saber as the war he unleashed in Ukraine lurches on. Despite European entreaties, Xi made no definitive commitment to speak with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Macron was joined in China by Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission. The two leaders sent somewhat divergent messages; von der Leyen bemoaned China’s “unfair practices,” particularly in trade, and arrived in the country after delivering a tough speech on the authoritarian challenge posed by Beijing. Macron, on the other hand, warned against the West plunging itself into an “inescapable spiral” of tensions with China.

Chinese commentators suggested that’s because the tables of history have turned and Macron recognizes the sheer weight and importance of China’s economy, not least at a moment when he’s trying to carve out a vision of a more robust, capable and independent Europe. “Although there are still concerns in France about our country’s increasing [global] role, China’s support is essential if France wants to exercise its soft power in global governance,” Shanghai-based scholars Zhang Ji and Xue Sheng wrote in a recent essay.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian holds hands with his Saudi Arabian counterpart, Prince Faisal bin Farhan al-Saud, and Chinese counterpart, Qin Gang, in Beijing on Thursday. (Ding Lin/Xinhua News Agency/AP)

Macron and Europe hedge their bets on China

In the middle of Macron’s visit, another major summit took place in Beijing. The foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia and Iran — the Middle East’s feuding antagonists — conducted the highest-level meeting between their two countries in seven years in the Chinese capital. In Washington, a bemused clutch of regional experts looked on as China played the role of a stabilizing outside power in the Middle East.

The thaw between Riyadh and Tehran was long in the works and not exclusively because of Chinese efforts. “Analysts say the warming ties are due to a convergence of interests,” wrote my colleagues Kareem Fahim and Sarah Dadouch. “Iran, under Western sanctions and trying to suffocate a domestic protest movement, has looked to ease its global and regional isolation; Saudi Arabia, faced with security threats from Iran that threaten its plan to diversify the kingdom’s economy away from oil, is seeking to tamp down regional tensions — a strategy that has included pursuing partnerships with major world powers beyond the United States.”

But it does invariably show a waning of American influence, especially over the Saudis. “Many experts still assume that whoever is in the White House will guide Saudi policy on Iran, but that simply isn’t true today,” said Anna Jacobs, a senior Gulf analyst at the International Crisis Group, to the New York Times. “Saudi Arabia and Gulf Arab states are focusing on their economic, political and security interests and protecting themselves from regional threats.”

Enter Xi’s China, an economic juggernaut now flexing new geopolitical muscles. “China has in recent years declared that it needs to be a participant in the creation of the world order,” former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger told Post columnist David Ignatius last month. “It has now made a significant move in that direction.”

China’s Xi promises to build ‘great wall of steel’ in rivalry with West

The contours of this imagined Chinese world order are still difficult to sketch. We know about its vast economic ambitions, including the Belt and Road Initiative that has seen China finance and invest in major infrastructure projects around the world. But in recent weeks, Xi has touted a number of other new initiatives over “security” and “civilization” — still vague policy positions essentially challenging the architecture of the U.S.-led order, as well as the concept of universal values.

“It appears to be a counterargument to [President] Biden’s autocracy versus democracy narrative,” Moritz Rudolf, a research scholar at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center, told the Financial Times. “It’s an ideological battle that’s more attractive to developing countries than people in Washington might believe.”

China’s foray into Middle East great power politics, in particular, show a new capacity and willingness to act. “In the past we would declare some principles, make our position known but not get involved operationally. That is going to change,” said Wu Xinbo, dean of the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, said in the same Financial Times story.

For some analysts, Macron’s visit is a reminder of the tough questions facing Europe. While the war in Ukraine and antipathy toward Russia have galvanized the transatlantic alliance, the question of China is thornier, with Chinese investment and trade vital to Europe’s future prospects. What that means for the grim scenarios that obsess Washington policymakers — including a possible future Chinese invasion of Taiwan — is an open question, and one that may elicit unwelcome answers on both sides of the pond.

“The paradox would be that, overcome with panic, we believe we are just America’s followers,” Macron told reporters traveling with him, before gesturing to current tensions over Taiwan. “The question Europeans need to answer … is it in our interest to accelerate [a crisis] on Taiwan? No. The worse thing would be to think that we Europeans must become followers on this topic and take our cue from the U.S. agenda and a Chinese overreaction.”

“What happens in Europe now — not just in terms of the outcome of this war [in Ukraine], but how Europeans define their relations with China in the future — will shape transatlantic relations,” wrote Andrew Michta, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. “And Europe’s choices when it comes to its China policy will greatly influence the outcome of U.S. competition with China in other theaters too.”

A global order defined — or heavily sculpted — by Beijing’s one-party regime would not be an attractive prospect to most countries. China is, in the Economist’s gloomy analysis, a would-be “superpower that seeks influence without winning affection, power without trust and a global vision without universal human rights.”

But its greater clout on the world stage need not always ring alarm bells. “Not everything between the U.S. and China has to be a zero-sum game,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who leads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Middle East panel, told Politico in the context of Beijing’s Middle East diplomacy. “I don’t know why we would perceive there to be a downside to de-escalation between Saudi Arabia and Iran.”

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Image: A general view shows a special ship, "Neptune", the floating liquefied natural gas terminal, during the inauguration of the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) terminal 'Deutsche Ostsee' in the port of Lubmin, Germany January 14, 2023. REUTERS/Annegret Hilse

Analysis: Europe facing costly winter without enough long-term LNG deals

Europe made the majority of purchases on the spot market, where prices are far higher than those agreed upon in long-term contracts preferred by seasoned purchasers like China. The International Energy Agency estimates that the cost of its LNG imports will more than treble to almost $190 billion in 2022.

REUTERS by Marwa Rashad and *Ron Bousso

LONDON, April 6 (Reuters) - Europe has not made enough progress in locking in long-term contracts for liquefied natural gas (LNG) as an alternative to Russian pipeline supply, which may prove costly next winter as a rebound in Chinese demand could sharply tighten the market.

Buying LNG to replace curtailed Russian flows helped the bloc weather the first winter of the Ukraine conflict, with Europe importing 121 million tonnes of the fuel in 2022, a 60% increase from 2021.

But that came at a cost: Europe bought largely on the spot market, where prices are much higher than those negotiated under long-term deals favoured by seasoned buyers like China. According to the International Energy Agency, the cost of its LNG imports more than tripled in 2022 to some $190 billion.

Northweat Europe LNG imports Northwest Europe LNG imports

Analysts estimate that Europe accounted for more than a third of global spot market trades in 2022, from around 13% in 2021. Such exposure could reach more than 50% this year if no long-term contracts were signed.

But Europe's climate goals - the EU aims to cut net emissions at least 55% by 2030, and to reach net zero by 2050 - mean its LNG buyers struggle to commit to the timeframes necessary to lock in LNG more cheaply under contract.

Morten Frisch, senior partner at Morten Frisch Consulting, said Europe ideally needs about 70-75% of its LNG supply under firm long-term sale and purchase agreements (SPAs).

"But since the green lobby in Europe has managed to persuade politicians wrongly that hydrogen to a large extent can replace natural gas as an energy carrier by 2030, Europe has become far too reliant on spot and short term purchases of LNG," he added.

One senior supply-side source reported a "disconnection" during negotiations with European companies between their needs and the messages they get from their governments on climate.

"Some customers struggle internally... (wondering) is there is a hard stop in 2030? Is there a net-zero by 2040? This moving target... is it really a cliff?" he said.

"This makes it tough for them to commit to the medium and longer term deals, and that potentially leaves them exposed to the spot market in the future."

SECURITY OF SUPPLY

Asia has continued to pull ahead in the race for limited global LNG supply this year before new flows come into the market in 2025 and beyond.

"Their preference for security of supply has allowed them to continue to support new projects, whereas European buyers are concerned about committing to supply well into the start of their net-zero targets," said Felix Booth, head of LNG at energy intelligence firm Vortexa.

China's LNG imports China's LNG imports

While gas is a fossil fuel, it produces less carbon dioxide emissions than coal, so some EU states see it as a temporary alternative to replace dirtier fuels.

Eurasia Group's managing director for energy, climate and sustainability Raad Alkadiri said Europe will not be able to lock in LNG as a replacement for Russian gas as long as the EU views it as a transition fuel, as producers want a guaranteed market in Europe over the next few decades.

LNG imports and exports by region LNG imports and exports by region

Spot LNG prices have dropped more than 82% since they hit a record $70.50 per million British thermal units (mmBtu) in 2022 after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

LNG spot market prices LNG spot market prices

But they are expected to rise again, with a hot summer that could cut hydro levels, a cold 2023-2024 winter and a rebound in Chinese LNG demand all seen as among the risk factors for price.

"EU companies would need to act first by signing a series of large-scale, long-term SPAs based on the Chinese model, to hedge themselves against any ups and downs of the turbulent global LNG market," said Victor Tenev, LNG business consultant at advisory ROITI Ltd.

"Failing to hedge their unenviable natural short position would leave the EU exposed again to the damagingly expensive spot market."

TRANSITION

Major LNG producers and traders including QatarEnergy, Shell, Chevron and ConocoPhillips have in recent months all held talks in European capitals on securing LNG deals.

QatarEnergy's talks with the German government and top power companies such as RWE have hit a wall due to disagreements over deal length, company and industry sources said.

While Qatar typically seeks to sign contracts with at least 25-year terms, Germany has sought a term of 10 to 15 years due to its commitments to slash greenhouse gas emissions, the sources said.

"If you take gas with the delivery point Germany, you cannot go beyond 2043, because gas is not allowed in Germany after 2043," a senior German industry source said.

To resolve the issue, Qatar has offered Germany shorter term contracts of 15 years which would price the LNG at a hefty premium to the longer-term contract, the sources said.

"Nobody wants to lock in 20 years nowadays, and it's the worst possible idea when you're trying to work out what's going to happen next year," Shell Chief Financial Officer Sinead Goreman said at a conference in March.

Shell is offering supply contracts with "break clauses" to allow changes to contracts' term and destination throughout the life of the supply deal such as a three, five or 10 year mark, she said.

"That's what you are going to see more and more - the big integrated players... (being) willing to take that risk because ultimately, countries and smaller companies want to have the flexibility to say, well, let's see how fast renewables grow."

*Thomson Reuters

Ron has covered since 2014 the world’s top oil and gas companies, focusing on their efforts to shift into renewables and low carbon energy and the sector's turmoil during the COVID-19 pandemic and following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. He has been named Reporter of the Year in 2014 and 2021 by Reuters. Before Reuters, Ron reported on equity markets in New York in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis after covering conflict and diplomacy in the Middle East for AFP out of Israel.

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Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country

…Armando Rodríguez, vice-president and executive director of the company, talks to us about their projects in the DR, where they have been operating for 32 years.

More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

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Leaked documents leave no doubt about how heavily the United States in involved in the war in Ukraine.Credit...Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

NEWS ANALYSIS

How the Latest Leaked Documents Are Different From Past Breaches

The freshness of the documents — some appear to be barely 40 days old — and the hints they hold for operations to come make them particularly damaging, officials say.

NYT by *David E. Sanger, April 9, 2023

When WikiLeaks spilled a huge trove of State Department cables 13 years ago, it gave the world a sense of what American diplomats do each day — the sharp elbows, the doubts about wavering allies and the glimpses at how Washington was preparing for North Korea’s eventual collapse and Iran’s nuclear breakout.

When Edward Snowden swept up the National Security Agency’s secrets three years later, Americans suddenly discovered the scope of how the digital age had ushered in a remarkable new era of surveillance by the agency — enabling it to pierce China’s telecommunications industry and to drill into Google’s servers overseas to pick up foreign communications.

The cache of 100 or so newly leaked briefing slides of operational data on the war in Ukraine is distinctly different. The data revealed so far is less comprehensive than those vast secret archives, but far more timely. And it is the immediate salience of the intelligence that most worries White House and Pentagon officials.

Some of the most sensitive material — maps of Ukrainian air defenses and a deep dive into South Korea’s secret plans to deliver 330,000 rounds of much-needed ammunition in time for Ukraine’s spring counteroffensive — is revealed in documents that appear to be barely 40 days old.

It is the freshness of the “secret” and “top secret” documents, and the hints they hold for operations to come, that make these disclosures particularly damaging, administration officials say. On Sunday, Sabrina Singh, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said U.S. officials had notified congressional committees of the leak and referred the matter to the Justice Department, which had opened an investigation.

The 100-plus pages of slides and briefing documents leave no doubt about how deeply enmeshed the United States is in the day-to-day conduct of the war, providing the precise intelligence and logistics that help explain Ukraine’s success thus far. While President Biden has barred American troops from firing directly on Russian targets, and blocked sending weapons that could reach deep into Russian territory, the documents make clear that a year into the invasion, the United States is heavily entangled in almost everything else.

It is providing detailed targeting data. It is coordinating the long, complex logistical train that delivers weapons to the Ukrainians. And as a Feb. 22 document makes clear, American officials are planning ahead for a year in which the battle for the Donbas is “likely heading toward a stalemate” that will frustrate Vladimir V. Putin’s goal of capturing the region — and Ukraine’s goal of expelling the invaders.

One senior Western intelligence official summed up the disclosures as “a nightmare.” Dmitri Alperovitch, the Russia-born chairman of Silverado Policy Accelerator, who is best known for pioneering work in cybersecurity, said on Sunday that he feared there were “a number of ways this can be damaging.” He said that included the possibility that Russian intelligence is able to use the pages, spread out over Twitter and Telegram, “to figure out how we are collecting” the plans of the G.R.U., Russia’s military intelligence service, and the movement of military units.

In fact, the documents released so far are a brief snapshot of how the United States viewed the war in Ukraine. Many pages seem to come right out of the briefing books circulating among the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and in a few cases updates from the C.I.A.’s operations center. They are a combination of the current order of battle and — perhaps most valuable to Russian military planners — American projections of where the air defenses being rushed into Ukraine could be located next month.

Mixed in are a series of early warnings about how Russia might retaliate, beyond Ukraine, if the war drags on. One particularly ominous C.I.A. document refers to a pro-Russian hacking group that had successfully broken into Canada’s gas distribution network and was “receiving instructions from a presumed Federal Security Service (F.S.B.) officer to maintain network access to Canadian gas infrastructure and wait for further instruction.” So far there is no evidence that Russian actors have begun a destructive attack, but that was the explicit fear expressed in the document.

Because such warnings are so sensitive, many of the “top secret” documents are limited to American officials or to the “Five Eyes” — the intelligence alliance of the United States, Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. That group has an informal agreement not to spy on the other members. But it clearly does not apply to other American allies and partners. There is evidence that the United States has plugged itself into President Volodymyr Zelensky’s internal conversations and those of even the closest U.S. allies, like South Korea.

In a dispatch that is very reminiscent of the 2010 WikiLeaks disclosures, one document based on what is delicately referred to as “signals intelligence” describes the internal debate in Seoul over how to handle American pressure to send more lethal aid to Ukraine, which would violate the country’s practice of not directly sending weapons into a war zone. It reports that South Korea’s president, Yoon Suk Yeol, was concerned that Mr. Biden might call him to press for greater contributions to Ukraine’s military.

It is an enormously sensitive subject among South Korean officials. During a recent visit to Seoul, before the leaked documents appeared, government officials dodged a reporter’s questions about whether they were planning to send 155-millimeter artillery rounds, which they produce in large quantities, to aid in the war effort. One official said South Korea did not want to violate its own policies, or risk its delicate relationship with Moscow.

Now the world has seen the Pentagon’s “delivery timeline” for sea shipments of those shells, along with estimates of the cost of the shipments, $26 million.

With every disclosure of secret documents, of course, there are fears of lasting damage, sometimes overblown. That happened in 2010, when The New York Times started publishing a series called “State’s Secrets,” detailing and analyzing selected documents from the trove of cables taken by Chelsea Manning, then an Army private in Iraq, and published by Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder. Soon after the first articles were published, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed fear that no one would ever talk to American diplomats again.

“In addition to endangering particular individuals, disclosures like these tear at the fabric of the proper function of responsible government,” she told reporters in the Treaty Room of the State Department. Of course, they did keep talking — though many foreign officials say that when they speak today, they edit themselves with the knowledge that they may be quoted in department cables that leak in the future.

When Mr. Snowden released vast amounts of data from the National Security Agency, collected with a $100 piece of software that just gathered up archives he had access to at a facility in Hawaii, there was similar fear of setbacks in intelligence collection. The agency spent years altering programs, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, and officials say they are still monitoring the damage now, a decade later. In September, Mr. Putin granted Mr. Snowden, a low-level intelligence contractor, full Russian citizenship; the United States is still seeking to bring him back to face charges.

But both Ms. Manning and Mr. Snowden said they were motivated by a desire to reveal what they viewed as transgressions by the United States. “This time it doesn’t look ideological,” Mr. Alperovitch said. The first appearance of some of the documents seems to have taken place on gaming platforms, perhaps to settle an online argument over the status of the fight in Ukraine.

“Think about that,” Mr. Alperovitch said. “An internet fight that ends up in a massive intelligence disaster.”

*David E. Sanger is a White House and national security correspondent. In a 38-year reporting career for The Times, he has been on three teams that have won Pulitzer Prizes, most recently in 2017 for international reporting. His newest book is “The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage and Fear in the Cyber Age.”  

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Jan de Pauw: "Personally, I just didn’t want my money heading to a French company month after month." Foto: Mashid Mohadjerin / DER SPIEGEL

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The Belgian Towns Producing Their Own Green Power

Energy prices in Europe have skyrocketed in the last year. But not in some towns in Belgium, where consumers have joined together to form co-ops and are generating their own sustainable electricity. It is a popular, and growing, model in Europe.

Spiegel, by Jan Petter in Eeklo, Belgium, 06.04.2023, 

*Global Societies

For our Global Societies project, reporters around the world will be writing about societal problems, sustainability and development in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe. The series will include features, analyses, photo essays, videos and podcasts looking behind the curtain of globalization. The project is generously funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

All Articles

Along with 65,000 other households, the couple are members of Belgium’s largest energy co-operative. The co-op produces and delivers green energy to its members at cost. When compared to the large corporations in the industry, Ecopower is just a dwarf, but it is a popular one. Last year, three times more people wanted to join the co-operative than could be supplied with electricity. At the moment, Ecopower is no longer accepting members.

Bernadette Vandercammen in her home. "It is important to me that the profits stay here in Eeklo."

Foto: Mashid Mohadjerin / DER SPIEGEL

The co-operative has its roots in Eeklo, Vandercammen’s hometown in northern Flanders. The "Eco" in the name once stood for the ecological convictions of its founders. These days, though, the name can easily be understood as a reference to the sustainable energy it produces. In the current energy crisis, Ecopower and other co-operatives offer reliability. Whereas others engage in speculation, jack up prices out of fear or throw out customers, Ecopower continues to provide cheap energy from renewable sources.

"We make long-term contracts," says Jan de Pauw, who works for Ecopower as a project developer. "We only provide energy to our members at a dependable price, without earning much profit." It’s also a rather small operation, regionally focused instead of seeking to expand multi~nationally. Many of its customers live within sight of the wind turbines and solar farms from which they get their energy.

Excellent Wind Power Conditions

Belgium is a leader when it comes to the concept of energy co-ops. In part, as de Pauw says during a tour of a facility, because of the conditions. After Denmark, he notes, Belgium is home to the best conditions in Europe for harnessing wind energy. He gestures to the flat, expansive fields, across which the wind blows down from the North Sea. But there are also other reasons. "Personally, I just didn’t want my money going to a French company month after month," says de Pauw.

Belgium is divided into French-speaking Wallonia and Dutch-speaking Flanders. The differences between the two populations have produced a sense of regional pride, with many needs being met locally. Including, in this case, the production of sustainable energy. Despite the local focus, however, de Pauw is convinced that the model could provide a more universal solution that would work in large parts of Europe and beyond.

Jan De Pauw: "The one wind turbine only benefits the company to which it belongs. The other is ours, and we pay out 10,000 euros per year from it to the people who live here."

Foto: Mashid Mohadjerin / DER SPIEGEL

One reason he highlights is the extremely small number of protests against the wind turbines that the Ecopower co-operative has erected here. De Pauw has collected the data to prove it: "Ten times fewer" complaints were lodged against Ecopower’s plans when compared to conventional projects, he claims. "Even those who weren’t members of the co-op accepted the projects."

The "not-in-my-backyard" (NIMBY) problem is one that has dogged the expansion of windfarms in many parts of Europe in recent years. In Bavaria, for example, complaints from locals have led to a situation in which the installation of wind power facilities has come to a virtual standstill. In Eeklo, by contrast, new wind turbines go up all the time, with 14 of them recently being added. The city produces more green energy than it consumes.

Wind turbines on the outskirts of Eeklo. The town now produces more energy than it consumes.

Foto: Mashid Mohadjerin / DER SPIEGEL

Support from locals is far from being just some sort of Flemish tic, says de Pauw. Locals know that the expansion of wind power benefits everybody in town. "Our offer is simply better."

To demonstrate his approach, he points to two different wind turbines of the exact same model, both of which reach 120 meters into the sky, their rotors gently humming as they turn. "What is the difference between the two?" de Pauw asks, his arm outstretched. He immediately answers his own question: "The one wind turbine only benefits the company to which it belongs. The other is ours, and we pay out 10,000 euros per year from it to the people who live here."

Cheaper and Sustainable

To convince locals of the value of his co-op, he organized a number of town hall meetings over the course of several months to explain the concept and respond to concerns. Ultimately, Ecopower and Eeklo agreed to a joint concept: For each wind turbine, the operators pay 5,000 euros into a local fund for climate protection each year and the same amount into a community fund for other needs. In addition, Ecopower has agreed to finance an engineer for the city for 20 years, whose job it is to help the town shift to renewable energy sources and develop a district heating system. That engineer is de Pauw himself.

Overall, the co-op isn’t particularly expensive, and it benefits the community. In recent years, electricity from Ecopower was only slightly cheaper than that from conventional providers. It was a model for sustainability, not necessarily for saving significant amounts of money. But ever since electricity prices have skyrocketed as a result of the war in Ukraine and other factors, it has been both. Whereas the large providers have tripled their prices in some cases, the co-op has only made slight increases to cover infrastructure and management costs. The basic price of electricity from their wind turbines, by contrast, only has to cover construction and maintenance costs. It remains constant for 20 years.

Bob D'Haeseleer: "Ecopower was a godsend for our community."

Foto: Mashid Mohadjerin / DER SPIEGEL

Bob D’Haeseleer, who was deputy mayor of Eeklo when Ecopower was set up, closely followed the co-op’s development for nearly 10 years. "Ecopower was a godsend for our community," he says. "It saved us from a number of destructive debates and brought more revenues to the city than a conventional provider." He says the city council vote to participate in the deal with the co-op and expand wind power was unanimous.

More recently, though, the mood in Eeklo has soured somewhat. Farmers are fighting about who is allowed to sell property to wind turbine operators. The district heating network, which was to become part of the co-op and be built with the corporation Veolia, hasn’t come to fruition. And the electricity providers who won the concession for the wind park along with Ecopower aren’t paying into the local fund as promised, says D’Haeseleer. Still, even though Eeklo has run into some problems, the concept of energy co-ops is gaining in popularity elsewhere in Europe.

A plaque next to an Ecopower wind turbine explains the idea behind the co-op.

Foto: Mashid Mohadjerin / DER SPIEGEL

Since 2019, the European Commission has been seeking to expand energy co-ops into an additional pillar of the European electricity supply. And the arguments in Brussels are the same as those in Eeklo: greater local support and participation and a more responsible approach to energy.

Heading Offshore

Ecopower is now setting up a European association of comparable organizations, with their number having multiplied in recent years. In countries like Spain, Britain and Germany, people are joining forces in organizations to produce energy. In addition to pure co-ops, there is also an increasing number of FinCoops, energy companies that customers can invest in to earn dividends.

"Despite the successes, we need to stay realistic," says de Pauw. "We're an additional pillar. A very important one, but for now, we cannot and do not want to take over the entire energy market." Currently co-ops are supplying only 2 percent of households in Belgium. That share, though, is almost certain to rise in coming years, with the participation of co-ops in new projects now legally mandated.

In a model European Union project, 100 needy families are currently receiving co-op shares instead of cost subsidies. Ecopower customers, says de Pauw, are twice as thrifty as other power consumers, so involving needy families in co-ops could facilitate the exchange of tips and ideas for awareness when it comes to energy consumption.

But the biggest upcoming project is elsewhere. Together with 32 other Belgian co-ops, Ecopower is planning to build an offshore wind park off the coast of Belgium. The plan calls for 240 wind turbines producing 15 megawatts of electricity each, eight times more powerful than the facilities in Eeklo. The call for tender is currently underway. The co-ops are to pool 450 million euros in a consortium. Should the plan ever become reality, the park would produce enough electricity for 800,000 households.

For Bernadette Vandercammen, though, other elements of the energy co-op are more important. "It is important to me that the profits stay here in Eeklo," she says.

*This piece is part of the Global Societies series. The project runs for three years and is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

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Oil is pumped into an oil tanker at the Ust-Luga oil products terminal in the settlement of Ust-luga, April 9, 2014. REUTERS/Alexander Demianchuk/File Photo

Analysis: Western curbs on Russian oil products redraw global shipping map

As a result of the European Union ban on Russian fuel that started on Feb. 5, tankers carrying clean oil products such as gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and naphtha are travelling between 16 and 18 days to bring Russian supplies to Brazil or U.S. cargoes to Europe, according to two shipping sources.

REUTERS by Mohi Narayan and Jonathan Saul, TODAY

NEW DELHI/LONDON, April 6 (Reuters) - Global fuel suppliers are turning to longer and costlier routes that produce more carbon emissions to move their diesel and other products as Western restrictions on Russian cargoes have reshuffled global energy shipping patterns.

As a result of the European Union ban on Russian fuel that started on Feb. 5, tankers carrying clean oil products such as gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and naphtha are travelling between 16 and 18 days to bring Russian supplies to Brazil or U.S. cargoes to Europe, according to two shipping sources.

That is up from the four to six days a ship used to travel from Russia to Europe, said the two sources, a broker at a major shipbroking firm and a charterer involved in the Russian trade of naphtha, which is used to make plastics and petrochemicals.

The ban comes on top of a halt late last year on Russian crude sales into the bloc as well as Western price caps.

Since the start of the ban, the Clean Tanker Index published by the Baltic Exchange, which measures average freight rates for shipping fuels like gasoline and diesel on some of the most common global routes, has more than doubled.

The redrawing of the shipping map underscores the knock-on effects of Western efforts to punish Russia over its invasion of Ukraine last year, adding to fuel supply insecurity and pushing up prices even as policymakers worry about inflation and the risk of a global economic downturn.

"Not only are voyages much longer, but vessel behaviour has also changed, keeping vessels from operating in other CPP (clean petroleum product) markets," Dylan Simpson, freight analyst at oil analytics firm Vortexa, wrote in a March 31 note.

Russian cargoes of fuel are heading to far-flung buyers in Brazil, Turkey, Nigeria, and Morocco as Moscow compensates for the lost European business, while Europe is importing more fuels such as diesel from Asia and the Middle East, according to shipping data from Refinitiv and Kpler.

Asian cargoes, in turn, are being displaced by Russian fuels in Africa and the eastern Mediterranean, and redirected to the blending hub of Singapore for temporary storage, two northeast Asian refinery sources said.

Naphtha trade route before Russia-Ukraine crisis

European importers whose naphtha cargoes travelled from Russian ports to Antwerp in four days before Russia's invasion of Ukraine now must wait 18 days for alternative supplies from the United States, the shipbroking source said.

Naphtha trade route before Russia-Ukraine crisis

The U.S. is also emerging as a top supplier of heavy naphtha to Europe amid the EU ban, while the Group of Seven Nations, EU and Australia have capped Russian naphtha prices at $45 a barrel and diesel and gasoline at $100 a barrel for trades that use Western ships and insurance. Meanwhile, Brazil, traditionally a U.S. naphtha importer, is boosting purchases from Russia at more attractive prices.

However, the journey from Russia to Brazil can take 18 days or longer and, at up to $7 million per voyage, the costs are nearly double that of a U.S. shipment, the ship charterer involved in the Russian market said.

Brazil received around 240,000 tonnes of Russian diesel and gasoil in the first three weeks of March, accounting for a quarter of Brazilian imports, up from Russia's 12% share in February and less than 1% last year, said Benedict George, head of diesel pricing with energy and commodity data provider Argus.

"Until February, Europe had remained Russia's primary market for refined product exports; however, in the space of a month, a major pivot has been observed," tanker broker E A Gibson said in a recent report.

Naphtha trade routes after Russia-Ukraine crisis unfolded

LONGER DISTANCES, MORE POLLUTION

Measured in terms of cargo miles, which multiplies the cargo quantity in metric tonnes by the distance travelled in nautical miles, the amount of Russian oil product shipments to Brazil in March rose to 3.07 billion metric tonne-nautical miles (MT-NM) from 941 million MT-NM in November, according to data from valuation company VesselsValue. Shipments from Russia to Nigeria rose to 1.88 billion MT-NM in March from zero in November, VesselsValue estimates showed.

Clean product cargoes to Saudi Arabia in March jumped to 1.75 billion MT-NM from 31 million MT-NM in November, while shipments to the United Arab Emirates were 4.43 billion MT-NM in March, up from 2.85 billion MT-NM in November, the data showed.

Also in March, Russian clean products shipped to Togo reached 973 million MT-NM, up from zero in November. In volume terms, Brazilian imports of oil products from Russia were about 284,000 metric tonnes in February, up from 73,300 tonnes in September, VesselsValue data showed. Conversely, Russian exports to the Netherlands dropped to 238,200 tonnes in February from 1.15 million tonnes in September.

Those longer distances are being done at higher costs for Russian products than for typical shipments from Europe.

According to market estimates, freight rates for the UK/European continent to West Africa are quoted at $55.77 per tonne for a product tanker with a standard 37,000-tonne load. This compares with an indicative rate of $174.24 per tonne for shipments from Russia's Baltic ports to Nigeria, $103.84 for Morocco and around $150 to Egypt.

With ships travelling further, that is also likely translating into greater emissions from smokestacks.

Based on pre-pandemic data, a 10% increase in mileage for all tankers travelling to and from the European economic area would increase their emissions by around 1.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, equal to the emissions of around 750,000 cars per year in Europe, said Valentin Simon, data analyst with the Transport & Environment think tank in Brussels.

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Image: Germán & Co

Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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Putin’s Energy Offensive Has Failed (NYT)

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HAPPY EASTER…

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Source: NYT, editing by Germán & Co

It is well known that the Kremlin's original plan for the military invasion of Ukraine was a blitzkrieg designed to encircle Kyiv and other essential cities quickly. What took place?

Germán & Co

NYT by Paul Krugman, April 6, 2023

Opinion Columnist…

Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. Since then, Russia has launched four great offensives. Three were military; the fourth was economic. And while you don’t hear much about that last offensive, its failure offers some very important lessons.

Everyone knows about the first military offensive: the attempted blitzkrieg that was supposed to seize Kyiv and other major Ukrainian cities in a matter of days. Many observers — especially, but not only, Western right-wingers who fetishized the perceived prowess of Russia’s un-woke military — expected this blitzkrieg to succeed. Instead, it turned into an epic defeat: Stalled by a dogged Ukrainian defense, the Russians eventually retreated after suffering huge losses.

The second offensive was more limited in scope: a spring attack on eastern Ukraine. Here again, many observers expected a decisive Russian victory, perhaps the encirclement of much of Ukraine’s army. And the Russians did make some advances thanks to overwhelming artillery superiority. But this offensive stalled once Ukraine acquired Western precision weapons, especially the now famous HIMARS, which wreaked havoc on Russian rear areas. And Ukraine was eventually able to launch counterattacks that regained significant ground, notably retaking Kherson.

The third Russian offensive, a winter attack in the Donbas region, is still underway, and it’s possible that Ukraine may choose to pull out of the embattled city of Bakhmut, a place of little strategic importance that has nonetheless become the scene of incredibly bloody fighting. But most observers I read view the enterprise as a whole as yet another strategic failure.

In some ways, though, Russia’s most important defeat has come not on the battlefield but on the economic front. I said that Russia has launched four great offensives; the fourth was the attempt to blackmail European democracies into dropping their support for Ukraine by cutting off their supplies of natural gas.

There were reasons to be concerned about this attempt to weaponize energy supplies. While the Russian invasion of Ukraine initially disrupted markets for several commodities — Russia is a major oil producer, and both Russia and Ukraine were major agricultural exporters before the war — natural gas seemed like an especially serious pressure point. Why? Because it isn’t really traded on a global market. The cheapest way to ship gas is via pipelines, and it wasn’t obvious how Europe would replace Russian gas if the supply were cut off.

So many people, myself included, worried about the effects of a de facto Russian gas embargo. Would it cause a European recession? Would hard times in Europe undermine willingness to keep aiding Ukraine?

Well, the big story — a story that hasn’t received much play in the news media, because it’s hard to report on things that didn’t happen — is that Europe has weathered the loss of Russian supplies remarkably well. Euro area unemployment hasn’t gone up at all; inflation did surge, but European governments have managed, through a combination of price controls and financial aid, to limit (but not eliminate) the amount of personal hardship created by high gas prices.

And Europe has managed to keep functioning despite the cutoff of most Russian gas. Partly this reflects a turn to other sources of gas, including liquefied natural gas shipped from the United States; partly it reflects conservation efforts that have reduced demand. Some of it reflects a temporary return to coal-fired electricity generation; much of it reflects the fact that Europe already gets a large share of its energy from renewables.

And yes, it was an unusually warm winter, which also helped. But the bottom line, as a report from the European Council on Foreign Relations puts it, is that “Moscow failed in its effort to blackmail E.U. member states through withholding gas.” Indeed, Europe has stepped up its military aid to Ukraine, notably by sending main battle tanks that may help the coming Ukrainian counteroffensive.

So what can we learn from the failure of Russia’s energy offensive?

First, Russia looks more than ever like a Potemkin superpower, with little behind its impressive facade. Its much vaunted military is far less effective than advertised; now its role as an energy supplier is proving much harder to weaponize than many imagined.

Second, democracies are showing, as they have many times in the past, that they are much tougher, much harder to intimidate, than they look.

Finally, modern economies are far more flexible, far more able to cope with change, than some vested interests would have us believe.

For as long as I can remember, fossil-fuel lobbyists and their political supporters have insisted that any attempt to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would be disastrous for jobs and economic growth. But what we’re seeing now is Europe making an energy transition under the worst possible circumstances — sudden, unexpected and drastic — and handling it pretty well. This suggests that a gradual, planned green energy transition would be far easier than pessimists imagine.

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Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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News round-up, April, 6, 2023

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Most read…

America’s First Indicted Ex-President Is Very Sorry—for Himself

Notes on Donald Trump’s day in court.

THE NEW YORKER By Susan B. Glasser, April 5, 2023

India's power output grows at fastest pace in 33 years, fuelled by coal

Intense summer heatwaves, a colder-than-normal winter in northern India, and an economic rebound caused a rise in electricity consumption, India is forced to increase output from coal plants to prevent power outages.

REUTERS BY MATTHEW CHYE AND CARMAN CHEW

Analysis: A Surprise Accusation Bolsters a Risky Case Against Trump

The unsealed case against Donald J. Trump accuses him of falsifying records in part to lay the groundwork for planned lies to tax authorities.

NYT By Charlie Savage, Published April 4, 2023

Exclusive: German insurers renew cover for blast-damaged Nord Stream gas link

“All indicate the pipeline's potential to resume operations following an alleged sabotage attack…

According to five sources with knowledge of the situation, German insurers Allianz and Munich Re have extended their coverage for the damaged Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline, which is under the control of Russia.

REUTERS BY JONATHAN SAUL,  CAROLYN COHN,  CHRISTOPH STEITZ AND JOHN O'DONNELL, EDITING BY GERMÁN & CO

China sends carrier group off Taiwan coast ahead of US meeting

China staged war games around Taiwan last August following the visit to Taipei of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Reuters, Today

China accuses U.S. of using Taiwan as ‘ATM for American arms sellers’

Taiwan is allegedly being utilized by the United States as a "chess piece" in a containment strategy and as a "ATM for American armaments vendors," according to China Central Television.

TWP By Christian Shepherd and Vic Chiang, TODAY

Energy firms bet big on German port as clean energy hub

The company stated in an email response that "feasibility studies are presently being developed for both projects, which will provide further insights into their practicability."

REUTERS By Vera Eckert, TODAY, EDITING BY GERMán & CO

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“We’re living in a volatile world…

it’s easy to get distracted by things like changeable commodity prices or a shortage of solar panels. But this wouldn’t be true to our purpose – we can’t allow ourselves to lose sight of our end goal; said Andres Gluski, CEO of energy and utility AES Corp

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Today's events

〰️

Today's events 〰️

Donald Trump spoke to a crowd of fans at Mar-a-Lago shortly after his arraignment, in Manhattan, on numerous felony charges.Photograph by Todd Heisler / NYT / Redux

America’s First Indicted Ex-President Is Very Sorry—for Himself

Notes on Donald Trump’s day in court.

THE NEW YORKER By Susan B. Glasser, April 5, 2023

By the time Donald Trump marched out from behind a phalanx of American flags and emerged into the gilded Mar-a-Lago ballroom to speak to cheering supporters on Tuesday night, America’s first indicted ex-President hardly seemed chastened by his historic day as a defendant in a Manhattan courtroom. He told the crowd that prosecutors investigating him were “racist” or “lunatic.” He criticized the judge in his case. He criticized the judge’s daughter. He lied about matters large and small, and expounded at length on everything from “Russia, Russia, Russia” to “Hunter Biden’s laptop from Hell.” He even attacked the National Archives and Records Administration as a “radical-left troublemaking organization.”

Indicted and Arraigned Trump, in other words, turned out to be just like his most recent previous incarnation, Impeached and Defeated Trump: a rambling, unrepentant grievance machine so beloved by his superfans in the Republican Party that he remains the front-runner for the G.O.P. nomination in 2024, even after everything.

Since last Thursday, when the Manhattan District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, secured Trump’s historic indictment, an unrealistic sense of expectation had built up around Tuesday’s arraignment of the former President, as if it were going to be, in and of itself, Trump’s long-awaited day of reckoning. But of course it was not. The charges, when finally unveiled, on Tuesday afternoon, were thirty-four felony counts stemming from alleged efforts by Trump to suppress sordid stories before the 2016 election with hush-money payments. But no major new evidence or surprise witnesses were revealed, and the next court appearance in the case won’t take place until December. Many legal analysts, including even “hard-core Democrats,” as Trump gleefully put it during his nighttime Mar-a-Lago speech, were soon casting doubt on Bragg’s decision to pursue a case that other prosecutors had declined to bring. If this was a reckoning, it didn’t seem all that much like one for an ex-President who, little more than two years ago, was urging a violent mob of his supporters to march on the U.S. Capitol and stop Congress from certifying his 2020 election defeat.

What it seemed like, instead, was the kind of televised spectacle that Trump both craves and excels at creating. The television networks remain more than willing to oblige, broadcasting each step in Trump’s return to New York to surrender to the authorities with a tone of breathless incrementalism that made for hours of exhausting but largely uneventful coverage: Trump has entered the building! Trump has left the building! Trump, Trump, Trump! What a long day of minutiae. I watched his motorcade leave Trump Tower, just after 1 p.m. Minutes later, I watched live as his motorcade arrived at the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse. As far as I could tell, no breaking news occurred in the course of the short trip downtown from Trump Tower.

The endless vamping by cable-news anchors was tedious—think rain-delay-at-the-World-Series-level tiresome—but at least it wasn’t as hard to take as the obvious trolling of the public by Trump and his team. The former President, according to a “source familiar” with Trump’s state of mind who was quoted on Twitter by a CBS News reporter, was said to be “resolute, determined, and fighting for all Americans against injustice, persecution, and weaponization.” Yeah, right. It’s not yet clear whether crying persecution by the prosecution will be good for Trump’s legal fortunes, but it is already abundantly clear that the TV drama has been good for his political coffers: Trump’s campaign, after bragging that he’s already raised more than seven million dollars as a result of Bragg’s indictment, began sending out fund-raising e-mails using his “NOT GUILTY” plea even before he had entered it. Hours before Trump had retreated back to Florida, you could get a T-shirt emblazoned with a fake mug shot of the former President for a contribution of a mere forty-seven dollars to the campaign.

For a historic day, it was notably unrevelatory. The big surprise, in fact, was that there was no surprise. Before Bragg’s sealed indictment was revealed, it seemed that the case would be centered on the years-old allegations involving hush-money payments made to the former porn performer known as Stormy Daniels, with Trump’s disgruntled former fixer Michael Cohen and Daniels as key witnesses. And that is what it turned out to be. Reading the official “statement of facts” that Bragg’s prosecutors filed along with the indictment was like returning to an old book that you’d read with great interest many years ago, but whose particulars you’d long since forgotten. The tawdry, embarrassing story behind the “Catch and Kill Scheme to Suppress Negative Information” in the 2016 election, as the prosecutors’ memo described it, was not new. Much of this has been known since 2018, when the Wall Street Journal published the first scoop about the hundred-and-thirty-thousand-dollar payoff to Daniels; many other reports followed, including great work by my colleague Ronan Farrow, who extensively reported on how the National Enquirer tabloid worked its “catch and kill” tactics on Trump’s behalf. Cohen, who handled payoffs for Trump before renouncing him, eventually even testified about the ex-President’s “dirty deeds” in a public congressional hearing, in early 2019. The flashy evidence produced that day included a photocopy of a check from Donald J. Trump’s personal bank account that, Cohen said, had been used to reimburse him for buying Daniels’s silence about her assignations with Trump.

It felt odd to read about all of this once again, in 2023. The Stormy Daniels affair, after all, was so many Trump scandals ago. Before impeachment No. 1 and Trump’s refusal to concede the 2020 election. Before January 6th and impeachment No. 2. In contrast, the fact that Trump slept with a porn star and paid her off to keep quiet about it before an election seems like the kind of old-fashioned political contretemps that might be bad for a politician’s image—and marriage—and even quite possibly illegal, but which hardly threatens to shake the foundations of American democracy.

In a press conference on Tuesday, shown on CNN with a split screen as “Trump Force One” taxied for takeoff at LaGuardia Airport, Alvin Bragg piously spoke of his “solemn responsibility to insure that everyone stands equal before the law.” Bragg may yet mount a strong legal case for Trump’s culpability; it’s impossible to tell from the bare-bones listing of charges released yesterday. But one thing is already apparent from Tuesday’s proceedings: a courtroom resolution rendering judgment on the former President’s guilt or innocence will be many months, if not years, in the future.

In the meantime, Bragg’s filing of the charges has had an electrifying effect on Trump’s reëlection campaign, offering the ex-President a new grievance to fuel his comeback bid at just the moment when he needs something to galvanize his effort and distract the Republican Party from the growing concerns about his losing record. The short-term boon is real, if possibly quite temporary: since news of the case broke, polls have shown Trump with his biggest leads in the G.O.P. primary so far, and even Trump-skeptical Republicans, such as Mitt Romney, found themselves leaping to his defense against what they insist is a politically motivated prosecution.

None of this may matter several months from now. Trump faces far more serious potential prosecutions in cases involving his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his possession at Mar-a-Lago of classified documents from his Presidency. If charges are forthcoming in any of those investigations, Manhattan indictment No. 71543-23 may end up as little more than a footnote to history, the first but not the last time that a prosecutor dared to call a former President a crook in a court of law. But what a footnote it will be. ♦

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Image: A view of an under-construction coal jetty of the planned 1,320-megawatt power plant on the coastline near India's southern tip, in Udangudi, Tamil Nadu, India, October 13, 2021. Picture taken October 13, 2021. REUTERS/Sudarshan Varadhan/Editing by Germán & Co

India's power output grows at fastest pace in 33 years, fuelled by coal

Intense summer heatwaves, a colder-than-normal winter in northern India, and an economic rebound caused a rise in electricity consumption, India is forced to increase output from coal plants to prevent power outages.

REUTERS By Matthew Chye and Carman Chew

SINGAPORE, April 5 (Reuters) - India's power generation grew at the fastest pace in over three decades in the just-ended fiscal year, a Reuters analysis of government data showed, fuelling a sharp surge in emissions as output from both coal-fired and renewable plants hit records.

Intense summer heatwaves, a colder-than-usual winter in northern India and an economic recovery led to a jump in electricity demand, forcing India to crank up output from coal plants and solar farms as it scrambled to avoid power cuts.

Power generation rose 11.5% to 1,591.11 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh), or units, in the fiscal year ended March 2023, an analysis of daily load data from regulator Grid-India showed, the sharpest increase since year ended March 1990.

Output from plants running on fossil fuels rose 11.2%, the quickest growth in over three decades, thanks to a 12.4% surge in electricity production from coal, the analysis showed, offsetting a 28.7% decline in generation from cleaner gas-fired plants as a global spike in LNG prices deterred usage.

In the new fiscal year that began April 1, Indian power plants are expected to burn about 8% more coal.

India fossil and non-fossil power output India fossil and non-fossil power output

The rapid acceleration in India's coal-fired output to address a spike in power demand underscores challenges faced by the world's third largest greenhouse gas-emitter in weaning its economy off carbon, as it attempts to ensure energy security to around 1.4 billion Indians.

Total power supplied during the last fiscal year was 1509.15 billion kWh, 8.4% higher than a year earlier but still 6.69 billion units short of demand, the widest deficit in six years.

Electricity generated from coal rose to 1,162.91 billion kWh, the data showed, with its share in overall output rising to 73.1% - the highest level since the year ending March 2019.

India's Central Electricity authority estimates that 1 million kWh of power produced from coal generates 975 tonnes of carbon dioxide, while the same amount of power generated from gas produces 475 tonnes. A plant fired by lignite, known as brown coal, emits 1,280 tonnes to produce equivalent power.

RENEWABLES PUSH

Increased fossil fuel burning for power in the world's fifth largest economy drove up CO2 emissions during the year by nearly a sixth, to 1.15 billion tonnes, Reuters calculations based on government data and emissions estimates show.

That is 3.4% of the International Energy Agency's estimate of annual global emissions of 33.8 billion tonnes in 2022.

Reuters Graphics

Many major countries boosted coal use in the twelve months due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but the rise was steepest in India, data from energy think-tank Ember shows.

The government has defended India's high coal use citing lower per capita emissions compared with richer nations and rising renewable energy output.

Reuters Graphics

After missing a target to install 175 GW in renewable energy capacity by 2022, India is trying to boost non-fossil capacity - solar and wind energy, nuclear and hydro power, and bio-power - to 500 GW by 2030.

India's solar capacity additions have risen by about a fifth during the just-ended fiscal year, boosting its renewable energy output by a record 33.3 billion units, or 21.7%, to 187.1 billion units.

The green energy output helped prevent as much as 32.5 million tonnes of CO2 emissions from power that would otherwise likely have been produced with coal, calculations show.

The share of renewables in power generation, excluding big hydro and nuclear power, rose to 11.8% in 2022/23, compared with 10.8% the previous year, the data showed, driven mainly by a 35% increase in solar output.

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Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country

…Armando Rodríguez, vice-president and executive director of the company, talks to us about their projects in the DR, where they have been operating for 32 years.

More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

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Image: By Germán & Co

Analysis: A Surprise Accusation Bolsters a Risky Case Against Trump

The unsealed case against Donald J. Trump accuses him of falsifying records in part to lay the groundwork for planned lies to tax authorities.

NYT By Charlie Savage, Published April 4, 2023

WASHINGTON — The unsealed indictment against former President Donald J. Trump on Tuesday laid out an unexpected accusation that bolstered what many legal experts have described as an otherwise risky and novel case: Prosecutors claim he falsified business records in part for a plan to deceive state tax authorities.

For weeks, observers have wondered about the exact charges the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, would bring. Accusing Mr. Trump of bookkeeping fraud to conceal campaign finance violations, many believed, could raise significant legal challenges. That accusation turned out to be a major part of Mr. Bragg’s theory — but not all of it.

“Pundits have been speculating that Trump would be charged with lying about the hush money payments to illegally affect an election, and that theory rests on controversial legal issues and could be hard to prove,” said Rebecca Roiphe, a New York Law School professor and former state prosecutor.

“It turns out the indictment also includes a claim that Trump falsified records to commit a state tax crime,” she continued. “That’s a much simpler charge that avoids the potential pitfalls.”

The indictment listed 34 counts of bookkeeping fraud related to Mr. Trump’s reimbursement in 2017 to Michael D. Cohen, his former lawyer and fixer. Just before the 2016 election, Mr. Cohen had made a $130,000 hush money payment to the pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels, who has said she and Mr. Trump had an extramarital affair.

Various business records concerning those payments to Mr. Cohen, an accompanying statement of facts said, falsely characterized them as being for legal services performed in 2017. For each such record, the grand jury charged Mr. Trump with a felony bookkeeping fraud under Article 175 of the New York Penal Law. A conviction on that charge carries a sentence of up to four years.

But bookkeeping fraud is normally a misdemeanor. For it to rise to a felony, prosecutors must show that a defendant intended to commit, aid or conceal a second crime — raising the question of what other crime Mr. Bragg would contend is involved.

Bragg Details Charges Against Trump

Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, accused Donald J. Trump of falsifying business records connected to a hush money payment to a porn star. Mr. Trump pleaded not guilty to all 34 felony counts.CreditCredit...Andrew Seng for The New York Times

On Tuesday, Mr. Bragg suggested that prosecutors are putting forward multiple theories for the second crime, potentially giving judges and jurors alternative routes to finding that bookkeeping fraud was a felony.

As was widely predicted, he is pointing toward alleged violations of both federal and state elections laws. By doing so, he is in part plunging forward with a premise that has given pause to even some of Mr. Trump’s toughest critics.

As a matter of substance, it can be ambiguous whether paying off a mistress was a campaign expenditure or a personal one.

As a matter of legal process, to cite federal law raises the untested question of whether a state prosecutor can invoke a federal crime even though he lacks jurisdiction to charge that crime himself. Still, Article 175 does not say that the second intended crime must be a state-law offense.

To cite state law raises the question of why New York election rules would apply to a federal presidential election, which is governed by federal laws that generally supersede state laws.

At a news conference, Mr. Bragg pointed to both state and federal election law. He cited a New York state election law that makes it a misdemeanor to conspire to promote a candidacy by unlawful means, but did not explain why that law would apply to a presidential election. He also described a federal cap on campaign contributions without indicating why he had the authority to invoke a crime he could not himself charge.

But Mr. Bragg also introduced yet another theory, accusing Mr. Trump of falsifying business records as a way to back up planned false claims to tax authorities.

“The participants also took steps that mischaracterized, for tax purposes, the true nature of the payments made in furtherance of the scheme,” Mr. Bragg wrote in the statement of facts that accompanied the indictment.

How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.

The statement of facts also described how Mr. Trump paid Mr. Cohen more than Mr. Cohen had paid Ms. Daniels to cover income taxes Mr. Cohen would incur. Mr. Bragg further emphasized that point in his news conference.

His wording was ambiguous in places. At one point, he seemed to suggest that a planned false statement to New York tax authorities was just an example of the ways by which Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen purportedly violated the state law against conspiring to promote a candidate through unlawful means.

But it is also a crime to submit false information to the state government. At another point Mr. Bragg seemed to put forward an alleged plan to lie to tax authorities — an intention to say Mr. Cohen had earned income for “legal services performed in 2017” to launder what was in reality a repayment — as a stand-alone offense.

In addition to covering up campaign-finance crimes committed in 2016, Mr. Bragg said: “To get Michael Cohen his money back, they planned one last false statement. In order to complete the scheme, they planned to mischaracterize the repayments to Mr. Cohen as income to the New York state tax authorities.”

In the courtroom, the prosecutor Christopher Conroy accused Mr. Trump of causing the Trump Organization to create a series of false business records, adding that he “even mischaracterized for tax purposes the true nature of the payment.”

That prosecutors cited the possibility of planned false statements on tax filings struck some legal specialists as particularly significant, given the speculation over how bookkeeping fraud charges would rise to felonies.

“The reference to false tax filings may save the case from legal challenges that may arise if the felony charges are predicated only on federal and state election laws,” said Ryan Goodman, a law professor at New York University.

Indeed, a range of election-law specialists on Tuesday expressed fresh doubt about whether Mr. Bragg could successfully use campaign finance laws alone to elevate the bookkeeping fraud charges to felonies. Among those skeptics were Richard L. Hasen, a University of California at Los Angeles legal scholar, and Benjamin L. Ginsberg, a longtime election lawyer for the Republican Party and a critic of Mr. Trump.

Even with the addition of the claim about intended false statements to tax authorities, Robert Kelner, the chairman of the election and political law practice group at the firm Covington & Burling, remained uncertain that it would show an intent to commit another crime.

“The local prosecutors seem to be relying in part on a bank shot exploiting Michael Cohen’s guilty plea in a federal campaign finance case,” he said. “But there were serious questions about the legal basis for the case against Cohen, making that a dubious foundation for a case against a former president. Prosecutors also allude vaguely to ‘steps’ taken to violate tax laws, but they say little to establish what that might mean.”

Mr. Trump arriving at the Manhattan courthouse on Tuesday afternoon for his arraignment.Credit...Dave Sanders for The New York Times

Still, Mr. Bragg emphasized that at this stage, prosecutors did not need to go into detail about what other crimes they believe Mr. Trump intended to commit.

But he will eventually have to show his hand. Barry Kamins, a retired New York Supreme Court judge who is now in private practice, said the next phase of the case would require prosecutors to divulge more.

“What is going to happen now is that the prosecutors are obligated to disclose things in discovery,” he said. “Defense counsel will learn in discovery the nature of the elections laws violations and the tax issues that were raised by Mr. Bragg in his statement of facts.”

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Image: The landfall facilities of the 'Nord Stream 1' gas pipeline are pictured in Lubmin, Germany, March 8, 2022. Picture taken with a drone. REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke/File Photo/ Editing by Germán & co

Exclusive: German insurers renew cover for blast-damaged Nord Stream gas link

“All indicate the pipeline's potential to resume operations following an alleged sabotage attack…

According to five sources with knowledge of the situation, German insurers Allianz and Munich Re have extended their coverage for the damaged Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline, which is under the control of Russia.

Reuters by Jonathan Saul,  Carolyn Cohn,  Christoph Steitz and John O'Donnell, Editing by Germán & Co

LONDON/FRANKFURT, April 4 (Reuters) - German insurers Allianz and Munich Re have renewed cover for the damaged Russia-controlled Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline, five sources with knowledge of the matter said, indicating that its revival has not been ruled out after an alleged sabotage attack.

Insurance by two of Germany's biggest companies is critical for any long-term future of the pipeline, which was the main route for Russian gas to Europe for a decade before the blast last September.

The insurance stands in contrast to Germany's public stance of severing ties with Moscow, but one of the five sources said the German government had not opposed the cover. Most Western investors have written off their stakes in the pipeline.

Munich Re (MUVGn.DE), Allianz (ALVG.DE) and Germany's chancellery declined to comment, while the economy ministry said insurance was not part of the support the government had in the past provided for the pipeline.

Russia has a 51% stake in Nord Stream 1 through a subsidiary of state-owned energy group Gazprom (GAZP.MM).

Some of Nord Stream's German shareholders favour at least preserving the damaged pipeline in case relations with Moscow improve, two people familiar with the matter said separately.

One of the people said that Berlin tolerated such an approach to the infrastructure, even though it has said that energy ties with Russia are severed.

All of the insurance industry and trade sources declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.

The insurance policy covers damage to the pipeline and business interruption issues, one of the sources said.

Having insurance would also facilitate any repair work needed to resume gas supplies under the Baltic Sea to Europe.

While the import of Russian crude oil and oil products is banned under European Union (EU) sanctions, Russian gas imports are allowed. The West, however, is trying to find alternatives.

'OLD LOGIC'

Europe's imports of Russian gas have fallen from around 40% of EU gas supply to less than 10% since Russia's invasion of Ukraine began in February last year.

The economy ministry spokesperson said the aim was to stop using gas from Russia and elsewhere.

"Russia showed everyone last year that it is not a reliable partner," said the spokesperson. "We need more renewable energies and must become independent of fossil imports."

The stance represents a major shift from Germany's previous whole-hearted support for Russian gas, in defiance of warnings from other EU countries and the United States.

Some German officials, politicians and others familiar with German government thinking told Reuters a minority still hoped Nord Stream 1 can be revived, even if few saw any prospect of that happening in the near future.

Michael Kretschmer, conservative leader of the eastern Saxony region, told the Berliner Zeitung newspaper in January the pipeline should be repaired and Germany should retain the option of importing through it again.

Veronika Grimm, one of the government's chief economic experts who advises the chancellery, said Germany's previous policy of relying on cheap Russian gas to support its economy and build political ties was no longer viable.

"There are still some who follow an old logic with regards to rebuilding energy ties to Russia after the (Ukraine) war," Grimm told Reuters.

The economy ministry spokesperson said the Federal government in 2010 supported the construction of Nord Stream 1 with export credit guarantees and a separate financial credit guarantee, adding that there was no further federal support.

In September 2022, several unexplained underwater explosions ruptured the Nord Stream 1 and newly-built Nord Stream 2 pipelines, each more than 1,200-km-long, that link Russia and Germany across the Baltic Sea.

Last month, sources told Reuters Nord Stream's undersea gas pipelines were to be sealed and there were no immediate plans to repair or reactivate them.

Other sources described this process as keeping the pipeline dormant.

OTHER INSURERS

Prior to Russia's invasion of Ukraine last February, Nord Stream 1 was insured by multiple European underwriters including some from the Lloyd's of London market, sources told Reuters.

Industry sources with knowledge of the situation said some Lloyd's underwriters were believed to have cut insurance arrangements that came up for renewal in late 2022 in part because of UK sanctions imposed on an entity connected to Gazprom.

Three of the Lloyd’s syndicates previously involved in insurance cover were unlikely to have renewed their exposure, three of the insurance industry sources said.

However, a fourth source said its underwriting syndicate from the Lloyd's market continued to provide insurance for the project. They all declined to provide further details.

Lloyd's of London declined to comment.

Customers often renew insurance contracts when their property is damaged and this is taken into account when agreeing the contract terms, industry sources said.

Nord Stream 1's policy was a two-year contract which renewed after the first year, two of the sources said. However, policy-holders and insurers can often break such a contract after the first year, depending on the terms, two insurance industry sources said.

It was unclear if insurer Zurich was part of the new arrangemen

Zurich (ZURN.S), which one of the five sources said was among the pipeline's insurers when the damage occurred, declined to comment.

Gazprom is subject to sanctions by Britain, Canada and the United States, as well as some EU restrictions.

Gazprom and Swiss-based Nord Stream AG did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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Image: Editing by Germán & Co

China sends carrier group off Taiwan coast ahead of US meeting

China staged war games around Taiwan last August following the visit to Taipei of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Reuters, Today

Chinese and Taiwanese flags are seen in this illustration, August 6, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo

TAIPEI, April 5 (Reuters) - Taiwan's defence ministry said on Wednesday a Chinese aircraft carrier group was in the waters off the island's southeast coast, the same day President Tsai Ing-wen was due to meet U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in Los Angeles.

China, which claims democratically-governed Taiwan as its own territory, has warned of unspecified retaliation if the meeting goes ahead.

China staged war games around Taiwan last August following the visit to Taipei of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Taiwan's defence ministry said the Chinese ships, which were led by the carrier the Shandong, passed through the Bashi Channel which separates Taiwan from the Philippines and then into waters to Taiwan's southeast.

It said the ships were going for training in the Western Pacific, and that Taiwanese naval and air forces and land-based radar systems closely monitored them.

"The Chinese communists continue to send aircraft and ships to encroach in the seas and airspace around Taiwan," the ministry said.

"In addition to posing a substantial threat to our national security, it also destroys the status quo of regional security and stability. Such actions are by no means the acts of a responsible modern country."

The ministry provided two pictures - one a grainy black and white image of the carrier taken from the air, and the other of a Taiwanese sailor looking at the Shandong and another unidentified ship in the distance.

China has yet to comment on the carrier group, whose appearance also coincided with the arrival in Beijing of French President Emmanuel Macron.

China has sailed its aircraft carriers near to Taiwan before and at similarly sensitive times.

In March of last year, the Shandong sailed through the Taiwan Strait, just hours before the Chinese and U.S. presidents were due to talk.

Taiwan's defence ministry, in its statement about the Shandong's latest mission near the island, said that "external pressure will not hinder our determination to go into the world".

Taiwan's military will continue to closely monitor the situation in the Taiwan Strait, and uphold the principles of "not escalating conflicts, not causing disputes" to deal with any challenges.

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China accuses U.S. of using Taiwan as ‘ATM for American arms sellers’

Taiwan is allegedly being utilized by the United States as a "chess piece" in a containment strategy and as a "ATM for American armaments vendors," according to China Central Television.

TWP By Christian Shepherd and Vic Chiang, TODAY

Beijing accused the United States and Taiwan of “serious wrongdoing” after Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen met with Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and a bipartisan group of House lawmakers Wednesday, a historic gathering at which both sides reaffirmed their commitment to preserving freedom amid escalating tensions with China.

Various Chinese ministries released coordinated statements condemning the meeting on Thursday morning local time. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the United States had ignored “repeated warnings” against allowing Tsai to visit and promised “resolute and forceful measures to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity in response to the serious wrongdoing of U.S.-Taiwan colluding together.”

State broadcaster China Central Television accused the United States of using Taiwan as a “chess piece” in a strategy of containment and as an “ATM for American arms sellers.”

The Chinese Communist Party claims the self-governing island democracy of 23 million as part of its territory and regularly threatens to annex Taiwan by force if it formally declares independence.

As of Thursday morning, China had yet to announce large-scale military exercises similar to the display of force it put on after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taipei in August. That earlier meeting on Taiwanese soil was the first time such a senior American politician had come to Taiwan in almost 30 years. China responded by sending warships, jets and missiles to surround Taiwan’s main island in drills that mimicked a partial blockade.

Taiwan’s president meets with McCarthy after warnings from China

Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said that it monitored the passage of China’s Shandong aircraft carrier as it sailed through the Bashi Channel between Taiwan and the Philippines on Wednesday. It came within 200 nautical miles of Taiwan en route to a training exercise in the West Pacific.

“For China, there is no need for a large response,” said Lin Ying-yu, a professor of international relations at Tamkang University in Taiwan, noting that April is peak time for the Chinese military to conduct training exercises. “They are reopening now [after covid], the Japanese foreign minister just visited and now so has the French president. What would other countries see if they launched large-scale military drills at this point?”

A three-day special operation from the Chinese coast guard this week also prompted Taiwan’s Ocean Affairs Council to warn China against infringing on its legal authority, asking Taiwanese vessels to report any attempts by China to board or carry out inspections.

In recent months, China has increased efforts to assert its claimed sovereignty over the Taiwan Strait. Taiwanese scholars worry that beefed-up coast guard patrols are part of this “gray zone” tactic as Beijing gradually alters the delicate balance in the critical waterway.

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) deliver remarks to the press after attending a bipartisan leadership meeting at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., on Wednesday. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Tsai’s visit marked the culmination of an eight-year effort to raise Taiwan’s international profile and strengthen relationships with countries that share democratic values with Taipei, even if they do not have formal diplomatic ties. Central to that strategy has been normalizing high-level exchanges with the United States.

Tsai’s meeting with McCarthy at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., was the first time that Taiwan’s president met with a political leader in the line of presidential succession on U.S. soil since the United States opened diplomatic relations with China in 1979. At the time, the United States agreed that it would break off formal ties with Taiwan, but it has in the decades since maintained highly choreographed unofficial relations with the island.

“It is no secret that today the peace that we have maintained and the democracy which [we] have worked hard to build are facing unprecedented challenges,” Tsai said in brief remarks with McCarthy after their meeting. “We once again find ourselves in a world where democracy is under threat, and the urgency of keeping the beacon of freedom shining cannot be understated.”

Taiwan, like Ukraine, is fighting for democracy, Tsai says in New York

McCarthy repeatedly signaled that lawmakers in both parties are unified in their desire to continue fostering a relationship with Taiwan. “The one thing I hope all countries see is that we’re united in the same approach together, on both sides. And we’re going to speak with one voice when it comes to China or any others when we look at foreign policy,” he said at a news conference following the meeting.

Tsai’s stop in California marks the end of her unofficial meetings with top political leaders throughout the United States that came ahead of a trip to Central American countries that maintain formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan.

Several Democratic and Republican lawmakers said Wednesday that they met with Tsai last week during her stopover in New York. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said he and Tsai met while she was in New York on Friday, noting in a statement that their encounter resulted in “a very productive conversation about the mutual security and economic interests between America and Taiwan.”

Tsai also met with a bipartisan group of senators — including Sens. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) — in New York on Friday, Ernst’s office confirmed Wednesday.

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Image: Germán & Co

Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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The 'Hoegh Esperanza' Floating Storage and Regasification Unit (FSRU) is anchored during the opening of the LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) terminal in Wilhelmshaven, Germany, December 17, 2022. Michael Sohn/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo/ Editing by Germán & Co

Energy firms bet big on German port as clean energy hub

The company stated in an email response that "feasibility studies are presently being developed for both projects, which will provide further insights into their practicability."

REUTERS By Vera Eckert, TODAY, EDITING BY GERMán & CO

WILHELMSHAVEN, Germany, April 6 (Reuters) - Germany's only deep water port, home to its largest naval base, is where energy firms now plan to spend more than $5.5 billion to help construct the clean energy infrastructure the country needs to help end its reliance on Russian gas.

Europe's leading industrial exporter has only just managed to get through an energy crunch by rushing to build makeshift floating infrastructure for importing liquefied natural gas (LNG), aiming to partially plug the gap left by Moscow's cuts.

But with energy firms already looking beyond LNG in efforts to reduce fossil fuel use, the port of Wilhelmshaven on Germany's northern coast is emerging as a hub for the infrastructure which is needed for hydrogen and ammonia imports, hydrogen production and offshore carbon emissions storage.

"We will become the pumping heart of Germany by 2030," said Alexander Leonhardt, who heads the business development agency for Wilhelmshaven, which has a population of 80,000. Challenges to its development include concerns about disturbing wildlife in the sensitive Wadden Sea and the risks of LNG overcapacity.

Uwe Oppitz of Rhenus Ports, who speaks for Energy Hub Port Wilhelmshaven, said that Wintershall Dea (WINT.UL) (BASFn.DE), Uniper (UN01.DE) and Tree Energy Solutions (TES) plan to spend a total of more than 5 billion euros at Wilhelmshaven.

Energy Hub Port Wilhelmshaven comprises 30 companies, which include E.ON (EONGn.DE), RWE (RWEG.DE) and Orsted (ORSTED.CO), as well as Wilhelmshaven's home state of Lower Saxony.

Oppitz said the investment, the magnitude of which has not previously been reported, will be made between 2026 and 2030, adding that the overall figure was disclosed on condition that no breakdown would be published.

TES, which is backed by Belgium private investment firm AtlasInvest, said the total sum was plausible.

Wintershall Dea said it is planning two projects, called BlueHyNow and CO2nnectNow.

"Feasibility studies are currently being prepared for both projects, which will provide further insights into their practicability," the company said in an emailed comment.

"Wintershall Dea plans to invest around 1 billion euros in the Wilhelmshaven site together with its partners," it said.

Uniper was not immediately available for comment.

The investment commitment is raising hopes that money and jobs can be funnelled into what is a relatively weak region economically and that it may even attract some companies to relocate from Germany's industrial heartland in the south.

Planned investments include electrolysis plants that could be scaled up to more than 1 gigawatts (GW) size, Oppitz said.

Wilhelmshaven is not only the landing point for pipelines and vessels, it has a flourishing offshore wind presence and gas storage caverns, while rail links from legacy activities are also a potential draw for new investment.

Reuters Graphics Reuters Graphics

GREEN HYDROGEN RUSH

Already home to Germany's first floating LNG terminal (FSRU), which is operated by state-controlled Uniper, Wilhelmshaven is also where TES is due to bring another FSRU into service by the end of this year.

Both companies are planning for clean gas production to begin in the second half of this decade.

And while Wintershall Dea will not get involved in LNG, it wants to repurpose some Norwegian pipeline gas imports for hydrogen production, capturing carbon dioxide from the process and exporting it in liquefied form for permanent subsea storage.

Wilhelmshaven's mayor Carsten Feist said he expects to create 1,000-2,000 jobs over the next five years and double corporate tax revenue, if such plans proceed.

To lessen their bills, the companies will tap funds under the European Union's Projects of Common Interest funding (PCI) scheme, hoping for grants to the tune of 30-50%, said Oppitz.

TES said it is confident no subsidies will be needed for its projects.

Paper maker PKV, a big employer 13 kilometres south of Wilhelmshaven, plans a new factory that working with the port projects could perhaps use waste heat from planned electrolysis plants that produce green hydrogen from renewable electricity.

And steelmaker Salzgitter (SZGG.DE) has already struck a deal with Uniper to receive green hydrogen for its steel mill processes, replacing essential fossil-fuel produced hydrogen.

Oppitz said that other firms are assessing the opportunities Wilhelmshaven offers, with clean hydrogen primarily needed by refineries, chemicals, fertilisers and metals makers while industry might welcome carbon storage options.

The Wilhelmshaven business promotion agency estimates that the region could produce more than 30 terawatt hours (TWh) of hydrogen a year from 2030. This alone would represent a quarter of Germany's demand for green hydrogen at that date, namely 95-130 TWh, according to its national hydrogen strategy.

Wintershall Dea wants to grow with that market, said project leader Andreas Moeller.

He rejected suggestions that carbon capture and storage (CCS) strategies are simply a way for fossil fuels to survive.

"We don't want to push green hydrogen to the side. On the contrary, we want to support its ramp-up," he said.

Gundolf Schweppe, chief executive of Uniper Energy Sales said it plans to bring up to 2.6 million tonnes of green ammonia into Wilhelmshaven a year in the second half of this decade.

That is not far off Germany's current production of ammonia, a fertiliser raw material, of 3 million tonnes a year.

Meanwhile, TES wants to bring renewable methane under the name electric natural gas (e-NG) from solar power made overseas into Wilhelmshaven from 2027.

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News round-up, April 4, 2023

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Stormy Daniels: Woman at center of Trump indictment is porn star turned ghostbuster

The alleged 2006 sexual encounter between adult movie star Stormy Daniels and former president Donald Trump has helped her create a sizable economic empire.

Reuters By Julia Harte, editing by Germán & Co

New York Already Knows a Lot About Donald Trump…

...a "SOROS BACKED ANIMAL." Mr. Trumph said.

While awaiting the indictment, the former president referred to Mr. Bragg in an anti-Black and anti-Semitic manner on Truth Social, calling him a "SOROS BACKED ANIMAL." Law enforcement authorities had to prepare for potential street unrest on Tuesday because Mr. Trump threatened "death and destruction" and called for large-scale protests before being indicted.

NYT, By Mara Gay, April 4, 2023, editing by Germán & Co

OPEC+ oil cut delivers blow to ECB

The action consists of putting additional pressure on European governments when voters from London to Berlin are unsatisfied with the rising expenses of energy, food, and transportation. Support for politicians has declined as individuals have struggled to pay their costs, leading to protests and industrial unrest. The West's reaction to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and other factors contributing to inflation is not getting any less important.

Analysts expect the supply crunch to negatively impact inflation in Europe.

POLITICO EY BY PAOLA TAMMA, EDITING BY GERMÄN & CO, APRIL 3, 2023

There ought to be no hiding place for Putin

Successful charges before an international tribunal would fully recognize the crime allegedly being committed by its full and proper name — the crime of aggression.

POLITICO EU BY AARIF ABRAHAM, TODAY

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“We’re living in a volatile world…

it’s easy to get distracted by things like changeable commodity prices or a shortage of solar panels. But this wouldn’t be true to our purpose – we can’t allow ourselves to lose sight of our end goal; said Andres Gluski, CEO of energy and utility AES Corp

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Image: A general view of the White House in Washington, U.S., July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo, Editing by Germán & Co

White House announces clean energy initiatives on coal

On Tuesday, the White House said that it was directing hundreds of millions of dollars toward supporting coal communities, including $450 million for sustainable energy initiatives in both active and past mining regions.

Reuters

WASHINGTON, April 4 (Reuters) - The White House said on Tuesday it was funneling hundreds of millions of dollars to help coal communities, including $450 million for clean energy projects on current and former mining areas.

The Department of Energy will also provide $16 million to the University of North Dakota and West Virginia University to complete design studies for a domestic refinery that will extract rare earth and other critical minerals from coal ash, acid mine drainage and other mine waste, the White House said.

"This project will help strengthen American supply chains, revitalize energy communities, and reduce reliance on competitors like China," the White House said in a statement.

The government action also includes putting 11 federal agencies to work in tandem on getting new resources into energy communities like former coal mining towns, it said.

The Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service will release guidance on Tuesday that will allow developers of clean energy projects and facilities to tap into billions of dollars in boneses, in addition to existing tax credits, it said.

The funding for this initiative comes from the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the White House said.

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Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country

…Armando Rodríguez, vice-president and executive director of the company, talks to us about their projects in the DR, where they have been operating for 32 years.

More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

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Image: By Germán & Co

Stormy Daniels: Woman at center of Trump indictment is porn star turned ghostbuster

The alleged 2006 sexual encounter between adult movie star Stormy Daniels and former president Donald Trump has helped her create a sizable economic empire.

Reuters By Julia Harte, editing by Germán & Co

 Who's who in Trump hush money case

April 4 (Reuters) - Adult film star Stormy Daniels has built a lucrative business empire around her alleged 2006 sexual encounter with former President Donald Trump and earned legions of fans for her breezy retorts to those who cast her as an immoral woman.

Her popularity and profits appeared to get a boost with the news of Trump's indictment on Thursday in a case involving a $130,000 hush payment she received in the waning days of his 2016 election campaign.

"Thank you to everyone for your support and love!" she posted on Twitter after news of the criminal charges broke. "#Teamstormy merch/autograph orders are pouring in."

Daniels, 44, is an author, director and media personality. She launched her own reality TV show, "Spooky Babes", in which she searches haunted houses as a "paranormal investigator", and she once flirted with a U.S. Senate bid as a Democrat-turned-Republican.

When a Twitter user asked what "the whore" was doing one day this week, Daniels responded, "Not sure why you're curious but... Just fed my horse and mucked stalls, signing photos and #teamstormy shirts and mailing them, booking crew/location for a music video I'm directing, floating in my pool and then my live show."

"Basically the usual," she added.

She is not shy about capitalizing on the attention around her connection to Trump. She points out he has done the same - but, in her view, has faced far less criticism.

"You take the opportunity," Daniels said on a Wednesday livestream on OnlyFans, an online subscription platform known for adult content, according to a report by British newspaper The Independent. "Isn't that what America is all about?"

Trump has raised more than $2 million for his legal defense since predicting on March 18 that he would soon be arrested, according to his campaign. A Trump fundraising group sent an email asking supporters for more contributions after his indictment.

After he announced his impending arrest, searches for Daniels on the website Pornhub jumped 21,655%, according to the site's research and analysis branch.

A spokesperson for Daniels could not be reached for comment.

'VINDICATION'

Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, is married to a fellow adult film star and has a young daughter and a horse farm, according to her social media profiles.

Her childhood was marred by sexual assault and poverty. Growing up in Louisiana with a single mother, "we were just trash. And my mom was a trainwreck, and my clothes didn't fit, and I was poor and I smelled," Daniels told Vice News in 2021.

Daniels said she had been a straight-A student and editor of her high school newspaper when she left home and started stripping to support herself.

She continued working in adult entertainment after graduating high school and began her career in adult films in 2002, according to the Vice News interview. Daniels soon began winning industry awards and landed roles in TV shows and films such as "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" and "Knocked Up".

Daniels has said she received the hush money in exchange for keeping silent about a sexual encounter she had with Trump in 2006. Trump has denied having the affair and initially disputed knowing anything about the payment.

It is unclear what charges he will face, and he has signaled he will continue his 2024 bid for the presidency as he fights the case.

In an interview with Britain's Times newspaper on Friday, Daniels called the indictment "vindication" and referred to a vulgar comment Trump made in a 2005 recording in which he boasted about forcing himself on women.

"But it's bittersweet," she said. "He's done so much worse that he should have been taken down before. I am fully aware of the insanity of it being a porn star. But it's also poetic; this pussy grabbed back."

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Image: NYT, editing by Germán & co

New York Already Knows a Lot About Donald Trump…

...a "SOROS BACKED ANIMAL." Mr. Trumph said.

While awaiting the indictment, the former president referred to Mr. Bragg in an anti-Black and anti-Semitic manner on Truth Social, calling him a "SOROS BACKED ANIMAL." Law enforcement authorities had to prepare for potential street unrest on Tuesday because Mr. Trump threatened "death and destruction" and called for large-scale protests before being indicted.

NYT, By Mara Gay, April 4, 2023, editing by Germán & Co

Ms. Gay is a member of the editorial board.

If Donald J. Trump seems a little on edge lately, so does the city where he made his name.

The former president, after largely eluding legal accountability of any kind for decades, has now been indicted by a grand jury in a case brought by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg.

So far Mr. Trump has handled the investigation, which has looked into whether he broke laws while paying hush money to a porn star ahead of the 2016 election, exactly as one might imagine: with the minimum amount of class and the maximum use of racist slurs. Not only has he made sure everyone knows Mr. Bragg is Black, he has also suggested he is subhuman.

“HE IS A SOROS BACKED ANIMAL,” the former president told his followers on Truth Social while waiting for the indictment, using anti-Black racism as well as antisemitism to describe Mr. Bragg. Mr. Trump also called for widespread protests before he was indicted and predicted “death and destruction,” forcing law enforcement agencies to prepare for possible violence in the streets on Tuesday, when he is expected to be arraigned.

All of this has made New York City, his former hometown, a bit anxious, too. The wait for Mr. Trump’s arraignment and any backlash that may come from it has the city unnerved.

Few Americans have seen Mr. Trump shimmy his way out of a jam more often than New Yorkers. We’ve seen him bounce back from bankruptcy six times, and he has never been truly held to account for his long history of excluding Black people from the rental properties that helped make him rich. We’ve seen his political fortunes soar despite credible claims of sexual assault and tax fraud. We’ve watched up close his gravity-defying, horrifying metamorphosis from a tacky real estate developer and tabloid fixture into a C-list celebrity and, finally, a one-term president with authoritarian aspirations.

Given that history, the idea that Mr. Trump will soon be fingerprinted and booked in a New York courthouse has left many in disbelief. A kind of collective angst over the Trump prosecution has settled over New York City, where many deeply disdain him but seem unconvinced he will ever truly be held to account.

During a recent stage performance of “Titanique,” the hit musical comedy and glitter-filled parody of the 1997 film about the doomed ship, Russell Daniels, the actor playing Rose’s mother, let out a kind of guttural scream. “It’s not fair that Trump hasn’t been arrested yet!” Mr. Daniels cried. Inside the Manhattan theater, the audience roared.

In Harlem recently, the Rev. Al Sharpton held a prayer vigil for Mr. Bragg, who received threats after Mr. Trump used his social media platform to share a menacing photograph of himself with a baseball bat juxtaposed with a photo of the district attorney, in a clear hint of his violent mind-set.

“We want God to cover him and protect him,” Mr. Sharpton said, referring to Mr. Bragg. “Whatever the decision may be, whether we like it or not, but he should not have to face this kind of threat, implied or explicit. Let us pray.”

New Yorkers, weary and still recovering from the pandemic Mr. Trump badly mismanaged, are also now bracing themselves for the possibility of demonstrations by the former president’s supporters. In the hours after the indictment on March 29, N.Y.P.D. helicopters hovered over the courthouses of Lower Manhattan and officers set up barricades along largely empty streets. The Police Department ordered all roughly 36,000 uniformed members to report for duty amid bomb threats and the arrest of one Trump supporter with a knife.

The inevitable spectacle began on Monday, when television helicopters tracked every inch of Mr. Trump’s motorcade from LaGuardia Airport to Manhattan, as if he were visiting royalty. The courthouse area downtown is expected be largely closed to traffic on Tuesday. All Supreme Court trials in the Manhattan Criminal Courts Building will be adjourned early. There are also police lines and TV trucks around Trump Tower, where the former president stayed on Monday night. Meanwhile, Republican groups and Trump supporters are planning or sponsoring rallies nearby, one of which will be addressed by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who will bring her destructive rhetoric up from Georgia.

Of the four known criminal investigations Mr. Trump faces, the Manhattan case is seen by some legal experts as the least serious, in part because it may involve allegations of campaign finance violations before his presidency rather than attempts to abuse his office by overturning the results of an election or inciting supporters to effectively overthrow the United States government. Fair enough.

Still, it’s a poetic irony that the former president will face his first criminal indictment in New York City, the town where he sought to burnish his “law and order” credentials. In 1989, Mr. Trump took out a notorious ad in several newspapers, including The New York Times, calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty when a group of Black and Latino teenagers were accused of the sexual assault of a jogger in Central Park. After serving prison sentences that varied from six to 13 years, the teens were exonerated.

“What has happened to the respect for authority, the fear of retribution by the courts, society and the police for those who break the law, who wantonly trespass on the rights of others?” Mr. Trump wrote in the 1989 ad. “How can our great society tolerate the continued brutalization of its citizens by crazed misfits?”

Over many years, New York has learned a painful lesson. Mr. Trump and his many misdeeds are best taken seriously.

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Image: Editing by Germán & Co

OPEC+ oil cut delivers blow to ECB

The action consists of putting additional pressure on European governments when voters from London to Berlin are unsatisfied with the rising expenses of energy, food, and transportation. Support for politicians has declined as individuals have struggled to pay their costs, leading to protests and industrial unrest. The West's reaction to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and other factors contributing to inflation is not getting any less important.

Analysts expect the supply crunch to negatively impact inflation in Europe.

The move is seen by analysts as a deliberate attempt by the group's largest countries to push the price of oil higher | Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images

POLITICO EY BY PAOLA TAMMA, EDITING BY GERMÄN & CO, APRIL 3, 2023 

A shock cut in oil output by the OPEC+ group has thrown a spanner into central banks' efforts to tame inflation just as pressure on Europe's cost of living was starting to ease.

The announcement on Sunday by the oil-producing cartel of a reduction of over 1 million barrels per day ― forcing the price up by as much as 8 percent by Monday morning ― has stoked fears of a knock-on effect on the economy as a whole. It comes at a time when inflation is only just starting to slow after reaching record rates in the eurozone since the summer.

It will take about two months for the OPEC+ decision to trickle down to the real economy, as current crude prices make their way to oil products, said Jorge León, senior vice president of Rystad Energy, a market intelligence firm. This will "most likely" increase inflation.

"That's a problem for Europe, because oil prices are very relevant for headline inflation in Europe" as a net importer of oil, he said. Future gasoline contracts are already trading at higher prices.

The move heaps more pressure on European governments at a time when rising costs of energy, food and transport have sown discontent among voters from London to Berlin. As people have struggled to pay bills, support for leaders has slipped and has triggered a wave of protests and industrial unrest. One of the many drivers of inflation ― Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the West's response to it ― shows little sign of becoming any less critical.

Money supply

Closer to home, higher inflation also may encourage the European Central Bank to continue tightening the money supply by putting up interest rates, and this in turn could have consequences for growth in the eurozone.

"What I'm worried about is the impact that this could have, first of all, on inflation, and therefore, on the attitudes of central banks, and therefore, on economic growth perspectives for this year and for next year," said León.

Annual inflation in the eurozone dropped to 6.9 percent in March from 8.5 percent in February having hit a record 10.6 percent in October. In an effort to bring it back to its 2 percent target, the ECB has continued to increase interest rates from -0.5 percent last summer to 3 percent in March — its fastest-ever tightening cycle.

The Opec+ decision was led by Saudi Arabia, it's most powerful member. This move, together with Saudi's continuing cooperation with Russia, adds to tension with the US and European governments as they struggle to present a united front on Moscow's aggression.

"The dramatic cut [in oil production] will only add to pressing global inflationary squeezes," said Nigel Green, CEO of deVere Group, an independent financial adviser. "There's real concern that the surprise decision announced by Saudi Arabia for OPEC+ will prompt central banks to maintain interest rates higher for longer due to the inflationary impact, which will hinder economic growth."

The move sent prices jumping from just under $80 per barrel of crude at market close on Friday to over $85 at one point on Monday, before falling back slightly. Analysts immediately raised their expectations for future oil prices, with Goldman Sachs projecting crude to reach $95 a barrel by the end of the year.

Concerns linger

It was the second slash in output announced by OPEC+ in under a year, after last fall it cut production by 2 million barrels per day — a decision that was sharply criticized by the U.S.

Non-OPEC countries can do little to counter the effort to push the price of oil higher at a global level | Vladimir Simicek/AFP via Getty Images

The move is seen by analysts as a deliberate attempt by the group's largest countries to push the price of oil higher. It hovered around the $100 a barrel mark last year.

Non-OPEC countries, including the U.S. and those of the EU, can do little to counter the effect, given historically low levels of crude oil reserves. U.S. reserves, which Washington can decide to release to counter some of the supply crunch, are at their lowest since 1984.

"It will take some time to see exactly how much this impacts global prices as demand concerns linger, but this is another potential factor exerting upward pressure on inflation," analysts at Deutsche Bank wrote in a note.

Opec, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, was expanded to become Opec+ in 2016 to bring in countries including Russia as crude oil prices fell.

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Image: Germán & Co

Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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Image: NYT EDITING BY GERMÁM & CO

There ought to be no hiding place for Putin

Successful charges before an international tribunal would fully recognize the crime allegedly being committed by its full and proper name — the crime of aggression.

POLITICO EU BY AARIF ABRAHAM, TODAY

Aarif Abraham is a British barrister and a member of Garden Court North Chambers and Accountability Unit in London.

The International Criminal Court’s (ICC) arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin on the war crime of unlawfully deporting children to Russia is a historic moment for intentional criminal justice. It is only the third time the ICC has issued indicative charges against a serving head of state, and the first time against that of a U.N. Security Council member.

The warrant starts a process that runs in parallel with another first — the initiative to create a Special Tribunal for the crime of aggression as allegedly being committed in Ukraine. It would be the first aggression-focused tribunal since Nuremberg and Tokyo, which prosecuted axis-power leaders after World War II. 

If created, such a tribunal could prosecute senior military and political leaders for what the 1946 Nuremberg judgment called the “supreme international crime.” Why? Because had the manifestly illegal acts of aggression — such as invasion, attack or occupation — not occurred, the egregious harm inflicted on civilians, including tens of thousands of war crimes, would never have happened. 

But the ICC cannot prosecute the crime of aggression in relation to Ukraine, only other international crimes like war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide. The only way for the ICC to prosecute the crime of aggression would be either with Russia’s consent, or through a U.N. Security Council referral. And it is for this reason the initiative for a tribunal led by Ukraine has received the active backing and strong engagement of over 30 countries — and the list is growing.

So, where does the ICC arrest warrant for Putin leave both processes, and which is more likely to succeed? The truth is, the ICC route and the tribunal route are highly complementary.

First, Ukraine rightly wishes to see all responsible military and political leaders in Russia and Belarus held to account for the totality of the harm resulting from aggression. And there would be far more senior leaders caught by the aggression net than the ICC net, which requires a strong evidential link between international crimes being committed by soldiers on the ground and senior leaders in Russia and Belarus. This usually makes such crimes difficult to decisively prove — particularly when Russia claims its actions, such as the deportation of children, are motivated by humanitarian concerns.

By contrast, the crime of aggression is easier to prosecute, as it goes straight to the top and does not require extensive testimonial evidence, given its focus on the high-level acts of the armed forces. It may, however, likely require significant material from intelligence and military sources.

Second, Russia heavily contests the ICC’s jurisdiction to try nationals of countries that are not its members — countries that include Russia, the United States and China. So, while the ICC’s 123 members are under a legal duty to apprehend Putin, executing the arrest warrant will be a source of immense political, and possibly legal, contention, as there is a view that serving heads of state enjoy personal immunity from arrest or prosecution — especially before courts to which they do not belong.

Thus, the consequences for a country apprehending the Russian head of state are not likely to be insignificant, but a special tribunal would face a similar challenge —although a different pool of states may back it. And in such a case, the support of powerful countries like the U.S., which has now been confirmed, could decisively strengthen the possibility of apprehending Putin, and provide some degree of immunity from Russian retaliation in enforcing any arrest warrants.

Third, the ICC route is clear, and its jurisdiction derives from a treaty that its 123 members agreed to adhere to.

The tribunal would likely be created by a similar treaty, ideally agreed with the U.N. General Assembly and/or the European Union and/or multilaterally. Its jurisdiction could be inherent from the extant prohibition on aggression under international law, which binds states through custom, combined with the prohibition on aggression under Ukrainian law. Incidentally, there is a prohibition on aggression under Belarusian and Russian law too —  a concept that was ironically pioneered, and strongly advocated for, by the Soviet Union in response to the horrors it suffered during World War II.

A man looks at his vehicle parked outside a destroyed building after a deadly strike in the city of Sloviansk in Eastern Ukraine, on March 27, 2023 | Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images

Considering the continuing aggression, and the risk of further contagion to other countries, both the ICC and special tribunal routes ought to run on a parallel track, for continued backing for a tribunal means there would be no hiding place for senior Russian and Belarusian leaders.

And successful charges before such a tribunal would not only encapsulate the horrors of the harm suffered, but it would finally recognize the crime allegedly being committed by Putin and those around him by its full and proper name.

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News round-up, April, 3, 2023

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Most read…

In Surprise, OPEC Plus Announces Cut in Oil Production

Oil prices soared 7 percent on Sunday night after the group’s move to cut 1.2 million barrels a day.

NYT BY CLIFFORD KRAUSS, NOW 

World Bank Warns of Lost Decade for Global Economy

Lender sees demographics, war and pandemic aftereffects holding back growth

WSJ BY HARRIET TORRY, APRIL 2, 2023 

Janet Yellen Says Bank Rules Might Have Become Too Loose

Treasury secretary argues that efforts to protect financial stability are incomplete

WSJ BY ANDREW DUEHREN

Exclusive: Russia shifts to Dubai benchmark in Indian oil deal - sources

The two state-controlled firms' move to leave the Brent standard, which is favored by Europe, is a part of a shift in Russia's oil sales toward Asia after Europe boycotted Russian oil after its invasion of Ukraine more than a year ago.

REUTERS BY NIDHI VERMA

Dollar ahead as inflation worries resurface after OPEC+ surprise

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its allies, also known as OPEC+, announced data on Friday that revealed that U.S. consumer spending increased moderately in February after surging the previous month, with inflation showing some signs of cooling even though it remained high.

REUTERS BY ANKUR BANERJEE. EDITING BY GERMÁN & CO

Justice Department has more evidence of possible Trump obstruction in documents probe, Washington Post reports

According to the Post, which cited people familiar with the investigation, Trump looked through some of the boxes of government records in his home after his advisers were served with a subpoena in May demanding the return of the classified records out of an apparent desire to keep certain things in his possession.

REUTERS, EDITING BY GERMÁN & CO

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“We’re living in a volatile world…

it’s easy to get distracted by things like changeable commodity prices or a shortage of solar panels. But this wouldn’t be true to our purpose – we can’t allow ourselves to lose sight of our end goal; said Andres Gluski, CEO of energy and utility AES Corp

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Image: Germán & Co

In Surprise, OPEC Plus Announces Cut in Oil Production

Oil prices soared 7 percent on Sunday night after the group’s move to cut 1.2 million barrels a day.

NYT By Clifford Krauss, now

Saudi Arabia, Russia and their oil-producing allies announced on Sunday that they would cut production by more than 1.2 million barrels of crude a day, or more than 1 percent of world supplies, in an apparent effort to increase prices.

Oil prices soared as markets opened Sunday evening, with both the American and global oil benchmark prices rising by 7 percent.

The production cut was unexpected because leaders of the group, known collectively as OPEC Plus, said in recent days that they did not intend to make changes in their policies. While the announcement was a surprise, its significance may ultimately be slight, especially if the global economy slows.

The alliance produced nearly two million barrels below its supply target in February, the last month for which official output figures are available. “We expect shortfalls to continue,” said Ha Nguyen, a global oil analyst for S&P Global Commodity Insights.

There have been persistent reports that Russia is struggling to keep up production without the benefit of Western service companies that have wound down their operations since the Russian invasion of Ukraine more than a year ago. Saudi production has also been below its production quota set by Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries in recent months.

Taking up the slack in supplying the 100-million-barrel-a-day global market are Brazil, Canada, Guyana, Norway and the United States. All are increasing their oil production.

Still, the OPEC Plus action has symbolic importance at a time when oil prices are a third below where they were immediately after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last February. OPEC Plus members may be responding to growing fears of a recession later this year in the wake of the failure of several American and European banks as well as central bankers’ continued efforts to tame inflation. Oil demand has also been undercut by strikes in France, including at refineries.

“We don’t think cuts are advisable at this moment given market uncertainty,” said Adrienne Watson, a spokeswoman with the U.S. National Security Council, adding, “We’re focused on prices for American consumers, not barrels, and prices have come down significantly since last year.”

Saudi Arabia and Russia will lead in making the announced cuts, with declines of 500,000 barrels each, followed by Iraq, United Arab Emirates and Kuwait. Some analysts said the move could spur more investor speculative interest in oil futures and help drive oil prices higher in coming weeks.

“I really am surprised,” said Tom Kloza, the global head of energy analysis at the Oil Price Information Service. Mr. Kloza said he expected that the Brent global oil price benchmark, which has been hovering at $75 to $80 a barrel in recent weeks, would climb above $80. On Sunday evening, the price of Brent crude surged to $85.48 a barrel. West Texas Intermediate, the American benchmark, rose to $81.04.

Various energy experts estimated the eventual cut differently. Helima Croft, head of global commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets, said that the voluntary cuts on paper amounted to more than 1.6 million barrels a day but, she added, the “real effect could be around 700,000 barrels a day.”

The global oil market is roughly 102 million barrels a day.

In recent years, Saudi Arabia, the leader of the group, has appeared determined to lift prices to around $90 a barrel. Ms. Croft said she saw the latest OPEC Plus cut as “just one more indication that the Saudi leadership is moving its oil production decisions with a clear eye to their own economic self-interests.” Other experts saw it as another sign of growing Saudi independence from the United States, with its relationship to China increasing in importance. It is already a vital partner of Russia’s in directing oil supply levels.

The cuts, which are voluntary and start in May, could be temporary depending on economic conditions.

Just last week, Saudi Aramco, the Saudi state oil company, announced two deals with China to supply refineries there with 690,000 barrels a day. Demand for oil continues to rebound from the global slowdown amid the Covid-19 pandemic. World diesel demand has nearly recovered to its levels before the pandemic, and jet fuel demand continues to surge as China emerges from its Covid shutdown.

The cuts come as gasoline prices, still well below where they were a year ago, are rising again. The average price for regular gasoline in the United States on Sunday was $3.51 a gallon, 13 cents above a month ago. The price a year ago was $4.20 a gallon, and was a major factor in the rise of inflation.

The cartel agreed in October to output cuts of two million barrels a day, but the ultimate reduction was well below that as producing countries like Libya and Nigeria agreed to cut to levels that they could not reach anyway.

The group had last slashed production in 2020, when demand collapsed because of the pandemic. It then gradually increased production until October.

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Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country

…Armando Rodríguez, vice-president and executive director of the company, talks to us about their projects in the DR, where they have been operating for 32 years.

More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

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Image: The World Bank’’s forecast comes in the wake of the Inflation Reduction Act.
PHOTO: SAMUEL CORUM/BLOOMBERG NEWS. Editing by Germán & Co

World Bank Warns of Lost Decade for Global Economy

Lender sees demographics, war and pandemic aftereffects holding back growth

WSJ by Harriet Torry, April 2, 2023 

“Over the past year, governments around the world have announced tax breaks, subsidies and new laws in a bid to accelerate investment, combat climate change and expand their workforces.

That might not be enough. 

The World Bank is warning of a “lost decade” ahead for global growth, as the war in Ukraine, the Covid-19 pandemic and high inflation compound existing structural challenges. 

The Washington, D.C.-based international lender says that “it will take a herculean collective policy effort to restore growth in the next decade to the average of the previous one.” Three main factors are behind the reversal in economic progress: an aging workforce, weakening investment and slowing productivity.

“Across the world, a structural growth slowdown is under way: At current trends, the global potential growth rate—the maximum rate at which an economy can grow without igniting inflation—is expected to fall to a three-decade low over the remainder of the 2020s,” the World Bank said.

Potential growth was 3.5% in the decade from 2000 to 2010. It dropped to 2.6% a year on average from 2011 to 2021, and will shrink further to 2.2% a year from 2022 to 2030, the bank said. About half of the slowdown is attributable to demographic factors.

The latest alarm bells from the World Bank about the global economy come in the wake of the U.S.’s passing the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes hundreds of billions in incentives and funding for clean energy, as well as a law to ratchet up investments in semiconductors. In response, the European Union is relaxing its rules on government tax breaks and other benefits for clean-tech companies.  

Meantime, major economies are trying to boost their workforce numbers, often in the face of steep resistance. In France, protesters responded violently to President Emmanuel Macron’s overhaul of the country’s pension system, while China’s shrinking population has prompted local governments there to offer cash rewards and longer maternity leaves to boost births.

These efforts so far might be too little, too late. Weakness in growth could be even more pronounced if financial crises erupt in major economies and trigger a global recession, the World Bank report cautions. The warning comes just weeks after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank sparked turmoil in the U.S. and European banking sectors. 

Questions surrounding global growth prospects will be in the air in Washington, D.C., alongside the blooming cherry blossoms at the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank from April 10 to 16.

Policy makers and central-bank officials will join economists from around the world to discuss topics including inflation, supply chains, global trade fragmentation, artificial intelligence and human capital.

Earlier this year, the World Bank sharply lowered its short-term growth forecast for the global economy, citing persistently high inflation that has elevated the risk for a worldwide recession. It expects global growth to slow to 1.7% in 2023. Other organizations, such as the International Monetary Fund and the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a Washington-based think tank, expect global GDP growth to expand a more robust 2.9% in 2023. 

This isn’t the first time the World Bank has warned of a lost decade. In 2021, the lender said the Covid-19 pandemic raised the prospect owing to lower trade and investment caused by uncertainty over the pandemic. It issued similar warnings after the 2008 financial crisis. Global growth from 2009 to 2018 averaged 2.8% a year, compared with 3.5% in the prior decade. 

The World Bank identifies a number of challenges conspiring to push down global growth: weak investment, slow productivity growth, restrictive trade measures such as tariffs and the continuing negative effects—such as learning losses from school closures—because of the pandemic.

It said pro-growth policies would help. Measures to boost labor-force participation among discouraged workers and women can help reverse the negative trend in labor force growth from an older population and lower birthrates, according to the World Bank. 

Some view the World Bank’s projection for a lost decade as too pessimistic. Harvard University economist Karen Dynan said that aging populations in nearly every part of the world will be a drag on global growth, but she was more optimistic on raising productivity—output per worker.

“I expect, outside the demographic effects, output per person to look a lot like it did before the pandemic,” she said.

“The World Bank is right to draw concern to the possibility of a lost decade in sub-Saharan Africa, in Central America, in South Asia—an awful lot of human beings are at risk or are facing very grim situations,” said Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. 

“But from a global GDP outlook, or even a global population outlook, most of the major emerging markets along with most of the Group of 20 essentially are doing pretty well,” Mr. Posen said. He pointed to economic resilience in Europe and emerging markets in recent years, even as the Federal Reserve has sharply raised interest rates.

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Image: WSJ, editing by Germán & co

Janet Yellen Says Bank Rules Might Have Become Too Loose

Treasury secretary argues that efforts to protect financial stability are incomplete

WSJ by Andrew Duehren

WASHINGTON—Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that regulators might need to tighten banking rules after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, arguing that the recent turmoil is a sign that efforts to bolster the financial system are incomplete.  

Speaking at an economics conference Thursday, Ms. Yellen questioned whether the regulatory system she helped build after the 2008 financial crisis was adequate to protect financial stability. Regulators this month extended emergency assistance to banks and stepped in to protect all depositors at SVB and Signature.

“These events remind us of the urgent need to complete unfinished business: to finalize post-crisis reforms, consider whether deregulation may have gone too far, and repair the cracks in the regulatory perimeter that the recent shocks have revealed,” Ms. Yellen said.

She spoke at the National Association for Business Economics, which was presenting her with an award in memory of former Federal Reserve Chair Paul Volcker. Before becoming Treasury secretary, Ms. Yellen held top jobs at the Fed, including serving as its chair.

Since SVB and Signature failed, some former regulators have said Washington might have focused too much on the biggest banks after the 2008 financial crisis. In 2018, lawmakers from both parties voted to raise to $250 billion from $50 billion the asset threshold at which banks automatically face strict stress tests and other rules. 

The Federal Reserve is now reconsidering a number of its rules for banks with assets between $100 billion and $250 billion. The White House on Thursday also called for tougher rules for midsize banks.

“Regulatory requirements have been loosened in recent years. I believe it is appropriate to assess the impact of these deregulatory decisions and take any necessary actions in response,” Ms. Yellen said.

More broadly, Ms. Yellen said the fallout from the recent banking turmoil—as well as from the market volatility in the spring of 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic struck the U.S.—had been successfully mitigated.

“In large part, this was due to the post-crisis reforms we put in place,” she said. “But in both cases, the government had to deliver substantial interventions to ease the pressure on certain parts of the financial system. This means that more work must be done.”

Ms. Yellen also laid out the work she and federal regulators are doing to address risks they see outside of banks. Under Ms. Yellen, the Financial Stability Oversight Council—an interagency forum created after the financial crisis—is preparing to change its rules so it can more easily subject institutions such as money-market funds to enhanced federal supervision.

Ms. Yellen said that money-market funds, hedge funds and stablecoins, a type of digital asset typically pegged to the dollar, each present the risk of creating fire sales of assets that could fuel instability. For instance, she said, if investors try to pull out of money-market funds en masse, that can force sales of underlying assets, potentially destabilizing those markets.

“The financial stability risks posed by money market and open-end funds have not been sufficiently addressed,” she said.

FSOC has restarted a group studying hedge funds, Ms. Yellen said, adding that the group could make policy recommendations. The Treasury has also asked Congress to pass legislation that would regulate stablecoin issuers more like banks. And Ms. Yellen said she would continue to accelerate hiring efforts at the FSOC, which she said had been decimated because of staff turnover before she took office.

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Image: A model of oil barrels is seen in front of Russian and Indian flags in this illustration taken, December 9, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration./Editing by Germán & Co

Exclusive: Russia shifts to Dubai benchmark in Indian oil deal - sources

The two state-controlled firms' move to leave the Brent standard, which is favored by Europe, is a part of a shift in Russia's oil sales toward Asia after Europe boycotted Russian oil after its invasion of Ukraine more than a year ago.

Reuters by Nidhi Verma

NEW DELHI, April 3 (Reuters) - Russia's largest oil producer Rosneft (ROSN.MM) and India's top refiner Indian Oil Corp (IOC.NS) agreed to use the Asia-focused Dubai oil price benchmark in their latest deal to deliver Russian oil to India, three sources familiar with the deal said.

The decision by the two state-controlled companies to abandon the Europe-dominated Brent benchmark is part of a shift of Russia's oil sales towards Asia after Europe shunned Russian oil following Russia's invasion of Ukraine more than a year ago.

Both benchmarks are denominated in dollars and set by S&P Platts, a unit of U.S.-based S&P Global Inc (SPGI.N), but Brent is mostly used by European oil majors and traders, whereas Dubai is heavily influenced by Asian and Middle Eastern oil trading.

Rosneft's chief executive Igor Sechin said in February that the price of Russian oil would be determined outside of Europe as Asia has emerged as largest buyer of Russian oil since the West imposed progressively tighter sanctions on the export.

Under the new deal, announced on March 29, Rosneft will nearly double oil sales to Indian Oil Corp (IOC.NS), two of the sources told Reuters.

IOC and Rosneft did not immediately respond to Reuters emails seeking comment on the details of the agreement, which have not been previously reported.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said on Tuesday that Russian oil sales to India jumped 22-fold last year, but he did not specify the volume sold.

Rosneft would sell up to 1.5 million tonnes (11 million barrels) each month, including some optional quantities, to IOC in the new fiscal year from April 1, the two sources said.

They said that in 2022/23, IOC had a deal to buy 3 million barrels of Urals grade with an option to double the quantity every month priced at differentials to dated Brent on a delivered basis.

The new contract includes Urals crude, shipped from Russia's European ports of Primorsk, Ust-Luga and Novorossiysk, and Sokol oil exported from Sakhalin which will be sold at a discount of $8-$10 per barrel to Dubai quotes on a delivered basis, three sources said.

The larger volumes and change in Russian oil pricing highlight closer ties between Moscow and India, which has now become the largest buyer of seaborne crude from Russia.

Indian refiners rarely bought Russian oil in the past due to higher freight costs compared with Europe, but after Urals prices fell to historical lows Russia has now replaced Iraq as top oil supplier to India in the last few months, data from trade sources showed.

Russia has been rerouting its energy supplies from traditional markets in Europe to Asia, mainly India and China, since the West imposed wide-ranging sanctions, including an embargo on seaborne Russian oil imports.

The European Union nations stopped buying Russian oil from Dec. 5 and the Group of Seven (G7) countries joined the EU in imposing a price cap on Russian crude of $60 per barrel. The move was aimed at cutting Russia's oil revenue while maintaining stability on the global oil market.

India was the biggest buyer of Russia's benchmark Urals grade crude in March. Deliveries to India are set to account for more than 50% of all seaborne Urals exports last month, with China in second place.

China, which buys Russian Urals at prices pegged against either dated Brent or ICE Brent, doubled its purchases of Urals oil in the first half of February compared to the same period of January, according to traders and Refinitiv Eikon data.

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Image: Germán & Co

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Image: Woman holds U.S. dollar banknotes in front of Euro banknotes in this illustration taken May 30, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo. Editing by Germán & Co

Dollar ahead as inflation worries resurface after OPEC+ surprise

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its allies, also known as OPEC+, announced data on Friday that revealed that U.S. consumer spending increased moderately in February after surging the previous month, with inflation showing some signs of cooling even though it remained high.

Reuters by Ankur Banerjee. Editing by germán & Co

SINGAPORE, April 3 (Reuters) - The U.S. dollar was broadly higher as fears over inflation resurfaced after a surprise announcement by major oil producers to cut production further, with traders wagering the Federal Reserve may need to increase interest rates at its next meeting.

The announcement from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its allies, known as OPEC+, comes after data on Friday showed U.S. consumer spending rose moderately in February after surging the prior month, with inflation showing some signs of cooling even as it remained elevated.

"While receding broader contagion risks, positive developments in China and expectations that the Fed is nearing the end of the tightening cycle should keep sentiments broadly supported, the oil price gain due to the surprise production cut is a fresh risk to inflation," said Christopher Wong, a currency strategist at OCBC in Singapore.

"Fresh inflation risks do imply the inflation fight is not over."

The euro was down 0.44% to $1.0791, after touching a one-week low of $1.0788, while the Japanese yen weakened 0.46% to 133.41 per dollar. Sterling was $1.2277, down 0.45% on the day. The dollar rose 0.32% against the Swiss franc.

The dollar index , which measures the U.S. currency against six peers, was 0.078% higher at 103.01, breaking past 103 for the first time in a week.

The OPEC+ cuts caused oil price increases of more than 6% on Monday.

The cuts were announced even before a virtual meeting of the OPEC+ ministerial panel, which includes representatives from Saudi Arabia and Russia, that was expected to stick to cuts of 2 million barrels per day (bpd) already in place until the end of 2023.

Instead, the oil producers on Sunday announced further output cuts of around 1.16 million bpd.

The two-year U.S. Treasury yield, which typically moves in step with interest rate expectations, was up 4.6 basis points at 4.108%. The yield on 10-year Treasury notes was up 2.9 basis points to 3.519%.

Markets are now pricing in the probability of the Fed hiking rates by a quarter point in May to 61%, from 48% on Friday. But, by the end of the year, expectations are priced in for cuts of 40 basis points.

Friday's report from the U.S. Commerce Department showed that personal consumption expenditures price index rose 5.0% in February from a year earlier, down from the 5.3% increase in January. A measure of core inflation - seen as a better gauge of future price increases - came in a shade lower than expected at 4.6%.

Additional data also showed U.S. consumer sentiment fell for the first time in four months in February on concerns of an impending recession, although the impact of the banking crisis was muted.

Citi strategists said concerns over financial stability are fading and any drag from tighter credit is likely to be both lagged and limited.

"Still, the recent experience likely will keep the Fed more cautious in raising rates and markets more cautious in pricing hawkish policy," Citi strategists said in a note, adding they expect 25 basis point hikes at the next three Fed meetings.

The risk-sensitive Australian dollar fell 0.30% to $0.667 ahead of a high-stakes policy meeting from the Reserve Bank of Australia this week, with markets betting the central bank will stand pat on interest rates after 10 interest rate hikes.

The kiwi slid 0.62% to $0.622, its biggest one-day percentage drop since March 24.

In cryptocurrencies, bitcoin last fell 2.43% to $27,703.00. Ethereum , last fell 2.27% to $1,776.40.

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Image: U.S. President Donald Trump delivers an update on the so-called Operation Warp Speed program in an address from the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington, U.S., November 13, 2020. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo/Editing by Germán & Co

Justice Department has more evidence of possible Trump obstruction in documents probe, Washington Post reports

According to the Post, which cited people familiar with the investigation, Trump looked through some of the boxes of government records in his home after his advisers were served with a subpoena in May demanding the return of the classified records out of an apparent desire to keep certain things in his possession.

Reuters, editing by Germán & Co

April 2 (Reuters) - U.S. Justice Department and FBI investigators have amassed new evidence indicating possible obstruction by former President Donald Trump in the probe into classified documents found at his Florida estate, the Washington Post reported on Sunday, citing sources.

FBI agents seized thousands of government records, some marked as highly classified, from Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in August. The investigation is one of two criminal inquiries into the former president being led by Special Counsel Jack Smith.

Trump, who was indicted on Thursday in a separate inquiry in New York, has denied any wrongdoing in the cases and describes them as politically motivated.

After his advisers received a subpoena in May demanding the return of the classified records, Trump looked through some of the boxes of government documents in his home out of an apparent desire to keep certain things in his possession, the Post reported, citing people familiar with the investigation.

Investigators also have evidence indicating Trump told others to mislead government officials in early 2022, before the subpoena, when the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration was working to recover documents from Trump's time as president, the Post reported.

The FBI referred questions to the Justice Department, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a statement to the Post, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said that the "witch-hunts against President Trump have no basis in facts or law," and accused Special Counsel Smith and the Justice Department of leaking information to manipulate public opinion.

Smith's investigations are among a growing number of legal worries for Trump, who in November launched a campaign seeking the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

In addition to the New York probe, Trump faces a Georgia inquiry over whether he tried to overturn his 2020 election defeat in the state.

What is the Iraq-Turkey oil pipeline dispute and who's on the hook?

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According to the federal government of Iraq, only SOMO, a state-owned marketing company, is authorized to oversee crude exports through Ceyhan.

REUTER by Rowena Edwards and Ahmed Rasheed, editing by Germán & Co

March 31 (Reuters) - An international arbitration ruling on March 23 prompted the shutdown of Iraq's northern crude oil exports through Turkey and sent oil prices back towards $80 a barrel.

Iraq, OPEC's second-largest oil producer, exports about 85% of its crude via ports in the south. But the northern route via Turkey still accounts for about 0.5% of global oil supply.

WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF THE DISPUTE?

Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) began exporting crude from the semi-autonomous northern region independently from the federal government in 2013, a move Baghdad deemed illegal.

KRG exports flow through a KRG pipeline to Fish-Khabur on the northern Iraqi border, where the oil enters Turkey and is pumped to the Turkish port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean coast.

Iraq's federal government says its state-owned marketed SOMO is the only party authorised to manage crude exports through Ceyhan.

Iraq filed for arbitration in 2014 with the Paris-based International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) over Turkey's role in facilitating oil exports from Kurdistan without the consent of the federal government in Baghdad.

Iraq said that by transporting and storing oil from Kurdistan and loading it on tankers in Ceyhan without Baghdad's approval, Ankara and Turkish state energy company BOTAS violated provisions of an Iraq-Turkey pipeline agreement signed in 1973.

HOW DID THE CASE DEVELOP?

After the final hearing in Paris in July, the ICC ruled on March 23 in Iraq's favour for the right to control loading at Ceyhan and to have access to see what was being loaded, a source familiar with the case has told Reuters.

Turkey was also asked to pay 50% of the discount at which KRG oil was sold, three sources said.

However, Turkey claimed the ICC overruled four out of Iraq's five demands and had ordered Iraq to pay compensation to Turkey, without stating the amount. Turkey also won a counter claim for Iraq to pay a pipeline throughput fee, one source said.

Based on all the rulings, the net amount Turkey owes Iraq was about $1.5 billion before interest, the source familiar with the case said. According to a Turkish source, Iraq's initial demand was for about $33 billion.

The arbitration case covers the period 2014-2018.

A second arbitration case, which could take about two years, would cover the period from 2018 onwards.

The Turkish government and the governments in Baghdad and Kurdistan have released statements since the court ruling but none of them included full details about the decision.

The KRG declined to comment when asked for further details. The Turkish energy ministry did not immediately respond to requests for further comment. The Iraqi oil ministry could not immediately be reached on Friday, the Iraqi weekend.

WHY DID TURKEY HALT OIL EXPORTS?

On March 25, Turkey stopped pumping around 450,000 barrels per day (bpd) of Iraqi oil via the pipeline to Ceyhan.

This comprised 370,000 bpd of KRG crude and 75,000 bpd of federal crude, a source familiar with pipeline operations said.

Turkey shutdown the pipeline because Iraq's federal government won the right to control loading at Ceyhan. Iraq's SOMO would have to instruct Turkey on ship-loading or the crude would have built up in storage with nowhere to go.

Turkey, Iraq's federal government and the KRG are in talks on how to reach a mutual agreement over northern Iraqi exports. A KRG source said Turkey had no choice but to halt flows through the pipeline until an agreement could be found.

HOW HAVE KRG OIL SALES DEVELOPED SINCE 2014?

Sales of KRG crude through the pipeline have grown rapidly over the past decade, with the total value reaching $12.3 billion in 2022, according to a Deloitte report, up 62% from 2017 when Deloitte first published data.

The KRG's ministry of natural resources said its oil revenues reached $5.9 billion in 2015.

From June 2015, the KRG restarted independent oil sales and signed several pre-payment deals with oil trading houses.

With its oil exports at a standstill, Kurdistan has halted repayments to energy traders including Vitol and Petraco on crude cargo deals worth $6 billion, trading sources said.

Vitol and Petraco have declined to comment on the issue.

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PDVSA's supervising board to appeal new creditors' move to go after Citgo

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To settle a $970 million claim by Canadian miner Crystallex resulting from the seizure of its Venezuelan properties, a U.S. court is preparing to auction shares in Delaware-registered PDV Holding. This week, attorneys have had a dispute regarding priority due to other businesses trying to attach their judgments to the case.

Reuters, Edeting by Germán & Co

The corporate logos of the state oil company PDVSA and Citgo Petroleum Corp are seen in Caracas, Venezuela April 30, 2018. REUTERS/Marco Bello/File Photo

HOUSTON, March 31 (Reuters) - A board that supervises Venezuela's overseas assets said it plans to file an appeal to a U.S. court's decision granting four firms the right to seize shares in one of the parent companies of Venezuela-owned U.S. refiner Citgo Petroleum.

A U.S. court is preparing for an auction of shares in Delaware-registered PDV Holding to satisfy a $970 million claim by Canadian miner Crystallex stemming from a expropriation of its Venezuelan assets. Other companies have sought to attach their own judgments to the case, leading to a feud this week among attorneys over priority.

The decision by a U.S. judge in Delaware to approve the attachments is contingent on green light by the U.S. Treasury Department.

O-I Glass Inc (OI.N), Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc (HII.N), ACL1 Investments Ltd, and Rusoro Mining Ltd (RML.V) received the court's blessing after showing state-oil firm PDVSA was the "alter ego" of Venezuela's government in asset battles.

An ad-hoc board created by Venezuela's National Assembly in 2019 to supervise PDVSA's foreign subsidiaries, especially Houston-based Citgo Petroleum, will oppose any conditioned auction, board's president Horacio Medina told Reuters.

Lawyers representing Crystallex and U.S. oil producer ConocoPhillips (COP.N), which have been fighting for years to recoup billions of dollars in expropriated assets, complained on Thursday that rights granted to additional creditors could complicate any sale.

"We might need to think about how the court is going to rank what is now becoming a very significant number of very substantial claims," said Amy Wolf, an attorney representing ConocoPhillips.

Even without green light from the U.S. Treasury, which has protected Citgo from creditors in recent years, U.S. Judge Leonard Stark has set a calendar for an eventual auction and asked investment banker Evercore Group to begin working on a tender.

Stark this week rejected a motion by lawyers representing Venezuela to disqualify the person appointed to manage the potential auction, and said he expects to hear by April 7 on whether the U.S. Treasury would allow a transfer of shares.

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Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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News round-up, March 31, 2023

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Most read…

‘O.J. Simpson on steroids’: Team Trump preps for a post-indictment frenzy

Plans have been in place to react to an indictment from the Manhattan D.A. On Thursday night, they were triggered.

POLITICO.COM by ALEX ISENSTADT and MERIDITH MCGRAW, 03/30/2023 

EU extends gas price cap system to all EU hubs

Following protracted discussions over taming gas prices that reached record highs after Russia curtailed gas exports to Europe in response to its invasion of Ukraine, EU member states agreed to the cap in December.

Reuters editing by Germán & co

China's demand comeback to help oil weather banking crisis: Reuters poll

Brent is presently trading at $80 after falling earlier this month to 15-month lows around $70 due to growing concerns over the banking sector's health. Since then, institutional rescue programs for troubled banks have mostly alleviated those concerns.

Reuter By Bharat Gautam, editing by Germán & Co

The "Vulkan Files" A Look Inside Putin's Secret Plans for Cyber-Warfare

Elite hackers from Russia have their sights set on airports and power plants around the world, along with the internet. Confidential data from Moscow, obtained by DER SPIEGEL and its partners, now provide a look inside their arsenal of cyber-weapons and reveal their strategy.

Spiegel by Nikolai Antoniadis, Sophia Baumann, Christo Buschek, Maria Christoph, Jörg Diehl, Alexander Epp, Christo Grozev, Roman Höfner, Max Hoppenstedt, Carina Huppertz, Dajana Kollig, Anna-Lena Kornfeld, Roman Lehberger, Hannes Munzinger, Frederik Obermaier, Bastian Obermayer, Fedir Petrov, Alexandra Rojkov, Marcel Rosenbach, Thomas Schulz, Hakan Tanriverdi und Wolf Wiedmann-Schmidt, 30.03.2023

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“We’re living in a volatile world…

it’s easy to get distracted by things like changeable commodity prices or a shortage of solar panels. But this wouldn’t be true to our purpose – we can’t allow ourselves to lose sight of our end goal; said Andres Gluski, CEO of energy and utility AES Corp

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Image: Germán & Co

‘O.J. Simpson on steroids’: Team Trump preps for a post-indictment frenzy

Plans have been in place to react to an indictment from the Manhattan D.A. On Thursday night, they were triggered.

POLITICO.COM by ALEX ISENSTADT and MERIDITH MCGRAW, 03/30/2023 

For most people, getting indicted is a setback. From Donald Trump’s team, it’s viewed as an opportunity.

Aides to the former president moved aggressively on Thursday to capitalize politically on news that a Manhattan grand jury had charged Trump — using it to fill their fundraising coffers, mobilize loyalists and further solidify his hold on his base of supporters in the GOP presidential primary.

A man with no shortage of love for made-for-TV drama, Trump himself anticipates that the media attention around the grand jury’s decision may help him win sympathy and support. His team is preparing for a circus. One Trump adviser compared the expected press frenzy of Trump going to Manhattan for the arraignment to “O.J. Simpson on steroids,” with television networks potentially launching helicopter coverage to dramatically follow Trump from his Florida estate to his plane at Palm Beach International Airport, and then from LaGuardia Airport to lower Manhattan.

Trump’s campaign had spent weeks laying the groundwork for this moment. And those plans kicked into gear when news finally emerged that he was facing charges related to allegations that he made a hush-money payment to a porn actress during the waning days of the 2016 election.

The Trump campaign’s pushback was swift. Just minutes after news broke that he was being indicted, the campaign sent out a statement from Trump calling the charges “Political Persecution and Election Interference at the highest level in history.”

It was followed by a fundraising appeal and then a deluge of statements from supporters rushing to Trump’s defense. There will be more, advisers say: Trump’s team has convened a small army of lawyers and surrogates, who are set to pepper the airwaves in the coming days with campaign-approved talking points. The campaign is also expected to appeal for small-dollar contributions on Facebook.

Operatives close to the campaign noted that it came just ahead of Friday’s end–of-first-quarter fundraising deadline, allowing Trump to increase his totals that would be revealed in a report to be filed next month.

The effort underscores how Trump’s team believes it can turn the indictment into a campaign positive, at least in the short term. The president has found himself in legal jeopardy before — though an indictment against a former president is unprecedented — and there is a conviction based on that history that it will bolster him politically.

Key figures in the Trump indictment

Here are some of the people involved as the case against former President Donald Trump moves forward.

Michael Cohen

Trump’s former attorney testified in 2018 that he made a hush-money payment on behalf of Trump.

Stormy Daniels

The porn actress is said to have received $130,000 for her silence about an affair with Trump.

Alvin Bragg

The Manhattan DA took office in January 2022 and inherited the investigation.

Allen Weisselberg

Prosecutors gave the ex-Trump Organization CFO immunity in their hush-money probe in 2018.

Joe Tacopina

A vocal member of Trump’s legal team, he began representing Trump earlier this year.

Susan Necheles

She is one of Trump’s lawyers who was on the defense team in the Trump Organization trial.

Robert Costello

Cohen’s former legal adviser cast aspersions on Cohen’s credibility before the grand jury.

Karen McDougal

The model is another woman who received “hush money” for her involvement with Trump.

David Pecker

The former National Enquirer CEO has been linked to Cohen’s efforts to pay off Daniels and McDougal.

Trump was in Florida at his Mar-a-lago resort when the news of the indictment came down. Both he and his advisers were blindsided by it, people close to the former president say.

But while the news was sudden, their preparations for it weren’t. Over the past two weeks, Trump and his campaign have been keeping tabs on which Republicans were dismissing the case and boosting the ex-president. After Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis appeared to mock Trump during a press conference last week for finding himself in a scandal with a porn actress, Trump lashed out, insinuating DeSantis would soon experience false accusations of his own. Unsatisfied with that Truth Social post, Trump deleted it and replaced it with another that went even further, not only suggesting without evidence DeSantis could be faced with allegations from not only a woman but a man, too, and that it could also come from someone “underage.”

The message was deliberate and unambiguous: Defend me or else. When the time came on Thursday, Trump’s fellow Republicans did just that. DeSantis, seen as the leading 2024 primary opponent to Trump, called the indictment “un-American,” and said he would not assist with any extradition request (Trump’s lawyers have said he will turn himself in). RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel called the news “a blatant abuse of power from a DA focused on political vengeance instead of keeping people safe.” And in a pre-recorded video message, GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy called the indictment “wrong” and said the country was “skating on thin ice.”

While many Republicans believe the indictment could boost Trump’s prospects by further solidifying his already-loyal base of supporters, they are also sanguine about the long-term damage it might cause. The case being brought against Trump is historic (no ex-president has ever been indicted). And future charges stemming from his actions on Jan. 6, 2021, and his possession of classified documents loom and could harm him even more in a general election, should he end up the nominee.

Former Vice President Mike Pence — who is debating his own 2024 challenge of Trump — called the indictment an “outrage” during a pre-scheduled interview with CNN. But he would not say whether he thinks Trump should drop out of the race if he is convicted.

“It’s a long way to that decision,” Pence said. “So I don’t want to talk about hypotheticals in all of this.”

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Image: Media

EU extends gas price cap system to all EU hubs

Following protracted discussions over taming gas prices that reached record highs after Russia curtailed gas exports to Europe in response to its invasion of Ukraine, EU member states agreed to the cap in December.

Reuters editing by Germán & co

BRUSSELS, March 31 (Reuters) - The European Commission will extend its gas price cap system to all trading hubs in the European Union from May to prevent potential distortions to Europe's energy markets, it said on Friday.

EU countries agreed the cap in December after drawn-out talks over taming gas prices that hit record levels after Russia cut gas deliveries to Europe following its invasion of Ukraine.

For now, the cap is triggered if prices exceed 180 euros ($196) per megawatt hour for three days on the Dutch Title Transfer Facility (TTF) gas hub's front-month contract.

The TTF price must also be 35 euros/MWh higher than a reference price based on existing liquefied natural gas (LNG) price assessments for three days.

TTF derivatives account for more than 90% of the natural gas derivatives traded on regulated markets in the European Union.

The Commission said its "market correction mechanism" would extend to derivatives linked to trading in all other EU hubs from May 1.

Report an The EU executive said the move would provide an even broader shield against high and volatile gas prices and help avoid potential distortions from applying it solely to TTF derivatives.

If triggered, trades would not be permitted on the front-month, three-month and front-year TTF contracts at a price more than 35 euros/MWh above the reference LNG price, which is currently set at 39.09 euros/MWh.

This caps the price at which gas can be traded, but the cap can fluctuate alongside global LNG prices - a system designed to ensure EU countries can still bid for gas in global markets.

The front-month TTF gas price contract hit a record high of 343 euros in August, but was trading on Friday at 45.70 euros/MWh, Refinitiv Eikon data showed.

The cap mechanism is designed to be temporary, applying until January 2024

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Image: An aerial view shows a crude oil tanker at an oil terminal off Waidiao island in Zhoushan, Zhejiang province, China January 4, 2023. China Daily via REUTERS

China's demand comeback to help oil weather banking crisis: Reuters poll

Brent is presently trading at $80 after falling earlier this month to 15-month lows around $70 due to growing concerns over the banking sector's health. Since then, institutional rescue programs for troubled banks have mostly alleviated those concerns.

Reuter By Bharat Gautam, editing by Germán & Co

March 31 (Reuters) - Oil will rebound after recent banking turmoil as demand from top consumer China is set to soar, but worries around economic growth will keep both benchmarks hovering below $90 this year, a Reuters poll showed on Friday.

A survey of 45 economists and analysts forecast benchmark Brent crude would average $86.49 a barrel this year, down from February's estimate of $89.23.

Brent is currently trading around $80, having been dragged to 15-month lows near $70 earlier this month on mounting worries over the stability of the banking sector. Those fears have since largely been allayed by institutional rescue measures for struggling banks.

"Fundamentals for the oil market do not seem to have changed meaningfully in light of bank runs in the U.S. and the forced takeover of a Swiss bank," said Suvro Sarkar, energy sector team lead at DBS Bank.

"The dip in oil prices is more of a blip at the moment, rather than a sustained move below $80 per barrel".

Analysts forecast U.S. crude to average $80.88 a barrel in 2023, down from the $83.94 consensus last month, but still above current trades of around $74.

Most analysts polled by Reuters expect oil prices to stay below $90 on fears of a recession in developed economies stemming from interest rate increases to bring down inflation.

Global oil demand is seen rising by about 1 million-2 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2023, with dips related to economic jitters or slowdowns in the West likely to be countered by increases from China, the world's biggest oil importer.

"Oil demand in China should pick up a bit further over the year. And while U.S. demand should slow, it won't fall, even as the economy weakens under the weight of higher interest rates," Capital Economics' Bill Weatherburn said.

Along with China, prices will also hinge on potentially declining Russian oil production due to Western sanctions, with a combination of the two likely tightening global supplies, analysts said.

OPEC+, which comprises the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and allies led by Russia, is likely to stick to its deal on output cuts of 2 million bpd until the end of the year, which could add to upward price momentum, the poll showed.

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Image: [M] Lea Rossa / DER SPIEGEL; Fotos: Vulkan Files (4); Gavriil Grigorov / dpa; Bobylev Sergei / Itar-Tass / action press; Wikimedia Commons; Sebastien Bozon / AFP; Denis Charlet / AFP

The "Vulkan Files" A Look Inside Putin's Secret Plans for Cyber-Warfare

Elite hackers from Russia have their sights set on airports and power plants around the world, along with the internet. Confidential data from Moscow, obtained by DER SPIEGEL and its partners, now provide a look inside their arsenal of cyber-weapons and reveal their strategy.

Spiegel by Nikolai Antoniadis, Sophia Baumann, Christo Buschek, Maria Christoph, Jörg Diehl, Alexander Epp, Christo Grozev, Roman Höfner, Max Hoppenstedt, Carina Huppertz, Dajana Kollig, Anna-Lena Kornfeld, Roman Lehberger, Hannes Munzinger, Frederik Obermaier, Bastian Obermayer, Fedir Petrov, Alexandra Rojkov, Marcel Rosenbach, Thomas Schulz, Hakan Tanriverdi und Wolf Wiedmann-Schmidt, 30.03.2023

A fine, late-winter drizzle is falling on a Moscow that has yet to completely free itself from its winter bleakness. Heaps of dirty snow are still piled up in front of the gray office building in the Sokolinaya Gora district in the eastern part of the city. It is an unremarkable structure in an unremarkable neighborhood, not far from the Preobrazhenskoye Cemetery, where an eternal flame burns in honor of the Soviet Union’s World War II dead. Outside the building, there is no barbed-wire and no threatening guards.

It's all quite normal. And it’s all a ruse.

The company headquartered here at Ulica Ibragimova 31 is called NTC Vulkan, and it presents itself as a completely normal, IT consulting firm, a small company with software expertise. Its website claims the company has a close relationship with IBM and lists Toyota Bank as a customer. One of its specialties: "Information security management.” It is a carefully constructed façade that holds up at first glance. And at second glance. But it’s not the whole truth.

Those wishing to go inside for a closer look at the frequently darkened offices full of computers, servers and other high-tech electronic equipment, must pass through security doors and a phalanx of cameras. After all, the building is home to programmers and hackers with a sinister mission: sowing chaos and causing destruction.

Vulkan headquarters in northeastern Moscow. Foto: DER SPIEGEL

For example: Paralyzing the computer systems of an airport so that the tower can no longer communicate with planes. Or triggering train derailments using a software program that deactivates all safety controls. Or interrupting power supplies.

All those things are elements of cyberwarfare, a specialty of Russian secret service agencies. And Vulkan works for those agencies: for the military intelligence agency GRU, the domestic intelligence agency FSB and for the foreign and economic intelligence agency SVR. "To begin with, it wasn’t clear what my work would be used for,” says one former employee, who has since left the country. "Later, I understood that we weren’t just collecting data. But that it was being used by the Russian secret service.”

The systems developed by Vulkan bear anodyne codenames like "Scan-V,” "Crystal-2V,” and "Amezit,” but their purposes are anything but normal. They have been programmed to assist the Russian military in finding the digital vulnerabilities of adversaries, thus making cyberattacks far easier to carry out. They can ambush enemy communications systems and take them over. And they can spread disinformation.

This is all chronicled in 1,000 secret documents that include 5,299 pages full of project plans, instructions and internal emails from Vulkan from the years 2016 to 2021. Despite being all in Russian and extremely technical in nature, they provide unique insight into the depths of Russian cyberwarfare plans. In a militarized country that doesn’t just fight with warplanes, tanks and artillery, but with hackers and software.

This strategy is especially apparent in Ukraine, which has been so unrelentingly attacked by Russian hackers since the invasion in February 2022 that experts have begun referring to it as the "first comprehensive cyberwar” ever seen. The Russians attack important companies and government agencies and interrupt internet service, and even managed to paralyze a communications satellite.

But cyberattacks in other parts of the world have also become increasingly brazen and dangerous.

USA 2016

During the U.S. presidential campaign, the servers of the Democratic Party were hacked, with data later being published on the WikiLeaks platform. In addition, fake news favoring the Republican candidate and later victor Donald Trump was disseminated. In an additional cyberattack, 60,000 emails belonging to Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager were stolen. A number of Russian hacker groups are thought to have been behind the attack, including “Fancy Bear.”

France 2017

Shortly before the run-off election for the presidency, thousands of emails and other documents from the campaign team of Emmanuel Macron were leaked. The trail leads back to the Russian hackers from “Sandworm.”

USA 2017

It becomes known that the nuclear power plant Wolf Creek in Kansas was hacked. Employees had received spear phishing emails ahead of the hack. In 2021, the U.S. Justice Department indicted three Russians in the case. They are thought to be part of the FSB hacking group “Berserk Bear.” They are also thought to have tried to spy on more than 3,300 people in more than 500 American and international energy companies.

Ukraine 2017

Russian hackers from “Sandworm” infiltrate a popular Ukrainian tax software and use it to successfully spread the trojan NotPetya. The program encrypts computers and makes them unusable. The virus spreads around the world and numerous international companies are affected.

South Korea 2018

“Sandworm” is thought to have interrupted the Olympic Winter Games. During the opening ceremony, the internet was intermittently interrupted. Later, the U.S. Justice Department indicted six GRU employees, who are thought to have been behind the attack.

Germany 2021

Numerous politicians received phishing emails in 2021 sent to their private email addresses. It is thought that the group “Ghostwriter” is behind the attacks. They are considered to be linked to GRU, Russia’s military secret service, and are known for their disinformation campaigns. In 2015, the GRU attacked 5,600 computers in the German parliament, including those in Angela Merkel’s parliamentary office.

Unit 74455 from the Russian GRU, codename "Sandworm," was responsible for the attacks in France and South Korea at the very least. It is considered the most dangerous group of hackers in the world, and Vulkan, according to the documents, may provide them with some of the tools they need for their attacks.

Until now, investigators have only been able to retroactively analyze the tracks left behind by such cyberattacks. But now, the Vulkan Files enable a detailed understanding of how such attacks are prepared and organized, and how aggressively Vladimir Putin, with the help of private companies, plans and implements hacking operations around the world. The documents allow a step-by-step look at how such attacks are intended to proceed.

Most of the documents are from an anonymous source. A few days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, that source made the information available to the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, later sharing it with DER SPIEGEL as well. "Because of the events in Ukraine, I decided to make this information public,” said the source, who never identified themself and has since receded. "The GRU and FSB are hiding behind this company. People should know about the dangers.”

DER SPIEGEL verified and analyzed the documents with 10 media partners from eight different countries. German public broadcaster ZDF was part of the group, along with the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Austrian daily Der Standard, Le Monde in France, Danish public broadcaster DR, the Tamedia Group in Switzerland and the Russian investigative portal IStories. Months of reporting turned up more internal documents from the company in addition to information about money transfers. Both Vulkan and the Kremlin were given several opportunities to comment, but they declined to respond. There are no obvious reasons to doubt the conclusions reached by the investigative team.

The "Vulkan Files"

For years, Russia has been pursuing cyberwarfare. A team of journalists coordinated by DER SPIEGEL and including reporters from the Guardian, German broadcaster ZDF, Austrian daily Der Standard, the Danish broadcaster DR, the Tamedia Group in Switzerland, the Washington Post, the Süddeutsche Zeitung and Le Monde has analyzed internal documents from the Moscow-based IT company NTC Vulkan. The company works for the Russian military and secret service agencies, providing tools for their virtual attacks.

For the first time, the Vulkan Files provide insight into Vladimir Putin's plans for cyber-warfare.

Five Western intelligence agencies also confirmed the authenticity of the documents. Most of those agencies have been keeping an eye on Vulkan for some time because of the work the company does for intelligence agencies. Vulkan appears to be part of the opaque military-industrial complex in which Russian intelligence agencies work closely with more than 40 private IT companies. One of their goals is to develop highly effective cyberweapons that can be used against all those that the Kremlin has identified as Russia’s enemies. Especially, of course, in the West.

"Russia is in our networks,” warns Wolfgang Wien, deputy head of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany’s foreign intelligence agency. Countries ensure that their hackers are well-prepared, he says, so that they can deploy quickly when ordered to do so.

It’s a frightening thought, one of many that arises when one dives into the dark world of hackers, agents and saboteurs. Another: Russian cyberwarriors don’t just hunker down in their secret bunkers and hidden headquarters somewhere in Moscow. Some have obtained jobs at multinational companies, including some in Germany. DER SPIEGEL has been able to track down former Vulkan employees at SIEMENS and at a BASF service provider, in addition to Trivago and Booking.com. The most concerning trail, however, leads to Dublin, into one of the centers of the European tech industry.

Ranelagh is a prosperous suburb in southern Dublin full of pleasant pubs and trendy restaurants with names like Butcher Grill and Firebyrd. Victorian villas contain foreign embassies, while the smaller brick houses with white window frames are frequently occupied by employees of Google, IBM and Meta – whose headquarters are only a few minutes away.

Sergey N. lives in one of these homes, a 35-year-old who seems younger than his age when he opens the door. Sergey N.’s commute is manageable, with less than a 30-minute drive to Amazon Web Services (AWS), an Amazon subsidiary with $80 billion in annual revenues that is the world’s largest provider of cloud computing. Many of the largest companies in the world store their information, and even much of their IT needs, with AWS, including Netflix, Vodafone, NASA, the U.S. Navy and most of the companies listed on Germany’s blue-chip stock index DAX, from Allianz to Volkswagen. A huge portion of the global internet runs though AWS servers – as does Ukrainian government information.

Sergey N. is a "senior software development engineer.” To get the job, he no doubt had to go through numerous selection rounds. Amazon can take its pick of the best programmers in the world, and Sergey N. has plenty of experience: He held a leadership position at Vulkan as chief developer.

AWS apparently hired him in 2018, long before the invasion – at a time when it seemed completely unproblematic to hire experts from Russian IT companies. Particularly from those like Vulkan that seemed inconspicuous. A company PR film notes that employees of Vulkan can "change the world for the better.” It currently employs 135 people.

For the seven years Sergey N. worked there, though, changing the world for the better wasn’t apparently a priority. The projects he worked on included a system called "Scan-V,” a software program that IT security experts and several Western intelligence agencies believe is "offensive” in nature. In other words, it can be used to attack other countries through the internet.

That is one of the things we hope to discuss with Sergey N. when he opens the door. "We are journalists from DER SPIEGEL and we are working on a story about a company named Vulkan. You worked for that company. Could we ask you a few questions?”

Sergey N. seems taken aback, and the expression on his face is a mixture of fear and confusion. He doesn’t want to answer any questions.

"Do you know about the system 'Scan-V?’” His eyes widen in apparent shock. "No, sorry.” He then shuts the door.

Reporters around Europe knocking on the doors of dozens of former Vulkan employees had similar experiences. Most of them didn’t want to talk about their former employer. It remains unclear whether that reticence is due to fear of reprisals or out of concern that their cover could be blown.

The example of Sergey N. raises a number of disturbing questions. What is a Russian cyberwar specialist doing in a company that takes care of the IT needs of hundreds of leading companies, the infrastructure of which is one of the pillars of the global internet? Did AWS not know what Sergey N. had worked on in Russia? Or did it not want to know? One leaked document from June 2019 includes comments signed in his name – at a time when he says he was already working for AWS. When approached for comment, the U.S. based company said only that the security of its customers’ data is its highest priority.

Siemens, where DER SPIEGEL also located a former Vulkan employee, provided a similar response, saying merely that the company takes the issue seriously, but was unable to provide information about specific employees for reasons of data protection. The integrity of job applicants, the company added, is investigated to the degree permitted by law. IBM commented that its business ties with Vulkan came to an end in 2020.

Companies seem improvident in the face of the extremely competitive marketplace for well-trained programmers. Numerous Vulkan employees are graduates of Bauman University in Moscow. The university has close ties to the Russian security apparatus and carries out "special studies” for the Russian Defense Ministry and the intelligence agency FSB.

Bauman University in Moscow has close ties to the Russian security apparatus. Foto: Grigory Dukor / REUTERS

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At least one of the founders of Vulkan, Alexander Alexandrovich Irzhavsky, also has such connections and is a regular guest at conferences held by the Defense Ministry. When he was once stopped for a traffic violation, the address he provided belonged to an institute that is closely linked to GRU, the military intelligence agency. In 2010, Irzhavsky founded Vulkan together with Anton Vladimirovich Markov. Both of them are middle-aged and inconspicuous.

Company founder Alexander Irzhavsky:

"I was always a bit afraid of them."

Foto: NTC Vulkan

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Company founder Anton Markov

Foto: NTC Vulkan

It is nevertheless possible to discover what they and their company have been working on over the past decade, including a system that bears the codename "Amezit.” The goal of the system is to gain control of flows of information in specific regions, according to one description in a document bearing the heading: "Software Purpose.” In numerous other documents, including hundreds of pages of blueprints, diagrams and tables, a platform is described that would cover virtually all aspects of modern-day cyberwarfare, ranging from censorship and the manipulation of social media content to attacks on critical infrastructure. Trails in the material lead to server farms in the U.S. and to a nuclear power plant in Switzerland.

"These documents suggest that Russia sees attacks on civilian critical infrastructure and social media manipulation as one-and-the-same mission, which is essentially an attack on the enemy’s will to fight,” says John Hultquist, a leading expert on Russian cyberwarfare and vice president of intelligence analysis at Mandiant, an IT security company.

Numerous elements of the program indicate that Amezit could be deployed during the takeover of occupied areas in order to quickly gain control over communication – areas such as the Crimean Peninsula or the Donbas region of Ukraine. The timing of its development is likewise concurrent with efforts by the Kremlin to build up a national internet sealed off from the rest of the world.

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It isn’t possible to definitively say for whom or what such a system was developed, but there are clues. These include an email written by project director Maxim Andreyevich D. to several Vulkan employees bearing the date June 22, 2018, and the subject line: "Business trip to Rostov.” He was heading to the Research Institute of Radio Communication run by the FSB, which is perhaps the most powerful secret service in Russia and employees an estimated 350,000 people.

Putin himself was head of the FSB at the end of the 1990s. Today, the agency is his most important tool for suppressing the opposition in Russia. As DER SPIEGEL and the investigative platform Bellingcat discovered, it was an FSB commando that apparently attempted to murder opposition leader Alexey Navalny in Siberia in summer 2020. FSB agents covertly smeared the nerve agent Novichok on his underwear.

The cyber-capabilities of the FSB are also prodigious. Several years ago, hackers from the agency forced their way into the computer system of the German Foreign Ministry in Berlin. They slowly progressed through the system until they ended up at the department responsible for Russia and Eastern Europe, which was apparently the primary target. Western security experts dubbed the group behind the attack "Snake.”

Another FSB hacker unit, known as "Berserk Bear” by experts, spent years covertly inserting malware into the computer systems of nuclear power plants, oil and natural gas companies and other energy corporations in 135 countries around the world, including the U.S. and Germany.

Despite having special cyberwar departments of their own, it isn’t unusual for secret services to work together with private companies. The whistleblower Edward Snowden, for example, didn’t work directly for the National Security Agency (NSA). He was an employee of a private partner company called Booz Allen Hamilton. There are several similar examples from India and China. Just like in the business world, it is sometimes quicker and more efficient to outsource jobs to specialized service providers. Such as Vulkan.

As such, it would seem that the Vulkan team’s business trip to the FSB site in Rostov-on-Don was part of a typical business relationship. In his email, Vulkan executive Maxim Andreyevich D. asked his team to quickly prepare a presentation "of our software platform for the military representative in Rostov.” The demonstration of "Amezit” and several of its sub-systems was to take place over the course of several days. According to the emails, the present-day Amazon employee Sergey N. was also to join the trip to present four "Amezit” sub-systems. For that purpose, it was made clear in the email traffic, the necessary equipment ("three servers, five mounts, switchboard”) was to be sent ahead to the FSB institute as quickly as possible.

The leaked documents provide no indication as to whether the trip to Rostov-on-Don was successful or whether the FSB is currently using "Amezit.” But there were plenty of other opportunities for the Vulkan engineers to present their cyberweapons. Teams of developers regularly made the trip to FSB headquarters on Lubyanka Square in Moscow, just four stops away from Vulkan on the subway. The square is flanked by the gigantic, ominous building which today houses the FSB – and where Stalin’s KGB used to torture and murder those designated as enemies of communism. It is just a few hundred meters from here to the Kremlin.

FSB headquarters on Lubyanka Square in Moscow. Foto: Mikhail Svetlov / Getty Images

The Vulkan employees generally entered the FSB through an inconspicuous building next door, according to a meeting participant. That building is home to the offices of the FSB’s Information Security Center, one of the secret service’s most important hacker departments. The Vulkan staffers would carry their laptops through a long entryway, passing through several sets of security doors, before their papers were controlled. They would then be received by FSB agents. Together, they would head to the upper floors, where Vulkan's people would spend hours presenting their products and answering questions, interrupted only by a lunch break with their hosts in the cafeteria of the Lubyanka complex.

Not all of the Vulkan staffers enjoyed making such visits, because the secret service agents of the FSB would often send them on their way with technically unrealistic requests.

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The Kremlin’s cyber-plans envision not just the rapid development of all manner of offensive cyberweapons, but also the training of Russian IT experts in their use. And Vulkan is apparently deeply involved in that effort as well: The company has developed its own training program for the state-sponsored hackers of tomorrow. One leaked document about the secret program, which bears the codename "Crystal-2V,” states that its goal is the "comprehensive training of specialists” in "information confrontation” – the term that Russian secret service agencies use to describe cyberwarfare.

According to the document, up to 30 IT experts were to be trained on using "Crystal-2V” to execute attacks on critical infrastructure. This includes "knocking out the control systems of rail, air and shipping transport” and other "vital” areas such as electricity and water supply. The program is also designed to train them in blocking access to the global public information system – an apparent reference to the internet. Such attacks on vital supply and transportation arteries and industrial control systems have for years been among the scenarios most feared by Western intelligence agencies.

And such attacks have long since become reality. In 2017, an attack on a Saudi Arabian oil refinery was discovered. Russian attackers attempted to manipulate the facility’s security mechanisms. One year ago, U.S. justice officials indicted GRU agent Evgeny Gladkikh for the incident. Officially, the suspected hacker had been working for a scientific research institution, which also provides financing to Vulkan.

Such attacks are described in detail in the training program developed by Vulkan. The focus is on "unauthorized access” to critical networks and the "detection of points of weakness” in the targeted system. An additional lesson module teaches denial-of-service attacks as a way of blocking access to web-based services. Recruits are to learn all those skills from both theory-based instruction and practical laboratory simulations.

But Vulkan isn’t just training the next generation of cyberwarriors, it is also seeking to arm them with new tools – which is why Vulkan programmers came up with "Scan-V.” The system is aimed at making cyberattacks far easier to plan, cutting down on the weeks and months it often takes to prepare such assaults. Targets must first be comprehensively investigated: How is the IT system structured? What operating systems have been installed and where are their weaknesses to be found?

According to the leaked documents, "Scan-V” is intended to automate these steps. The information gathered is then analyzed and proposals are made for how an attack might be structured.

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It "reminds me of old military movies,” says Gabby Roncone, from the IT security firm Mandiant, "where people stand around … and place their artillery and troops on the map.” They then try to "understand where they need to strike first to break through the enemy lines.”

Experts have classified "Scan-V” as an offensive weapon, primarily developed for hacker units that frequently launch large-scale attacks. And which want to become even more powerful.

In May 2020, a Vulkan team was planning a visit to one of the company’s most important clients. The destination was Khimki, an industrial city just outside of Moscow. "Please provide your passport details” ahead of time, wrote the "Scan-V” project head Oleg N. on May 27 in an email to his team. The site they would be visiting had extremely tight security and access was strictly controlled. The meeting may well have been scheduled to be held in a 20-floor, glass high-rise on the banks of the Moskva River. Western security officials know it well.

It even appeared in an indictment from 2018 that caused a stir around the world. The indictment stemmed from the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into Russian influence on the 2016 presidential election in the U.S. In the document, the high-rise in Khimki is referred to as "The Tower.” The unit from the military intelligence agency GRU, which is based here, is thought to have participated in the surveillance of Hillary Clinton’s campaign team in an effort to get Donald Trump elected. Officially, the military hackers are identified by their military postal service number: 74455. But they are better known under their codename: "Sandworm.” They are the most notorious cyberwarriors in the world.

"The Tower": The GRU unit known as 74455 is thought to operate out of this high-rise. Foto: Alexander Zemlianichenko / AP / picture alliance

Many of the most spectacular hacks and cyberattacks performed in recent years are thought to have been perpetrated by the hackers operating behind the glass façade of The Tower. The man considered to be the unit’s new commander, Evgenii Serebriakov, doesn’t appear particularly dangerous in his passport photo, but a few years ago, he and three others were discovered attempting to attack the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague. The Dutch discovered them in the act, confiscated their laptops and mobile phones, and threw them out of the country.

The embarrassing incident doesn’t seem to have hurt Serebriakov’s career, a fact that doesn’t come as a surprise to high-ranking officials who have spent extensive time observing the Russian secret services. Demonstrations of strength and courage are often more important in Moscow than operational success. Russia intentionally crosses boundaries in order to strike fear in the hearts of its adversaries, says one intelligence official, adding that Russian hackers are frequently careless when they go on the attack. "Maybe the attack wasn’t particularly sophisticated and didn’t achieve its goal. But that almost doesn’t matter. The message is: We don’t just issue threats, we also take action.”

That is particularly true of the GRU, the most ferocious of all the Russian secret services. Some 37,000 people work there, including 25,000 elite soldiers from Spetsnaz. Western intelligence services believe that the agency also employs several thousand hackers. One espionage expert describes the GRU's approach as "impact over cover." GRU’s arsenal of "active measures” includes sabotage and subversion, disinformation and assassination. The goal: unleashing chaos and damaging Western democracies.

$10 million reward: The FBI in the U.S. used wanted posters in the search for the "Sandworm" hackers. Foto: FBI

The attacks perpetrated against Ukrainian targets by "Sandworm” – which have been going on for around the last 10 years, are particularly spectacular and unrelenting. Just before Christmas in both 2015 and 2016, Russian hackers managed to successfully attack Ukraine’s power supply, resulting in the first blackouts ever triggered by cyberattacks. A clear demonstration of power.

A few months later, Moscow launched an attack considered to be the most consequential hack ever performed. The perpetrators used a popular Ukrainian tax software to disseminate a malware program called "NotPetya.” It spread rapidly, encrypting infected computers and making them unusable. Because multinational companies were infected, the effects of the attack quickly spread beyond the borders of Ukraine – and soon, around the world. Companies like the logistics giant Maersk and the cosmetics multi-national Beiersdorf were forced to completely rework their IT systems. The attacks caused an estimated $10 billion in damages.

The Russians are currently going after Ukrainian companies with "Wiper” attacks, destructive malware programs that seek to make infected computers unusable. In a recent analysis, Microsoft has identified nine different "Wiper” families that have been used to attack more than 100 Ukrainian companies and government agencies since the invasion. As part of an operation against the national news agency Ukrinform that was uncovered in January, "Sandworm” deployed five of these programs at once.

At the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine, cyberattacks were conducted in concert with conventional attacks. Russia would launch rockets or missiles at targets that had previously been the subject of cyberattacks.

Kyiv, Feb. 28, 2022

Just a few days after the Russian invasion, hackers infiltrate a Kyiv media company, according to Microsoft. The next day, the television tower is attacked from the air.

Attack on the television tower of Kyiv on March 1, 2022. Source: Twitter / Rob Lee

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Zaporizhzhia, March 2, 2022

A Russian group hacks deep into the network of a Ukrainian nuclear power plant operator. One day later, Putin’s troops attack Ukraine’s largest nuclear power plant, located in Zaporizhzhia. They take control of it on March 4.

Fighting at the gate of the nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia on March 3, 2022. Source: Twitter / BeMilInterest

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Dnipro, March 11, 2022

A government agency in Dnipro is attacked by malware. The same day, the city is attacked from the air.

A rocket detonates in Dnipro on March 11, 2022. Source: Twitter / m_osint

Lviv, April 18, 2022

Several cruise missiles detonate in the city. One day later, a local logistics company is attacked by malware. On April 29, the hackers again launch an attack, this time targeting networks used by logistics companies in Lviv. A few days later, an electrical substation belonging to the rail company is attacked from the air. According to Microsoft, the cyberattacks were performed by the group “Sandworm.“

Russian air attacks on Lviv on April 18, 2022. Source: Twitter / nexta_tv

According to numerous IT security experts and Western intelligence agents that DER SPIEGEL spoke to, "Scan-V” would be a useful tool that could be used to prepare such attacks. It is unclear, however, whether the GRU has in fact deployed or purchased "Scan-V.”

It does seem to be clear, however, that the GRU closely followed the development of this tool. An 11-page document, full of jargon about processing systems and data analysis, provides clear evidence of that interest. The coversheet identifies it as a protocol for "Scan-V,” focusing on "data exchange between the sub-systems PU-L, PSAP, Scan-AS.” In the upper left corner is the notification: "Authorized representative of military unit 74455.” The "Sandworm” unit.

The tools were successively refined by Vulkan over the course of several years. And 10 years ago, one of the company’s employees was involved in a global attack launched by one of the best Russian hacker groups – a finding from an analysis performed by Google, which DER SPIEGEL is now making public for the first time.

The attack, which researchers christened "MiniDuke,” targeted official state computers in countries like Germany, the U.S. and Ukraine. The goal: stealing secret information from agency networks. The computers of at least three Western government representatives were successfully infiltrated and more than 100 servers around the world were infected, according to IT security experts. Behind the attacks was a group called "The Dukes,” also known as "Cozy Bear” – linked to the Russian foreign intelligence agency SVR. Later, the hackers went after the Pentagon.

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In late 2012, Google identified an email address that was later linked to "MiniDuke.” "We observed that gmail address send an apparent test message to an email address with the ntc-vulkan.ru domain,” the company said in a statement. Such test emails are frequently used to determine if Google filters recognize their viruses or hacking tools. The tests were apparently successful, because later, the hackers used that same email address to send out the malware that circled the world as "MiniDuke.” Diplomats, government officials, members of the military and others in numerous Western countries received customized emails from Moscow with attachments bearing titles like "Ukraine’s NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP) Debates” or an incredibly realistic-looking invitation to an "Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) Seminar on Human Rights.” As soon as the documents were open, the computer was infected.

Cryptic posts began appearing on Twitter in parallel from anonymous accounts - things like "Albert my cousin. He is working hard,” followed by a seemingly random list of characters. For Twitter users, it looked like nonsense, but for infected computers, those posts contained orders to covertly download the next tier of the malware program. Experts would later refer to the system as "extremely effective.”

But Google was able to draw a line from "MiniDuke” to Vulkan due to a mistake made by the hackers: They used the same IP address to rent a control server that they had also used when registering the Google account that was used to send the malware. "Definitely a slip-up,” says an IT security expert from Google. The discovery led Google to block the email account, but the global hacking campaign could no longer be stopped.

Early coups such as that one likely contributed to Vulkan receiving funding over several subsequent years to further develop its capabilities. The company was paid numerous installments adding up to several million euros from institutes closely linked to Russian secret service agencies and the military. In over 17,000 money transfers of Vulkan for which the international reporting team has documentation, the system names "Scan-V,” "Amezit” and "Crystal-2V” are regularly noted as the reason for payment.

It also appears that the Russian hackers are urgently searching for ways to further boost the efficiency of their massive cyberattacks. Ukraine is currently being bombarded by such attacks on an almost daily basis. They frequently resemble an onslaught from March 28, 2022.

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That morning, Kyrylo Hontsharuk was awakened by the ringing of his mobile phone. It was his 40th birthday. The caller, though, was not a well-wisher, but a distraught employee of his company. Hontsharuk is the chief information officer (CIO) of the Ukrainian internet service provider Ukrtelecom. He had been expecting a hacker attack since the beginning of the war, and now it was here. The attackers had managed to infiltrate the account of a Ukrtelecom employee. From there, they found their way into the company’s internal systems and obtained administrative rights, thus giving them the ability to change programming code. Hontsharuk immediately realized that if the hackers progressed any further, they would have access to specific users.

Hontsharuk figured he only had one choice: He had to take the servers offline to prevent lasting damage. But doing so would cut off hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians from the internet. And many of them were trapped in bunkers, with the internet as their only source of information about where and how the Russian military was advancing, and whether their families were still safe.

Hontsharuk’s team worked through the night to remove the Russian saboteurs from the system. "Such an attack must never be allowed to happen again,” says Hontsharuk. "But there is no such thing as 100 percent protection.”

The Russian cyber-soldiers, though, aren’t just targeting their presumed enemies abroad. Increasingly, they are turning their weapons inward. Under Putin, Russia has long since become an intelligence state, and his confidants from the shady world of espionage, the "siloviki,” have become the new nobility. The importance of this bubble for Putin, say high-ranking Western security officials, is almost impossible to overstate.

He is relying on his old connections to solidify his power. The West doesn’t trust Putin, says a Western intelligence official, but his own people likely trust him even less. Which is why Putin’s intelligence services have been tasked with gathering and saving as much information as possible, whether or not it is of immediate use.

Vulkan helps with that effort as well. At the behest of the FSB, the company’s software engineers developed surveillance software to control the Russian population – codename: "Fraction.” The goal is the automated surveillance of online activities. "A system,” as it is described in the documents, "to monitor and identify activities in social networks.” A web-based "Big Brother” designed to scan social media posts for suspicious content and then save that content. It is a way to filter out those who are critical of Putin.

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Not all Vulkan employees are pleased about developing instruments for the suppression of their fellow Russians. For some, it crosses the line. When he learned about the cooperation among intelligence services in this area, says Yevgeny, it became clear to him "that I didn’t want to support the regime.” Yevgeny is not his real name. He worked for Vulkan for several years, but now lives in the West. His precise location and the projects he worked on cannot be revealed so as not to put him in danger.

Yevgeny is one of the more the 90 current and former Vulkan employees who were contacted during the reporting on this project. He is a quiet IT nerd, a far cry from the militaristic bombast he says the two company founders exude. "I was always a bit afraid of them,” he says. The work itself, though, was "fun,” with an atmosphere similar to that of a startup. And his salary was above average.

The Vulkan open-space offices may have all the charm of an insurance agency, with the brown carpeting and yellow walls. But the mood was quite relaxed, says Yevgeny, and people were friendly with each other. After one party, he says, co-workers grabbed the unfinished bottles of schnapps to continue drinking together, and they would also go fishing together on company outings. One time, they drove tanks across a military exercise ground. He says that some in the company derisively refer to Putin as "grandpa in the bunker,” and they even talked about the invasion of the Crimea inside the company, with some at Vulkan voicing their opposition.

The full palette of the projects that Vulkan was working on only slowly became clear to Yevgeny. It was knowledge that he wasn’t supposed to obtain, with the employees sworn to secrecy, even within the company, about the projects they were working on. The increasingly brutal methods employed by the Russian regime ultimately transformed Yevgeny into an opponent of the Kremlin and a follower of opposition leader Alexei Navalny. "The total surveillance of activists cannot be a feature of a modern country,” he says.

Yevgeny has now managed to build a life for himself in a Western country and says he never wants to return to his homeland. "This regime is a police state and one of the pillars of this state is made up of companies like Vulkan.”

His former co-workers continue on their mission. The Russian cyberwar machine needs an uninterrupted supply of soldiers and weapons. For "Sandworm” and "Cozy Bear,” for Vulkan and all the others, a golden age has apparently dawned.

Because for Putin and his military, the internet is not the battlefield of the future, but of the present.

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Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country

…Armando Rodríguez, vice-president and executive director of the company, talks to us about their projects in the DR, where they have been operating for 32 years.

More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

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Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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