There’s a wide range of factors causing massively increased gas prices in Europe, but Russia is not one of them: Kremlin
By Jonny Tickle | RT | October 6, 2021
Russia has nothing to do with the rapidly rising gas prices in Europe, and the country is providing as much as it possibly can to the rest of the continent, the Kremlin said on Wednesday, amid accusations that Moscow is to blame.
Speaking to journalists on Wednesday, spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected the idea that Russia is playing any part in the rising prices. Earlier that day, the price of gas in Europe once again reached a historical record of $1,900 per 1,000 cubic meters.
“The first and most important thing is that we not only believe, but we insist that Russia is playing no role in what is happening on the gas market in Europe,” Peskov said, noting that Gazprom is pumping as much gas as it can “within the framework of the existing contracts.”
According to the Kremlin spokesman, Russia has avoided huge gas prices due to a well-thought-out strategy, while Europe has made mistakes.
“It’s all very simple. If you bet on the development of wind energy, you create the appropriate infrastructure,” Peskov explained. “But different climate processes happen and suddenly there is less wind. This is what is happening this year in Europe. There is less wind and generation is down.”
Some have accused Moscow of intentionally limiting gas supplies to Europe as a means to speed up the launch of the controversial pipeline Nord Stream 2, which was recently completed.
On Tuesday, the European Commission announced it would look into suggestions that Moscow is trying to boost gas prices. However, according to European Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson, Russia is “fulfilling its long-term contracts.”
Lift Iran sanctions if you seek end to global energy crisis: Minister
Press TV – October 4, 2021
Iranian Oil Minister Javad Owji says removing sanctions from Iran’s hydrocarbon sector would be key to resolving a global energy crisis that has affected supplies in many Western countries.
Owji said on Monday that people in the United States and some European countries have been paying the price for the unwise policies of their leaders who have banned crude exports from Iran as one of the leading energy suppliers of the world.
The minister made the remarks while speaking after a meeting of OPEC+ alliance of oil exporting nations.
He was referring to fuel, natural gas and electricity problems reported on both sides of the Atlantic amid rising prices and increasing demand caused by the global recovery from the coroanvirus pandemic.
“My recommendation to the decision-makers in these countries is that they should take a lesson from the current circumstances and lift sanctions from Iran so that people in all regions can benefit from cheap and accessible energy,” said Owji.
Iran has seen its oil exports slashed to levels much lower than those reported in mid-2018 when a former US administration pulled out of an international agreement on Iran’s nuclear program and imposed sanctions on the country.
A new US government has been pressing for a revival of the 2015 nuclear deal that would lift sanctions from Iran’s energy exports.
Beside its huge crude production capacities, Iran is also a leading supplier of natural gas with a current production of over 1 million cubic meters per day.
Owji said Iran has repeatedly declared that it would be able to swiftly increase its crude production to help alleviate the global shortage of fuel.
He said the current shortages could have larger implications on the livelihoods of people in the West in future if policymakers do not properly tackle supply issues.
Businesses push back against Scotland’s vaccine passport
By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | October 5, 2021
Resistance to the introduction of vaccine passes, based on various grounds and gaining momentum for different reasons – is not present only among the general population and customers. In Scotland, owners of businesses have joined those who are opposed to a mandated COVID passport system by announcing a weekend boycott of the program.
Their argument is that the scheme Scotland launched via an app is so technically flawed that it is causing chaos and harming their businesses, as it keeps customers and visitors to places like night clubs and football stadiums away by simply not working.
This seems to be yet another in UK’s botched schemes rolled out over the course of the pandemic, and besides being riddled with technical problems, another thing these have in common is that they cost a lot of taxpayers’ money – although the latest Scottish “omnishambles” as some are calling the app is “cheap” compared to some other UK COVID fiascos – it cost a “mere” £600,000 ($816,520) to develop, although that’s probably £600,000 too much, considering that it doesn’t appear to work.
The first to defiantly pull out of the scheme once it became apparent it was useless were football clubs, who have been hard-hit by COVID restrictions that kept fans out of stadiums and seriously undermined their revenues for months on end.
The app was officially put in practice last Friday morning, with the SNP-led government announcing people would need to show proof of vaccination to be let into this type of venue. But the very same day, realizing the app wasn’t working, Aberdeen FC simply abandoned this requirement for its fans to attend the game upcoming on Sunday.
“Nobody will be asked to show proof of vaccine,” the club announced on Friday, reacting to fans being unable to buy tickets because the app could not be used to prove their vaccination status. Other Scottish clubs, like Rangers and Hearts, soon followed suit, while owners of nightclubs and others in the hospitality industry did the same, saying the confusion was “farcical.”
What followed was Health Secretary Humza Yousaf having to reverse previous policy, saying that “nobody should be denied entry this weekend if they failed to show proof of vaccination, and admitted the widespread technical problems may take ‘days’ to fix,” the Telegraph reported.
U.K. Suffers High Death Toll Despite Massive Spending to Combat Covid
The Daily Sceptic | October 4, 2021
There follows a guest post by a subeditor and long-time Daily Sceptic reader who is keeping his identity anonymous. He has spotted that spectacular healthcare spending and impressive vaccination rates have not brought the U.K. obvious rewards against Covid. (Sweden is highlighted in the graph above because, by imposing the fewest restrictions, it is the closest Europe has to a control.)
Recent figures for European countries from the World Mortality Dataset, depicted in the graph above, reveal that island nations have fared particularly well during the pandemic: Iceland, Cyprus, Ireland and Malta have all recorded low levels of excess deaths. However, there is one noteworthy exception – the U.K.
In fact, even the third poorest country in Europe, Kosovo, riven by war in the late 1990s, and only an independent state since 2008, has performed better. This is despite the Balkan country having, per capita, a fraction of our health service facilities, staff and expertise.
The double-vaccination rate in Kosovo, currently 30% of the population, is a long way behind the U.K. on 66%.
Excess mortality is widely regarded as the best measure of a country’s success in coping with a prolonged health crisis, such as a bad flu season, as it allows for differing evaluations of the causes of death, notably whether they have been ‘with’ or ‘of’ Covid, and disregards arbitrary time limits, such as within 28 days of a positive PCR test. All other deaths, such as those brought on by lockdown measures, are also, of course, included in these statistics.
This evidence shows that spending billions of pounds above normal on health services and staff, and enticing a large proportion of a population to get vaccinated, do not necessarily correlate with a lower number of deaths.
More News On The Progress Toward Eliminating Fossil Fuels
By Francis Menton | Manhattan Contrarian | October 3, 2021
The bureaucrats of the world, particularly in the UN and developed countries, have the idea that they are going to eliminate all use of fossil fuels by somewhere around 2040-50. They have no conception of how to accomplish that, other than to order from on high that it shall occur and assume that somebody else will figure out the details. This gives the rest of us the opportunity to sit on the sidelines and observe how bureaucratic fantasy gradually runs into the brick wall of physical reality.
Back in June I covered the Report just out from Ren21 Renewables Now wherein we learned that in the ten years from 2009 to 2019, despite hundreds of billions of dollars of subsidies for intermittent wind and solar power, the percent of world final energy consumption coming from fossil fuels had dropped all the way from 80.3% to 80.2%. Oh, but world final energy consumption was substantially up over that decade from about 320 to 385 exajoules, so despite all the strenuous efforts to reduce their use, in fact annual fossil fuel consumption had increased from about 260 to 310 exajoules.
And then just two weeks ago I covered the unfolding energy crisis in the UK. There, the mad rush to close coal plants and build wind turbines had left the country completely subject to just-in-time natural gas deliveries from others, particularly Russia. When a period of calm hit the North Sea wind farms, gas prices spiked by a multiple, and Britain was left closing factories and begging Russia for supply.
And there is plenty more news coming out on the same subject. Here are a couple of examples for today:
China. With the waning of the pandemic, all the rich countries of the West are back to wanting to consume lots of manufactured stuff. But of course the obsession with eliminating fossil fuels has gradually made the industrial energy supply of the rich countries more expensive and less reliable. (This is more true in Europe than in the U.S., but California and New York are doing their best to keep up.). Anyway, no problem, we’ll just get the stuff from China. So in recent months China has been in the mode of ramping up production. That will of course require much more energy. Do you think that it is going to come from wind and solar? Don’t be ridiculous. On September 27, Reuters reported that the ramp-up is causing massive energy shortages around China, and the solution is — coal. “China provincial governor urges more coal imports to resolve power shortages”:
China should work to import more coal from Russia, Indonesia and Mongolia in order to resolve supply shortages now crippling large sections of industry, said Han Jun, governor of the northeastern province of Jilin, one of the worst-hit regions. Speaking to local power firms on Monday, Han said “multiple channels” needed to be set up to guarantee coal supplies, according to the province’s official WeChat social media account. He said the province would also dispatch special teams to secure supply contracts in the neighbouring region of Inner Mongolia.
OPEC World Oil Outlook. On September 28 OPEC came out with its annual World Oil Outlook. This Report looks forward through the year 2045. It’s becoming increasingly impossible to get any straight information out of the American and European oil companies, as threats of lawsuits and regulatory actions cause them to mouth green groupthink and to pretend that they are planning to go out of business over the next couple of decades. But OPEC isn’t subject to the same pressures, so their Report is a much better indication of where knowledgeable people think things are going.
And where might that be? Here is OPEC’s chart of projected demand growth for petroleum from now to 2045:
In short, it’s continued growth in consumption all the way through 2045, albeit with the growth leveling off toward the end of the period. But basically, OPEC projects that any and all decreases in oil consumption achieved by the OECD nations (developed countries) will be offset and more by increases in the rest of the world.
OPEC also tries its hand at projections of demand for coal and natural gas over the same period. Here’s their chart of projected demand for natural gas:
It’s increases as far as the eye can see. Yes, they project that demand from the OECD countries will remain essentially flat at just under 30 mboe/d over the whole period; but meanwhile demand from the rest of the world is projected to go up dramatically from about 35 mboe/d to around 55 mboe/d.
In another chart relating to coal, they project a small decline in world demand from around 70 mboe/d today to around 60 mboe/d by 2045. Substantial declines in OECD nations will be offset by almost equivalent increases in places like India and Africa.
Do the people at OPEC know what they are talking about with these projections? I think that these figures are far more likely to be close to the mark than the fantasies coming out of the UN, where the talk is that the entire world economy will reach “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050. For example, here is the UN’s IEA, November 17, 2019, discussing what they call a “1.5 °C scenario that does not rely on negative emissions technologies”:
This . . . [scenario] means a reduction in emissions of around 1.3 billion tonnes CO2 every year from 2018 onwards. That amount is roughly equivalent to the emissions from 15% of the world’s coal fleet or from 40% of today’s global passenger car fleet. The year by which different economies would need to hit net-zero in such a scenario would vary, but the implication for advanced economies is that they would need to reach this point in the 2040s. . . . [D]eveloping economies . . . would all need to be at net-zero by 2050.
Not happening. Do they have any idea how completely absurd this is?
This week’s elections could pave way for Prague to Czech out of EU
By Paul A. Nuttall | RT | October 4, 2021
The elections in the Czech Republic later this week have largely been ignored, but the political situation in the country is not only compelling, it could have ramifications for the rest of Europe, and in particular for the EU.
Czechs go to the polls on Friday and Saturday in legislative elections that will determine who will lead the country for the next four years. These elections have been getting little attention in the international press, mainly because the focus has been on the elections taking place in Germany.
The Czech Republic has been led by a coalition government since 2017. The senior partner in the coalition is the ANO 2011 party, and its leader is the current Prime Minister Andrej Babis.
Babis’ party is described as ‘populist’. An ally of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, he recently attended the Demographic Summit in Budapest, where Babis and his counterparts from Poland, Serbia and Slovenia announced their intention to oppose further mass immigration in Europe.
Babis is also opposed to further EU integration and determined not to see the euro replacing the country’s current official currency, the koruna. He claims his party “will not hand over the sovereignty of the Czech Republic to the European Parliament or the European Commission.”
Recent polls put the ANO 2011 party in the lead with 27%. The main opposition parties, SPOLU (an alliance of liberals and conservatives) and the bizarrely named Pirates and Mayors party are polling around 21%. Both are committed to combining their votes in an alliance to force Babis from power.
Indeed, some commentators, who it must be said are firmly opposed to Babis’ politics, are predicting that the Czech Republic could be heading towards a constitutional crisis. However, it is expected that President Milos Zeman will use his constitutional powers to appoint the leader of the largest party as prime minister.
In all likelihood, this will be Babis, and it will give him the first opportunity to form a coalition. However, even if this is the case, he will be facing a big problem, as his current coalition partners have seen their support fall off a cliff recently.
The Social Democrats, who share power with Babis, are only polling between 4% and 6% and may not even make the 5% threshold to have candidates elected to parliament. And this puts Babis in a difficult position because, devoid of his main coalition partner, he will be forced to look elsewhere.
The ‘elsewhere’ in this case is most likely to be the Freedom and Direct Democracy Party (SPD), which is the most Eurosceptic political party in the country and is polling around 11%. The SPD is committed to a direct democracy law that will allow citizens to force referendums, and the one the party wants most is a referendum on Czech membership of the European Union.
SPD leader Tomio Okamura has made it clear that any negotiations for his party to join a future coalition will be conditional on holding such a referendum: “One of the fundamental conditions is for the government manifesto… to include a referendum law including the possibility of a referendum on leaving the EU or potentially NATO.”
Now this places Babis in a difficult position because, although he is a Eurosceptic, he does not envisage the Czech Republic leaving the EU anytime soon. Moreover, he is opposed to the idea of citizen-led referendums, or at least he would like prohibitive barriers implemented, such as a requirement for a huge number of signatories to force a referendum.
Another problem is that a direct democracy law would require the support of a three-fifths majority in both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. However, the upper house, which is elected for a six-year term, is dominated by a pro-EU majority.
Nevertheless, the fact that an EU referendum is on the agenda could be seen as an outlier to where the Czech Republic is eventually headed. And let us not forget, the Czechs are not alone here. Recently, there have been noises in Budapest about the need for a referendum on EU membership in Hungary.
Although largely ignored, the elections in the Czech Republic this weekend will be fascinating, but even more enthralling could be the political “horse trading” that follows – the outcome of which could have ramifications for the rest of the EU.
Paul A. Nuttall is a historian, author and a former politician. He was a Member of the European Parliament between 2009 and 2019 and was a prominent campaigner for Brexit.
Wind Power Suffers More Setbacks
By Jack Dini | Principia Scientific | October 4, 2021
The Wall Street Journal reports that wind turbine makers are facing a quadrupling of transportation costs and increases in steel, copper, aluminum and carbon fiber prices, making wind turbines ever more expensive.
Top wind turbine makers are struggling with lower earnings as rising raw material costs, problems shipping the hulking machines, and uncertainty over the future of US subsidies pressure their businesses.
In sharp contrast to claims by the renewables lobby, the costs of wind energy is not falling, empirical data shows. Despite industry claims, the building of wind farms in deeper water is costing more rather than less. (2)
Added to this, a number of locations across the US have had problems with existing wind farms.
South Dakota
A South Dakota manufacturer of wind turbine blades plant, Molded Fiber Glass (MFG) shut its doors permanently in August, sending shock waves through the local community. More than 300 workers lost their jobs, forcing locals to take a hard look at green energy proponents’ promises to provide good paying jobs for American workers. (3)
South Dakota’s prospects for becoming a bigger player in the energy sector have suffered another setback in recent months. In addition to the MFG plant closure, the Biden administration’s decision to kill the Keystone XL pipeline means South Dakota and many other states will not benefit from having the now-canceled infrastructure project transport 800,000 barrels of oil a day through their states.
Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania
A maker of components for wind turbine blades is closing its manufacturing plant in the Lehigh Valley. The work done in the Lehigh Valley plant will be transferred to a plant the company opened two years ago in Matamoros, a city in northeastern Mexico. A memo to the employees said;
“During the past year, we have experienced challenging market conditions as the near-term market in North America has been influenced by consolidation, leading to a reduction of the blade manufacturing footprint in North America as well as reduced production at the continuing locations.” (4)
Little Rock, Arkansas
GE owned LM Wind Power closed its turbine blade plant in Little Rock, Arkansas in April 2020 in a move affecting about 460 workers. The closure of the plant was due to commercial factors, not the coronavirus pandemic. This closure is a reversal for the plant, which was the subject of an expansion program as recently as 2017. (5)
Rhode Island
Block Island wind farm off the state of Rhode Island was the first commercial offshore wind farm in the United States, located 3.8 miles from Block Island in the Atlantic Ocean. Recently, four of the five Block Island’s wind turbines stopped running this summer. Islanders say the turbine blades stopped turning several weeks ago, even on windy days. David Collins suggests that there is more trouble with the turbines than anyone wants folks to know. (6)
Missouri
Ratepayers should not be on the hook to pay a return for an asset that can’t fully operate. Every night for months, turbines at Missouri’s largest wind farm sit idle to avoid killing endangered and threatened bats. And now, as the wind farm’s owner, Ameren Missouri, seeks permission to increase customers’ rates, consumer advocates are sounding the alarm. They argue customers shouldn’t have to pay the full cost of the wind farm on their bills if it’s not fully functional. And at least one fears the company won’t meet state standards for renewable energy. (7)
Ameren is currently seeking a rate increase from customers worth nearly $300 million, including costs that it hopes to recover from ratepayers. But consumer and business advocates filed testimony estimating that the wind farm is only operational about 75 percent of the year.
References
1. “Wind turbine makers struggle to profit from renewable energy boom,” wsj.com, August 24, 2021
2. “Offshore wind costs rising, not falling, data shows,” energyvoice.com, September 11, 2017
3. Bonner R. Cohen, “South Dakota wind turbine manufacturer closing its doors,” Environment & Climate News, August 2021
4. Jon Harris, “Wind energy company closing Lehigh Valley manufacturing plants, shifting work to Mexico,” June 4, 2021
5. Andrew Lee, “GE’s LM wind power to close US turbine blade factory,” rechargenews.com, April 14, 2021
6. David Collins, “The Block Island wind farm has largely shut down,” the day.com, August 7, 2021
7. Allison Kite, “Missouri’s largest wind farm isn’t running at night for fear of killing endangered animals,” missouriindependent.com, September 9, 2021
Italians’ electricity bills to rise by 30%, gas up 14%
By Max Civili | Press TV | September 30, 2021
Rome – On Friday, the Italian Energy Authority ARERA announced that electricity bills will rise by almost 30% while gas bills will increase by over 14%, effective from Friday.
Italians are not pleased at all. Some consumer associations have estimated that the sharp rise may cost Italian families up to 2,000 euros a year due to a ripple effect on the entire productive system.
On one side, ARERA has pointed out that without government intervention to stem the rises, spikes in electricity and gas bills would have been 45% and 30% respectively, on the other, people are saying that the executive should have been able to predict the increase and handle the situation more effectively.
In its bid to tackle climate change, the European Union has adopted an Emission Trading Scheme which covers more than 12,000 polluting (sic) companies across the old continent, today.
It consists in the establishment of a market where firms trade emission allowances to cover their annual CO2 emissions, increasing, this way, their expenditures.
Analysts are warning the world is heading into an energy crunch that will likely affect global economies. The prices of fossil fuels such as coal, carbon and gas have all hit record highs lately. This is while crude oil has pushed above 80 dollars a barrel.
Energy price could go much higher if the weather is as cool this winter as some meteorologists predict. It’s not only the people that are worried. Several European energy-intensive industries have claimed that the adoption of the Emission Trading Scheme may entail a significant loss of international competitiveness due to increases in production costs.
Iran And Venezuela Strike Oil Swap Deal
By Irina Slav | Oilprice.com | September 27, 2021
Iran and Venezuela have struck a deal to swap heavy Venezuelan crude for Iranian condensate, Reuters has reported, citing unnamed sources familiar with the deal.
According to these sources, the swaps are set to begin this week and last for six months, although they could be extended. The imports of Iranian superlight crude will help Venezuela revive its falling oil exports amid U.S. sanctions that, among other problems, have cut off the country’s access to the light oil that is used to blend with its superheavy to make it exportable.
For Iran, the deal will bring in heavy crude it could sell in Asia, the Reuters sources also said. The diluted Venezuela crude will also likely go to Asian buyers.
Reuters also reported that, according to the U.S. Treasury Department, the deal could constitute a breach of sanctions, to which both Venezuela and Iran are subjects.
“Transactions with NIOC by non-U.S. persons are generally subject to secondary sanctions,” the Treasury Department said in response to a Reuters request for comments on the deal. It added that it “retains authority to impose sanctions on any person that is determined to operate in the oil sector of the Venezuelan economy.”
Despite the sanction noose, Venezuela has been ramping up its oil exports, generating vital revenue. According to a recent Reuters report, the country, which is home to the world’s largest oil reserves, exported more than 700,000 bpd of crude in July—the highest daily export rate since February.
Most of the oil went to China and Malaysia, although the latter is usually only a stop along Venezuelan oil’s trip to China. The same report noted that three of the five crude oil blending facilities in the Orinoco Belt were operational, and another crude upgrader was preparing to restart operations after a year’s pause.
Iran, meanwhile, recently revealed plans to attract some $145 billion in oil and gas investments from both local and foreign sources.
“We plan to invest $145 billion in the development of the upstream and downstream oil industry over the next four to eight years, hence I welcome the presence of domestic and foreign investors in the industry,” Javad Owji, Iran’s new oil minister, said during a meeting with executives from China’s oil giant Sinopec.
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Infertility: A Diabolical Agenda
Dr. Joseph Mercola | July 9, 2022
“Infertility: A Diabolical Agenda,” is the fourth vaccine-related documentary by Dr. Andrew Wakefield. It tells the story of an intentional infertility vaccine program conducted on African women, without their knowledge or consent.
While it’s been brushed off as a loony conspiracy theory for years, there’s compelling evidence showing it did, in fact, happen, and there’s nothing to prevent it from happening again. … continue
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