Wednesday, November 10, 2021

How 250 people helped rescue a man trapped for 53 hours in one of Britain's deepest caves

Injured caver slowly brought up 'a mile or two' by stretcher through steep, wet and winding passages

Shari Kulha

Nov 09, 2021 •

The injured man lies in the blue stretcher as rescuers carefully traverse fast-flowing rivers and slippery surfaces. PHOTO BY SOUTH AND MID WALES RESCUE TEAM HANDOUT

An injured man trapped underground in a cave in the famed Brecon Beacons hills has been rescued after a complex, two-day mission involving around 250 specialist rescuers.

The man, thought to be in his 40s and an experienced caver, fell shortly after noon on Saturday while caving in Ogof Ffynnon Ddu near Penwyllt, a hamlet 30 kilometres northeast of Swansea in Wales

His injuries — a broken jaw, broken leg and damage to his spine — meant he wasn’t able to help himself. He is said to be in good condition in hospital in Swansea, having been brought out at about 7:45 p.m. on Monday.

A fellow caver called emergency services, and specialist cave and mountain rescuers — from across the U.K., some who also assisted in the Thai cave rescue in 2018 — also showed up. Of the 16 rescue teams in the British Isles, around 10 sent personnel to help, providing stretcher carrier support, preparing routes and bringing in supplies.

Some 70 people assisted from underground, working in shifts to help carry him up using a stretcher, which had to be carried horizontally and vertically to manoeuvre through the passages.

The man was said to be in “remarkable spirits” throughout his ordeal.

“I spent two- to six-hour blocks with the injured caver and chatted to him most of the time,” Wales Online quotes Dr. Brendan Sloane of the British Cave Rescue Council. “Fair credit to the guy. He is a fit guy, and he is incredibly resilient.”

After he was lifted to the surface, he was clapped and cheered by rescuers helped into a cave-rescue Land Rover and transported down to a waiting ambulance. Foggy, wet conditions in the Brecon Beacons meant an air ambulance helicopter was unable to land.

Spirits remained high in the SWCC headquarters, near the entrance to the cave, where dozens of rescuers huddled around hot drinks and food.

Teams of about 30 at a time set off from SWCC HQ up the mountain to the cave entrance to take over from their colleagues as they emerged into daylight. Some had been below ground for 12-hour stints, the Guardian reported.

Peter Francis, one of the rescuers and a member of the South Wales Caving Club (SWCC), told the BBC that the man was “an experienced, fit caver,” and his fall was just “incredibly unlucky,” Sky News said — “a matter of putting his foot in the wrong place at the wrong time,” when something moved out from under him.

His mental powers properly got him through
RESCUER PETER FRANCIS

The Ogof Ffynnon Ddu (The Cave of the Black Spring) system is one of the deepest and most complex in the U.K. and cavers need a permit from the SWCC to access it.

The rescue mission took almost 55 hours, making it the longest cave rescue ever undertaken in Wales, according to the BBC, as Francis said the man “was a mile or two underground in an awkward place.”

The Ogof Ffynnon Ddu cave system is the third longest in Wales. Some of the caves in the system are 275 metres below ground and stretch for more than 50 km, according to Wales Online. It’s been described as “intestinal.”

https://mobile.twitter.com/khargaoasis/status/1457720098857398276

“We often say in caving that an hour of caving equates to 10 hours of carrying a stretcher,” said Gary Evans of the South and Mid Wales Cave Rescue Team. “The main point is that the amount of effort that goes into training our rescuers really pays off for an instance like this.”

Startcaving.com claims that high-risk cavers run a one-in-3,332 chance of dying, compared with one in 60 for base jumping and one in 100 for grand prix motor racing.

“Its approx 61km of passages provide everything from huge chambers, beautiful formations, to yawning chasms and thundering river passages,” the SWCC says in an online description of the cave system.

“All the odds were against the caver, but his mental powers properly got him through,” Francis said. “He was in an awful lot of pain to begin with, until we could get the drugs to him.

“I’m absolutely impressed to no end how the teams worked together. A lot of them didn’t know each other and had never worked together before. And the fact they pulled this off — I’m absolutely thrilled.”

— with additional reporting by The Washington Post

Canada was just ranked the second-best country in the world

Canada's positive perception on the world stage is increasing according to a new poll that ranks the top "nation brands," or the public image of a country.

The 2021 Anholt-Ipsos Nation Brands Index (NBI) collected over 60,000 interviews online in 20 panel countries, ranking the top 60 countries by how they're viewed abroad.

The NBI has been ranking countries' reputations since 2005, and while Canada has always been a top-ten contender, we've been gaining ground in recent years.

This year's rankings are somewhat of a reversal from last year, as countries get back on their feet, repairing their reputations by kickstarting their lockdown-ravaged economies and tourism sectors.

Our influential, welcoming, low-crime country ranked quite well, moving up in this year's list to the #2 nation brand.

Some big shakeups can be seen in the 2021 NBI rankings, including gains for Canada. Image via Anholt-Ipsos.

Canada had landed in third place on the NBI for the past couple of years, though this year the country has bumped up one spot in global reputations, snatching the second-place spot away from the United Kingdom, which has slipped to fifth place in the rankings.

Canada moved up one spot in this year's 2021 NBI rankings. Image via Anholt-Ipsos.

Canada climbed from a ranking of 67.86 in 2020 to 70.64 in 2021, though this slight increase proved enough to push the maple leaf flag up to its new record of second place.

Though it wasn't enough to claim the overall top position, Canada still ranked first across the poll's governance, people, and immigration and investment indices, and still scored high in factors like exports, tourism, and culture.

Only Germany ranked better, holding onto its top spot for the fifth year in a row.

And while people see a rosy picture of Canada from abroad, our neighbour to the south is not looking as hospitable.

The United States' ranking declined sharply in 2020, falling from sixth to 10th place. And though their pandemic recovery and rising tourism have helped bring them back up to #8, the States still have some catching up to do. It was only just five years ago that the U.S. held the top ranking on this list.

BLOGTO

BLUE H2

Federal government putting $1.35 million into Alberta hydrogen projects

Author of the article:Lisa Johnson
Publishing date:Nov 09, 2021 •

Daniel Vandal, minister responsible for Prairies Economic Development Canada and minister responsible for the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency, announces funding of $1.35 million through PrairiesCan to help modernize C-FER technologies to test their products and processes to demonstrate the value of Canadian-made technologies for the global hydrogen industry on Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2021 in Edmonton. PHOTO BY GREG SOUTHAM /Postmedia

Ottawa is putting $1.35 million into helping Alberta companies engineer and test hydrogen fuel infrastructure, equipment and technologies.

Dan Vandal, federal minister in charge of Prairies Economic Development Canada (PrairiesCan), said Tuesday the funding will help Alberta companies get ahead in the rapidly growing hydrogen economy.

“We are investing in projects that provide entrepreneurs and provide businesses with the knowledge that they need, and the resources they need, to develop industry leading-edge hydrogen products and technologies,” Vandal said at his first announcement since being appointed minister two weeks ago.

C-FER Technologies, a non-profit subsidiary of government agency Alberta Innovates, provides experimental testing and specialized engineering consulting services out of Edmonton. It will use the federal funding to upgrade one of its facilities to help test new products and procedures for hydrogen transportation and storage.

Alberta Innovates is also chipping in $300,000. Combined with contributions from private companies, a total of $2.8 million is going towards the initiative.

Vandal estimated that 50 small and medium-sized energy companies will benefit from the program.

Kirk Hamilton, C-FER’s senior engineering adviser, said a key challenge is for the industry to develop the necessary infrastructure to move hydrogen once it’s generated.

“It is important to understand the compatibility of legacy and new equipment with hydrogen and hydrogen-natural gas blends,” he said.

The funding will also provide a boost for upcoming projects that include evaluating existing natural gas pipeline systems for transporting hydrogen, developing new technologies for underground hydrogen storage, and demonstrating new infrastructure for exporting to foreign markets.

Edmonton Mayor Amarjeet Sohi, a former Liberal cabinet minister, said in the PrairiesCan news release the city supports local tech companies like C-FER.

“(They) will accelerate the transition to a new energy economy that will create jobs, attract workers and talent to Edmonton, all while growing our economy,” he said.

Vandal said he met with Sohi earlier Tuesday morning, was meeting with local industry leaders in the afternoon, and his office had been in contact with the provincial government.

“My goal and objective, certainly in the future, is to work with the elected officials of the legislature of Alberta and I’m very much looking forward to that,” said Vandal.

While there were no provincial ministers at the announcement, Jobs, Economy and Innovation Minister Doug Schweitzer said in the news release diversifying the energy sector is important to the province’s economic recovery plan.

“Alberta is already a world leader in hydrogen production, and through investments like this, we will retain that leadership as we accelerate innovative technology solutions that will help grow our clean hydrogen production to meet national and international demand,” said Schweitzer, who attended the announcement of a new business accelerator in Calgary Tuesday morning.

Alberta’s natural gas and electricity associate minister Dale Nally has been prominent at previous provincial hydrogen industry-related announcements, including with the release of a hydrogen road map last Friday.

Nally’s office did not directly respond to Postmedia’s question about why he did not attend.

Taylor Hides, Nally’s press secretary, said in a statement Tuesday they are happy to see the federal government investing in Alberta’s economy and to have Alberta Innovates represent the province.

Laura Kilcrease, CEO of Alberta Innovates, said in a release that the support from PrairiesCan will enable entrepreneurs and businesses to accelerate the development of hydrogen technology.

Alberta’s map sets the province’s sights on exporting blue hydrogen — which is produced from natural gas through carbon capture and storage technology — globally by 2030. The federal hydrogen strategy, first released last December , similarly embraces blue hydrogen as the favourite for large-scale, low-cost production.

lijohnson@postmedia.com

Calgary committee endorses climate emergency declaration

By Adam MacVicar & Adam Toy Global News
Posted November 9, 2021

The City of Calgary is one step closer to declaring a climate emergency after a unanimous vote by a city committee on Tuesday. As Adam MacVicar reports, council hopes the symbolic gesture will open up more investment opportunities.

An effort to declare a climate emergency in Calgary cleared its first hurdle Tuesday.

Meeting for the first time this term, the city’s executive committee voted unanimously to have the notice of motion debated at council as a whole, including a final vote.

The notice of motion from Ward 5 Coun. Raj Dhaliwal calls for the City of Calgary to declare a climate emergency and adjust the city’s emissions reduction targets to net-zero by 2050. The current goal within the City of Calgary is to reduce 80 per cent of 2005 emissions in the same timeframe.

READ MORE: Climate emergency declaration could have Calgary aiming for net zero by 2050

According to experts, that is the base target around the globe to limit warming of the climate to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Mayor Jyoti Gondek helped the novice councillor write the notice of motion and a number of other councillors, including Ward 9’s Gian-Carlo Carra and Ward 12’s Evan Spencer, were among those named co-signatories to the declaration.

Dhaliwal, who worked in the energy sector prior to running for public office, said climate change was an issue he heard about during the campaign following the hailstorm in the city’s northeast, with many of his constituents still waiting for repairs following the billion-dollar hailstorm in 2020. Dhaliwal said he heard “one simple question” while campaigning.

“Why isn’t city doing more on climate change? Why are we kicking the can down the street?” Dhaliwal told the committee. “My kids or their kids, they don’t want to see this again in their lifetime.”

“They were telling me they want to see robust plans that will protect not only us but future generations and make the city more resilient in a way.”

According to the Insurance Bureau of Canada, Calgary and Alberta have been subject to at least six of the top 10 most-costly years on record from severe weather. The 2020 hailstorm resulted in more than $! billion in insured damages.

READ MORE: Majority support Trudeau’s climate policy pitches made at COP26, poll suggests

The climate emergency declaration aims to make climate change “a strategic priority” and calls on administration to develop strategic business plans and budgets across each city department to invest in and implement emissions-reduction and climate risk-reduction projects.

Proponents said the declaration would unlock opportunities for investment dollars to come into the city.

READ MORE: Calgary election: The future of the city with a changed climate

“There are numerous business advantages. There are investment opportunities that we are missing out on,” Ward 14 Coun. Peter Demong said. “The entrepreneurial spirit here in Calgary will take this and run with it. So I’m looking forward to it.”

Demong added investment drawn to Calgary as a result of the declaration could help lift the city from a pandemic-induced recession.

“What it does is it helps position the City of Calgary in terms of the language of the globe,” head of Alberta Eco Trust Climate Fund Mike Mellross told Global News.

“The rest of the globe is very interested in low-carbon solutions and transitioning the economy to low-carbon pathways.

“A climate emergency helps to signal that to various entities that might want to invest in Calgary and that actually can help attract talent.”
Skepticism shows

Ward 10 Coun. Andre Chabot hoped to move some of the language in the motion to make net zero a goal rather than an active process. Dick Ebersohn, the city manager leading climate change and environment policy planning, said the language in the motion is standard across worldwide cities who have also declared climate emergencies.

Chabot challenged the idea of human-induced climate change, citing “different presentations” he’s listened to.

“There’s been some that would suggest that the rise in the earth’s temperature actually preceded the rise in the CO2 levels,” Chabot said.

READ MORE: Alberta economy to return to pre-pandemic levels by 2022; Calgary mayor sets stage for city’s recovery

Gondek quickly noted that Chabot should hold his debate until the Nov. 15 city council meeting, as Tuesday’s committee meeting was more a matter of technical review of the proposed motion.

Amendments to the notice of motion also call for the implementation of a carbon budget as well as advocacy for funding to reduce climate risk to public infrastructure including upstream flood and drought mitigation on the Bow River.

It also calls for the City of Calgary to work with civic partners and subsidiaries to get aligned with the net-zero-by-2050 target.

2:19 Alberta’s economy looks to transition to renewable energy – Nov 1, 2021

“When we start looking at our relationship with how we move around the city — whether it be transit, active mobility, accessibility lanes and so on — that’s one huge way of us changing our culture of convenience and our lifestyle to creating a future-friendly, climate-resilient city,” Ward 8 Coun. Courtney Walcott said.

“How we build, our land use, the strategies that we employ at a city level to create those changes are going to be some of the most impactful shifts that the city will have a hand in.”

According to Ebersohn, work is underway to provide Calgarians an incentive to retrofit their homes with more sustainable materials and energy sources like solar panels.

Ebersohn also told Global News a strategy is underway to transition the city’s fleet of vehicles to help towards emissions-reduction targets.

“Commercial and residential sectors are key sectors for us to intervene in,” Ebersohn said. “It’s the buildings and the transportation sector that are the key contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, and that’s what we need to focus on.”

Reports into these initiatives and strategies are expected next year which will include more details as well as a better idea of costs for the city and taxpayers.
New time, new council

The federal government and the cities of Edmonton, Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal have all declared climate emergencies, most in 2019, leaving Calgary as a laggard.

Whether the past city councillors would have been as favourable of such a declaration was speculation Carra would not engage in on Tuesday.

But asked whether it was the current time the city is living in or the new members of council that led to the endorsement for the declaration of a climate emergency, the Ward 9 representative said “yes.”

1:45 Climate change action top of mind for Calgarians: poll – Sep 8, 2021

“I suspect the climate emergency motion would not have passed in the last council, and I think that declaring a climate emergency is a declaration that we’re doing things differently and we are responding to the will of the electorate in terms of addressing the challenges facing our city right now,” Carra said.

Demong — one of four returning members of council — was also unsure of whether city council would have passed such a declaration before 2021.

“If it did, it would have been tight, but I try not to guess what council’s going to do or should, would have or should have done.”

The motion to declare a climate emergency in Calgary goes to the next meeting of city council on Nov. 15.

Braid: Climate emergency declaration boosts Calgary's economic recovery

At this crucial stage, Calgary must not seem lukewarm about the climate action investors want

Author of the article: Don Braid • Calgary Herald
Publishing date:Nov 09, 2021

Mayor Jyoti Gondek speaks at an orientation outlining the 2022 Adjustments to the One Calgary Service Plans and Budgets report at Calgary Municipal Building on Monday, November 8, 2021. PHOTO BY AZIN GHAFFARI/POSTMEDIA
Article content

Mayor Jyoti Gondek’s declaration of climate emergency won’t face much trouble from her new council. It’s likely to pass by 12-3 or better when the vote comes Nov. 15.

About time, too. More than 500 Canadian cities, towns, hamlets and the federal Parliament have already passed this resolution. Edmonton did so in 2019.

By failing to sign on, Calgary risks looking like a climate change denier. That would harm the city’s reputation — and economy.

Premier Jason Kenney, exercising his knee-jerk reflex to almost anything coming out of Calgary council, scolded Gondek when she announced her intention.

“In a city that has been suffering from near double-digit unemployment, that has gone through five years of deep economic adversity, I find that a peculiar priority,” Kenney said.

“I would have thought that the mayor of Calgary’s top priority would be getting Calgarians back to work,” he said. “That’s certainly my top priority.”

But this climate declaration is very much about jobs. It’s a signal to the country and the world that the city is open to investment in technology and innovation, as well as the oil and gas industry’s transition to net-zero emissions.

That 2019 declaration sure didn’t hurt Edmonton. Although times are far from easy there, the capital has done much better than Calgary.

Why did glacial cycles intensify a million years ago? Researchers find clues on the bed of the Atlantic Ocean

by Earth Institute at Columbia University

Something big happened to the planet about a million years ago. There was a major shift in the response of Earth's climate system to variations in our orbit around the Sun. The shift is called the Mid-Pleistocene Transition. Before the MPT, cycles between glacial (colder) and interglacial (warmer) periods happened every 41,000 years. After the MPT, glacial periods became more intense—intense enough to form ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere that lasted 100,000 years. This gave Earth the regular ice-age cycles that have persisted into human time.

Scientists have long puzzled over what triggered this. A likely reason would be a phenomenon called Milankovitch cycles—cyclic changes in Earth's orbit and orientation toward the Sun that affect the amount of energy that Earth absorbs. This, scientists agree, has been the main natural driver of alternating warm and cold periods for millions of years. However, research has shown that the Milankovitch cycles did not undergo any kind of big change a million years ago, so something else likely was at work.

Coinciding with the MPT, a large system of ocean currents that helps move heat around the globe experienced a severe weakening. That system, which sends heat north through the Atlantic Ocean, is the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). Was this slowdown related to the shift in glacial periods? If so, how and why? These have been open questions. A new paper published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences proposes an answer.

The researchers analyzed cores of deep-sea sediments taken in the south and north Atlantic, where ancient deep waters passed by and left chemical clues. "What we found is the North Atlantic, right before this crash, was acting very differently than the rest of the basin," said lead author Maayan Yehudai, who did the work as a Ph.D. student at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

Prior to that oceanic circulation crash, ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere began to stick to their bedrock more effectively. This caused glaciers to grow thicker than they had before. This in turn led to a greater global cooling than before, and disrupted the Atlantic heat conveyor belt. This led to both stronger ice ages and the ice-age cycle shift, says Yehudai.

The research supports a long-debated hypothesis that the gradual removal of accumulated slippery continental soils during previous ice ages allowed ice sheets to cling more tightly to the older, harder crystalline bedrock underneath, and grew thicker and more stable. The findings indicate that this growth and stabilization just before the weakening of the AMOC shaped the global climate.

"Our research addresses one of the biggest questions about the largest climate change we had since the onset of the ice ages," said Yehudai. "It was one of the most substantial climate transitions and we don't fully understand it. Our discovery pins the origin of this change to the Northern Hemisphere and the ice sheets that evolved there as driving this shift towards the climate patterns we observe today. This is a very important step toward understanding what caused it and where it came from. It highlights the importance of the North Atlantic region and ocean circulation for present and future climate change."

The research was led also by Yehudai's advisor, Lamont geochemist Steven Goldstein, along with Lamont graduate student Joohee Kim. Other collaborators included Karla Knudson, Louise Bolge and Alberto Malinverno of Lamont-Doherty; Leo Pena and Maria Jaume-Segui of the University of Barcelona; and Torsten Bickert of the University of Bremen. Yehudai is now at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry.A 50,000-year history of current flow yields new climate clues

More information: Evidence for a Northern Hemispheric trigger of the 100,000-y glacial cyclicity, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2021). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2020260118.

Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Provided by Earth Institute at Columbia University

Biden ‘antagonism’ to U.S. oil industry is strange: Daniel Yergin

"The rest of the world is saying this is really strange"

Author of the article:
Bloomberg News
David Wethe and Alix Steel
Publishing date:Nov 09, 2021 •
A drill rig in Loving County, Texas.
PHOTO BY ANGUS MORDANT/REUTERS FILES

While President Joe Biden has been “jaw-boning” OPEC nations to pump more crude, the rest of the world finds it odd that the leader of the top oil producer isn’t paying more attention to domestic shale, said oil historian Daniel Yergin.

“There’s a basic antagonism and lack of interest — indifference — to the industry, although it has 10.5 million people work in it,” Yergin, vice chairman of IHS Markit Ltd., said in a Bloomberg Television interview on Monday. “The rest of the world is saying this is really strange.”

As Biden considers tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to stem a surge in gasoline prices, Yergin said there isn’t much the White House can do. Talk of releasing crude from the reserve always comes up anytime gasoline prices are high, he said.

“President Biden has been in Washington a long time and knows that high gasoline prices are not good for incumbents,” Yergin said. “They’re obviously worried about 2022 and people do vote their wallets.”

©2021 Bloomberg L.P.

Pressure Mounts On Biden To Tap U.S. Oil Reserves

By Tom Kool - Nov 09, 2021, 2:00 PM CST

With OPEC+ refusing to pump more oil and Saudi Arabia increasing its official selling prices, pressure is increasing on President Biden to consider tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserves

Chart of the Week

- Netting a third straight month of declines, Chinese crude oil imports dropped to 8.94 million b/d in October, the lowest level since July 2018.

- The regional electricity mandates contributed to a fall in utilization rates to 81%, a five-month low, despite robust demand for transportation fuels.

- Independent refiners were limited in their refining as the Chinese government only issued its last batches of import quotas in early October, luckily China still has some 830 MMbbls of crude inventories, down 80 MMbbls on the year.

Market Movers

- The US conglomerate GE (NYSE:GE) will be split into three public companies focusing on energy, healthcare, and aviation, sending its stock up 7% on the day.

- In a rare move for a Western major, US oil firm ExxonMobil (NYSE:XOM) announced it took an FID on a $10 billion petchem project in China’s Guangdong province that would specialize in performance polymers.

- Spain’s oil firm CEPSA is considering the sale of its chemicals business valued at $3.5 billion as it seeks to garner funds for its transition towards renewable energy, with Citibank chosen to identify possible bidders.

Tuesday, November 09, 2021

The US’ standoff with OPEC has become the main talking point of this week - not only did Saudi Arabia rebuff Washington’s calls for more output, but it also hiked its December official selling prices way beyond market expectations. Whilst US crude inventories have reportedly risen for the third straight week, the pressure is now on the Biden Administration to consider further SPR releases. Meanwhile, jet cracks have bounced back to prominence on the back of travel restrictions being lifted globally (despite both Europe and Asia seeing case spikes), adding some unseasonal strength to middle distillates.

US House of Representatives Approves $1 Trillion Infrastructure Bill. The Biden Administration finally managed to ram through the bipartisan 1 trillion bill that would increase baseline funding on infrastructure by 550 billion and more than 100 billion on clean energy projects.

Gazprom Starts Filling up European Storage. Despite some concerns that Russia’sGazprom (MCX:GAZP) did not book any additional capacity via Ukraine and kept Yamal-Europe deliveries into Germany at zero on Monday, the Russian firm stated today it started to send gas towards its European storage.

Aramco Sees Spare Oil Capacity Shrinking. The Saudi national oil company Saudi Aramco (TADAWUL:2222) said it expects the current 3-4 million b/d global spare production capacity to diminish significantly next year once jet demand returns in full.

Canada’s Oil Sands on Track for All-Time High. Despite the ongoing COP26 hype, Canada’s oil sands producers are on track to reach an all-time high production rate of 3.5 million b/d by December amidst a nationwide move to focus on tight budget discipline and higher dividends.

Qatar Wants More LNG Tankers. In addition to its currently operating fleet of 45 Q-Flex and Q-Max carriers, Qatar has placed another order for six new LNG vessels with South Korean shipyards as it moves to bring its total LNG fleet tally to 100 by the end of 2027.

China’s Coal Production Reaches Multi-Year Peak. Chinese authorities reported that daily average national coal output reached 11.93 million tons over the first week of November, setting the scene for further price declines as Beijing is doing its utmost to alleviate the risks of a prolonged energy crunch. Related: Oil Rally Reverses On Signs Of Cooling Demand

Venezuela Uses Sanctions Calm to Increase Output. Out of the public eye for several months, Venezuela’s national oil company PDVSA raised overall production to more than 600,000 b/d last month as it received Iranian condensate to dilute the extra-heavy crude from the Orinoco Belt.

Saudi Arabia Wants to Pay Back Debts with Windfall Profits. According to media reports, Saudi Arabia is looking to amend the terms of a 16 billion loan due in 2023 and reduce the size of the credit facility, as Riyadh seeks to improve its credit ratings on the back of high oil prices.

Alliance Refinery Set to Become Export Terminal. Unable to sell the 255,000 b/d Alliance Refinery which suffered the most damage from Hurricane Ida, US major Phillips 66 decided to convert the refinery into an oil export terminal, to be finalized by 2022.

UK Funds Rolls Royce to Develop Nuclear. The UK government provided a $550 million backing to Rolls Royce (LON:RR) to develop the country’s first small modular nuclear reactor as London seeks non-intermittent energy sources to complement its vast wind capacity.

Italy’s ENI Quits South Africa Block. The Italian oil major ENI (NYSE:E) withdrew from an offshore block in South Africa, a few months after its six-well drilling programs elicited a strong response from local environmentalists as the drilling would be near sites considered ecologically fragile.

Morocco Looks Towards LNG After Algeria Feud. Having been cut off from Algerian pipeline gas exports on the back of a political spat, Morocco is now considering deploying an FSRU unit to start importing LNG as soon as possible.

Gambia Re-Offers Block Relinquished by BP. Less than a year after BP (NYSE:BP)exited Gambia’s offshore block A1 citing its pivot towards low-carbon projects, the African nation’s government is offering the block in a new bidding round.

By Tom Kool for Oilprice.com

U.K. Rejects Alliance Seeking Fixed Date on Fossil Fuel Phaseout

November 9, 2021 EnergyNow Media

Nov 9, 2021

(Bloomberg)The U.K. won’t join an alliance of countries fixing a date to phase out fossil fuel production, in a move that calls into question the COP26 host nation’s climate leadership.The Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance is being spearheaded by the governments of Denmark and Costa Rica and is expected to announce new member countries on Wednesday at the climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland.

Limiting oil and gas production is one of the key priorities for capping global warming at 1.5-degrees Celsius. Earlier this year, the International Energy Agency said no new oil and gas fields should come online if a climate crisis is to be averted.

But the U.K. — which recently had to contend with record-high natural gas prices — says it won’t back the alliance because ending fossil fuel production could cause a cliff edge in energy supply.

“No other significant oil and gas producing nation has gone as far as the U.K. in supporting sector’s gradual transition to a low carbon future,” a spokesperson said in a statement.

“While the U.K.’s reliance on fossil fuels continues to fall, there will continue to be ongoing but diminishing need for oil and gas over the coming years while we ramp up renewable energy capacity.”

The U.K. is seeking to become climate neutral by 2050 and in March announced a plan to decarbonize oil and gas production in the North Sea.

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Why did glacial cycles intensify a million years ago? Researchers find clues on the bed of the Atlantic Ocean

Pressure Mounts On Biden To Tap U.S. Oil Reserves

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Why did glacial cycles intensify a million years ago? Researchers find clues on the bed of the Atlantic Ocean

Pressure Mounts On Biden To Tap U.S. Oil Reserves