Artist or aliens? Mystery surrounds Utah monolith's appearance and disappearance

A quiet canyon in Utah's Red Rock country has sent the world's imagination into overdrive.

© Provided by NBC News

Members of the Utah Department of Public Safety's Aero Bureau were assisting Wildlife Resources in a routine count of bighorn sheep on Nov. 18 when they spotted the monolith — a tall, metallic reflective structure that clearly had been placed there.

But the question was: by whom?

The Public Safety Department admitted that it didn't know who — or what — installed the monolith, and it wouldn't even tell the public where, exactly, in the large and remote southeastern corner of the state the structure stood.

The public's first guess: aliens, of course. Theories and jokes abounded. Ones that only grew stronger after the federal Bureau of Land Management said Saturday that the monolith had suddenly disappeared. In its place was a pile of rocks, appearing to commemorate the vanished structure.

"#WhereDidItComeFrom #WhereDidItGo," the San Juan County Sheriff's Office wrote on Facebook.
Aliens?

Pilot Bret Hutchings said that when one of his officers spotted the monolith, it felt like a scene right out of the Stanley Kubrick classic "2001: A Space Odyssey."

"He was like, 'Whoa, whoa, whoa, turn around, turn around!' And I was like, 'What?' And he's like, 'There's this thing back there — we've got to go look at it!'" Hutchings told NBC affiliate KSL of Salt Lake City. "We just happened to fly directly over the top of it."

Immediately, people started making alien jokes, and when the monolith disappeared, the jokes didn't.

The alien gag become so popular that CNN even ran a headline saying, "The Utah monolith probably wasn't the work of aliens," implying a small chance that extraterrestrials had, indeed, placed it there.

And in its post about the disappearance, the sheriff's department poked fun at the alien theories, posting a collage of aliens from movies on Facebook and asking residents whether "you recognize anyone from the lineup provided as being in the area of the strange structure on the night of November 27th."

But while the monolith was still in the canyon, a more plausible theory was developing.
Art?

Hutchings, the pilot, acknowledged that the silver monolith appeared to be some sort of "new wave" art installation, and quickly, people began to wonder which one.

© Utah Department of Public Safety Image: Metal monolith in Utah

 (Utah Department of Public Safety)

One theory posited that the monolith was a work by Petecia Le Fawnhawk, a Southwestern artist who used to live and work in Utah. Le Fawnhawk has previously installed sculptures in the desert, but she told Artnet News that while she "did have the thought to plant secret monuments in the desert," she "cannot claim this one."

Others, including The Art Newspaper, said it immediately scanned the monolith as the work of the sculpture artist John McCracken, who died in 2011 and lived in New Mexico.

David Zwirner, whose gallery represented McCracken and showed his work, originally said he believed the structure to be McCracken's, but has since changed his mind.

“I love the idea of this being John’s work, but when you look closely at the photos of the Utah monolith, you will see rivets and screws that are not consistent with how John wanted his work to be constructed," Zwirner said in a statement. "He was a perfectionist. While I know that this is not John’s work, I also know that he would have enjoyed the Utah location and would have greatly appreciated the mystery surrounding this work. We all think it is a wonderful homage.”

A spokesperson for the state Public Safety Department said the monolith is clearly "somebody's art installation, or an attempt at that."

Ross Bernards, an adventure photographer, had another explanation for the missing monolith when he said he visited the installation on Friday.

In a photo series posted on Instagram on Monday, Bernards said four men, who appeared to come out of nowhere, disassembled the monolith and departed with its broken parts in a wheel barrow at about 9 p.m.

In one of the photos allegedly taken at the scene, three individuals with headlights can be seen with the monolith lying flat on the ground.

Bernards said he did not stop the group of men because he said he believed "they were right to take it out."

The last few words Bernards heard? "Leave no trace."

And yet, mystery also surrounds just how long the sculpture has been in the remote, rarely trafficked corner of Utah. The public safety spokesperson said it may have been there since the 1940s or the 1950s.

A user on Reddit, who goes by a name too profane to publish, claimed to have found the exact location of the sculpture through satellite images and terrain analysis. Based on the analysis, some believe it wasn't placed in the canyon until after McCracken died.

And just as interest in the monolith seemed to be plateauing, another — perhaps a copycat — was discovered in Romania — the second monolith of what could be many more to come.

© Provided by NBC News IMAGE: Metal monolith in Utah

 (Kelsea Dockham / Canyon State Overland)

Ethicists debate whether anti-mask protestors should forfeit COVID-19 medical care

THE MAJORITY ARE ANTI-VAXXERS

Sharon Kirkey POSTMEDIA DEC.1,20200

© Provided by National Post An anti-mask demonstration in Canmore, Alta., on Sunday, November 29, 2020. Ethicists disagree on whether people who flout public health measures should accept prompt care should they contract the virus. I WILL POINT OUT THEY ARE OUTSIDE IN THE FRESH AIR AND ARE SOCIALLY DISTANT, 

THEIR SIGNS ON THE OTHER HAND SHOW THEM AS TYPICAL COVIDIOTS

This past weekend, hundreds of Albertans rallied against masking orders, demonstrators gathered outside a house in Montreal’s posh Westmount neighbourhood they thought, mistakenly, belonged to Quebec’s premier, while in Ontario, police and bylaw officers saw to an illegal, 60-person party at a Mississauga Airbnb. Some guests fled as police arrived, 27 others were slapped with $880 fines, and the hosts issued summons carrying minimum $10,000 fines.

“These antics,” tweeted Peel deputy police chief Marc Andrews, “help no one.”

Given all that, some ethicists have argued that people who flout or publicly protest pandemic public health measures should willingly forfeit medical care in favour of those who play by the rules, should hospital resources become strained. An average of 2,111 people with COVID-19 were being treated in Canadian hospitals each day during the past week.

“We’re not saying don’t treat,” Arthur Caplan, founder of the division of medical ethics at NYU School of Medicine said Monday. “We’re saying, if you’re going to run around and claim exemption to endorsed and established behavioural policy, you should volunteer, if you get sick, to go to the end of the line.”

Others contend that a person’s political ideals should have no bearing on who should get care ahead of others.

In an opinion piece published earlier this year, an opinion he still holds, Caplan, along with his co-authors, argued that while most people are diligently and heroically adhering to public health asks, thousands of others haven’t fully grasped the gravity of the situation, or believe the economic consequences of stay-at-home orders disproportionately outweigh the health benefits.

'Thou shalt not kill:' Manitoba premier quotes Bible to anti-mask protesters

Addressing anti-mask protests poses a challenge for leaders, experts say

In Canada, demonstrators have argued that appeals and orders to mask or limit social gatherings violate their Charter rights, including freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of association.

But Caplan said there are no free-for-alls in a “plague,” and that a threat to others justifies limitations on individual civil liberties. “Doctors have a long-standing obligation to treat everyone regardless of sin,” Caplan said. “We have an ethic of trying to treat all comers in medicine, and that’s good.” However, should people willfully engage in behaviours known to potentially harm others, “then if you get sick, I think you have an obligation to think about saying, ‘let others go before me, because I wasn’t responsible,” he said. “If you are a real believer in liberty, then you have to say, ‘I’ll pay the price.’”

Healthcare isn’t rationed for people who smoke cigarettes, but smoking is a self-harm behaviour, Caplan said. “It generally hurts you, but not others. If you’re obese, generally it’s harming yourself. If you are not controlling your blood pressure, same thing.” The scarcity of donor organs sometimes requires giving lower priority to people unable to control harm to themselves, he said.

“If you were just running around hugging yourself and you made yourself sick, OK. But if you run around not wearing a mask and hugging other people, or assaulting people by going mask-less and standing close, then you’re really harming others.”

At a minimum, protesters should sign a pledge stating that they are willing to forgo medical care should emergency rooms or intensive care units become saturated — in the name of their political beliefs, Caplan and his co-authors wrote. “Patrick Henry’s famous proclamation, carried by many protestors, is ‘give me liberty or give me death,’ not ‘give me liberty and if that doesn’t work out so well give me a scarce ventilator.'”

Vaccines are a different matter, Caplan said, “because if you get vaccinated, you may stop infecting other people.”

“I think the thing that motives people to not wear a mask, to go where they want to go, oddly enough that’s what a vaccine will let them do,” Caplan said. While some have mused that pandemic protesters might be more likely to reject vaccines, “I think it’s more consistent with what the anti-mask, anti-social distancing, anti-quarantine crowd wants,” Caplan said — “as soon as they understand they can get on a plane or go on a cruise if they get vaccinated, I think they’ll shift their attitudes.”

 

© Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press/File 

People protest against measures taken by public health authorities to curb the spread of COVID-19, in Montreal, Saturday, November 28, 2020.

While he has a great amount of respect for Caplan, McGill University’s Daniel Weinstock couldn’t disagree more with the assertion protesters should forfeit their right to care before others.

A basic principle in medical ethics, particularly in a country like Canada, is that “you get medical care, if and when you need it, and need is really the only criterion that we should use,” said Weinstock, a professor of law and the Katherine A. Pearson chair in civil society and public policy.

There absolutely should be sanctions visited upon people who break laws, Weinstock said, including criminal sanctions for criminal acts. A 30-year-old man was charged with assault last week after an employee at a Dawson Creek, B.C. Walmart was attacked and repeatedly punched after he requested that a shopper wear a mask. Masks are required by B.C. government order, and are mandatory in all Walmart stores across the country. “Certainly that assault on the Walmart employee would seem to qualify, but that doesn’t disqualify them from receiving care,” Weinstock said.

“I think everybody is kind of operating at a level of anxiety and fear that has polarized societies,” Weinstock said, but someone has to be the adult in the room. “Even though it might be tempting when seeing people flouting common sense public health directives to say, ‘you guys, back of the line’ … I think it really behooves the medical establishment to look beyond the crisis,” he said.

“We’re all going to have to live in society together and avoid any acts that may exacerbate polarizations or fractures in society.”

It’s also a principle of biomedical ethics that people have full information, but the pandemic has seen an unprecedented glut of misinformation and disinformation, “and I don’t think the consequences of that should be laid” at the feet of protestors, Weinstock said.

In exceptional times, people can become locked into messages thrown at them from all corners, but offer a way of rationalizing their denial, Weinstein said. “I don’t think we want to make matters worse by making them pay the price for what is a much broader set of problems.”

People also need to be sensitive to the frustrations, the COVID exhaustion and small businesses struggling with government-ordered closures, like a Toronto area barbeque house that last week brazenly beached lockdown rules to serve dine-in customers. “I can just imagine the level of despair people are feeling,” said Montreal critical care physician Dr. Peter Goldberg. “Absolute despair.”

“One of the great things about a vaccine is that at least people see there may be a end to this despair — ‘I can get hopefully through the next three months, or the next five months.’ We think there is actually a finite end.”

• Email: skirkey@postmedia.com | Twitter: sharon_kirkey

SCOTUS skeptical of plan to block undocumented immigrants from census count

Several Supreme Court justices on Monday questioned the legality of a last-ditch attempt by the outgoing Trump administration to exclude undocumented immigrants from the federal count used to award states seats in Congress and the Electoral College.

© Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg via Getty Images 

The conservative-leaning high court heard more than 80 minutes of oral arguments on the legal challenges against President Trump's effort to remove immigrants living in the U.S. without authorization from the decennial census count that dictates redistricting for the House of Representatives.

"A lot of the historical evidence and longstanding practice really cuts against your position," Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the newest addition to the bench, told the government attorney arguing the administration's case.

The U.S. government has always counted most of the country's residents, including non-citizens without legal status, for the purposes of allocating congressional seats. The 14th Amendment requires House seats to be awarded after the government counts "the whole number of persons in each State." The constitutionally mandated process occurs every 10 years following the census.

In July, arguing that "persons" was not strictly defined in the 14th Amendment, Mr. Trump said that it would be U.S. policy to exclude immigrants who lack "lawful immigration status" from calculations that determine how many House districts each state should have. His presidential directive instructed Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who administers the Census Bureau, to provide him information following the 2020 Census that would allow him to do this.

Justice Stephen Breyer, a liberal who was appointed by Democratic President Bill Clinton, on Monday called the legal argument that undocumented immigrants should be counted for congressional apportionment "fairly strong."

"They are persons, aren't they?" Breyer asked acting solicitor general Jeff Wall, the lawyer representing the Trump administration in the suit, known as Trump v. New York.

Barrett, who is Mr. Trump's third appointment to the high court, reminded Wall of the unprecedented nature of the change sought by the administration, and posed the example of an undocumented immigrant who has lived in the U.S. for 20 years. "Why would … such a person not have a settled residency here?" she asked Wall.

Wall responded by saying that the U.S. has previously excluded foreign diplomats living in the country on a long-term basis from the apportionment count. "I'm not disputing at all that illegal aliens form ties to the community in the sense you are talking about, but they're not the sort of ties that are sufficient to qualify you within the apportionment base," he said.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, appointed by President Barack Obama in 2009, said that immigrants detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — whom the Trump administration has said would likely be excluded from the apportionment count under its proposal — could be eligible to stay in the country through asylum or other forms of immigration relief.

"I'm not sure how you can identify any class of immigrant that isn't living here in its traditional sense," Sotomayor told Wall. "This is where they are."

Members of the high court's conservative majority and liberal wing pressed Wall on the practical feasibility of the Trump administration excluding the nation's estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants from the redistricting count. The Commerce Department has a December 31 deadline to provide the president a tabulation of each state's population. The president is then required by federal law to submit a statement to Congress that would be used to redraw House districts.

Census count puts Montana in a unique spot

Justice Samuel Alito, nominated to the bench by Republican President George W. Bush, called it a "monumental task."

Under questioning by Alito, Wall conceded that it was "very unlikely" that the Census Bureau would be able to identify and remove all unauthorized immigrants from the apportionment calculations.

Three federal courts have already ruled against Mr. Trump's planned changes to the census. In September, a three-member panel of federal judges in New York said the proposal violates federal laws that govern the redrawing of congressional seats and the census count, though they did not weigh in on its constitutionality.

Last week, however, another panel of federal judges in Washington, D.C. dismissed a fourth challenge against Mr. Trump's effort, saying the case was not yet "ripe for review" given the uncertainty surrounding which undocumented immigrants would be removed from the redistricting count.

Several conservative justices, including Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Mr. Trump's second appointment to the Supreme Court, on Monday weighed the possibility of the high court taking a similar approach and ruling after the administration decided which immigrants to exclude.

"The key point, I think, is that [Mr. Trump's] memorandum imposes no obligations on the plaintiffs to do anything at this point, unlike for example, a typical agency regulation," Kavanaugh said. "We call that a lack of ripeness."

If Mr. Trump's plan is enacted, California, Texas and Florida, states with large immigrant communities, could end up with one fewer House district than they would have been given under the current calculations, according to an analysis by the non-partisan Pew Research Center. Conversely, some states like Alabama and Ohio with less undocumented residents would gain a congressional seat that they would've otherwise not secured.

The Justice Department has argued that the impact of Mr. Trump's proposal on certain states potentially losing or gaining House seats is unclear, since he has yet to determine which classes of immigrants to exclude from the apportionment figures. The number of ICE detainees, the population Mr. Trump is most likely to exclude, stands at 16,075, according to government figures.

However, Justice Elena Kagan, an appointee of Mr. Obama, noted that the government also has records on hundreds of thousands of immigrants with final deportation orders or in removal proceedings, and of more than 640,000 recipients of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. While DACA offers works permits and protection from deportation, it does not legalize the status of its recipients, who remain undocumented.

Chief Justice John Roberts, a Republican appointee, said in his opening questioning that if the court did not intervene now before the commerce department transmits state population information to the president, "I don't know when the court would be able to intervene."

Wall said that lawsuits could be brought after Mr. Trump determines who will be excluded from the redistricting numbers and sends his report to the House of Representatives.

"Isn't that going to be like having to unscramble the eggs?" Roberts asked.

BMO to Exit Oil And Gas Investment Banking in the U.S.

Kiel Porter, Rachel Adams-Heard and Kevin Orland
Tue, December 1, 2020


(Bloomberg) -- Bank of Montreal is winding down its U.S. oil and gas investment banking business and will focus on assets in Canada going forward, becoming the latest financial institution to cut ties with America’s beleaguered shale industry.

BMO said it has made “the financial decision for an orderly wind-down of our non-Canadian investment and corporate banking energy business.” Going forward, the company said by email, its capital markets energy business will be focused on Canada.

The company is eliminating about 50 positions in its investment banking group as part of the exit that was announced to staff on Monday, according to a person with direct knowledge of the situation who asked not to be identified because the information isn’t public. A handful of corporate bankers will manage BMO’s U.S. oil and gas loan book, the person said.


BMO is the latest bank to halt investment banking tied to U.S. oil and gas explorers, which even before the pandemic were facing pressure after years of generating meager returns. The move didn’t appear to be related to ESG concerns plaguing fossil fuel companies. America’s shale industry has been swept up in a wave of consolidation in recent months as the pandemic slashes oil demand, drags down prices and forces low-premium mergers. That follows years of lackadaisical M&A activity in the oil patch.

Read More: Bad Energy Loans Double Over Three Months, Canada Banks Say

BMO’s U.S. oil and gas loan book was about $5.4 billion (C$7 billion) as of July 31, making up half of its overall oil and gas loans, according to a company presentation.

For ESG data on BMO, click here.

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©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

Enbridge Pipeline Linking Oil Sands to Midwest Wins Approval

Robert Tuttle Tue, December 1, 2020


(Bloomberg) -- An Enbridge Inc. pipeline that will help ship more Canadian crude to the U.S. Midwest received final approval, paving the way for construction to start soon on a third key export project for the oil sands after years of delays.

Minnesota approved the stormwater pollution plan for Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline replacement and expansion, the project’s last pending permit, the company said on Monday. Construction is expected to take six-to-nine months on a line that will add 370,000 barrels a day of capacity.

Producers in Alberta, which holds the world’s third-largest crude reserves, have seen growth ground to a halt in recent years as a lack of enough export pipelines caused local crude prices to plummet in value. Now, three projects could allow them to ship an extra 1.8 million barrels a day when built.

Work is underway on TC Energy Corp.’s Keystone XL after a decade-long saga for approval, though it’s still unclear if U.S. President Elect Joe Biden will maintain an authorization from the Trump administration for the pipeline to cross the border. Meanwhile, the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion to the Vancouver coast is proceeding in Alberta and British Columbia.

“Line 3 is potentially unique among the three in that it has the potential to be the soonest online,” as early as late 2021, IHS Markit Ltd. Vice President Kevin Birn said by phone.

Line 3 could still encounter state and federal legal hurdles, as well as the prospect of protests that slow construction, delaying the start of service until 2022, Height Commentary said in a note last week. Trans Mountain faces fierce opposition in British Columbia, including from indigenous-led protesters.

Another of the company’s pipelines in the U.S., the Line 5 that crosses the Great Lakes into Michigan, was dealt a blow last month when the state’s government took legal action to shut it down. The pipeline supplies Central Canadian refineries with oil from Alberta.

“Until the barrels are freely flowing, we should take nothing for granted,” Tim McMillan, chief executive officer of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, said by phone.

Two years ago, Canadian export pipelines became so congested that heavy Western Canadian Select crude’s discount to benchmark U.S. prices widened to about $50 a barrel, prompting Alberta’s government to impose mandatory output limits. Those curbs were only lifted recently as the Covid-19 pandemic crippled demand for Canada’s oil, temporarily leaving extra space on some pipelines.

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

Exxon Faces Historic Writedown After Energy Markets Implode

Kevin Crowley
Tue, December 1, 2020


(Bloomberg) -- Exxon Mobil Corp. is about to incur the biggest writedown in its modern history as the giant U.S. oil and gas producer reels from this year’s collapse in energy prices.

Exxon -- traditionally far more reluctant to cut the book value of its business than other oil majors -- on Monday disclosed it will write down North and South American natural gas fields by $17 billion to $20 billion. That could make it the industry’s steepest impairment since BP Plc’s 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill that killed 11 workers and fouled the sea for months. Meanwhile, capital spending will be drastically reduced through 2025.

The announcement comes in the waning days of a grueling year for Chief Executive Officer Darren Woods, who’s resorted to laying off thousands of employees, curtailing retirement benefits and canceling ambitious growth projects. The former refinery manager, who stepped in to the top job in 2017, has been forced to recast his seven-year, $210 billion blueprint for rejuvenating Exxon’s aging portfolio of crude and gas holdings.


In addition to dropping vast swaths of gas assets from the development queue, Woods is capping capital spending at $25 billion a year through 2025, a $10 billion reduction from his pre-pandemic target.

This year has been particularly bruising for America’s most-iconic oil explorer. Exxon lost money for three consecutive quarters, an unprecedented streak, the shares dipped to an 18-year low and the company was ejected from the bosom of blue-chip stocks, the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Woods also plans to cut 15% of the company’s workforce by the end of next year.

From being the largest company in the S&P 500 Index as recently as 2012, Exxon now ranks just inside the top 50 as energy lost its luster and technology giants grew. Chevron Corp. now has a larger market valuation than Exxon.

No Pivot

Unlike its European peers, Exxon has so far chosen to stick with its $15 billion-a-year dividend and has increased borrowing in recent months to fund it and its other capital priorities. On an annualized basis, the dividend has been increased each year for almost four decades.

Optimism that vaccines will soon restore global economic growth buoyed crude prices in recent weeks but the impact of the contagion on Big Oil is likely to be longlasting. With European giants Royal Dutch Shell Plc and BP accelerating the pivot to renewables and Exxon locking in drastic spending cuts, capital flows into big, traditional developments are expected to shrink in coming years.

Cowen & Co. analyst Jason Gabelman detected a subtle shift in Exxon’s word choices that may herald a dramatic change in financial priorities. Whereas company executives touted Exxon’s “reliable and growing dividend” during the third-quarter earnings conference call, Monday’s statement only mentioned reliability, the analyst said in a note to clients.

‘High-Grading’

“Continued emphasis on high-grading the asset base -- through exploration, divestment and prioritization of advantaged development opportunities -- will improve earnings power and cash generation, and rebuild balance sheet capacity,” Woods said in the statement.

Exxon has been warning shareholders since October that its gas assets were at risk of significant impairment. Previously, the energy titan’s largest writedown was for about $3.4 billion in 2016, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.

Assets removed from Exxon’s development plans include so-called dry gas resources in Appalachia and the Rocky Mountains, Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas, as well as western Canada and Argentina, the company said. It will attempt to sell “less strategic” assets.

The writedown stems from former CEO Rex Tillerson’s decision a decade ago to buy XTO Energy for $35 billion rather than spend years building an in-house shale business. At the time, the outlook for North American gas prices was bright because demand was rising faster than supply.

Supply Glut

Instead, fracking was a victim of its own success, unleashing so much gas that it overwhelmed demand and the infrastructure needed to handle it, resulting in a prolonged stretch of depressed prices.

U.S. rival Chevron recorded an impairment of more than $5 billion on Appalachian gas a year ago, and recently agreed to sell those fields to EQT Corp. for about $735 million.

(Updates to recast lead paragraph)

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CRISIS OF OVERPRODUCTION

Posthaste: Imperial Oil's massive write-off suggests the era of stranded Canadian assets is already here

© Provided by Financial Post Is oil turning into a sunset industry?

Yadullah Hussain 

Good morning!

Imperial Oil just became the most high-profile Canadian oil producer to give up on some of its fossil fuel assets in Alberta.

“Imperial has re-assessed the long-term development plans of its unconventional portfolio in Alberta, Canada and no longer plans to develop a significant portion of this portfolio,” the company said in a statement after markets closed on Monday.

The company said would take an impairment charge of about $900 million to $1.2 billion in the latest quarter.

“These non-core assets are non-producing, undeveloped assets and the company does not expect any material future cash expenditures related to this impairment. Not included in this impairment are the high-value, liquids-rich portion of the company’s unconventional asset portfolio, which the company still plans to develop,” the company said.

The decision comes after France’s Total SE took an US$8 billion impairment earlier this year on the value of its assets, mostly in Canadian oilsands projects. Earlier this year, oil majors BP Plc and Royal Dutch Shell Plc had also written off the value of some of their global assets that were no longer feasible to produce.

The moves suggest Canadian fears of stranded oil and gas assets are already coming to pass.

The decision is also significant as, unlike many European oil majors, that had already divested from, scrapped or written down the value of, a number of their carbon-intensive assets, Imperial Oil and its parent company Exxon Mobil Corp. had been steadfast to date, believing their oil assets had a long runway rooms.

But the mighty are now yielding ground.

Yesterday, Exxon said it would write down the value of its natural gas properties by $17 billion to $20 billion, its biggest ever impairment, and slashed project spending next year to its lowest level in 15 years.

In another signal that the fossil fuel industry may be turning into a long-sunset industry, Bank of Montreal pledged to exit “non-Canadian investment and corporate banking energy business.”

Rystad Energy expects global oil and gas producers to invest around US$380 billion next year, almost flat year-on-year, but warns that about 20 per cent could be at risk of deferral or reduction, and most of the investments will be focused on safer tiers of low and medium-range (read less carbon-intensive) risk.

Exploration and production players are pulling multiple levers to weather the market downturn, such as deferring infill drilling programs, delaying final investment destinations and start-ups, reporting significant write-offs on stranded assets, and reshaping their portfolios to stabilize returns.

“As E&Ps are also speeding up a transition into low-carbon energy, it is possible that this time, too, upstream investments will not return to pre-crisis levels in the long-term, even if they do recover somewhat over the next few years,“ says Olga Savenkova, upstream analyst at Rystad Energy.

In a note earlier this year Angus Rodger, a director with Wood Mackenzie’s upstream research, noted that a few years ago the oil industry wouldn’t even countenance ideas of climate risk, peak demand, stranded assets and liquidation business models.

“Today, companies are building strategies around these ideas. Demand might still grow from here, and many companies are still chasing a share of that growth, Rodger wrote in a note to clients. “But make no mistake, the corporate landscape is changing, and the majors are changing with it.”

UPDATE
India farmers protests: Thousands swarm Delhi against deregulation rules
By Julia Hollingsworth, Swati Gupta and Esha Mitra CNN

Tens of thousands of farmers have swarmed India's capital where they intend to camp out for weeks to protest new agricultural laws that they say could destroy their livelihoods.

© Biplov Bhuyan/Hindustan Times/Shutterstock 

Farmers congregate during day five of the protest against the new farm reform laws at Singhu border on November 30, 2020 in New Delhi, India.

Farmers from the nearby states of Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh began arriving by tractors and on foot at the outskirts of New Delhi last week, where they blocked roads and set up makeshift camps, according to protest leaders. Some slept on the road or in their tractors, and several places of worship offered protesters food.

Police attempted to block demonstrators from entering the city. They fired tear gas and water cannons Thursday and Friday after protesters pelted police officers with stones and damaged public property, according to Manoj Yadav, a senior police official from Haryana.

The farmers are protesting laws passed in September, which Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi says will give farmers more autonomy to set their own prices and sell directly to private businesses, such as supermarket chains.

But the move has infuriated India's farmers, who say that the new rules will leave them worse off by making it easier for corporates to exploit agricultural workers who make up more than half of India's 480 million-strong workforce, according to India's most recent Census in 2011.

According to Ashutosh Mishra, the media coordinator of protest organizer All India Kisan Sangharsh Committee, which represents around 200 farming unions, tens of thousands of demonstrators have gathered at each of New Delhi's three borders -- a line of protesters at one of the borders stretches for 30 kilometers (19 miles), he said.

Police have put up barriers and dug up roads to prevent protesters from coming into the city center to hold sit-ins. Mishra expects more farmers from around the country to join the protests in the coming days.

That's despite New Delhi being a hotspot for Covid-19 in a country that has already reported more than 9.4 million reported cases, the most in any country bar the United States.

"We are trying to be weary of Covid but we don't have an option -- it is a question of life and death," said Mukut Singh, the president of a farmers union in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, who is leading thousands in protest in his home state, and says he will join the protesters in Delhi later this week.

"We are the ones who have provided food, milk, vegetables when the whole country was in lockdown -- we were still toiling in the fields," he said. "It is the government who has put us at risk by introducing these laws during Covid."

What the protests are about

For decades, the Indian government has offered guaranteed prices to farmers for certain crops, providing long-term certainty that allows them to make investments for the next crop cycle

.

© Mayank Makhija/NurPhoto/Getty Images 

Security personnel deployed to stop farmers from entering the national capital during a protest against the Centre's new farm laws at Singhu border near Delhi, India on November 30, 2020.

Under the previous laws, farmers had to sell their goods at auction at their state's Agricultural Produce Market Committee, where they were guaranteed to get at least the government-agreed minimum price. There were restrictions on who could purchase at auction and prices were capped for essential commodities.

Modi's new laws dismantle the committee structure, allowing farmers to sell their goods to anyone for any price. Farmers have more freedom to do things such as sell direct to buyers and sell to other states.

Modi said increasing market competition would be a good thing as it fulfills farmers' demands for higher income and gives them new rights and opportunities.

© Biplov Bhuyan/Hindustan Times/Shutterstock

 Farmers prepare food during day five of protests over farm reform laws at Singhu border on November 30, 2020 in New Delhi, India.

"The farmers should get the advantage of a big and comprehensive market which opens our country to global markets," Modi said on Monday, as farmers protested in the capital. He hopes it will attract private investment into the agricultural industry, which has lagged as other parts of the country's economy have modernized.

But farmers argue that the rules could help big companies drive down prices. While farmers could sell crops at elevated prices if the demand is there, conversely, they could struggle to meet the minimum price in years when there is too much supply in the market.

Singh, the Uttar Pradesh farmer, said that removing the price guarantees will make life tougher for farmers.

"There is a lot of anger among farmers," he said. "We don't get even the minimum support price that is presently declared -- removing these protections and making it easier for corporates to enter will completely buy us out."


Why it's such a hot political issue

Agriculture is the primary source of livelihood for about 58% of India's 1.3 billion population, meaning farmers are the biggest voter block in the country.

That's made farming a central political issue, with farmers arguing for years to get the minimum guaranteed prices increased.

In a bid to win over farmers, Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said in its 2014 general election manifesto that all crop prices should be fixed at a minimum of 50% higher than the production costs. In 2016, Modi promised to boost the country's agriculture sector with a target of doubling the income of farmers by 2022.

Modi and his government continue to insist that they are supporting farmers.

He hailed the new laws as a "watershed moment" which will ensure a complete transformation of the agriculture sector. But besides calling the move long overdue, Modi has not said why he opted to introduce these measures during the pandemic, which has caused India to suffer its first recession in decades.

"The Indian government under the leadership of Prime Minister Modi has always stood in full commitment to resolving the problems faced by farmers and will continue to stand by them," said Narendra Singh Tomar, the Minister of Agriculture and Farmer Welfare.

Tomar urged farmers to abandon their protests and instead discuss their issues with the government -- although so far, Modi has shown no sign of capitulating to protesters' demands.

© Manish Rajput/SOPA Images/Shutterstock 

Farmers gather near a police road block stopping them from marching to New Delhi during a demonstration on November 30, 2020.

Guns, Drugs and Viral Content: Welcome to Cartel TikTok

Oscar Lopez
Sun, November 29, 2020

Visitors light a candle at a shrine to Jesus Malverde, the Robin Hood-esque bandit venerated by many, particularly in the narcotics trade, in Culiacan, Mexico, July 16, 2015. 

(Brett Gundlock/The New York Times)

MEXICO CITY — Tiger cubs and semi-automatic weapons. Piles of cash and armored cars. Fields of poppies watered to the sound of ballads glorifying Mexican drug cartel culture.

This is the world of Cartel TikTok, a genre of videos depicting drug trafficking groups and their activities that is racking up hundreds of thousands of views on the popular social media platform.

But behind the narco bling and dancing gang members lies an ominous reality: With Mexico set to again shatter murder records this year, experts on organized crime say Cartel TikTok is just the latest propaganda campaign designed to mask the bloodbath and use the promise of infinite wealth to attract expendable young recruits.

“It’s narco-marketing,” said Alejandra León Olvera, an anthropologist at Spain’s University of Murcia who studies the presence of Mexican organized crime groups on social media. The cartels “use these kinds of platforms for publicity, but of course it’s hedonistic publicity.”

Circulating on Mexican social media for years, cartel content began flooding TikTok feeds in the United States this month after a clip of a high-speed boat chase went viral on the video-sharing platform.

American teens were served the boat chase video on their For You page, which recommends engaging videos to users. Millions liked and shared the clip. Their clicks boosted the video in the For You page algorithm, which meant more people viewed it.

And once they viewed the boat chase video, the algorithm began to offer them a trickle, then a flood of clips that appeared to come from drug trafficking groups in Mexico.

“As soon as I started liking that boat video, then there’s videos of exotic pets, videos of cars,” said Ricardo Angeles, 18, a California TikToker interested in cartel culture.

“It’s fascinating,” he said, “kind of like watching a movie.”

Others began noticing the surge of cartel videos as well and posting reactions to the deluge of guns and luxury cars filling their feeds.

“Did the cartels just roll out their TikTok marketing strategy?” asked one flummoxed user in a video viewed some 490,000 times. “Is the coronavirus affecting y’all’s sales?”

Asked about their policy regarding the videos, a TikTok spokesperson said that the company was “committed to working with law enforcement to combat organized criminal activity” and that it removed “content and accounts that promote illegal activity.” Examples of cartel videos that were sent to TikTok for comment were soon removed from the platform.

While cartel content might be new for most teen TikTokers, according to Ioan Grillo, author of “El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency,” online portrayals of narco culture go back more than a decade, when Mexico began ramping up its bloody war against the cartels.

At first, the videos were crude and violent — images of beheadings and torture that were posted on YouTube, designed to strike fear in rival gangs and show government forces the ruthlessness they were up against.

But as social platforms evolved and cartels became more digitally savvy, the content became more sophisticated.

In July, a video that circulated widely on social media showed members of the brutal Jalisco New Generation Cartel in fatigues, holding high-caliber weapons and cheering their leader next to dozens of armored cars branded with the cartel’s Spanish initials, CJNG.

The show of force appeared online at the same time President Andrés Manuel López Obrador was visiting the states that make up the cartel’s stronghold.

“That is kind of a kick, a punch in the stomach to the government’s security strategy,” Grillo said.

López Obrador, who campaigned on a promise of confronting crime with “hugs not bullets,” has so far been unable to make a significant dent in the country’s soaring violence, with a record 34,582 murders registered last year alone.

But while some videos are still made to strike terror, others are created to show young men in rural Mexico the potential benefits of joining the drug trade: endless cash, expensive cars, beautiful women, exotic pets.

“It’s all about the dream. It’s all about the hustle,” said Ed Calderon, a security consultant and former member of Mexican law enforcement. “That’s what they sell.”

According to Falko Ernst, senior Mexico analyst for the International Crisis Group, a global think tank, some of the TikTok videos may be produced by cartel members themselves, especially young hit men or “sicarios” keen to show off the spoils of war.

Still, he said, most are probably filmed by young, lower-level operators in the gangs, then shared widely on the web by their friends or those longing for the lifestyle.

But whether they are made and shared by cartels or simply produced by aspiring gangsters, the ultimate goal is the same: drawing in an army of young men willing to give their lives for a chance at glory.

The gangs, Ernst said, depend on this “sea of youngsters.”

And while videos of bejeweled guns and decked-out cars have been circulating on Instagram and Facebook for years, TikTok has brought a new dimension to the cartel genre.

“The message has to be quick, it has to be engaging, and it has to be viral,” said León, the anthropologist. “Violence becomes fun, or even put to music.”

One video, which attracted more than 500,000 likes before it was removed, shows a farmer slicing unripe seed pods in a field of poppies, presumably to harvest the resin for heroin production.

“Here in the mountains, there are only hard workers,” says a voice-over. “Just good people.”

In another video, from a now-disabled account called “The clown of the CJNG,” in reference to the Jalisco cartel, a figure dressed in black with a bulletproof vest and an AR-15 rifle does a dance move known as the Floss.

Such videos may be intended for a Mexican audience, but for users in the United States who help promote them, they tap into an increasingly popular fascination with the cartel world, one propagated by shows like “Narcos” on Netflix.

That was in part the allure for Angeles, the California teenager, whose parents emigrated from Mexico before he was born.

Even as he acknowledged the real-world violence behind the videos, Cartel TikTok has become a way of connecting with Mexican popular culture from a safe distance.

“There’s a difference between watching ‘Narcos’ and getting kidnapped by one,” Angeles said.

The videos also provide a stark reminder of what life may have looked like had his parents not sought better opportunities north of the border.

“I could’ve been in that lifestyle,” Angeles said. But “I would much rather be broke and nameless than rich and famous.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

© 2020 The New York Times Company

BACKGROUNDER

Ethiopia war may turn into guerrilla insurgency

Tue, December 1, 2020

* Skirmishes still reported, though capital Mekelle captured

* Experts fear drawn-out guerrilla conflict looming

* PM Abiy's troops have been fighting TPLF for four weeks

* Eritrea and Sudan both affected by conflict over border

ADDIS ABABA/NAIROBI, Dec 1 (Reuters) - Ethiopia's nearly month-long war against rebellious northern forces may be transforming into a guerrilla conflict, experts said on Tuesday, even though federal troops declared victory after capturing the Tigrayan regional capital at the weekend.

Fighting since Nov. 4 is believed to have killed thousands of people, as well as forcing refugees into Sudan, dragging in Eritrea, and worsening hunger and suffering among Tigray's more than 5 million people.

Reports of clashes between Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's soldiers and the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) were still coming out of the region, though communications remain largely cut and outside access blocked.

Abiy accuses the TPLF of treason, specifically for attacking an army base, while the Tigrayans say their ex-military comrade and partner in government wants to dominate their ethnic group for personal power. Both sides scoff at the other's accusations.

Federal forces took Tigray's highland capital Mekelle in hours on Saturday. TPLF leaders fled to the hills, saying they were resisting and taking prisoners.

Asked about ongoing fighting, TPLF head Debretsion Gebremichael said in a text: "Yes. On three directions. Two around Mekelle. One 50km away."

There was no immediate response from the government.

Reuters has been unable to verify claims from both sides.

SKIRMISHES CONTINUING

Two regionally-run Tigrayan TV stations, including the TPLF's "Dimtsi Woyane" ("Voice of the Revolution"), were still on air, although it was unclear where they were broadcasting from. Government-affiliated media have not yet broadcast any images from Mekelle.

A United Nations aid worker in touch with people in Tigray said large areas remained outside federal control and fighting was still taking place on several fronts. There was still scant coordination with aid workers, the source added.

"There are skirmishes continuing in many parts of Tigray and we are seeing the hallmarks of the beginning of an insurgency," Horn of Africa expert Rashid Abdi told an online forum.

"The terrain, geography and history suggest this will be a long, drawn-out insurgency."

Both the federal army and the TPLF have long military experience - from toppling a Marxist dictator in 1991 to fighting neighbouring Eritrea from 1998-2000.

Though outnumbered and expelled from their capital, the Tigrayans can exploit their mountainous terrain and long borders with Sudan and Eritrea.

REFUGEES

The U.N. refugee agency appealed for access to 96,000 Eritrean refugees in Tigray, where food was thought to be running out.

"Our extreme worry is that we hear about attacks, the fighting near the camps, we hear about abductions and forced removals," spokesman Babar Baloch told a news briefing in Geneva.

In a speech to parliament on Monday, Abiy urged the more than 45,000 Ethiopians who fled into Sudan to return.

One aid worker in the area said numbers crossing to Sudan at the main transit point of Hamdayet were down to a trickle. Refugees were saying that Ethiopian militia and soldiers were trying to impede them, he said.

"The accounts of the people are that it's getting harder and harder to get to the border," he said, adding that three refugees had also said there were flyers going round with messages not to speak in Tigrayan

There was no immediate government response to those accusations, but federal officials vehemently deny discrimination against Tigrayans or harassment of civilians.

Though Tigrayans make up only about 6% of Ethiopia's 115 million people, they dominated national government for nearly three decades until Abiy took office in 2018.

Abiy, whose parents are from the larger Oromo and Amharic groups, has been removing Tigrayans from government and military posts, saying they made up more than 60% of senior ranks and that other ethnicities should also be represented.

Last year, Abiy won the Nobel Peace Prize for ending a two-decade border standoff with Eritrea. The TPLF has fired rockets towards Eritrea's capital Asmara during the conflict.

(Reporting by Addis Ababa newsroom, David Lewis in Nairobi, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, Aidan Lewis in Cairo; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Angus MacSwan)