ANTI-WAR Democrat Tulsi Gabbard to speak this week at CPAC with Trump, other conservatives

Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, is seen at a Democratic presidential primary debate in Atlanta, Ga., on November 20, 2019. She has often been critical of other Democrats, including President Joe Biden.

 File Photo by Tami Chappell/UPI | License Photo
Feb. 21 (UPI) -- Former congresswoman and onetime 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard is scheduled to speak this week at the Conservative Political Action Conference -- a major gathering for Republicans.

Matt Schlapp, chairman of the group that organizes the event, announced Gabbard's participation on Twitter Monday.

Gabbard, who represented Hawaii in the U.S. House, has frequently been critical of prominent Democrats -- including President Joe Biden on the issue of Ukraine.

"Biden can prevent war, but I fear he lacks the courage to do so," she wrote in a Tweet Monday.




"What are we trying to achieve in Ukraine? How will it benefit the American people? And at what cost? The Biden [administration] has never answered these questions."

Gabbard's photo was among those listed on CPAC's website on Monday, along with a number of conservatives including former President Donald Trump, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Trump also attended last year's event.

Gabbard was one of a number of Democrats who ran for president in 2020, but her campaign never gained much traction with voters. She dropped out in March 2020 having won only two pledged delegates.

Gabbard is scheduled to address the conference's Ronald Reagan Dinner on Saturday, according to The Hill.

The conference begins on Thursday in Orlando, Fla., and will run until Sunday.

What “Energy Independence” Really Means For The U.S.

Editor OilPrice.com
Sun, February 20, 2022

Since the days of President Jimmy Carter and the 1970s oil crisis, the United States has relentlessly pursued the utopia of energy independence. Indeed, energy independence is a worthy pursuit that both Democrats and Republicans readily agree upon. After all, relying on other countries for oil, natural gas or coal is an inherently risky proposition since It can lead to wars, or compromise the country’s relationships with foreign powers.

The notion that the country could become self-sufficient by producing enough energy to sustain the entirety of its population and industries was first floated by Nixon when he declared war on foreign oil during the oil crisis of the 1970s.

It was later popularized by Bush in a state of the union address in February 2006 when he decried United States’ addiction to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world before announcing plans to break this addiction by developing several alternatives, including a multibillion-dollar subsidized ramp-up of biofuels.

Bush went on to boldly declare that by 2025, America would “...make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past” by cutting imports from Gulf states by three-quarters.

Well, it turns out the former president was prescient on some key predictions, which in hindsight appears quite remarkable when you consider that back then, the shale industry was barely on its feet.

The revelation that the U.S. is currently producing more energy than it consumes suggests that America has finally achieved the seemingly elusive goal of producing enough fuels to avoid relying on the rest of the world.

Net Energy Exporter

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), the United States was a net energy exporter in 2019 and 2020.

EIA notes that total U.S. annual primary energy net imports (imports minus exports) generally increased in most years since the mid-1950s, reaching a record high in 2005, equal to about 30% of total U.S. energy consumption. Since 2005, total annual energy imports have gradually decreased while total energy exports have increased.

The United States became a net total energy exporter in 2019 for the first time since 1952, and maintained that position in 2020 even though both total energy production and consumption were lower in 2020 than in 2019. Total U.S. energy exports exceeded total energy imports by 3.46 quadrillion British thermal units (quads) in 2020, the largest margin on record. U.S. energy exports in 2020 totaled 23.47 quads, and energy imports fell 13% to 20.0 quads, the lowest level since 1992.

Crude oil accounts for the largest share of U.S. energy imports on an energy content basis. Even though the United States remained a net importer of crude oil in 2020, crude oil net imports were at the lowest level since 1985. Moreover, some of the imported crude oil is refined into products that are exported.

us_net_imports

Source: EIA

Despite a 4% drop in domestic crude oil production in 2020 from 2019, U.S. crude oil net imports in 2020 were the lowest since 1985. U.S. total annual crude oil exports have increased every year since 2010 and reached a record high in 2020 of about 3.18 million barrels per day (b/d). U.S. crude oil imports fell to about 5.88 million b/d in 2020.

U.S. petroleum products (excluding crude oil) imports and exports declined in 2020 from 2019: imports by 15% and exports by 5%. However, total annual petroleum products exports in 2020 were the third highest on record behind 2019 and 2018. Propane was the most-exported petroleum product in 2020, followed by distillate fuel oil.

Gross exports of natural gas have increased every year since 2014, and in 2017, the United States became a net exporter of natural gas for the first time since the late 1950s. In 2020, natural gas gross exports reached a record high of 14.43 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d), and gross imports of natural gas fell to 6.99 Bcf/d, the lowest level since 1993. Increases in domestic natural gas production and increases in liquefied natural gas (LNG) export capacity have contributed to growth in natural gas exports.

Trade volumes of coal and other fuels account for relatively small shares of U.S. total energy trade. U.S. coal exports, which had increased in both 2017 and 2018, decreased in both 2019 and 2020. The United States has been a net coal exporter since at least 1949.

Net Petroleum Exporter

In 2019, for the first ever, the U.S. became a net exporter of petroleum--which includes crude oil and petroleum products.

Unfortunately, U.S. crude imports have remained stubbornly high even during the shale boom thanks to healthy domestic demand. U.S. crude oil production has shot up 160% to over 13 million b/d since the advent of the shale era; meanwhile, domestic demand has remained flat but very high at 19-21 million b/d.

In 2019, the country still imported 9.1 million b/d of petroleum and other liquids, with 6.8 million b/d of those being crude oil, due to constraints such as regional supply/demand imbalances, infrastructural challenges, and other factors. Further, many of the refineries in the United States are optimized to process the heavier crude grades from Canada, Venezuela, and Mexico instead of the lighter, sweeter oil crude from its own shale fields.

petro_exporter

Source: EIA

The big consolation here is that a bigger proportion of its oil imports have been coming from its northern ally, with crude imports from Canada clocking in at 134 million barrels in 2019 from 76 million in 2008.

As Bush predicted, the United States is no longer as heavily reliant on OPEC for its oil, with the organization supplying less than 30% of imports.

Renewables Offer The Best Solution

It’s, therefore, clear that whereas the overall trend is that the U.S. has been exporting more energy than it imports, it’s still a very mixed bag with many regions still importing vast quantities of crude and other petroleum products.

To complicate matters further, the planet’s fossil fuel reserves are finite, with experts estimating that the U.S. only has enough natural gas reserves to last 93 more years, and enough coal to last about 283 years.

In other words, the United States will never achieve true energy independence while still relying so heavily on fossil fuels.

Indeed, some experts now contend that the only one surefire way to be completely and indefinitely energy independent is by adopting 100% renewable energy.

At first, this sounds like a pipe-dream, considering that only tiny Costa Rica has come close to achieving that goal after it generated 98.1% of its electricity from renewables in 2016. The Central American nation, however, has a population of 5 million vs. 330 million by the U.S. and a land area 0.5% the size of the U.S.

But some experts still insist that 100% renewable energy in the U.S. is not only feasible but can lower costs.

Renewable resources generate only around 19 percent of U.S. electricity in 2020. However, last year, a group of researchers at Stanford University set out to prove that a 100% renewable energy grid by 2050 is not only feasible but can be done without any blackouts and at a lower cost than the existing grid.

The researchers matched time-dependent energy supply with demand and storage in a grid integration model for every 30 second interval in 2050 and 2051. The study authors analyzed U.S. regions and countrywide demand until the model produced a solution with what the authors called zero-load loss--meaning, essentially, no blackouts with 100% renewable energy and storage.

Wesley Cole, a senior energy analyst at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), says that hourly interval models are more common, but this new study gives researchers like himself a boost of confidence that they are not missing anything by modeling at a higher temporal resolution.

“The question is much more an economic question, not so much a technical question,” says Cole. According to Cole, the pathway to a 100% renewable grid is not as expensive as first estimated due to huge cost reductions in solar and wind energy over the years.

Unfortunately, politics always seem to get in the way.

By Alex Kimani for Oilprice.com

TotalEnergies Announces Major Oil Discovery Offshore Suriname

Editor OilPrice.com
Mon, February 21, 2022

TotalEnergies and its partner APA Corporation have made significant oil and associated gas discovery offshore one of the hottest basins for major oil finds in recent years, the Guyana-Suriname Basin offshore South America.

The French supermajor and APA Corporation found significant amounts of oil and associated gas in the Krabdagu-1 well, in the central area of Block 58 offshore Suriname, TotalEnergies said on Monday. The discovery announced today follows four previous Suriname discoveries—Maka, Sapakara, Kwaskwasi, and Keskesi.

Drill stem test operations will be carried out now at Krabdagu-1 to appraise the resources and productivity, and at least three further exploration and appraisal wells are planned to be drilled in 2022 on the block, TotalEnergies said.

“This successful exploration well at Krabdagu-1 is a significant addition to the discovered resources in the central area of Block 58. This result encourages us to continue our exploration and appraisal strategy of this prolific Block 58 in order to identify sufficient resources by year-end 2022 for a first oil development,” Kevin McLachlan, Senior Vice President, Exploration at TotalEnergies, said in a statement.

Suriname hopes to replicate Guyana’s success. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the Guyana-Suriname Basin could hold up to 32.6 billion barrels of undiscovered oil resources, underscoring the tremendous hydrocarbon potential that the countries share. It is estimated that Suriname’s offshore oil discoveries held recoverable oil resources of nearly 2 billion barrels as of the end of 2021.

Suriname’s neighbor, Guyana, became a major holder of oil and gas reserves in 2015 when ExxonMobil found oil in its waters in what turned out to be a block with resources estimated at 10 billion oil-equivalent barrels and counting. Now Guyana wants to capitalize on the large oil and gas discoveries over the past half-decade to build up an economy powered by its own energy resources.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

Bitcoin Miners Are Fighting Over Flared Gas

Editor OilPrice.com
Mon, February 21, 2022

Partnerships between oil producers and crypto miners are becoming more commonplace across the U.S. as bitcoin firms fight over flared gas. While bitcoin and other digital currency producers have struck up several deals with local American oil firms to repurpose their waste gas for mining, it’s only recently that oil majors have started to pay attention. With huge carbon-cutting potential through mutually beneficial partnerships, this could be a win-win for crypto and Big Oil.

Over the past couple of years, interest in repurposing waste gas for use in crypto mining has increased significantly. Oil companies are feeling mounting pressure from governments, international agencies, and environmental activists to reduce the quantity of greenhouse gas emissions they’re releasing into the atmosphere from their operations. Until now, potential solutions for carbon-cutting have been costly. Oil and gas firms have invested billions into carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies as well as seeking out less carbon-intensive oil opportunities. But then crypto companies came along and offered a possible alternative.

Gas flaring is a byproduct of fracked shale output that is thought to produce about 1 percent of the world's carbon emissions. This gas is flared because the is little profit in reusing it. Meanwhile, the energy needed to mine cryptocurrency is extremely high. In 2020, bitcoin required more energy than the whole of Switzerland for mining. So, when crypto companies reached out to oil firms to establish mines on oil sites and repurpose the gas, several firms jumped at the chance.

An increase in the number of oil-crypto partnerships has been seen in both the U.S. and Russia – the world’s biggest oil flarer. Even politicians in the U.S. are getting on board, with Texas Senator Ted Cruz encouraging partnerships as a means of securing energy infrastructure against harsh weather conditions that can lead to lethal energy cuts. Setting up these types of sites would allow energy to be shifted back to the grid as needed, particularly useful in times of natural disaster.

Now it appears that oil majors want a piece of the action as Conoco Phillips has started selling waste gas to bitcoin miners in North Dakota. It announced this month that it is currently running a pilot project, selling gas destined for burning to a third-party bitcoin processor to repurpose. Similar projects have seen a reduction of around 63% in CO2 emissions compared to flaring.

In 2020, Conoco Phillips announced its net-zero operational greenhouse gas emissions target for 2050, setting ambitious objectives for 2030. As part of this aim, it endorsed the World Bank Zero Routine Flaring by 2030 initiative. Through its Lower 48 methane reduction project Conoco has already implemented a combustion control strategy to make its flaring more efficient. And introducing new partnerships with crypto miners could take this one step further, helping the company to significantly reduce its carbon emissions from waste gas.

And we can already see those reaping the rewards from these innovative partnerships. In 2019, when oil-crypto partnerships were practically non-existent, two students in Texas established Giga Energy Solutions. They put a shipping container with thousands of bitcoin miners on an oil production site, diverting natural gas into generators to convert it into electricity, which in turn powers the miners.

Company co-founder Brent Whitehead explains, “Growing up, I always saw flares, just being in the oil and gas industry. I knew how wasteful it was… It’s a new way to not only lower emissions but to monetize gas.”

Giga is now expanding rapidly, having signed deals with over 20 oil and gas firms and expecting more to follow. In fact, in 2020 Giga achieved revenues of $4 million, with expected earnings of around $20 million by the end of 2022.

Similarly, 27-year-old Hunter Lowe set up Crusoe Energy with the same intention, spotting a gap in the market and seeing a way to reduce carbon emissions at the same time. Lowe set up a bitcoin mine at an oil site in North Dakota, which quickly profited from last year’s crypto boom. Encouraged by the reduction in carbon emissions, companies such as Valor Equity Partners, Bain Capital, and the Agnelli family's Exor invested $128 million in Crusoe last year, allowing it to expand its flare capture technology and increase the size from 40 to 100 units.

Just three years ago, many crypto innovators were laughed out of the room for suggesting to oil and gas firms that they would help them cut their carbon emissions and save money by repurposing waste gas for crypto mining. Digital currencies were simply too volatile to take this suggestion further. Fast-forward three years, several projects across the U.S. and other countries are already up and running, sending carbon emissions down and crypto profits up. Having seen the success of these projects, oil major Conoco Phillips is now running a pilot project that could lead the way for carbon capture through mutually beneficial partnerships.

By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com

Bitcoin – DeFi Dream Dead, 

Just Another Risk Asset: Man Institute

Aaryamann Shrivastava
Mon, February 21, 2022

Bitcoin brought in the future wave when it debuted back in 2009. Although it took the world about ten years to notice its actual value, today, cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology are becoming a part of some major financial institutions across the globe.

Still, at the same time losing the core values it was built upon.

What Is Bitcoin Today?

The Man Institute explained that the rising correlation of the king coin with pre-established investment institutions leads to the cryptocurrency turning into just another “rate sensitive risk asset.”

Bitcoin was created to allow people to control their own money and finance without being dependent upon the traditional financial system of banks.

And while that same dream led to the birth of multiple other similar assets, the present market conditions seem to be killing that dream.

Equities are usually the riskiest assets as their value is tied to distant cash flows. And up until 2019, the correlation between Bitcoin and the stock exchange NASDAQ was negative.

However, since then, this correlation has been rising. Standing at 0.51 at its peak in August 2020, the correlation came down significantly around March 2021 but shot back up soon. Right now, Bitcoin shares a correlation of 0.46 with NASDAQ.


Similarly, its correlation with Bitcoin-based exchange-traded funds has also risen. In a way, ETFs are also subjected to the same treatment as equities, and thus a high correlation with it indicates that Bitcoin is changing entirely as an asset class.


On the rising correlation, the report stated:

“This mirrors bitcoin’s journey along the Gartner hype cycle: from being an underground tech phenomenon, the flagship cryptocurrency is now a mainstream way for both institutional and retail investors to speculate. In our view, it is therefore unsurprising that it is becoming increasingly correlated with the very riskiest assets – equities (sic).”

Adding to the same, the Man Institute iterated:

“…the higher the correlations get, the more bitcoin seems to be another manifestation of a crucial facet of investing over the past decade: there is too much capital chasing too little genuine economic growth.”

How Is Bitcoin Today?

After five straight days of red candles, Bitcoin today looked somewhat green at press time. In the last few days, the king coin’s value has trickled down by over $6k (13.86%) to trade at $38,757.

The bearish crossover visible on the MACD that occurred three days ago is only gaining more strength as the bearishness continues to rise. This is not a good sign for Bitcoin since even the Parabolic SAR signals a downtrend.

If the indicators turn right, BTC could witness further price fall.

This article was originally posted on FX Empire

ATTEMPTED UNION BUSTING

Exxon Beaumont Union Accepts Deal After Nearly Ten-Month Lockout

Barbara Powell
Mon, February 21, 2022


(Bloomberg) -- Union members, who’ve been locked out of Exxon Mobil Corp.’s Beaumont refinery on the Texas Gulf Coast since May, accepted the company’s latest contract offer Monday, people familiar with the vote said.

Approval by the union means Exxon and workers will now negotiate a return-to-work agreement for union-represented employees, ending the nearly 10-month lockout. Temporary workers have been running the refinery since May 1. The approval comes four months after members of the local United Steelworkers union resoundingly turned down a previous deal to end the labor dispute.

The new local contract makes Martin Luther King Jr. a paid holiday and amends some language including the makeup of a workmen’s committee.

Approving a new worker agreement removes uncertainty about having an adequately trained labor force at a time when Exxon is working to expand the 369,000-barrel-a-day site by 250,000 barrels. The expansion will add a new crude unit that could process light, low-sulfur crude from the Permian Basin by 2023, making Beaumont the largest refinery in the U.S.

A six-year labor pact between the USW local and Exxon expired last February without a new collective bargaining agreement in place. The two sides continued to negotiate and the old contract at first remained in effect using 24-hour extensions. Exxon, which made it clear it wanted to control costs and have a flexible work agreement to maintain competitiveness, locked out the 650 union-represented members of USW Local 13-243 at the refinery and adjoining lubricant oil plant in May.

Texas oil refinery workers ratify Exxon labor contract offer

Erwin Seba
Mon, February 21, 2022

Exxon Mobil begins lockout of workers from Texas plant


By Erwin Seba

BEAUMONT, Texas (Reuters) -Union workers locked out of their jobs at a Texas oil refinery for nearly 10 months voted on Monday to accept an Exxon Mobil Corp contract offer, ceding to a key company demand that it have the right to determine plant assignments.

About 600 United Steelworkers union members at the 369,024 barrel-per-day (bpd) refinery and Mobil 1 motor oil plant were locked out May 1 to preclude a wildcat strike, Exxon has said. The Beaumont, Texas, facility has continued to run since with managers and temporary workers.


The contract allows Exxon to decide all assignments, an issue that led to a rejection vote in October. A quarter of assignments previously were determined by worker seniority. The contract also adds Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a paid holiday.

Exxon said it was "thrilled" by the vote, adding employees would return to work "as soon as safely possible." The contract was made effective from Feb. 1, 2021.

The six-year contract was approved by a vote of 214 to 133, according to USW International representative Bryan Gross.

"The membership decided to accept the offer after 10 months of a fight," Gross said. "The company started the lockout; they can end it at any time." USW local 13-243 intends to continue with an unfair labor practices complaint, Gross said. The USW has alleged Exxon imposed the lockout to force removal of the union.

Also to be decided is whether the USW will continue to represent the plant's hourly workers. The U.S. National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) oversaw a vote in November and December on removing the USW, a move sought by 30% of union members.

Before the Beaumont workers can return to work, the two sides must negotiate an agreement that sets rules for returning employees. Preliminary talks on the agreement began last week.

(Reporting by Erwin Seba in Beaumont, Texas; Editing by Shivani Singh)

Exclusive-HSBC targets 34% cut to emissions from oil and gas clients by 2030

Simon Jessop, Tommy Wilkes and Lawrence White
Mon, February 21, 2022

FILE PHOTO: The HSBC bank logo is seen at their offices in

 the Canary Wharf financial district in London

LONDON (Reuters) - HSBC aims to cut emissions associated with loans made to its oil and gas clients by 34% this decade, the bank's sustainability chief told Reuters, marking the first time that Britain's biggest lender has committed to such a target.

More than 100 banks have pledged to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050 and are under pressure to provide details on the deep shorter-term cuts to "financed emissions" that are needed if banks are to have any chance of meeting their goal.

"This is rewiring the way we make financing and investment decisions from here on in," Group Chief Sustainability Officer Celine Herweijer said of HSBC's 2030 targets.

HSBC is a major lender to corporate clients across Asia and some of the world's biggest oil and gas companies, and its plan is expected to set the tone for other banks in the region, most of which have yet to release targets.

HSBC said its oil and gas target was based on 'absolute' reductions rather than 'carbon intensity', which measures emissions per unit of energy or barrel of oil and gas produced, and so could see actual emissions rise.

Climate activists say intensity-based targets do not go far enough if the world is to keep global warming from rising beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels, which scientists deem crucial to prevent catastrophic climate change.

"There's no way that you can move to a net-zero economy by 2050 if you have intensity-based metrics in the energy sector," Herweijer told Reuters.

Among the biggest global banks, few have committed to absolute targets, although Citigroup last month vowed to reduce its energy-sector absolute emissions by 29% by 2030.

HSBC's new targets also include a plan to reduce by 75% the intensity of financed emissions for power and utility clients.

Herweijer said this target was intensity-based, rather than absolute, because electricity consumption globally would need to rise during the transition to a lower-carbon economy.

The bank's targets are aligned with the International Energy Agency's Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario, which Herweijer said was the hardest to meet but "doable".

HSBC said on Tuesday targets for the coal, aluminium, cement, iron, steel and transport sectors would follow in 2023.

BIGGEST CLIENTS

Around 100 large upstream and integrated companies are responsible for 90% of HSBC's oil and gas sector financed emissions, and the bank has given them an end of 2022 deadline to produce plans on how they intend to decarbonise.

The targets will cover so-called Scope 1 and 2 emissions, those linked to a company's own operations, and Scope 3 which are produced when customers use their products and which Herweijer said account for 80% of their emissions.

While focused on helping clients to plan, those who did not risked losing access to finance, Herweijer said, adding that a major challenge is the variability in emission disclosures.

"There's a big diversification on how different companies are measuring and reporting, if at all, on Scope 3, and the extent of that," she said.

Like most banks, HSBC's targets exclude capital markets activity such as underwriting bonds and share placements, although this would change as standard accounting for 'facilitated emissions' becomes available.

While that may not happen until later this year, Herweijer said HSBC was not "ignoring capital markets" and for future deals was "thinking about the financed emissions of them as part of our decision making".

(Editing by Alexander Smith)

Duterte warns unvaccinated people:

 ‘If you die, good riddance’
By: Daphne Galvez - Reporter / @DYGalvezINQ
INQUIRER.net / 10:55 PM February 07, 2022


President Rodrigo Duterte in his “Talk to the People” on Jan. 24, 2022. (File phot from a PCOO live stream)

MANILA, Philippines — “I’m warning you. Don’t be complacent. If you die, and you’re not vaccinated, I will tell you: Good riddance,’” President Rodrigo Duterte, speaking in a mix of English and Filipino, said in his weekly taped address, “Talk to the People,” that aired late on Monday.

He addressed the warning to those who refuse to get vaccinated as he stressed the Philippines was not yet “over the hump” in its battle against COVID-19.

“If you don’t want it [vaccination], you want to die. OK then. Walk around, and if you get contaminated, you will feel very, very sorry for yourself and your family,” Duterte added.

He encouraged parents to get their children vaccinated as the government had approved the vaccination of kids aged 5 to 11.

The government is set to hold another national vaccination drive on Feb. 10 and 11, this one for at least six million individuals, including children aged 5 to 11 years.

Qatar’s World Cup turf needs chilled stadiums, desalinated water to thrive

on February 21, 2022
By Sonia Ulebor


Winter will come early to soccer stadiums in baking-hot Qatar when groundskeepers blast chilled air starting in September to ensure pitch turf thrives in the desert country for the World Cup.

Mimicking winter in the Gulf state, where temperatures can swelter at 40 Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) in the fall, is just one trick experts have introduced over the last 14 years to improve turf quality and increase the number of soccer pitches.

An elite corps of groundskeepers now maintains 144 green, lush fields — eight stadium pitches and 136 training grounds. They blast chilled air through nozzles directly at the turf, tending luxuriant patches of green dotted amid the dun or grey of Qatar’s desert and concrete.

“The weather condition and the climate together with the level of performance criteria we have set for ourselves makes it extremely challenging to develop the product we need. But we succeeded,” said Haitham Al Shareef, a Sudanese civil engineer who has worked on Qatar’s pitches since 2007.

Preparing turf for the World Cup, being held for the first time in the Middle East, is environmentally costly.

Qatar flies in 140 tonnes of grass seed annually from the United States on climate-controlled aircraft, Al Shareef said, and pitches are watered with desalinated seawater, in an energy-intensive process burning the country’s wealth of natural gas.

Each pitch requires 10,000 litres of desalinated water daily in winter and 50,000 litres in the summer, he added.

WEAR AND TEAR

The 28-day event begins in November at perhaps the most challenging time of year for durable turf, as Qatar‘s weather transitions from searing summer to mild winter.

Some grass varieties turn dormant as temperatures rise and winter ryegrass takes root, making adequate growth a challenge between matches.

“When you have wear and tear, you want the grass to keep growing to recover,” Al Shareef said. “If you seed the pitch too early, you will have germination, but the winter grass will not really grow, it will actually die because it’s too warm.”

So groundskeepers trigger winter in September, seeding pitches with ryegrass in a practice that has over the last three years yielded durable pitches.

Qatar has also countered the risk of fungus and disease outbreaks with a maintenance regime involving chemical cocktails, grass mowers that vacuum debris and an underground system that sucks excess moisture, said a UEFA pitch consultant.

“You’re one disease outbreak from failure,” said consultant Dean Gilasbey, who has trained groundskeepers around the world.

Qatar says it is is prepared for any turf emergency.

A 425,000 sq metre reserve of grass – some 40 soccer pitches worth – is growing at a farm north of Doha.

It can be harvested, trucked to a stadium and layed down ready for play in as little as eight hours, said Mohamed Al Atwaan, who worked as a project manager on Stadium 974.

Organisers have declined to say how much the turf programme has cost Qatar, a wealthy gas exporter that spent billions on infrastructure over the last decade to prepare for the event.


(Reporting and writing by Andrew Mills; Editing by Ghaida Ghantous, John Stonestreet, William Maclean)

French Communist presidential candidate Roussel fights back against fake jobs claims

Tracy MCNICOLL - Yesterday 1

France 24


French Communist Party presidential candidate Fabien Roussel fought back on Monday after allegations he was paid in public funds for five years for a fictitious job.

Investigative news site Mediapart on Sunday cast doubt on the veracity of Roussel's employment as a parliamentary assistant from 2009 and 2014, saying the Communist former journalist didn't work out of National Assembly lawmaker Jean-Jacques Candelier's constituency office in northern France and citing associates of the deputy who couldn't describe any work Roussel had carried out in the role.

Mediapart said Roussel had not provided any document, e-mail or text message proving he had completed work under Candelier despite repeated requests in the 10 days before the muckraking website published the story on Sunday.

On Monday, the Communist candidate said he had "the documents" that will show he did the work. "I worked for five years with Candelier, with the colleagues I had alongside him. They and Jean-Jacques can bear witness to the work we did together," Roussel told Europe 1 of his stint working for the former National Assembly deputy.

"I was with him, and without him, to keep tabs on the conflict in the Douai area, his area," Roussel responded to the accusations on Monday. "I have the working documents that I put together with him on these topics, with the trade unionists," he continued. "I will show them."

Candelier, for his part, said in a statement he was "surprised and indignant" over the Mediapart allegations, calling Roussel a "precious and efficient associate, on the ground, constantly in touch with a number of union players, elected officials and residents", with "a very astute knowledge of the economic and social situation" and "tight connections with many players in the area".

Roussel is the first French Communist Party nominee to join the race for the French presidency since 2007. The Communist gathered the 500 sponsorships needed from electoral officials across the country well ahead of schedule and applied to join the official presidential ballot over the weekend, he said.

Campaigning on a pledge of "Happy Days for France", Roussel is also one of the very few of a deep glut of left-wing presidential candidates with anything to smile about in the polls ahead of the election's first round on April 10. Indeed, Roussel's party linked the allegations levied by Mediapart to his relative momentum in the race.

French Communist Party spokeswoman Cécile Cukierman noted that "today, the law doesn't define a typical job description, the traceability of parliamentary assistants' work". She added that Roussel's "choice" not to respond to Médiapart's requests "doesn't make him guilty".

"Would we be talking so much about this if he had stayed at 1.5 percent in the polls?" Cukierman asked Agence France Presse. Roussel polled at 5 percent, even with Greens candidate Yannick Jadot and ahead of Socialist Party nominee Anne Hidalgo (3 percent), in a survey released by the Opinionway firm on Friday.

"With only a month and a half to go before the first round, a thing like that comes out, I tell myself 'that's the game'," Roussel told Europe 1 on Monday.

"They made their enquiries by interviewing people who are at war with me. I don't have only friends, that's normal... But I do have dozens of people who could say what we did together, the battles that we even won together with Candelier," Roussel insisted.

The Communist challenged details in the Mediapart story, including his alleged €3,000 salary. "I started at €2,460 net, I finished at €2,700," he said.

Fake jobs was a notorious watchword of the previous French presidential race. The 2017 campaign was rocked by a fake-jobs scandal after revelations published by muckraking weekly Le Canard Enchaîné about conservative candidate François Fillon and his wife, Penelope. Once tipped to win the race, Fillon ultimately fell short of the run-off round, behind the centrist newcomer Emmanuel Macron and far-right leader Marine Le Pen. Fillon, a former prime minister, was later convicted alongside his wife and handed a five-year sentence. A verdict on Fillon's appeal is due in May.

(With AFP)

Tunisian NGOs triumph in David-vs-Goliath toxic waste battle with Italy

Sophie GORMAN - Yesterday 

France 24

Tunisia was victorious this weekend in a protracted David versus Goliath rubbish battle against Italy. On Saturday, a consignment of 7,900 tonnes of toxic waste illegally sent by Italy to Tunisia was sent back where it came from after an almost two-year legal wrangle spearheaded by small local environmental NGOs.

With its extensive white sandy beaches, sparkling turquoise sea, unbroken sunshine and lavish resorts, the pretty Tunisian seaside city of Sousse is best known as a holiday destination. But it has recently become famous for a much smellier reason: Since 2020, more than 200 big shipping containers filled with 7,900 tonnes of Italian toxic waste have been stuck in limbo in a port warehouse.

Between the end of May and the beginning of July 2020, 282 containers were exported by Italian company Sviluppo Risorse Ambientali (SRA) from the port of Salerno, in Italy’s Campania region, to this Tunisian port city. The Tunisian company importing them, Soreplast, declared to customs that they contained scrap plastic left over from manufacturing processes, which Soreplast said it would then recycle. But they were revealed to instead contain household and hospital waste, which is legally prohibited from being imported in Tunisia.

The Italian company SRA was established in 2008 through the sale of a branch of another company, Fond.Eco. Both companies ended up at the centre of a judicial investigation in 2016 conducted by Salerno's Anti-Mafia Investigation Directorate. Tommaso Palmieri, who runs both companies, was accused of leading an organisation that recycled bulk waste. SRA is also one of the companies included in an Italian parliamentary report on the link between the waste industry and organised crime.
€5 million contract

The containers were the first shipment of a €5 million contract to dispose of 120,000 tonnes of Italian waste in Tunisian landfills. Soreplast was being paid €48 per tonne of waste.

213 of the containers were stored at the port in Sousse, the remaining 69 were sent to a warehouse outside the city. The containers and their contents rotted away in these warehouses for over a year until they were officially seized by the Tunisian government last July. They ­– and their pungent odours – were to remain in place, however, for another seven months.

On December 28, 2021, Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs Luigi di Maio went to the capital Tunis for talks with President Kais Saied, in particular to address this thorny issue. At the end of this meeting, the Tunisian presidency published a Facebook statement, stressing "the need to accelerate the repatriation of the waste as soon as possible".

An agreement was finally signed on February 11 to return the rubbish to Italy. The Tunisian ministry of environment said in a statement posted after the meeting on its Facebook page that "the signing of this agreement is part of the continuity of the consultation process between the two countries, which began in 2020". The statement continued: "Among other things, this agreement provides for the immediate return of 213 containers in the first instance, out of a total of 282 containers, after 69 of them were involved in a fire."

The ministry added that consultations are continuing with regard to finalising the return of the remaining waste after containers were damaged by a fire, which broke out in the importers' warehouse in the governorate of Sousse. They did not elaborate on the state of the containers post-fire or when any subsequent transfer might take place.
‘Important victory’

Last Friday, the first 213 containers were loaded on a Turkish ship, chartered by the Italian authorities. The ship left Sousse at 8pm local time on Saturday.

Only a handful of people were invited to watch from the docks, including a number of politicians, one local television network and members of one voluntary network, Réseau Tunisie Vert, an NGO that had fought hard for this waste to be sent back to Italy.

“It was a very symbolic moment, watching them load up the boat and seeing it sail away into the night, we couldn’t believe it was finally happening,” said Nidhal Attai, member of the network and the co-ordinator of the environmental programme at the Heinrich Boll Foundation in Tunisia, speaking with FRANCE 24.

“This is a very important victory for Tunisian civil society. It was a very different kind of environmental battle than we are used to fighting, so this result will definitely boost the courage and the will of the people to take on issues like this.”
Italy’s dustbin

When news about the waste mountain mouldering at the port first emerged in local media, it provoked outrage from the population and local NGOs, who said they refused to allow their country to become Italy's dustbin.

“This type of trade is immoral and environmentally destructive; it is not acceptable to import waste from Italy to Tunisia for landfilling. Landfilling of waste can generate toxic leaching and contribute to the degradation of human health and the environment,” said Mohammed Tazrout, campaigner for Greenpeace Middle-East and North Africa, in a joint statement published by a number of NGOs.

Having developed into something of a David versus Goliath battle over the last two years, the outcome was the result of a united protest from a number of local and international NGOs, who kept constant pressure on the Tunisian government until they finally agreed a method with the Italian government to send back most of the containers.

“We met with three successive government ministers to push them into this result. We wrote to the president twice, with no reaction, and we reached out to international forces like the United Nations,” said Attai. “It was a major campaign.”

On December 21 2020, the Tunisian Minister of the Environment Mustapha Larou was arrested and about 25 officials - a dozen of whom were also arrested - were charged. The list of suspects also includes the name of Larou's head of his cabinet, the directors of the National Waste Management Agency and the Environmental Protection Agency, customs officials and the laboratory responsible for analysing waste from abroad. It also includes Beya Ben Abdelbaki, the Tunisian consul in Naples. One person missing from the list – and indeed Tunisia – is the owner of Soreplast, who has fled abroad.

“We have been pushing the ministry for the environment for more transparency for almost two years to share the information they have, but they held back until now,” said Attai. “There has been a complete lack of transparency about how the deal came about so far. People have been arrested and are waiting for their trials, but even when that is over, we don’t know if we will learn how this deal happened in the first place.”
Trafficking waste to Africa

In 1991, then Chief Economist of the World Bank Lawrence Summers signed a memo that defended the decades-old practice of trafficking waste from developed countries in the global north – where strict environmental regulations make its disposal prohibitively expensive – to less developed countries.

“I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that,” Summers’ controversial memo read. Summers later claimed he was being “sarcastic” in this section.

Outrage followed its publication, but the scandal did serve to raise the profile of one relatively recent environmental treaty, the 1989 Basel Convention on the control of hazardous waste, while also providing the impetus for the subsequent 1998 Bamako Convention These treaties were created to regulate the transit of toxic waste across borders. Bamako was specifically designed to ban the import of any waste that cannot be recycled to Africa. This Tunisia deal would appear to be in direct breach of that.

All of Tunisia's waste is managed in landfills. The country's largest, in Borj Chakir on the outskirts of the capital Tunis, takes in an estimated 3,000 tonnes of waste every day, a figure that is considerably more than the 44 tonnes per day permitted in EU landfills. Plastic bags are strewn everywhere and the waste has polluted nearby water sources.

“This Italian deal shows how our environment is another sector that is directly affected by corruption and bad governance,” said Attai. “We don’t talk about it enough as it is eclipsed by other priorities such as the economy. But what would all this waste do to our environment, to our land, if it was buried in our soil?”

“This was just the first wave of containers and there would have been many others if we hadn’t caused such protest. This scandal really highlights, at both a national and even international level, the current limitations of recycling. It will not be able to put an end to the problems of waste management," Attai said.

"We need to transform the way we treat domestic waste; we can’t simply bury it all in landfill sites.”