PUT IT ON LIFEBOATS

MIT Engineers Created a Portable Device that Zaps Seawater to Make Drinking Water

Tony Ho Tran
Fri, April 29, 2022

Karen Kasmauski

A team of scientists at MIT have created a device that transforms brackish seawater into clean drinking water at the push of a button—and can be especially helpful for people living in seaside places like California who are dealing with climate change-fueled droughts.

The new desalination device (a term used to describe a machine that can remove salt from seawater) is roughly the size of a suitcase, weighs less than 10 kilograms, and uses less energy than a cell phone charger, according to a paper published on April 14 in the journal Environmental Science and Technology. At a push of a button, can automatically create potable drinking water that exceeds the World Health Organization’s water quality standards.

Sunlight Might Be the Key to Turning Our Oceans Into Drinkable Water

“Even a kindergarten student can carry and use the desalination unit,” Junghyo Yoon, a research scientist in the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT and co-author of the paper, told The Daily Beast. “[Ease of use] was one of the main motivations of creating the device.”

The device doesn’t rely on any filters like traditional desalination machines. Instead, it zaps the water with electric currents to remove minerals such as salt particles from the water. Due to its portability and the lack of filters that need to be replaced, it has a wide range of applications including being sent to seaside communities, climate catastrophe refugees, or even doomsday preppers, according to Yoon.

“My team and I have been working on desalination technology for more than ten years now,” Jongyoon Han, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science and of biological engineering at MIT and lead author of the paper, told The Daily Beast. “This particular technology went through many different iterations and finally we reached a milestone of a system that can be demonstrated.”

Yoon’s and Han’s new device solves a few issues that plague most commercially-available desalination machines. For one, pushing water via pumps through filters is fairly energy intensive so it’s difficult to create a smaller, portable version of it. Instead, the MIT team’s device relies on a process called ion concentration polarization (ICP), which utilizes an electric field sent through membranes above and below a channel of water. The field repels charged particles and contaminants into a separate channel of water that is discarded. This allows clean, drinkable water to be produced. “We apply an electric field in the water flow and the electricity helps remove the particles like salt in the water,” Yoon explained. “That’s the basic principle of the device’s desalination process.”

The researchers now want to build off of their device in order to improve its production rate and usability. After all, the more water that the device can make at a time, the more people will be able to access potable and safe drinking water. To that end, Yoon plans to launch a startup in the coming years in order to create a viable, commercial desalination device using the ICP technology with the support of MIT.

However, Han said he has broader and more “long-term goals” for his desalination efforts. Specifically, he wants to take a more critical look at reverse osmosis (RO), a process of desalination in which salt water is pushed through a membrane or filter resulting in clean water. “That achieves good enough energy efficiency, but it has significant maintenance requirements and it only operates on a large scale, such as a big plant,” Han said, adding that it’s an inefficient process for places in the world such as California where “the water demand is always fluctuating” and currently, is in dire need of clean, potable water.

The user-friendly unit, which weighs less than 10 kilograms and does not require the use of filters, can be powered by a small, portable solar panel.
M. Scott Brauer

“That flux doesn’t work well with a rigid model of desalination that’s employed by an RO plant,” he said. “So I’m thinking about how we can apply more flexible desalination processes, like ICP. That’s a really long-term direction I’m interested in.”

He also explained that he wants to tackle challenges beyond desalination including detecting and removing contaminants in water such as heavy metals and disease-causing pathogens like viruses and bacteria.

“Most of these contaminants are open charge, so technically speaking we have the opportunity to remove a broad spectrum of contaminants such as lead and bacteria,” Han said. “In the future, we want to engineer our system to remove industrial contaminants. Those prospects are very exciting.”

Soviet identity is gone forever, but Putin doesn’t get it

Fri, April 29, 2022

Mural in Belgrad that depicts Putin with his eyes covered

In the summer of 2003, I was working at a paper mill in Kyiv, trying to save up for a trip to Odesa – something my student allowance from the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy was quite insufficient for.

Strange things were afoot around my workplace. A car brings in a whole stack of works by Soviet ideologues, to be mulched and made into napkins and toilet paper. Next thing you know – the same car delivers Aristotle’s Politics, in a bright orange cover, in mint condition.

Read also: Russia's genocide handbook

A grant, perhaps, funded the printing of his work – which was then promptly recycled.

Some of my coworkers were veterans of the Soviet military operation in Angola of the 1970s and 1980s. Their lockers are plastered with Polish erotica. They smoke unfiltered cigarettes. There’s no end to them telling me about Angola, as if they think it’s absolutely essential to educate me on the subject.

Besides the escapades involving Portugese comfort women – I was never clear whether these accounts were true, or a case of soldiers spinning tales – they would stress how vital it is to understand one’s identity during a war. Being a philosophy student, those stories grabbed my attention.

It’s challenging to fight, saddled with the artificial identity as prescribed by your Soviet passport, be it in Angola, Afghanistan, or Korea. When people in the streets ask who you are, “a Soviet citizen” is not a satisfactory answer. They treat you as a Russian, while you were conscripted by an enlistment office in Kyiv’s Leningrad district, in 1979.

A little-known fact: the military bridge engineers branch of Kyiv’s military district played an important role in the Soviet operation in Afghanistan. These regiments were designed to erect pontoon crossings over Dnipro, should the Red Army have to retreat to the river’s left bank during a potential NATO invasion of the Soviet Union.

Read also: How dangerous are Macron's words about the 'brotherhood' of Russians and Ukrainians

Young guys, born in Kyiv in the 1960s and early 1970s, were dressed in Soviet naval uniforms, and deployed to Afghanistan. Far from bridging rivers, they were, armed with automatic rifles, driving around the central Asian country atop BMP-1s – a Soviet IFV of rather poor design. The exceptionally thin armor plating of BMP-1 made these soldiers reluctant to get inside the vehicles. After all, the Mujahedeen were armed with U.S.-made Stingers.

These were the guys who returned to Kyiv in late 1980s and even 1990s. They were still wearing their bridge engineer uniforms, despite never erecting a single pontoon crossing for the military. Instead, they learned that there is no such thing as a Soviet identity. In Afghanistan, they were treated as Russians. They could never explain to the locals that they actually came to fight from Kyiv, from Ukraine.

In the 1980s, the ideology department of the KGB worked hard to distill and propagate the foundations of Soviet identity. There were no attempts to enforce it in the Central Asian Soviet republics like Uzbekistan or Kazakhstan. The concept was meant chiefly for the Baltics, Ukraine, and republics in the Caucasus.

Incidentally, these efforts were studied by Fiona Hill, former Russia adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump.

Each of those regions has its own history of resisting the Soviet imperial identity. In Georgia, people did it through folklore. Lithuania had the Forest Brothers movement that resisted the Soviet occupation of the country in the 1940s and 1950s – not unlike the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UIA). UIA insurgents were still being executed in the 1980s, and the Ukrainian rejection of all things Soviet took the form of the People’s Movement (Narodniy Rukh) political party, founded in 1990.

Now, Putin and his advisers are going back to all this work the KGB did in the 1980s. Once again, they are attempting to project and instill a Soviet, imperial, and at times even Russian identity in Ukraine. This is what unfortunate Ukrainians, stuck in Moscow-occupied Kherson or Izyum, are dealing with right now.

But Putin is missing a critical point: it’s impossible to revive and restore the Soviet identity. After all, one cannot restore something that never existed in the first place, even if Russia’s annual VE day military parades on May 9 are draped in Soviet flags. Identity is far more complex than a piece of crimson fabric.

It also goes beyond one’s passport – another thing Moscow clearly misses, given their efforts to issue Russian passports to Ukrainians in annexed Crimea and Donbas. Identity is rooted, first and foremost, in history and community, social belonging.

Ukrainians could never feel at home sharing a culture with people from Novokuznetsk, Voronezh, Yakutsk, or Orel. Plainly speaking, Ukrainians are not Russians – they never have been, and never will be. You could force a Ukrainian to take your passport or vote in a sham referendum at gunpoint, but they will never think of themselves as one of Russia’s own.

The Russian army can – and does – block humanitarian shipments of German baby food and Polish beef to Kherson, supplanting those with dreary canned food from Krasnodar. But it doesn’t mean that, by taking Krasnodar tins, people in Kherson are donning Russian or Soviet identity. Food is a basic human need and takes priority over politics.

Read also: Ukraine's MFA condemns Macron's statement calling Russians and Ukrainians ‘brothers’

The very concept of Soviet identity emerged late into Leonid Brezhnev’s tenure at the Soviet Union’s helm. The very same Brezhnev, who was almost entirely plated in Soviet medals and awards, and who famously ignored news media, being well-aware of how devoid of truth they are.

That period was the peak of Soviet consumer culture. Large department stores in Moscow and Leningrad offered citizens everything they needed for a comfortable life: chandeliers, mirrors, couches, clothes, shoes, wine glasses – even though the latter would be of little use during the forthcoming alcohol prohibition, enacted by Mikhail Gorbachev.

Sitting in their offices in Moscow’s Lubyanka, surrounded by bookshops and promenades, the KGB decided that the flourishing consumer culture in the capital meant they can finally officially enforce the “Soviet mentality” as identity of Soviet citizens. It was an unwieldy, creaking, philosophically flawed structure of a concept, that was difficult to articulate in the Pravda newspaper. It made sense only in the Politburo’s classified documents.

Meanwhile in Kyiv, this consumer culture was nowhere to be seen. When going to school here in 1989, one was most likely to see empty shelves in the nearby grocery store. There was plenty of bread to go around, but meat and dairy – not so much. People would queue for canned food when it became available, sporadically. Greengrocers near me were selling pickles, as well as pickled tomatoes and watermelons in baby bathtubs.

Having spent my early childhood in well-off Finland, I was surprised by the empty shelves in Kyiv’s shops – in stark contrast to the abundance of goods in Helsinki’s malls. It seemed bizarre that there was nowhere to buy bananas, pineapples, or yoghurt in Kyiv, astonishing to see people queue for ghastly-looking preserved meat in mason jars. Same goes for observing people touch and pinch bread on sale, checking if it’s freshly-made, and then leave without buying the loaves they had sunk their fingers into.

Read also: Kyiv mayor says Russia seeks to restore the Soviet Union

The Soviet identity was never accepted by people in Kyiv because it was never associated with a prosperous consumer culture. The city wasn’t starving, of course – street marketplaces were full of pork, cheese, and veggies – but there weren’t enough TV sets or cars to go around. Not to mention PCs and VCRs that were the norm in 1980s Finland, which residents of Kyiv couldn’t even dream of. My peers were stunned to learn I had a computer and a VCR at home.

It's quite impossible to construct an identity on the basis of poverty and lack of infrastructure. That’s what Putin doesn’t get.

Like any other Russian with a post-Soviet mentality and a host of decrepit communist notions, Putin lives in a world of ideas. Ideas of imperial glory, dominion, and monopoly on political power. He doesn’t understand that the sorry state of a Novocherkassk hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic is much better testament to his regime than the price of Gazprom’s shares, even if they trade at the London Stock Exchange.

He decided that a sophisticated political strategy matters to ordinary people more than their ability to afford a vacation in Italy or a low-interest mortgage. I’m not even sure how Putin sees the Russification of Kherson, when a Ukrainian passport allows its residents to spend a weekend in Prague. Russian passports and citizenship promise little more than sitting at home, watching ever more depressing TV programming.

The Soviet Union was bureaucratically-enforced poverty and suppression of civil liberties. Both of those pillars remain very much intact in Putin’s Russia. And yet the Russian dictator decided he could dictate how Ukrainians are to live in their own country and enforce Russia’s reign upon them. This reign is entirely based on what might incur the wrath of the ruler in the Kremlin.

I spoke with people in Crimea who stayed thereafter 2014. Setting aside their deeply personal, tragic stories, even adapting to Russian laws, when it came to private property rights, was utter hell. Endless queues at government offices, bribery, callous bureaucrats – that’s what people in Crimea had to deal with, just to properly register their apartments in Katrsyvel, Kostropol, or Symeiz with the state.

These are the chimeras that followed in the wake of Russia’s army, however welcomed it might have been by the pro-Russian population of Crimea. Ukraine is far from perfect, but at least its governance and laws are aligned with EU norms, and many procedures have been digitalized. There’s no need to stand in long queues – most documents, licenses and permits can be obtained online via the e-governance app Diya.

Read also: ‘Russia wants to drag Ukraine back to the USSR,’ says US chargé d'affaires in Ukraine

The quality-of-life Putin would bring to Ukraine is not far from the one unrecognized “republic” of Transnistria, in Moldova. The simple rule of wild, post-Soviet capitalism –money trumps all – applies there. There’s no rule of law, no norms of any kind, no liberty. There’s only money, dirty capital that has no regard at all for decent people with European ethics.

Ukraine doesn’t want to become like Transnistria. Not a single Ukrainian city would opt for that. Putin has nothing to offer Ukraine, besides violence against its citizens. That’s why his notion of a shared identity is absurd.

The New Voice of Ukraine

RIOTS A RESULT OF PROVOCATION
Swedish PM says integration of immigrants has failed, fueled gang crime

SOCIAL DEMOCRATS GO RIGHT

FILE PHOTO: Clashes with police in Malmo

Thu, April 28, 2022,

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Sweden has failed to integrate the vast numbers of immigrants it has taken in over the past two decades, leading to parallel societies and gang violence, Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson said on Thursday, as she launched a series of initiatives to combat organised crime.

ISLAMOPHOBIA DIRECTED AT THE VICTIMS OF WHITE VIOLENCE & INTOLERANCE

Many Swedes were shocked earlier this month after violent riots left more than 100 police injured. The violence erupted after a Swedish-Danish politician burned the Quran at a rally and sought to hold more in several immigrant-dominated neighborhoods.

Andersson blamed criminals and said both Islamism and right-wing extremism had been allowed to fester in Sweden, in unusually frank and self-critical comments.

"Segregation has been allowed to go so far that we have parallel societies in Sweden. We live in the same country but in completely different realities," Andersson told a news conference.

The number of people in Sweden born abroad has doubled in the last two decades to 2 million, or a fifth of the population. Andersson's Social Democrats have been in power for 28 of the last 40 years, including the last eight.

Andersson said she wanted to introduce local youth crime boards where social services and police could collaborate. She also proposed tools to make sure that youths stayed in schools and off the streets without the consent of parents.

"Integration has been too poor at the same time as we have had a large immigration. Society has been too weak, resources for the police and social services have been too weak," she said.

Sweden, which holds a general election later this year, has radically tightened its immigration policies since taking in more people per capita than any other European Union country during the migration crisis in 2015. It now has one of the bloc's most restrictive policies.

Human rights organisation Amnesty International has been critical of Sweden's tightening of policies, claiming it is causing human suffering and making integration even harder for immigrants.

(Reporting by Johan Ahlander; Editing by Tomasz Janowski)

Swedish PM rejects referendum on possible NATO membership

Thu, April 28, 2022,

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Sweden's government does not plan to hold a referendum if its parliament decides to proceed with an application for NATO membership, Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson said on Friday.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has forced both Sweden and Finland to review long held beliefs that military neutrality is the best means of ensuring national security, with both countries expected to make a decision in the coming few weeks.

Andersson said that a referendum was a "bad idea".

"I don't think it is an issue that is suitable for a referendum," she told reporters.

"There is a lot of information about national security that is confidential, so there are important issues in such a referendum that cannot be discussed and important facts that cannot be put on the table."

Sweden's parliament is reviewing security policy with a report expected in mid-May. Separately, Andersson's own party, the Social Democrats, are looking at whether to drop their objections to NATO membership.

With a majority in parliament backing membership, the ruling Social Democrats are seen as the biggest hurdle to Sweden applying to join the 30-nation alliance.

The leader of the Moderates, the biggest opposition party, has also rejected calls for a referendum on the issue.

"Voters ... are not naive about Russia," Ulf Kristersson told daily Aftonbladet earlier this week in a debate with Left Party leader Nooshi Dadgostar. "It's very clear that Swedish voters have understood what happened on 24 February and have drawn their conclusions."

Dadgostar, whose party opposes NATO membership, told Aftonbladet that Swedes should get a say in the decision.

"This .. has to go back to the voters, there has to be very strong democratic support in this question," she said.

Sweden holds a general election in September.

An opinion poll by Demoskop in daily Aftonbladet published on April 20 showed 57% of Swedes in favour of joining NATO, up from 51% in March.

(Reporting by Johan Ahlander; Editing by Tomasz Janowski)

NASA's Mars helicopter discovers 'alien' wreckage on the Red Planet



Zachary Rosenthal
Fri, April 29, 2022

On a routine mission to take aerial photographs of the Red Planet, the Mars helicopter Ingenuity captured something unusual.

In one of its photographs, scientists could see what looked like a landing capsule, a supersonic parachute, and other debris scattered across the Martian landscape. All the evidence pointed to the wreckage being from some sort of spacecraft, and as it turns out, the evidence was right.

"Technically, this *is* the wreckage of a flying saucer that crashed on Mars that belongs to aliens," Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, tweeted.


A photo from Ingenuity showing the mysterious wreckage on Mars. 

(NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory)

In this case, though, humans are the aliens. The wreckage was found to be from another Martian spacecraft; it is a part that detached during the landing of the Perseverance rover back in February 2021.

The photos of the wreckage, while fascinating on their own merit, will actually help scientists plan more landings on the surface of Mars in the future.

According to NASA, Martian landings are "fast-paced and stressful". A vehicle entering Mars' atmosphere can spiral into the planet at nearly 12,500 mph and wrestle with high temperatures and intense gravitational forces. Being able to study the wreckage that remains might allow scientists to make changes that allow for smoother landings in the future.

"Every time we're airborne, Ingenuity covers new ground and offers a perspective no previous planetary mission could achieve," Teddy Tzanetos, Ingenuity's team lead at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, said.

Perseverance was launched on July 30, 2020, traveling more than 290 million miles, with tiny 4-pound Ingenuity riding along as an unexpected companion. Ingenuity and Perseverance both landed on Mars on Feb. 18, 2021, exactly 203 days later.


Concept art of NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter flying on the Red Planet while the Perseverance rover also works nearby. (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory)

Ingenuity, which went from an improbable idea to Perseverance's spaceflight buddy, has proved that a helicopter-style rover can work. When Ingenuity made its first flight on April 19, 2021, it became the first human-made craft to ever fly on another planet.

There were concerns that Ingenuity wouldn't be able to make it off the ground. Mars' atmospheric volume is much thinner than Earth's, coming in at an atmospheric volume of less than 1% of our planet's, according to the European Space Agency, making it unclear if a helicopter could take off.

But take off Ingenuity did, and multiple times too. The photos were taken on Ingenuity's 26th flight on the Red Planet. During that flight, the helicopter traveled for 159-seconds and covered 1,181 feet of distance, according to NASA. All told, the marvel of modern engineering has traveled over 3.9 miles in nearly 40 minutes aloft, with plenty of flights still to go.

United Methodist bishops acknowledge breakup is imminent


A gay pride rainbow flag flies along with the U.S. flag in front of the Asbury United Methodist Church in Prairie Village, Kan., on April 19, 2019. The United Methodist Church's Council of Bishops, ending a five-day meeting on Friday, April 29, 2022, acknowledged the inevitable breakup of their denomination, which will gain momentum during the weekend with the launch of a global movement led by theologically conservative Methodists. 

(AP Photo/Charlie Riedel) 


HOLLY MEYER and DAVID CRARY
Fri, April 29, 2022
The United Methodist Church’s Council of Bishops, ending a five-day meeting Friday, acknowledged the inevitable breakup of their denomination – a schism that will widen this weekend with the launch of a global movement led by theologically conservative Methodists.

The breakaway denomination, called the Global Methodist Church, will officially exist as of Sunday. Its leaders have been exasperated by liberal churches’ continued defiance of UMC bans on same-sex marriage and the ordination of openly gay clergy.

Bishop Thomas Bickerton, who became the Council of Bishops’ new president Friday, described the launch of the new movement as a “sad and sobering reality.” Bickerton said he regrets any departure from the UMC and values the denomination’s diversity of thought.

“There is no perfect church,” he said. “The constant fighting, the vitriolic rhetoric, the punitive behaviors have no place in how we preserve and promote our witness as Christian believers.”


He said he prays the infighting will stop and the UMC will rediscover its mission to make disciples for Christ. He urged the UMC, even as it suffers defections, to think of May 1 as its launch day as well.

“We are the United Methodist Church not interested in continuing sexism, racism, homophobia, irrelevancy and decline,” he said. “What we are interested in is a discovery of what God has in mind for us on the horizon as the next expression of who we are as United Methodists.”

Bickerton, who heads the UMC’s New York City region, succeeded Louisiana-based Cynthia Fierro Harvey as president of the bishops’ council.

Harvey acknowledged the inevitable splintering of the denomination when she preached April 25 during her final address as the Council of Bishops president, “I also realize that it might be time to bless and send our sisters and brothers who cannot remain under the big tent.”

A leader of the breakaway movement indicated Sunday’s launch would take place with little fanfare.

“This is the date that we can start receiving churches as they leave the United Methodist Church, and that’s going to occur over a considerable amount of time,” said the Rev. Keith Boyette, chairman of the new denomination’s Transitional Leadership Council and a United Methodist minister in Virginia. “It’ll be more of a rolling celebration.”

Its transitional doctrine includes a belief that marriage is between one man and one woman, and clergy must adhere to it – a core point of division in the UMC for decades.

Boyette said he expects some churches and pastors to announce Sunday they are joining the Global Methodist Church. He will be among them.

“On May 1, I will no longer be a member of the United Methodist Church,” said Boyette, who has already been approved – effective Sunday -- as a clergyperson in the new denomination.

It is easier for clergy to leave the UMC than an entire church, which has to follow a layered process. As a result, Boyette expects the ranks of the Global Methodist Church will grow over time, noting that some who want to join will wait until after the UMC's 2024 General Conference – and the possible passage of a protocol that spells out details for the breakup.

Boyette criticized the actions of some members of the Council of Bishops, including the decision to further delay the General Conference. He suggested some bishops are intentionally blocking churches from using certain processes for exiting the denomination.

Global Methodist Church organizers had originally expected to launch the denomination only after the next General Conference of the UMC. That legislative body is the only one that could approve a tentative agreement — unveiled in 2020 after negotiations between conservatives, liberals and centrists — to allow churches and regional groups to leave the denomination and keep their property.

But the General Conference, originally scheduled for 2020, was already delayed for two straight years by the pandemic. In March, the UMC announced it was pushing off the next gathering yet again — to 2024 — due to long delays in the U.S. processing of visa applications. A little more than half of the denomination’s members are overseas, notably in Africa and the Philippines.

The United Methodist Church claims 6.3 million members in the U.S. and 6.5 million overseas.

Differences over same-sex marriage and the ordination of LGBTQ clergy have simmered for years in the UMC, and came to a head in 2019 at a conference in St. Louis where delegates voted 438-384 to strengthen bans on LGBTQ-inclusive practices. Most U.S.-based delegates opposed that plan and favored LGBTQ-friendly options; they were outvoted by U.S. conservatives teamed with most of the delegates from Methodist strongholds in Africa and the Philippines.

In the aftermath of that meeting, many moderate and liberal clergy made clear they would not abide by the bans, and various groups worked on proposals to let the UMC split along theological lines.

___

Associated Press writer Giovanna Dell'Orto contributed to this report.

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Germany Drops Opposition To Russian Oil Embargo

Editor OilPrice.com
Sat, April 30, 2022, 

Oil prices have risen for a fourth consecutive day with concerns over Russian supply disruptions trumping reduced demand expectations in China.

Brent Crude climbed 1.7 percent to $109.40 per barrel, while WTI Crude moved up 1.03 percent to $106.50 per barrel.

Both contracts are set to finish up on the week, and post their fifth straight monthly gains, buoyed by reports the European Union (EU) will phase out Russian oil imports by the end of the year.

Germany – the bloc’s largest economy – has dropped its opposition to the measure, which is being considered for inclusion in the EU’s possible sixth package of sanctions on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine in February.

Prices have been on a volatile journey in the proceeding two months, peaking at 14-year highs at $139 per barrel in early March before plummeting below the $100 milestone later that month as developed economies grappled with the prospect of supply shortages.

The US and UK opting to impose sanctions on Russian energy supplies caused prices to spiral, exacerbated by tight markets amid OPEC+’s persistent failure to raise output production in line with its modest pledged increases of 400,000 extra barrels per day.

With pleas from the West to boost supplies falling on deaf ears, the US and members of the International Energy Agency (IEA) opted to flood the market with 240m barrels – causing prices to tumble as President Joe Biden desperately seeks to contain the cost-of-living crisis ahead of key mid-term elections this year.

The latest resurgence on both major benchmarks has been weighed down by continued Covid-19 lockdowns in China, the world’s biggest crude importer.

The country has shown no signs of easing lockdown measures in Shanghai, despite the impact on its economy and global supply chains.

However, prices are likely to remain elevated regardless, with fears of supply shortages continuing to escalate.

Russian oil production could fall by as much as 17 percent this year, according to documents seen by news agency Reuters, as Western sanctions hurt investments and exports.

Related: German Energy Giant To Pay For Russian Gas In Rubles

Reflecting this reality, Exxon Mobil revealed earlier this week that the Russian unit Exxon Neftegas has declared force majeure for its Sakhalin-1 operations.

The Sakhalin-1 project produces Sokol crude oil off the coast of Sakhalin Island in the Russian Far East, exporting about 273,000 barrels per day, mainly to South Korea, alongside Japan, Australia, Thailand, and the US.

The energy giant revealed last month it would exit about $4 billion in assets and discontinue all its Russia operations, including Sakhalin 1.

Meanwhile, OPEC+ is likely to stick to its existing deal and agree on another small output increase for June when it meets on May 5.

By CityAM

Russia's weaponization of natural gas could backfire by destroying demand for it

Michael E. Webber, 

Josey Centennial Professor of Energy Resources, 

University of Texas at Austin

THE CONVERSATION
Fri, April 29, 2022

Russian President Vladimir Putin (left) with Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller at a launch ceremony for the Nord Stream gas pipeline, Sept. 6, 2011, in Vyborg, Russia.

Sasha Mordovets/Getty Images

In December 2006, The Economist magazine published a cover drawing of Russian president Vladimir Putin, dressed like a 1930s gangster in a dark suit and fedora hat, under the headline “Don’t Mess with Russia.” Putin held a gasoline nozzle, gripping it like a machine gun. The target presumably was Europe, which relied heavily on Russia for oil and natural gas.

The cover story’s subheading asserted, “Russia’s habitual abuse of its energy muscle is bad for its citizens, its neighbourhood and the world.” Today that assertion still rings true with Russia’s cutoff of natural gas deliveries to Poland and Bulgaria.

As an energy scholar who has lived and worked in Europe, I know that gas is a precious commodity that is critical for industries, power generation and heating buildings – especially in northern Europe, where winters can be harsh and long. This explains why European nations import gas from many sources, but have grown to depend on Russian supplies to keep their homes warm and their economies humming.
From oil embargoes to gas cutoffs

The energy weapon can take many forms.

In 1967 and 1973, Arab nations cut off oil exports to the U.S. and other Western nations that supported Israel in conflicts against its Middle East neighbors. Withholding supply was a way to inflict economic pain on opponents and win policy concessions.

Today, an oil embargo might not work as well. Oil is a fungible commodity in a global market: If one source cuts off shipments, importing countries can just buy more oil from other suppliers, although they may pay higher prices on spot markets than they would have under long-term contracts.

That’s possible because more than 60% of the world’s daily oil consumption is delivered by ship. At any given moment, a flotilla of seaborne vessels is carrying crude oil from one point to another around the globe. If there are disruptions, the ships can change direction and get to their destinations within a matter of weeks.

As a result, it’s hard for one oil-producing country to prevent a consuming country from buying oil on the global market.

By contrast, natural gas is moved primarily by pipeline. Only 13% of the world’s gas supply is delivered by tankers carrying liquefied natural gas. This makes gas more of a regional or continental commodity, with sellers and buyers who are physically connected to each other.

It is much harder for buyers to find alternative natural gas supplies than alternative oil sources because laying new pipelines or building new liquefied natural gas import and export terminals can cost billions of dollars and take many years. Consequently, gas disruptions are felt quickly and can last a long time.

The real cost of buying Russian gas

European nations’ dependence on Russian energy, particularly natural gas, complicates their foreign policies. As many observers have pointed out since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, European consumers’ heavy reliance on Russian oil and gas over the decades has funded and emboldened Putin’s regime and made European governments hesitant in the face of bad behavior. It was no accident that Russia invaded in February, when it’s coldest and European demand for gas for heating buildings is highest.

Because the European gas grid spans many countries, Russia’s shutoff of gas to Poland and Bulgaria doesn’t just affect those two countries. Prices will rise as gas pressures in the pipelines that run through those countries to other nations drop. The shortage will eventually ripple through to other countries further downstream, such as France and Germany.

If Europeans can reduce their gas consumption quickly as the heating season winds down and gas power plants are replaced with other sources, they can slow the onset of pain. Fuller use of liquefied natural gas imports from coastal terminals could also help.

In the longer run, the European Union is working to increase energy efficiency in existing buildings, which are already efficient compared to U.S. buildings. It also aims to fill gas storage caverns to 90% capacity during the off-peak seasons when gas demand is lower, and ramp up local production of biomethane – which can substitute for fossil gas – derived from agricultural waste or other organic, renewable sources.

Building more import terminals to bring in liquefied natural gas from the U.S., Canada or other friendly nations is also an option. However, creating new fossil fuel infrastructure would conflict with efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to slow climate change.

Ramping up wind, solar, geothermal and nuclear power plants as quickly as possible to displace the continent’s natural gas power plants is a key priority for the EU. So is replacing natural gas heating systems with electric heat pumps, which can also provide air conditioning during the continent’s increasingly frequent and intense summer heat waves. These solutions align with the EU’s climate objectives, which suggests that Russia’s gas cutoffs might ultimately accelerate European nations’ efforts to shift to renewable energy and more efficient use of electricity.

All of these options are effective but take time. Unfortunately, Europe doesn’t have many options before next winter. Prospects are worse for energy customers in poorer regions, such as Bangladesh and sub-Saharan Africa, which will simply go without in the face of higher energy prices.

Will Russia’s cutoff backfire?

While gas supply disruptions will undoubtedly inflict pain on European consumers, they also are hard on Russia, which badly needs the money. Currently, Putin is ordering “unfriendly” countries to pay for Russian energy in rubles to boost Russia’s currency, which has lost value under the weight of economic sanctions. Poland and Bulgaria had refused to pay in rubles.

Cutting off gas supplies in February would have been expensive for Russia and surely would have inspired even more backlash in Europe. By wielding natural gas as a weapon when the weather is mild, Russia can flex its petro-muscles without being too aggressive or losing too much money. The key question now is whether Europe needs Russian gas more than Russia needs revenue from European sales.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Michael E. Webber, University of Texas at Austin.

WHEW THAT WAS CLOSE

Massive asteroid as wide as 8 football fields skims past Earth 


Joshua Hawkins
Thu, April 28, 2022
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A massive asteroid skimmed past Earth. The asteroid in question is named 418135, or 2008 AG33. It’s estimated to be twice as big as the Empire State building, with a diameter between 1,150 and 2,560 feet.

While it poses no threat to our planet, it is coming dangerously close.


asteroid skimming past Earth

The asteroid skimming past Earth today will only come within 2 million miles at its closest point. That’s eight times the average distance between the Earth and the Moon. That might not sound like very close, but it’s actually considered a danger zone when it comes to measuring distance in space.

Overall, NASA considers any object that comes within 120 million miles of the Earth as a “near-Earth object”, or NEO. Further, any fast-moving object within 4.65 million miles is classified as potentially hazardous. Since this asteroid is skimming past Earth at around 23,300 miles per hour, it falls into the latter category.

Asteroid 2008 AG33 was first discovered in 2008 by surveyors at the Mt. Lemmon SkyCenter observatory in Arizona.

The last time this asteroid skimmed past Earth was back in March of 2015. NASA says that it swings by every seven or so years. The next flyby is expected to come around May 25, 2029. The path that these asteroids take can change, though, which is why NASA is keeping an eye on asteroids that come so close to Earth.

NASA expects another asteroid named 467460, or 2006 JF42, to breeze past Earth on May 9, 2022. NASA estimated the asteroid to be between 1,247 and 2,822 feet in diameter and traveling at roughly 25,300 miles per hour.

What if a NEO is flying right towards Earth?

Illustration of DART, from behind the NEXT–C ion engine

With so many near-Earth objects out there, it makes sense to be concerned about what we would do if one of them found its path aimed directly at the Earth. That’s why NASA and other space agencies are working on countermeasures. These defenses will help combat any asteroid skimming past Earth that might come a little too close.

NASA is setting up its D.A.R.T. system. The agency will test it later this year. China also recently shared plans for an asteroid monitoring system. These systems could help us keep a better eye on near-Earth objects, as some smaller ones have come out of nowhere and hit the Earth.

Ultimately, though, this asteroid is skimming past the Earth, not coming directly towards it. As such, you can rest easy knowing that asteroid 2008 AG33 won’t impact your day at all.

America’s power grid facing real trouble

There are two reasons why consumers experience a power outage. The first is obvious: a storm comes along and knocks down trees and power lines. That’s what typically happens. 

But there’s now a second reason for power outages in the United States—there simply isn’t enough electricity to go around.

Power substation in Valparaiso.

Terry Jarrett
Fri, April 29, 2022,

Power generation in the United States has always been an extremely dependable commodity. But recently, there’s been a startling decline—and both Texas and California have offered previews of this worrying trend.

In February 2021, portions of Texas’s natural gas infrastructure and wind turbines froze, leaving utilities without sufficient fuel and generating capacity to meet demand. The ensuing blackouts claimed more than 200 lives.

In California, the challenge over the past two years has been rolling power outages. It’s an increasingly regular occurrence on hot days.

Power grid regulators have been warning that California’s and Texas’ troubles are only a preview of a brewing national grid-reliability crisis. It appears they’re right. Mismanagement of America’s transition to renewable energy is leaving entire regions of the country short of on-demand power generating capacity when it’s needed most.

Recently, the grid operator for 15 U.S. states, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), announced some startling news. In an April power capacity auction—which serves as the annual marketplace to ensure sufficient generating capacity during peak needs—prices jumped nearly 50-fold.

Why this stunning increase? MISO President Clair Moeller explained that some utilities simply don’t “have sufficient generation to cover their load plus their required reserves.” That has left them scrambling to obtain back-up power at nearly any cost. Moeller cautions that these states could see an “increased risk of temporary, controlled outages to maintain system reliability.” In other words, get ready for blackouts.

In recent years, America’s electricity supply has endured what one industry analyst described as a “slew of coal and nuclear retirements.” That has translated to the loss of a large chunk of reliable electricity production across the nation.

Wind and solar power are currently being added to regional grids. But they only provide power when the weather cooperates. Adding this renewable capacity looks good on paper. But reliable, on-demand capacity from coal and nuclear is being eroded at the same time. During peak demand on a bitter cold, windless day—or on a scorching summer night—there may not be enough power to go around.

This is a situation poised to go from bad to worse. Utilities are now begging for reliable power generation. But America’s coal plants are being pushed into early retirement by regulatory pressures. That means environmental regulation is out-of-sync with the alarming facts on the ground.

Any transition to renewable energy must be managed in ways that don’t impose soaring costs on consumers—or sacrifice reliable power delivery. Natural gas prices have doubled in the past year, and the challenge of matching power supply with the limits of renewable energy remains an ongoing challenge. We need to rethink the role existing coal plants can play in getting us to our energy future.

Instead of dismantling our existing generating capacity, let’s build on its shoulders. Rolling blackouts or complete grid failures due to faulty planning are unacceptable. It’s past time for a responsible energy policy, not a reliability crisis.

Terry Jarrett
Terry Jarrett is an energy attorney and consultant who has served on both the board of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners and the Missouri Public Service Commission.

This article originally appeared on Wichita Falls Times Record News: America’s power grid facing real trouble