Heat Wave Tests the Limits Of Texas Power Grid

By Julianne Geiger - May 20, 2022, 

Power demand in Texas amid the current heatwave reached a new record on Thursday and was set to break that record on Friday.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, reported that conditions on Friday were normal, so far.

But the grid’s capabilities in times of extreme weather have been again called into question as last week, ERCOT asked customers to scale back their energy usage as several power plants in the state shut down, causing prices to soar to more than $4,000 / MWh. ERCOT has maintained that it was merely a proactive request and not an emergency alert.

ERCOT has devoted much time and effort to reassuring the public that the lights will stay on this summer, and that its generation capacity is sufficient to fulfill the lofty demands throughout the summer months under normal conditions and under most extreme weather and grid scenarios.

Earlier in May, there was a spattering of outages in Texas as the heatwave took hold.

ERCOT has also asked power generators to defer scheduled maintenance—scheduled maintenance that is typically completed in the runup to the hot months.

Critics of ERCOT—which grew in number after the horrific Texas freeze that resulted in blackouts that claimed the lives of 246 people—argue that calls for decreased power usage in the middle of May, well below typical peak summer temperatures, is a worrisome sign.

Several grid operators have warned this summer will see electricity shortages as they anticipate they will be unable to cope with the call for power. California warned that it would need to produce more electricity if it is to avoid blackouts, and The Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), the nonprofit charged with operating the power grid in 15 U.S. states and Manitoba, issued a warning about outages during the summer.

The WSJ cited grid operators as a warning recently that the pace of progress in battery storage capacity development was too slow to compensate for the closures of fossil fuel power plants in favor of wind and solar installations.

By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com

If Tesla isn’t good enough for an ESG index, then who is?

Bloomberg News | May 19, 2022 | 

The first Tesla Model S. (Image by Steve Jurvetson, Flickr).

Tesla Inc.’s removal this week from an industry benchmark index is raising new questions about what ESG actually means to investors.


The strategy, widely seen as favoring industries ostensibly interested in sustainability (of the environmental, social and governance sort) started about two decades ago as a way to protect investors from risks tied to things like global warming, labor violations and discrimination. Since then, it’s morphed into a $35 trillion industry of its own and—as the market exploded—sown confusion about what metrics should be used to gauge it, and fury over the tsunami of what’s come to be called greenwashing.

Enter Tesla. While many would agree few automakers have done more than Elon Musk’s company in the global shift away from fossil fuels, the company’s management and workplace issues have been at times problematic. So much so that S&P Dow Jones Indices, while acknowledging Tesla’s environmental prowess, nevertheless decided to remove the electric vehicle maker from the S&P 500 ESG Index over safety and labor issues.

“How can a company whose self-declared mission is to ‘accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy’ not make the cut in an ESG index?” wrote Margaret Dorn, senior director and head of ESG indexes for S&P Dow Jones in North America, in a blog post. Answering her own question, she said “there are many reasons,” including that Tesla “has fallen behind its peers when examined through a wider ESG lens.”

Dorn focused on social and governance factors at the company, which had a negative impact on its overall ESG score. She singled out two events centered around allegations of racial discrimination and poor working conditions at Tesla’s factory in Fremont, California, as well as its handling of a U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration investigation after multiple deaths and injuries were linked to its “autopilot” function.

Academics like Todd Cort of Yale University agree with Dorn. The S&P methodology focuses on corporate performance, and Tesla’s “management systems and controls are still pretty undeveloped” relative to industry leaders, he said.

But investors including Cathie Wood of ARK Investment Management have strenuously disagreed. In a post on Twitter, she called S&P’s decision “ridiculous.” It’s “not worthy of any other response.”

Paul Watchman, an industry consultant who wrote a seminal report in the mid-2000s that helped spur ESG investing, said Tesla should be part of ESG indexes. “Not all breaches of ESG are equal, and this assessment shows just how warped the S&P assessment is,” he said.

Tesla does have multiple problems related to corporate governance and health and safety, but Watchman said they should be viewed in context. “However relevant these failures and shortcomings may be, they aren’t nearly as bad other companies.” Fossil fuel giants being one example, he said.

MSCI Inc., the leading provider of ESG ratings, still includes Tesla (as well as Exxon Mobil Corp.) in its more widely tracked ESG-focused indexes, adding to the confusion about what ESG actually is. (The methodologies MSCI and S&P use for their ESG indexes are very similar.)

MSCI said its ESG-focused indexes are designed to “maximize their exposure to positive ESG factors” while “exhibiting risk and return characteristics” similar to the overall market. Companies with links to the tobacco, “controversial” weapons, civilian firearms, oil sands and thermal coal are excluded from the indexes.

S&P Dow Jones Indices said its S&P 500 ESG Index is “a broad-based, market-cap-weighted index that’s designed to measure the performance of securities meeting sustainability criteria, while maintaining similar overall industry weights as the S&P 500.” The index also excludes companies engaged in the thermal coal, tobacco and controversial weapons industries.

“The market continues to conflate ESG with sustainability, and you’re certainly seeing that play out here.”

From a market standpoint, ESG indexes matter because investors have poured $410 billion into passively run ESG-labeled funds, according to data compiled by Bloomberg Intelligence. “The market continues to conflate ESG with sustainability, and you’re certainly seeing that play out here,” said Rob Du Boff, senior ESG analyst at BI. “Our ETF team likes to note Tesla is the ultimate Rorschach test for ESG investors.”

Tesla has made the world a greener place with their innovative electric vehicles, and investors have been rewarded as a result, Du Boff said. But they’ve also been stung by Musk’s tussles with the US Securities and Exchange Commission and his recent takeover approach to Twitter Inc., he said.

“Turns out investors should have been paying closer attention to signs of poor corporate governance,” Du Boff said.

And that brings the conversation back to trying to define ESG. Hours after it emerged that S&P Dow Jones had expelled Tesla, Shaheen Contractor and Eric Balchunas from BI published a note with this headline: “Is Tesla ESG? Many Funds Think So Even as S&P ESG Index Drops It.”

Contractor and Balchunas said their analysis ranks Tesla 46th in the S&P 500 for inclusion in ESG-focused funds. “The automaker’s ESG status remains among the most debated for any stock,” they wrote.

(By Tim Quinson and Saijel Kishan)

Woodside shareholders back BHP petroleum merger

Cecilia Jamasmie | May 19, 2022 | 

Pluto LNG processes gas from the offshore Pluto and Xena gas fields in Western Australia. (Image courtesy of Woodside.)

Woodside Petroleum’s (ASX: WPL) shareholders have almost unanimously backed a merger with BHP’s (ASX, LON, NYSE: BHP) petroleum division, cementing the world’s top miner’s exit from the oil and gas industry amid increasing global pressure to curb emissions.


The 98.66% approval for the all-stock deal with BHP at a shareholder vote in Perth creates a top ten global independent oil and gas producer worth $40 billion.

The companies expect to complete the merger on June 1, BHP said in a separate statement. The business combination will give BHP investors a 48% stake in the expanded Woodside, which will have assets in Australia, the United States, Mexico, Senegal and Trinidad.

“The merger is an opportunity for Woodside to increase its contribution to the world’s growing energy needs and build the scale, resilience and diversity to thrive through the energy transition,” Chief Executive Officer Meg O’Neill told shareholders.

Chairman Richard Goyder acknowledged there was “work to be done” on the climate report, which received an almost 49% rejection from environmental Proxy adviser CGI Glass Lewis, saying that Woodside lagged behind its peers and appeared to “overly rely on carbon offsets” to meet emissions targets.

“Our shareholders’ views are important to us and will continue to inform our approach as it evolves,” Goyder said, but declined to guarantee the company would ever again put a climate report to the AGM.

BHP’s oil and gas assets will boost Woodside’s annual output to 200 million barrels of oil equivalent. That is almost double the combined volume produced by rivals Santos (ASX: STO) and Oil Search (ASX: OSH), which merged in December last year.

AurMac could achieve Tier 1 status in the Yukon this fall, says Banyan Gold CEO

Henry Lazenby | May 18, 2022 

Image from Banyan Gold.

Banyan Gold (TSXV: BYN) has delivered a mineral resource update on its flagship AurMac property nestled in an emerging mining district in the Yukon Territories between Alexco Resource Corp’s (TSX: AXU) Keno Hill mine and Victoria Gold’s (TSX: VGCX) Eagle gold mine.


CEO Tara Christie tells MINING.com at the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference (VRIC) sidelines that the project is living up to expectations thus far.

“The updated resource estimate comprises a total inferred mineral resource of 3.99 million oz. gold grading 0.6 grams per tonne, held in 207 million tonnes”.

The pit-constrained resource draws from three near/on-surface deposits, including the Airstrip, Powerline and Aurex Hill deposits.

“This is just a stepping stone,” said Christie. “We’ve since drilled 17,000 meters here in 2022, targeting higher grade on-surface ounces.”

The strategy is to continue expanding the resource base while looking for higher-grade starter pit areas. “We think we can get this up to tier-one status, which for the majors is plus five million oz. by the fall,” she said.

Located in the Mayo Mining ‎District, about 56 km northeast of the town of Mayo, the project has good access to infrastructure, including a powerline with ample capacity.

“This resource estimate demonstrates the value generated by Banyan with 40,000 m of drilling adding over three million oz. of inferred mineral resources. All three deposits are open, with mineralization extending beyond the current block model boundaries,” said Christie.

“Examining the Airstrip and Powerline mineral resource model highlights their robust nature; when the cut-off grades are increased by 50%, to 0.3 g/t, just 10% of the ounces are reduced; while the grade increases by 20% to an average of 0.72 g/t. We are confident the 30,000 metres that the company plans to drill in 2022 will meaningfully continue to build upon this resource estimate,” she said.

Banyan has another 35,000m of drilling planned this year, and Christie said work is ongoing for a preliminary economic assessment (PEA) for release in 2023.

“We will optimize our drill program around the economics as we go through the season so that next year when we do an updated resource, we can achieve that five million oz. critical mass for the PEA. It will help us become a premier, district-scale project,” said Christie.”

According to Christie, the company has about C$5.2 million cash in the bank, with all bills paid up to date.

Banyan is also focused on the Hyland gold project, 70 km Northeast of Watson Lake, Yukon, along the southeast end of the Tintina Gold Belt.

The company has been tipped as a hot stock to buy during the VRIC. At C45.6c per share, its Toronto-quoted equity is currently trading up more than 60% over the past 12-month timeframe, giving it a market capitalization of C$105.37 million ($82m).

Global autonomous mining truck population tops thousand mark, to reach 1,800 by 2025 — report

Staff Writer | May 18, 2022 

Autonomous trucks at West Angelas mine.

 (Image: Christian Sprogoe Photography | Rio Tinto.)

The number of autonomous haul trucks in operation globally reached 1,068 by May 2022, representing an annual increase of 39%, according to figures tallied by GlobalData. The UK-based data analytics firm also expects this total to exceed 1,800 (a 70% increase on current levels) by the end of 2025.


The major additions this month came from BHP, which has plans to automate up to 500 haul trucks across its Western Australia iron ore and Queensland coal mines through to 2023. Both Canadian Natural Resources and Suncor Energy also plan to add over 100 autonomous trucks to their oil sands mines before the end of 2025.

By country, the largest population of autonomous trucks is in Australia with 706, up from 561 in 2021 and 381 two years earlier. It is followed by Canada with 177, up from 143 in 2021, China with 69, and Chile with 33. Autonomous haul trucks are present at 25 mines in Australia alone, compared with 19 across the rest of the world.

Credit: GlobalData

Company wise, BHP currently accounts for the largest number of autonomous trucks in operation with 300, followed by Fortescue Metals Group with 193 trucks and Rio Tinto with 187 trucks. BHP’s numbers include 95 at the Goonyella Riverside mine and have been boosted by its roll out of a fleet of 34 trucks at the Daunia Mine, where the mine’s entire truck fleet is now autonomous, and 42 Komatsu 930E-5 ultra- class haul trucks at its South Flank iron ore mine in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.

Meanwhile, Anglo American’s first fleet of autonomous mining trucks has been deployed at its Quellaveco copper project. At the moment, there are 22 fully autonomous trucks on site, with plans for a full fleet of 27 automated trucks by the second half of 2022.

Caterpillar and Komatsu are the two main suppliers of autonomous vehicles, accounting for 86.5% of the trucks tracked by the Mining Intelligence Center, with the 793F and 930E the most popular models for the two OEMs respectively.

Asia’s two richest men reap windfall from surging oil, coal

Bloomberg News | May 18, 2022 

Gautam Adani. (Image: Headlines Today | YouTube.)

Gautam Adani and Mukesh Ambani are profiting from a surge in global commodity prices triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, burnishing their fossil-fuel credentials even as Asia’s richest men publicly push their pivots toward greener energy.


With coal prices skyrocketing to a record, Adani’s conglomerate is expanding a controversial mine in Australia to meet demand. Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd. is snapping up distressed crude-oil cargoes at discounts to feed its refining complex, the biggest in the world. Reliance even deferred a scheduled maintenance of the facility to help churn out more diesel and gasoline, whose margins have shot up to touch a three-year high.

The two Indian tycoons are stepping in at a time when many developed countries are scrambling for alternative sources of fuels as they try to back away from Russian supplies. This month, the Group of Seven most-industrialized nations pledged to ban imports of Russian oil. The disruption has also brought the focus back on the need for more coal, the dirtiest fossil the world has vowed to phase out to cut emissions.

Though Adani, 59, and Ambani, 65, have unveiled a combined $142 billion in green investments over the next few decades in a pivot away from coal and oil — the bedrock of their empires — they are also finding it hard to kick the fossil-fuel habit as the conflict stokes demand. Global coal demand is expected to rise to a record level in 2022 and stay there through 2024, according to the International Energy Agency.

The war has created a tailwind for fossil fuel-based firms in India, said Chakri Lokapriya, managing director and chief investment officer at TCG Advisory Services Pvt. in Mumbai.

Image courtesy of John Englart | Flickr.

“The collateral damage is that fossil fuels will continue to play a vital role the next 20 years or more,” he said, adding that it was sufficient time to reap benefits from carbon-based investments.

Representatives for Adani Group and Reliance Industries didn’t respond to an email requesting comments.

Bullishness in coal prices helped flagship firm Adani Enterprises Ltd. clock a 30% jump in profit for the three months ended March — the highest in six quarters — while surging prices of petroleum products aided Reliance, which posted one of its biggest quarterly profits ever.

Shares of both Reliance and Adani Enterprises had soared 19% and 42% respectively between Feb. 24, when the invasion began, and end of April, before a global stock rout wiped out some of those gains. Adani has added about $25 billion to his wealth since the war started, taking his net worth to almost $106 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Ambani’s fortune swelled by almost $8 billion to $92.4 billion.

It isn’t just these two Indian billionaires benefiting from the commodities surge. Others include US oil and gas tycoons Harold Hamm, Richard Kinder and Michael S. Smith, and Indonesia’s Low Tuck Kwong, the boss of coal mining company PT Bayan Resources, who have all seen their wealth increase this year.

Almost 60% of Reliance’s revenue comes from oil-refining and petrochemicals, the mainstay business founded by Ambani’s late father. Since inheriting it in 2002, Ambani has been reducing the conglomerate’s dependence on oil-refining by diversifying into retail, telecommunications and technology.

India has bought millions of barrels of Urals crude in the spot market since the end of February, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. While flows of Russian oil into India aren’t sanctioned, the South Asian country has repeatedly said that those shipments are minuscule compared to Europe’s purchases and represent a tiny fraction of the country’s total consumption. They also provide some relief at a time when inflationary pressures are increasing. India’s consumer prices rose the most in eight years in April.

“We have minimized feedstock cost by sourcing arbitrage barrels,” Reliance’s Joint Chief Financial Officer V. Srikanth told reporters on May 6, without providing details. “Overall demand drivers are very promising,” he said referring to the strong comeback in demand for fossil fuels.

Refiners in India exported 3.37 million tons of diesel in March, the highest since April 2020, when overseas sales were a record 3.4 million tons as local demand plummeted during the Covid-19 lockdown, according to data on Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell’s website. Gasoline exports reached a five-year high of 1.6 million tonnes.

For first-generation entrepreneur Adani, coal is central to his empire. He has invested more than $3 billion in coal mines in India, Australia and Indonesia. His Carmichael mine in Queensland, which has been a target of environmental activists including Greta Thunberg for years, started shipping the fuel only this year.

In a May 4 earnings call, Adani Enterprises said it plans to raise the annual capacity of the Carmichael mine to 15 million tons in the year through March 2023, about 50% more than what its board approved for the first phase of the project. It plans to export as many as seven capesize cargoes a month, director Vinay Prakash said on the call.

The “geopolitical situation” is expected to keep coal prices strong for now, but how long this lasts is “anyone’s guess,” Prakash told investors.

(By Rajesh Kumar Singh and Debjit Chakraborty, with assistance from P R Sanjai, Pei Yi Mak, Rakteem Katakey and Alexander Sazonov)

Russia’s biggest gold producer’s largest shareholder donates 100% of shares
Staff Writer | May 17, 2022 

Image from Polyus.

PJSC Polyus (LSE, MOEX: PLZL) Russia’s largest gold producer, has announced that Said Kerimov has donated 100% stake in Wandle Holdings, Polyus’ largest shareholder, and owned by Kerimov, to the fund for support of Islamic foundations.


The fund was established by the Council of Muftis of Russia, the Muslim Spiritual Board of the European part of Russia and Mufti sheikh Rawil Gaynetdin and was established in 2012, Polyus said in a media statement.

Kerimov is the son of Russian billionaire and politician Suleyman Kerimov, who transferred shares in 2015. In April, Wandle Holdings divested a 29.99% stake in the company to Akropol Group, NS Energy reported.

As a result of the transfer, Kerimov no longer executes any economic interest or ownership rights in respect to the company, directly or indirectly, Polyus said.

The fund now indirectly owns 46.35% of the company via IJSC “Wandle Holdings Limited”. Following the transaction, Akhmet Palankoyev owns 29.99% of Polyus’ share capital.

The company’s top management team jointly owns 0.94% of Polyus shares, with treasury shares representing 0.47% of share capital. The remaining 22.25% continues to trade as a free float in form of local shares on Moscow Exchange and in form of depositary receipts on London Stock Exchange.

“We welcome this act of philanthropy of Mr. Said Kerimov in these challenging times and hope this will inspire other people and corporations to help those in need,” Mufti sheikh Rawil Gaynetdin, head of the fund for support of Islamic foundations, said in the statement. “As a non-for-profit foundation, we fully trust the current management team to take the company forward and do not plan to be involved in the day-to-day running of the business.”

Polyus said it intends to form its board of directors majorly comprised by independent directors.

In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Canadian miner Kinross Gold (TSX: G) (NYSE: KGC) in April sold its Russian assets to Highland Gold Mining for $680 million in cash, a month after suspending its operations in the country.

Electric vehicles surpass phones as top driver of cobalt demand

Cecilia Jamasmie | May 17, 2022 |

A growing number of electric cars in China — the world’s largest EV market — are powered by low-cost lithium-iron phosphate batteries. (By unlimit3d |Stock Image. )

Electric vehicles (EVs) overtook smartphones and other high-tech devices for the first time last year as the main driver of cobalt demand, with the sector consuming 59,000 tonnes of the battery metal, or 34% of the total globally.


According to a report published on Tuesday by the Cobalt Institute, cellphones manufacturers consumed 26,000 tonnes of the metal used in lithium-ion batteries, while laptops and tablets accounted for 16,000 tonnes of the total demand, which reached 175,000 tonnes.

The figure contrasts with the 160,000 tonnes of cobalt mined last year, highlighting one of the biggest issues the car industry faces as it goes electric — lack of battery metals.

Not surprisingly, prices for cobalt, nickel, lithium and copper have skyrocketed. Cobalt has nearly tripled in price since the start of 2021. Nickel turned so wild in March the London Metal Exchange (LME) had to suspend trading.

Source: Cobalt Institute.

Battery-makers have responded by using more lithium-iron-posphate chemistry, which doesn’t use either cobalt or nickel, but that tightens up the lithium market itself with spot prices doubling since the start of the year.

Benchmark Mineral Intelligence estimates the global lithium industry needs as much as $42 billion of investment by the end of the decade in order to meet demand

MINING.COM’s EV Metal Index, which tracks the value of battery metals in newly registered passenger EVs (including full battery, plug-in and conventional hybrids) around the world, totalled $1.5 billion in December, an increase of 192% over the same month of 2020.

“Securing access to raw materials is crucial if the world is to achieve the sustainable and just transition to a greener future,” David Brocas, head Cobalt Trader at Glencore and chairman of the Cobalt Institute’s executive committee, said. “Cobalt’s role in batteries and recycling makes it one of the critical materials of a climate-neutral future.”
Production in hands of very few

The metal, a by-product of copper and nickel mining, makes up only 0.001% of the earth’s crust. Its appeal to EV makers comes from the fact that it provides batteries with energy density that increases the range of their vehicles and boosts their life.

Supply comes mainly from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where production is dominated by miner and commodities trader Glencore (LON: GLEN) as well as Chinese companies.

Source: Cobalt Institute.

The institute expects cobalt demand to keep growing to about 320,000 tonnes annually over the next five years, almost double the total consumed in 2021, with EVs driving 70% of this growth.

It also sees supply picking up this year and next, leading to a more balanced market. From 2024, cobalt availability will wind down again, growing 8% a year, compared to more than 12% of demand growth, which will leading to significant deficits.

Some manufacturers, such as Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) and Volkswagen have even announced intentions of becoming “actively involved in raw materials business”.

Europe’s first homegrown battery plant begins shipments

Bloomberg News | May 17, 2022 

Peter Carlsson, Founder of Northvolt – Image courtesy of Youtube (screen capture)

Swedish battery-maker Northvolt AB became the first European firm to start commercial shipments to a carmaker last week, giving shape to the continent’s five-year push to counter Asian dominance in supplying energy cells for electric vehicles.


The first deliveries, which came from Northvolt’s plant in Skelleftea, Sweden, were made on schedule, a spokesman said. The company is hiring about 150 people per month at the plant, which currently employs about 1,000 workers, he added.

While Northvolt’s launch marks a success for Europe kickstarting an independent battery industry, skyrocketing prices for raw materials including lithium and cobalt have become a concern. For years, China has fostered closer ties with mining companies in Africa and South America, potentially exposing manufacturers elsewhere to supply bottlenecks.

Northvolt, which plans to scale up production over the rest of the year, recently said it had secured more than $50 billion in contracts from electric-car manufacturers including BMW AG, Volkswagen AG, Volvo Car AB and Polestar. Wigardt said the total headcount at the Skelleftea plant will likely reach 4,000, up from a previous estimate of 3,000.

On Monday the company also said it had started commercial EV battery recycling at Hydrovolt in Fredrikstad, Norway, a joint venture with Hydro. Hydrovolt is Europe’s largest electric-vehicle battery recycling plant, with the capacity to process around 25,000 batteries annually.

(By Rafaela Lindeberg)

IMPERIALI$M IN $PACE

China, US are racing to make billions from mining the moon’s minerals

Bloomberg News | May 17, 2022 | 

NASA outlined in 2019 its long-term approach to lunar exploration, which includes setting up a “base camp” on the moon’s south pole. (Artist’s rendition courtesy of NASA.)

“There’s going to be a new world order out there, and we’ve got to lead it,” US President Joe Biden said after Russia’s war in Ukraine upended global geopolitics. Far from Earth, that transition is already happening.


Just like in the era of Sputnik and Apollo more than half a century ago, world leaders are again racing to achieve dominance in outer space. But there’s one big difference: Whereas the US and the Soviet Union hashed out a common set of rules at the United Nations, this time around the world’s top superpowers can’t even agree on basic principles to govern the next generation of space activity.


The lack of cooperation between the US and China on space exploration is particularly dangerous in an era where the cosmos are becoming more crowded. Billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos along with emerging markets such as Rwanda and the Philippines are launching more and more satellites to bridge the digital divide and explore commercial opportunities.

The stakes are even higher when it comes to the US and China, which are erecting economic barriers in the name of national security as ideological divisions widen over the pandemic, political repression and now Vladimir Putin’s war. Their inability to cooperate on space risks not only an arms race, but also clashes over extracting potentially hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of resources on the moon and elsewhere.


“Our concern in the West is more about who sets the rules of the road, particularly access to resources,” said Malcolm Davis, a former official with Australia’s defense department who now researches space policy at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in Canberra.

“The biggest risk is you have two opposite set of rules,” he said. “You could have a Chinese company on the moon in the 2030s claiming territory with a resource on it, in the same way the Chinese have claimed the entire South China Sea.”

The geopolitics of space, once a frontier that brought rivals together for the good of humankind, are now mirroring the competition on Earth pitting the US and its allies against China and Russia. And just as Beijing and Moscow have blamed American military alliances in Europe and Asia for stoking tensions over Ukraine and Taiwan, Chinese state-run media has warned the US now wants to set up a “space-based NATO.”

At the center of the dispute is the US-drafted Artemis Accords, a non-legally binding set of principles to govern activity on the moon, Mars and beyond. The initiative, which NASA says is grounded in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, forms the foundation of the space agency’s effort to put astronauts on the moon this decade and kick-start mining operations of lucrative lunar elements.

So far 19 countries have agreed to support the accords, including four — Romania, Colombia, Bahrain and Singapore — that signed up after Putin’s invasion spurred a US-led effort to isolate Russia. Underscoring the divide, Ukraine was an early Artemis club member after President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s government signed in late 2020.

The accords are part of an effort by the Biden administration to establish “a broader and comprehensive set of norms” for space, Vice President Kamala Harris said in an April 18 speech at Vandenberg Space Force Base, about 160 miles (250 kilometers) northwest of Los Angeles.

“As we move forward, we will remain focused on writing new rules of the road to ensure all space activities are conducted in a responsible, peaceful, and sustainable manner,” she said. “The United States is committed to lead the way and to lead by example.”

China and Russia have led opposition to the accords, vowing greater space cooperation in early February as part of a “no limits” partnership when Putin visited President Xi Jinping in Beijing shortly before the war began. They are jointly promoting an alternative project on the moon they say is open to all other countries: the International Lunar Research Station.

One of China’s main problems with the Artemis Accords is a provision allowing nations to designate areas of the moon as “safety zones” — regions on the lunar surface that others should avoid. For the Americans and their Artemis partners, the exclusive areas are a way to comply with obligations under the Outer Space Treaty, which requires countries to avoid “harmful interference” in space.

To China, however, the safety zones are thinly disguised land grabs in violation of international law. Beijing wants any rule-making to be settled at the UN, where it can count on support from a wider group of countries eager for friendly ties with the world’s second-biggest economy.

“It’s time the US woke up and smelled the coffee,” the official China Daily proclaimed in a January editorial that criticized how NASA “invented” the concept of safety zones to allow governments or companies to reserve areas of the moon. “The world is no longer interested in its divisive, hegemonic schemes.”

China has good reason to be suspicious of US efforts in space. American legislation first passed in 2011 prevents NASA from most interactions with its Chinese counterpart, and the US has blocked China from taking part in the International Space Station — a move that simply prompted Beijing to build its own.

“China was left out of that order and now it’s going its own way,” said Lincoln Hines, an assistant professor at the US Air War College who has studied the Chinese space program. “That raises the challenge as to whether you can have a coherent system of rules in outer space when you have two different visions of order and there isn’t any cooperation.”

The head of the Russian space program, Roscosmos director Dmitry Rogozin, in late April suggested that Russia had decided to quit the International Space Station because of Western sanctions on Russia from its invasion of Ukraine.

While Russia’s space program was already in decline before Putin’s war, China is swiftly moving toward Xi’s goal of matching US capabilities in space. China became the first country to send a probe to the far side of the moon in 2019, and last year it became only the second nation after the US to land a rover on Mars.

On March 10, China launched a Long March rocket from the southern island province of Hainan to deliver cargo to the Tiangong, the orbiting spacecraft that Beijing plans to complete this year — making China the only country to operate its own space station. The following month, Xi ordered officials to build a world-leading spacecraft launch site in Hainan.

“To explore the vast cosmos, develop the space industry and build China into a space power is our eternal dream,” Xi said in the introduction to a white paper on China’s space program released in January, which said China plans to launch a robotic lunar mission around 2025. China may be able to send astronauts to the moon for the first time by 2030, Ye Peijian, chief designer of China’s first lunar probe, told state media at the time.

“China wants really badly to be seen as the NASA of the future,” said Michelle Hanlon, co-director of the Center for Air and Space Law at the University of Mississippi and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Space Law. “It wants to be that leader. China feels that it’s China’s time.”

As the US, China and other nations target the moon, the need to establish rules to avoid conflict is becoming more urgent.


NASA in April conducted tests for the launch of Artemis I, the first American spacecraft to aim for the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972. While this mission will be fully robotic, NASA’s goal is to send astronauts to the moon around 2025 — including the first woman — and build a base camp on the lunar surface.

Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp. will conduct a test flight from Texas in the next few months of the company’s new Starship rocket, which SpaceX plans to use to take humans to the moon and Mars.

Japan and South Korea, both Artemis Accords signatories, have lunar missions in the works. So does India, the largest space-faring nation yet to commit to either the American or the Sino-Russian teams. Putin also vowed last month to “restore the moon program.”

“The moon is in play,” said Steven Freeland, vice-chair of a working group on legal aspects of space resource activity for the UN’s Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. Freeland, an emeritus professor of international law at Western Sydney University, expects to see the start of efforts to extract resources from the lunar surface by the end of the decade.

Unlike Earth, the moon may contain large amounts of helium-3, an isotope potentially useful as an alternative to uranium for nuclear power plants because it’s not radioactive. Chinese state media in 2019 said the moon is “sometimes referred to as the Persian Gulf of the solar system,” with experts believing 5,000 tons of coal could be replaced by about three tablespoons of helium-3.

While there’s not yet proof that helium-3 can do what boosters claim, Chinese researchers are already looking for the element in moon rocks brought back to Earth in late 2020 by one of China’s lunar missions. The moon could also prove valuable as a source of water, taken from ice at the lunar poles, to make rocket fuel that could power missions to Mars and other places in the solar system.

For now, the US appears to be ahead in winning over nations to its interpretation of rules for operating in space. As the Artemis Accords gain new signatories, China is still waiting for another leader besides Putin to team up on the International Lunar Research Station.


Chinese state media reported in March that negotiations were underway with the European Space Agency, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia about taking part in the rival moon base. But Russia’s war in Ukraine will likely make the project much less appealing to some nations.

The European Space Agency on March 17 suspended a plan to send a Russian-made lander to Mars in September or October, following UK-based satellite operator OneWeb Ltd.’s cancellation of plans to launch its low-Earth orbit satellites aboard Russian rockets.

“The impact on the Russian space program is going to be disastrous,” said Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics, which is operated by Harvard University and the Smithsonian Institution.

Although China doesn’t need Russian expertise, Xi’s long-term strategic calculus means Beijing is unlikely abandon Moscow in an effort to win more potential partners. Putin’s top space official has already called for greater cooperation with China.

“We work well with our Chinese friends,” Roscosmos director Rogozin said in an interview with Chinese state-run broadcaster CGTN released on April 4. “To be friends in space, we must be friends on Earth.”

The same appears to hold true for adversaries. In a sign of what could go wrong without a common set of rules in space, the US and China traded accusations in recent months over two incidents last year involving satellites launched by Musk’s SpaceX that Beijing said came dangerously close to its orbiting space station.

After China lodged a complaint with the UN, the US said a notification wasn’t necessary — implying Beijing exaggerated the risk. That irked China even more, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian saying the US didn’t reply to emails to discuss the incident and wasn’t “showing the due responsible attitude as a space power.”

The episode points to China’s bigger problem with the Artemis Accords: Beijing is upset about being left out of the process and pressured to accept principles that were crafted by the US instead of at the UN, according to Jessica West, senior researcher and managing editor for the Space Security Index project at Project Ploughshares, the peace research institute of The Canadian Council of Churches.

The conflict over who makes the rules, she added, shows the world has lots of work left to avoid a clash in space.

“I’m not sure people expected the explosion of space activity that happened,” West said. “We’re just not adequately prepared.”

(By Bruce Einhorn, with assistance from Jing Li)