Mexico's Cemex to fully operate UK cement plant on alternative fuel


A cement plant of Mexican cement maker CEMEX is pictured in Monterrey

Mon, May 30, 2022

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -Mexico's Cemex, one of the largest concrete producers globally, said Monday it would fully operate a cement plant in the United Kingdom on a type of alternative fuel, as the company looks to greatly reduce its carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions.

The plant in Rugby, in England's West Midlands region, is Cemex's first to fully operate on "Climafuel," a mix of paper, cardboard, wood, carpet, textiles and plastics, the company said. BIOFUEL THAT IS NOT POLLUTION FREE

Cemex Chief Executive Fernando Gonzalez said in a statement that the plant's conversion served "as the model for the rest of our regions."

Concrete producers have been pressured by regulators and investors to lower CO2 emissions in recent years. Cement, key to producing concrete, contributes around 8% of CO2 emissions globally, according to estimates.

Cemex did not give a time frame for the plant's transition to alternative fuels, with the regional head saying in a statement the company "eventually (expected) to phase out" fossil fuels completely at the Rugby facility.

The company said the move was part of its strategy to produce net-zero CO2 concrete by 2050.

Giant Deep Ocean Turbine Trial Offers Hope of Endless Green Power

Erica Yokoyama
Mon, May 30, 2022, 7:07 PM·6 min read

(Bloomberg) -- Power-hungry, fossil-fuel dependent Japan has successfully tested a system that could provide a constant, steady form of renewable energy, regardless of the wind or the sun.

For more than a decade, Japanese heavy machinery maker IHI Corp. has been developing a subsea turbine that harnesses the energy in deep ocean currents and converts it into a steady and reliable source of electricity. The giant machine resembles an airplane, with two counter-rotating turbine fans in place of jets, and a central ‘fuselage’ housing a buoyancy adjustment system. Called Kairyu, the 330-ton prototype is designed to be anchored to the sea floor at a depth of 30-50 meters (100-160 feet).

In commercial production, the plan is to site the turbines in the Kuroshio Current, one of the world’s strongest, which runs along Japan’s eastern coast, and transmit the power via seabed cables.

“Ocean currents have an advantage in terms of their accessibility in Japan,” said Ken Takagi, a professor of ocean technology policy at the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Frontier Sciences. “Wind power is more geographically suited to Europe, which is exposed to predominant westerly winds and is located at higher latitudes.” Japan’s New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) estimates the Kuroshio Current could potentially generate as much as 200 gigawatts — about 60% of Japan’s present generating capacity.

Like other nations, the lion’s share of investment in renewables has gone into wind and solar, especially after the Fukushima nuclear disaster curbed that nation’s appetite for atomic energy. Japan is already the world’s third largest generator of solar power and is investing heavily in offshore wind, but harnessing ocean currents could provide the reliable baseline power needed to reduce the need for energy storage or fossil fuels.

The advantage of ocean currents is their stability. They flow with little fluctuation in speed and direction, giving them a capacity factor — a measure of how often the system is generating — of 50-70%, compared with around 29% for onshore wind and 15% for solar.

In February, IHI completed a 3 ½ year-long demonstration study of the technology with NEDO. Its team tested the system in the waters around the Tokara Islands in southwestern Japan by hanging Kairyu from a vessel and sending power back to the ship. It first drove the ship to artificially generate a current, and then suspended the turbines in the Kuroshio.

The tests proved the prototype could generate the expected 100 kilowatts of stable power and the company now plans to scale up to a full 2 megawatt system that could be in commercial operation in the 2030s or later.

Like other advanced maritime nations, Japan is exploring various ways of harnessing energy from the sea, including tidal and wave power and ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC), which exploits the difference in temperature between the surface and the deep ocean. Mitsui OSK Lines Ltd. has invested in UK-based Bombora Wave Power to explore the potential for the technology in Japan and Europe. The company is also promoting OTEC and began operating a 100 kW demonstration facility in Okinawa in April, according to Yasuo Suzuki, general manager of the corporate marketing division. Kyushu Electric’s renewable unit Kyuden Mirai Energy begins a 650 million yen ($5.1 million) feasibility test this year to produce 1 MW of tidal power around the Goto Islands in the East China Sea. The government this month also proposed changes to offshore wind auctions that could speed up development.

Among marine-energy technologies, the one advancing fastest towards cost-effectiveness is tidal stream, where “the technology has advanced quite a long way and it definitely works,” said Angus McCrone, a former BloombergNEF chief editor and marine energy analyst. Scotland-based Orbital Marine Power is one of several companies constructing tidal systems around Orkney, location of the European Marine Energy Centre. Others include SIMEC Atlantis Energy’s MeyGen array and California-based Aquantis, founded by US wind pioneer James Dehlsen, which reportedly plans to start testing a tidal system there next year.

While tidal flows don’t run 24 hours, they tend to be stronger than deep ocean currents. The Kuroshio current flows at 1 to 1.5 meters per second, compared with 3 meters per second for some tidal systems. “The biggest issue for ocean current turbines is whether they could produce a device that would generate power economically out of currents that are not particularly strong,” said McCrone.

Ocean Energy Systems, an intergovernmental collaboration established by the International Energy Agency, sees the potential to deploy more than 300 gigawatts of ocean energy globally by 2050.

But the potential for ocean energy is location dependent, taking into account the strength of currents, access to grids or markets, maintenance costs, shipping, marine life and other factors. In Japan, wave energy is moderate and unstable through the year, while areas with strong tidal currents tend to have heavy shipping traffic, Takagi said. And OTEC is better suited to tropical regions where the temperature gradient is bigger. One of the advantages of the deep ocean current is it doesn’t restrict navigation of ships, IHI said.

Still, the Japanese company has a long way to go. Compared with onshore facilities, it’s much more complicated to install a system underwater. “Unlike Europe, which has a long history of the North Sea Oil exploration, Japan has had little experience with offshore construction,” said Takagi. There are major engineering challenges to build a system robust enough to withstand the hostile conditions of a deep ocean current and to reduce maintenance costs.

“Japan isn’t blessed with a lot of alternative energy sources,” he said. “People may say that this is just a dream, but we need to try everything to achieve zero carbon.”

With the cost of wind and solar power and battery storage declining, IHI will also need to demonstrate that overall project costs for ocean current power are competitive. IHI aims to generate power at 20 yen per kilowatt-hour from large-scale deployment. That compares with about 17 yen for solar in the country and about 12-16 yen for offshore wind. IHI also said it conducted an environmental assessment before it launched the project and will use the test results to examine any impact on the marine environment and fishing industry.

If successful at scale, deep ocean currents could add a vital part in providing green baseline power in the global effort to phase out fossil fuels. IHI’s work could help Japan’s engineering take a leading role with government support, said McCrone.

IHI has to make a convincing argument that “Japan could benefit from being a technology leader in this area,” he said.

Electric vehicles not the only way to meet CO2 targets, Italy car lobby says


An electric car is plugged in at a charging point for electric vehicles in Rome

Tue, May 31, 2022

MILAN (Reuters) - Electric vehicles are not the only effective route to reducing carbon emissions produced by the car industry, the head of Italy's automotive lobby said on Tuesday.

Other technologies could help to decarbonise the industry, meeting the same targets on emissions while preserving know-how and jobs in Italy, said Paolo Scudieri, the chairman of automotive industry association ANFIA.

"I refer to the tangible contribution that biofuels and synthetic fuels, as well as hydrogen, can provide," Scudieri said opening ANFIA's public assembly, adding the Italian automotive industry was already making huge investments on hydrogen.

Biofuels and synthetic fuels, referred to as e-fuels, are being developed to allow modified versions of combustion engines to continue to be used rather than a wholesale switch to battery electric vehicles (BEV).

Scudieri said that exclusively focusing on BEV technology, currently dominated by Asian producers, would put some 73,000 jobs at risk in Italy in coming years, which would not be compensated by about 6,000 new jobs expected to be created by electric mobility.

He added around 450 car parts maker in Italy, out of a total of 2,200, risk going out of business as they have not yet started to shift production towards electric technology.

The European Commission has proposed a 100% cut in CO2 emissions by 2035 for the industry. The target, which is part of a bigger package of climate change policies launched last year, would make it impossible to sell new fossil fuel-powered vehicles in the 27-country bloc.

The European parliament will hold a debate next week on a number of climate policies, including a plan to effectively ban combustion engine cars by 2035.

Scudieri said there was not a prevailing position among different political groups within the European parliament.

"Every single vote will count and my wish is that our MEPs will vote also having the country's interests in mind," he said.

(Reporting by Giulio Piovaccari; Editing by Keith Weir)

21ST CENTURY ROBBER BARON

Elon Musk said working from home during the pandemic 'tricked' people into thinking they don't need to work hard. He's dead wrong, economists say.

Isobel Asher Hamilton

Wed, June 1, 2022,

Elon Musk at the 2022 Met Gala.Andrew Kelly/Reuters

• Elon Musk said COVID-19 "tricked people into thinking that you don't actually need to work hard."

• Working from home didn't make workers less productive, three economists told Insider.

• The only constraint on productivity was when workers had children at home they needed to look after.

Elon Musk is not a fan of remote work.

In the early hours of Wednesday, Musk commented on a tweet which appeared to be an email from him to Tesla executive staff, saying: "Anyone who wishes to do remote work must be in the office for a minimum (and I mean *minimum*) of 40 hours per week or depart Tesla."

Although Musk didn't confirm the authenticity of the email, when asked whether such a strict in-office policy could be considered antiquated by some, he replied: "They should pretend to work somewhere else."

The tweets were not completely out of the blue.

Musk previously expressed distaste for American workers "trying to avoid going to work at all" in a May interview with The Financial Times — although he was contrasting them with workers in China, rather than comparing in-office and remote workers.

And he tweeted last month: "All the Covid stay-at-home stuff has tricked people into thinking that you don't actually need to work hard."

Musk, who railed against lockdown mandates and defied shelter-in-place orders to send workers back to his California Tesla factory in May 2020, might have the wrong idea about remote work. Insider spoke to three economists, all of whom said remote work during the pandemic did not damage worker productivity.

"Most of the evidence shows that productivity has increased while people stayed at home," Natacha Postel-Vinay, an economic and financial historian at the London School of Economics, told Insider.

"People spent less time commuting so could use some of that time to work, and they also got to spend more time with their family and sleeping, which meant they were happier and ended up more productive," she added.

Musk did not immediately reply when contacted by Insider outside of usual working hours.

Data shared with Bloomberg in February 2021 by VPN provider NordVPN Teams suggested that in many economies, working from home meant people worked longer hours.

Albrecht Ritschl, an professor of economic history, also said cutting out commuting was a bonus to worker productivity, and added that working from home led to fewer hours spent in "pointless meetings."

"Time spent at the office is not the same thing as working hard," Ritschl said.

Almarina Gramozi, a lecturer in economics at King's College London, said the largest surveys of workers in the US and the UK found workers were at least as productive at home as in the office — although she said a similar study in Japan found workers did report lower productivity working from home.

All three experts said productivity occasionally dipped in some cases, but not because people were shirking.

People with children at home during the pandemic often had to split their attention between work and childcare, leading to a decrease in productivity, Postel-Vinay and Ritschl said.

Gramozi also added productivity isn't just down to individual employees.

"Productivity levels depend substantially on the support that employers offer, technology adoption, and on the type of work that would allow it to be easily conducted remotely," she told Insider.

Elon Musk says recession is 'a good thing,' billionaires make people 'happy'



Bryan Ke
Mon, May 30, 2022

Elon Musk said in a series of tweets last week that it is “morally wrong and dumb” to use the word “billionaire” as a pejorative and that a possible recession is “a good thing” because it could affect unproductive work-from-home employees.

The comment about billionaires came after Musk, 50, opened a poll on Twitter on Friday and asked his 95.7 million followers who they trust less: politicians or billionaires. The results of the poll, which 3,399,953 people participated in, showed that 75.7% of respondents trust politicians less, while 24.3% of respondents trust billionaires less.

Who do you trust less? Real question.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 26, 2022

In another tweet on Friday, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO said it is “morally wrong and dumb” to use the word “billionaire” as a pejorative, adding, “If the reason for it is building products that make millions of people happy.”



Musk also tagged Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY, 14) in one of the replies to his poll, daring the politician to start her own poll with her followers. The New York representative reportedly told Bloomberg earlier this month that she would like to replace her Tesla with an electric vehicle manufactured by workers who push for unionization, a process that Musk has expressed great disapproval of in the past.

“A union is just another corporation,” Musk tweeted on Friday. “Far better for many companies to compete for your skills, so that you have maximum optionality.”

In addition to his pro-billionaire thread, Musk expressed his thoughts about the country heading for a recession, claiming that “this is actually a good thing.”

“It has been raining money on fools for too long. Some bankruptcies need to happen,” Musk added. “Also, all the Covid stay-at-home stuff has tricked people into thinking that you don’t actually need to work hard. Rude awakening inbound!”

Replying to another Twitter user who asked how long the recession would last, Musk wrote, “Based on past experience, about 12 to 18 months. Companies that are inherently negative cash flow (i.e. value destroyers) need to die so that they stop consuming resources.”


Musk’s tweets came right after the World Economic Forum occurred in Davos, Switzerland, from May 22 to 26. During the event, several world leaders, CEOS, journalists, investors and others gather to discuss wide-ranging problems, from economy-related issues to climate change.

Rich Nations’ Toxic Habits Bring African Refugees to Their Doors



Antony Sguazzin, Katarina Hoije and Maya Averbuch
Tue, May 31, 2022

(Bloomberg) -- Osman Ali grew up near southern Somalia’s Shabelle river that was once deep enough for him to dive in for a swim. But in the last three years, droughts have thinned it into a dirty stream, wilting his corn and sesame crops and reducing his sheep and goats to skin and bones. Left at the mercy of armed extortionists he couldn’t pay, the 29-year-old sold his family’s land and bought a ticket to Brazil. A two-month-long trudge through jungles, rivers and cities brought him to Tapachula in Mexico, with hopes of heading to the US southern border.

Like him, Ibrahima Coulibaly waited in the sweltering heat on a sidewalk outside Tapachula’s immigration office in a yellow Lakers basketball jersey. He left his home near Tambacounda in eastern Senegal after a series of droughts destroyed his millet, peanut and bean crops, leaving his family with little to eat. He sold his 32 head of cattle and embarked on a long journey to the Americas. Arriving in Brazil earlier this year and robbed in the Darien Gap — the dense jungle between Colombia and Panama infested with poisonous snakes and bandits — Coulibaly was desperate for a permit to continue crossing Mexico to get to the US border.

“At some point leaving is better than staying; you can walk until you drop dead, but you can’t just sit still until you die from hunger,” the 37-year-old said in an interview in April. “Every year is worse than the previous one.”

The number of Africans trying to make it to the US southern border is on track to hit a potential record this year. Coming from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali, Senegal, Ghana, Somalia and elsewhere, many are escaping livelihood-destroying climate events. The continent they’re fleeing is facing natural disasters at a faster rate than the rest of the planet, and is largely unprepared to deal with them. Africa, which has done the least to cause the global climate crisis — producing just 4% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions — is being hit by record storms, floods and droughts as the earth heats up.

By 2050, 86 million Africans, or about 6.6% of the region’s 1.3 billion people, will be forced to migrate by climate change, the World Bank estimates. That’s on top of those fleeing conflicts and persecution — often linked to climate-related skirmishes over scarce resources. And with Africa’s population expected to double by 2050, those numbers can only rise.

The vast majority of climate victims migrate to other parts of their own country — mostly to urban slums — or spill into a neighboring nation, but those who can scrape together some funds venture farther afield. With over 4,500 Africans crossing the Colombia-Panama border between January and April this year, according to the International Organization for Migration, they have become the second-largest group — after Latin Americans — to try to get to the US border. And although Europe has tightened controls, in the first two months this year, over 89,000 people crossed the Sahara desert in northern Niger, according to the IOM. Most were on their way to — or returning from — Algeria and Libya, the well-worn path to Europe, with nine out of 10 people the IOM spoke to citing climate change as one of the reasons for why they were leaving.

“People are like ‘OK, I can’t live here, I may as well die trying to get somewhere else,’” said Ayaan Adam, chief executive officer of AFC Capital Partners, the unit of the infrastructure-focused Africa Finance Corp. that’s raising $500 million for a climate-resilience fund this year. “This is happening now. We are seeing a preview of the movie that will unroll and that will be increasing in intensity.”

Helping Africans stay home by making the continent sustainable carries a hefty price tag — $1 trillion to “climate-proof” the infrastructure it needs, which itself would cost $2.3 trillion, Adam estimates. China, the US and Europe, which collectively produce more than 50% of the world’s emissions, need to help finance this effort, African leaders say.

“This is not a donation, this is a cleaning fee,” Malawi’s President Lazarus Chakwera said at COP26 in Glasgow in November.

Richer countries can limit refugees at their borders by helping the continent adapt to climate change, said Lisa Lim Ah Ken, a migration and climate change specialist for east Africa at the IOM.

“Developed nations spend huge national budgets on building walls and creating and policing immigration policies that prevent migration, yet if those budgets were invested in the nations and communities who are suffering from the effects of climate change, supporting their sustainable development, then perhaps forced migration would be reduced,” Lim Ah Ken said.

It’s been more than a decade since rich countries committed to help the world’s poorer nations cut emissions and adapt to climate change with up to $100 billion a year. They have yet to meet that target.

African leaders estimate that adapting to climate change — by fortifying coastlines against rising sea levels, fighting desertification and building climate-resilient roads and bridges — would require an annual $33 billion, Patrick Verkooijen, chief executive officer of the Global Center on Adaptation, or GCA, said in an interview from Rotterdam. While the countries can raise $6 billion themselves, they’re only getting another $6 billion in aid, he said.

“This is a must have, not a nice to have, for Africa,” Verkooijen said, adding that adaptation finance will be a key focus of the COP27 climate summit in November in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.

The climate-adaptation money currently flowing in is too insignificant to make a difference. The African Development Bank has a fund with contributions from Europe and Canada, but has disbursed just $8 million for small operations in 16 countries. One ambitious project — the Great Green Wall initiative aimed at halting desertification by planting trees across the width of Africa — has received pledges of over $19 billion from organizations across the globe. But progress has been slow.

Extreme weather events have exploded in Africa. The Horn of Africa is currently dealing with the worst drought in at least four decades, putting 16 million people across Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia at risk and raising the specter of a famine. In May, South Africa’s deadliest floods in almost three decades triggered landslides that killed 435 people and destroyed thousands of dwellings.

The number of floods in Africa has jumped five-fold since the 1990s, according to GCA. In 2020, the most severe flood in Sudan in 60 years displaced more than 500,000 people. In 2019, two of the strongest cyclones ever recorded hit east Africa. Cyclone Idai destroyed 90% of the homes in the city of Beira in Mozambique and damaged 1.4 million hectares (3.6 million acres) of arable land in Zimbabwe. That was followed by Cyclone Kenneth. Together, they killed 1,300 people and affected the lives of 3.5 million more.

The floods that followed the cyclones provoked the worst locust infestation in a quarter century, leaving 9.6 million people in Sudan without enough food and driving thousands of farmers in Somalia to migrate. Africa loses 4 million hectares of forest each year to land degradation, Lake Chad has shrunk by 90% in the last 40 years and the glaciers on Mount Kilimanjaro are melting.

“Climate change impacts are costing African economies between 3% and 5% of their GDPs,” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa told the African Union on Feb. 6. “Despite not being responsible for causing climate change, it is Africans who are bearing both the brunt and the cost. The necessary financial flows to enable developing-economy countries in particular to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change remain vastly inadequate.”

African leaders haven’t helped, treating climate-driven problems as a “peripheral issue,” said Saliem Fakir, executive director of the African Climate Foundation. “Governments treat it as an environmental issue largely to be supported by donor assistance and not really integrated into the economic debate.” Poor planning, deforestation and the misuse of developmental funds have made matters worse.

In an index of 182 countries assessed by the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative for climate-change vulnerability, the bottom seven are African. That comes from the continent’s overwhelming dependence on subsistence farming. About half of Africa’s population relies on agriculture. In the eastern parts of the continent, that number rises to 70%. There’s little irrigation, leaving farmers at the mercy of rain.

For many potential climate refugees, poor crops are where their migration journeys start. Mouhoumoudane Mohamed, 34, from a village in the Agadez region in Niger, left for Algeria in 2019, hoping to make it to Europe.

“One bad harvest followed another; the meager crops that you could squeeze from the soil weren’t enough,” Mohamed said. “The problem in Agadez is the lack of water. When it rains, it’s never enough. Or it’s too heavy and destroys the crops.”

He failed, and is back in Agadez, holding off trying again — for now.

A record 4.3 million people were displaced in 2020 in Sub-Saharan Africa alone due to weather events and conflicts, GCA estimates. Migration within the continent creates problems of its own. Desperate farmers moving to greener pastures cause conflict with communities already there. Also, with few opportunities, youths are joining Islamist militants — providing fodder for groups that Europe and the US are trying to fight.

Africa’s rapidly growing cities, to which many of the continent’s poor gravitate, are seeing climate-related problems of their own. About half of Africans now live in cities, and the urban population is expected to nearly triple by 2050, according to GCA. Seventy-nine African cities, including 15 national capitals, are at extreme risk of climate change, according to Catlyne Haddaoui, a global policy and research manager at the Washington-based Coalition for Urban Transitions.

“An increase of 2 degrees Celsius in average world temperature doesn’t have the same effect in Nigeria as it does in the US where you have air conditioning from your car to your office to your house and everywhere,” Haddaoui said. “It would be way more difficult to deal with in Africa and way more deadly.”

With extreme weather only likely to intensify and drive more people to migrate, “developed countries have both a responsibility and an interest in helping some of the most vulnerable countries,” said Taylor Dimsdale, director for Risk and Resilience at E3G, a climate think-tank.

It might stop migrants like Ali from knocking at their doors. The Somali farmer waited in Tapachula, about 900 miles from the nearest US border, to make the final stretch of his journey to America. With climate change destroying his livelihood, he’s keen to start over elsewhere.

“We depend on the rain and the river, but there was no water,” said Ali. “We lost everything.”

Why India is the big winner as EU’s Russia oil ban redraws energy trade map

‘We have a growing suspicion that India is becoming the de facto refining hub for Europe’: RBC’s Tran

May 31, 2022 

William Watts

David Hecker/Getty Images

In an unexpected twist, the European Union’s plan to ban imports of Russian crude in response to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine appears to be transforming India’s role in the global oil trade.

“As the EU weans from Russian refined product, we have a growing suspicion that India is becoming the de facto refining hub for Europe,” said Michael Tran, global energy strategist at RBC Capital Markets, in a Tuesday note.

It’s all part of the seismic displacements taking place across the physical market for crude and products in the aftermath of Russia’s late-February invasion and the resulting rounds of sanctions placed on Moscow.

EU leaders agreed Monday to embargo most Russian oil imports into the bloc by year-end as part of new sanctions agreed at a summit. While the agreement marks a hard-fought policy victory for the West, the reshuffling of global trade flows are set to prove economically inflationary for all nations involved as long as the war drags on, Tran said.

That will make sourcing barrels more expensive and keep upward pressure on oil pricing, the analyst said. The U.S. oil benchmark CL.1, +2.90% CLN22, +2.90% ended the day lower on Tuesday after earlier trading near a three-month high just shy of $120, but ended may with a strong gain. Brent crude BRN00, +1.14%, the global benchmark, ended higher and was also up for the month.

Meanwhile, India’s new role comes as it loads up on discounted Russian crude, which it has been refining at a torrid pace and then exporting refined products (see chart below).

RBC CAPITAL MARKETS

Here’s how the puzzle pieces fit together, according to Tran:
India is buying record amounts of severely discounted Russian crude, running its refiners above nameplate capacity, and capturing the economic rent of sky-high crack spreads and exporting gasoline and diesel to Europe. In short, the EU policy of tightening the screws on Russia is a policy win, but the unintended consequence is that Europe is effectively importing inflation to its own citizens. This is not only an economic boon for India, but it also serves as an accelerator for India’s place in the new geopolitically rewritten oil trade map. What we mean is that the EU policy effectively makes India an increasingly vital energy source for Europe. This was historically never the case, and it is why Indian product exports have been clocking in at all-time-high levels over recent months.

So does India’s example mean that Russian crude no longer bound for Europe will just end up elsewhere? That’s unlikely, according to Tran.

He expects the EU ban to back out around 1.2 million to 1.5 million barrels a day (mbd) of Russian exports. They will have to find a home elsewhere, particularly Asia.

So far, China has yet to increase imports, let alone Russian barrels, but scope for India, which has “already been backing up the truck and buying discounted Russian barrels in size,” to further boost purchases appears limited. Over time, Russian storage will fill and production will begin to falter, Tran said.

He noted that Russian floating crude storage now stand near 2 million barrels, down from 3.5 million a month ago, while refined products remain unchanged near 4 million barrels.

“This implies that barrels have continued to move in a relatively fluid state and storage levels have yet to be stressed, for now, but given the ban, the directional arrows of process would suggest that the wheels are in motion,” he said.

RUSSIA JUSTIFIES WAR WITH POLAND
Putin's Security Council says that Poland is "moving to seize" Ukraine



Ukrayinska Pravda
Tue, May 31, 2022
"EUROPEAN PRAVDA" — TUESDAY, MAY 31, 2022
NIKOLAY PATRUSHEV, PHOTO BY RIA NOVOSTI

Secretary of the Russian Security Council Nikolai Patrushev said that Poland is moving to seize territories in western Ukraine.

He said this on Tuesday at a meeting on national security in the Volga region."European Pravda" with reference to the Russian agency "Interfax".

He said that the partners of the "Kyiv regime" are not averse to taking advantage of the current situation to further their own interests and have special plans for Ukrainian lands.

"Apparently, Poland is already making moves to seize Western Ukrainian territories," Patrushev said.

According to him, this was confirmed by the visit of Polish President Andrzej Duda to Kyiv and his words that "soon the Polish-Ukrainian border will cease to exist."

Earlier in May, Duda proposed to conclude a new agreement on the friendship between Poland and Ukraine and also said that the border between these two countries should unite, not divide.

Patrushev also said that "a number of states are already actively working on the dismemberment of Ukraine."

Earlier in Russia, they came up with a scenario according to which Poland, in collusion with the United States, seizes western Ukraine.

During the visit of President Andrzej Duda to Kyiv, Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced his intentions to simplify the border crossing between Ukraine and Poland.

For more information, see the article Approaching Schengen: what will give Ukraine joint control over the border with Poland.

Analysis: Russians feel little economic pain now, long-term outlook darkens

Mon, May 30, 2022, 

By Jake Cordell

LONDON (Reuters) - For Oleg Kechin, owner of a chain of barbershops, forecasts that Russia will be plunged into its deepest economic crisis in a generation feel overdone.

U.S. President Joe Biden may have promised that Western sanctions would wreak economic havoc in Russia, but Kechin's business is still drawing in customers in the town of Saransk, which lies 510 km (320 miles) southeast of Moscow.

"There's no deep crisis. In general, everything's fine," he said. "Everyone's talking about a decrease in purchasing power, but I haven't noticed it."

Yet, such confidence may not be entirely well placed, if some indicators are to be believed. Trade with the outside world has plunged, consumers are reluctant to spend and rising prices on basic items are starting to squeeze household budgets.

Russian officials insist the economy is holding up. The central bank slashed interest rates by three percentage points to 11% on Thursday and expects to cut its forecast for inflation for this year from the current prediction of 18-23%.

Under capital controls and orders that exporters sell half their hard currency earnings, the rouble has rallied and, at about 66 to the U.S. dollar, is stronger than before Russia sent its armed forces into Ukraine on Feb. 24. [RU/RUB]

President Vladimir Putin, who has welcomed the departure of foreign firms which have sold up or just dumped Russian assets, said Russia could not be isolated from global trade.

But not everyone is convinced the economy will escape unscathed. Roman, a 25-year-old in Moscow, who asked not to be identified by his full name, said middle class life was not "drastically different" than before but he saw worrying signs.

"One thing that bothers me ... is constant price rises for everyday goods and even vegetables. I think that signals the worst is yet to come." he said. "The situation with the labour market in my sphere doesn't make me very optimistic either."

'DEMAND CRISIS'

Some indicators justify his concerns. VAT receipts, which reflect consumer spending, fell 54% in April year on year, the Kommersant daily said, citing preliminary finance ministry data.

Economy Minister Maxim Reshetnikov said on Friday there was a "demand crisis" in business and consumer spending.

Russia has stopped publishing most data on financial flows, but figures compiled by the Bank of Finland based on local customs data show imports have plunged - and not just from the West.

Chinese exports to Russia were down by a quarter in April and shipments from Vietnam, South Korea, Malaysia and Taiwan more than halved, the bank said.

The economy minister said manufacturers were re-establishing supply chains broken by sanctions and said 2,000 "backbone companies" could access preferential lending programmes.

But inflation is still at its highest in two decades at more than 17%. That means a 10% hike in pensions and the minimum wage announced by Putin still leaves many facing a cut in household incomes in real terms.

Rising prices may not be Russia's biggest problem. The strong rouble has already brought down weekly inflation sharply, but it won't fend off a broader threat to economic output from Russia's increasing isolation.

Reshetnikov said there were "fears that we could break into a deflationary spiral, when a reduction in money in the economy leads to a reduction in production, lower prices, and so on."

Meanwhile, financing a military campaign in Ukraine will put pressure on the budget. Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said on Friday that Moscow required "huge financial resources" for what Moscow calls its "special military operation".

STIMULUS

Russia has already dipped into its National Wealth Fund, which has about $110 billion of liquid assets, to support spending, which is up 22% this year, the economy minister said.

The finance minister said Moscow had earmarked 8 trillion roubles ($123 billion) of stimulus for "the current circumstances", although it was not clear how much of that was new money and over what period.

The full impact on economic output and jobs from the withdrawal of Western firms, ranging from carmakers to banks, has yet to seen.

Sergei Guriev, economics professor at France's Sciences Po, expected the impact to be felt more sharply in the next few months.

"The real pain has not started yet as some exiting companies are still paying wages and some companies continue production using their inventories of imported parts," said Guriev, who is also a former chief economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

Morgan Stanley economists see a 13% drop in household consumption in 2022 and a 23% fall in investment. The bank's chief regional economist, Alina Slyusarchuk, said in a note that Russia's potential long-term growth rate was now just 1%.

The outlook appears to be dimming for smaller Russian firms, although there is little way to gauge it precisely with so little official data now being published and businesses no longer required to report results.

"Very few companies want to create a strategy or plan long-term, large-scale contracts right now," said Anastasia Kiseleva, a partner at a small public relations firm in Moscow.

"Businesses - especially small ones - will be engaged in pure survival, not developing or creating anything new."

Survival-mode, however, is nothing new to many Russians, who have lived through several deep crises since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

"The worst is ahead of us," said Yevgeniy Sheremetov, who runs a tour company near Lake Baikal in Siberia. "But residents of this country are used to difficulties. I have my summer house, with potatoes and cucumbers. After the 1990s, nothing can scare me."

(Additional reporting by Marc Jones in London; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Edmund Blair)

Ukraine's 'unicorn' LGBTQ soldiers head for war





Couple leave for the frontline to serve the Territorial Defence army, in Kyiv

Tue, May 31, 2022,
By Horaci Garcia

KYIV (Reuters) - As volunteer fighters Oleksandr Zhuhan and Antonina Romanova pack for a return to active duty, they contemplate the unicorn insignia that gives their uniform a rare distinction - a symbol of their status as an LGBTQ couple who are Ukrainian soldiers.

Members of Ukraine's LGBTQ community who sign up for the war have taken to sewing the image of the mythical beast into their standard-issue epaulettes just below the national flag.

The practice harks back to the 2014 conflict when Russia invaded then annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine, "when lots of people said there are no gay people in the army," actor, director and drama teacher Zhuhan told Reuters as he and Romanova dressed in their apartment for their second three-month combat rotation.

"So they (the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community) chose the unicorn because it is like a fantastic 'non-existent' creature."

Zhuhan and Romanova, who identifies as a non-binary person with she/her pronouns and moved to the capital from Crimea after being displaced in 2014, met through their theatre work.

Neither was trained in the use of weapons but, after spending a couple of days hiding in their bathroom at the start of the war, decided they had to do more.

"I just remember that at a certain point it became obvious that we only had three options: either hide in a bomb shelter, run away and escape, or join the Territorial Defence (volunteers). We chose the third option," Romanova said.

Russia says its forces are on a "special operation" to demilitarise Ukraine and rid it of radical anti-Russian nationalists. Ukraine and its allies call that a false pretext for a war of aggression.

For Zhuhan and Romanova, their vocation gives them an added sense of responsibility.

"Because what Russia does is they don't just take our territories and kill our people. They want to destroy our culture and... we can't allow this to happen," Zhuhan said.

'NO BULLYING'

Their first tour of duty around Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine, about 135 km (80 miles) from the port of Odesa, changed their lives. They fought in the same unit and found it terrifying, Zhuhan contracted pneumonia, but, the couple says, their fellow fighters accepted them.

"There was no aggression, no bullying... It was a little unusual for the others. But, over time, people started calling me Antonina, some even used my she pronoun," Romanova said.

There was much back-slapping as they joined their new unit at Kyiv's central station for a second three-month stint. Some of the team Zhuhan and Romanova knew but the commanders were not at the station.

"I'm a little worried about that," he said, the mood becoming more sombre as the unit headed towards their train as dusk fell. "I know that in some units, the rules are more strict... It wasn't like that in our (first) unit."

Zhuhan's unease lifts as one commander makes clear his refusal to tolerate homophobia, and a more senior officer says the only important thing on the front line is to be a good fighter, he subsequently tells Reuters by phone.

But one overriding fear, voiced back in their apartment, remains.

"The thing I'm worried about is that in case I get killed during this war, they won't allow Antonina to bury me the way I want to be buried," Zhuhan said.

"They'd rather let my mum bury me with the priest reading silly prayers... But I am an atheist and I don't want that."

(Reporting by Horaci Garcia; Writing by Eleanor Biles and John Stonestreet; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

LET THERE BE CONSPIRACY THEORIES

This American Married Into Royalty—Now She’s Dead

Barbie Latza Nadeau
Tue, May 31, 2022,

Instagram

An American-born princess whose fairy tale life turned into a modern horror story has died in her home in Spain.

Kasia Gallanio, 45, was born to Polish parents in Los Angeles, but spent the last years of her troubled life fighting for custody of the three daughters she had with the Prince of Qatar, Abdelaziz bin Khalifa Al-Thani, who is 30 years her senior and the uncle of the emir of Qatar.

Al-Thani moved to Paris in 1992 after he was cast out of the royal family for allegedly trying to overthrown the emir. He met Gallanio, who would ultimately become his third wife, there and convinced her to convert to Islam. Gallanio was involved in a $65 million lawsuit after discovering that someone had fraudulently been siphoning funds out of Al-Thani’s Barclay’s bank account, which made headlines across France in the late 1990s.

Gallanio left her husband over allegations that her husband sexually abused one of her three daughters when she was between 9 and 15 years old, and the two had been in a bitter custody battle that exposed plenty of family secrets of the Qatar royal family, with allegations that ran the gamut from infidelity to corruption.

Al-Thani denies all allegations and maintained custody off all three girls at his home in Paris while Gallanio lived in a palace in Marbella, Spain, where French media reported she was battling depression and addictions to drugs and alcohol.

Galliano had fled with her daughters from that palatial Parisian flat, but Al-Thani had recently regained custody of the girls, and they had moved back with him to Paris, according to French and Spanish media reports. If they attempted to visit their mother, the prince reportedly made them sleep in the servants quarters until they repented, according to French media reports.

A full autopsy is being carried out on Tuesday, but first responders said that they suspect her death was a drug overdose. Police went to the Costa del Sol beach home after she had not responded to her children’s telephone calls for several days. They have now opened an investigation into any circumstances around her death, including whether it was inspired by the bitter custody battle.