The forever coup: The Big Lie is more than Trump now

Alan Elrod, Arizona Mirror
August 05, 2022

The Big Lie is no longer just about 2020: It's now the core of the GOP's spirit, and it will be center stage in Arizona in November. Photo by Ken Coleman | Michigan Advance

This week’s primaries helped show something: The January 6 hearings may well not end the Big Lie. The Big Lie is more than Trump now, and it is more than a revisionist project about the 2020 election.

The Big Lie is now part of the culture wars, and as such it has become more diffused through our politics, more capable of enduring in myriad ways across American life. Any and all elections can now be called into question—from school board to president. Thiel-backed Senate hopeful Blake Masters, addressing questions around his own peddling of election lies summed it up by saying, “I think there’s always cheating, probably, in every election.”

His fellow Arizona election deniers — Kari Lake, Mark Finchem, and Abe Hamadeh — all have secured their nominations. Lake made waves by alleging she already had proof of fraud and tampering in the 48 hours before the primary vote, but has refused to provide any proof. She also emulated Trump by taking to the stage at her watch party at a moment when she still trailed in the vote and declaring, “We won this race, period.”

Lake is now the nominee, with all the worrying things that could portend, but her conduct in the final hours of the primary race highlight just how thoroughly embedded the logic of election denial has become.

While Masters has taken extreme positions, the threat posed by Lake, Finchem, and Hamadeh is far more direct. If they successfully win their respective races for governor, secretary of state, and attorney general, then elections in newly swing-y Arizona would be at the mercy of a trio of Big Lie supporters. While such a trifecta is by no means guaranteed, this would be a dream scenario for the MAGA movements hardcore coup supporters in 2024.

Finchem, a self-identified member of the Oath Keepers, also offers a prominent example of the increasingly dangerous relationship between the modern GOP and extremist militias. The Big Lie isn’t just fueling attempts at legal coups, it’s helping to propel groups that are entirely willing to engage in armed and violent actions to subvert democracy.

We live in the age of the supercharged conspiracy theory, capable of finding wider and wider audiences through new media platforms and capturing believers before they’re even fully aware of the nature of the content they are consuming.

But, perhaps more importantly, we live in the age of the fractured civic soul. Americans do not trust their institutions, and they do not trust one another. A host of politicians and activists, primarily on the populist right, have emerged to prey upon these vulnerabilities and move across the country like door-to-door salesmen for authoritarianism.

Concerns remain elsewhere. The Rust Belt states that helped deliver Donald Trump’s shock win in 2016 and were then critical to Biden’s 2020 victory have been particular hotbeds of Big Lie radicalism. In Pennsylvania, Doug Mastriano’s candidacy threatens to bring a firmly pro-coup politician into the governor’s mansion. In Michigan, party purges across state and local levels have elevated election deniers and alienated those who defend basic democratic accountability and transparency. Canvassers in Macomb, Saginaw, and Kalamazoo Counties, among others, have been pushed out to make room for Big Lie believers. In Michigan’s 3rd Congressional District, Republican Peter Meijer paid the ultimate price for his 2021 impeachment vote, falling to Trump-backed John Gibbs.

Across Lake Michigan, politics in Wisconsin is also turning into a stew of election paranoia and contempt. One stark example can be found in Elena Schneider’s examination of politics in Green Bay, where she noted that the city’s “nonpartisan city council races — traditionally quiet affairs that focus on taxes and roads — feature ads from a GOP super PAC questioning whether the city’s elections are legitimate…” We are no longer at a moment where the question is only whether Donald Trump will run in 2024 and attempt to manipulate or invalidate the results. We are at a point where even the most local races are vulnerable to conspiracy theorizing and attempted power grabs.

That local aspect is critical. It isn’t just in the prominent congressional, gubernatorial, and senatorial races that you can find the rot. Across America, officeholders and power-seekers in the most banal and seemingly minor contexts now plead conspiracy and theft in the face of basic democratic process. Sheriffs in states like Kansas, Michigan, and Wisconsin have taken it upon themselves to tout and even investigate election conspiracies. The deterioration of state Republican parties is clear, and so is the descent at the county level — perhaps best highlighted by the refusal of commissioners in Otero County, N.M., to certify their results of the state’s Republican primary.

Yes, many of the people above were propelled to prominence by Trump and the Trump movement — Kari Lake was, after all, once a proud Obama-voting moderate. And conspiratorial fears about Dominion Voting Systems continue to come up as a point of contention even in cases like Otero County. But the genie is well out of the bottle at this point.

Make America Great Again is so 2016, and Keep America Great is so 2020. Make America Great Again, Again is the new credo, and its redundancy is a function of its eternal quality. It’s the language of the Lost Cause, a nation having risen, been thwarted, and risen again, only to fall again to the overwhelming power of a corrupt elite and its power centers of finance and cultural production.

The term “forever war” has been popularized to describe the difficult, often flailing foreign military entanglements in which the United States poured itself during the Global War on Terror. These quagmires, the common sense has gone, led to decades of civic rot, misallocated energy, and declining reputation prestige for the country. Now, America could well be poised to endure a prolonged domestic quagmire, marked by anger, distrust, and a fundamentally anti-democratic approach to the election process.

Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on Facebook and Twitter.

The GOP’s anti-tax rhetoric is also pro-sedition
John Stoehr
August 05, 2022

Senator Ted Cruz (BILL CLARK/POOL/AFP)

Last night, the Senate Democrats finalized an agreement on a $740 billion piece of legislation that addresses climate change, corporate taxes, healthcare, drug prices and more. US Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Arizona’s conservative Democrat, held out till the end. After some bargaining, she said last night that she’s ready to “move forward.”

The Inflation Reduction Act is only part of an agenda Joe Biden had outlined early in his administration. (The president had hoped for a couple of trillion dollars’ worth of new investments.) Headlines this morning, however, are treating it as if it were the whole shebang. CNN said it puts “Biden's agenda on the cusp of Senate approval.”

Maybe that’s why US Senator Ted Cruz slandered it.

Anti-tax rhetoric

The Republican from Texas told Fox this morning that the bill would expand the Internal Revenue Service in order to descend on America “like a swarm of locusts,” he said. Cruz went on: “These IRS agents aren’t there to go after billionaires. They’re there to go after you, to go after your small business … The Democrats’ idea is if they audit the hell out of every American, think of all the money they can raise.”

Fact is, the bill does expand the IRS. Another fact is, the IRS has been badly depleted thanks to Republicans like Ted Cruz who know very well that an enervated IRS gives multinational firms and the very obscenely rich leeway to hide wealth and otherwise dodge levies. The Inflation Reduction Act remedies this. It also reduces inflation by clawing back taxes owed, especially by the very obscenely rich.

Pro-sedition rhetoric

Cruz’s anti-tax rhetoric should be familiar. The Republicans (as well as some Democrats) have stood against every proposed tax hike for over 20 years. The last Republican president to sign a tax increase into law was George HW Bush. Since 1994, the GOP has treated the federal government’s constitutional authority to tax as if it were theft – as if taxes were morally wrong as well as politically illegitimate.

Anti-tax rhetoric used to cover up for racist white people, especially in the south, refusing to pay for programs benefitting Black people. But over time, it evolved to become something more sinister.

The GOP’s rhetoric became pro-sedition.


Mainstream sedition

That comes naturally to Cruz.

Like many others, Cruz was in contact with Donald Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, before the former president’s bid to take over the US government. Trump pressured Republican senators to vote against accepting Joe Biden’s victory. Cruz readily complied. He voted that night to overturn the election. He later voted to acquit Trump.

The present is a product of the past, though.

And Ted Cruz is a product of Newt Gingrich.

In a review of The Destructionists, a new book about the history of the Republicans, by Post columnist Dana Milbank, Christopher Buckley summed up the record of the former House speaker:

It was Newt who pushed the Ur-rightwing nutjob conspiracy that Clinton aide Vince Foster was murdered. That big little lie metastasized a quarter-century later into 'Stop the Steal.' It was Newt who defended right-wing militias after Timothy McVeigh murdered 168 people in Oklahoma City.

And it was Newt who, while leading a hot steaming mess of a personal life, fiercely agitated to oust Bill Clinton for playing hide-the-cigar with a 20-something intern.

Gingrich brought sedition into the Republican Party.

From that point until today, taxes from the Republican point of view were no longer constructive investments in nation-building. They were wrong. They were robbery. They were politically illegitimate.

They were the basis for a revolt.

Mainstreaming militias

Not a democratic revolt.

Gingrich escalated the Republicans’ militant rhetoric by including “the new, decidedly insurrectionist interpretation of the Second Amendment,” wrote James R. Skillen last year, “namely that the founders had written the amendment precisely so that individual citizens would have guns to use against government tyrants.”

With that, Gingrich established the party’s paramilitary wing.

It was paranoid. It was armed. It was violent.

It was perfect. Skillen wrote:

While Gingrich, [Texas Congressman] Dick Armey, and other leaders did claim that the time for insurrection had come, they *expanded the GOP coalition to include militias,* whose members were literally preparing for war with the federal government. The militias remained at the party’s margins only because *mainstream Republicans did not yet* share their dark conspiracy theories, including the belief that communists had taken control of the federal government or that the military was preparing internment camps for American citizens.

Burning a country

Donald Trump was elected in a backlash against the country’s first Black president. That backlash didn’t come from nowhere. Its funding, its organization and its rhetoric were all firmly planted.

Gingrich had brought sedition into the Republican Party. He had wrapped insurrection in the flag and the US Constitution. He had made respectable the starving of the government of revenue, as if it were just another valid point of view. He had demanded freedom!

He had made it possible for Ted Cruz to look us in the face and say 87,000 IRS agents are going to descend “like a swarm of locusts.”

By 2010, the GOP was ready to foment, as Buckley said, “a racial backlash against Barack Obama, turning ‘itself into the party of white grievance. All that was left for Trump to do was to light a match.’”

But it didn’t just burn a Black president.

It burned a country.

John Stoehr is a fellow at the Yale Journalism Initiative; a contributing writer for the Washington Monthly; a contributing editor for Religion Dispatches; and senior editor at Alternet. Follow him @johnastoehr.

Rick Scott's unhinged CPAC speech blames the left for every bad thing that happened in the 20th Century

THE AMERICAN RIGHT WANTS TO PURGE THE LEFT IN AMERICA THATS WHAT ITS ALL ABOUT NOW

David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement
August 05, 2022

FL. Gov, Rick Scott (Photo: Gage Skidmore)

U.S. Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) gave a lengthy speech at CPAC on Friday in Dallas, telling far-right conservatives that Democratic policies are "evil," the "militant left" is the "enemy" and "the greatest danger" America has ever faced while claiming Democrats are "wacky" socialists, and socialism is responsible for the deaths of 100 million people.

After calling U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) "one of the most principled individuals I know" who "will always stand up for what he believes," Scott told attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference that the "militant left-wing in our country has become the enemy within" and is "the greatest danger we've ever faced."

Scott took his audience on a long tour of 20th Century history, but along the way equated "the militant left" with "the woke left" who he says has now "seized...control of our economy, our culture and our country."

He then equated "the woke left" with the entire Democratic Party, suggesting Democrats are socialists, and socialists are communists before declaring: "Socialism leads to two things, poverty and depression. Socialism is not a new idea. It's one of the dumbest, oldest, most despised ideas of the 20th century that resulted in the deaths of 100 million people.

READ MORE: ‘Wants to Steal Your Money’: Ron Johnson Thinks Rick Scott’s Social Security Plan Is ‘Not Cruel Enough’ Say Critics

Scott is likely referring to mass killings under communist regimes, including the Holocaust, genocides, crimes against humanity, and even mass famines – none of which have anything to do with socialism or the Democratic Party.

"When you turn on the news at night do you even recognize the country you see?" Scott asked. "Are you worried for your family? Are you worried for your freedoms?"

"The woke left now controls the Democrat Party, the entire federal government, the news media, academia, big tech Hollywood, most corporate boardrooms, and now even some of our top military leaders," he said.

"They are working hard to redefine our country, silence their opponents – and that means that each of you."

"They are destroying everything they touch, and they've got their hands on everything. Here's the thing about what they're trying to destroy: American patriotism. Border security. American history. Gender. Traditional morality. Capitalism. Fiscal responsibility. Opportunity. Rugged individualism. Judeo-Christian values. Free speech. Law enforcement. Religious liberty. Parental involvement in schools. And even private ownership of firearms."

"The woke left wants all of that gone. They want to end the American experiment," he claimed.

READ MORE: ‘It’s in the Plan!’ Fox News Host Slaps Down Rick Scott Over His Proposal to ‘Sunset’ Social Security

"They want to replace freedom with their control. The elites in the government are telling us what we can and cannot believe what we can think and what we can do. They want to completely control our lives. Woke government schools. Woke government-run health care. Woke government-run media. Woke government-run everything. In their new socialist order, everyone will obey and no one will be allowed to complain. You do speak up, boom, you're going to be canceled. Your views if you don't conform with big tech, Fauci, or Neil Young, you're gonna be taken off Spotify, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter."

"The militant left in America or the modern-day version of book burners," he said, one of his few remarks that drew applause.

Senator Scott continued his attack.

"The modern wacky left Democrat has never read George Orwell," he continued. "They don't know they're making his predictions come true. Let's be clear. What the militant left is now proposing is not simply wrong, it is evil."

"It is evil and the results are evil," he added, minutes later asking: "Is this the beginning of the end? Of America?"

"It's time to take our country back."

'No divorcing' the GOP from 'disgusting' racism and fascism after Orban's CPAC display: former party operative

Matthew Chapman
August 05, 2022

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban will meet US President Donald Trump at the White House on May 13 (AFP Photo/ATTILA KISBENEDEK)

On Friday's edition of MSNBC's "The Beat," Kurt Bardella — a former GOP operative and Breitbart staffer turned Democratic adviser — laid into Republicans at CPAC in Dallas for cheering on speakers openly promoting Christian nationalism and the erosion of democracy.

One of the key moments from that gathering was a speech delivered by Viktor Orbán, the strongman prime minister of Hungary.

"What is that disgusting display by someone like Viktor Orbán, on domestic U.S. soil, telling you about the GOP?" asked anchor Katie Phang.

"What you are seeing, Katie, is the Republican Party wrap their arms around autocratic white nationalist ideals and cementing that as the platform of the party going forward," said Bardella. "Make no mistake about it right now, there is no divorcing the Republican Party from racism. Every single candidate that is on the ballot with an R next to their name in November, you own this. Your refusal to speak out against it, your participation in it, the fact that you cater and pander to the audience at CPAC that is cheering on these very dangerous and disgusting ideals. You own this."

Bardella continued on, condemning Republican silence as complicity.

"It would not be hard for any member of the Republican Party to denounce what we're hearing right now," said Bardella. "Things that are repulsive, repugnant, have no place in the 21st century. Yet they're not going to do that. They're going to hide. They're going to embrace. They're going to high-five. They're going to cheer it on. Because to them, the white America that we're hearing these speakers talk about is exactly what they want to do to this country, they're not trying to hide it. They've basically taken off their hoods and exposed themselves for what they are."

Kurt Bardella on GOP's embrace of Viktor Orbán at CPACwww.youtube.com

In New York, a native tribe fights to save its land from climate change

AFP

The Shinnecock Kelp Farmers harvest seaweed to help reduce carbon and nitrates in their coastal water

Southampton (United States) (AFP) - In the Hamptons, New York's playground for the rich and famous, a Native American tribe is battling with the latest threat to what's left of its traditional land: climate change.

The Shinnecock, whose name means "people of the stony shore," have lived on Long Island for 13,000 years.

Their villages stretched along the island's eastern end before land grabs by European settlers and later US authorities reduced their territory to an 800-acre (1.25 square-mile) peninsula.

That low-lying land is now shrinking due to rising sea levels and coastal erosion, and making it increasingly vulnerable to more powerful storms.

"You're looking at a situation where an entire nation of people who have been here for essentially forever are faced with a devastating reality that we may have to relocate," Tela Troge, a Shinnecock attorney, told AFP.

The Shinnecock Indian Nation is a self-governing, federally recognized tribe of approximately 1,600 members.

Roughly half live on its reservation, which juts out into Shinnecock Bay beside Southampton, where multi-million-dollar mansions sit behind electric gates.

Also next door is the hamlet of Shinnecock Hills and its famous eponymous golf club, land the tribe says was stolen from them in 1859.

Warming temperatures are causing seas to expand and rise, eating away at the reservation's coastline.

- Flooding -

Ed Terry, who makes traditional Shinnecock jewelry out of shells found on the beach, remembers the sand going out much further when he was a boy.

"You can see the erosion. Where the land was is now water. It's like the sea is coming to us," the 78-year-old told AFP, as he sculpted a mussel shell to be worn as earrings.

Some parts of the shoreline have already receded 150 feet (45 meters), according to studies cited by Shavonne Smith, the nation's environment director.

She says 57 homes may have to be relocated soon and bodies possibly disinterred from the tribe's coastal cemetery and moved elsewhere.

"If you're talking about taking a people that are so dependent on the water -- for spiritual health, recreational and sustenance -- and now moving them further inland, you're talking about a very huge, stressful, emotional, dynamic shift in who we are," Smith told AFP.

The nation estimates its sea levels will rise by up to 4.4 feet (1.3 meters) by the end of the century. Coupled with more intense storms, this would mean frequent devastating floods.

Hurricane Sandy gave a foretaste in 2012, washing away bluffs on the shore, ripping off roofs and flooding basements and the burial grounds.

"There are studies that show by the year 2040 there's a 100 percent chance the entire Shinnecock Nation region will get inundated by a storm," said Scott Mandia, a climate change professor at Suffolk County Community College.
'We will survive'

In an attempt to preserve their homeland and way of life, which includes fishing and farming, the nation is taking a nature-based approach towards tackling global warming.

It has built an oyster shell reef and placed boulders to try to hold back waves, as well as planted sea and beach grass in a bid to stop sand from shifting.

Tribe members are doing their bit too.

Troge, 35, is director of Shinnecock Kelp Farmers -- a group of six Indigenous women who harvest sugar kelp and sell it as a non-chemical fertilizer.

The seaweed helps clean up water pollution, fueled by neighboring development, by absorbing carbon and nitrates that cause toxic algae blooms, which damage marine life.

Wading into the bay waist-high, farmer Donna Collins-Smith says she is inspired by previous Shinnecock generations "and what they have preserved for us."

"We are maintaining that and bringing it back from a state of near dead," the 65-year-old told AFP.

Mandia, co-author of a book about rising sea levels, laments that marginalized communities "who are least responsible for" climate change are those "who are going to feel the pain the most."

He applauds the tribe's efforts but says they are "just buying time" before their land becomes uninhabitable.

Terry, the septuagenarian jeweler, wonders where future Shinnecock will go, since tribal boundaries are fixed.

"We have no higher ground," he says.

Nevertheless, Terry adds, "We are a strong people. We will survive."Read More

 

Hot Rivers To Limit French Nuclear Power Output Amid Energy Crisis

By Alex Kimani - Aug 03, 2022, 11:30 AM CDT

Electricite de France SA, France’s state-owned utility, announced on Tuesday that it is highly likely it will be forced to extend cuts to nuclear generation as scorching weather pushes up river temperatures, making the water too hot to cool reactors. 

The French utility says that power stations along the Rhone and Garonne rivers will likely produce less electricity in the coming days, but has promised there will be a minimum level of output to keep the grid stable, Bloomberg reports.  

As Europe’s energy crisis deepens, most of the world’s attention is focused on Germany and gas flows from Russia. However, France is facing an even bigger crisis with Europe’s biggest energy exporter turning into a net importer thanks to the country’s imploding nuclear sector.

A deadly heat wave in Western Europe has triggered massive wildfires, displaced thousands of people  and disrupted transportation as the continent grapples with the impact of climate change. According to the national weather forecaster, several areas in France have experienced record-breaking temperatures surpassing 100 degrees Fahrenheit with at least five countries in Europe declaring a state of emergency or red warnings. And now the extreme heat is having an unusual effect: it’s making France’s rivers too hot to be used in nuclear reactors.

Currently, Electricite de France SA is running just 26 of its 57 reactors, with more than half of its chain undergoing emergency maintenance after the discovery of cracked pipes. 

Experts are now saying that France faces an electricity ‘Waterloo’ with atomic reactors generating the lowest share of the country’s power in 30 years, according to Bloomberg. 

The slump in nuclear availability is forcing France to rely on gas-fired plants more than ever, hydro, intermittent wind and imports. That’s in turn pushing up the cost of electricity in the wholesale market for the entire continent, with French forward prices surging to almost 1,000% above their 10-year average through 2020.

The crisis could get even worse in winter, with high consumption in the winter season likely to make electricity costs catastrophically expensive.

By Alex Kimani for Oilprice.com

German Chancellor: Germany Could Keep Nuclear Power Plants Operating After All

By Julianne Geiger - Aug 03, 2022

Germany’s government has held firmly onto the belief that its nuclear power industry must be retired, even in the midst of an energy crisis. But today, it appears that could change, with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz saying for the first time that the country could put off the retirement of its nuclear power fleet, according to the Wall Street Journal.

“It could make sense” to keep its nuclear power plants operating, Scholz said on Wednesday, despite the current plans to retire the final three plants come December, and despite Germany’s economy and environment ministries in March recommending against extending the life of the reactors.

At the time, the German ministries concluded that extending the life of the nuclear reactors would have a “very limited” impact on alleviating Germany’s power crunch, and that it would come at a “very high economic cost”.

“If someone decides to do so now,”  Scholz said about the potential for building new nuclear power plants as recenly as in June, “they would have to spend 12-18 billion euros on each nuclear power plants and it wouldn’t open until 2037 or 2038. And besides, the fuel rods are generally imported from Russia. As such one should think about what one does.”

Germany has also restarted two power plans that run on oil as the country tries to conserve natural gas as Russian gas flows to Europe continue to be restricted amid an ongoing gas turbine repair situation. Coal-fired plants in Germany have also been resurrected.

Austerity measures have been implemented, with Stadtwerke Munchen reducing swimming pool temperatures and shutting saunas until further notice.

Germany’s plan to phase out nuclear power generation spans decades and was hurried along by the Fukushima disaster.

For now, the German government has commissioned a stress test for nuclear plants, according to the WSJ, to determine if the life of the plants can be extended safely, and whether it will truly aid Germany with its tight energy situation.

By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com

Glencore Announces $3 Billion Share Buyback As Profits Soar

By City A.M - Aug 04, 2022, 10:30 AM CDT

Mining and commodities giant Glencore announced it would put $4.5bn back in shareholders pockets today after it reported record half-yearly profits of $18.9bn on the back of soaring metal prices and market volatility.

The group’s adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) rose to $18.92bn in the six months to June, compared with $8.7bn a year earlier.

Part of the return to shareholders will be made up of a bumper buyback programme of $3bn as bosses put excess cash to use. 

It comes as prices for much of Glencore’s metals including thermal coal used in electricity production have reached record highs due to wild swings in the markets which have been exacerbated by war in Ukraine.

Bosses said today the volatility was likely to continue in the period ahead.

“Global macroeconomic and geopolitical events during the half created extraordinary energy market dislocation, volatility, risk, and supply disruption, resulting in record pricing for many coal and gas benchmarks and physical premia, underpinning a $10.3bnincrease in Group Adjusted EBITDA to $18.9bn,” chief executive Gary Nagle said today.

He added that with few short-term solutions to rebalance global energy markets, coal and LNG prices look “set to remain elevated” during the period ahead.

 

Permian’s Natural Gas Takeaway Capacity Set To Rise

By Tsvetana Paraskova - Aug 04, 2022, 11:30 AM CDT

U.S. pipeline operators and developers have recently announced five natural gas pipeline projects which are expected to increase the takeaway capacity from the Permian basin to demand centers near the U.S. Gulf Coast, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said on Thursday.

Four newly announced projects and one optimization project under construction are set to boost takeaway capacity out of the Permian Basin by a combined 4.18 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) over the next two years if they are completed as planned.

Of the four newly announced projects, three are capacity expansions of existing pipelines, while one is a new pipeline project which has reached a final investment decision (FID), the EIA says in its latest Natural Gas Pipeline Project Tracker.

The expansion projects include Kinder Morgan’s Gulf Coast Express Pipeline Expansion which will boost capacity by 0.57 Bcf/d to 2.55 Bcf/d and is planned to enter service in December 2023. Another Kinder Morgan project, the Permian Highway Pipeline Expansion, will also expand capacity, by 0.55 Bcf/d to 2.65 Bcf/d. The project is expected to enter service in November 2023. The third expansion is the Whistler Pipeline Capacity Expansion by WhiteWater and MPLX, expected to enter service in September 2023.

The new pipeline project is the Matterhorn Express Pipeline, planned to transport up to 2.5 Bcf/d of natural gas through approximately 490 miles of pipeline from Waha, Texas, to the Katy area near Houston, Texas.

Gas production in the Permian Basin is expected to increase by 2.3 Bcf/d in 2022 and an additional 1.4 Bcf/d in 2023, the EIA has estimated.

Increased takeaway capacity and production out of the Permian could further boost supply for U.S. LNG exports in the coming years.

In the first half of 2022, the United States became the world’s largest LNG exporter, thanks to high demand in Europe, high natural gas prices, and increased export capacity, the EIA said last week. 

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

Yemen’s Houthis Claim Saudi-Backed Coalition Looted $13B In Oil

By Charles Kennedy - Aug 05, 2022, 

Yemen’s Houthi-led government has accused the country’s Saudi-backed coalition forces of siphoning off $13 billion in Yemeni oil revenues over the past five years, with reports claiming that another $180 million in looted oil left the country this week on a Greek oil tanker. 

In a tweet published by local media sources, Houthi National Negotiation Delegation official Abdul Malik Al-Ajri claimed that the $13 billion “looted” from Yemen’s oil revenues is based on figures from an OAPEC (Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries) and maritime traffic data. 

Yemen has been embroiled in a civil conflict since 2014, when Houthi insurgents, backed by Iran, attempted to overthrow the Sunni government, taking over the capital and the country’s largest city. A coalition led by Saudi Arabia launched a counteroffensive in 2015, and the conflict has continued since and is considered a proxy war largely between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The Houthis now control most of Yemen’s north, while a four-month ceasefire deal is expiring. 

Al-Ajri’s accusations were echoed in July by Yemeni Oil Company spokesman Issam Al-Mutawakkil, who claimed that Yemen’s oil revenues are diverted to the Saudi National Commercial Bank, depriving the country of its oil wealth.

"Yemen as an oil producing nation is suffering the same as countries that don't possess any oil wealth", adding that "Yemen doesn't benefit from the crude oil revenues that are exported to the Saudi National Commercial Bank,” Al-Mutawakkill said. 

Yemen produces oil in the provinces of Marib, Shabwa and Hadhramaut, and the revenues from those operations bypass Yemen’s Central Bank, diverted to accounts controlled by officials tied to the Saudi-backed coalition, he added. 

On Thursday, the Yemen Press Agency, cited by the Middle East Monitor, alleged that Saudi coalition-backed sources had recently sold another two million barrels of Yemen’s Al-Masila crude worth $180 million at current prices, and is expected to be loaded this week on a Greek vessel at the port of Dhaba. 

Also on Thursday, the United Nations announced that both sides in this conflict had agreed to extend a truce for two months, with the current four-month ceasefire deal coming to an end and sparking fears of a return to bloodshed. 

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com