‘Canadians will be our own best customer’: Carney hits back on new Trump tariffs

By Charlie Buckley
 August 01, 2025 at 9:35AM EDT

 Trump escalates trade war, raising tariffs to 35 per cent

CTV National News: Breaking down what CUSMA protects from tariffs

‘Very little evidence’ of U.S. claims of fentanyl border crisis: OPP acting detective superintendent

Prime Minister Mark Carney says U.S. President Donald Trump’s new 35 per cent tariffs are disappointing but that Canada will continue to develop trade both domestically and overseas in response.

“While we will continue to negotiate with the United States on our trading relationship, the Canadian government is laser focused on what we can control: building Canada strong,” Carney wrote in a statement posted to X on Friday morning.

“Canadians will be our own best customer, creating more well-paying careers at home, as we strengthen and diversify our trading partnerships throughout the world. We can give ourselves more than any foreign government can ever take away.”

LIVE UPDATES: Canada ‘can give ourselves more,’ Carney says as Trump raises tariff



The prime minister’s comments come following Trump’s Aug. 1 deadline for Canada and other U.S. partners to reach new trade agreements, under threat of yet another round of sweeping import tariffs.

Trump signed an executive order activating tariffs against 68 countries and the European Union Thursday evening. New tariffs of 35 per cent on Canadian exports, effective Friday, exclude products under the Canada-U.S.-Mexico trade agreement (CUSMA), the White House has said.

An April analysis from RBC Economics estimated that in 2024, 94 per cent of Canadian imports to the United States could be CUSMA compliant and covered by “zero-tariff” product rates.

“The U.S. application of CUSMA means that the U.S. average tariff rate on Canadian goods remains one of its lowest for all of its trading partners,” Carney noted in his Friday statement.

According to the U.S. president, he and Carney spoke about trade negotiations in the days leading up to the Aug. 1 deadline, but were not in contact on Thursday.

Among the justifications Trump has offered in recent months for tariffs on Canada are trade deficits, supply management in Canada’s dairy industry, Canada’s recent announcement of intentions to recognize a sovereign Palestinian state and alleged flows of illicit fentanyl across the Canada-U.S. border.

“Given Canada’s continued failure to arrest traffickers, seize illicit drugs, or coordinate with U.S. law enforcement and Canada’s retaliation against the United States for the President’s actions to address the unusual and extraordinary threat to America, further presidential action is necessary and appropriate to protect American lives and the national security and foreign policy of the United States,” reads a Thursday release from the White House.

In a statement Friday, Canadian Chamber of Commerce president Candace Laing described the Trump administration’s written justification for the tariffs as baseless.

“The White House fact sheet should be called a fact-less sheet when it comes to basing trade decisions about Canada on the fentanyl emergency,” she said.

“More fact-less tariff turbulence does not advance North American economic security.”

Data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection and other agencies show that only a fraction of U.S. fentanyl imports come from the northern border; a proportion described by one U.S. think tank as “not an important part of this story.”

“Canada’s government is making historic investments in border security to arrest drug traffickers, take down transnational gangs, and end migrant smuggling,” Carney wrote. “We will continue working with the United States to stop the scourge of fentanyl and save lives in both our countries.”

‘Hold out hope’: Poilievre

Federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says his party continues to “hold out hope for a deal to end all U.S. tariffs on Canada,” and that the prime minister should “accept nothing short” of an outcome that restores the state of affairs from before the trade war.

“We must also take back control of our economic future by breaking our dependence on the U.S.,” Poilievre wrote in a post to X Thursday evening.

“We call on the Liberals to repeal anti-development laws, and cut taxes on work, energy, investment and home building to make our economy strong, self-reliant and sovereign.”


This is a developing story. More details to come.

With files from The Associated Press

Charlie Buckley
CTVNews.ca National Digital Producer

In rejecting U.S. jobs report, Trump follows his own playbook of discrediting unfavourable data

By The Associated Press
 August 05, 2025 


THE ORANGE SPEAKS

President Donald Trump speaks with reporters before boarding Air Force One at Lehigh Valley International Airport, Sunday, Aug. 3, 2025, in Allentown, Pa. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

WASHINGTON — When the coronavirus surged during U.S. President Donald Trump’s first term, he called for a simple fix: Limit the amount of testing so the deadly outbreak looked less severe. When he lost the 2020 election, he had a ready-made reason: The vote count was fraudulent.

And on Friday, when the July jobs report revisions showed a distressed U.S. economy, Trump had an answer: He fired the official in charge of the data and called the report of a sharp slowdown in hiring “phony.”

Trump has a go-to playbook if the numbers reveal uncomfortable realities, and that’s to discredit or conceal the figures and to attack the messenger — all of which can hurt the president’s efforts to convince the world that America is getting stronger.

“Our democratic system and the strength of our private economy depend on the honest flow of information about our economy, our government and our society,” said Douglas Elmendorf, a Harvard University professor who was formerly director of the Congressional Budget Office. “The Trump administration is trying to suppress honest analysis.”

The president’s strategy carries significant risks for his own administration and a broader economy that depends on politics-free data. His denouncements threaten to lower trust in government and erode public accountability, and any manipulation of federal data could result in policy choices made on faulty numbers, causing larger problems for both the president and the country.


The White House disputes any claims that Trump wants to hide numbers that undermine his preferred narratives. It emphasized that Goldman Sachs found that the two-month revisions on the jobs report were the largest since 1968, outside of a recession, and that should be a source of concern regarding the integrity of the data. Trump’s aides say their fundamental focus is ensuring that any data gives an accurate view of reality.
Not the first time Trump has sought to play with numbers

Trump has a long history of dismissing data when it reflects poorly on him and extolling or even fabricating more favorable numbers, a pattern that includes his net worth, his family business, election results and government figures:

— Judge Arthur Engoron ruled in a lawsuit brought by the state of New York that Trump and his company deceived banks, insurers and others by massively overvaluing his assets and exaggerating his net worth on paperwork used in making deals and securing loans.

— Trump has claimed that the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections were each rigged. Trump won the 2016 presidential election by clinching the Electoral College, but he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, a sore spot that led him to falsely claim that millions of immigrants living in the country illegally had cast ballots. He lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden but falsely claimed he had won it, despite multiple lawsuits failing to prove his case.

— In 2019, as Hurricane Dorian neared the East Coast, Trump warned Alabama that the storm was coming its way. Forecasters pushed back, saying Alabama was not at risk. Trump later displayed a map in the Oval Office that had been altered with a black Sharpie — his signature pen — to include Alabama in the potential path of the storm.

— Trump’s administration has stopped posting reports on climate change, canceled studies on vaccine access and removed data on gender identity from government sites.

— As pandemic deaths mounted, Trump suggested that there should be less testing. “When you do testing to that extent, you’re going to find more people,” Trump said at a June 2020 rally in Oklahoma. “You’re going to find more cases. So I said to my people, ‘Slow the testing down, please.’”

While Trump’s actions have drawn outcry from economists, scientists and public interest groups, Elmendorf noted that Trump’s actions regarding economic data could be tempered by Congress, which could put limits on Trump by whom he chooses to lead federal agencies, for example.

“Outside observers can only do so much,” Elmendorf said. “The power to push back against the president rests with the Congress. They have not exercised that power, but they could.”

White House says having its own people in place will make data ‘more reliable’


Kevin Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council, took aim at the size of the downward revisions in the jobs report (a combined 258,000 reduction in May and June) to suggest that the report had credibility issues. He said Trump is focused on getting dependable numbers, despite the president linking the issue to politics by claiming the revisions were meant to make Republicans look bad.

“The president wants his own people there so that when we see the numbers, they’re more transparent and more reliable,” Hassett said Sunday on NBC News.

Jed Kolko, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics who oversaw the Census Bureau and Bureau of Economic Analysis during the Biden administration, stressed that revisions to the jobs data are standard. That’s because the numbers are published monthly, but not all surveys used are returned quickly enough to be in the initial publishing of the jobs report.

“Revisions solve the tension between timeliness and accuracy,” Kolko said. “We want timely data because policymakers and businesses and investors need to make decisions with the best data that’s available, but we also want accuracy.”

Kolko stressed the importance in ensuring that federal statistics are trustworthy not just for government policymakers but for the companies trying to gauge the overall direction of the economy when making hiring and investment choices.

“Businesses are less likely to make investments if they can’t trust data about how the economy is doing,” he said.

Not every part of the jobs report was deemed suspect by the Trump administration.

Before Trump ordered the firing of the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner, Erika McEntarfer, the White House rapid response social media account reposted a statement by Vice President JD Vance noting that native-born citizens were getting jobs and immigrants were not, drawing from data in the household tables in the jobs report.

Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer also trumpeted the findings on native-born citizens, noting on Fox Business Network’s “Varney & Co.” that they are accounting “for all of the job growth, and that’s key.”

During his first run for the presidency, Trump criticized the economic data as being fake only to fully embrace the positive numbers shortly after he first entered the White House in 2017.
White House says transparency is a value

The challenge of reliable data goes beyond economic figures to basic information on climate change and scientific research.

In July, taxpayer-funded reports on the problems climate change is creating for America and its population disappeared from government websites.

The White House initially said NASA would post the reports in compliance with a 1990 law, but the agency later said it would not because any legal obligations were already met by having reports submitted to Congress.

The White House maintains that it has operated with complete openness, posting a picture of Trump on Monday on social media with the caption, “The Most Transparent President in History.”

In the picture, Trump had his back to the camera and was covered in shadows, visibly blocking out most of the light in front of him.

___

Associated Press writer Michelle Price in Washington contributed to this report.

Josh Boak, The Associated Press

Air Canada flight attendants enter final day of strike mandate vote

By The Canadian Press
August 05, 2025 

An Air Canada plane takes off from Montreal-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport in Montreal, Friday, Sept. 13, 2024. Air Canada flight attendants are entering the final day of voting on whether to give a strike mandate to their union. 

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Christinne Muschi

MONTREAL — Air Canada flight attendants are entering the final day of voting on whether to give a strike mandate to their union.

The vote, which began July 28 and closes today, comes after the Air Canada component of the Canadian Union of Public Employees concluded the conciliation process with no deal reached.

The union represents more than 10,000 flight attendants who have been in contract talks since the start of the year.

It has said that despite sustained efforts, including in the conciliation process with a federally appointed mediator, key issues such as pay, unpaid work and pensions remain unresolved.

Air Canada has cautioned the vote does not mean a disruption will happen, noting a potential strike can’t take place until after a 21-day cooling-off period following the 60-day conciliation period.


In a July 25 statement, the airline said it “remains fully available to continue negotiations towards a fair and equitable collective agreement with CUPE that recognizes the contributions of its flight attendants and supports the competitiveness and long-term growth of the company.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 5, 2025.

After unionized Canada Post workers reject ‘final offers,’ what happens next?

By The Canadian Press
 August 05, 2025 

A Canada Post employee prepares to check a street letter box while delivering mail, in White Rock, B.C., on Monday, July 28, 2025. Unionized workers at Canada Post rejected the Crown corporatin's latest offers in a forced ratification vote. 

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

OTTAWA — Labour experts say another postal service strike is unlikely after unionized Canada Post workers rejected their employer’s latest round of offers in a forced vote and the parties mull their next steps.

The Canadian Union of Postal Workers said Friday that the roughly 55,000 members represented by the union shot down the Canada Post’s latest proposal, which would’ve seen wage hikes of about 13 per cent over four years and restructuring to add part-time workers to the deal.

Some 68.5 per cent of urban mail carriers who voted were against the deal, while their rural and suburban colleagues were 69.4 per cent against.

Adam King, assistant professor in the labour studies program at the University of Manitoba, said the forced ratification vote ordered by the federal government and administered by the Canada Industrial Relations Board was a “distraction.”

“Hopefully, at the end of the day, we see an agreement reached at the table — where it should have been in the beginning,” he said in an interview.


“Canada Post management is really going to have to put something on the table that the union actually thinks members will accept.”

Negotiations for a new collective agreement have been ongoing for more than a year and a half. The federal government asked CIRB to step in and scuttle a holiday season postal strike late last year, but the parties remain at an impasse.

The Crown corporation requested Jobs Minister Patty Hajdu send its most recent proposals from late May — calling them the “final offers” — to a forced vote from workers.

Canada Post said in a statement Friday that it was “disappointed” in the vote results and that it was weighing its next steps.

CUPW said in a bulletin to members last week that its negotiators are ready to head back to the bargaining table.

A national ban on overtime work, in place since CUPW entered a strike position in late May, will continue in the meantime.

King acknowledged that while the vote didn’t go in Canada Post’s favour, it wasn’t a “resounding” rejection, with more than 30 per cent of voters coming out in favour of the deals as presented.

Larry Savage, professor in the department of labour studies at Brock University, said that apparent division in the ranks of CUPW would make it difficult to get members on a picket line.

“Even if you could effectively organize a strike, it’s not obvious to me that it would produce the results the union’s looking for,” Savage said in an interview.

Before Hajdu sent Canada Post’s offers to a vote, she had asked the parties to come to terms for binding arbitration to put an end to the dispute.

CUPW was broadly in favour of sending talks to arbitration but Canada Post pushed back, arguing it would tie negotiations up in a lengthy process.


Canada Post has warned that uncertainty around the fate of contract talks continues to cost the struggling postal service millions of dollars in business each day as customers shift to competitors.

The Crown corporation’s financial woes have been well-documented throughout the talks. An Industrial Inquiry Commission report from Commissioner William Kaplan earlier this year found the postal service was effectively bankrupt and needed substantial reforms to remain afloat.

But King said arbitrators tend to be “conservative” in bringing parties to a middle ground and are unlikely to make the kinds of sweeping, structural changes Canada Post is looking for in a new deal.

Savage agreed that “binding arbitration is not actually a long-term solution to the problems at Canada Post.”

“I think that management’s forced final vote was a gamble and it blew up in their faces, but they still hold cards,” he said.

Canada Post could unilaterally impose new contract terms and “dare the union to strike,” Savage said, or could start laying off workers as its business falters.

“Both of those strategies would put tremendous pressure on the union to reach an agreement,” he said.

“The danger, of course, for Canada Post is that its aggressive tactics thus far have seemingly only driven the parties further apart.”

Hajdu said in a statement Friday that the federal government expects the parties to get back to the negotiating table and find a resolution “as soon as possible.”

Given the financial struggles mentioned in the report, Savage said he expects the federal government will look to restructure Canada Post’s mandate after the current labour dispute wraps up.

That could see, as suggested in Kaplan’s report, a further expansion of community mailboxes or an end to daily door-to-door delivery.

In that context, Savage said the negotiations are less about which side wins the day and more about “who will survive long-term.”

“There is a storm brewing for both Canada Post’s management and the union. And I think that getting over this hump is important, but I think that it pales in comparison to what’s coming,” he said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 5, 2025.
Craig Lord, The Canadian Press

Canada Post workers vote to reject latest contract offer

By The Canadian Press
August 02, 2025


Unionized workers at Canada Post have voted to reject the Crown corporation’s latest contract offer.

The Canadian Union of Postal Workers said Friday that 68.5 per cent of urban mail carriers who voted were against the deal, while their rural and suburban colleagues were 69.4 per cent against.

The offer included wage hikes of about 13 per cent over four years but also added part-time workers that Canada Post has said are necessary to keep the postal service afloat.

The union had urged the roughly 55,000 postal service workers it represents to reject the proposal.

“It’s time for Canada Post to come back to the bargaining table and start seriously negotiating,” it said in a bulletin.


“With these votes behind us, Canada Post must now recognize that the only way forward is to negotiate ratifiable collective agreements that meet postal workers’ needs.”

A national overtime ban for members remains in effect.

Canada Post had said the offer reflected the company’s “current realities while protecting items that are important to employees” and accounting for “needed changes to help begin to rebuild the company’s parcel business.”

The Crown corporation has previously said its operating losses amounted to $10 million a day in June.

“While we are disappointed in the results, we want to thank employees for participating in the process,” the postal service said in a statement on Friday, adding that it’s evaluating next steps.

The vote, which opened July 21, was administered by the Canada Industrial Relations Board, which stepped in earlier this year after federal Jobs Minister Patty Hajdu intervened in the labour dispute.

Hajdu said Friday that after 18 months of negotiations, “it was important for workers’ voices to be heard.”

“Federal mediators have supported parties since August 2024 and will remain available to assist the parties until they reach a deal,” Hajdu said in a statement.

“The government is monitoring this situation closely and expects the parties to reach a resolution as soon as possible.”

Canada Post and the union have been at odds with one another for more than a year and a half.

Last holiday season, postal workers went on strike, leaving mail and parcels undelivered and many post offices closed.


They returned to work the week before Christmas, when the labour minister established a process with the Canada Industrial Relations Board to assess the likelihood of Canada Post and the union reaching an agreement by the end of 2024.

The board, led by Commissioner William Kaplan, eventually found that Canada Post was essentially bankrupt.

The board’s final report tabled in May showed Kaplan recommended an end to daily door-to-door mail delivery and an expansion of community mailboxes, among other measures to keep the postal service in business.

He also endorsed Canada Post’s model for adding part-time mail workers — one sticking point in negotiations — and largely blamed the stalled negotiations on CUPW defending “business as usual.”

Dan Kelly, the president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, called Friday’s results “extremely disappointing.”

“This just brings more uncertainty at a time when small businesses are already struggling to plan ahead,” Kelly said in a statement.

“We can’t keep doing this. If there’s another strike, two in three businesses may walk away from Canada Post permanently.”

Kelly called on the federal government to extend the current agreement for the “foreseeable future” to prevent another strike from happening.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 1, 2025.

Ukraine Hits Russian Oil Depot as Trump’s Ceasefire Deadline Looms

By RFE/RL staff - Aug 04, 2025

• Ukrainian drone strikes hit deep into Russian territory, including a major oil depot in Sochi.
• 
  
• Trump has given Putin until August 8 to agree to a ceasefire or face harsh tariffs and potential escalation.
• 
  
• Despite ongoing violence, Ukraine and Russia have agreed to a prisoner exchange involving 1,200 detainees.

Ukrainian forces continued to hit military-linked infrastructure deep inside Russia, as Kyiv and Moscow traded strikes ahead of a deadline set by US President Donald Trump for the Kremlin to accept a peace deal with Ukraine.

Russian authorities in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi said Ukrainian drones had set a regional oil depot on fire early on August 3, but the fires were later extinguished after more than 120 firefighters battled the flames. Sochi Mayor Andrei Proshunin said there were no victims.

In the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolayiv, a Russian missile strike destroyed homes and civilian infrastructure, the regional governor said on August 3. At least seven civilians were reported injured in the attack. Ukraine's State Emergency Service said three of the wounded were being treated in a hospital.

In the front-line regions of Zaporizhzhya and Kherson, at least three people were killed and more than 12 injured in Russian attacks over the 24 hours into August 3, regional Ukrainian governors said.

This latest round of attacks comes as Ukraine appears to be stepping up drone strikes deep inside Russia at a time when Trump is pressing Russian President Vladimir Putin to agree to a cease-fire and an end to the war, now in its fourth year.

In July, Trump said Putin had 50 days to end the war or Russia would face severe tariffs targeting its oil and other exports, but he said earlier this week that he had set a new "10 or 12" day timeline, later clarifying August 8 as the deadline.

This corresponded with a deadly week for civilians in Ukraine, including a July 31 attack on Kyiv involving more than 300 drones that killed at least 31 people, as Ukrainian forces also increased strikes on Russian infrastructure.

Russian authorities said the recent drone attack on the Sochi oil refinery was one of several launched by Ukraine over the weekend, targeting energy and military installations in the southern Russian cities of Ryazan, Penza, and Voronezh.

Russia's Defense Ministry also said on August 3 that its air defenses intercepted 93 Ukrainian drones overnight, 60 of which were over the Black Sea region.

Meanwhile, Ukraine's air force said on August 3 that Russia fired 76 drones and seven missiles throughout the night, 61 of which were shot down.

It added that 16 drones and six missiles struck targets in eight locations.

Ukraine Announces New Prisoner Exchange Agreement

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on August 3 that Ukraine and Russia agreed to exchange 1,200 prisoners.

“There is an agreement to exchange 1,200 people," he wrote on X, saying the lists of individuals to be swapped were being worked on and that they were working to "unblock the return of our civilians."

Zelenskyy made the announcement after a meeting with his national security team to discuss "the negotiation track -- specifically, the implementation of the agreements reached during the meetings with the Russian side in Istanbul," referring to Russia-Ukraine talks in July hosted by Turkey.

He added that "preparations for a new meeting" had also taken place.

There was no immediate comment from Russia.

Each of the three rounds of talks around ending the war in Ukraine this year has resulted in some form of prisoner exchanges but has failed to yield a diplomatic breakthrough for a lasting cease-fire.

What Will Happen With Trump's Truce Deadline For Putin?

The escalating attacks and the approaching deadline for a deal set by Washington come as Trump said on August 1 that he had deployed nuclear-capable submarines to the "appropriate regions."

That announcement was in response to a threatening social media post by former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who is now deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council, that suggested he would be ready to launch a nuclear strike as tensions rise over the war in Ukraine.

In an August 1 post on Truth Social, Trump said he had decided to reposition the nuclear submarines "closer to Russia" because of "highly provocative statements" by Medvedev.

The US president did not specify whether these were nuclear-powered or nuclear-armed submarines.

Asked later by reporters why he ordered the submarine movement, Trump said that "a threat was made by a former president of Russia, and we're going to protect our people."

He was referring to a July 28 post on X by Medvedev where he accused Washington of playing a "game of ultimatums" in response to Trump's announcement that he shortened the deadline for the Kremlin to accept a cease-fire from 50 to 10 days, writing that "each new ultimatum is a threat and a step toward war."

Trump has voiced frustration with Putin more recently after initially appearing more conciliatory toward striking a deal with Moscow following his return to office in January.

The US president has since said that he believes Putin is not negotiating in good faith and earlier this week described Russia's continued attacks on civilian areas as "disgusting."

Putin has not publicly responded to Trump's latest deadline. He has periodically claimed to be interested in peace, but only on terms wholly unacceptable to Kyiv.

In an apparent reference to Trump's comments, Putin said on August 1 that "all disappointments arise from inflated expectations. This is a well-known general rule."

It is not immediately clear what will happen should Trump's August 8 deadline not be met.

In an effort to perhaps strike a last-minute deal, Trump said he is sending his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, to Moscow following his current trip to Israel, although a specific itinerary has not been disclosed.

Trump has spoken of imposing further sanctions on Russia and crippling secondary tariffs on countries importing Russian oil.

Given that these would include targeting China and India, the two largest buyers of Russian oil, some analysts have expressed skepticism that Washington will take this measure.

By RFE/RL

 Norway LNG Export Plant Back Online After 3-Month Maintenance

By Michael Kern - Aug 04, 2025

Hammerfest LNG, the liquefied natural gas export facility in Norway, is back online following more than three months of scheduled maintenance works.

The return of LNG supply from Norway, which is also Europe’s top pipeline gas supplier having replaced Russia in 2022, contributed to the fall in Europe’s benchmark natural gas prices on Monday. 

Hammerfest LNG, Europe’s first LNG export plant, is an onshore plant on the island of Melkøya which receives and processes natural gas from the Snøhvit field via a pipeline from the Barents Sea. The Melkøya plant accounts for 5% of Norway’s natural gas exports. During normal production, Hammerfest LNG delivers 6.5 billion cubic meters of LNG per year, and LNG ships call at Melkøya roughly every five days. 

Hammerfest LNG had issues with unexpected outrages early this year, when operations and exports were halted in peak winter due to compressor failures and other technical problems. In recent years, a major fire, gas leaks, and equipment failures have hampered the normal operations at the plant. 

Hammerfest LNG was offline for a year and a half after a fire at the facility in September 2020. The plant, Europe’s only large-scale LNG export facility, resumed operations in March 2022, but has been on-and-off since then, due to various issues.  

At the end of April, Equinor shut the plant down for its annual maintenance, which was expected to last until the middle of July. The deadline has been extended twice since July 19, when it was initially supposed to come back online. 

Finally, Equinor restarted the export plant on Sunday, August 3, a spokesperson for the Norwegian energy major told Reuters on Monday. 

Early this year, gas export system operator Gassco said that Norway’s natural gas exports hit a record level in 2024 and are expected to remain close to this all-time high in the next few years. 

Norway’s gas accounted for 30% of Europe’s natural gas imports and about 9% of all European energy consumption last year.  

By Michael Kern for Oilprice.com 

Qatar’s LNG Warning Highlights Europe’s Fragile Energy Strategy

By Simon Watkins - Aug 04, 2025

• Qatar, Europe’s third-largest LNG supplier, is threatening to cut deliveries if the EU’s new Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) penalizes its companies.

• Losing Qatari LNG would severely strain Europe’s energy security, especially as it plans to phase out Russian gas by 2027 and relies increasingly on U.S. supplies.

• A supply shift toward China would weaken Europe’s energy resilience and could complicate Western unity.

The race has been on to secure new liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies for Europe since Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022. LNG at that point became the key global emergency energy source as it is quick to secure and to move, unlike pipelined energy that requires time-consuming infrastructure build-out and contract negotiations before it can be moved anywhere. Europe was especially in need of such supplies to compensate for the energy it has bought for decades from Russia without questioning Moscow’s long-term strategic motivation for offering such enormous quantities of cheap gas and oil. This was simply to ensure minimal pushback from Europe when President Vladimir Putin began his long-flagged objective to recapture those parts of Europe that were once part of the U.S.S.R., as analysed in full in my latest book on the new global oil market order. The strategy worked perfectly in 2008 with Russia’s foray into the independent European sovereign state of Georgia, and again in the 2014 invasion and annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region – a practice run for what would happen in 2022. It would have worked as well in that year too, with early European dithering about taking any meaningful actions against Russia, but for the strong intervention of the U.S., Great Britain, and France, who could see that if this invasion of Ukraine was not opposed then the rest of Europe would follow. Staggeringly now, a crucial source of these compensatory LNG supplies to Europe – Qatar – is under threat from the continent’s own sustainability laws.

The law in question is the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), which according to the official blurb: “[Aims to] foster sustainable and responsible corporate behaviour in companies’ operations and across their global value chains. The new rules will ensure that companies in scope identify and address adverse human rights and environmental impacts of their actions inside and outside Europe.” It further requires firms to integrate sustainability into their core business strategies, address impacts on the environment and society, and establish transition plans aligned with the Paris Agreement’s climate goals. All this is focused on European Union (E.U.) companies with over 1,000 employees and a worldwide turnover exceeding EUR450 million (USD514 million), and non-E.U. companies with a turnover exceeding EUR450 million within the E.U. Failure to adhere to some of its sharper strictures can results in extremely severe punishments for transgressors. One particularly eye-catching punishment is that companies found in breach of these conditions can be fined up to 5% of their global turnover or be required to compensate affected individuals and communities. Unsurprisingly, for those countries in a more emerging stage of development than those who drafted the law (that is, nearly most of the major oil and gas suppliers around the world), some of these conditions are problematic. For Qatar, they are apparently infuriating, with its Minister of State for Energy Affairs Saad al-Kaabi calling the legislation “ridiculous” at a forum in Doha in December. He also threatened at that point to end all LNG supplies to the E.U. if any of his country’s companies were subject to penalties by dint of the CSDDD. Matters have now escalated, according to a senior E.U. security source spoken to by OilPrice.com last week, with a letter from al-Kaabi to the European Commission (the executive branch of the E.U.) reiterating the threat of cut-off from Qatar’s LNG supplies if the Directive is not modified to ensure that its companies do not face any penalties.

Equally unsurprisingly, according not the E.U. source, Europe is taking this threat very seriously. It should certainly do so, as Qatar has many more willing buyers for its LNG than Europe has sellers of the gas to choose from. In Europe’s case, it took many months of very tough negotiations led by the U.S. to turn Qatar from a state whose main supply priority was China before the Russia invasion of 2022 to a “major non-NATO ally” of the U.S. and its European allies as former President Joe Biden put it at the time, as also analysed in depth in my latest book on the new global oil market order. Information received by OilPrice.com just after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 from impeccable security sources indicated that China had been broadly told by Russia of its plans for a ‘large-scale special operation’ in Ukraine months before it happened, not just prior to the 4 February 2022 start of the Beijing Winter Olympics, as many reports have it. Indeed, China concluded several major LNG deals with Qatar a year before, beginning with the signing of a 10-year purchase and sales agreement by the China Petroleum & Chemical Corp (Sinopec) and Qatar Petroleum (QP) for 2 million metric tonnes per annum (mtpa) of LNG, and multiple similar deals followed. However, following hard negotiations with the U.S., May 2022 saw Qatar sign a declaration of intent on energy cooperation with Germany aimed at becoming its key supplier of LNG. These plans would run in parallel with, but were likely to be finished significantly sooner than, the plans for Qatar to also make available to Germany sizeable supplies of LNG from the Golden Pass terminal on the Gulf Coast of Texas. QatarEnergy holds a 70% stake in the project, with the U.S.’s ExxonMobil holding the remainder. Following on from these developments, December 2022 saw two sales and purchase agreements signed between QatarEnergy and the U.S.’s ConocoPhillips to export LNG to Germany for at least 15 years from 2026.

As of now, Qatar remains a major LNG supplier to the E.U. – its third largest, in fact – having shipped around 10 million metric tonnes of the gas to the continent last year. As one of these three is Russia (in number two position, after the U.S.) – and the E.U. is considering phasing out all Russian LNG and gas entering it by the end of 2027 – Qatar’s share was set to rise dramatically. This dovetails with the country’s own plans to more than double its current 77 million mtpa production to 160 million mtpa by 2030. By that time, it will account for at least 40% of all new LNG supplies across the globe, making it even more of crucial energy and geopolitical ally to the West, and to China, Russia, and countries in their sphere of influence. Such a situation would leave the U.S. with a huge supply gap to fill very quickly, although industry projections are that its LNG supply will increase by at least 75 million mtpa (from over 90 million mtpa currently) by 2030. This would also accord with the recent E.U. pledge to buy USD750 million of U.S. energy in the next three years, with much of this increase expected to come from the LNG sector. That said, the E.U. may be at least as concerned by the fact that it would leave Europe’s emergency energy supply almost entirely in the hands of Washington. Given President Donald Trump’s comments about not even helping to defend fellow European NATO members from attack – as the U.S. is obliged to do by Article 5 of the Treaty -- if they do not increase their defence spending to what he considers a sufficient level, the E.U.’s leadership may ponder whether he would take the same view on the U.S.’s commitment to energy supplies to the continent as well should it be attacked by Russia. In short, the loss of Qatari LNG to Europe – and more supplies going to China -- would be catastrophic for Europe – and indeed for the broader Western Alliance even now. And it would be considerably worse if Beijing launches its own ‘Special Military Operation’ to ‘reunite’ Taiwan with its ‘rightful motherland’ mainland China in 2027 – the date Chinese President Xi Jinping has told his military to prepare for.

By Simon Watkins for Oilprice.com

BP's Big Bet on Oil Pays Off in Brazil

By Tsvetana Paraskova - Aug 04, 2025

BP announced on Monday a significant oil and gas discovery in Brazil’s prolific offshore Santos Basin, the supermajor’s biggest in 25 years.  

BP’s exploration well in the deepwater Bumerangue block found an estimated 500 meter (1,640 ft) gross hydrocarbon column in high-quality pre-salt carbonate reservoir with an areal extent of greater than 300 square kilometers (116 square miles), the UK-based oil and gas major said in a statement.

BP plans further appraisal activities, subject to regulatory approval, in the block which it secured in a 2022 open acreage production sharing tender “on very good commercial terms.” 

“We are excited to announce this significant discovery at Bumerangue, bp’s largest in 25 years,” said Gordon Birrell, BP’s executive vice president for Production & Operations.  

“This is another success in what has been an exceptional year so far for our exploration team, underscoring our commitment to growing our upstream,” the executive added. 

Bumerangue is BP’s tenth oil and/or gas discovery so far this year, including one in the Gulf of Mexico, as the company pursues increasing its oil and gas production following the strategy reset early this year. 

BP has said it is increasing its investment in upstream oil and gas to $10 billion per year while slashing spending on clean energy by more than $5 billion a year. 

In the upstream, BP will aim for 10 new major projects to start up by the end of 2027, and a further 8–10 projects by the end of 2030. Production is also expected to grow to 2.3–2.5 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (boed) in 2030, with capacity to increase to 2035. 

For Brazil, a new major discovery in the Santos Basin aligns with its goal to boost oil and gas production. 

“Brazil is an important country for bp, and our ambition is to explore the potential of establishing a material and advantaged production hub in the country,” Birrell said today.  

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com 

Elliott Wants BP to Double Cost Cuts Target to $10 Billion

By Tsvetana Paraskova - Aug 04, 2025

Elliott Management, the activist U.S. hedge fund with 5% in BP, is doubling down on its pressure on the UK supermajor to deliver massive cost reductions after the reset, seeking doubling of the current target of $5 billion by 2027, the Financial Times reports. 

BP’s stock has been underperforming its UK-based peer, Shell, and other major international oil firms in recent years. The BP board has been under increased pressure to seek fundamental changes to the business to reward shareholders more.   

The pressure on BP became more intense earlier this year after Elliott bought a stake and demanded changes in strategy. Elliott has been pushing for changes in strategy and board reshuffles to address BP’s underwhelming stock performance.  

In a major reset back to oil and gas, BP in February said it would increase its investment in upstream oil and gas to $10 billion per year while slashing spending on clean energy by more than $5 billion a year.  

BP will also look to reduce costs and net debt, aiming at $4 billion–$5 billion of structural cost reductions by the end of 2027 and targeting $20 billion of new divestments to be announced by the end of 2027. 

Elliott is not happy with the structural cost reductions target and wants it doubled, to $10 billion in cost cuts by 2027 compared to a 2023 baseline, according to sources who spoke to FT. 

BP has pledged that its second-quarter results – due out on August 5 – would include a progress report on the cost reductions. 

Elliott’s ask for doubling the cost cuts target may hamper BP’s long-term growth, another major investor in the UK energy giant told FT, noting that “I would guess there is some upside to BP’s stated target but doubling it to $10bn seems overly aggressive.”   

For the second quarter, BP has warned that lower oil and gas prices are expected to dent the earnings, despite higher output and stronger refining margins.    

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com