CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Billion-Dollar Ponzi DC Solar’s CFO Gets Six-Year Prison Term

Robert Burnson
Tue, April 12, 2022, 


(Bloomberg) -- A defunct California-based solar company’s chief financial officer was ordered to prison for six years for his part in a $1 billion Ponzi scheme that attracted big-name investors, including Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

Robert A. Karmann started as DC Solar’s accountant and went on to become its controller and CFO before the company went bust in the wake of an FBI raid in 2018.

At his sentencing Tuesday in Sacramento federal court, U.S. District Judge John Mendez ordered Karmann to pay $624 million in restitution, according to court records.

Read More: Billion-Dollar Solar Power Ponzi Schemer Gets 30 Years’ Prison

DC Solar hooked investors on the idea that there was a fortune to be made in the market for its trailer-mounted solar generators. But in fact, demand for the generators was “virtually non-existent” and DC Solar was using money from new investors to pay off the old ones, according to U.S. Justice Department.

Karmann, 55, of Clayton, California, oversaw circular funds transfers and provided false financial information to investors, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office in Sacramento.

DC Solar owner Jeff Carpoff was sentenced in November to 30 years in prison and ordered to pay $790.6 million in restitution.

WAGE THEFT
Newport News-based Jose Tequilas ordered to pay overtime to 97 workers

Andrea Castillo/Daily Press/TNS

Dave Ress, Daily Press
Tue, April 12, 2022

The Newport News-based Jose Tequilas Mexican Grill and Bar chain must pay back overtime pay to 97 workers at its seven locations, most of which are in Hampton Roads, the U.S. Department of Labor ordered.

They are to receive a total of $176,276.71 in back pay.

The Richmond district office of the department’s Wage and Hour Division found the company had not paid those workers the time-and-one-half hourly rate when they worked more than 40 hours a week. It also found the company did not maintain required records, in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act.

One of the company’s owners said the problem involved equipment that was improperly counting hours worked

“It’s all been resolved,” and the company has paid the overtime, he said. He declined to give his name.

The seven restaurants involved are the Jose Tequilas Mexican Grill & Bar at 615 Thimble Shoals, Newport News; 2052 Lynnhaven Parkway, Virginia Beach; 2101 McComas Way, Virginia Beach; 205 Bypass Road, Williamsburg; 1108 Little Creek Road, Norfolk, and a location in Owings Mills, Maryland. Senor Fox Mexican Restaurant at 1080 Nimmo Parkway, Virginia Beach, was also involved.

“Food service employees are entitled to the essential protections provided by the Fair Labor Standards Act,” said Roberto Melendez, Richmond district director of Wage and Hour division.

“As restaurants struggle to find and keep the workers they need to remain competitive, they must remember that retaining and recruiting workers is harder for employers who fail to respect workers’ rights and violate labor laws,” he said.

More than 900,000 people have left jobs in restaurants and hotel businesses every month since August 2021, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports. Its reports do not say how many moved on to other restaurant jobs or found work in other industries.

WAGE THEFT

Tampa pharma maker owed Florida and Puerto Rico workers $1.9 million in pay, feds say


DAVID J. NEAL/dneal@MiamiHerald.com

David J. Neal
Mon, April 11, 2022, 

A Tampa-based international pharmaceutical company “missed several payrolls” in 2021, and eventually paid $1,943,241 in back pay after a U.S. Department of Labor investigation, the agency announced last week.

That money should have been paid to 139 workers of Romark Laboratories, an average of $13,980.15 per employee. Labor said the Wage and Hour Division investigation concerned Romark’s Bayport Drive location in Tampa and its Manati, Puerto Rico, facility.

According to Labor’s announcement, Romark “missed several payrolls from July 25 to Nov. 15, 2021.” This is a basic violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).

“Wages are due to employees on their regularly scheduled pay day. Employers who fail to meet this obligation make it very hard for workers to provide for themselves and their families, and meet their obligations,” said Wage and Hour Division District Director Nicolas Ratmiroff. “In today’s environment, employers who continue to make it harder for employees to earn a living can quickly find themselves struggling to retain and recruit workers.”

State records say Romark registered with the state in 1994 and is headed by president/CEO Marc Ayers and secretary Jean-Francois Rossignol. Romark has not responded to an emailed request for comment from the Miami Herald.

The Wage and Hour complaint section of Labor’s website contains information on how to file a complaint if you believe your employer has violated FLSA. Miami’s Wage and Hour Division office can be reached at 305-598-6607. The national helpline is 866-4US-WAGE (487-9243).

No matter a worker’s immigration or citizenship status, he or she can speak with the department, which says it can handle calls in more than 200 languages.

BLAME TRUMP

China's biggest offshore oil and gas producer is preparing to exit operations in the US, UK, and Canada due to concerns around sanctions, a report says


Grace Dean
Wed, April 13, 2022

Sources told Reuters that CNOOC had launched a review of its global portfolio as it prepares to list on the Shanghai stock exchange this month.

imaginima/Getty Images


CNOOC is preparing to exit the US, UK, and Canada because of sanctions concerns, sources told Reuters.

One senior industry source told Reuters that the assets were "marginal and hard to manage."

Following an executive order by Trump, CNOOC was delisted from the NYSE in October 2021.

CNOOC, a Chinese state-owned offshore oil and gas producer, is preparing to exit its operations in the US, UK, and Canada because of sanctions concerns, regulations, and costs, industry sources told Reuters.

A senior industry source told Reuters that CNOOC wanted to sell "marginal and hard to manage" assets in the three countries. They said that CNOOC's top management found it "uncomfortable" to manage the Western assets because of regulations and high operating costs.

CNOOC had entered the three countries through a $15 billion acquisition of Canadian oil and gas giant Nexen that closed in 2013.

The company had been listed on the New York Stock Exchange since 2001 but former President Donald Trump's administration added CNOOC to a list of countries it claimed were owned or controlled by the Chinese military in December 2020. Following an executive order by Trump, CNOOC was delisted from the NYSE in October 2021, the company said.

It was removed from the blacklist by President Joe Biden's administration in June 2021.

"Assets like Gulf of Mexico deepwater are technologically challenging and CNOOC really needed to work with partners to learn, but company executives were not even allowed to visit the US offices," the senior industry source told Reuters. "It had been a pain all along these years and the Trump administration's blacklisting of CNOOC made it worse."

The sources told Reuters that CNOOC wanted to exit the operations because of concerns in Beijing that the assets could face Western sanctions. US deputy secretary of state Wendy Sherman said last week that if China helped Russia "in any material fashion" amid sweeping sanctions from the West, China itself could also be sanctioned.

CNOOC did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment made outside of normal working hours.

The sources told Reuters that CNOOC had launched a review of its global portfolio as it prepares to list on the Shanghai stock exchange this month.

CNOOC is planning to buy assets in Latin America and Africa as it prepares to leave its Western operations, the sources said. In its 2021 annual report, the company said it was eyeing the Bohai and South China seas as well as parts of Guyana for production growth.

Reuters reported that CNOOC is China's biggest offshore oil and gas producer. It produced, on average, around 1.57 million barrels of oil equivalent per day in 2021, of which 62,000 were from sites in Canada and 80,000 were from sites elsewhere in North America, it said in its annual report. Reuters calculated that CNOOC's assets in the US, UK, and Canada collectively produce around 220,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day.

In the US, CNOOC owns onshore assets in the Eagle Ford and Niobrara shale basins and also has offshore stakes in the Stampede and Appomattox fields in the Gulf of Mexico. In the UK, it operates three sites in northeast Scotland, and has oil sands and shale gas assets in Canada.

The West has imposed huge sanctions on Russia after it invaded Ukraine in late February. This includes targeting its huge oil and gas industry. US President Joe Biden has pledged to ban Russian energy imports, Germany halted plans for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, and Lithuania said it became the first EU country to completely cut off Russian gas imports.

Could Yellowstone wolves help combat chronic wasting disease? Here’s what one study says


Doug Smith/National Park Service

Brett French
Wed, April 13, 2022

With its diversity of predators, could Yellowstone National Park be a disease-free island in a surrounding sea of chronic wasting disease?

That’s speculation based on a recent study by Ellen Brandell who, with other scientists, built a model to analyze the role predators play in removing sick animals from the environment.

“The Yellowstone Ecosystem is an exciting area to study this because there is a rich predator community and CWD has just started to infect elk and deer,” Blandell wrote in a blog posted on the Animal Ecology in Focus website.

Dan MacNulty, from Utah State University’s Department of Wildland Resources and Ecology Center, has studied wolves in Yellowstone for years. He collaborated with Blandell on her study and said, “There is a growing body of scientific research, including our recent study, that predicts that Yellowstone National Park will become an island mostly free of CWD in a sea of CWD infection thanks to its diverse and abundant community of large carnivores.”

Predators could be slowing fatal disease

Doug Smith, lead wolf biologist in Yellowstone National Park, collaborated on the study as well. He said the modeling is missing one key piece of information: How effectively wolves and cougars will prey on CWD-infected elk and deer.

If the predators identify a sick animal early in its infection, the effect will be much greater, he said.

Another question is how many infected animals will predators kill? And will the kill rate of sick animals be higher than that for healthy ones?

Despite the weak points in some knowledge, Smith said the model shows that predators could help slow CWD’s spread by removing sick animals from the landscape.

“I would say this is one of the benefits of having an intact predator community,” he said.

By collecting brain stem material from elk and deer that predators have killed and analyzing it for CWD, Yellowstone researchers are attempting to find out infection and kill rates in the park. Smith and his colleagues also capture elk every winter and tests them for the disease.

Smith is hopeful that with time, evidence may be collected to support the CWD theory.

“The utility of models like this is a deeper understanding of complex ecological relationships, but models require simplifying certain processes as well and should be interpreted with some caution,” Brandell wrote.

Other collaborators on Brandell’s modeling included: Paul C. Cross, Will Rogers, Nathan L. Galloway, Daniel R. Stahler, John Treanor and Peter J. Hudson.
Wolf advocates have argued predators’ role

Scientists already know predators will often kill sick, old, young and weak prey that are easier to take down. So maybe mountain lions and wolves could play a role in removing elk, deer or moose that have chronic wasting disease, Brandell’s study hypothesizes.

A 2010 study in Colorado’s Front Range “showed mule deer killed by mountain lions were more likely to be infected with CWD than mule deer killed by hunters,” Colorado State University reported. A 2008 study, however, found that “such selective predation by mountain lions…did not limit CWD transmission in deer populations with high infection rates.”

The theory was that because lions ambush their prey, instead of chasing like wolves, cougars may be “less likely to detect sick animals compared to wolves.”

Reducing the number of animals, with or without CWD, is one tool state wildlife agencies employ to lessen the disease’s spread. This is based on the fact that CWD is more easily dispersed if animals are in close contact. It also recognizes that hunters can remove sick animals from the population, sometimes before they show symptoms of infection.

Seeing predators as another tool to keep disease prevalence low is an argument wolf advocates have long been making to the Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission. With that in mind, groups like Wolves of the Rockies have been seeking to lower wolf hunting and trapping quotas in the state, so far to no avail.
What do Yellowstone wolves eat?

In Yellowstone, wolves primarily dine on elk, accounting for around 96% of their diet in winter and 85% in summer, according to the National Park Service. Mountain lions rely on elk for about 55% of their diet, with about 45% coming from mule deer, the Yellowstone Cougar Project found.

Chronic wasting disease tends to infect adult male deer more often than females. Elk seem somewhat resistant to the disease, although Montana detected its first infected elk in 2019 and a Wyoming elk shot in Grand Teton National Park tested positive for CWD in 2020. An Idaho elk also tested positive for the illness in recent months.

Montana’s first detected case of CWD in wild deer occurred in 2017 in south-central Montana’s Carbon County. In Wyoming the disease is working its way north and west since it was first identified in 1985.

The disease, which causes damage to the infected animal’s brain, is always fatal. The abnormal proteins that cause CWD, called prions, are spread from an infected animal’s bodily fluids or feces. Once in the environment, the prions can survive for years, making it difficult to eradicate.

So far, 27 states and two Canadian provinces have detected CWD infected animals. The sickness has also been found in South Korea and Norway.

Brandell’s study comes out in the wake of the October publication of a U.S. Geological Survey study documenting the benefit of scavengers — from ravens and crows to coyotes and golden eagles — as landscape sanitizers. The study placed disease-free cattle fetuses in different types of habitat. Cameras were set up to film what animals arrived to feed and how long it was before the fetuses were eaten.

The goal was to mimic when elk, which can carry brucellosis, abort their fetus. The birthing material is believed to be one of the main ways brucellosis is spread.

World’s Largest Oil Trader To Completely Phase Out Russian Crude


Editor OilPrice.com
Wed, April 13, 2022

Commodity major Vitol plans to wind down its activities involving Russian crude oil by the end of the year, Bloomberg has reported, citing a spokesman for the company.

Trade with Russian oil "will diminish significantly in the second quarter as current term contractual obligations decline," the spokesman said, adding, "we anticipate this will be completed by end of 2022".

The report notes the announcement was made following an urge from the Ukrainian government addressed to the four major commodity traders to stop dealing in Russian oil, the revenues from which, the Ukrainian government says, are used to finance the war in Ukraine.

Vitol had previously signaled that it was planning to cease trade in Russian oil at some point. Yet it also needs to decide what to do with its stake in the giant Vostok oil project led by Rosneft.

Vitol, together with Mercantile & Maritime, bought a 5-percent in the Siberian megaproject before the pandemic. With reserves estimated at 2.6 billion tons of crude, equal to some 19 billion barrels, the group of fields that the Vostok Project spans could produce up to 100 million tons of crude annually once it reaches full capacity. Rosneft itself estimates the fields' reserves at up to 44 billion barrels.

Now, with all the public pressure on businesses to exit Russia—and many already doing it—pressure may increase on private companies such as the commodity trading major, too.

Last month, unnamed sources told Reuters that Vitol has long-term contracts with Rosneft until at least October this year. Long-term contracts with private commodity traders are not normally made public.

Per that report, oil traders expected both Vitol and fellow commodity major Trafigura to continue trading Russian crude this month and next, although perhaps in lower volumes "given the potential difficulties in selling the cargoes to EU buyers."

The European Union has been discussing a potential oil embargo on Russia for weeks now, but the only thing that seems to have been established is that if one is ever agreed, it would be a gradual wind-down of imports rather than a sudden suspension.

Exxon Bets Another $10 Billion On Guyana’s Oil Boom

Editor OilPrice.com
Tue, April 12, 2022

The deeply impoverished South American microstate of Guyana, which was rocked by the COVID-19 pandemic, finds itself at the epicenter of the continent's latest mega-oil boom.

 Since 2015, ExxonMobil, which has a 45% stake and is the operator, along with its partners Hess and CNOOC which own 30% and 25% respectively, has made a swathe of high-quality oil discoveries in Guyana’s offshore 6.6-million-acre Stabroek Block. Exxon, which is the operator of the Stabroek Block, has made over 20 discoveries, 6 of those in 2021 alone, which the global energy supermajor estimates to hold at least 10 billion barrels of recoverable oil resources. The most recent crude oil discoveries, announced in January 2022, were at the Fangtooth-1 and Lau Lau-1 exploration wells. Those finds will boost the Stabroek Block’s oil potential adding to the 10 billion barrels of recoverable oil resources already estimated by Exxon.

The integrated energy supermajor is investing heavily in the Stabroek Block, which will be a game-changer for the company. Exxon’s first operational field in the Stabroek Block Liza Phase-1 achieved a nameplate capacity of 120,000 barrels per day during December 2020. The next notable development for the Exxon-led consortium and a deeply impoverished Guyana is that the Liza Phase-2 development pumped first oil in February 2022. That operation is expected to reach a nameplate capacity of 220,000 barrels daily before the end of 20220, lifting the Stabroek Block’s output to around 340,000 barrels per day. In September 2020 Exxon gave the green light for the Payara oilfield project. This $9 billion development is the supermajor’s third project in the Stabroek Block, and it is anticipated that Payara will start production during 2024, with the asset expected to reach a capacity of 220,000 barrels per day before the end of that year.

Earlier this month, Exxon made the final investment decision on the Yellow Tail offshore development choosing to proceed and invest $10 billion in the project. This was announced on the back of Guyana’s national government, in Georgetown, approving the project and signing a petroleum production license for Yellow Tail with the Exxon-led consortium. This will be the integrated energy supermajor’s largest project to be developed to date in offshore Guyana. It is anticipated that Yellow Tail will commence production in 2025 reaching a nameplate production capacity of 250,000 barrels per day before the end of that year. That will lift overall petroleum output from the Stabroek Block to at least 810,000 barrels per day. Exxon envisages that the Stabroek Block will be pumping over 1 million barrels per day by 2026 when the Uaru project, which has yet to be approved, comes online.

Exxon Guyana Oil Production


Source: Exxon 2022 Investor Day Presentation.


As a result of Exxon’s investment, Guyana will become a major player in global energy markets and a top 20 producer with the former British colony pumping an estimated 1.2 million barrels daily by 2026, two years earlier than originally predicted.

It isn’t only the Exxon-led consortium in the Stabroek Block which is enjoying drilling success in offshore Guyana. In late-January 2022 Canadian driller CGX Energy and its partner, the company’s majority shareholder, Frontera Energy discovered oil with the Kawa-1 exploration well in the 3-million-acre Corentyne Block in offshore Guyana. The block, where CGX is the operator and its parent company Frontera owns a 33.33% working interest, is contiguous to the prolific Stabroek Block lying to its south-southwest. The Kawa-1 well is in the northern tip of the Corentyne Block, close to the discoveries made by Exxon in the Stabroek Block.

Source: Frontera Energy Corporate Presentation March 2022.

CGX and Frontera intend to invest $130 million in exploring the Corentyne Block. That includes spudding the Wei-1 exploration well in the northwestern part of Corentyne during the second half of 2022. According to CGX, the geology of the Kawa-1 well is similar to discoveries made in the Stabroek Block as well as the 5 significant finds made by TotalEnergies and Apache in neighboring Block 58 offshore Suriname. It is believed that the northern segment of the Corentyne Block lies on the same petroleum fairway that runs through the Stabroek Block into Suriname’s Block 58.

Related: Tight Oil Markets Are Sending Fuel Margins Through The Roof

These events point to offshore Guyana’s considerable hydrocarbon potential, supporting industry claims that the United States Geological Survey grossly miscalculated the undiscovered oil potential of the Guyana Suriname Basin. The USGS, which committed to revisiting its two-decade-old appraisal during 2020, only for that to be prevented by the COVID-19 pandemic, estimated 2 decades ago that the Guyana Suriname basin had to mean undiscovered oil resources of 15 billion barrels. To date, Exxon has disclosed that it estimates to have found at least 10 billion barrels of crude oil in the Stabroek Block. This number can increase because of the latest discoveries in the block and ongoing development activities. Then there are TotalEnergies and Apache’s crude oil discoveries in Block 58 offshore Suriname where the flow-tested Sapakara South appraisal well has tapped a reservoir estimated to hold oil resources of over 400 million barrels. In 2020 U.S. investment bank Morgan Stanley estimated that Block 58 could possess oil resources of up to 6.5 billion barrels.

The low costs associated with operating in Guyana, reflected by projected industry-low breakeven prices of $25 to $35 per barrel, and a favorable regulatory environment make it an extremely attractive jurisdiction for foreign energy companies. That appeal is enhanced by the crude oil discovered being relatively light and low in sulfur, making it particularly attractive in a global energy market where demand for low-carbon intensity and reduced emission fuels is rapidly growing. For those reasons investment from foreign energy companies and hence exploration as well as development activities in offshore Guyana are accelerating.

Aside from Frontera allocating up to $130 million to be invested in exploration activity in the Corentyne Block, Spanish energy major, Repsol, plans to ramp up activity in the nearby Kanuku Block in offshore Guyana. The company has contracted Noble to spud the Beebei-Potaro well in the block during May 2022. The Kanuku Block, where Repsol is the operator and holds a 37.5% interest with partners Tullow and TotalEnergies owning 37.5% and 25% respectively, is located south of, and contiguous to, the prolific Stabroek Block. That places it close to Exxon’s Stabroek discoveries, notably the Hammerhead, Pluma, Turbot, and Longtail wells, indicating that the northern part of the Kanuku Block potentially contains the petroleum fairway that runs through the Stabroek and northern part of the Corentyne Block into offshore Suriname Block 58.

Recent oil discoveries combined with rising interest as well as investment from foreign energy investment coupled with the speed with which Exxon is developing the Stabroek Block could see Guyana pumping well over 1 million barrels per day earlier than expected. Some industry analysts speculate that volume could be reached by 2025 which is supported by statements from the CEO of Hess, Exxon’s 30% partner in the Stabroek Block, John Hess. These latest developments in offshore Guyana couldn’t come at a more crucial time with the U.S. looking to bolster crude oil supplies in the wake of Washington banning Russian energy imports. If Guyana can rapidly grow low-carbon intensity offshore oil production as predicted, the deeply impoverished South American microstate will become an important supplier of crude oil, especially for the U.S. This will also deliver a significant economic windfall for Guyana, which has already seen its gross domestic product expanded by a stunning 20.4% during 2021 when crude oil production was only averaging 120,000 to 130,000 barrels per day.

Matthew Smith for Oilprice.com

I WAS INVOLVED WITH A GUYANESE LEFT WING STUDY GROUP IN EDMONTON WHICH ALSO STUDIED THE COLONIAL AND ANTI IMPERIALIST STRUGGLES IN THE CARIBBEAN THIS WAS DURING THE FALL OF GRENADA 

Oil Traders Selling Pricey Russian Crude Chafe Indian Refiners

Serene Cheong and Debjit Chakraborty
Tue, April 12, 2022, 

(Bloomberg) -- Indian refiners that are among the few remaining eager buyers of Russian oil are baffled as to why they’re paying nearly full cost for cargoes that are being offered at record discounts in Europe.

Processors in the South Asian nation recently bought millions of barrels of Urals crude via open tenders, with some supplies going at a premium of $1 a barrel to London’s Dated Brent benchmark on a delivered basis, said traders. That compares with discounts of more than $30 a barrel for the same grade in Europe.

Officials at the Indian refineries said they don’t understand why they’re not receiving offers of discounts anywhere near what they’re seeing in Europe when they’ve been vocally supportive of continuing to import Russian crude. The lack of price cuts is especially galling for them as the invasion sent prices to more than $100 a barrel, adding inflationary concerns to the poorest major oil importer.

India is under pressure from allies including the U.S. to stop importing Russian energy to deprive Vladimir Putin of income to keep the economy afloat and fund the invasion of Ukraine. Russia and India have been long-time trade partners in everything from energy to food to weapons.

India’s state refiners usually procure spot crude via open tenders, in which prospective sellers submit their interest along with details on the oil type, volume, price and other offer terms.

The process is aimed at transparency and accountability, but it can be gamed by sellers who have a good sense of what price they need to beat, said refinery officials. Offers for Urals have been just slightly cheaper than other medium-sour grades typically sold to India such as Oman and Upper Zakum, instead of the deep discounts seen offered in Europe, they said.

The seller of many of the spot cargoes was Vitol Group, said the officials, who can’t be named because of company policy. Vitol declined to comment on specific trading activities.

Traders said that anyone who’s able to load Urals at prices near the discounted European offers would be making a profit between $10 and $20 a barrel for sales into India, after taking into account freight, insurance and other costs. Those are staggering profits in an industry where competition usually shaves margins to a few cents a barrel.

In late March, Suezmax tankers with a capacity of 1 million barrels were chartered at the equivalent of near $5 a barrel to transport crude from the Black Sea to India. The backwardated market structure meant the loss of another $4 a barrel during the month-long journey, among other costs. That still adds up to profits of $10 million to $20 million for the shipment, traders estimated.

Little Competition

Just a handful of companies are lifting Urals and selling it in Asia, said Indian refinery officials. This means there’s not a lot of competition, which is needed to drive down offers, they said.

More sellers are entering the market as traders get clarity on the various restrictions and sanctions on Russia and as workarounds emerge. This is beginning to increase the discounts offered to Indian buyers.

Tanker fixtures and port agent reports show that companies such as Vitol, Trafigura Group, Petraco Oil, Glencore PLC, Litasco SA and Gunvor Group continue to load crude from Russian ports, likely via pre-existing contracts entered before Ukraine’s invasion. The cargoes may sail directly to buyers, or undergo what’s known as ship-to-ship transfers onto larger vessels to save on freight costs or for other strategic reasons.

Indian refiners have historically been passive buyers, taking the best price offered to them via tenders, as opposed to setting up separate trading arms. That leaves them without trading units that can scour the global market for the most affordable physical oil grades, and even buy, sell and swap cargoes for profits, like Chinese state-owned refiners do.

PSYCH OUT

Russian troops who seized Chernobyl will soon suffer the effects of radiation exposure after digging trenches in the nuclear zone, Ukraine official says


Sophia Ankel
Wed, April 13, 2022,

The fourth reactor of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant is seen behind the abandoned town of Pripyat, Ukraine.Gleb Garanich/File Photo via Reuters

Russian soldiers gave up control of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant earlier this month.

Troops stationed there will "feel the consequences" of radiation poisoning soon, a Ukrainian official said.

Yevhen Kramarenko said Russians dug trenches and drove into the most contaminated areas of the site.

Russian troops who seized Chernobyl will soon suffer the effects of radiation exposure after digging trenches in the nuclear zone, the head of the State Agency of Ukraine on Exclusion Zone Management said Wednesday.

Yevhen Kramarenko told reporters that Russian troops, who occupied the Chernobyl exclusion zone for five weeks, had dug trenches and shelters for their vehicles in an area known as Red Forest.

The Red Forest is a 1.5-square-mile pine forest that died as a result of radiation exposure shortly after the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986. It remains the most contaminated part of the exclusion zone, according to Reuters.

"We believe very soon [the Russians] will feel the consequences of radiation that they have received. Some of them will feel it in months, some of them in years," Kramarenko said at a press conference Wednesday. "But anyway, all of the servicemen who were there will feel it at some point,"

He also confirmed earlier reports of Russian soldiers driving around the Red Forest without any protective gear and inhaling clouds of radioactive dust.

Radiation poisoning can cause different effects depending on the strength and length of exposure, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

In more extreme cases, radiation poisoning can lead to internal bleeding and skin burns, as well as thyroid cancer and cardiovascular disease, per the CDC.

Russian troops left the exclusion zone at the beginning of the month after some of their soldiers "panicked" at the first sign of radiation illness, Ukraine's state power company, Energoatom, said, according to The Guardian.

It is unclear exactly what their supposed symptoms were, although they "showed up very quickly," Energoatom added.

The Russian troops have since gone to Belarus and Russia, Kramarenko said, adding that Ukrainian plant officials are now working on developing additional safety measures to "avoid in the future any events similar to what we had to happen."

The power plant was fully decommissioned after the 1986 nuclear accident and the remaining work at the site is mostly directed toward decontamination.

Kramarenko said it is unclear how high radiation levels are around the site at the moment because there is currently no electricity.

"Until then we won't understand the damage done," he said.

SEE LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for CHERNOBYL 

Texas Follows Through With Gross Stunt of Dumping Migrants in D.C.

Zachary Petrizzo, Rachel Olding
Wed, April 13, 2022

Twitter/John Roberts

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott followed through on his cruel promise to dump asylum seekers and migrants in the capital with the first busload conveniently arriving outside Fox News’ office on Wednesday morning.

Abbott vowed last week to bus them to the Capitol steps in response to the Biden administration’s decision to end Title 42, a pandemic-era emergency order implemented by Donald Trump that allowed migrants to be sent back to Mexico at the border, even if they were seeking asylum.

“To help local officials whose communities are being overwhelmed by hordes of illegal immigrants who are being dropped off by the Biden administration, Texas is providing charter buses to send these illegal immigrants who have been dropped off by the Biden administration to Washington D.C.,” he said.

“We are sending them to the United States Capitol where the Biden administration will be able to more immediately address the needs of the people that they are allowing to come across our border.”

Around 30 people got off the bus when it pulled up at about 9 a.m. in front of the Hall of the States building, which houses Fox News, MSNBC and C-SPAN, a few blocks away from the Capitol. Fox News reported that officials cut off their wristbands and told them they were free to go.

Zachary Petrizzo for The Daily Beast

Eleven migrants who spoke to The Daily Beast at Union Station said they wouldn’t be staying in the D.C. area. Instead, the group was planning to split up as Catholic Charities help them travel to New York City and Miami.

Father John Enzler of Catholic Charities told The Daily Beast that another two buses are expected to arrive from Texas—one later Wednesday and one on Thursday morning.

“Its not well organized,” he said. Enzler added that his organization’s facilities—totaling 34 sites in D.C.—are mostly full but will look to “transition” migrants.

Zachary Petrizzo for The Daily Beast

“Everybody [will] go somewhere else,” Ivan Calderon, an immigrant from Colombia, told The Daily Beast in comments translated by a Univision reporter.

Those that spoke with The Daily Beast said they had come from Colombia, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Cuba.

Multiple advocacy groups had decried Abbott’s stunt as callous, pointless and possibly illegal as states can’t enforce federal immigration law.

“There is no one to help them,” a volunteer with the Catholic charity lamented to The Daily Beast, adding that the bus was sent by the Texas governor just to dump the migrants off at the Hall of the States building with no assistance.

Zachary Petrizzo for The Daily Beast

Greg Abbott’s D.C. Migrant Bus Is a Dehumanizing Political Stunt


Max Burns
Wed, April 13, 2022

Montinique Monroe/Getty

After years of Republican doomsaying, a bus of undocumented immigrants finally arrived in Washington, D.C. But these migrants didn’t end up in the nation’s capital by choice—they were shipped to the Beltway by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in a craven publicity stunt that dehumanizes migrants and further humiliates the state of Texas.

Abbott’s bus stunt comes after the governor directed the Texas Division of Emergency Management to scoop up any migrants released from federal custody and ship them to other states. And so they readied the mission, securing 900 buses capable of transporting up to 40 migrants at a time until Texas has made its political dysfunction someone else’s problem. Abbott reportedly said a second bus is en route to D.C. right now. And if buses don’t get the job done fast enough, Abbott has plans to charter private flights to Washington on the taxpayer dime.

While the governor’s gambit may delight the talking heads at Fox News—one of Abbott’s migrant buses dropped three dozen immigrants off just a few feet away from the network’s Washington headquarters—it also marks a clear acceleration in Texas’ rightward shift toward dehumanizing women, minorities, and migrant communities.

Abbott launched his publicity stunt/human rights violation after the Biden administration lifted a pandemic-related immigration policy that allowed local authorities to turn away migrants on public health grounds. Infuriated that Texas would actually be required to treat asylum-seeking migrants as actual people, Abbott and his far-right cronies opted instead to make these migrants’ shattered lives even more painful with an unexpected bus trip across the country.

“If I were to go to Washington, D.C., and take you and put you on a bus and take you down to the Rio Grande Valley, that would be kidnapping,” Abbott told Fox News last week in a rare moment of sanity. But that acknowledgement hasn’t stopped Abbott from upending the lives of migrants already fleeing violence and persecution, all for a few minutes of television time.

And despite Abbott’s repeated claims his migrant caravans are completely “voluntary,” the stories of migrants dropped off in Washington on Wednesday morning paint a darker picture. Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior policy counsel at the American Immigration Council, noted in a Twitter thread that quite a few of Abbott’s caravan members are already buying bus and plane tickets to their actual destinations, a “sign that Abbott’s ‘voluntary’ bus trips were probably not.”

For a governor who never misses an opportunity to crow about strengthening “law and order” in the Lone Star State, Abbott’s publicity stunt is not only a shockingly callous act, it’s also a potential crime, as White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki argued last week.

“I think it’s pretty clear that this is a publicity stunt,” Psaki told reporters during a White House press briefing. “I know that the governor of Texas, or any state, does not have the legal authority to compel anyone to get on a bus.” The question remains, though: If Abbott lacks the authority, and it is increasingly clear many of the D.C. caravan’s passengers had no desire to arrive in Washington, what will the federal government do about it?

The answer? Probably not much. Unlike his strong stances on issues like voting rights and infrastructure improvements, immigration is one area where the Biden administration lacks broad public support. And Biden’s move to revoke those pandemic-era border policies is already unpopular: 56 percent of registered voters oppose it, including over half of independents.

Biden was right to end the discriminatory Trump-era policies that led to COVID outbreaks on the border and dehumanized migrants in need of American protection. But his administration is unlikely to take the fight to Abbott if that means being anchored to an immigration debate during the heat of the midterm election cycle. And so, as usual, migrants will be left on their own.

At some point, though, polling must stop preventing the President of the United States from fully protecting the human rights and human dignity of migrants on our southern border. Americans aren’t opposed to offering asylum to those in need—most Americans support Biden’s decision to offer asylum to roughly 100,000 Ukrainian refugees fleeing Russian persecution. That American voters don’t feel the same compassion for Hispanic refugees fleeing violence in nations like Guatemala, Venezuela, and El Salvador shows how deep and unconscious right-wing otherization of migrants based on skin color has become.

Unwilling to craft state policies that actually address the surge in asylum-seeking on the southern border and addicted to the easy media coverage of publicity stunts, Abbott and Texas Republicans are unlikely to stop their abuses.

But there are signs that Abbott’s cruelty is too much even for the few Texas GOP officials still interested in actually repairing our broken immigration system. “It’s a gimmick,” Texas GOP Rep. Matt Schaefer tweeted dismissively.

Unfortunately for the migrants whose lives have once again been upended by a cruel and abusive state regime, Texas’ latest “gimmick” only succeeds in perpetuating the pain these migrants fled to the United States to escape.