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Oil Industry Not Spending Enough To Balance Supply & Demand

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Editor OilPrice.com
Sat, August 26, 2023 

Oil, Gas Companies Still Spending Less than Needed on New SupplyFailure to Invest: Oil & Gas Companies Still Underspending on New SupplyOil Industry is in Upcycle and Spending More, but Not EnoughOil Industry Not Spending Enough to Balance Supply & Demand

After years of warnings of failure to invest in enough new exploration, the industry has begun spending more. Yet, it would still be less than is necessary to secure enough supply to respond to demand.

That’s the take of Wood Mackenzie analysts, at least, who recently reported that the oil and gas industry is currently in the third year of an upcycle, with this year’s investments in new production at $490 billion. This would be significantly higher than the low reached in 2020, which stood at $370 billion.

Even though spending on its own is not enough to secure supply, the Wood Mac analysts noted in an interview for the firm that cost reductions will make up for the difference. They note the rise of U.S. shale and other non-OPEC sources, and forecast non-OPEC producers to maintain a constant market share in the coming years.

Indeed, this chimes in with what U.S. oil industry executives reported during the latest financial reporting season. What the said, basically, was that wells were yielding more oil than expected, boosting total production. The reason wells were yielding more: technological improvements.

Argus reported earlier this month, citing Pioneer Natural Resources, that well productivity since the start of the year has been trending significantly higher than the average for 2022. At the same time, however, Bloomberg recently cited research from Enverus suggesting that shale wells were draining faster than previously assumed, with few untapped reservoirs left as the shale patch gets mature.

Besides U.S. oil, there is also Canada, Mexico, Brazil, and smaller producers such as Guyana. These have contributed significantly to global supply, but OPEC remains the biggest fish in the oil pond because of its common supply control policies.

What’s more, with the expansion of the BRICS bloc, we get another grouping of some of the largest producers in the world, partly overlapping with OPEC but also including Brazil and Argentina.

Groupings aside, global investments in new oil and gas supplied are well and truly on a rise despite the transition push. Goldman Sachs reported last month that there were currently 70 large-scale oil and gas projects under development globally right now. That was up by a substantial 25% from 2020, although 2020 could hardly be seen as a normal year for investment decision-making in any industry except perhaps IT.

Per the investment bank, the seven-year-long underinvestment period led to a sharp decline in the resource life of future projects as well as the life of already producing fields. With a rebound in investment, this may yet change. Wood Mac, on the other hand, warns of peak demand and a fundamental change in the oil and gas industry driven by the prospect of that.

According to upstream analysts Fraser McKay and Ian Thom, the current cycle will not end with a bust as all previous cycles in the industry did. The reason: the prospect of peak oil demand caused by the transition to non-hydrocarbon energy sources. This prospect, they argued, would keep oil and gas producers on their toes and maintain their financial discipline over the longer term.

Still, despite the prospect of peak demand, even Wood Mac analysts are worried about the lack of a spare production capacity cushion, which could be viewed as a side effect of this newly found discipline with spending and focus on efficiency while adjusting to a world in transition.

“We expect companies to go for margin rather than market share; and upstream supply chain capacity to creep rather than leap, which has been the traditional response in an upcycle,” McKay and Thom said, adding “That restraint could lead to a tighter supply chain than the industry has been used to.”

While peak demand for oil is something that a lot of forecasters talk about and even call for openly, for now it remains on the horizon while actual demand for oil breaks record after record. Even the International Energy Agency, a vocal transition advocate and peak oil demand forecaster said that over the short-term demand is going to grow, hitting a record of over 102 million barrels daily this year.

This makes the global balance between supply and demand perhaps a bit more precarious than the Wood Mac analysis suggests. While it’s true that technological gains have played an important role in keeping production high while reducing costs, U.S. shale drillers have steered clear of their previous setting of “growth at all costs”.

Meanwhile, OPEC is keeping a lid on output with the novel option for individual members—Saudi Arabia—to cut additional volumes whenever they decide to, in order to push prices higher. And OPEC, in a sense, grew with the BRICS expansion.

The oil and gas industry is spending more on new production despite the transition push. This means expectations are that peak oil demand is a relatively distant prospect. It might even become more distant if the transition begins to show signs of exhaustion amid substantial cost inflation and the risks of raw material shortages.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

ECOLOGY IS INTERSECTIONALITY

Environmental groups recruit people of color into overwhelmingly white conservation world

TODD RICHMOND
Sat, August 26, 2023 









University of Wisconsin-Madison senior Arianna Barajas searches for signs of whooping cranes on Tuesday, Aug. 15, 2023, near Baraboo, Wis. Barajas, who identifies as Mexican-American, is spending the summer working for the International Crane Foundation as part of the Natural Resources Foundation of Wisconsin's Diversity in Conservation Internships.

 (AP Photo/Todd Richmond)

BARABOO, Wis. (AP) — Arianna Barajas never thought of herself as the outdoors type. The daughter of Mexican immigrants who grew up in Chicago's suburbs, her forays into nature usually amounted to a bike ride to a community park.

She was interested in wild animals but had no idea she could make a living working with them until her older brother enrolled in veterinarian school. She took a leap of faith and enrolled at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and became a wildlife ecology major.

This summer Barajas landed an internship designed for people of color at the International Crane Foundation's headquarters in Baraboo, Wisconsin, and stepped into a new world.

“I always knew growing up I had an interest in wildlife and animals but didn't know the options I had," Barajas, 21, said. “I really just have a passion for the outdoors. I can't just be in an office all day. I need to be outside and doing things I think are valuable.”

Environmental groups across the country have worked for the last two decades to introduce members of underrepresented populations like Barajas to the overwhelmingly white conservation world. The effort has gained momentum since George Floyd's death forced a national reckoning on race relations and challenged a variety of industries to focus on diversity and inclusion efforts.

As climate change reshapes the planet, leaders need to hear every perspective when determining conservation policies, minority advocates say. Multiple studies since the early 1980s have found communities of color feel the impact of pollution and climate change more acutely than wealthy areas.

“All the environmental issues we’re facing are really big and we simply can’t face them all unless we have a lot of ideas at the table,” said Soumi Gaddameedi, a 22-year-old Indian American who works as a donor coordinator for the nonprofit group Natural Resources Foundation of Wisconsin. “No one solution fits all. People of color are in the communities facing the worst impact. It’s important that they have a voice.”

White men have largely controlled American conservation policy for more than a century. The modern conservation movement in the United States began around the turn of the 20th century, led by figures such as Sierra Club co-founder John Muir, who openly derided American Indians as savages, and President Theodore Roosevelt, who doubled the number of sites in the National Park System. Conservationists such as Aldo Leopold and Wisconsin Gov. Gaylord Nelson, who founded Earth Day, followed them.

More than 80% of National Park Service employees are white, according to service data. A 2022 survey of the 40 largest non-government environmental organizations and foundations by Green 2.0, an organization advocating for minority inclusion in the environmental sector, found 60% of staff and almost 70% of organization heads identified as white.

Sociologists offer a number of explanations for the lack of diversity in conservation ranks. For instance, people of color tend to live in urban settings with less exposure to the outdoors and may consider outdoor recreation a white man's domain, said Kristy Drutman, the Filipino and Jewish founder of the Green Jobs Board, an online listing of environmental jobs with companies promoting diversity. She also runs the Brown Girl Green podcast.

“I don't think BIPOC are choosing not to be in the outdoors, they're just not given the same opportunity,” Drutman said, using an acronym for Black people, Indigenous people and people of color.

“Urbanization, racial segregation, all these histories have separated BIPOC from neighbors with more green spaces," Drutman said. "It's become a white people's thing because of that.”

Relatively few people of color study biology and natural resources in college. Hispanic people made up only about 13.6% of graduate students and 12.8% of doctoral students in those fields in 2021, according to a National Science Foundation study. Black people made up about 9.5% of graduate students and only 6% of doctoral students. Native Americans made up less than 1% of graduate and doctoral students in both fields.

“There's a long-standing tradition of white men from rural areas dominating these roles,” said Caitlin Alba, who works to recruit minority students to the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point's environmental programs. “(Minority) mentors and educators are unfamiliar with these opportunities.”

National environmental organization Conservation Legacy has been recruiting young people from underrepresented populations for teams across the country, including Arizona, New Mexico, North Carolina and the Appalachian region.

The teams handle a wide array of conservation projects, such as river restoration, vegetation monitoring, disaster relief and conservation projects on Native American lands. The teams include a group for sign-language users and an all-female crew dubbed “the Trail Angels."

Northwest Youth Corps, based in Eugene, Oregon, has recruited LGBTQ students between 16 and 18 and LGBTQ adults to its so-called Rainbow Crews since 2017. The crews work on reforestation projects and are designed to provide hands-on training and experience for those interested in environmental jobs or other other outdoor careers. The program won the Corps Network's 2020 Project of the Year award.

This year the organization created two all-women crews that operate out of Idaho. The organization also recruits young American Indians for crews working on ancestral lands in hopes of encouraging them to find environmental jobs with their tribes.

The Natural Resources Foundation of Wisconsin launched a paid internship program for BIPOC students in 2021. The program places interns with other conservation groups like the International Crane Foundation where Barajas is one of 10 interns. The internship program had three participants in 2021 and seven last summer.

After spending the summer tagging and tracking whooping cranes across south-central Wisconsin, Barajas has become even more aware of how minority perspectives are rarely considered in the conservation world.

“Sometimes I’ll hear about children’s programming on different natural things. I’m thinking, what opportunities do you have for people who don’t speak English?” she said. “Are you reaching out to diverse communities?”

Barajas used the example of a city imposing fines to ensure people recycle. “Well, there’s a financial obstacle now where certain communities can’t pay that fine,” she said.

Other people of color are working to expand inclusion on their own.

Tykee James, who is Black, grew up in Philadelphia but became an avid birdwatcher after two white employees at a local environmental education center visited his high school environmental studies class and recruited him to serve as a guide at the facility. Like Barajas, the job opened his eyes to a new path.

James has since served as an environmental policy specialist for Pennsylvania state Rep. Donna Bullock and governmental affairs coordinator for the National Audubon Society. He currently works as government relations representative for The Wilderness Society, which seeks to protect wilderness acreage.

In 2019, James co-founded Amplify the Future, which provides college scholarships for Black and Latinx bird watchers from the continental U.S. and Puerto Rico.

“When we’re making decisions about the use of finite resources ... it requires a diversity of vision to answer these types of important questions,” James said. “The same folks from the same background, money, same racial make-up, same wealth background, I wouldn't be too surprised that they all think the same about how things work."

Are We Watching the End of Russia’s Space Ambitions?

Tony Ho Tran
Sat, August 26, 2023 

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty

FLAGS ARE NOT DAMAGED FLYING IN NO ATMOSPHERE

It was a tale of two space programs. On Sunday, Russia’s Luna-25 lander malfunctioned as it prepared to touch down on the moon’s south pole the following day—eventually crashing into the lunar surface. If it had landed, it would have been the country’s first return to the moon since 1976, when it was known as the Soviet Union. Instead, it ended up being another black eye for a beleaguered space program.

Then, a few days later, India’s Chandrayaan-3 lander successfully touched down on the moon’s south pole—making India the fourth country to land on the lunar surface after the Soviet Union, the U.S., and China. There, researchers hope to deploy a rover to search for and study ice and soil in the region—which many suspect holds valuable and vital resources for future lunar missions.

While it was a resoundingly successful mission, the Chandrayaan-3 lander underscored the relatively decline of Russia’s civilian space agency, Roscosmos. It’s seen its stature on the world stage take a beating in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine, and had already been suffering from a string of embarrassing news ranging from the bloviating smack talk of its former chief Dmitry Rogozin to the multiple life-threatening incidents it caused for astronauts on the International Space Station. The failure of Luna-25 calls into question the long term ambitions of Roscosmos—and whether or not we’re witnessing the death rattle of Russia’s space ambitions.

“The problems with Roscosmos existed certainly prior to the invasion of Ukraine,” John Logsdon, founder of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, told The Daily Beast. The issues that have plagued Russia’s space program, he said, mirror the very issues that have mired the country for decades including a downright Kafkaesque bureaucracy and financial malfeasance.

Russia’s First Moon Landing in Decades Ends in Failure After Crash

“They have not had adequate funding or adequate priority—but they have had a lot of corruption,” Logsdon explained.

Indeed, lack of funding has significantly crippled the once-proud space program. In 2015, the Russian government slashed spending on Roscosmos by more than a third due to a financial crisis caused by western economic sanctions in response to its 2014 invasion of Ukraine. This greatly delayed the agency’s plans to create its own space station by 2023—which has clearly not happened and hasn’t gained much development since its announcement.

In 2018, Roscosmos faced budget cuts yet again to the tune of roughly $2.4 billion. The cuts caused further delays to its spacefaring ambitions along with the construction of its spaceports. This is despite Russian president Vladimir Putin saying that same year: “It is necessary to drastically improve the quality and reliability of space and launch vehicles […] to preserve Russia’s increasingly threatened leadership in space.”

More recently, in 2021, Putin announced yet another cut in funding for the following three years to Roscosmos due to a financial crisis caused by western economic sanctions in response to its invasion of Ukraine (stop us if you’ve heard this one before). Also in the backdrop of all this was the space agency’s announcement that it had lost an eye-watering $262.4 million in revenue in 2020 due to a variety of issues stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Despite this, Putin still expressed his wishes that Roscosmos return the country’s space ambitions to its former dominance—expressing concern that it would be rapidly outstripped by western competition from the likes of SpaceX. However, much of this can likely be attributed to Putin’s wish that the country dominate space for geopolitical purposes rather than scientific ones.

America Is Risking Total Chaos in a Space War With China and Russia

Logsdon explained that this can be seen through Moscow’s focus on the Russian Space Forces, their answer to the U.S. Space Force. Not only has this branch received the majority of the focus when it comes to Russia’s space ambitions, but it also controls the necessary resources for space exploration.

“The Russian equivalent of the Space Force in the military has gotten priority funding over the last 10 years or so,” he said. “They’ve developed a wide range of military capabilities that are viewed by the U.S. as rather threatening.”

Logsdon added: “The military controls all the launch vehicles.” This means that Roscosmos lacks independence and autonomy to conduct missions when compared to the likes of NASA.

There’s also the rampant corruption that has occurred throughout Roscosmos—exacerbated by its former head Rogozin. While he has since left the role following the Ukraine invasion, many space experts blame Rogozin for the current state of the agency.

Russia Might Just Plunge the World Into a Dark Era for Space

Under his wing, Roscosmos had a series of failed and embarrassing launches and suffered from widespread corruption. Funds meant for the construction of the Vostochny cosmodrome in eastern Russia—the same space port from which the ill-fated Luna-25 was launched—were embezzled, resulting in prison terms for four former construction company executives in 2021.

That brings us to today, where Roscosmos’ latest space-faring plan came crashing down to the lunar surface. This failure represents a massive setback for the agency’s hopes to establish a foothold on the moon, which has become a shining prize for the world’s spacefaring nations.

This is due to the fact that the moon—and, in particular, its south pole—is thought to abound in resources and materials that future lunar colonies can rely on, like water and minerals. It’s why China and India have recently sent rovers to the moon. It’s also why the U.S. and NASA have poured billions of dollars into the Artemis program to return American astronauts to the moon and establish a permanent base.

“There’s pretty firm speculation that there are resources in the craters of the [lunar] south pole that have technical and economic values in addition to scientific interest,” Logsdon said. “There is a ‘race’ to be the first to the south pole region.”

Whoever Controls the Moon Controls the Solar System

However, with Roscosmos now performing with seemingly both hands tied behind its back, it’s now well behind the competition, whatever Putin might say. The Russian space industry is not nearly as advanced or well-funded as it is in the West, which boasts such private-sector heavy hitters as SpaceX and Blue Origin.

Logsdon cautioned that this doesn’t mean that Roscosmos should be written off quite yet. “It depends on how the Russian leadership reacts to this failure,” he said. “They could say—as the U.S. has after shuttle failures, or the Apollo 1 fire, or some of our Mars failures—that it’s not acceptable and we gotta get back to where we want to be. Or they could say, ‘Let’s not throw good money after bad,’ and de-emphasize the civilian program.”

For now, though, things look bleak for Roscosmos. The storied Soviet-Russian space program once projected near-total dominance when it came to space. It produced heroes like Yuri Gagarin, and groundbreaking events like the first satellite into orbit and interplanetary probes to Venus and Mars.

Now, despite its sky-high ambition, it’s a shadow of its former self—the victim of its own corruption, incompetence, and greed.

 The Daily Beast.

Put ‘pest’ animal species on the pill, don’t cull them, says scientist


Robin McKie
Sun, 27 August 2023 

Photograph: Scott-Cartwright-Photography/Getty Images

Conflicts between humans and wildlife are triggering growing numbers of disease outbreaks, road accidents and crop damage. And the problem is likely to get worse unless new, humane measures to curtail animal numbers are developed in the near future, say scientists.

It is a critical environmental issue that will be debated this week at a major conference in Italy where experts will discuss how best to limit numbers of grey squirrels, wild boar, deer, feral goats, pigeons, parakeets and other creatures that are causing widespread ecological damage in many countries.

A key approach to be highlighted at the meeting will be the need to develop contraceptives for animals. These would provide conservationists and farmers with a means to curtail animal numbers in a humane way, say researchers.


Wild boar provide an illustration of the issues involved. Their numbers are rising across Europe, and UK breeding populations have been established in areas such as the Forest of Dean. With their large snouts and muscular necks, boar are good at rooting up fungi and seeds and can destroy crops, vulnerable habitats, ground-nesting animals and fragile root systems. Wild boar have also been linked to the spread of African swine fever to domestic pigs.

“Controlling numbers of animals like wild boar used to be achieved by shooting them, but hunting is not as popular as it used to be and is also more expensive, requiring expensive licences,” said Dr Giovanna Massei, Europe director of the Botstiber Institute for Wildlife Fertility Control at York University.

She added: “Numbers of individuals who hunt animals are declining in many parts of Europe. As a result, controls of boar populations have weakened.”

One solution is to develop boar contraceptives. “Preventing these animals from breeding is a humane way to limit numbers,” added Massei, who will be speaking at the European vertebrate pest management conference in Florence.

In the US and Europe, scientists have launched projects aimed at developing contraceptive chemicals that could be mixed with food and would drastically limit boar fertility. “It is not easy to develop contraceptives but the good news is that once we get one, we have a way to deliver it,” said Messai.

The delivery method is known as the Boar-Operated System and it uses metal cones placed over dishes of food that only wild pigs can lift with their snouts. Other animals cannot access the plates. “That means we can get contraceptives into boar and only boar,” said Massei.

A similar approach has already been implemented to tackle grey squirrels. After the rodent was introduced to the UK from the US in the 19th century, its numbers have reached 2.7 million and it threatens to replace native red squirrels. Grey quirrels also cause considerable damage to UK woodlands by stripping bark from trees.

Massei and other scientists are now carrying out research on an oral contraceptive in the form of a vaccine that prompts the squirrel’s immune system to reduce the production of sex hormones, leaving both males and females infertile.

Mixed with hazelnut spread – a top squirrel treat – the drug is placed in pots in feeding boxes that only they can access. The environment minister, Richard Benyon, recently argued that the project could help eradicate the grey squirrel in the UK – without killing them.

Deer cause widespread crop destruction and are involved in road accidents that injure an estimated 700 people each year. Photograph: Z Fiedler/Alamy

Other contraceptive targets include deer. Apart from the widespread crop and woodland destruction they cause, deer are involved in car accidents that injure an estimated 700 people a year: some due to collisions with vehicles, others because drivers swerved to avoid hitting the animals.

Deer vaccines have been developed but problems remain about delivering them to their targets.

The development of animal oral contraceptives will not be sufficient on their own to remove the problems posed by wildlife and human conflicts, admitted Massei: “However, they will certainly be an important asset in dealing with the problem. The crucial point is that we have too many people and too many animals, and that is causing conflict.

“We need to control numbers in ways that are publicly supported, and that means relying on non-lethal methods which are popular with the public.”

Russian teen eco-activists fight for future as risks mount


Romain COLAS
Sun, 27 August 2023 

Alexei Zetkin testing water released by a paper factory on the bank of the Sura river in Penza (Olesya KURPYAYEVA)

Egor Chastukhin, an 18-year-old environmental activist, holds a flask to a drain spurting out warm, putrid water near the historic city of Penza in western Russia.

"It smells like herbal tea," he jokes after taking a waft of the sample while Sonia, his wife, jots down notes.

She records the odour and its yellowish colour as two other teenage activists, Alexei Zetkin and Yakov Demidov, look on.

The water's source is a nearby paper factory previously fined for pollution. Its destination is a tributary of the Sura river, around 600 kilometres (372 miles) from Russia's capital Moscow.

The group carries out a spot test on the liquid, which shows excess levels of chlorine, iron and organic matter.

"People who drink this water, fish in it and bathe in it need to understand the danger," Egor told AFP.

The chances of that happening are slim.

Environmental groups in Russia not linked to the government -- those like Egor's -- have long faced pressure from authorities.

And since an unprecedented crackdown on dissent launched after Russia's full-scale military intervention in Ukraine, their future is in doubt.

Russia has outlawed the work of Greenpeace and the World Wide Fund for Nature, branding them and dozens of other Western-linked groups "undesirable".

The exiled coordinator of the climate action nonprofit Bellona, Ksenia Vakhrusheva, told AFP there were no longer any Russian environmental organisations powerful enough to bring about "systemic change".

- 'Threat to the state' -

What remains of ecological advocacy in Russia rests on the shoulders of under-resourced activists like Egor, who are still trying to raise awareness in spite of the risks.

"What we're doing is legal and harmless. But tomorrow they could link it to extremism or terrorism. The slightest transmission of information could become an alleged threat to the state," Egor says.

Suddenly, a press officer and factory employee holding a camera arrive on the scene, with the rag-tag group taking off after a security guard appears -- a move that is sometimes followed by a police visit.

Several metres away, men under some trees continue to fish the polluted water.

The group regularly inspects rivers and dumps. Together with a more experienced activist with a legal background, they report violations to local prosecutors or the environmental protection agency.

Sometimes with surprising success.

In November 2021, Egor and his friend Alexei, then high school students, tested the water discharged by the paper factory.

- 'Small victories' -

Alexei sent the results to the authorities, who fined the factory manager about $5,000 after confirming the violations.

The factory is run by a local politician from the Kremlin-loyal United Russia party, and says it has since invested in modernising its equipment.

Following the probe, Alexei, then a member of a pro-government environmental group, was accused of carrying out the inspection without the approval of his superiors and kicked out.

In February last year, he set up Eko-Start, and he and Egor campaign together.

After the factory, activists and AFP journalists visited a landfill outside Penza, a jumble of rotting vegetables, batteries and medical waste emitting toxic fumes.

"The owners of the dump are high-ups in the region. They save money by not sorting the waste and not respecting the rules on storage," Alexei said.

Alexei met Egor in the Komsomol, the youth wing of the Russian Communist Party, which, though subservient to the Kremlin at the national level, sometimes represents opposition locally.

Both have since left the group.

Egor describes himself as a "Trotskyite-internationalist", saying he is against "Stalinists" and political repression.

While many young Russians are apolitical or support President Vladimir Putin, Alexei thinks the conflict in Ukraine has politicised many, and pushed some to take a stand in opposing -- or supporting -- the government.

"If you don't do politics today, politics will come for you tomorrow," he says.

bur/cw

ANALYSIS - Does Brics expansion mean a new global order?

Namita Singh
Sun, 27 August 2023 

When British economist Jim O’Neill coined the “Bric” acronym about two decades ago to denote Brazil, Russia, India and China, he was writing about investment opportunities in nations set to become the world’s top emerging economies.

Then a Goldman Sachs banker, he did not think that the four countries will borrow his idea to form a transnational bloc eight years later in 2009.

Now, the five-member group of developing nations has agreed to expand the alliance further to include Argentina, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and United Arab Emirates in a bid to provide a counterweight to the dominance of Western alliances in global affairs.

"This membership expansion is historic," Chinese president Xi Jinping, the bloc’s most stalwart proponent of the enlargement, said. "It shows the determination of Brics countries for unity and cooperation with the broader developing countries."

The six new candidates will formally become members on 1 January 2024, South African president Cyril Ramaphosa said when he named the countries during a three-day leaders’ summit he is hosting in Johannesburg.

"Brics has embarked on a new chapter in its effort to build a world that is fair, a world that is just, a world that is also inclusive and prosperous," Ramaphosa said.

"We have consensus on the first phase of this expansion process and other phases will follow."

The expansion adds economic heft to Brics whose current members are China – the world’s second-largest economy – as well as Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa.

The move is also aimed at increasing Brics’s clout as a champion of so-called Global South nations, many of which feel unfairly treated by international institutions dominated by the United States and other wealthy Western nations, explains professor Swaran Singh, an international relations professor at India’s Jawaharlal Nehru University.

“Expansion of Brics or Brics were never meant for challenging any other system,” he says.

“They were supposed to create an alternative platform to provide some opportunity for least developed and developing countries to participate in international decision making, which automatically perhaps indirectly implies that there is some discomfort with the way international decision making has happened inside the post-second World War international organizations,” he tells The Independent.

“And therefore they were presenting an alternative to create space for these developing countries. And if it is expanding, that means that there is an increasing desire and demand in the world for a platform like this.”

President of China Xi Jinping, president of Brazil Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, South African president Cyril Ramaphosa and prime minister of India Narendra Modi gesture during the 2023 Brics Summit at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg on 24 August 2023 (AFP via Getty Images)

More than 40 countries expressed interest in joining Brics, with 22 formally asking, representing a disparate pool of potential candidates – from Iran to Argentina – motivated largely by a desire to level a global playing field many consider rigged against them.

United Nations secretary-general Antonio Guterres also attended Thursday’s expansion announcement, reflecting the bloc’s growing influence as he echoed its longstanding calls for reforms of the UN Security Council, International Monetary Fund, and World Bank.

"Today’s global governance structures reflect yesterday’s world," he said. "For multilateral institutions to remain truly universal, they must reform to reflect today’s power and economic realities."

And while the criteria for inclusion of new members remains unclear, those invited to join the bloc reflect individual Brics members’ desires to bring allies into the club.

Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva had vocally lobbied for neighbour Argentina’s inclusion while Egypt has close commercial ties with Russia and India. The entry of oil powers Saudi Arabia and UAE highlights their drifting away from the United States’s orbit and ambition to become global heavyweights in their own right.

Russia and Iran have found common cause in their shared struggle against US-led sanctions and diplomatic isolation. With their economic ties deepening in the wake of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin used his address to lambast the West, highlight the threat they posed to traditional values in developing nations, and signal the emergence of a multi-polar world.

South African president Cyril Ramaphosa and prime minister of India Narendra Modi shake hands during the 2023 Brics Summit at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg on 24 August 2023 (AFP via Getty Images)

"Make no mistake: this is not just about trade,” says Daniel Silke, director of the South Africa-based Political Futures consultancy. “This is about the fragmentation and political polarisation we are seeing in the world," he notes, adding that China had cited threats of a new Cold War with Washington as a reason to expand.

"The world... has entered a new period of turbulence and transformation," Xi said on Wednesday. "We, the Brics countries, should always bear in mind our founding purpose of strengthening ourselves through unity."

But Singh argues that while the individual countries may have their own national agenda when they address the Brics, “when it comes to collective, the declaration and the tone is much generic”.

“It’s not appearing at all as anti-West. It seeks reforms in the IMF. That is a fair thing that they have been talking about democratizing International institutions.”

“But of course, Iran and Russia would be looking at Brics as their platform if they are getting isolated. This will be the collective which they will kind of depend on.

“So I can understand that Tehran and Moscow would have a very different take on how they see their participation in Brics.

“But overall, Brics is able to balance the tone and you have seen moderation in the final declaration which doesn’t kind of become jingoistic exactly the way Russia would like it to be or Iran would like it to be.

“And of course, Russia, China, India have always said we oppose unilateral sanctions on Iran. So in that sense, you can see the same tone in the final declaration.”

Though home to about 40 per cent of the world’s population and a quarter of global gross domestic product, internal divisions have long hobbled Brics ambitions of becoming a major player on the world stage.

Brics countries have economies that are vastly different in scale and governments with often divergent foreign policy goals. And as a result, the West does not really see Brics as a serious threat to western blocs.

It was evident in the statement by White House national security advisor Jake Sullivan last Tuesday who noted that Washington does not see them as "evolving into some kind of geo-political rival to the United States or anyone else" due to divergence on critical issues.

President of Brazil Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, president of China Xi Jinping, South African president Cyril Ramaphosa, prime minister of India Narendra Modi and Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov attend the 2023 Brics Summit at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg on 24 August 2023 (AFP via Getty Images)

The view is not unsubstantiated.

Its heavyweight members – China and India – are often at odds: New Delhi is more friendly to the West and has military deals with the United States, while it is in sometimes violent conflict with Beijing over their Himalayan border.

For Russian president Vladimir Putin the bloc is a forum to jab at the West that has sought to isolate Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine. But Lula used the summit to reiterate Brazil’s position of "defending sovereignty (and) territorial integrity" of countries, in an apparent swipe at Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

“I doubt that an expanded Brics can pose any real challenge to existing blocs - Brics has always been incoherent politically speaking – while the Russians and Chinese have had a clear anti-West agenda, India and the rest do not necessarily see the world this way,” says Jabin Thomas Jacob, an associate professor specialising in China’s domestic politics and foreign relations at New Delhi’s Shiv Nadar University.

“India has issues with Western economic domination but it is much closely aligned with the West on matters of international law and norms than it is with China or Russia.

“The Brics countries might look like they have taken a neutral stance on the Russian invasion but there are differences between them,” says Jabin. “Clearly, China is much more invested in a Russian victory while the others are much more concerned about a quick end to the conflict and disruption in the grain and energy markets.”

Additional reporting by agencies

Rishi Sunak to become first PM in a decade to skip UN world leader event

YOU HAVE TO BE A LEADER TO GO TO IT

Adam Robertson
Sun, 27 August 2023

Rishi Sunak will skip the UN General Assembly

RISHI Sunak is to become the first UK prime minister in a decade to skip the UN General Assembly, despite calls from non-governmental organisations for him to attend an event to achieve sustainable development.

Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden and Foreign Secretary James Cleverly (below) will lead the British delegation at the annual gathering of world leaders in New York in September, Downing Street said.

A No 10 spokesperson pointed to the Prime Minister’s busy schedule for the autumn, noting that he will meet counterparts at the G20 leaders’ summit in New Delhi on September 9 and 10 and the Cop28 UN climate summit in Dubai in November.

The National:

It is unusual for a modern British premier to miss the UN’s so-called high-level general debate.

Sunak’s predecessors, including short-lived former prime minister Liz Truss, made time to travel to New York to deliver speeches on the world stage.

The last no-show from a UK leader was David Cameron in 2013.

More than a hundred aid and development leaders wrote to Mr Sunak, calling on him to go to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) summit – the centrepiece of this year’s UN gathering.

The SDG summit is held once every four years and marks the halfway point to the 2030 deadline for achieving the global plan to improve the planet and the quality of human life.

In a letter on Friday, the NGO leaders urged the Prime Minister to “walk the talk and show leadership by turning these commitments into action” and “rebuild the UK’s reputation as a trusted partner to lower-income countries and global actors”.

Stephanie Draper, chief executive of Bond – the UK network for international development organisations, said Britain appeared to have “stepped back from leadership on globally agreed goals”.

“The upcoming UN SDG Summit is an opportunity for the Prime Minister to show leadership on the global stage and rebuild the UK’s reputation as a trusted partner to lower-income countries, and this requires being present as a starting point,” she said.

Labour shadow foreign secretary David Lammy said earlier this month that Sunak’s absence at the UN General Assembly “would mark a low ebb of the Conservatives’ isolationist foreign policy”.

Last year, the Prime Minister faced a backlash when he indicated he would miss Cop27 in Egypt and eventually decided to go after all.

A No10 spokesperson said: “The UK delegation at the UN General Assembly High Level Week will be led by the Deputy Prime Minister, accompanied by the Foreign Secretary and others.

“The Prime Minister is expected to hold discussions with a number of world leaders in the coming weeks, including at the G20 Summit in New Delhi and the Cop28 Summit in the UAE.

“He and other ministers will continue to use all their engagements with their international counterparts to drive forward the Government’s priorities, including on growing the economy, stopping illegal migration and supporting Ukraine.”

Russia uses social media channels to exploit Niger coup

Jason Burke Africa correspondent

THE GUARDIAN
Sun, 27 August 2023 


Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Social media channels associated with the Russian state have launched a major effort to exploit the military coup in Niger last month, seeking to reinforce Moscow’s influence in the strategic African country and possibly open opportunities for intervention.

Mohamed Bazoum, the pro-western elected president, was ousted by senior army officers on 26 July and is being held a prisoner in his official residence in Niamey. African leaders have threatened military action to oust the new regime but advocates of intervention have so far been unable to rally sufficient support.

Activity focusing on Niger on channels linked to the paramilitary Wagner Group declined sharply after the death of Yevgeney Prigozhin, Wagner’s leader, in an unexplained plane crash north of Moscow last week, expert analysis has revealed.

But pro-Russian Telegram channels more broadly have continued to discuss or push disinformation about Niger at generally the same levels as before Prigozhin’s death, according to research by Logically, a technology company tackling potentially harmful online content and disinformation based in the UK, India and US.

Prigozhin, who led a rebellion against Vladimir Putin in June, spearheaded a disinformation offensive in Africa that played a key role in the expansion of Russian influence in strategic areas such as the Sahel.

Content about Niger across 45 Russian Telegram channels either affiliated with the Russian state or Wagner increased 6,645% in the month following the coup, suggesting a keen interest in Moscow in exploiting the upheaval.

Logically detected only 11 pieces of content relating to Niger in the month before the coup, but 742 pieces of content since. The company identified a significant increase in the amount of content pushing anti-French narratives on these accounts, though it found that negative sentiments towards Paris in Niger, a former French colony, were already widespread before the coup.

The research will reinforce fears that Russia will seek to win influence, lucrative contracts and access to key resources in Niger following the overthrow of Bazoum.

The overthrow of a civilian government by soldiers in neighbouring Mali in 2021 marked a turning point in the battle for influence between Russia and western countries in the Sahel.

The new regime in Mali swiftly concluded a deal with the Wagner group leading to the withdrawal of western forces stationed there in what was seen as a major victory in Africa for Moscow.

Most observers were taken by surprise by the July coup as Niger was seen as relatively stable and with stronger democratic institutions than many of its neighbours. The country is also a key base for western forces and its army has been a partner for the US and other militaries in the unstable and troubled Sahel region.

There is no evidence of a concerted Russian effort to destabilise Bazoum’s government immediately before the coup, which analysts have attributed to internal power struggles.

However, Niger has been the focus of influence campaigns on social media before. In mid-February, social media was flooded by a wave of disinformation when Bazoum travelled to Paris for a meeting with President Macron of France.

One video that was circulated widely on TikTok and Facebook in February, falsely presented footage filmed during an attempted coup in March 2021 in Niamey as a fresh incident involving firing around the president’s residence.

Underneath were postings by contributors that fiercely criticised Bazoum and his support of France.

Other footage was deployed in in the same way to mislead viewers. Fake bulletins showed a French attack on a Nigerien military convoy and contained accusations that France’s forces were secretly working with Islamist extremists.

Similar examples found by Logically in recent weeks include a post from a Russian “fact-checking” Telegram channel with more than 600,000 subscribers that claimed that instability in Niger and other nations was being fomented by western powers as a consequence of their desire to join the BRICS group of developing world countries, which has been broadly supportive of Russia since the outbreak of war in Ukraine.

A second post from a Russian state-media outlet with more than 360,000 subscribers on Telegram amplified claims made by the Nigerien regime that two countries from the ECOWAS regional bloc of west African nations were close to launching a military intervention to restore Bazoum to power.

“Social media accounts quite quickly pivoted to Niger … [with] some serious issues with misattributed footage. There is a big audience for pro-Kremlin narratives that contradict western countries’ pro-Ukrainian narratives,” said Kyle Walter, the head of research at Logically.

Social media was blamed for fuelling mounting hostility towards France that led Paris to pull its troops out of Mali and the Central African Republic in 2022 and from Burkina Faso earlier this year.

The future of the Wagner group on the continent remains uncertain. The networks of companies set up by Prigozhin have been very successful in extracting gold, diamonds, valuable timber and much else from African countries as well as winning contracts as mercenaries in Central African Republic, Mozambique, Libya and elsewhere.

“It’s unclear whether there will be a wholesale takeover of Wagner by some part of the Russian state or if Moscow will try to use a constellation of other groups as it tries to maintain the influence it has won,” said Dino Mahtani, an independent analyst and veteran observer of African affairs.

“There has been a rise in pro-Russian sentiment in many of these countries that Moscow will want to reinforce.”

The continuing effort by accounts linked to the Russian state to exploit the upheaval suggests the Kremlin will seek to ensure continuity as it takes over the influence operations as well as networks and businesses run by Prigozhin.

Several Facebook pages that shared the fake news about recent turmoil in Niger have previously disseminated pro-Russian material or taken aim at the French presence in the Sahel.

One page amplified false reports on Facebook and Twitter in April 2022 that accused French troops of committing atrocities in central Mali and displayed supposed pictures of a mass grave dug up at Gossi, near a French military base that had just been handed back to the Malian army.

The French army revealed it had used a drone to film what appeared to Russian mercenaries burying corpses several days earlier.

The CAR also has hired Russian mercenaries, and there are concerns that Burkina Faso may now do the same.

In January, an animated video showing a Wagner operative helping west African countries fight off zombie French soldiers began circulating on social media and pro-Kremlin Telegram channels. According to the Atlantic council, a US based thinktank that tracks disinformation, the origin of the video has not been identified but it appears to have first been posted on Twitter on 14 January, then migrated to alternative video platforms before being shared elsewhere.

Anthony Blinken, the US secretary of state, last week told the BBC he did not think Russia or Wagner instigated Niger’s coup but “they tried to take advantage of it”.

Forty-eight hours before his death, Prigozhin posted his first video address since leading a short-lived rebellion in Russia in June, appearing in a clip – possibly shot in Mali – on Telegram channels affiliated with the Wagner group.

The warlord said the clip that Wagner was conducting reconnaissance and search operations and “making Russia even greater on all continents, and Africa even more free”.

‘The UK’s importing of food is a travesty’: farmer’s wife Helen Rebanks tells her own story

Toby Helm
Sun, 27 August 2023 

Photograph: Gary Calton/The Observer

“I live with my husband, James, and we have four children – Molly, Bea, Isaac and Tom. There are also six sheep dogs, two ponies, 20 chickens, 500 sheep and 50 cattle to care for. I am a farmer’s wife, and this is my story.”

So writes Helen Rebanks on the first page of her debut book, The Farmer’s Wife. It is about her life with husband James managing four young children and a lot more animals on a 700-acre farm in the Lake District. James has already made his name as a bestselling author of The Shepherd’s Life and English Pastoral about traditional farming in Cumbria

Now it is Helen’s turn. Behind her portrait of a hard, though in many ways idyllic, life Helen believes all is far from well for UK farmers. Interviewed before the book’s launch, Rebanks is scathing about how Brexit and its aftermath have destroyed farmers’ livelihoods, and in some cases their lives.

“Farming is going through a huge challenge with the government post-Brexit,” she says. “Since the 1950s farmers have been encouraged to produce, produce, produce and have been supported. But then came the catastrophe of foot and mouth disease and there was rebuilding for some: others went out of business. Farmers have relied on EU subsidies which, however imperfect, were at least a system – basic payment for the land you farmed. But that has been incrementally reduced year on year, so farmers’ income keeps coming further down.”

She is particularly critical of the government’s trade agreements with non-EU countries that were supposed to create a new “global Britain” in which farmers and everyone else running businesses would thrive after Brexit.

Instead they find imports are now undercutting homegrown produce. “The most recent is Mexico for eggs – from battery hens,” says Rebanks. “Our egg producers are going out of business because feed costs, heating, lighting, energy costs – everything to do with production – has gone up. There are fewer British eggs because supermarkets won’t pay the true cost of production. How are farmers supposed to make a living?”

Related: Farmer’s wife Helen Rebanks: ‘There was a fire in me about speaking up for the women who hold things together’

For some farmers, it has proved too much. “A lot of farmers are trapped in awful circumstances with not enough staff,” she says. “It is no surprise the suicide rate is at an all-time high. The government’s importing of food is a travesty. I don’t want to eat an apple that has been shipped in a cold store for months from New Zealand, or chicken in a supermarket sandwich that has possibly come from Thailand.”

• The Farmer’s Wife by Helen Rebanks will be published on 31 August by Faber (£20). 

Opinion

Don’t say the craic of doom has come for Ireland’s pubs

Alex Clark
Sun, 27 August 2023 

Photograph: Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters

A question for the times: is there anywhere in the world where you can’t get a pint of Guinness in a joint draped with green, white and orange tricolours and belting out the hits of Christy Moore? Such desolate places must exist but they appear to be vanishingly rare.

If the Irish pub is one of the country’s most successful exports, there’s worrying news about its fortunes at home. Since 2005, nearly 2,000 pubs have closed, and since 2019 – a period of lockdown and sharply rising costs – more than 450 have called time for good. Unsurprisingly, the perennially populous Dublin has been affected less than smaller towns and rural areas.

It is, of course, all relative. In the riverside town five miles from where I live, we look mournfully at the half-a-dozen shuttered bars that thrived in our drinking memory; but we still have our pick of at least half a dozen more. The town has just over 1,500 inhabitants.

We look mournfully at the half a dozen shuttered bars that thrived in our drinking memory

It was to one – a tiny space that still keeps room for a shop at the front, where you might buy a few rashers or some fly spray – that the congregation of the Cistercian abbey at the heart of the town repaired after a wedding a few days ago. We needed to get a shine on before the reception proper started, and where else would you do it?

The problem with writing about Irish pubs, especially if you’re a blow-in like me, is that everything sounds invented for comic effect. What can I say? It is true that I have a fond memory of hubris punished when, during a family session in a favourite local – one that also doubles as an undertaker – we decided to join the pub quiz. Metropolitan liberal elite humanities graduate that I am, I envisaged an easy victory. I had not reckoned on several questions involving the results of nearby lower-league hurling fixtures, concocted as the landlord flicked through the sports pages of the Carlow Nationalist, nor marks awarded to those who knew which graveyard was closer to the establishment (a wag: “By road, John, or as the crow flies?”). We thought to gain advantage when the price of the plots in said graveyards cropped up, my mother-in-law having memory of a recent purchase in our extended circle, but it was to no avail. I think we came last.

Nor have I embellished the occasion on which a particularly well-refreshed gent gathered me up for a dance and, hearing my English accent, cried: “Sure, never mind! Give us a kiss, the war is over!” I recall my waltzing partner later having his car keys gently confiscated and his good-natured son being called to fetch him.

Neither does the sight of two young fellas, clearly not on their first pint, watching agog as the pub TV showed the culmination of True Detective (“They’re shooting your man Farrell to bits! Jaysus!”) require further ornamentation.

One more: a quick stop-off on a trip to the west, on a hot and dusty afternoon in a one-horse town. An elderly gent sipping Guinness at the bar, dressed smartly in a beige suit. On his feet, socks and open-toed sandals; on his head a colourful sombrero. We did not ask.

Speaking of Colin Farrell, Irish pubs are not all exact replicas of the convivial, warm darkness that sustained the characters in The Banshees of Inisherin. But they are still the very best pubs you will ever find.

• Alex Clark is an Observer columnist