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TOPIC: natural gas

In The News

EU Leaders In Kyiv, Israeli Gas Deal, Tesla Warning

👋 Ello-hay!*

Welcome to Thursday, where France’s Macron, Germany’s Scholz and Italy’s Draghi all arrive in Kyiv, the EU secures a deal to wean itself off Russian gas, there’s sign of LGBTQ+ progress in Thailand and data warns about Tesla driver-assisted cars crashing. Meanwhile, for Ukraine media Livy Bereg, Oleksandr Detsyk analyzes the tricky art of hitting Russia with the right sanctions so as not to trigger a global economic crisis.

[*Pig Latin]

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Russia’s Deescalation Pledge Raises Int’l Eyebrows

👋 Dydh da!*

Welcome to Wednesday, where Western leaders share their skepticism after Moscow promises to scale back its offensive in Ukraine, Israel is rocked by a third terror attack in eight days, and Pluto may host ice volcanoes (and a hidden ocean). Meanwhile, Persian-language media Kayhan-London looks at Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guards and the role they may play in helping revive the country’s nuclear deal.

[*Cornish, UK]

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How Will Gulf Crisis Play Out? Watch Asia's Energy Markets

Forget the Strait of Hormuz.

The real place to watch the simmering diplomatic battle between Saudi Arabia and Qatar is 5,500 kilometers to the southeast, in the Strait of Malacca between Malaysia and Indonesia. That's because the petroleum market's center of gravity, along with that of the global economy, is in Asia these days. As recently as the 2003 Iraq War, the U.S. and Europe accounted for more than half of the world's oil imports. The share has now fallen to barely more than one-third, as imports by the north Atlantic countries have stood still while those by China, India, South Korea and the Philippines have surged.

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Will Macedonia Scuttle Gazprom's New Mega Pipeline?

SKOPJE — Macedonia's prime minister announced last week that his country would participate in Gazprom's "Turkish Stream" pipeline, which is meant to allow gas deliveries from Russia to Europe to bypass Ukraine, under one condition: that the European Union sign off on the project.

Opposition groups in Macedonia have been lobbying for Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski to resign. Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has declared that the opposition protests are being organized by foreign forces, who are angry that the prime minister didn't join the rest of Europe in instituting sanctions against Russia.

In an interview with a local newspaper, Gruevski tried to distance himself from pro-Russian positions. When asked about people who came to his demonstration wearing T-shirts with Putin's photo on them, he responded that there were 100,000 people at the demonstration, and perhaps three or four were showing off pro-Russian paraphernalia.

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Peru
Michael Bauchmüller

Fossil Fuels Must Go The Way Of The Dinosaurs, Now

As the 20th UN Climate Summit begins in Peru, one faster way to fight global warming is to steer investors away from oil and gas, and bet instead in clean energy. The planet depends on it.

-Commentary-

BERLIN — The oil industry doesn't get reflective about much, but it does about low oil prices. For whatever reason, the price has fallen so low that investors are now thinking long and hard. Should they go in for expensive deep-sea oil production? Exploit the Arctic? Put more money in tar sands and fracking? Each one of these extraction methods is ecologically crazy and devastating for the environment — but as a general rule those are not concerns that worry investors. Their world turns around prices and returns. The driving force is survival. As soon as oil prices rise, they'll be drilling again, and it doesn't matter how or where: The industry must go on.

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Mozambique
Sébastien Hervieu

Pemba Postcard: How A Natural Gas Boom Is Changing Mozambique

The once sleepy coastal city is now buzzing with activity, and foreign investors.

PEMBA — There used to be so few cars here that locals knew exactly who each one belonged to. That was "before they discovered gas," recalls one resident in Pemba, a coastal city in northern Mozambique.

Now the place is crawling with cars. There are maybe 2,000 in circulation. Chinese-manufactured mopeds have begun to appear as well in Pempa's increasingly asphalted streets.

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Future
Audrey Garric

Biofuel On The Fire? New Study Says Renewable Energy Causes Pollution

PARIS - It is a new stain on the already tarnished reputation of biofuels. After being accused of aggravating food insecurity and driving up food prices, accelerating tropical deforestation and even increasing greenhouse gas emissions, crop-based biofuels are now being accused of worsening air pollution and creating health problems.

The European Union’s target of 10% renewable energy in the transport sector by 2020 in order to reduce the effects of climate change, could in fact be aggravating ozone pollution and causing nearly 1,400 premature deaths every year, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

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