Free Republic

Russia won’t immediately resume exports of natural gas to Europe through its Nord Stream 1 pipeline, worsening a shortage that threatens to tip the continent into an energy crisis this winter. On Friday, Russian state energy giant Gazprom said it would not resume flows through the pipeline on Saturday as planned because it had detected an oil leak at its Portovaya compressor station. The pipeline has been shut since Wednesday for maintenance. It didn’t give a timeline of when exports might resume.

Russia has scrapped a Saturday deadline to resume flows via a major gas supply route to Germany, deepening Europe’s difficulties in securing winter fuel, after saying it had found faults in the Nord Stream 1 pipeline during maintenance.Nord Stream 1, which runs under the Baltic Sea, had been due to resume operating at 0100 GMT on Saturday after a three-day halt for maintenance....European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said earlier the EU should impose a price cap on Russian pipeline gas......Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Moscow would turn off supplies to Europe if Brussels imposed such a cap.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen declares an energy emergency. The crisis will not be contained to Europe. EC President Seeks 'Emergency Intervention' in Electricity Market Please note Ursula von der Leyen Calls for 'Emergency Intervention' in Electricity Market. "The skyrocketing electricity prices are now exposing, for different reasons, the limitations of our current electricity market design," the European Commission president said on Monday while addressing the Bled Strategic Forum in Slovenia. "[The market] was developed under completely different circumstances and for completely different purposes. It is no longer fit for purpose. "That is why we, the Commission, are...

NEW YORK (AP) — As winter nears, European nations, desperate to replace the natural gas they once bought from Russia, have embraced a short-term fix: A series of roughly 20 floating terminals that would receive liquefied natural gas from other countries and convert it into heating fuel. Yet the plan, with the first floating terminals set to deliver natural gas by year’s end, has raised alarms among scientists who fear the long-term consequences for the environment. Some scientists say they worry that the floating terminals will end up becoming a long-term supplier of Europe’s vast energy needs that could last...

China's economic slowdown has left it with a surplus of natural gas that it is re-selling to energy-strapped Europe, according to a report. Boosted by cargoes from China, Europe's imports of liquefied natural gas jumped 60% year-on-year in the first half of 2002, according to a Nikkei report citing data from research firm Kpler. China's economy has slowed sharply in 2022 as Beijing implemented a strict zero-COVID policy and as a crisis grips the country's highly indebted property sector. Economists think it is likely to fall well short of the government's aim of 5.5% growth. The economic slowdown has left...

The radar of a Greek S-300 missile system based on the island of Crete locked on to the Turkish jets on Tuesday, Anadolu reported on Sunday, citing defence ministry sources. The F-16s were at an altitude of 3,000 metres (10,000 feet) to the west of Greece’s Rhodes island when the Russian-made S-300’s target-tracking radar locked on, the report added. The Turkish planes completed their mission and returned to their bases “despite the hostile environment”. Radar lock-ons are considered an act of hostility under NATO rules of engagement. Greek defence ministry sources dismissed the allegations. Last week, Turkey summoned the Greek...

A PLO representative who wrote to Zehava Galon 'moved us all' - awarded a shield of honor to the mother of 6 terrorists, among them the participants in the lynching in Ramallah Ishay Fridman @IshayFridman: Aug 24, 2022 Mohammed Al Madani, the chairman of the interaction with the Israeli society, sent a congratulatory letter to the chairman of Meretz, Zehava Gal-On. Nice of him. The same Al Madani awarded a token of appreciation to "Umm Hamid" a symbol of the Palestinian mother. 6 of her children became serious terrorists. Murdered Israelis, suicide attacks, murdered Israeli soldiers, the lynching in Ramallah...

The leaders of Greece and Bulgaria on Friday marked the completion of a new pipeline that will supply natural gas from Azerbaijan to Bulgaria, whose vital supply of Russian gas was cut off in April amid the fallout over Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis stressed the importance of the new link as an alternative supply line for Bulgaria, as neighboring Greece jockeys to become a regional energy transport hub. Greece is also building a liquefied natural gas terminal off the northeastern port of Alexandroupolis, near Komotini, which Mitsotakis said would in the future provide additional gas...

On a cloudless afternoon last week, Dan Tronchetti stood amid a field of leafy soybeans and struck a scarecrow pose. The 66-year-old farmer was trying to ward off what he considered an invader. While his wife, Susan, fixed her camera on him, Tronchetti, wearing a gray Carhartt T-shirt and a red mesh-back hat, held his arms out straight to either side to indicate where a developer wanted to route a pipeline through the 1,500 acres that his family farms in northwest Iowa. He hoped that illustrating just how close to his home the pipeline would run might catch a reporter’s...

Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin’s agreement late last month to back the disingenuously named Inflation Reduction Act came as a shock to Republicans and likely to members of his own party as well. Up until then, the West Virginia senator had been the one vote standing between the Democrats’ passage of needless and expensive climate change legislation and fiscal sanity. In order to secure Manchin’s vote, President Joe Biden and Democratic leaders promised to facilitate the approval of a gas pipeline in West Virginia. This would require passage of legislation that would “overhaul the permitting process for energy infrastructure,” according to...

The Iberian Peninsula holds around 30% of total Europe’s LNG processing capacity and yet it is not well connected to the rest of Europe. A plan to build a pipeline from Spain to France in order to get this natural gas across Europe was canceled in 2019 due to economic and environmental reasons….

Russian oil has stopped flowing through a pipeline that feeds countries in Central and Eastern Europe, dealing another blow to a region contending with the loss of vital energy supplies from Russia. Transneft PJSC, the government-owned oil-pipeline operator, said Tuesday that crude exports through Ukrainian territory had halted on Aug. 4. It blamed payment difficulties caused by Western sanctions on Moscow and said Ukraine’s pipeline operator had declined to carry crude after it didn’t receive funds. A spokeswoman for Naftogaz NJSC, Ukraine’s state energy firm and the parent company of pipeline operator Ukrtransnafta, said it would issue a statement later...

AFTER 40 years of hesitation and seven hard years of reform and lobbying, Turkey is basking today in the most qualified of invitations to begin the process of joining Europe - a continent whose eastern half the Ottoman empire controlled for centuries. A European Commission report released yesterday, which paves the way for a deciding vote by the 25-member European Union at its December summit, was heavily qualified, and Turkish leaders were muted in their expressions of delight at their initial success. Presenting the decision to the European parliament last night, commission president Romano Prodi said it was a "qualified...

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) has been in politics since 1982, so he knows a thing or two about wheeling and dealing. Manchin was sitting pretty, holding the fate of the entire Democratic Party in the palm of his hand because it was his vote that was absolutely necessary to keep Joe Biden’s agenda alive. When Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer doggedly pursued Manchin’s vote for the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act,” he didn’t arrive at the negotiations empty-handed. Schumer came to the table bearing gifts — the kind of gifts that a politician like Manchin couldn’t refuse. Schumer and Manchin crafted...

A former National Security Agency contractor jailed for leaking a document about Russian hacking in the 2016 election has spoken out about her experiences, insisting that she is "not a traitor." Reality Winner, now 30, was arrested in 2017 and admitted to taking classified intelligence documents that same year. She was accused of mailing top-secret NSA information to the media outlet The Intercept. The classified document detailed Russian government efforts to hack a Florida-based US voting software supplier. In 2018, Winner was sentenced to more than five years in prison. She was released in June 2021 for good behavior. Speaking...

Rep. Ted Budd (R-NC) is seeking to codify a Trump-era rule that limits states throwing up regulatory roadblocks to pipeline construction, Breitbart News learned exclusively on Wednesday.The congressman and Trump-endorsed U.S. Senate candidate is set to introduce a bill on Thursday which would cement the 2020 Clean Water Act Section 401 Certification Rule. The rule was created to limit states’ review power after Republicans in Congress reported that some states were using the permitting process detailed in Section 401 of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act to stop new energy projects.The bill is the House companion to Sen. Shelley Moore...

https://m.news1.co.il/Archive/0026-D-155442-00.html Hamas concerned about the relations between Turkey and Israel Yoni, Ben-Menachem, 11/07/2022 Hamas is trying to damage the good relations between the Israeli Mossad and the Turkish intelligence through a fabricated investigation at the Al-Jazeera Channel... An attempt to discredit the activity of the institution in Turkey At Hamas they understand that the Israeli Mossad has excellent intelligence capabilities and that it also provided the Turkish intelligence evidence that Hamas extension is engaged in terrorism and also in undermining the Palestinian Authority. Therefore, Hamas leadership is now trying to bring a wedge between the Israeli institution and the Turkish...

Although Russia has reportedly invested $55 billion into its pipeline deal with China, natural gas imports through the pipeline have only totaled $3.81 billion since December 2019, according to China customs data as of June, accessed through Wind Information. The pace of Chinese purchases picked up in the first half of this year — nearly tripling from a year ago to $1.66 billion, the data showed.

An illegal “vodka pipeline” has been discovered by a group of patrolling Ukrainian border officials near the southeastern city of Podilsk. According to the Ukrainian government, the pipeline was used to transport bootleg alcohol from Ukraine into Moldova. “Three hundred meters of polyethlene pipe stretched from the state border underground in the direction of the private home of a 32-year-old citizen of Ukraine,” the Ukrainian government said in a statement. ***** The recently discovered vodka highway is part of a network of pipelines built under the former Soviet Union that was built to transport cheap Russian vodka out of the...

BERLIN — Natural gas started flowing through a major pipeline from Russia to Europe on Thursday after a 10-day shutdown for maintenance, the operator said. But the gas flow was expected to fall well short of full capacity. The Nord Stream 1 pipeline to Germany had been closed since July 11 for annual maintenance work. Amid growing tensions over Russia’s war in Ukraine, German officials had feared that the pipeline — the country’s main source of Russian gas, which has accounted for around a third of Germany’s gas supplies — might not reopen at all. Operator Nord Stream AG said...