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On Monday, Europe’s natural gas prices fell to the lowest level in three months thanks to mild weather and a high level of LNG imports... hitting an intra-day low of $140 per megawatt-hour (down from $350 on August 26th, the lowest since July 1st). Gas storage in the EU is now at more than 90% and the bloc has managed to reduce its gas consumption by 10%.

A newly launched Ukrainian hotline offering Russian soldiers a chance to surrender — and stay alive — has been fielding thousands of calls from desperate draftees, according to Ukrainian officials. Andriy Yusov, a representative of Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense, said in a recent interview with Voice of America that thousands of enemy troops have reached out to the “I Want to Live” program via phone or online chat to give up their arms. Yusov said the hotline has been receiving offers of surrender at a rate of hundreds a day from soldiers already fighting in...

Sir Isaac Newton vs. the EC There are plenty of formal peer-reviewed industry papers and articles published in specialized international oil & gas journals regarding theoretical “huge volumes” of supposed European nat-gas “reserves”. Supposedly, such reserves would “solve” the absolutely unnecessary self-inflicted European nat-gas crisis. Furthermore, there are lots of curious back-of-the-envelope ´calculations´ plus added blah blah blah with the very same prognosis in mind. And even some European Commission members are on record describing a highly optimistic outlook on how long ( months ! ) would Europe´s natural gas reserves ´easily´ last after Russia stops delivering its traditional and...

The first statement made by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in her annual State of the European Union address on Wednesday was not verbal, but visual. Clad in bright blue and yellow alongside other senior politicians, she showed support for Ukraine's battle with Russia, making clear even before the speech began that the war would top the agenda. With Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska in Strasbourg for the occasion, von der Leyen pledged Europe's "unshakeable" commitment to Kyiv, sending a defiant message to Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. "Putin will fail and Europe will prevail," the chief...

European natural gas inventories rose by +76 BCF over past 7 days. EU nat gas storage 85% full. Current inventories at 3243 BCF. 20.9% higher than 1 year ago. EU goal is at least 80% full by Nov 1st for winter. Current projection is for EU to reach 92% by Nov 1st.

European countries can withstand Russia’s gas cuts this winter as supply headaches may have been “successfully solved”, according to analysis by a leading US bank. Goldman Sachs said the price of gas was likely to more than halve this winter as efforts by EU countries’ to avoid big shortages this winter prove effective.

Ukrainian officials, defending their country against Russian aggressors, began doing something in July that seemed odd, even counterintuitive: They started speaking loudly and regularly about their plans to liberate Kherson—a key southern city that Russia seized only a week after invading Ukraine on February 24. Indeed, the Ukrainians telegraphed their intentions in a way that the Russians could not mistake. This was like waving a red cape at an angry, incompetent bull. Almost immediately, rumors proliferated that the Russians were racing reinforcements to Kherson to prepare for the Ukrainian attack. Goading the Russians into doing so seems to have been...

European natural gas inventories rose by +99 BCF over past 7 days. EU nat gas storage 78% full. Current inventories at 2997 BCF. 21.9% higher than 1 year ago. EU goal is at least 80% full by Nov 1st for winter. Current projection is for EU to reach 92% by Nov 1st.

Six months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, signs are accumulating that the balance on the military and economic battlefields is slowly tilting the way of Kyiv and its Western backers. ... Some results of the war already seem settled. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attempt to rewrite the ending of the Cold War by restoring Moscow’s historic sphere of influence in Eastern Europe has failed. His war on Ukraine has instead united almost all of Europe against him, revivifying the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which is poised to add Sweden and Finland as new members.

This list only includes destroyed vehicles and equipment of which photo or videographic evidence is available. Therefore, the amount of equipment destroyed is significantly higher than recorded here. Small arms, ATGMs, MANPADS, loitering munitions, drones used as unmanned bait, civilian vehicles, trailers and derelict equipment are not included in this list. All possible effort has gone into avoiding duplicate entries and discerning the status of equipment between captured or abandoned. Many of the entries listed as 'abandoned' will likely end up captured or destroyed. Similarly, some of the captured equipment might be destroyed if it can't be recovered. When the...

Today I am risking being too glib, but my excuse is aspiring to meet the Einstein standard, “Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.” It’s not hard to see that as rough as economic conditions are now, they are set to get worse. And it’s not hard to see that despite the considerable blowback from the sanctions against Russia, the West is not going to relent. Here’s a simple baseline forecast. Russia wins in Ukraine. The West may try to define it somehow as not a victory, but it’s hard to see how Russia does not take the...

The Germans aren’t laughing now. In fact, gas prices are so high in Germany today that wood-burning stoves and firewood have become scarce nationwide. German citizens are loading up on wood to heat their homes next year — just like they did in the Middle Ages.

Some landlords in Germany are rationing hot water and will turn down the heating as Europe's largest economy battles soaring energy costs due to reduced supplies of Russian natural gas. German real estate company, Vonovia, said it would lower tenants' heating during the night to cut costs. In a statement sent to Insider, the company said the move was designed to "save as much gas as possible," adding that reducing temperatures between 11pm and 6am would reduce heating costs by about 8%. Some tenants in Dippoldiswalde, Saxony, will only be able to take a hot shower between 4am and 8am,...

Russia’s announcement that it would reduce natural gas flows through a key European pipeline by roughly 40% appears to be a political move rather than a result of technical problems, Germany’s vice chancellor said Wednesday. Russia’s state-controlled energy giant Gazprom also told Italian gas giant Eni that it would reduce gas through a different pipeline by roughly 15% on Wednesday. The reason for the reduction has not been made clear, and the Italian company said it was monitoring the situation. The reduced flows follow Russia’s halt of natural gas supplies to Bulgaria, Poland, Finland, Netherlands, Denmark as Europe works to...

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov's visit to Serbia has been cancelled after countries around Serbia closed their airspace to his aircraft, a senior foreign ministry source told the Interfax news agency on Sunday. The source confirmed a Serbian media report that said Bulgaria, North Macedonia and Montenegro had closed their airspace to the plane that would have carried Moscow's top diplomat to Belgrade on Monday. "Our diplomacy has yet to master teleportation," the source said.

Lyra makes a compelling case that European nations will collapse without food, oil, gas, and raw materials from Russia, while Russia is so close to self-sufficient that it can survive without anything from anybody. If he is right, then Germany, France, the UK, and others are basically committing suicide by toeing the deep-state line on Ukraine.

In a speech to mark the 77th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, German Chancellor Scholz said that by likening the conflict in Ukraine to the fight against Nazi Germany, Russian President Putin was falsifying of history.

The EU faces difficult questions that need to be debated now rather than later. Europe needs a strong deterrent against Moscow, and that will only be possible if France and Germany team up to advance the debate. In the end, the meeting at the United States airbase in Ramstein, Germany, resembled a ribbon ceremony with praise awarded to the most diligent. Germany is a great friend that is doing everything it can to support Ukraine, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said. It was not only thanks for the Germans’ proposal to send tanks to Ukraine, but also the polite...

Poland has been preparing to give up Russian gas fuel for a long time, so Gazprom's decision to turn off the tap did not surprise her. Rather, the inevitable has accelerated. Poland's energy security should not be jeopardized, but the gas turmoil may again have an impact on Poles' bills in a few months. The former president of PGNiG draws attention to one important element of the entire gas puzzle. On Wednesday at 8.00, Gazprom will officially suspend gas supplies to Poland under the Yamal contract . The day before, journalists reported that gas fuel transmission from the east fell...

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said one of the main reasons he expanded the city's vaccine mandate to include children aged 5-11 is because he wanted to "give parents a sense of urgency" amid the spread of Omicron variant. "For the older kids—12 and up—it's over 80 percent now, vaccinated. So I think we're going to get there with the younger kids, but I'm trying to give parents a sense of urgency," De Blasio told CNN's New Day on Tuesday. "We're dealing with a new reality—this is not the fall. This is the winter We see COVID go...