Russia´s Gazprom tries to belittle the US shale gas revolution

Educational video for Gazprom executives

As we all know, the shale gas revolution has been - and will continue to be a gamechanger in US and global energy markets. As T. Boone Pickens, the Texas oil magnate, so rightly has stated, abundant gas reserves in the United States make the country the "Saudi Arabia of natural gas."

This is of course extremely difficult for Vladimir Putin and his energy outlet Gazprom to swallow. That´s why they are peddling cheap anti-shale propaganda, now apparently also with the assistance of a company that is desperately trying to advocate Russian gas exports to the US (a ridiculous undertaking in a country that has more than enough of gas of its own!):

Long-term prospects for the shale natural gas sector in the United States aren't very encouraging, Russian natural gas company Gazprom said.

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Sergei Komlev, who represents Gazprom's exporting division, said optimism over U.S. natural gas may be overblown.

"We forecast that soon, the disparity between the shale gas costs and sales price will disappear," he told the Platts news service. "When it happens, it will make the U.S. plans to become a major gas exporter economically unviable."

Gazprom worked on its analysis of the U.S. natural gas sector with Pace Global Energy, whose mission, disclosure forms state, is to advocate for Russian gas exports to the United States.

Read the entire article here

Here is a free piece of advice to comrade Komlev and his bosses in Moscow: Watch the video above before you make your next statement concerning US shale gas. It is in English, but the message should be easy enough even for you to understand.

Cameron´s energy transition policy even worse than the German one?

There are many cases of governments and parliaments agreeing on something they have no idea about. This appears to be the case when the UK parliament - apparently soon - is going to agree on the British version of Germany´s "Energiewende": 

One could easily overlook it, amidst all the talk about the German "Energiewende", but the UK too has announced a very ambitious "decarbonisation" plan. Indeed, the UK government's draft Energy Bill, introduced in May, has broad political support and is expected to pass into law in the second half of this year.

Energy analyst Jonathan Lane, writing in the European Energy Review, appears to understand the problems with the legislation, but he thinks that there is no choice because of the Cameron governments "decarbonisation agenda": 

Some of the key provisions of the UK government's draft energy bill, released in May 2012, have come under sharp criticism. This applies in particular to the new scheme aimed at supporting investment in low-carbon generation (nuclear power and renewable energy), which will give producers government-guaranteed prices for their output. Yet, according to independent energy analyst Jonathan Lane, the government has little choice but to go ahead with its plan if it is to deliver on its decarbonisation agenda. The main problem will be in getting the details right once the bill is passed in the second half of 2012.

There is an excellent comment on the Lane article, which I think pretty well sums up what the British "Energiewende" is all about:

"The main policy goals of the EMR are to help the UK reach its 80% decarbonisation target by 2050 ambitions and to ensure that 15% of its electricity is generated from renewable sources by 2020." 

What a farce this whole thing is. MP's have absolutely no idea about that on which they are voting. There is no chance of achieving these crazy, nonsensical targets and absolutely no reason for even attempting to do so.

The "Carbon Scam" is daily shown to be just that, as more evidence emerges that the computer models are wrong and CO2 is not cooking the planet, nor will it ever do so. A cap on emissions is simply to freeze out coal, whilst the Chinese are using it with gay abandon.

The imposition of a floor price on CO2, for that is what it is, not "carbon", is simply to gurantee profits for the vested interests that are running UK policy.

When the chairman of the Climate Change Committee, John Gummer, is also chairman of the wind consortium, Forewind and the chairman of the commons Climate Change Committee, Tim Yeo, is chairman of the Renewable Energy Association and the author of the Stern Review which has guided government policy, is involved in carbon trading via Idea Carbon, how then can the UK have an objective energy policy?

When was conflict of interest re-written so that it became mandatory that anyone on a government committee must have a financial interest in the results of their deliberations.

"Decarbonisation" is a foolish ideological policy, with no future except the imposition of even more costs on an unaware public. How laughable are the liittle chimney fans on the Crawley photograph, I expect they may power the odd light bulb, but the rest of us are paying for this madness.

Harbinger

Read the entire article here

PS

Surely there must be some sane people - including politicians - in the UK who will stop this madness! If not now, then at the next general election. 

The Sergei Magnitsky case - Russia protecting criminals

The Sergei Magnitsky case is proving to be highly damaging to Vladimir Putin and the mafia kleptocracy that he has created: 

Over the course of the last two years, investigators with Hermitage Capital have compiled highly detailed reports on the alleged theft of $800 million in Russian tax money and the cover-up murders of five people, including Hermitage lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. The most recent report drills down to the detail of showing receipts for vacations that alleged gang leaders and Russian government accomplices took together in Cyprus and Dubai.

Hermitage recently released a powerful 18-minute video that is now moving minds across the world. Posted on YouTube, it’s called: “The Magnitsky Files: Organized Crime Inside the Russian Government.”

At last count, about 20 parliaments, starting with the United States Congress and the British Parliament, are drawing up legislation to ban visas and freeze assets of suspects in the Magnitsky case.

Facing this international PR disaster, what is Russia doing?
It is painting the attack on about 44 suspected Russian criminals and corrupt government officials as an attack on Russia’s 144 million people.

It has assigned a deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, to attack the U.S. Congress full time on the issue. In almost daily comments to the press, he has expressed the Russian government’s “outrage” at the “Magnitsky Act” under consideration in the U.S. Congress and has promised “a symmetrical response” if legislation is approved. Alexei Pushkov, chairman of the Duma’s International Affairs Committee has told Interfax: “We will certainly react to this and the American Administration will feel the consequences.”

It sent a delegation that included Dmitry Klyuyev, alleged ring leader of the criminal gang, to a meeting two weeks ago in Monaco where legislators from 56 Western and Eurasian nations debated adopting visa bans and asset freezes on the Russian gang members and government accomplices.

It sent to the United States Senate a delegation led by a Russian senator, Vitaly Malkin. A billionaire, Malkin has been denied visas to Canada and was cited by the Canadian government in court proceedings as “a member of a group engaging in organized or transnational crime.”

Moscow apparently believes the best defense is a strong offense.

But in Europe and the United States, legislators are finding the Russian offensive, well, offensive.

At the end of the Monaco meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation, 90 percent of the 320 parliamentarians present voted to call “on national parliaments to take action to impose visa sanctions and freezes on persons responsible for the false arrest, torture denial of medical care and death of Sergei Magnitsky.”

In Washington, Russia’s Senator Malkin alleged that Magnitsky was a drunk, out of shape, who probably fatally injured himself in jail. In response, Natalia Magnitskaya, mother of the dead lawyer, wrote an open letter to Malkin: “I believe that an attempt to slander the good name of my son posthumously looks shameful and not deserving of the honorable title of people’s representative.”

On Wednesday, a U.S. Senate committee voted unanimously in favor of the ‘Magnitsky Act” – the third American congressional committee to do so in six weeks. Passage of the bill is expected in coming months.

Clearly, the Kremlin is losing big time in the international court of opinion.

Read the entire article here

Wherever you look, Vladimir Putin, Russia´s capo di tutti capi, is defending fellow crooks both in his own mafia state and abroad. He may still be able to delay justice in cases involving the likes of Magnitsky and Assad,  but he is fighting a losing game. Before long Putin will share the same fate as all other criminal dictators ...

The euro is doomed

Greece is on its way out:

Greece has fallen behind with its budget cuts and is asking lenders for more time to meet the conditions of the 130 billion euro aid package. But that would require fresh help of up to 50 billion euros, SPIEGEL has learned. Neither Berlin nor the IMF are prepared to make that money available.

Germany and other important international creditors are not prepared to extend further loans to Greece beyond what has already been agreed, German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung reported on Monday. In addition, SPIEGEL has learned that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) too has signalled it won't take part in any additional financing for Greece.

The Süddeutsche Zeitung cited an unnamed German government source as saying it was "inconceivable that Chancellor Angela Merkel would again ask German parliament for approval for a third Greece bailout package."

Merkel has had difficulty uniting her center-right coalition behind recent bailout decisions in parliamentary votes and would be unwilling to risk a rebellion in a another rescue for Greece, the newspaper reported.

Meanwhile, German Economy Minister Philipp Rösler said on Sunday he was "more than skeptical" that Greece's reform efforts will succeed. "If Greece no longer meets its requirements there can be no further payments," he said in an interview with German public broadcaster ARD. "For me, a Greek exit has long since lost its horrors."

Spain is also teetering on the brink, and Slovenia is fast becoming a bail-out candidate ...

The euro in its present form is doomed. It will remain in the history books as an example of monumental political and economic failure. 

Chinese olympic athletes leave UK because of cold weather

Chinese olympic athletes have left London because of cold weather:

Chinese athletics gold medal hopeful Liu Xiang has abandoned London’s “cold weather” for warmer temperatures in Germany to complete his pre-Olympics training.


"Other Chinese teams have also chosen to move their base thanks to London's cold weather, so Liu Xiang is not the only one," coach Sun Haiping said.


Agence France-Presse said Liu is among the “leading contenders” to win gold in London. His main rival will be Cuban Olympic champion and world record holder Dayron Robles.


Read the entire article here

Of mice and a man - Could Putin´s life expectancy be doubled?

Official portrait of President  Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (2050)  
(image by www.kremlin.ru)

Last year the Russian New Times magazine asked "What has happened with Putin's face?":

It spoke to four plastic surgeons who contended that the Russian leader had probably had cosmetic surgery. It was likely that he had undergone Botox injections in his forehead, an eye-lift on his lower lids, and an injection of firming filler into his cheek bones.

Putin's face has contorted and smoothed out so much that it's at times unrecognisable. Talking to teenagers at the pro-Kremlin Nashi youth group's summer camp this year, he was at pains to smile. All wrinkles had disappeared. 

Now that Putin has had himself confirmed as de facto lifetime dictator president, it appears that he is looking for something more lasting than a Botox treatment: 

Russian scientists will model a chemical compound to serve as a basis for medicines, slowing aging processes in human body on the Lomonosov supercomputer, CNews reports citing Dmitry Cherepanov, senior scientist in the Frumkin Institute of Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry of the Russian Academy of Science (RAS).

The compound SkQ1 was synthesized in 2004 by a group of Russian scientists, headed by Valdimir Skulachev from RAS. The project includes over 40 organizations, including the Moscow State University, RAS and its institutes, as well as several foreign labs. 

Vladimir Skulachev, the head of the project, said that mice testing showed that the compound could slow down about 40 signs of aging, including eye dryness, balding, losing moustache hair, osteoporosis, hump, etc. As a result of the experiment, life expectancy of mice, living in non-sterile conditions, doubled, Mr. Skulachev said.

PS
It is not yet clear whether the SkQ1 treatment also will be offered to Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev. 

Global warming: Psychologists busy finding ways to manipulate people

You cannot blame warmists for not trying. 
Scores of well funded psychologists in a great number of universities are now busy trying to find ways how to manipulate people in order to make them more receptive to global warming propaganda. That is the unintended gist of a New York Times Opinion Pages article, which includes this revealing finding: 


Sometimes, when forming our opinions, we grasp at whatever information presents itself, no matter how irrelevant. A new study by the psychologist Nicolas Guéguen, published in last month’s Journal of Environmental Psychology, found that participants seated in a room with a ficus tree lacking foliage were considerably more likely to say that global warming was real than were those in a room with a ficus tree that had foliage.

It is good to keep this study in mind when reading about new global warming opinion polls - done in the middle of a heatwave - like the one recently published by the University of Texas. 


Fortunately, the global warming manipulators also are faced with one big problem in the US, which they have not been able to solve: Republicans (who are not as easily manipulated as democrats). 

While concern about warming crosses party lines, the intensity is sharply different. More than half of Democrats say it will be "very serious" if no action is taken, compared with 23 percent of Republicans

It is also important to understand that climate change polls are not always done by "neutral" pollsters. This is e.g. what the University of Texas poll director had to say:

While the survey didn’t ask about the causes of climate change, Sheril Kirshenbaum, the poll director, said “there is no debate” that man-made carbon emissions are warming the planet. “We need to get beyond arguing if it’s occurring and start developing policies to adapt to extreme weather events and rising sea levels,” she said in an e-mail.