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Midwest floods hammer U.S. ethanol industry, push some gasoline prices toward five-year high

April 8, 2019

FILE PHOTO: A motel, restaurant and travel stop are shown surrounded by flood waters in this aerial photo in Percival, Iowa
FILE PHOTO: A motel, restaurant and travel stop are shown surrounded by flood waters in this aerial photo in Percival, Iowa, U.S., March 29, 2019. REUTERS/Tom Polansek/File Photo

April 8, 2019

By Jarrett Renshaw and Stephanie Kelly

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The March floods that punished the U.S. Midwest have roiled the ethanol industry, hammering prices and trapping barrels in the country’s interior while the U.S. coasts suffer from shortages of the biofuel.

The historic March floods have dealt a series of blows to large swaths of an ethanol industry that was already struggling with high inventories and sluggish domestic demand growth. And the ethanol shortages are one factor pushing gasoline prices in Los Angeles and Southern California to the highest in the nation and they could top $4 a gallon for the first time since 2014, according to tracking firm GasBuddy.

Benchmark price for ethanol used in most supply contracts initially jumped on news of the floods but has been hobbled by rising waters around the Chicago hub that have halted barges and sales. That stands in contrast to prices on the coasts, which rose dramatically – drawing in heavy imports from Brazil, the main U.S. ethanol competitor.

The floods inflicted billions of dollars in damage to crops and homes in the U.S. Midwest, and knocked out roughly 13 percent of ethanol capacity.

U.S. ethanol is made from corn and required by the government to be blended into the nation’s fuel supply to reduce emissions.

While some ethanol plants were flooded, the primary effect of the rising waters was to shut rail lines that serve as the main arteries for corn and ethanol deliveries.

Ethanol prices on the coasts spiked due to shortages, but Midwest producers have been unable to take advantage because of washed-out rail lines, market sources told Reuters.

“Unfortunately for anyone who was impacted by logistics issues it was a double whammy. You couldn’t capture the rally,” said one trader.

At Chicago’s Argo terminal, the nation’s main ethanol pricing hub, the cash price for ethanol fell for an eighth straight session last week to $1.29 a gallon, the longest downward skid since April of last year, according to Oil Price Information Service, which does daily assessments.

Initially, fears of widespread plant outages boosted that benchmark, but plants proved more resilient than expected, continuing to produce despite logistical challenges.

U.S. ethanol inventories were at 24 million barrels for the week ended March 29, just off a record hit a week earlier, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data.

Chicago’s price acts as the benchmark for millions of barrels bought and sold via longer-term supply contracts each day. While that price faltered, ethanol prices at the coast have surged, helping plants owned by Pacific Ethanol Inc and White Energy in California and Texas to take advantage of higher prices.

Ethanol delivered into Los Angeles typically trades at 20 cents a gallon higher than Chicago, but that premium rose to as high as 50 cents a gallon, traders said. The price in New York Harbor was at roughly double normal levels, traders said.

The tight ethanol supplies, along with refinery outages, boosted retail gasoline prices and led to some gas station shutdowns in the West as blenders there lacked the ethanol needed to blend with gasoline to make fuel that meets government regulations.

Gas prices in Arizona averaged $2.88 per gallon on Sunday, 17 percent higher than last month, according to the American Automobile Association. Prices were even steeper in California at $3.78 a gallon, well above the national average of $2.74 a gallon.

“Ultimately, Los Angeles could get close to seeing that average at $4 a gallon,” Patrick DeHaan, head of petroleum analysis at tracking firm GasBuddy, said, adding that much of that increase will come because of refinery outages in the state.

At least one county in California has already surpassed $4 a gallon. The highest recorded average price for the state was $4.67 a gallon, in October 2012, according to AAA.

The high coastal prices attracted barrels from the biggest U.S. competitor: Brazil. Overall ethanol imports to the United States totaled 558,279 barrels in March, the most seasonally since 2013, according to Refinitiv Eikon ship tracking data. Most of the imports during the month came from Brazil, according to the tracking data.

(Reporting by Jarrett Renshaw and Stephanie Kelly; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

Source: OANN

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‘It Belongs To The People, Not The Bankers’: Italy Moves To Seize Gold From Central Bank

April 7, 2019

Two weeks ago, somewhat out of the blue, ECB President Mario Draghi issued an odd statement confirming that the European Central Bank needs to approve any operation in the foreign reserves of euro zone countries, including gold and large foreign currency holdings.

“The ECB shall approve both the operations in foreign reserve assets remaining with the NCBs (national central banks)…and Member States’ transactions with their foreign exchange working balances above a certain threshold,” [he said].

“The purpose of this competence is to ensure consistency with the exchange rate and monetary policy of the Union.”

Specifically, Draghi made this statement to two Italian members of the European Parliament.

At the time it did not seem notable for any reason other than its peculiar timing, but now things are starting to make more sense as The Wall Street Journal reports that Italy’s ruling populists pushed ahead this week with efforts to seize control of the central bank and its gold reserves.

Complaining that hundreds of thousands of small individual investors lost billions of dollars after several Italian banks failed in recent years, the anti-establishment ‘5 Star Movement’ and the nationalist ‘League’, depict the central bank as a symbol of a technocratic elite aloof from the needs of ordinary Italians.

“We need a change of course at the Bank of Italy if we think about what happened in the last years,” said Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio, leader of the 5 Star Movement.

Five Star and the League have repeatedly attacked the Bank of Italy for not preventing the banking crises, and blamed it for the losses suffered by mom-and-pop savers who had bought bank shares and bonds.

“If you are here with your current account in the red, it’s because the people who were supposed to control things didn’t do so,” League’s leader, Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, told a group of former investors in Banca Popolare di Vicenza, which was liquidated in 2017.

And this week saw Italian lawmakers from 5 Star asking Parliament to pass two draft laws:

One law would instruct the central bank’s owners, most of them private banks, to sell their shares to the Italian Treasury at prices from the 1930s.

The other law would declare the Italian people to be the owners of the Bank of Italy’s reserve of 2451.8 metric tons of gold, worth around $102 billion at current prices.


Italian Prime Minister Matteo Salvini (Ivan Romano / Contributor / Getty)

As The Wall Street Journal notes, such a move could in theory widen the scope for selling the gold and reduce the bank’s reserves, which help underpin the financial system…

“The gold belongs to the Italians, not to the bankers,” said Giorgia Meloni, leader of the Brothers of Italy, a far-right opposition party that supports both bills. “We are ready to battle everywhere in Italy and to bring Italians to the streets if necessary.”

The establishment sees it differently, warning that their actions are an attempt to undermine the Bank of Italy’s independence, and to spend the nation’s gold reserves on populist policies.

“Gold is part of the assets of the Bank of Italy and can’t be used for monetary financing of the Treasury,” said Bank of Italy Governor Ignazio Visco.

“This looks like revolutionary expropriation,” said Gianluca Garbi, chief executive of Banca Sistema SpA.

But as The Wall Street Journal concludes, the 5 Star Movement and the League support public ownership of the gold reserves, and with backing from parties comprising 60% of lawmakers, the draft law has enough support to pass. Lawmakers from 5 Star also support nationalizing the central bank, while the League hasn’t decided yet, leaving the bill short of a majority with around 40% support.

As of last week they had forced the creation of a parliamentary commission to look into the failure of Italian banks, launching what could be months of tense scrutiny.

Is it any wonder, Russia (and China) have started to horde gold?

Alex Jones officially calls for an invasion of Venezuela to end the humanitarian crisis for the starving Venezuelan people while saving the entire western hemisphere from collapsing into a communist hell hole by direct design of the UN-run illegal immigrant invasion of Central and North America.

Source: InfoWars

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Berlin activists march to demand city seize housing from landlords

April 6, 2019

People take part in a protest against rising rents and a housing shortage in Berlin
A general view shows people taking part in a protest against rising rents and a housing shortage in Berlin, Germany April 6, 2019. Picture taken with a fish eye lens. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

April 6, 2019

By Caroline Copley

BERLIN (Reuters) – Thousands of Berlin residents took to the streets on Saturday to vent anger over surging rents and demand the expropriation of more than 200,000 apartments sold off to big private landlords, which they blame for changing the character of the city.

Activists have started collecting signatures for a ballot proposal that would require the city to take back properties from any landlord that owns more than 3,000 apartments. Polls suggest such a measure could pass, forcing the city to consider spending billions of euros buying privatized housing back.

Demonstrators marched through the city center under a giant model shark. Banners read “against rent sharks and speculators”.

“We have had very bad experiences with these property companies for years, and we know that they answer to their shareholders and not to tenants. We don’t want them in our city any more,” organizer Rouzbeh Taheri told Reuters television.

For decades after unification in 1990, Berlin became a magnet for artists, musicians and students drawn by housing that was far cheaper than in other major European cities. Around 85 percent of Berliners rent their homes rather than own them.

But with an influx of some 40,000 people a year in the last decade, rents have more than doubled since 2008, according to a study by online housing portal immowelt.de. The city is no longer a bargain for newcomers, and many of its longer-term residents say they are struggling.

Among the properties that have been sold off to the private sector are many of the large landmark Communist-era housing projects built as showpieces under the former East Germany. Many have been acquired in recent years by Deutsche Wohnen, the city’s largest landlord with around 115,000 flats.

Campaigners, who call their movement “expropriate Deutsche Wohnen”, have six months to gather 20,000 signatures and until February to collect a further 170,000 to force a referendum. A February poll showed 44 percent of Berliners support renationalizing flats, while 39 percent oppose it.

Deutsche Wohnen and other landlords say the specter of expropriation could exacerbate the problem by deterring new construction: “Expropriation brings no relief for the drastically tight housing market in the capital,” said Deutsche Wohnen Chief Executive Michael Zahn.

The Berlin Senate estimates the cost of buying back property at up to 36 billion euros ($41 billion). The Social Democrats who lead the coalition that governs the city say such funds would be better spent building housing than re-nationalizing it. They instead favor a five-year rent freeze.

“I understand the anger against property firms that want to squeeze every cent out of renters. But expropriation takes years and doesn’t create a single apartment,” the Social Democrats’ national leader Andrea Nahles told Bild am Sonntag newspaper.

(Reporting by Caroline Copley and Reuters TV; Editing by Peter Graff)

Source: OANN

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Polish opposition kicks off election campaign with ‘Polexit’ warning

April 6, 2019

FILE PHOTO: Grzegorz Schetyna of Civic Platform walks prior to media conference at the Parliament in Warsaw
FILE PHOTO: Grzegorz Schetyna of Civic Platform walks prior to media conference at the Parliament in Warsaw, Poland January 12, 2017. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel

April 6, 2019

WARSAW (Reuters) – Poland’s biggest opposition front launched its campaign for next month’s European Parliament election on Saturday by warning that the ruling eurosceptic PiS party could eventually lead the country out of the EU.

Poles overwhelming support remaining in the bloc, and the Law and Justice party (PiS) has never called for Poland to leave. But opposition leaders say the party’s fierce anti-EU rhetoric and a series of disputes with Brussels bring “Polexit” a step nearer.

Seeking to appeal to voters’ pro-European sentiment, leaders of the opposition European Coalition (KE) said May’s European election poses a stark choice about the nation’s future.

“There’s a great choice ahead: either strong, rich, democratic Poland in a strong Europe, or what we see today — party state, on its way to leave the EU,” said Grzegorz Schetyna, head of the centrist Civic Platform (PO), which is part of the multi-party KE grouping.

“We’re facing elections to the European Parliament that are the most important elections since 1989. Now even more is at stake,” he told a KE convention on Saturday, referring to the election 30 years ago that marked the return of democracy.

If Poland was to hold a referendum similar to Britain’s Brexit ballot, 88 percent of Poles would vote against leaving the bloc, according to an opinion poll published this month by IBSP.

A voter survey by the IBRiS pollsters gave PiS support of 39 percent in the European elections, ahead of the KE on 36.5 percent.

The ruling party, which has governed Poland since 2015, has retained solid support among voters despite a series of corruption scandals and opposition criticism that its legal and media reforms are a thinly veiled power grab.

Much of the party’s appeal among lower-income Poles is linked to targeted welfare spending, political analysts say.

At Saturday’s campaign launch, Schetyna promised pay rises for teachers and extra financial support for young workers.

He pledged to spend billions on an anti-cancer program, to reinstate funding for in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment among tens of thousands of infertile couples, and improve air quality by stopping the use of coal for household heating.

(Reporting by Marcin Goclowski and Anna Koper; Editing by Helen Popper)

Source: OANN

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In astrophysics milestone, first photo of black hole expected

April 6, 2019

FILE PHOTO: A supermassive black hole with millions to billions times the mass of our sun is seen in an undated NASA artist's concept illustration
FILE PHOTO: A supermassive black hole with millions to billions times the mass of our sun is seen in an undated NASA artist’s concept illustration. REUTERS/NASA/JPL-Caltech/Handout/File Photo

April 6, 2019

By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Scientists are expected to unveil on Wednesday the first-ever photograph of a black hole, a breakthrough in astrophysics providing insight into celestial monsters with gravitational fields so intense no matter or light can escape.

The U.S. National Science Foundation has scheduled a news conference in Washington to announce a “groundbreaking result from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project,” an international partnership formed in 2012 to try to directly observe the immediate environment of a black hole.

Simultaneous news conferences are scheduled in Brussels, Santiago, Shanghai, Taipei and Tokyo.

A black hole’s event horizon, one of the most violent places in the universe, is the point of no return beyond which anything – stars, planets, gas, dust, all forms of electromagnetic radiation including light – gets sucked in irretrievably.

While scientists involved in the research declined to disclose the findings ahead of the formal announcement, they are clear about their goals.

“It’s a visionary project to take the first photograph of a black hole. We are a collaboration of over 200 people internationally,” astrophysicist Sheperd Doeleman, director of the Event Horizon Telescope at the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian, said at a March event in Texas.

The news conference is scheduled for 9 a.m. (1300 GMT) on Wednesday.

The research will put to the test a scientific pillar – physicist Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity, according to University of Arizona astrophysicist Dimitrios Psaltis, project scientist for the Event Horizon Telescope. That theory, put forward in 1915, was intended to explain the laws of gravity and their relation to other natural forces.

SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLES

The researchers targeted two supermassive black holes.

The first – called Sagittarius A* – is situated at the center of our own Milky Way galaxy, possessing 4 million times the mass of our sun and located 26,000 light years from Earth. A light year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km).

The second – called M87 – resides at the center of the neighboring Virgo A galaxy, boasting a mass 3.5 billion times that of the sun and located 54 million light-years away from Earth. Streaming away from M87 at nearly the speed of light is a humongous jet of subatomic particles.

Black holes, coming in a variety of sizes, are extraordinarily dense entities formed when very massive stars collapse at the end of their life cycle. Supermassive black holes are the largest kind, devouring matter and radiation and perhaps merging with other black holes.

Psaltis described a black hole as “an extreme warp in spacetime,” a term referring to the three dimensions of space and the one dimension of time joined into a single four-dimensional continuum.

Doeleman said the project’s researchers obtained the first data in April 2017 from a global network of telescopes. The telescopes that collected that initial data are located in the U.S. states of Arizona and Hawaii as well as Mexico, Chile, Spain and Antarctica. Since then, telescopes in France and Greenland have been added to the network.

The scientists also will be trying to detect for the first time the dynamics near the black hole as matter orbits at near light speeds before being swallowed into oblivion.

The fact that black holes do not allow light to escape makes viewing them difficult. The scientists will be looking for a ring of light – radiation and matter circling at tremendous speed at the edge of the event horizon – around a region of darkness representing the actual black hole. This is known as the black hole’s shadow or silhouette.

Einstein’s theory, if correct, should allow for an extremely accurate prediction of the size and shape of a black hole.

“The shape of the shadow will be almost a perfect circle in Einstein’s theory,” Psaltis said. “If we find it to be different than what the theory predicts, then we go back to square one and we say, ‘Clearly, something is not exactly right.’”

(Reporting by Will Dunham; Editing by Sandra Maler)

Source: OANN

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US Sets Sights on China in New Electric Vehicle Push

April 5, 2019

U.S. government officials plan to meet with executives from automakers and lithium miners in early May as part of a first-of-its-kind effort to launch a national electric vehicle supply chain strategy, according to three sources familiar with the matter.

While Volkswagen AG, Tesla Inc and other electric-focused automakers and battery manufacturers are expanding in the United States and investing billions in the new technology, they are reliant on mineral imports without a major push to develop more domestic mines and processing facilities. For a graphic, click https://tmsnrt.rs/2Azl09N

China already dominates the electric vehicle supply chain. It produces nearly two-thirds of the world’s lithium-ion batteries – compared to 5 percent for the United States – and controls most of the world’s lithium processing facilities, according to data from Benchmark Minerals Intelligence, which tracks prices for lithium and other commodities and is organizing the Washington, D.C., event.

U.S. imports of lithium have nearly doubled since 2014 due in part to rising demand from Tesla, SK Innovation Co and others building battery plants in the country, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

“We need to find ways to more efficiently develop our nation’s domestic critical mineral supply because these resources are vital to both our national security and our economy,” North Dakota Senator John Hoeven, a member of the Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said in a statement to Reuters when asked about the meeting.

Hoeven and Senator Lisa Murkowski, chair of the Senate’s energy committee, have been invited to attend the meeting. Officials from the U.S. Department of State, Department of Energy, Department of the Interior and the U.S. Geological Survey plan to attend, according to two of the sources.

As part of the effort, Murkowski is expected to introduce standalone legislation aimed at streamlining the permitting process for lithium and other mines, bolstering state and federal studies of domestic supplies of critical minerals and encouraging mineral recycling, among other topics, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Some of those efforts were part of broader energy legislation in prior Congresses that failed, and Murkowski hopes that similar legislation will draw broader attention to the topic, according to the source.

Five companies, including Lithium Americas Corp, are developing U.S. lithium projects that plan to use new technologies to extract the metal from clays, bromine and even oilfield waste, processes not common elsewhere and considered game-changing by some analysts. But not all of them have secured financing. For a graphic, click https://tmsnrt.rs/2CXdGWN

If all five come online by 2022 as planned, the country would produce at least 77,900 tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent each year, making the country one of the world’s largest lithium producers. Lithium development projects have historically faced numerous obstacles, so that production number is far from guaranteed.

“Creating a domestic electric vehicle supply chain is the perfect blueprint to make America great again,” said Jesse Edmondson, chief executive officer of U.S. Critical Minerals, a start-up firm buying lithium mineral rights in the U.S. Southeast.

Representatives from Tesla, Ford Motor Co and General Motors Co plan to attend the Washington meeting and discuss with federal officials potential policy changes that could encourage development of a domestic supply chain to mine, process and supply lithium, nickel, cobalt and graphite for battery manufacturers and automakers, according to the sources.

Tesla and GM did not respond to requests for comment.

A Ford spokesperson said that the company regularly engages with stakeholders on various supply chain topics.

Albemarle Corp and Livent Corp, two U.S.-based companies that mine lithium in South America, also plan to attend, as do executives from the handful of lithium mines under development in the United States, according to the sources.

“We are looking forward to participating in a forum with policy makers and industry participants who are focused on ensuring the U.S. remains a leader in the development of the electric vehicle industry,” said Paul Graves, CEO of Livent, which has said it is eyeing expansion opportunities.

Albemarle, which operates the only existing lithium mine in the United States, declined to comment.

The one-day meeting will be divided into morning workshops focused on financing and permitting obstacles, with one-on-one afternoon meetings between regulators and industry executives, according to the sources.

“We’re trying to make sure policymakers have an understanding of this complex situation,” said James Calaway, chairman of ioneer Ltd, which is developing a lithium project in Nevada that also hold a large concentration of boron, used in a plethora of consumer goods.

In Arkansas, Standard Lithium Ltd is developing a pilot project to extract lithium from the bromine waste of a Lanxess AG chemical facility.

“We have an opportunity to take a huge step forward in lithium production, and we want to support that,” Asa Hutchinson, the governor of Arkansas, told Reuters.

Hutchinson and some other U.S. officials want U.S. lithium projects to stand alone without financial support from the government, a potential impediment as financiers often look for even tacit government support before investing in new, unproven technologies.

“There’s a real opportunity in the electric vehicle supply chain if the United States wakes up,” said Jonathan Evans, president of Lithium Americas, which is developing a lithium project in Nevada expected to open by 2022.

Source: NewsMax America

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Futuristic Helicopter to Replace Army’s Apache Fleet

April 5, 2019

The U.S. Army is considering whether it should purchase Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) to replace its aging fleet of Boeing AH-64 Apache and Bell OH-58D Kiowa Warrior copters, reported Task & Purpose.

“The FARA will only replace Apaches in our heavy attack reconnaissance squadrons and this represents about half of the Apache fleet,” a spokesperson for Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told Aviation Week.

“There have already been serious questions about whether the AH-64 platform will be able to remain relevant, especially in a high-end conflict environment, through 2048, when the Army plans to retire the very last of the gunships,” Joseph Trevithick at The War Zone explained.

“The Army expects to be integrating significant upgrades into its latest AH-64E Guardian variants through 2026. These include updates to its fire control and targeting systems, improved data sharing and fusion capabilities, better sensors, a more robust ability to work directly with unmanned aircraft and more,” Trevithick added.

In 2018, the Army selected several FARA candidates. Sikorsky is currently in the running with the S-97 Raider high-speed scout and attack helicopter. Bell is developing a V-280 Valor tiltrotor that was also selected.

Video: Sikorsky S-97 Raider flight test:

Video: Bell V-280 Valor flight test:

“We’re looking for an aircraft that, without going into specific requirements or classifications, essentially goes further, can see further, can acquire specific targets further and can engage at greater ranges than current exist and has greater legs – can fly further with a greater payload of weapon systems,” Milley told Congress on March 26, 2019.

The Army could purchase hundreds of FARA helicopters within the next ten years. If a new helicopter replaces the AH-64 and OH-58D, then the service could be looking at 700 new aircraft – a contract worth tens of billions of dollars.

Alex Jones presents video footage of an elderly, Jewish man being attacked and called a Nazi for simply wearing a Make America Great Again hat.

Source: InfoWars

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Exclusive: United States sets sights on China in new electric vehicle push

April 5, 2019

FILE PHOTO: Brine pools from a lithium mine, that belongs U.S.-based Albemarle Corp, is seen on the Atacama salt flat in the Atacama desert
FILE PHOTO: Brine pools from a lithium mine, that belongs U.S.-based Albemarle Corp, is seen on the Atacama salt flat in the Atacama desert, Chile, August 16, 2018. REUTERS/Ivan Alvarado/File Photo

April 5, 2019

By Ernest Scheyder

(Reuters) – U.S. government officials plan to meet with executives from automakers and lithium miners in early May as part of a first-of-its-kind effort to launch a national electric vehicle supply chain strategy, according to three sources familiar with the matter.

While Volkswagen AG, Tesla Inc and other electric-focused automakers and battery manufacturers are expanding in the United States and investing billions in the new technology, they are reliant on mineral imports without a major push to develop more domestic mines and processing facilities.

For a graphic, click https://tmsnrt.rs/2Azl09N

China already dominates the electric vehicle supply chain. It produces nearly two-thirds of the world’s lithium-ion batteries – compared to 5 percent for the United States – and controls most of the world’s lithium processing facilities, according to data from Benchmark Minerals Intelligence, which tracks prices for lithium and other commodities and is organizing the Washington, D.C., event.

U.S. imports of lithium have nearly doubled since 2014 due in part to rising demand from Tesla, SK Innovation Co and others building battery plants in the country, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

“We need to find ways to more efficiently develop our nation’s domestic critical mineral supply because these resources are vital to both our national security and our economy,” North Dakota Senator John Hoeven, a member of the Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said in a statement to Reuters when asked about the meeting.

Hoeven and Senator Lisa Murkowski, chair of the Senate’s energy committee, have been invited to attend the meeting. Officials from the U.S. Department of State, Department of Energy, Department of the Interior and the U.S. Geological Survey plan to attend, according to two of the sources.

As part of the effort, Murkowski is expected to introduce standalone legislation aimed at streamlining the permitting process for lithium and other mines, bolstering state and federal studies of domestic supplies of critical minerals and encouraging mineral recycling, among other topics, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Some of those efforts were part of broader energy legislation in prior Congresses that failed, and Murkowski hopes that similar legislation will draw broader attention to the topic, according to the source.

Five companies, including Lithium Americas Corp, are developing U.S. lithium projects that plan to use new technologies to extract the metal from clays, bromine and even oilfield waste, processes not common elsewhere and considered game-changing by some analysts. But not all of them have secured financing.

For a graphic, click https://tmsnrt.rs/2CXdGWN

If all five come online by 2022 as planned, the country would produce at least 77,900 tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent each year, making the country one of the world’s largest lithium producers. Lithium development projects have historically faced numerous obstacles, so that production number is far from guaranteed.

“Creating a domestic electric vehicle supply chain is the perfect blueprint to make America great again,” said Jesse Edmondson, chief executive officer of U.S. Critical Minerals, a start-up firm buying lithium mineral rights in the U.S. Southeast.

Representatives from Tesla, Ford Motor Co and General Motors Co plan to attend the Washington meeting and discuss with federal officials potential policy changes that could encourage development of a domestic supply chain to mine, process and supply lithium, nickel, cobalt and graphite for battery manufacturers and automakers, according to the sources.

Tesla and GM did not respond to requests for comment.

A Ford spokesperson said that the company regularly engages with stakeholders on various supply chain topics.

Albemarle Corp and Livent Corp, two U.S.-based companies that mine lithium in South America, also plan to attend, as do executives from the handful of lithium mines under development in the United States, according to the sources.

“We are looking forward to participating in a forum with policy makers and industry participants who are focused on ensuring the U.S. remains a leader in the development of the electric vehicle industry,” said Paul Graves, CEO of Livent, which has said it is eyeing expansion opportunities.

Albemarle, which operates the only existing lithium mine in the United States, declined to comment.

The one-day meeting will be divided into morning workshops focused on financing and permitting obstacles, with one-on-one afternoon meetings between regulators and industry executives, according to the sources.

“We’re trying to make sure policymakers have an understanding of this complex situation,” said James Calaway, chairman of ioneer Ltd, which is developing a lithium project in Nevada that also hold a large concentration of boron, used in a plethora of consumer goods.

In Arkansas, Standard Lithium Ltd is developing a pilot project to extract lithium from the bromine waste of a Lanxess AG chemical facility.

“We have an opportunity to take a huge step forward in lithium production, and we want to support that,” Asa Hutchinson, the governor of Arkansas, told Reuters.

Hutchinson and some other U.S. officials want U.S. lithium projects to stand alone without financial support from the government, a potential impediment as financiers often look for even tacit government support before investing in new, unproven technologies.

“There’s a real opportunity in the electric vehicle supply chain if the United States wakes up,” said Jonathan Evans, president of Lithium Americas, which is developing a lithium project in Nevada expected to open by 2022.

(Reporting by Ernest Scheyder; editing by Amran Abocar and Edward Tobin)

Source: OANN

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Shell faces lawsuit from climate change activists over fossil fuels

April 5, 2019

FILE PHOTO: A passenger plane flies over a Shell logo at a petrol station in west London, Britain
FILE PHOTO: A passenger plane flies over a Shell logo at a petrol station in west London, Britain, January 29, 2015. REUTERS/Toby Melville/File Photo

April 5, 2019

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – Environmentalist and human rights groups said on Friday they had started a lawsuit against Royal Dutch Shell in the Netherlands to force the energy firm to cut its reliance on fossil fuels.

The groups, including Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth Netherlands, handed over a court summons to Shell at its headquarters in The Hague, demanding it stop extracting oil and gas and cut its greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050.

“Shell spends billions on oil and gas exploration each year, with current plans to invest just 5 percent of its budget in sustainable energy and 95 percent in exploiting fossil fuels,” the groups said.

They said Shell’s plans were “incompatible with the goal to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming” under the goals set out in the Paris Agreement to combat climate change.

Shell on Friday said the case should not be brought to court as it supports the goals of the 2015 pact and has promised to cut its contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2050.

“We also feel action against climate change is needed right now”, the company said in a statement.

“We have invested billions of dollars in a range of CO2-light technologies, such as biofuels, hydrogen and wind energy and we want to continue to grow these activities.”

Activists say this commitment does not go far enough to ensure climate goals can be reached on a global scale.

“With their current strategy, they will keep the world dependent on fossil fuels in the next 40 years,” Greenpeace campaigner Eefje de Kroon said.

The groups said more than 17,000 Dutch citizens signed up to support their case against Shell.

The company has about six weeks to reply to the court summons, after which a judge will decide on further proceedings.

(Reporting by Bart Meijer; Editing by Edmund Blair and Louise Heavens)

Source: OANN

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Brazil’s Bolsonaro warms to old-style politics to push pension bill

April 4, 2019

FILE PHOTO: Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro speaks at an event with Israeli and Brazilian business people, attended by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in Jerusalem
FILE PHOTO: Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro speaks at an event with Israeli and Brazilian business people, attended by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in Jerusalem April 2, 2019. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

April 5, 2019

By Anthony Boadle

BRASILIA (Reuters) – Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro appealed to leaders of five big centrist parties on Thursday to back his pension reform plan, resorting to the traditional political methods he had condemned during the election campaign.

The government’s deputy Senate whip, Senator Izalci Lucas, told Reuters that Bolsonaro had done well to form a cabinet without political interference. But parties will now get to share some 2,000 second-level federal jobs and have a say on public works that favor their members’ districts.

Bolsonaro, a longtime fringe Congressman, won the top office by criticizing the corruption and extensive horse-trading of Brazilian coalition politics. Those practices directly led to the country’s “Car Wash” scandal, which has been called the largest political graft investigation ever, in which billions of dollars in kickbacks were funneled through politically appointed executives at state-run companies and parties.

To end that, Bolsonaro pledged during his campaign not to use those methods and has tried to govern without embracing a base of parties across the ideological spectrum. But with 30 parties in Brazil’s unwieldy Congress, getting any bill through requires deft negotiating.

Just over 100 days into Bolsonaro’s presidency, his flagship legislative proposal to overhaul the costly pension system and save more than 1 trillion reais ($260 billion) over the next decade has gained no traction in Congress, to the dismay of the market.

The inability of his government to organize backing for the long-awaited but deeply unpopular reform bill, which most economists say is vital to shore up Brazil’s public deficit and avoid slipping back into recession, was on crystal clear display on Wednesday.

That’s when Economy Minister Paulo Guedes was grilled during an acrimonious, six-hour lower house committee hearing and received virtually no support, even from lawmakers within Bolsonaro’s own party. The session was cut short after leftist congressmen opposed to the reform traded insults with Guedes.

‘NEW DIALOGUE’

Bolsonaro met separately with the heads of five centrist parties on Thursday, all of whom back pension reform in principle but want to see the president’s version revised.

“This meeting marks the beginning of a new dialogue where we can express our concerns and build bridges to guarantee the legislative agenda advances,” ACM Neto, head of the powerful Democrats party, told reporters after meeting Bolsonaro.

Geraldo Alckmin, former Sao Paulo governor and head of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party, said the pension system must be reformed. But he is opposed to changes that reduce benefits for rural, elderly and disabled workers.

After the meetings, Bolsonaro said in a Facebook live video that he expects Congress to pass the bill, and added that no government job offers were discussed with the party leaders. His chief of staff Onyx Lorenzoni told reporters that the president will meet with more leaders next week.

House Speaker Rodrigo Maia and other key lawmakers have said they were losing patience with the government’s refusal to negotiate and called on Bolsonaro and his backers to stop trying to govern the country via Twitter, which Bolsonaro says he counts on to get his message directly to voters.

As the political chaos has deepened, Brazilian market volatility has risen, triggering sharp declines in the currency and stocks, and a spike in bond yields. Markets have settled this week, but investors expect volatility to remain high.

While a recent decree issued by the government sets qualification requirements for federal jobs, the parties will now be able to put qualified names forward, Izalci said.

“He is correcting the mistake. By drawing closer to the parties he will get their support,” Izalci said. “Now things will start moving.”

(Reporting by Anthony Boadle; Additional reporting by Lisandra Paraguassu; Editing by Daniel Wallis)

Source: OANN

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