BLAST KILLS SEVEN CHILDREN IN TOGO: Sunday explosions in northern Togo killed seven children and wounded two . Last month, Togo declared a state of emergency in the region, citing threats of Islamist attacks from the northern border with Burkina Faso, where a jihadist insurgency is threatening to spill over into coastal West Africa. The Togolese military refrained from immediately describing the incident as an attack, saying "an investigation is ongoing to determine the circumstances of this explosion and identify the perpetrators." NO GAS FOR KARACHI: Despite weeks of scorching heat and prolonged blackouts, Pakistan has received no offers on its $1 billion tender for additional liquefied natural gas deliveries from July through September. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif turned to Afghanistan for help, which began shipping coal over by rail at a reported 30 percent markup. Chinese energy firms operating in Pakistan have balked at the hike, and are now threatening to stop those Afghan coal imports unless prices come down. Ed Cox , head of global LNG at commodity intelligence firm ICIS, said Pakistan's failure to secure extra gas on global markets is "obviously a direct consequence of Europeans' rising LNG demand" as EU buyers snap up all available cargoes in a bid to pivot away from Russian supply. "The European payment premium of just over $14 per [million British thermal units of gas] to East Asia is exceptional, we've never seen this before," Cox told Global Insider. "Qatar is the main supplier to Pakistan, Bangladesh and India through long-term contracts at prices much lower than the spot price. Of course, power demand has been pretty high in South Asia, and any [additional] supply — particularly from the U.S. — that would have gone to those markets is just getting sucked up by Europe," he added. As coal prices also rise, "Pakistan and particularly India have switched to oil derivatives for power generation." KENYA SWITCHES TO COOKING WITH CHARCOAL: As the price of liquefied petroleum gas, also known as cooking gas, rises, families in Kenya are turning to charcoal instead — with all the attendant health problems and deforestation concerns. The stuff is made from charring wood, and the illegal logging trade to cash in on the demand is on the rise. TECH CORNER The Guardian and Washington Post dropped a bomb on Uber over the weekend, releasing parts of an ICIJ investigation based on more than 124,000 leaked documents over a five-year period from executives at the ride-sharing giant. The documents reveal questionable practices pushed by billionaire founder Travis Kalanick, aggressive lobbying of then-Vice President Joe Biden, a dismissive attitude toward then-Hamburg mayor Olaf Scholz and then-Economy Minister Emmanuel Macron's secret attempts to help Uber win support in France. Read Kalanick's response to the allegations, via a spokesperson, here. YOU KNEW THIS WAS COMING: Elon Musk dropped memes on Twitter making fun of the brewing lawsuits over his decision to rescind his acquisition of the social network he recently promised to buy and retool. MASTICATED: Meanwhile, in other rough news for billionaires, Jeff Bezos is going to have to find a new way to set sail, after officials in Rotterdam refused to dismantle a bridge to let his new megayacht reach open waters. INTERVIEW — CLAIRE JUNGMAN Claire Jungman is chief of staff at the United Against Nuclear Iran nonprofit in New York. She's been tracking the shipping tankers that have clandestinely moved Tehran's U.S.-sanctioned oil, gas and petrochemicals to willing buyers around the globe since 2018, when then-U.S. President Donald Trump pulled out of the JCPOA deal. She's also watched those ships switch to carrying Russian oil in the wake of recent Western sanctions. According to UANI, Chinese purchases of Iranian oil alone could exceed $25 billion this year — thanks to a so-called "ghost armada" of some 200 rickety vessels that ferry the high seas largely unsanctioned by American authorities. What are the techniques Iran uses to move its oil? "There are a number of deceptive practices, with spoofing being the number one we're seeing . We used to see vessels 'go dark' a lot more frequently — that's when they turn off their AIS transponder [the unique satellite tracking signal all ships emit] — but then people got smart and realized ships that went dark were up to no good. So now we see spoofing, where they are actually manipulating their transponder to appear as if they are anchored in one location, but in reality they are loading at ports in Iran or engaging in ship-to-ship transfer. The vessel basically spoofs its transponder when it loads the Iranian oil, then conducts a ship-to-ship transfer out at sea to offload that oil with vessels that have, say, Malaysian oil on them. Or it may not even be Malaysian oil, but they're in Malaysian waters so they're able to rebrand the oil as Malaysian blend. It's a very small amount — out of 700,000 barrels a tanker can hold, it will take on maybe 40,000 barrels, but it's enough that they can basically re-produce documents to say, that's a Malaysian blend." How does payment happen? "It's a little bit of a sketchy process. My understanding is that Iran does not sell its oil unless it receives money up-front, basically. China is the number one importer, followed by Syria. Since 2019, we've seen discount prices range from $12 [per barrel lower than market rates] to a $2 or $3 discount. Right now, Russian oil is being discounted more than Iranian oil, so we're seeing a little bit of a decline in Iran's oil exports to China, with Russian oil exports to China going up." Why are these ships now switching from carrying Iranian oil to Russian? Since the Russia-Ukraine crisis chartering rates have gone up in the Black Sea and Baltic Sea, because it's more dangerous for vessels to be operating in that area — I believe chartering rates are around $30,000 a day. That's why we're starting to see vessels we call the Ghost Armada which typically transport Iranian oil, now shift to carrying Russian crude, as owners and operators receive more money to use those ships. The number of ships that have made the switch from moving Iranian oil to Russian so far is up to 13 they range in sizes but all together can carry approximately 12 million barrels of oil. If we add in ships normally carrying Venezuelan oil that have switched to Russian, it's up to 25 vessels. Why aren't existing sanctions being enforced on these ships? We saw a little bit of early enforcement from the Biden administration, but I think they were so focused on trying to get a new deal with Iran that they were reluctant to enforce sanctions on its oil exports because it would disrupt negotiations. Over the last few months we've seen more enforcement, which is promising, but there is more work to be done. Specifically, to bring Iranian oil exports back down the 200-plus vessels currently transporting Iranian oil should be sanctioned. Industry as a whole has also been slow to follow the deceptive practices, and as a result they're sort of enabling this type of activity — and if they can't crack down on it with Iran, I don't know how they're going to crack down on it with Russia. Insurance companies are the most reactive and responsive, they don't want to be responsible for insuring cargo that is sanctioned, but most of them aren't tracking at the level we're tracking, so some [ships] go under the radar. But when the insurance ban on Iranian oil took place, we saw most of these vessels using not the international Protection & Indemnity insurance companies, but establishing their own P&I clubs. Some ports won't accept the cargo if it's not insured by an international P&I club — but most of the countries that want to buy the sanctioned oil, China for example … won't care what P&I club it has. Classification societies, their job is just to make sure a vessel is up to safety standards and fit to sail the seas, they're not technically responsible for looking at the cargo — but there have been some cases where they will take action and declass vessels. Panama is the largest ship registry in the world — I think out of the 200 vessels we track carrying Iranian oil about 37 percent are flagged by Panama. They should very much have the resources and capabilities to track at the levels we track and be responsible … but they seem to be turning a blind eye. What more can be done? There needs to be continuous monitoring and a process where they hit the vessel with sanctions right away. But that's not what we see — it's a very slow moving process, and you can sanction the entire [Russian] Sovcomflot fleet, but you know, they're going to turn to using other vessels. In addition, sanctions on the purchasers of the oil would help. I'm sure we would see a decline in Iranian oil exports to China if the U.S. started sanctioning Chinese importers.
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