Author: omc_admin
From the moment he became de facto head of the Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk seemed intent on carving up the federal bureaucracy like a Thanksgiving turkey. Thousands of federal employees were laid off, entire departments folded, and contracts worth billions of dollars were scrapped.That mayhem created a lucrative opening for one startup.In the first half of this year, Legalist, a San Francisco lender founded by one of tech billionaire Peter Thiel’s fellows, extended more than $100 million to dozens of government contractors scrambling for cash. Founder Eva Shang says that’s about twice what it deployed in the three…
Jordan and Israel have suffered through their hottest nights on record, with nocturnal temperatures in the Levant well above levels that scientists consider “hellish”.Temperatures on Monday night did not go below 35C (95F) in Ghor es-Safi and Aqaba in Jordan, while in the capital, Amman, they stayed above 31.8C.In Israel, meteorologists reported a record-breaking nighttime minimum on Tuesday night of 36C in Sedom.“It’s like you’re walking in a sauna,” said Fayha al-Shibli, a climate scientist at the University of Jordan, who lives in Amman.Doctors fret about hot nights because they compound the damage done by heatwaves, preventing worn-out bodies from…
Ukraine’s drone campaign against Russian energy assets has taken out another major target—this time Lukoil’s Volgograd refinery, one of the ten largest in the country, forcing a halt to crude intake.According to regional officials, Thursday’s strike sent falling debris onto oil product storage, sparking a fire that burned for 19 hours before being contained. The 300,000 bpd facility, a key supplier to southern Russia with some exports, has been hit multiple times this year. Lukoil has yet to comment.The attack comes amid a flurry of Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries and energy infrastructure in the past week, as Vladimir Putin…
(Bloomberg) — Centrica Plc signed a 10-year agreement to buy natural gas from Devon Energy Corp. to help expand its activities across the Atlantic. Centrica Energy, its trading arm, will receive 50,000 million British thermal units (MMBtu) per day of natural gas from 2028, or the equivalent of five liquefied natural gas cargoes per year, according to a statement on Friday. The volumes will be indexed to TTF, the European benchmark price. The deal expands Centrica’s global gas business after the recent announcement of a New York office. The agreement will also help the firm to manage the…
A view of the platform of the Leviathan natural gas field in the Mediterranean Sea is pictured from the Israeli northern coastal city of Caesarea on December 19, 2019. – Israel has approved the export of gas from its offshore reserves to Egypt, a spokeswoman said on December 17, with a major reservoir expected to begin operations imminently. The approval by Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz was part of a long process under which Israel will transform from an importer of natural gas from Egypt into an exporter and potential regional energy player. (Photo by JACK GUEZ / AFP) (Photo by…
A view of the platform of the Leviathan natural gas field in the Mediterranean Sea is pictured from the Israeli northern coastal city of Caesarea on December 19, 2019. – Israel has approved the export of gas from its offshore reserves to Egypt, a spokeswoman said on December 17, with a major reservoir expected to begin operations imminently. The approval by Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz was part of a long process under which Israel will transform from an importer of natural gas from Egypt into an exporter and potential regional energy player. (Photo by JACK GUEZ / AFP) (Photo by…
Intel’s underlying problems won’t be solved by the U.S. government purchasing an equity stake in the struggling chipmaker, Bernstein warned clients in a note published Friday. The Trump administration is in talks with Intel to buy a stake in the company in order to help fund a delayed manufacturing hub in Ohio, people familiar with the plan told Bloomberg News . It is the latest example of President Donald Trump’s interest in building government-backed national champions in strategic industries, in a stark departure from the free-market orthodoxy of previous administrations. Investors welcomed the prospect of government intervention with Intel’s stock…
(Bloomberg) – Algeria is close to finalizing a deal with ExxonMobil and Chevron to tap the North African nation’s vast gas reserves, including shale, for the first time, a senior official said. “The technical aspects have more or less been agreed upon, but the commercial alignment is still under negotiation and will soon be finalized,” Samir Bekhti, the chairman of energy regulator Alnaft, said in an interview. Attracting the two U.S. giants “sends a strong signal,” he said. Algeria is betting big on shale as it looks to shore up state revenue in a country where hydrocarbons account…
A massive cloudburst has triggered flash floods in north-west Pakistan, killing at least 157 people, as rescuers continued to search for people missing after floods in neighbouring India.Mohammad Suhail, a provincial emergency services spokesperson, said 78 bodies were recovered from various parts of Buner district in the north-west province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa by noon on Friday, and a further 79 were pulled later from the rubble of collapsed homes and flooded villages.“The death toll may rise as we are still looking for dozens of missing people,” Suhail said.The latest fatalities bring to 556 the total number of rain-related deaths in…
The UK government has decided against bailing out the country’s bioethanol plants, which have warned they would be forced to close without a rescue package as the U.S.-UK trade deal has made them unviable. The trade deal from May removed a previous 19% tariff, which the UK imposed on imports of U.S. bioethanol. As a result, the UK-produced bioethanol has been unable to compete with the zero-tariff imported U.S. bioethanol. Vivergo Fuels, the UK’s largest bioethanol plant, warned at the end of May that “if there is no government intervention in the next few weeks, our plant will have to close. That…