industryterm:natural gas

  • Russia Squeezing Embattled Venezuela for Tax-Free Gas Expansion - Bloomberg
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-20/russia-squeezing-embattled-venezuela-for-tax-free-gas-expansion


    Photographer: Wil Riera/Bloomberg

    • Venezuela offers Rosneft path to amplify natural gas dominance
    • Expropriation clause gives Moscow-based company a hedge

    Russia’s state-controlled oil giant, Rosneft PJSC, is extracting concessions from crisis-ridden Venezuela to enter the offshore natural gas market on the cheap, a potential headache for the U.S. and Europe.

    An accord signed by both Russia and Venezuela earlier this month will give Rosneft tax breaks to produce and export gas from the Patao and Mejillones fields off Venezuela’s east coast. The document, which also includes a “fair market price” in the event of an expropriation, makes changes to a bilateral agreement reached in 2009, according to a filing by the Russian government.

    The deal underscores how Russia is both propping up and gaining from the Nicolas Maduro regime at a time when the U.S. is sanctioning Maduro and China has cut its support. Venezuelan gas could eventually offer Russia new entry points into both Asia and Europe.

    China is backing away in terms of its financial exposure,” Andrew Stanley, an associate fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in a telephone interview. “Whereas the Russians, over the past few years, they’ve gone in the opposite direction, they’ve kind of doubled down and seen this as an opportunistic plan.

    Since 2014, Rosneft has loaned about $6.5 billion to Venezuela in exchange for oil, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Petroleos de Venezuela SA, or PDVSA, has been repaying the loans by delivering barrels to Rosneft, and had an outstanding debt of about $1.8 billion in the first quarter, according to a company presentation.

    As a result of the changes signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Rosneft and its suppliers will be exempt from value added and import taxes to develop the two gas fields, which are near to where Exxon Mobil Corp. is rushing to extract oil in neighboring Guyana. The agreement was filed online by the Russian legal information website, which publishes orders by the president and applied international treaties.

  • Quoting ’The Lorax,’ Court Pulls Permit For Pipeline Crossing Appalachian Trail : NPR
    https://www.npr.org/2018/12/14/676950106/quoting-the-lorax-court-pulls-permit-for-pipeline-crossing-appalachian-trail

    A federal appeals court has thrown out a power company’s permit to build a natural gas pipeline across two national forests and the Appalachian Trail – and slammed the U.S. Forest Service for granting the approvals in the first place.

    In a decision filed Thursday by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., a three-judge panel declared the U.S. Forest Service “abdicated its responsibility to preserve national forest resources” when it issued permits for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline to build through parts of the George Washington and Monongahela National Forests and a right of way across the Appalachian Trail.

    “This conclusion,” they wrote in a unanimous judgment, “is particularly informed by the Forest Service’s serious environmental concerns that were suddenly, and mysteriously, assuaged in time to meet a private pipeline company’s deadlines.”

    The judges cited Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax: “We trust the United States Forest Service to ’speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.’”

    #should_trees_have_standing #pipeline #droit_de_l'environnement #animisme_juridique

  • #E.P.A. Plans to Get Thousands of #Pollution Deaths Off the Books by Changing Its Math - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/20/climate/epa-air-pollution-deaths.html

    The Obama administration had sought to reduce planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Power Plan by pushing utilities to switch away from coal and instead use natural gas or renewable energy to generate electricity. The Obama plan would also have what is known as a co-benefit: levels of fine particulate matter would fall.

    The Trump administration has moved to repeal the Obama-era plan and replace it with the Affordable Clean Energy rule, which would slightly improve the efficiency of coal plants. It would also allow older coal plants to remain in operation longer and result in an increase of particulate matter.

    #microparticules #santé_publique #intérêts_privés #états-unis #porte_tournante #

  • China Spying: The Internet’s Underwater Cables Are Next - Bloomberg
    https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-04-09/china-spying-the-internet-s-underwater-cables-are-next


    Underwater eyes on China.
    Photographer: Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Adam K. Thomas/U.S. Navy via Getty Images

    As the West considers the threat posed by China’s naval ambitions, there is a natural tendency to place overarching attention on the South China Sea. This is understandable: Consolidating it would provide Beijing with a huge windfall of oil and natural gas, and a potential chokehold over up to 40 percent of the world’s shipping.

    But this is only the most obvious manifestation of Chinese maritime strategy. Another key element, one that’s far harder to discern, is Beijing’s increasing influence in constructing and repairing the undersea cables that move virtually all the information on the internet. To understand the totality of China’s “Great Game” at sea, you have to look down to the ocean floor.
    […]
    But now the Chinese conglomerate #Huawei Technologies, the leading firm working to deliver 5G telephony networks globally, has gone to sea. Under its Huawei Marine Networks component, it is constructing or improving nearly 100 submarine cables around the world. Last year it completed a cable stretching nearly 4,000 miles from Brazil to Cameroon. (The cable is partly owned by China Unicom, a state-controlled telecom operator.) Rivals claim that Chinese firms are able to lowball the bidding because they receive subsidies from Beijing.
    […]
    A similar dynamic [as in 5G equipment] is playing out underwater. How can the U.S. address the security of undersea cables? There is no way to stop Huawei from building them, or to keep private owners from contracting with Chinese firms on modernizing them, based purely on suspicions. Rather, the U.S. must use its cyber- and intelligence-gathering capability to gather hard evidence of back doors and other security risks. This will be challenging — the Chinese firms are technologically sophisticated and entwined with a virtual police state.

    And back doors aren’t the only problem: Press reports indicate that U.S. and Chinese (and Russian) submarines may have the ability to “tap” the cables externally. (The U.S. government keeps such information tightly under wraps.) And the thousand or so ground-based landing stations will be spying targets as well.

    #cables_sous-marins #internet #espionnage

  • A Reliable #blockchain Platform for Renewable #energy Sector
    https://hackernoon.com/a-reliable-blockchain-platform-for-renewable-energy-sector-b25a7eecdf5d?

    TerraGreen PurposeThe general thought behind #terragreen is to use blockchain technology and cryptocurrency to make the earth (Terra) a greener place. The focus of TerraGreen is to produce renewable energy that is generated from renewable materials and waste productions instead of using fossil fuels like oil, coal and natural gas. In the end, TerraGreen’s purpose is to create a truly sustainable and clean community which will allow consumers to directly participate in the renewable energy industry positively.TerraGreen intends to break down the walls between energy producers, investors, consumers, and utilities so that people get involved and influence their energy is produced.TerraGreen Motivation.Environmental stress to earth has induced an urgent quest for innovation in energy (...)

    #ico #climate-change

  • In the Middle of Winter, Bering Strait Sea Ice Is Disappearing - Bloomberg
    rubrique : Climate Changed
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-06/sea-ice-between-alaska-and-russia-shrinks-by-record-in-middle-of-winter


    Photographer: Yuri Smityuk/Getty Images

    Ice cover should be building, but instead it’s now at a record low for this time of year.

    The ice cover in the Bering Sea is at its lowest on record for this time of year after losing an area about the size of Montana at the height of winter.

    It’s the second consecutive year that the ice extent in the area has retreated at record pace. It shrank from 566,000 square kilometers (219,000 square miles) to 193,000 square kilometers between Jan. 27 and March 3, according to scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado.

    Low ice levels impact local communities who rely on the ice to hunt for walrus and other wildlife during the winter, and the unprecedented change could also impact feeding habits of Arctic animals. And while that’s alarming to environmentalists concerned about global warming, ship owners carrying liquefied natural gas and other goods see it as an opportunity.

    The Bering Sea is more susceptible to temperature fluctuations during the winter when thin ice moves further south and melts, but this year has been “extreme,” the boffins said.

    “A major cause of the ice loss is the strong low pressure in the Bering Sea and the high pressure over northwestern Canada,” the researchers said. “Strong winds between these pressure centers drew warm air into the region from the south, inhibiting ice growth in the Bering Sea while also pushing ice to the north.”

    Elsewhere in the Arctic, sea-ice extent during February was at the seventh lowest on record and on a par with 2015 levels. But the scientists in Colorado aren’t ready yet to call the end of the growing season.

    Thinner ice allows Russia’s Novatek PJSC to transport LNG cargoes from its Yamal plant directly to Asia, the biggest consumer of the fuel, rather than sell or transfer them in western Europe.

  • Small Town Near Hamburg Said to Be Likely Choice for LNG Plant - Bloomberg
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-07/small-town-near-hamburg-said-to-be-likely-choice-for-lng-plant

    A small port city near Hamburg is the leading choice of Angela Merkel’s government for the first liquefied natural gas terminal in Germany, according to people familiar with the thinking of senior ministers.

    The town on the Elbe River, #Brunsbuettel, is competing with rival bids from the city of #Stade and the North Sea port of Wilhelmshaven for federal aid that’s key to unlocking investment in the terminal. The Economy and Energy Ministry in Berlin is backing the bid of Brunsbuettel partly due to its proximity to Hamburg, said two people familiar with the government’s thinking.

    #Brunsbüttel est au débouché de l’Elbe sur son estuaire et à l’entrée du canal de Kiel, pourrait (peut-être) permettre d’éviter d’avoir recours à un pilote maritime de l’Elbe #Lotsenbrüderschaft_Elbe)…

    #Stade, plus en amont sur l’Elbe, à mi-chemin de Hambourg.

  • Amid an Export Boom, the U.S. Is Still Importing #Natural_Gas - Bloomberg
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-27/amid-an-export-boom-the-u-s-is-still-importing-natural-gas

    The U.S. may be exporting natural gas at a record clip, but that hasn’t stopped it from accepting new imports. A tanker with fuel from Nigeria has berthed at the Cove Point import terminal in Maryland, while a second ship with Russian gas is idling outside Boston Harbor.

    Pipeline constraints, depleted stockpiles and a 98-year-old law barring foreign ships from moving goods between U.S. ports is opening the way for liquefied natural gas to be shipped from overseas with prices expected to spike as the East Coast winter sets in.

    The two tankers are carrying about 6 billion cubic feet of #LNG, enough to power 150,000 homes for a year. At one point Thursday, the ship carrying Nigerian fuel to Cove Point passed another tanker in the Chesapeake Bay filled with U.S. gas that was headed abroad.

    It is ironic,’” said John Kilduff, a partner at Again Capital LLC in New York. But the “super cheap gas” produced in the nation’s shale fields “is trapped down west of the Mississippi unable to serve its own market,” he said by phone. “The gas is where the people aren’t.

    bout the money. The companies shipping the gas into Maryland — BP Plc and Royal Dutch Shell Plc — will likely have it stored until freezing East Coast temperatures push prices higher as local suppliers struggle to meet demand, according to Trevor Sikorski, head of natural gas, coal and carbon with the London-based industry consultant Energy Aspects Ltd. in a note to clients on Wednesday.

    Meanwhile, the gas being exported out will likely fetch higher prices right now in Europe and Asia. Dominion Energy Inc., which owns the Cove Point terminal, didn’t respond to emailed and telephone requests seeking comment.

    Other factors are at play as well. For instance, American providers can’t just ship LNG from shale fields in the south because the giant ships that transport the super-chilled fuel sail under foreign flags. Under the 1920 #Jones_Act, that means none can legally transport LNG to the Northeast from existing export terminals in Louisiana and Texas.

    At the same time, even the vast pipeline network feeding the region can quickly develop bottlenecks at a time when stockpiles are sitting at their lowest levels for this time of year since 2002. While production is soaring, strong demand from more and more U.S. power plants using the fuel, along with new export terminals, soaks up much of that new supply.

    There’s still some logistics and pipelines that need to be built to match out to where the demand is,” Kilduff said.

    #GNL

  • Big Oil Doubles Down On Shale Despite Price Drop | OilPrice.com
    https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Big-Oil-Doubles-Down-On-Shale-Despite-Price-Drop.html

    According to Bloomberg, shale has become “a safe haven” for Big Oil amid the recent increased volatility in prices. The argument is that shale production costs are much lower than a few years ago and combine with the opportunity for a steady production increase and quicker returns than conventional projects.

    The recent assessment of the U.S. Geological Survey of the recoverable reserves in the Wolfcamp basin must have added fuel to Big Oil’s shale enthusiasm. The authority estimated that the Wolfcamp basin, together with the Bone Spring formation, also in the Permian, hold the largest reserves of oil and gas ever uncovered, at 46.3 billion barrels of crude and 281 trillion cu ft of natural gas. Great news for those who have the cash to expand in the area. Not all are so enthusiastic, however.

    #climat #etats-unis

  • Global Carbon Budget 2018
    http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/carbonbudget/18/publications.htm

    Carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions from fossil fuels and industry are projected to rise more than 2% (range 1.8% to 3.7%) in 2018, taking global fossil CO₂ emissions to a new record high of 37.1 billion tonnes.

    The strong growth is the second consecutive year of increasing emissions since the 2014-16 period when emissions stabilised, further slowing progress towards the goals of the Paris Agreement that require a peak in greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible. Strong growth in emissions from the use of coal, oil and natural gas suggests CO₂ emissions are likely to increase further in 2019.

    https://theconversation.com/carbon-emissions-will-reach-37-billion-tonnes-in-2018-a-record-high
    #climat
    Les figures : http://folk.uio.no/roberan/GCB2018.shtml

  • Russia’s Gazprom says offshore part of TurkStream is complete | Reuters
    https://uk.reuters.com/article/turkey-russia-gas-pipeline-idUKL8N1XU3N5

    Construction of the offshore part of the TurkStream pipeline that will carry Russian gas across the Black Sea to Turkey has been completed, Russian gas producer Gazprom said on Monday.

    TurkStream is part of Moscow’s efforts to bypass Ukraine as a gas transit route to Europe, which imports around a third of its gas needs from Gazprom.

    Projects of this kind and this project in particular are not directed against the interests of anyone. Projects of this kind are purely creative,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said as he and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan attended an official ceremony in Istanbul.

    Work will now focus onshore and is on track to be completed by the end of 2019, he said.

    Gazprom is building the TurkStream in two lines, each with a capacity of 15.75 billion cubic metres of gas per year. The first will supply Turkey and the second southern Europe.

    Turkey is almost completely reliant on imports to meet its energy needs. A crippling currency crisis which has seen the lira plummet has increased costs, prompting energy companies to hike consumer prices.

    Turkey’s state pipeline operator Botas will build the 69-km section of TurkStream which will carry natural gas from the coast to its distribution centre in Luleburgaz in northwestern Turkey, Energy Minister Fatih Donmez told private broadcaster NTV, adding he expected this to be completed in 2019.

    A 145-km section of pipeline from the distribution centre to the border will be constructed by Botas and Gazprom, he said.

  • Rotten fish to help power #Hurtigruten cruise ships after refit | Agricultural Commodities | Reuters
    https://af.reuters.com/article/commoditiesNews/idAFL8N1XQ6SH

    The Nordic region’s most high-profile cruise fleet operator is refitting its ships to make them less polluting, and plans to use a byproduct of rotten fish to help power their new, leaner engines.

    Norway’s Hurtigruten, best known for the ships that ferry tourists along the country’s fjords and coastline and up into the Arctic, is investing 7 billion crowns ($826 million) over three years to adapt its 17-strong fleet.

    Six of its older vessels will be retrofitted to run on a combination of liquefied natural gas (LNG), electric batteries and liquefied bio gas (LBG).

    We are talking about an energy source (LBG) from organic waste, which would otherwise have gone up in the air. This is waste material from dead fish, from agriculture and forestry,” Hurtigruten CEO Daniel Skjeldam told Reuters in an interview.

    Our main aim is to improve and cut emissions,” he said.

    Hurtigruten, also the world’s biggest expedition cruise operator to destinations including Antarctica, Svalbard and Greenland, is also ordering three new ships that will run on electricity, with a diesel engine only as back-up.

  • Israel’s defense chief resigns, slams Netanyahu for ’surrendering to Hamas terror’
    Haaretz.com - Chaim Levinson Nov 14, 2018 12:47 PM
    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israel-s-political-arena-holds-breath-as-defense-chief-calls-surpr

    Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman announced his resignation on Wednesday and called for elections to be held as soon as possible, saying he hopes a date will be set by Sunday. Lieberman said of all the members of his party, Yisrael Beiteinu, will quit the coalition.

    However, a senior source in Likud, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s party, said that elections are not neccessarily the next step and added that Netanyahu will initially take on Lieberman’s portfolio. Lieberman, who heads Yisrael Beiteinu, will retake his Knesset seat following his resignation, as provided for by law.

    “I didn’t look for reasons to quit,” Lieberman said. “I tried to remain a loyal government member, in the cabinet, keep differences internal even at an electoral cost.” The two turning points, he said, were the millions of dollars in cash delivered from Qatar to Gaza, and the cease-fire Israel reached with Hamas on Tuesday.

    “There is no other definition, no other significance, but a capitulation to terror,” he said, adding: “What we are doing now as a country is buying short-term quiet at the cost of our long-term security.”

    “It is no secret there were differences between the prime minister and I,” he said. “I did not agree to allow entry of Qatari money [into Gaza], and I had to allow it only after the prime minister announced it.” Lieberman said similar differences revolved around the evacuation of the West Bank Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar.

    Yisrael Beiteinu’s departure means Netanyahu still holds a Knesset majority of 61 seats to maintain the coalition. Another key coalition partner in Netanyahu’s government, Habayit Hayehudi (headed by Education Minister Naftali Bennett) said that unless the defense portfolio goes to Bennett, the party will also quit the coalition.

    Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, said Lieberman’s resignation is a recognition of Israel’s defeat in this week’s military confrontation with the Islamic group.

    Following the cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Lieberman and Education Minister Naftali Bennett published statements against the truce reached with Hamas. Sources said that as soon as the latest round of fighting erupted, Lieberman demanded a “harsh, decisive” move against Hamas. Sources near Bennett say that his opposition to the cease-fire was clear as could be.

    Other sources, however, say that ultimately, the ministers unanimously supported the defense establishment’s position that action should be taken to restore the calm.

    According to associates of Lieberman, the Prime Minister’s Office’s claim on Tuesday that he had supported the cease-fire agreement that was reached to end hostilities in Gaza infuriated him.

    Senior Hamas official Husan Badran said Tuesday, the third day of hostilities, that “if Netanyahu is interested in ending this round, he must fire [Defense Minister] Lieberman, who in his foolish conduct caused the escalation.”

    In recent weeks, Lieberman and Bennett have publicly argued between them about Gaza and Israel’s actions there. Last month, Bennett charged Lieberman of a weak, left-wing defense policy, while Lieberman retorted that in cabinet meetings, Bennett says the opposite of what he says in public.

    Lieberman and the cabinet were divided about the sale of gasoline and natural gas to Gaza, and in defense forums, it was decided that the defense minister may not make decisions on the subject without the cabinet’s agreement. The ministers were surprised last month by Lieberman’s decision to cut off the fuel supply to Gaza, a decision he made on his own, in contradiction to the position of the defense establishment. Netanyahu and the cabinet members heard of the decision for the first time through the media.

  • Who’s buying Israeli gas? A company owned by the General Intelligence Service (Egypt) | MadaMasr

    https://madamasr.com/en/2018/10/23/feature/politics/whos-buying-israeli-gas-a-company-owned-by-the-general-intelligence-servic

    When news broke in February that an Egyptian firm named Dolphinus Holdings had signed a US$15 billion deal to purchase Israeli natural gas for supply to Egypt, the Egyptian government refused to comment, portraying it as a private market transaction.

    “The Ministry of Petroleum has no comment on private-sector negotiations or agreements regarding the import or sale of natural gas to Israel,” the ministry spokesperson said in a brief statement at the time.

    That same day, Reuters quoted an anonymous Egyptian government official who said that the deal did not mean the government itself would import gas from Israel. “International private companies will import gas from abroad in the framework of their own needs,” the official said.

    Similar claims were made in September after a preliminary agreement was struck for the acquisition of a stake in a pipeline between Ashkelon and Arish that would allow the transport of natural gas from Israel to Egypt.

    Again, the Petroleum Ministry spokesperson issued a swift response: “The ministry welcomes this new step taken by the private companies involved in the imminent commercial venture.” This time, the Egyptian company involved was called East Gas.

    Last week, CEO and managing director of East Gas Mohamed Shoeib boasted in several interviews that in exchange for the deal, his company had managed to get a handful of arbitration fines and cases against Egypt dropped after 18 months of negotiations. Shoeib attributed the success of the deal to a decision “from the beginning to think outside the government framework.”

  • The Real Reasons Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Wanted Khashoggi ‘Dead or Alive’
    https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-real-reasons-saudi-crown-prince-mohammed-bin-salman-wanted-khasho

    Christopher Dickey 10.21.18
    His death is key to understanding the political forces that helped turn the Middle East from a region of hope seven years ago to one of brutal repression and slaughter today.

    The mind plays strange tricks sometimes, especially after a tragedy. When I sat down to write this story about the Saudi regime’s homicidal obsession with the Muslim Brotherhood, the first person I thought I’d call was Jamal Khashoggi. For more than 20 years I phoned him or met with him, even smoked the occasional water pipe with him, as I looked for a better understanding of his country, its people, its leaders, and the Middle East. We often disagreed, but he almost always gave me fresh insights into the major figures of the region, starting with Osama bin Laden in the 1990s, and the political trends, especially the explosion of hope that was called the Arab Spring in 2011. He would be just the man to talk to about the Saudis and the Muslim Brotherhood, because he knew both sides of that bitter relationship so well.

    And then, of course, I realized that Jamal is dead, murdered precisely because he knew too much.

    Although the stories keep changing, there is now no doubt that 33-year-old Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the power in front of his decrepit father’s throne, had put out word to his minions that he wanted Khashoggi silenced, and the hit-team allegedly understood that as “wanted dead or alive.” But the [petro]buck stops with MBS, as bin Salman’s called. He’s responsible for a gruesome murder just as Henry II was responsible for the murder of Thomas Becket when he said, “Who will rid me of that meddlesome priest?” In this case, a meddlesome journalist.

    We now know that a few minor players will pay. Some of them might even be executed by Saudi headsmen (one already was reported killed in a car crash). But experience also tells us the spotlight of world attention will shift. Arms sales will go ahead. And the death of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi risks becoming just one more entry in the annals of intensifying, murderous repression of journalists who are branded the “enemy of the people” by Donald Trump and various two-bit tyrants around the world.

    There is more to Khashoggi’s murder than the question of press freedom, however. His death holds the key to understanding the political forces that have helped turn the Middle East from a region of hope seven years ago to one of brutal repression and ongoing slaughter today. Which brings us back to the question of the Saudis’ fear and hatred of the Muslim Brotherhood, the regional rivalries of those who support it and those who oppose it, and the game of thrones in the House of Saud itself. Khashoggi was not central to any of those conflicts, but his career implicated him, fatally, in all of them.

    The Muslim Brotherhood is not a benign political organization, but neither is it Terror Incorporated. It was created in the 1920s and developed in the 1930s and ‘40s as an Islamic alternative to the secular fascist and communist ideologies that dominated revolutionary anti-colonial movements at the time. From those other political organizations the Brotherhood learned the values of a tight structure, party discipline, and secrecy, with a public face devoted to conventional political activity—when possible—and a clandestine branch that resorted to violence if that appeared useful.

    In the novel Sugar Street, Nobel Prize-winning author Naguib Mahfouz sketched a vivid portrait of a Brotherhood activist spouting the group’s political credo in Egypt during World War II. “Islam is a creed, a way of worship, a nation and a nationality, a religion, a state, a form of spirituality, a Holy Book, and a sword,” says the Brotherhood preacher. “Let us prepare for a prolonged struggle. Our mission is not to Egypt alone but to all Muslims worldwide. It will not be successful until Egypt and all other Islamic nations have accepted these Quranic principles in common. We shall not put our weapons away until the Quran has become a constitution for all Believers.”

    For several decades after World War II, the Brotherhood’s movement was eclipsed by Arab nationalism, which became the dominant political current in the region, and secular dictators moved to crush the organization. But the movement found support among the increasingly embattled monarchies of the Gulf, including and especially Saudi Arabia, where the rule of the king is based on his custodianship of Mecca and Medina, the two holiest sites in Islam. At the height of the Cold War, monarchies saw the Brotherhood as a helpful antidote to the threat of communist-led or Soviet-allied movements and ideologies.

    By the 1980s, several of the region’s rulers were using the Brotherhood as a tool to weaken or destroy secular opposition. Egypt’s Anwar Sadat courted them, then moved against them, and paid with his life in 1981, murdered by members of a group originally tied to the Brotherhood. Sadat’s successor, Hosni Mubarak, then spent three decades in power manipulating the Brotherhood as an opposition force, outlawing the party as such, but allowing its known members to run for office in the toothless legislature, where they formed a significant bloc and did a lot of talking.

    Jordan’s King Hussein played a similar game, but went further, giving clandestine support to members of the Brotherhood waging a covert war against Syrian tyrant Hafez al-Assad—a rebellion largely destroyed in 1982 when Assad’s brother killed tens of thousands of people in the Brotherhood stronghold of Hama.

    Even Israel got in on the action, initially giving Hamas, the Brotherhood branch among the Palestinians, tacit support as opposition to the left-leaning Palestine Liberation Organization (although PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat once identified with the Brotherhood himself).

    The Saudi royals, too, thought the Brotherhood could be bought off and manipulated for their own ends. “Over the years the relationship between the Saudis and the Brotherhood ebbed and flowed,” says Lorenzo Vidino, an expert on extremism at George Washington University and one of the foremost scholars in the U.S. studying the Brotherhood’s history and activities.

    Over the decades factions of the Brotherhood, like communists and fascists before them, “adapted to individual environments,” says Vidino. In different countries it took on different characteristics. Thus Hamas, or its military wing, is easily labeled as terrorist by most definitions, while Ennahda in Tunisia, which used to be called terrorist by the ousted Ben Ali regime, has behaved as a responsible political party in a complex democratic environment. To the extent that Jamal Khashoggi identified with the Brotherhood, that was the current he espoused. But democracy, precisely, is what Mohammed bin Salman fears.

    Vidino traces the Saudis’ intense hostility toward the Brotherhood to the uprisings that swept through much of the Arab world in 2011. “The Saudis together with the Emiratis saw it as a threat to their own power,” says Vidino.

    Other regimes in the region thought they could use the Brotherhood to extend their influence. First among these was the powerful government in Turkey of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has such longstanding ties to the Islamist movement that some scholars refer to his elected government as “Brotherhood 2.0.” Also hoping to ride the Brotherhood wave was tiny, ultra-rich Qatar, whose leaders had used their vast natural gas wealth and their popular satellite television channel, Al Jazeera, to project themselves on the world stage and, they hoped, buy some protection from their aggressive Saudi neighbors. As one senior Qatari official told me back in 2013, “The future of Qatar is soft power.” After 2011, Jazeera’s Arabic channel frequently appeared to propagandize in the Brotherhood’s favor as much as, say, Fox News does in Trump’s.

    Egypt, the most populous country in the Arab world, and the birthplace of the Brotherhood, became a test case. Although Jamal Khashoggi often identified the organization with the idealistic hopes of the peaceful popular uprising that brought down the Mubarak dynasty, in fact the Egyptian Brotherhood had not taken part. Its leaders had a modus vivendi they understood with Mubarak, and it was unclear what the idealists in Tahrir Square, or the military tolerating them, might do.

    After the dictator fell and elections were called, however, the Brotherhood made its move, using its party organization and discipline, as well as its perennial slogan, “Islam is the solution,” to put its man Mohamed Morsi in the presidential palace and its people in complete control of the government. Or so it thought.

    In Syria, meanwhile, the Brotherhood believed it could and should lead the popular uprising against the Assad dynasty. That had been its role 30 years earlier, and it had paid mightily.

    For more than a year, it looked like the Brotherhood’s various branches might sweep to power across the unsettled Arab world, and the Obama administration, for want of serious alternatives, was inclined to go with the flow.

    But then the Saudis struck back.

    In the summer of 2013, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, the commander of the Egyptian armed forces, led a military coup with substantial popular support against the conspicuously inept Brotherhood government, which had proved quickly that Islam was not really the “solution” for much of anything.

    Al-Sissi had once been the Egyptian military attaché in Riyadh, where he had many connections, and the Saudis quickly poured money into Egypt to shore up his new regime. At the same time, he declared the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, and launched a campaign of ruthless repression. Within weeks of the coup, the Egyptian military attacked two camps of Brotherhood protesters and slaughtered hundreds.

    In Syria, the efforts to organize a credible political opposition to President Bashar al-Assad proved virtually impossible as the Qataris and Turks backed the Brotherhood while the Saudis continued their vehement opposition. But that does not mean that Riyadh supported moderate secular forces. Far from it. The Saudis still wanted to play a major role bringing down the Syrian regime allied to another arch enemy, the government of Iran. So the Saudis put their weight behind ultra-conservative Salafis, thinking they might be easier to control than the Muslim Brothers.

    Riyadh is “okay with quietist Salafism,” says Vidino. But the Salafis’ religious extremism quickly shaded over into the thinking of groups like the al Qaeda spinoff called the Nusra Front. Amid all the infighting, little progress was made against Assad, and there to exploit the chaos was the so-called Islamic State (which Assad partially supported in its early days).

    Then, in January 2015, at the height of all this regional turmoil, the aged and infirm Salman bin Abdelaziz ascended to the throne of Saudi Arabia. His son, Mohammed bin Salman, began taking into his own hands virtually all the reins of power, making bold decisions about reforming the Saudi economy, taking small measures to give the impression he might liberalize society—and moving to intimidate or otherwise neutralize anyone who might challenge his power.

    Saudi Arabia is a country named after one family, the al Saud, and while there is nothing remotely democratic about the government, within the family itself with its thousands of princes there traditionally has been an effort to find consensus. Every king up to now has been a son of the nation’s founder, Abdelaziz ibn Saud, and thus a brother or half brother of the other kings.

    When Salman took over, he finally named successors from the next generation. His nephew Mohammed bin Nayef, then 57 and well known for his role fighting terrorism, became crown prince. His son, Mohammed bin Salman, became deputy crown prince. But bin Nayef’s position between the king and his favorite son clearly was untenable. As one Saudi close to the royals put it: “Between the onion and the skin there is only the stink.”

    Bin Nayef was pushed out in 2017. The New York Times reported that during an end-of-Ramadan gathering at the palace he “was told he was going to meet the king and was led into another room, where royal court officials took away his phones and pressured him to give up his posts as crown prince and interior minister. … At first, he refused. But as the night wore on, the prince, a diabetic who suffers from the effects of a 2009 assassination attempt by a suicide bomber, grew tired.” Royal court officials meanwhile called around to other princes saying bin Nayef had a drug problem and was unfit to be king.

    Similar pressure was brought to bear on many of the richest and most powerful princes in the kingdom, locked up in the Ritz Carlton hotel in 2017, ostensibly as part of an extra-legal fight against corruption. They were forced to give allegiance to MBS at the same time they were giving up a lot of their money.

    That pattern of coerced allegiance is what the Saudis now admit they wanted from Jamal Khashoggi. He was no prince, but he had been closely associated in the past with the sons of the late King Faisal, particularly Turki al-Faisal, who was for many years the head of the Saudi intelligence apparatus and subsequently served as ambassador to the United Kingdom, then the United States.

    Although Turki always denied he had ambitions to be king, his name often was mentioned in the past as a contender. Thus far he seems to have weathered the rule of MBS, but given the record of the crown prince anyone close to the Al Faisal branch of the family, like Khashoggi, would be in a potentially perilous position.

    Barbara Bodine is a former U.S. ambassador to Yemen, which has suffered mightily since MBS launched a brutal proxy war there against Iran. Both MBS and Trump have declared the regime in Tehran enemy number one in the region. But MBS botched the Yemen operation from the start. It was dubbed “Decisive Storm” when it began in 2015, and was supposed to last only a few weeks, but the war continues to this day. Starvation and disease have spread through Yemen, creating one of the world’s greatest humanitarian disasters. And for the moment, in one of those developments that makes the Middle East so rich in ironies, in Yemen the Saudis are allied with a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.

    “What drives MBS is a ruthless effort toward total control domestically and regionally; he is Putin of the Desert,” says Bodine. “He has basically broken the back of the princelings, the religious establishment and the business elite, brought all ministries and agencies of power under his sole control (’I alone can fix it’), and jailed, killed or put under house arrest activists and any and all potential as well as real opposition (including his mother).”

    In 2017, MBS and his backers in the Emirates accused Qatar of supporting “terrorism,” issuing a set of demands that included shutting down Al Jazeera. The Saudis closed off the border and looked for other ways, including military options, to put pressure on the poor little rich country that plays so many angles it has managed to be supportive of the Brotherhood and cozy with Iran while hosting an enormous U.S. military base.

    “It was Qatar’s independent streak—not just who they supported but that they had a foreign policy divorced from the dictates of Riyadh,” says Bodine. “The basic problem is that both the Brotherhood and Iran offer competing Islam-based governing structures that challenge the Saudi model.”

    “Jamal’s basic sin,” says Bodine,“was he was a credible insider, not a fire-breathing radical. He wrote and spoke in English for an American audience via credible mainstream media and was well regarded and highly visible within the Washington chattering classes. He was accessible, moderate and operated within the West. He challenged not the core structure of the Kingdom but the legitimacy of the current rulers, especially MBS.”

    “I do think the game plan was to make him disappear and I suspect the end game was always to make him dead,” said Bodine in a long and thoughtful email. “If he was simply jailed within Saudi there would have been a drumbeat of pressure for his release. Dead—there is certainly a short term cost, whether more than anticipated or longer than anticipated we don’t know yet, but the world will move on. Jamal will become a footnote, a talking point perhaps, but not a crusade. The dismembered body? No funeral. Taking out Jamal also sends a powerful signal to any dissident that there is no place safe.”

    #Arabie_Saoudite #Turquie #politique #terrorisme #putsch

  • US Military Policy in the Middle East: An Appraisal | Chatham House

    https://www.chathamhouse.org/publication/us-military-policy-middle-east-appraisal#

    Despite significant financial expenditure and thousands of lives lost, the American military presence in the Middle East retains bipartisan US support and incurs remarkably little oversight or public debate. Key US activities in the region consist of weapons sales to allied governments, military-to-military training programmes, counterterrorism operations and long-term troop deployments.
    The US military presence in the Middle East is the culmination of a common bargain with Middle Eastern governments: security cooperation and military assistance in exchange for US access to military bases in the region. As a result, the US has substantial influence in the Middle East and can project military power quickly. However, working with partners whose interests sometimes conflict with one another has occasionally harmed long-term US objectives.
    Since 1980, when President Carter remarked that outside intervention in the interests of the US in the Middle East would be ‘repelled by any means necessary’, the US has maintained a permanent and significant military presence in the region.
    Two main schools of thought – ‘offshore balancing’ and ‘forward engagement’ – characterize the debate over the US presence in the Middle East. The former position seeks to avoid backlash against the US by maintaining a strategic distance from the region and advocates the deployment of forces in the ‘global commons’, where the US military enjoys unparalleled supremacy. The latter group believes in the necessity of a robust military footprint to provide access to oil and gas markets and to prevent the emergence of a regional hegemon, such as Iran.
    American public opinion is roughly evenly split on whether the US should maintain a military presence in the Middle East. However, the status quo enjoys wide support in elite US circles.
    Despite President Trump’s criticism of major elements of the US military’s presence in the Middle East, US troop levels have increased since he took office. This demonstrates the difficulty in altering the status quo due to the risk of rupturing relations with friendly governments in the region.
    Key US objectives include reducing instability in the region, containing Iran’s influence, preventing the emergence of safe havens for terrorist organizations, assuring the free flow of oil and natural gas, and building up the capacities of local militaries to defend their own territory. The goal of allowing the flow of oil has been largely successful, while the others have had decidedly mixed outcomes.

  • U.S. eyes West Coast military bases to export coal, gas -report | Reuters
    https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-trump-coal/update-1-us-eyes-west-coast-military-bases-to-export-coal-gas-report-idUSL2

    President Donald Trump’s administration is considering using West Coast military facilities to export coal and natural gas to Asia, according to an Associated Press report on Monday, citing U.S. Department of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.

    The move would help fossil fuel producers ship their products to Asia and circumvent environmental concerns in Democratic-leaning states like Washington, Oregon and California that have rejected efforts to build new coal ports.

    In an interview in Montana, Zinke told AP “it’s in our interest for national security and our allies to make sure that they have access to affordable energy commodities” and proposed using naval facilities or other federal properties for exports.

    Zinke, a former Navy SEAL, said the former Naval Air Facility Adak in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands could be used to export natural gas. He did not specify any others.
    […]
    The idea drew praise from the U.S. coal industry, which is eager to overcome a dearth of export terminals on the U.S. West Coast. Currently, U.S. coal exported into the Pacific basin must go through Canada’s British Columbia.

  • Is The U.S. Using #Force To Sell Its LNG To The World? | OilPrice.com
    https://oilprice.com/Geopolitics/International/Is-The-US-Using-Force-To-Sell-Its-LNG-To-The-World.html

    From the moment he chose to run for President, Trump has embraced the new shale revolution in the U.S. as a major contributor to the country’s economic growth and energy independence.

    Increasingly, Trump has become the top promoter for increasing exports of U.S. Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) to world markets. He openly threatened to place economic sanctions on Germany if it went ahead with the deal for Russia’s new Nordstream 2 pipeline, that would nearly double natural gas supplies from Russia, Germany’s largest supplier.

    As most observers noted, the U.S. sanction threat was accompanied by the offer of U.S. LNG to Germany and Europe, as a replacement of Russian gas.

    No doubt that Trump’s bullying offended European sensibility, but despite the German protest regarding outside interference in its domestic economic affairs, and its intention to complete the Russian pipeline, Germany is quietly building up LNG importing facilities, “as a gesture to American friends.”

    Most energy experts agree that it is inevitable that U.S. LNG will eventually become a component of European markets, despite its significantly higher price to Russian and Norwegian gas, if for no other reasons to keep the peace with America, Europe’s largest ally, and assure Europe’s access to the U.S. market.

    #economie_de_marché #free_market #auto_régulation #énergies_fossiles #etats-unis #europe

  • Qatargas agrees on 22-year LNG supply deal with China | Reuters
    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-qatar-petrochina/qatargas-agrees-on-22-year-lng-supply-deal-with-china-idUSKCN1LQ0DM

    Qatargas said on Monday it had agreed on a 22-year deal with PetroChina International Co, a unit of PetroChina Co, to supply China with around 3.4 million tonnes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) annually, as the nation stepped up efforts to combat air pollution.

    The Qatari state-owned company will supply LNG from the Qatargas 2 project - a venture between Qatar Petroleum, Exxon Mobil Corp and Total - to receiving terminals across China, with the first cargo to be delivered this month.

    The deal allows flexibility in delivering LNG to Chinese terminals including those in Dalian, Jiangsu, Tangshan and Shenzhen, using the Qatargas fleet of 70 conventional, Q-Flex and Q-Max vessels, the company said.

    China requires LNG for its push to replace coal with cleaner burning natural gas, a way to reduce air pollution. After Beijing started the program last year, China has overtaken South Korea as the world’s second-biggest buyer of LNG.

    China’s LNG imports may surge 70 percent to 65 million tonnes by 2020, according to consultancy SIA Energy. Last year, China imported a record 38.1 million tonnes, 46 percent more than the previous year.

    Meanwhile Qatar, the world’s biggest LNG producer, is seeking buyers for a planned expansion of its output.

    C’est pas avec ce genre de contrats que le Qatar va se faire bien voire des É.-U. !

  • BBC - Future - The giant coal plant converting to green energy
    http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180821-the-giant-coal-plant-converting-to-green-energy

    On the train to visit one of the last places in Britain that burns coal for electricity, I pass three solar farms soaking up sunshine. I also pass a coal plant called Eggborough that has all but ceased operations. No steam rises from its giant cooling towers. It will shut in September.

    But the coal plant I’m visiting is different. It’s named Drax, after a local village, and is the largest power plant in Western Europe. By 2023, its owners plan to stop burning coal entirely. They hope that instead their plant will consume only natural gas and biomass – wood pellets crushed into powder.

    #électricité #énergie #énergie_verte #reconversion #royaume_uni

  • Amid Deadly Israeli Crackdown on Gaza Protests, Chomsky Says U.S. Must End Support for “Murderers”
    Democracy Now! July 30, 2018
    https://www.democracynow.org/2018/7/30/amid_deadly_israeli_crackdown_on_gaza

    (...) NOAM CHOMSKY : The official program—official—was to keep Gaza on what was called a diet, barely enough to survive. Doesn’t look good if they all starve to death. Notice that this is occupied territory, as recognized by—even by the United States, everyone but Israel. So, here’s a population kept in a prison, in an occupied territory, fed a diet to keep them at bare survival, constantly used as a punching bag for what’s called—what calls itself the most moral army in the world, now reaching a point where within a couple years it will be uninhabitable, yes, and in addition to that you have sadistic acts like highly trained snipers killing a young Palestinian woman medic when she’s tending a patient, and what the doctor just described.

    What do we do with it? We actually react to that. The United States has reacted. It’s reacted by very sharply cutting its funding to the one organization, UNRWA, U.N. organization, that keeps the population barely alive. That’s our response, along with, of course, overwhelming support for Israel, providing with the arms, diplomatic support and so on. One of the most extraordinary scandals, if that’s the right word, in the modern world.

    Can we do something about it? Sure, of course we can. Gaza should be a thriving Mediterranean paradise. It has a wonderful location, has agricultural resources, could be marvelous beaches, fishing, sea resources, even has natural gas offshore, which it’s not being allowed to use. So there’s plenty that can be done. But we’ve—the U.S. has preferred, under repeated-administrations but much worse now, to, as usual, support the murderers.
    (...)
    AMY GOODMAN: And, Noam, the solution that you say that is very straightforward and simple?

    NOAM CHOMSKY: Very straightforward. Live up to the terms of the November 2005 agreement. Allow Gaza to reconstruct. Open the entry points to Israel and Egypt. Rebuild the seaport that was smashed. Destroy the—rebuild the airport that Israel destroyed. Allow them to reconstruct the power plants. Let them become a flourishing Mediterranean site. And, of course, permit—remember that the famous Oslo Agreements required, explicitly, that the Gaza Strip and the West Bank be a unified territory and that its territorial integrity must be maintained. Israel and the United States reacted at once by separating them. OK? That’s not a law of nature, either. Palestinian national rights can be achieved, if the U.S., Israel are willing to accept that.

  • US #startup Takes on #houzz with their Top-level Home Improvement Services
    https://hackernoon.com/us-startup-takes-on-houzz-with-their-top-level-home-improvement-services

    Renovaten vs Houzz: the war is on!When people go to buy a product or service online, they usually type it into Google, or visit some reliable price comparison website; then assume the results will show them an affordable price structure for that product or service. The same thing happens to the low-income homeowners or renters who are already burdened with a plethora of financial risks and problems. The majority of homeowners overwhelmingly prefer natural gas, electric services, filtered sparkling water and other amenities to make their lifestyle more comfortable. On the other side, giving importance to the regular home renovations is also a crucial thing to increase the value of your home.With so many services available out there, people need clarity as they are confused about where to (...)

    #renovaten #home-improvement #renovaten-vs-houzz

  • Hundreds of Norway oil workers go on strike, Shell shuts Knarr field | Reuters
    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-norway-oil-wages/wage-talks-with-norway-oil-drilling-workers-go-into-overtime-strike-threat-

    Hundreds of workers on Norwegian offshore oil and gas rigs went on strike on Tuesday after rejecting a proposed wage deal, leading to the shutdown of one Shell-operated field and helping send Brent crude prices higher.

    One union said hundreds more workers would join the strike on Sunday if an agreement over union demands for a wage increase and pension rights was not reached.

    Royal Dutch Shell said that due to the strike it was temporarily closing production at its Knarr field, which has a daily output of 23,900 barrels of mostly oil, but also natural gas liquids and natural gas.

    Shutting the field, whose owners are Idemitsu, Wintershall and DEA, could take up to 36 hours, it said.

    Norway is Western Europe’s biggest oil producer. The disruption added to a rise in global oil supply outages and helped push Brent crude up 1.2 percent to $79.03 per barrel.

  • Drawing Borders in the Arctic: The Race To Colonise the North | The Market Mogul

    https://themarketmogul.com/drawing-borders-arctic-anthropocene-aided-race-define-distinctive-bo

    Once a region largely overlooked by the international community for its inaccessibility and large ice masses, the Arctic is now at the forefront of some of the world’s most critical questions. As anthropocentric climate change continues to thaw boreal ice at unprecedented rates, the increased accessibility of the Arctic region presents new windows of opportunity for the Arctic nations of the United States, Canada, Russia, Norway, and Denmark while simultaneously exacerbating the significance of unsettled borders between these Arctic states. Compelled by rapid environmental change, countries are now mobilising to carve up as much land as possible in the Northern Circumpolar Region; often leading to complex overlapping claims and the potential for disagreement and conflict. The significance of the Arctic is also boosted by # the large numbers of fisheries, natural gas, oil, and rare earth minerals such as nickel, copper, uranium, and diamonds which are becoming increasingly open to exploitation as the ice melts away. Thus, as the Anthropocene continues to alter the physical geography of the Arctic circle, previous treaties, norms, and models of governance have become incompatible with the changing landscape and require a distinct and purposeful drawing of borders to avert tensions and promote a stable and cooperative environment in the High North.

    #cartographie #arctique #climat

  • Greece’s Energean reportedly in talks to develop Gaza’s natural gas fields
    Sources say bringing Gaza Marine into production would benefit Israel, too
    Ora Coren - Jun 25, 2018 10:25 AM - Haaretz.com
    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/business/greece-s-energean-reportedly-in-talks-to-develop-gaza-s-gas-1.6201931

    Energean, the Green energy company that is developing Israel’s offshore Karish and Tanin oil fields, is negotiating with the Palestinian Authority to develop fields offshore the Gaza Strip, sources in the local energy industry told TheMarker on Sunday.

    The sources said that the discussions have revolved around the commercial aspects of Energean’s taking over development of the fields after Royal Dutch Shell said in March it was giving up its stake in the undeveloped license.

    Energean declined to comment. “Developing Karish and exploring the blocks adjacent to it are our highest priorities. We avoid commenting on rumors concerning our operations and when there is something to announce we will do so officially,” the company said.

    Located about 30 kilometers off the Gaza coast, Gaza Marine has long been seen as a golden opportunity for the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority to join the Mediterranean gas bonanza, providing a major source of income to reduce its reliance on foreign aid.

    However, no work advanced on the field amid repeated wars with Israel, the blockade and ongoing rivalry between Hamas and the PA over control of Gaza. Shell had been struggling to find a buyer for its 55% stake in Gaza Marine, which it took over as part of its acquisition of BG Group in 2016.

    With Shell’s exit, the Palestine Investment Fund, a sovereign wealth fund, remains the sole shareholder. The field is estimated to hold over 30 to 35 billion cubic meters of natural gas, the equivalent of Spain’s consumption in 2016.

    Israel’s Energy Ministry has reportedly been kept abreast of the talks, but refused on Sunday to comment on them. Any development of the field would require Israel’s approval, but at least one official said that Israel would benefit economically from it.

    “The matter has been under discussion in the government for a long time. If they develop the Palestinian reservoir and it’s connected to Israel it would create competition for Tamar,” said one source, referring to Israel’s single gas field now in operation, a monopoly that has been the source of chronic controversy.

    “It would also reduce the burden on Israel Electric Corporation, which today is supplying power to Gaza,” said the source, who asked not to be named. “It’s a small field, but the Gaza power plant has minimal needs. So whoever develops [Gaza Marine] will also want to sell Gaza gas to Israel.”

    The source said that converting electricity generation to clean natural gas would also reduce air pollution in Gaza and ensure a more reliable energy supply to the enclave, which now gets only a few hours of power daily.

    The only problem – and the source said it could be a fatal one – is that the PA would be entitled to royalties from the gas.

    Although Gaza Marine is small, the gas doesn’t lie deep beneath the seabed and development could probably be completed within three years.

    With reporting by Reuters.

    #GazàGaza