It’s believed that a US-Iran war would disrupt the flow of Middle Eastern oil and, as such, should be avoided at all costs. With US oil futures trading in the negative, has the risk of such a war suddenly become attractive?

This is really bad. A total collapse of oil prices.

NEW YORK (AP) — Oil prices plunged below zero on Monday as demand for energy collapses amid the coronavirus pandemic and traders don’t want to get stuck owning crude with nowhere to store it.

Earlier, US President Donald Trump said during a press briefing that he had held a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Riyadh's King Salman. The phone talks followed the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries's (OPEC) discussions on a deal for new oil cuts.

Donald Trump called Russian president Vladimir Putin on Monday to discuss plunging oil prices that are wreaking havoc on America’s shale oil industry. The two leaders talked briefly about the coronavirus pandemic but quickly switched to Trump’s real concern which is oil production.

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Gasoline prices at some Cleveland gas stations have dipped below one dollar per gallon over the past 24 hours, reaching as low as 67.9 cents Monday night at one station on Cleveland’s West Side.

A world increasingly in lockdown over the coronavirus crisis and the oil price war set off between Saudi Arabia and Russia have brought crude prices down more than 65% year-to-date.
In America's shale country, budgets have been slashed, capital investment put on hold, and workers laid off. In the last two weeks alone, 59 rigs have been put out of service.
"We see in this coming month of April what could be a 20 million barrel a day decline in oil demand. It's unprecedented," Dan Yergin of IHS Markit told CNBC.

A pipeline carrying gas between Turkey and Iran exploded at the Gurbulak border gate, on the Turkish side of the border with Iran, on Tuesday.

US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed on Monday to have energy officials from both countries discuss the dire state of the global oil market, the Kremlin said, according to Reuters.

Trump and Putin discussed the matter over the phone on Monday.

This month has seen a spectacular oil price crash the likes of which we haven't seen in decades.

The oil price war and subsequent crash have had devastating effects on U.S. shale, which was already struggling with diminishing profit margins. “Few U.S. shale firms can withstand prolonged oil price war,” Reuters proclaimed last week. “For the last five years, U.S. shale oil producers have been battling suppliers for lower costs and running equipment and crews hard to drive drilling costs down by about $20 a barrel,” the article reports. “The oil market rout last week, however, has left most shale firms facing prices below their costs of production.”

With West Texas Intermediate below $30 a barrel and Saudi Arabia’s plans to keep pumping as much as it can for as long as it can, the U.S. oil industry is bracing for job losses that could end up in five-figure territory. “A sustained drop in oil prices would cost the sector 50,000-75,000 jobs if employment returned to its low from a few years ago,” the chief economist of PGIM Fixed Income, Nathan Sheets, told CNBC this week.

Donald Trump made one of the biggest mistakes of his presidency in the spring of 2017, when he offered an unconditional embrace to the then-emerging 31-year-old ruler of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, and adopted his agenda of aggressively confronting Iran. Three years later, as Trump grapples with the greatest crisis he has faced, that choice is costing him dearly.

March 17, 2020
12:01 am
Scott Ritter

Russia and Saudi Arabia are engaged in an oil price war that has sent shockwaves around the world, causing the price of oil to tumble and threatening the financial stability, and even viability, of major international oil companies.

This will also destroy the Petrodollar that Nixon and Kissinger gave us. It will crash the so called American Empire,which will be a good thing for Americans and for the Planet!

Moscow’s understanding of the OPEC+ deal was that in return for Russia’s help in propping up the oil prices the Gulf Arabs would reinvest some of the proceeds in Russia (and make up for sanctions) but that didn’t really happen

After the latest round of U.S. sanctions against Russia was signed into law last year, Russian president Vladimir Putin warned that Russia would retaliate at a time and place of its own choosing. Wrecking the OPEC-Plus arrangement and provoking a demolition-derby price war with Saudi Arabia may seem to be an odd and puzzling way to respond, but there may be a method to that madness. I believe that the Kremlin is gambling that, by year’s end, it will be able to not only push back against the United States but also to reconstruct its partnership with Saudi Arabia.

Last week, OPEC called on Russian oil companies to lower production in response to reduced demand from China and a Eurozone bound for recession. They said no.

Just like that, oil took a nosedive, losing 25% of its value on Monday. The price of a barrel of oil closed at $33 dollars, compared to $45 late last week.

For the last decade, America's rise as an oil exporting power thanks to the expensive shale exploiting process has allowed neocons to cripple the economies of Venezuela, Iran and Russia.

A mild winter in the northern hemisphere, the COVID-19 outbreak, and now the price war that Saudi Arabia declared last weekend have combined to produce an all-new oil price crisis just four years after the last one. And things might get worse before they get better.

U.S. shale growth is about to decline, becoming an immediate victim of the Saudi-Russian price war.

OPEC+ is no more, after a torrid 24 hours in which Russia overturned the balance of power in the oil world, leaving the members of OPEC+ dazed and confused, shocking Saudi which now faces social unrest with the price of oil far below Riyadh's budget, and - in a repeat of the Thanksgiving 2014 OPEC massacre - sending oil prices plunging by the most since the financial crisis.

And now, Bloomberg has the stunning backstory behind Friday's announcement that Russia is quitting its output deal with OPEC and its allies, after last week's Vienna summit meant to back a proposal by oil producers to cut output collapsed, causing a 10% plunge in oil prices, with some markets seeing their biggest one-day falls since the financial crisis.

Next on their agenda.....world war!

The Sunday futures fiasco started off on the back foot, with virtually every risk asset that is not nailed down puking with a force unseen since the financial crisis. It has only gotten worse since.

There is real power in the word “No.”

In fact, I’d argue that it is the single most powerful word in any language.

In the midst of the worst market meltdown in a dozen years which has at its source problems within global dollar-funding markets, Russia found itself in the position to exercise the Power of No.

Multiple overlapping crises are happening worldwide right now and they all interlock into a fabric of chaos.

BP's catastrophic Deepwater Horizon disaster released millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico and devastated wildlife.

But new research reveals it was worse than previously feared and an invisible chemical in the oil that is toxic to animals spread well beyond its known footprint.

A study found that even when visible oil had been cleaned up, invisible toxic chemicals called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) lingered for weeks.

These reached beyond the limitations of the US government's measures to stop the oil spreading and were found as far afield as the East Florida shelf and Texas.

The conflict in the Eastern Mediterranean is dormant but could flare up at any moment, with serious consequences for North Africa, West Asia and Southern Europe. The militarization of the region and deep-rooted political disputes give ample reason for concern.

In the current scheme of things, the Eastern Mediterranean is sitting atop a dormant volcano. Developments in other hot spots in the Middle East, such as the carnage in Syria, the conflict and humanitarian crisis in Yemen, the Saudi-Iranian standoff in the Gulf and the civil war in Libya, have diverted the attention away from a latent yet perilous conflict. If triggered, such a conflict could have tremendous ramifications for countries in North Africa, West Asia and Southern Europe as well as for the stability of shipping transportation and energy markets worldwide.

The discovery in late 2010 of the huge natural gas bonanza off Israel’s Mediterranean shores triggered other neighboring countries to look more closely at their own waters. The results revealed that the entire eastern Mediterranean is swimming in huge untapped oil and gas reserves. That discovery is having enormous political, geopolitical as well as economic consequences. It well may have potential military consequences too.

Preliminary exploration has confirmed similarly impressive reserves of gas and oil in the waters off Greece, Turkey, Cyprus and potentially, Syria.

In 2017, soon after Trump took office, Aramco, the Saudi owned oil conglomerate, opened offices in Deir Ezzor province in Syria.

Under the protection of both ISIS and the United States Army, Aramco began an exploration of 12 new oil and gas deposits recognized by American SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) military satellites, retasked for this purpose.

These oil and gas fields represent significant finds, equaling the Kirkuk field in Iraq and the largest of Saudi Arabia’s oil finds.

Similarly, as early as 2012, massive oil and gas deposits were discovered in the Mediterranean Sea, some off Gaza, others off Cyprus, but the largest traversed inland, into Syria, across Latakia and Idlib Provinces, areas now held by ISIS and al Qaeda with US support.

The flow of oil traveling from Latin America to China has stopped in the wake of the deadly outbreak of the coronavirus that has sunk oil prices to three-month lows, with no oil making its way from Brazil or Colombia to China since last week, according to Bloomberg.

Makes sense now. Syria has more oil and natural gas than you can shake a stick at. New discoveries. New fields.

The Saudi Arabian oil company, Aramco, is now hiring oil workers throughout Deir Ezzor Province inside Syria as part of a joint effort, nominally with an unknown American entity and with full partnership with both ISIS and the United States Army.

Thousands of unemployed Syrian engineers and oil workers are being asked to apply for jobs paying $3000 per month.

No one knows who they will be working for.This is the story we will be examining, how it began and where it is going now.

In 2017, soon after Trump took office, Aramco, the Saudi owned oil conglomerate, opened offices in Deir Ezzor province in Syria.

Under the protection of both ISIS and the United States Army, Aramco began an exploration of 12 new oil and gas deposits recognized by American SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) military satellites, retasked for this purpose.

Despite the fact that United States President Donald Trump declared a truce between the U.S. and China in their more-than-a-year-long trade war in Switzerland this week, we shouldn’t expect to see a quick economic turnaround. The problem, as explained by The Hill in their article “Trump's 'phase one' deal with China won't undo trade war damage,” is that “the positive results of the deal remain on paper and in the future, while the damage caused by the bruising U.S.-China trade war will continue indefinitely.”

America's second largest oil company has evacuated all of its American oil workers from Iraq following last week's U.S. airstrike in Baghdad.

“Great nations do not fight endless wars,” Trump declared in his State of the Union address just last year. “Our brave troops have now been fighting in the Middle East for almost 19 years. In Afghanistan and Iraq, nearly 7,000 American heroes have given their lives. More than 52,000 Americans have been badly wounded. We have spent more than $7 trillion in the Middle East.”

Yet Iran has always been the unprincipled exception to Trump’s skepticism of regime change. In his zeal to reverse Obama’s legacy, he risks repeating Obama’s folly. For the 44th president also owed his election to the fact that he recognized Iraq was a “dumb war.” He left office with the U.S. mired in more wars of choice than before, including interventions in Libya, Yemen and Syria that have to varying degrees kept smoldering under Trump.

By the twisted logic of Imperial Washington you could say the Iranians were asking for it. After all, they had the nerve to locate their country right in the middle of 35 U.S. military bases!

Then again, your saner angels may ask: What in the hell is Washington doing with a massive military footprint in a region and in a string of backwater countries that have virtually no bearing on homeland security, safety and liberty?

Operation Ajax (1953) (officially TP-AJAX) was an covert operation by the United States CIA in collaborating with the Pahlavi dynasty, to overthrow the elected government of Iran and Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh and consolidate the power of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.

Operation Ajax Summary

Although they were locked in a convoluted struggle concerning the impeachment of President Trump, Republicans and Democrats in the Senate laid down their arms in order to vote, in quasi-unanimity, for the imposition of heavy sanctions on the companies participating in the construction of North Stream 2, the doubling of the gas pipeline which delivers Russian gas to Germany across the Baltic Sea. The main victims were the European companies which had helped finance the 11 billion dollar project with the Russian company Gazprom. The project is now 80 % finished. The Austrian company Omy, British/Dutch Royal Dutch Shell, French Engie, German companies Uniper and Wintershall, Italian Saipem and Swiss Allseas are also taking part in the laying of the pipeline.

Shale drilling does not produce as much oil and gas as the industry promised, raising questions about the productivity, profitability and, ultimately, the longevity of the fracking boom.

The Wall Street Journal published a damning investigation into the productivity of thousands of shale wells, finding that as time has passed, oil and gas production from shale wells has proved to be more disappointing than previously thought. The report adds more evidence to the conclusion that the WSJ came to nearly a year ago, which raised serious questions about problems endemic to shale drilling.

Does Mr. Trump really not grasp that his sanctions left and right – and now on the Russian-German gas pipeline Nord Stream 2 – is committing economic suicide, not for himself, of course, but for the United States? He attempts to punish not only Russia, but all the corporations, construction companies, Russian, German and from everywhere, which collaborated and are still working on the final stretch of the1,250 km pipeline.

Although they were locked in a convoluted struggle concerning the impeachment of President Trump, Republicans and Democrats in the Senate laid down their arms in order to vote, in quasi-unanimity, for the imposition of heavy sanctions on the companies participating in the construction of North Stream 2, the doubling of the gas pipeline which delivers Russian gas to Germany across the Baltic Sea. The main victims were the European companies which had helped finance the 11 billion dollar project with the Russian company Gazprom.

The project is now 80 % finished. The Austrian company Omy, British/Dutch Royal Dutch Shell, French Engie, German companies Uniper and Wintershall, Italian Saipem and Swiss Allseas are also taking part in the laying of the pipeline.

The U.S. crossed the Rubicon this week. And I’m not talking about the ridiculous impeachment of President Trump for doing his job.

I’m talking about passing the NDAA with provisions to sanction ‘from hell’ anyone associated with completion of the Nordstream 2 pipeline. The U.S. is now openly dismissive as a matter of law any ally or partner who engages in economic activity it disapproves of.

Perhaps it’s not evident to anyone who is not an oil-worker living in America’s biggest shale towns, but signs of the shale slowdown predicted by many analysts, and the EIA itself, are already surfacing in the form of vacant hotels, a dip in home prices, a noticeable reduction in overtime hours for oil workers, and a change in standards for hiring.

Texas’ Permian basin lost 400 jobs in the first 10 months of this year, according to the Dallas Morning News, and fracking contractor Superior Energy Services Inc. alone announced in late November that it had cut 112 jobs from its Permian Pumpco unit.

An explosive expert was arrested this morning in Greenville, North Carolina after he set more than 5 tons of TNT in the wrong building and blew it up.

The impeachment of Trump didn't get serious until he refused to attack Iran over the drone shootdown.

What a War Whore this individual is. An attack on Iran will be the beginning of the end for the US,military wise and economically. The dollar will be the first casualty. Oil prices will skyrocket and a worldwide depression and world war will ensue.

Months upon months of US military buildups in the Middle East, all around Iran, combined with near-constant threats to attack Iran outright have sure been raising regional tensions, but according to US Centcom commander Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, it is not believed to be deterring Iran.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) has staked his country’s future on selling a 5% stake in Saudi Aramco, the most valuable asset it has.

And it is his hope that this IPO will help finance the country’s turnaround making it less dependent on oil revenue.

It’s been trying to do this for three years and was ready to pull the trigger when the Houthi rebels in North Yemen pulled theirs and damaged major Aramco facilities at Ab Qaiq in August.

A lot of big names will report third quarter earnings this week, and the results are expected to be worse than the same period in 2018.

The timing comes as the shale sector is facing somewhat of a reckoning. After years of price volatility – with more downs than ups – oil prices have failed to return even remotely close to pre-2014 levels. For several years, shale E&Ps took on debt and issued new equity, promising investors that they would profit both from a rebound in prices and from rapid production growth.

A suggestion by President Donald Trump to send U.S. Big Oil companies in Syria to manage its oil fields has sparked outrage among both energy and legal experts, Reuters reports.

Russia makes deals. We kill people. The US will become isolated politically and economically by it's stupid and murderous policies. The American people will suffer tremendously and already are due to our criminal and stupid leadership.

Having secured pivotal economic and political influence in recent months with Iraq (both north and south), Syria, Iran (and by dint of this, the rest of the countries constituting the Shia arc of power, including Lebanon, Jordan, and Yemen), Russia appears to be in the process of ‘completing the set’. Last week saw a range of done deals and hints at more secretive deals that point to Russia taking full advantage of the power vacuum created in the Middle East by U.S.

The Russians own the rights to producing Syrian oil. They are getting ready to assert those rights and give Trump a big slap in the face.
The Dog in the Manger will soon be kicked out.

In accordance with an energy cooperation framework agreement signed in late January, Russia will have exclusive rights to produce oil and gas in Syria.

The agreement goes significantly beyond that, stipulating the modalities of the rehabilitation of damaged rigs and infrastructure, energy advisory support, and training a new generation of Syrian oilmen. Still, the main international aspect and the key piece of this move is the final and unconditional consolidation of Russian interests in the Middle East.

Russia, citing satellite imagery, says the United States has been smuggling Syrian oil to other countries under the protection of its troops before and after the defeat of the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group in the region.

Moscow released photos it claims show the real reason the US wants to keep troops in eastern Syria: to protect the illegal oil trade and reap large profits.

On Saturday, the Russian Defense Ministry published aerial images of what it said is clear proof of Syrian crude oil being massively smuggled outside of the country “under the strong protection of the US.”

Part One: The Banking Houses of Morgan and Rockefeller

The Four Horsemen of Banking (Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and Wells Fargo) own the Four Horsemen of Oil (Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch/Shell, BP and Chevron Texaco); in tandem with Deutsche Bank, BNP, Barclays and other European old money behemoths.

But their monopoly over the global economy does not end at the edge of the oil patch.

According to company 10K filings to the SEC, the Four Horsemen of Banking are among the top ten stock holders of virtually every Fortune 500 corporation.[1]

Iran's President Hassan Rouhani has said there is video footage of an Iranian tanker being hit by at least two rockets in the Red Sea off the coast of Saudi Arabia.

"It wasn't an act by terrorists, by an individual, a group. It was done by a government," Rouhani said. "It was a hostile and treacherous act."

This is the greatest pleasure of a thriller published this summer, in which a former intelligence analyst imagines what happens when Israel attacks Iran with well-laid plans, and a global humanitarian and environmental nightmare, and near-world-war, ensue. The book puts the lie to such cheerleading.

Tehran has confirmed that an Iranian-owned oil tanker, the Sinopa, was attacked in the Red Sea, and that the mysterious strike caused an oil spill. The vessel was reportedly hit by two missiles.

The US Military is a Great Threat to our Future

It also leaves behind toxic pollution from burn pits and weapons such as depleted uranium (DU). The use of DU violates international law, including the Biological Weapons Convention. As described in David Swanson’s article about a new study, which documents the horrific impact of DU on newborns in Iraq,

“…every round of DU ammunition leaves a residue of DU dust on everything it hits, contaminating the surrounding area with toxic waste that has a half-life of 4.5 billion years, the age of our solar system, and turns every battlefield and firing range into a toxic waste site that poisons everyone in such areas.”

The drones and missiles the Houthi use are copies of Iranian designs assembled in Yemen with the help of Hizbullah experts from Lebanon. Four days ago a Houthi delegation visited Iran. During the visit Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for the first time publicly admitted that the Houthi have Iran's support:

"I declare my support for the resistance of Yemen's believing men and women ... Yemen’s people... will establish a strong government," state TV quoted Khamenei as saying in a meeting with the visiting chief negotiator of the Houthi movement Mohammed Abdul-Salam.

It is expected that these weapons, including new ones, will be used by the Houthis both on the territory of Yemen against the interventionist troops and local collaborators, as well as against infrastructure facilities in Saudi Arabia and the UAE (airports, military bases, ports, oil pipelines).

For Iran, the entire Yemeni war has become an excellent training ground, where in real combat conditions (via the hands of the Houthis) the latest samples of Iranian ballistic missiles, adjustable artillery shells, and reconnaissance and attack drone vehicles are being tested.

The Middle-East is literally exploding: the Houthis have delivered an extremely effective blow against Saudi oil production which (so they claim) has now dropped by 50% before bouncing back; there are persistent rumors that Russian Su-35S and S-400 has threatened to shoot down Israeli aircraft attacking Syria; Lebanon has declared that it will defend itself against Israeli attacks; Hezbollah has been threatening to deliver crippling strikes on Israel and even Israeli officials; Turkey has purchased Russian air defenses and says that if the USA refuses to deliver their F-35S, then Turkey will consider Su-35s and even maybe Su-57’s. Bibi Netanyahu tried to use Putin for his reelection campaign (well, he really is trying desperately to stay out of jail) but had to go home empty handed and, according to the JP, his mission was a failure.

Sanctions,Smanctions! Checkmate!

Amidst historic U.S. – Iran tensions, Beijing is doubling-down on its strategic partnership with Tehran, ignoring U.S. efforts to isolate the Islamic Republic from global markets. Following an August visit by Iran Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to Beijing, the two countries agreed to update a 25-year program signed in 2016, to include an unprecedented $400 billion of investment in the Iranian economy – sanctions be damned.

The U.S. thought it was cleverly choking the regime, but now it's clear that 'maximum pressure' goes both ways.
The Saturday attack on Saudi oil facilities, which took 5.7 million barrels of oil per day offline, is the escalation that wasn’t supposed to happen. Now that it has happened, we enter perilous new terrain.
In the meantime, Trump is in a tight spot of his own making, with neither escalation nor retrenchment looking to be attractive options. The president may have outsmarted himself this time.
The whole drama, in a nutshell, is just the old-fashioned hubris of the imperial power, issuing its edicts, and genuinely surprised when it encounters resistance, even though such resistance confirms for the wunderkinds their view of the enemy’s malevolence.

Is Trump trapped? That is the question of the hour.

This lover of Israel is raising on a busted flush.

President Trump announced Wednesday that he had ordered a “substantial increase” in sanctions on Iran.

“I have just instructed the Secretary of the Treasury to substantially increase Sanctions on the country of Iran!” he wrote on Twitter.

The move comes after Saturday’s drone strikes on oil facilities in Saudi Arabia, which the country said had disrupted about half of the kingdom's oil capacity, or 5% of the daily global oil supply.

US Defense Secretary Mike Esper said on Monday that the US military is preparing a response to the attack on major Saudi Arabia oil facilities, AFP reported.

Moscow has had its fill of Netanyahu. He’s openly mocking Trump at international forums, first offering to sell the U.S. Russia’s hypersonic missiles at the G-20 and then offering to sell S-400 missile defense systems to the Saudis to protect their people from outside actors.
All with tongue firmly implanted in cheek, but like with all good comedy a core of undeniable truth.
Things look bad for the alliance between the U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia, when your opponents are laughing at you openly. In that moment Putin exposed that the emperor truly was standing naked in front of the world.

Iran in its memo rejected involvement in offensives on the Saudi oil installations on Saturday, condemning US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other American officials' allegations.

The memo also warned that if any attack is launched against Iran, the Islamic Republic's reaction will be rapid and crushing and will likely target more extensive areas than the origin of the attack.

Yemen’s Ansarullah movement announced on Saturday that its drones had successfully attacked two oil plants in the heart of Saudi Arabia’s oil industry, stressing that the attacks were a firm response to Riyadh’s relentless bombardment of Yemen.

https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2019/09/18/606495/Iran-Saudi-Arabia-oil...

The Houthi armed forces spokesman claimed responsibility for today's attack:

This operation is one of the largest operations carried out by our forces in the depth of Saudi Arabia and came after a accurate intelligence operation and advance monitoring and cooperation of honorable and free men within the Kingdom.
The claim of cooperation by people in Saudi Arabia will make the Saudi rulers even more paranoid than they usually are. It may well be that the drones were launched from inside Saudi Arabia and that their launch point was far nearer to the target than is publicly assumed.

The devastating blitz on Saudi Arabia’s oil industry has led to a flurry of accusations from US officials blaming Iran. The reason for the finger-pointing is simple: Washington’s spectacular failure to protect its Saudi ally.
The Trump administration needs to scapegoat Iran for the latest military assault on Saudi Arabia because to acknowledge that the Houthi rebels mounted such an audacious assault on the oil kingdom’s heartland would be an admission of American inadequacy.

Things aren’t going well for the US, NATO, Israel, Riyadh, and their jihadist proxies in Yemen.

They’re losing endless war to Ansarullah Houthi rebels, their capabilities much more sophisticated than earlier believed.

Their explosive-laden drones and missiles are able to penetrate Saudi defenses effectively, damaging strategic targets, including kingdom oil fields, its soft underbelly super-wealth producing lifeline.

On Saturday, explosive-laden Houthi drones attacked two Saudi Aramco oil facilities, setting targets struck ablaze — the kingdom’s Abqaiq refinery (the world’s largest) and Khurais oil field.

Both attacks caused huge fires visible from outer space. The facilities are crucial world energy supply chain links.

It is a game changer all right. A couple more strikes like this and it will be the end of the House of Saud!

(CNN)The attack on the world's largest oil processing plant early Saturday morning is a dramatic escalation in the confrontation between Iran and Saudi Arabia -- even if the Iranians didn't fire the drones or missiles responsible.

Several projectiles struck the Abiqaiq plant, starting a series of fires that quickly took out nearly half Saudi's oil production -- 5% of the global daily output -- and sparking fears about the security of the world's oil supplies.
It's unclear when Abiqaiq, which is operated by Saudi giant Aramco, will be fully operational again.

By Olivia Rosane, EcoWatch

California officials ordered Chevron Friday “to take all measures” to stop a release that has spilled around 800,000 gallons of water and crude oil into a dry creek bed in Kern County, KQED reported.

The order, issued by the new acting head of the state’s Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR) Jason Marshall, also said the fossil fuel company had not done enough to stop the spills that had begun May 10...

Judge Lewis A. Kaplan has ordered that lawyer and activist Steven Donziger, who was fighting for Amazonian villagers, can be fined an egregious amount of $200,000 per day and to seize his passport for each day that he fails to turn over attorney-client privileged information...

By Elias Marat

In a particularly unnerving trend that has unfolded on both the Pacific and Atlantic coasts, hundreds of carcasses belonging to marine mammals such as whales and dolphins have been washing up on beaches in the United States, in what scientists are calling “unusual mortality events.”...

At least 279 dolphins have stranded across much of the U.S. Gulf Coast since Feb. 1, triple the usual number, and about 98 percent of them have died, scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Friday.

Scientists will investigate whether lingering effects from the 2010 BP oil spill and more immediate effects from low salinity because of freshwater flowing from high rivers and a Louisiana spillway contributed to the deaths, said Teri Rowles, coordinator for NOAA Fisheries' Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response Program.

BEIRUT, LEBANON (6:00 P.M.) – The Islamic Republic of Iran has allegedly deployed a massive naval contingent to the Persian Gulf, today, after the nation’s president, Hassan Rouhani, threatened to block the vital Strait of Hormuz.

Yet another reason to #KeepItInTheGround. A 14-year chronic oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico could surpass BP’s Deepwater Horizon spill as the largest offshore disaster in U.S. history, the Washington Post reported.The spill stems from a Taylor Energy-owned production platform located 12 miles off the coast of Louisiana that was toppled by an underwater mudslide caused by Hurricane Ivan in 2004.

Rather than take a meaningful step to divest from fossil fuel companies, the Democrats want to make certain they do not offend energy workers by going too far in combating destruction of the climate.

>>>

Climate change is a fact of life, as is not contested by defendants,” U.S. District Judge John Keenan wrote in a 23-page opinion. “But the serious problems caused thereby are not for the judiciary to ameliorate. Global warming and solutions thereto must be addressed by the two other branches of government.”...Chevron’s attorney Ted Boutrous, from Gibson Dunn, said that the judge “got it exactly right Trying to resolve a complex, global issue like climate change through litigation is ‘illogical,’ and would intrude on the powers of Congress and the executive branch to address these issues as part of the democratic process,” (FYI Boutrous is the lawyer who said that he will "represent pro bono anyone who Trump sues for exercising their free speech rights.")

Researchers have predicted the 'dead zone' - an area of low oxygen that can kill fish and marine life - in the Gulf of Mexico will soon be larger than the state of Connecticut.

The dead zone will cover about 6,620 square miles of the bottom of the continental shelf off Louisiana and Texas.

There are more than 500 dead zones around the world, but the one in the northern Gulf of Mexico is the second largest human-caused hypoxic (lacking oxygen) area in the world.

This is where the stumblers are being moved to. All the stories I have stumbled, over 110,000 articles are still available. There are tens of thousands of your stories I stumbled the last 7 years.
I will continue to put your stories up at Mix.com,but it will take some time to rebuild traffic and figure out the best way to do that with this new site.

PHILADELPHIA (CNN) – With every news alert or breaking story, our world seems to be pushed further and further into crisis. It is taking a serious toll on our environment but also on our mental health.

The world has always been stressful, but experiencing acute events occurring thousands of miles away is a new and challenging phenomenon. On any given day, it feels like the world is falling apart.

How can we brace for disaster and find the strength to withstand it? How will we adapt to our greater exposure to trauma? And will our mental health be sacrificed in the process?

Need a laugh this morning. John Wayne and The Magnificent Seven with Clint Eastwood save Planet Earth!

’The Alamo » is attacked by BUGS!
When John Wayne meets Paul Verhoeven…