Tag: natural resources

With just ONE HOUR to decide, Zelensky REJECTS U.S. proposal for rare earth minerals in exchange for military aid

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has firmly rejected a U.S. proposal to grant Washington access to Ukraine’s rare earth mineral reserves in exchange for military aid, upping the stakes in an already complex geopolitical tug-of-war. According to reports from The Economist, The Washington Post, and Reuters, the proposal was first presented to Zelensky during a visit by U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent last week. Zelensky, however, has repeatedly deferred or outright rejected the deal, signaling a reluctance to cede control over Ukraine’s natural resources to foreign powers.

The proposed deal, which reportedly grants the U.S. rights to 50% of Ukraine’s mineral reserves, emerged during tense negotiations amid the ongoing conflict with Russia. U.S. President Donald Trump has openly stated that he wants Ukraine to “pay back” the estimated 300 billion in aid provided since 2022 by offering the equivalent of 500 billion worth of rare earth minerals. These minerals, which include lanthanum, cerium, and neodymium, are essential for technologies ranging from batteries and nuclear power to advanced weaponry.

Misaligned expectations and strategy

Zelensky’s refusal to sign the deal during the Munich Security Conference last weekend underscores a fundamental disconnect between Kyiv and Washington. While U.S. officials view the proposal as a means of recouping investments and securing long-term strategic interests, Zelensky is advocating for a more equitable partnership.

In October 2024, Zelensky unveiled his so-called “victory plan,” which included a proposal for joint use of Ukraine’s critical resources with the U.S., contingent on continued military assistance and strategic deterrence. However, at Munich, he emphasized that Ukraine was not yet ready to commit to such a deal, seeking better terms that align with the country’s sovereignty and economic interests.

“This is not about who gets what,” Zelensky reportedly told reporters at the conference. “It’s about creating a partnership that respects Ukraine’s independence and ensures a sustainable future for our people.”

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Mysterious Explosions Rock Russian Shadow Fleet Tanker Off Italian Coast

Two explosions rocked the hull of a Maltese-flagged oil tanker hauling Russian crude oil from Algeria while it was docked at the port of Savona in northwestern Italy late last week. Investigators have not ruled out the possibility that the “two loud bangs” were caused by explosive devices, as a section of the hull appeared to be “retracted inwards.”

Italian daily newspaper il Fatto Quotidiano reported that the oil tanker Seajewel, part of the Russian shadow fleet to circumvent Western sanctions, was hit by “two loud bangs” on Friday. The crew found a section of the hull “bent inwards.” 

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Zelenskiy Refuses To Sign Rare Earth Deal With Trump, Ukrainian Official Mocks, “We Will Send Eggs”

The Washington Post reports that although Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy refused to sign a deal with the United States for $500B in rare earth minerals for the hundreds of billion in aid provided by America for the Ukrainian armed forces, a Ukrainian official mocked the offer, and said Ukraine would send eggs to help Americans.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky rejected a Trump administration request this past week that Kyiv hand over 50 percent of its mineral resources — an extraordinary demand that could significantly overshadow the value of aid that has been sent to Ukraine, wrote WaPo.

“We can consider how to distribute profits when security guarantees are clear. So far, I have not seen that in the document,” he told reporters at an annual gathering of U.S. and European security elite.

“Senior Ukrainian official jokes that to maintain U.S. support, Ukraine would even send a massive shipment of eggs, noting the country’s surplus and rising U.S. prices.”

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Is Trump’s Plan To Take Greenland To Control Arctic Shipping Lanes?

Donald Trump’s recent flirtations with acquiring Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal are not new ideas. They all relate to a single strategic objective: controlling shipping lanes between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

The US has long been a champion of “freedom of navigation”, using military force to police the world’s seaways, from the South China Sea to the Straits of Hormuz.  Although the US has never ratified the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), it consistently enforces its principles worldwide.

As Arctic seas ice continues to recede, opening the Northwest Passage (NWP) and the Northern Sea Route(NSR) for longer periods each year, international access to these shipping routes is becoming an ever more pressing issue, as these Arctic routes offer significantly shorter transit between Europe and East Asia than routes through the Panama or Suez canals.

Moreover, the economic and geopolitical implications of Arctic trade are staggering. Shorter and more cost-effective shipping routes will reshape the balance of global trade, and control over these routes will dictate economic flow, energy transportation, and even military positioning, given the critical role of seaborne logistics in global defense strategies. The viability of the Arctic as a major shipping region also brings with it economic opportunities in tourism, fisheries, and natural resource extraction, including oil and rare earth minerals.

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Treasury Targets Iran’s Oil Network In New Sanctions As Trump Stuns By Talking Deal

President Donald Trump has been notoriously hawkish on Iran, as have some of his top national security officials, which is why it was surprising and refreshing for his rhetoric to take a different track in Wednesday statements. Responding to reports that the US and Israel are preparing scenarios to attack Iran and its nuclear sites, Trump stated Wednesday that these reports are “greatly exaggerated” and said that making a deal would be preferable instead.

“I want Iran to be a great and successful Country, but one that cannot have a Nuclear Weapon,” the president wrote on Truth Social. “I would much prefer a Verified Nuclear Peace Agreement, which will let Iran peacefully grow and prosper. We should start working on it immediately, and have a big Middle East Celebration when it is signed and completed. God Bless the Middle East!” Trump added.

During his first administration, Trump unilaterally pulled the United States out of the JCPOA nuclear deal with Iran in 2018, which had been implemented during the Obama administration, and involved the other P5+1 countries of China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, as well as the European Union.

He also dropped a surprise bombshell upon signing the new executive order to reimpose “maximum pressure” on the Islamic Republic, though it’s been woefully underreported in the media: 

“There are many people at the top ranks of Iran that do not want to have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said in the Oval Office.

Still, Trump claimed when he signed it that he was “unhappy” to do it – perhaps revealing it as leverage and part of his big stick approach which can induce a better deal down the road.

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Trump To Restore ‘Max Pressure’ On Iran With EO Aimed At Driving Its ‘Oil Exports To Zero’

It’s long been anticipated and expected, but now it’s happening within just the first couple weeks of the new administration alongside Trump’s threat to strangle the Russian economy by orchestrating a global oil price collapse (perhaps a likely bluff meant to gain leverage at the negotiating table, however)…

President Donald Trump will sign executive order on Tuesday restoring “maximum pressure” on Iran, Reuters is reporting, citing a US official. This is with the intended aim of thwarting all paths of the Islamic Republic toward a nuclear weapon.

The US official also cited Iran’s “malign influence” in the Mideast region and de facto state of war with Israel, including support for regional militants who attack Israeli territory and interests.

“The official told Reuters that Trump’s directive orders the US Treasury Secretary to impose ‘maximum economic pressure’ on Iran, including sanctions and enforcement mechanisms on those violating existing sanctions. The directive is aimed at denying Iran ‘all paths to a nuclear weapon’ and countering ‘Iran’s malign influence’ according to the official.”

Crucially, there’s this line in the breaking Reuters report:

The US Secretary of State will modify or rescind existing sanctions waivers and cooperate with the treasury to implement a campaign “aimed at driving Iran’s oil exports to zero,” the official added.

Trump famously unilaterally withdrew the United States from the Iran nuclear deal on May 8, 2018 – which had initially been implemented under Obama in 2015.

WTI bounced about $2.00 in very short order on the fresh Reuters headline and newswires…

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Russia races for Ukranian mineral wealth before a potential ceasefire

Russia has spent the past five months swallowing up ever bigger tracts of Ukrainian coal, lithium, and uranium in the Donbass. Yet Western politicians still cling to the belief that they will be able to tap these resources to repay Ukraine’s ever mounting pile of debt. This is economic madness.

In the summer of 2024, most Western politico-military commentators were predicting that Russia was focussed on storming the strategically important military hub of Pokrovsk in Donetsk. Russian troops had advanced slowly, inexorably westward in a straight line following the bloody attritional battle for Avdiivka which was captured in February 2024.

But from August, Russian tactics shifted. First from the south of Donetsk they stormed Vuhledar, literally translated as “Gift of Coal,” a site of significant reserves, capturing it on October 1. That opened the way to swallow up large swaths of land in the south. Following the apparent encirclement of Velyka Novosilka in the past two days, one of Ukraine’s three licensed blocks of extractable lithium is now within short reach in Shevchenko.

Russian armed forces skirted Pokrovsk, instead battling through Selydove and in a straight line for about 20 miles, capturing a Uranium mine in a village called Shevchenko (not the same Shevchenko where the lithium is located). In recent weeks, Russian forces have taken Ukraine’s most important mine for coking coal in Pishchane and two related coking coal shafts in Udachne and Kotlyne. Together, these mines alone had produced the coking coal for 65% of Ukraine’s steel production. There are now fears that Ukrainian steel production could plummet to 10% of its prewar level in 2025.

Since President Trump was elected in November, and the prospect of an enforced ceasefire grew brighter, Russia’s advance has progressively accelerated. Today it is on the verge of completing its capture of the coal-rich bastion of Toretsk, the only town on the line of contact that hadn’t moved since 2014.

That’s bad news for Ukraine, not just because of a potential loss of further territory.

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Alaska Natives say Biden’s last act against oil and gas makes them more eager for Trump’s return

With only a few days remaining in his presidency, Joe Biden took one more parting shot at the oil and gas industry — and Alaska Natives — Thursday. The Department of Interior recommended that approximately 3 million more acres in Alaska’s 23-million acre National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A) region be protected from development. The announcement also provides direction for additional protections for impacts to “subsistence use,” which are areas used by Alaska Natives for traditional fishing and hunting. 

“This is just another slap in the face as Biden heads out the door. It was always about pushing his radical agenda and propping up his eco-elitist friends,” Larry Behrens, communications director for Power the Future, an energy advocacy group, told Just the News.

Indigenous voices

While presented as an expansion of protections for Alaska Native traditions, native communities in the North Slope have long been critical of the Biden-Harris administration’s attacks on oil and gas in the region, which they say provide needed economic development. Besides the jobs the industry provides, the tax revenues support infrastructure development in an area that previously had little. 

“The Biden administration is selectively citing Indigenous voices, while ignoring wide swaths of the North Slope Iñupiat, and fails to understand the implications of this announcement. Instead, it listened to voices that agreed with its policy agenda to justify its actions while ignoring the overwhelming majority of North Slope residents and locally elected leaders who opposed today’s decision,” Nagruk Harcharek, President of the Voice of Arctic Iñupiat (VOICE), said in a statement. 

The VOICE, which represents 21 communities and companies in the North Slope, spent years trying to gain an audience with Biden’s Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, only to have her continually ignore their requests. Finally in June, Haaland met with representatives of the VOICE.

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‘We Are in Serious Trouble’: Speaker Johnson Reveals Biden Didn’t Know He Signed Executive Order Banning Natural Gas Exports

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) raised concerns about who was really in charge at the White House for the last four years after revealing that Joe Biden wasn’t aware he had signed an important executive order pausing liquid natural gas exports to Europe.

In an interview with The Free Press on Friday, Johnson explained he had the revelation Biden hadn’t been in charge for awhile when, in private meeting with the puppet president in January 2024, Biden admitted he didn’t know he had signed the EO several weeks earlier.

“He’s in the twilight years of his life. He obviously has not been in charge for some time, and I know this by personal observation and now the whole world knows it, and it’s been very concerning to me over the last year and half since I’ve been Speaker,” Johnson told journalist Bari Weiss.

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An independent energy expert explains how the UK’s “Net Zero” strategy will result in blackouts by 2030 – how the solution is nuclear and how natural gas could have reduced bills for decades

The UK plan is to shut down natural gas and so remove the back up to intermittent “renewables”.

Gas and nuclear rely on turbines rotating at 3,000 rpm to produce 50 cycles – renewables produce direct current – requiring an adjustment to convert to the alternating current used by the grid.

From here:

Gas powered electricity accounts for at leas 50% at all times. The Marxist lunatics want to turn it off by 2030.

Here is a 47-minute video:

Will blackouts come to Britain?

On 8 January 2025, wind provided just 2.5 GW (out of the claimed 17 GW) and imports of electricity from overseas interconnectors could only provide 5.7 GW – demand was for 47 GW.

Loss of load probability was 29% – it is usually zero – meaning power blackouts were possible.

NESO = National Energy System Operator – a quasi-autonomous non-government organisation – QANGO – formed when the Marxist Labour government bought out the grid assets from National Grid plc – with taxpayers money a few months ago.

Demark had to defer maintenance in order to supply 700 MW (not GW) from Demark – thy dd the UK a favour – the Danes were under no compulsion to send the electricity over.

All about “where did the reserves come from and how much back-up is available?”

Prices on 8 January 2025 reached £5,500 per MW – normally 120-150 per MW – a power company made a few million pounds in a few hours – why would not ALL power companies take advantage of the price?

Don’t forget, the flip side, if the power from wind turbines is not needed, “curtailment fees” are paid to the wind turbine operator – for NOT producing energy!

The YouTube write-up says this:

“Did the UK only narrowly avoid a blackout last week? Freddie Sayers is joined by energy analyst Kathryn Porter to break down the National Grid numbers and find out how Net Zero might cause blackouts by 2030.”

The solution is to get KEPCO (South Korean Electricity Company) to build 8 nuclear power stations in the UK over the next decade and let everyone make out like bandits!

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