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Russia is world’s 2nd biggest oil producer after US this year – Rosstat

July 28, 2021 by Leave a Comment

According to Rosstat data, Russia produced an average of 10.36 million barrels of oil daily in January-May 2021, while the average US output was 11.10 million barrels a day, making it the largest oil producer in the reporting period. Saudi Arabia came in third, with an average of 8.27 million barrels of oil per day.

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Oil accounted for 41.3% of Russia’s overall exports during the first five months of 2021. However, the country’s oil exports are down 16.9% compared to the previous reporting period, standing at 50.8 million tons. In total, Russia has produced 212.3 million tons of oil so far this year, which is a 6.2% decrease in annual terms.

The country’s oil output is expected to grow in the coming months following the agreement to boost oil production reached earlier this month by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its allies. 

Also on rt.com OPEC+ members agree to ramp up output by 400,000 barrels per day amid soaring oil prices

OPEC member states agreed to increase the daily oil supply starting in August, since prices have reached a three-year high amid increased demand and the global economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.

OPEC+ countries, including Russia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, will boost production by 400,000 barrels a day from August. Production is expected to be gradually increased until all of the output halted during the worst of the pandemic is restored.

For more stories on economy finance visit RT’s business section

Article source: https://www.rt.com/business/530435-russia-us-oil-output/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

Filed Under: Global Business

Russia ramps up its hydrogen energy ambitions

July 28, 2021 by Leave a Comment

With the development of a new working group, by Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, to coordinate hydrogen projects, Russia appears to be responding to international energy transition expectations for the coming years. 

Russia expects national demand to continue to rely heavily on oil and gas, meaning that much of its hydrogen production will be aimed towards export. With high levels of natural gas production, Russia is understandably interested in pursuing hydrogen production, as its neighboring European and Middle Eastern regions express their interest both for hydrogen development and importation over the next decade. 

Also on rt.com Russia invites Saudi Arabia to participate in hydrogen energy production

Russia plans to produce blue hydrogen, using carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology on its natural gas sites to produce the energy source. 

The working group consists of the presidents and vice-presidents of national gas firms Gazprom and Novatek, as well as representatives from the oil industry and several other national corporations and ministries. The group will be headed by Alexander Novak, Russia’s deputy prime minister. 

Gazprom has been interested in the potential uses of hydrogen for several years, including setting out a plan for hydrogen-powered trains by 2024. The firm is now suggesting that one of the two lines in its new Nord Stream 2 undersea gas pipeline project, connecting Russia and Germany, could be used to transport hydrogen in the 2030s. 

Russia eyes boosting its global market share of hydrogen by 20% in a decade Russia eyes boosting its global market share of hydrogen by 20% in a decade

The firm has recently signed agreements to look into the incorporation of CCS, ammonia production, and wind-power generation into its existing gas production sites. And oil companies Rosneft and Gazprom Neft are also offering their expertise, with experience in grey hydrogen production at their refineries. 

Building upon Russia’s hydrogen roadmap, the working group expects that hydrogen-producing facilities using CCS could be commissioned for as early as 2023. Green hydrogen could also be in the works, as the group intends to run trials on hydrogen production from water and other renewables. 

Since the creation of the working group this month, some companies have already announced plans for hydrogen production and use in the country. For example, the United Engine Corporation of Rostec (UEC) has stated its intention to develop power plants to support the utilization of hydrogen in the aviation sector.

Novak stated in June that Russia is aiming for a 20 percent share in the world’s hydrogen market, with the government expected to approve a hydrogen plan within the next two months. The plan is expected to offer various scenarios for Russian hydrogen production as well as potential export markets. 

Russia’s 2020 energy strategy, through 2034, presented a target of 200,000 tonnes of hydrogen exports by 2024, increasing this figure to 2 million tonnes by 2035. However, if demand surpasses expectations, Russia could develop its hydrogen industry much faster, in order to export significantly higher amounts of clean energy. 

Russia also expects to work closely with several other high-demand and production states in the development of a hydrogen industry over the next decade including Germany, France, Australia, Japan, South Korea, and Saudi Arabia. 

With a Deloitte report suggesting that hydrogen use in Europe’s transport sector will reach 50 million tonnes by 2050, and European industry could require 45 million tonnes by this date, many countries are diving into production plans, with Russia offering a vital bridge between Asia and Europe as the market expands. 

This article was originally published on Oilprice.com

Article source: https://www.rt.com/business/530369-russia-hydrogen-production-ambitions/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

Filed Under: Global Business

Covid Variant Adds to Worker Anxieties

July 28, 2021 by Leave a Comment

For much of the pandemic, Amazon has offered free on-site Covid testing for employees. It incorporated a variety of design features into warehouses to promote social distancing. But a worker at an Amazon warehouse in Oregon, who did not want to be named for fear of retribution, said there had been a gradual reduction in safety features, like the removal of physical barriers to enforce social distancing.

Kelly Nantel, an Amazon spokeswoman, said that the company had removed barriers in some parts of warehouses where workers don’t spend much time in proximity, but that it had kept up distancing measures in other areas, like break rooms.

“We’re continuously evaluating the temporary measures we implemented in response to Covid-19 and making adjustments in alignment with public health authority guidance,” Ms. Nantel said. She added that the company would “begin ramping down our U.S. testing operations by July 30, 2021.”

At REI, the outdoor equipment and apparel retailer, four workers in different parts of the country, who asked not to be named for fear of workplace repercussions, complained that the company had recently enacted a potentially more punitive attendance policy it had planned to put in place just before the pandemic. Under the policy, part-time workers who use more than their allotted sick days are subject to discipline up to termination if the absences are unexcused. The workers also said they were concerned that many stores — after restricting capacity until this spring — had become more and more crowded.

Halley Knigge, a spokeswoman for REI, said that under its new policies the company allowed part-time workers to accrue sick leave for the first time and that the disciplinary policy was not substantively new but merely reworded. The stores, she added, continue to restrict occupancy to no more than 50 percent capacity, as they have since June 2020.

Workers elsewhere in the retail industry also complained about the growing crowds and difficulty of distancing inside stores like supermarkets. Karyn Johnson-Dorsey, a personal shopper from Riverside, Calif., who finds work on Instacart but also has her own roster of clients, said it had been increasingly difficult to maintain a safe distance from unmasked customers since the state eased masking and capacity restrictions in mid-June.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/28/business/economy/coronavirus-delta-workers.html

Filed Under: Economy News

Trump Is Gone, but the Media’s Misinformation Challenge Is Still Here

July 27, 2021 by Leave a Comment

Mr. Quinn came to this decision after realizing that Mr. Trump, though not the first politician to spin or mislead, had altered an incentive structure for politicians interacting with the news media that had previously discouraged dishonesty.

“What Donald Trump did, it created a whole bunch of pretenders, where the truth is not important and they don’t care,” he said in an interview today.

“We all have best practices,” he added of news outlets, “and he used it to spread falsehoods left and right.”

Now, Mr. Quinn urges his reporters to seek context. He offered an example from this month, in which a reporter covered a forum in which the Republican Senate candidate J.D. Vance repeatedly referred to illegal immigration as “dirty.” The reporter produced an analysis of how Mr. Vance had transformed in a few years from being someone who would have condemned such language.

“Four years ago,” Mr. Quinn said, describing his newspaper’s own evolution, “we would have had a story: ‘J.D. Vance came to Cleveland, called immigrants “dirty.”’”

This approach has its own drawbacks, including opening up the newspaper to allegations of partisan bias. But to many industry leaders, the days of “he said, she said” without the weight of the journalist’s judgment are long gone.

Joan Donovan, the research director of the Shorenstein Center at Harvard, has advocated a strategy called “strategic silence,” urging news organizations not to give platforms to certain ideas. But while that might be sensible with a fringe white supremacist group, she said in an interview, a different stance is necessary with prominent politicians. She suggested unearthing the motives behind politicians’ false narratives.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/27/us/politics/trump-false-claims-media.html

Filed Under: Media Business

The chairman of a House coronavirus subcommittee vows to investigate eviction practices by corporate landlords.

July 27, 2021 by Leave a Comment

Jim Baker, the executive director of the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, a nonprofit that has been tracking eviction filings in a handful of large counties, said that corporate landlords, rather than so-called mom-and-pop landlords, had accounted for the majority of eviction filings. Corporate landlords had filed at least 75,000 evictions across the half-dozen large counties the group has tracked since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention imposed a nationwide eviction moratorium in September, Mr. Baker said.

The moratorium is credited with cutting the number of eviction actions filed by landlords roughly in half, according to the Eviction Lab at Princeton University.

But the effects have been mixed: State and local courts have been divided on the details of the moratorium, with some ruling that landlords could file eviction actions for nonpayment of rent and were prohibited only from removing such tenants. Other courts have permitted evictions if they are for violations of a housing complex’s rules and regulations.

With the moratorium expiring this week, housing advocates estimate that roughly 11 million adult renters are vulnerable to being evicted because they are behind on their rent. Nearly a half-million people are behind in New York City alone, according to an analysis of census data by the National Equity Atlas, a research group associated with the University of Southern California.

Housing advocates fear there will be a rush of eviction filings once the moratorium ends. Some are concerned about how slow the federal government has been to dole out roughly $45 billion in federal rental assistance. A little over $1.5 billion has been paid out nationwide, the Treasury Department said last week.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/27/business/eviction-moratorium.html

Filed Under: Economy News

Instagram Introduces Changes to Protect Teenagers on Its Platform

July 27, 2021 by Leave a Comment

Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have called for more online protections for children. A proposed bill with bipartisan support, the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act, would ban targeted advertising aimed at children and require user consent to collect information from users younger than 15.

Even so, Facebook continues to move ahead with plans to create an Instagram for children under the age of 13, an expansion that has been opposed by attorneys general for 44 states and jurisdictions as well as an international coalition of 35 children and consumers’ groups. Facebook’s critics cited research showing that social media use has led to an increase in mental distress, body image concerns and suicidal thoughts.

In a blog post on Tuesday, Pavni Diwanji, Facebook’s vice president of youth products, said the company was using artificial intelligence to try to verify users’ ages. Birthday messages directed at a user, for example, can be used to detect their age, in addition to the age someone entered in Instagram and across other Facebook apps.

“This technology isn’t perfect, and we’re always working to improve it, but that’s why it’s important we use it alongside many other signals to understand people’s ages,” Ms. Diwanji wrote.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/27/technology/instagram-teenagers-privacy.html

Filed Under: Media Business

BuzzFeed Is Going Public. Now What for Vox Media, Group Nine and Vice?

July 27, 2021 by Leave a Comment

“For us, it’s a question of ambition and opportunity, and we are ambitious,” said Jim Bankoff, Vox Media’s chief executive. “We are going to evaluate our options, but we’re going to do it from a position of strength.” He would not comment on financial details or any potential deals.

Group Nine had talks with major publishers, including Vox Media, about a possible merger for its own SPAC listing, but so far none have materialized, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. Ben Lerer, the head of Group Nine, said in an interview that the company was “in an enviable position” given its recent sales growth.

“The SPAC obviously allows us to be even more ambitious,” he said.

An option for Group Nine would be a deal with one of its largest backers: Discovery Inc. The media giant recently orchestrated a daring takeover of WarnerMedia in an effort to better compete in streaming. Group Nine’s properties have helped drive hundreds of thousands of new customers to Discovery’s streaming platform through content partnerships, making it an attractive takeover target.

The digital ad market thrived during the pandemic, as people started spending more online; BuzzFeed, Vox Media and Group Nine all benefited. Still, their gains were nothing compared with the amounts brought in by the digital giants.

“Facebook, Google and Amazon’s crumbs are Vox, Group Nine and Buzzfeed’s cake,” said Brian Wieser, the lead analyst at GroupM, the media investing arm of the ad company WPP.

That disparity underlines the need of the ad-driven publishers to keep getting bigger.

BuzzFeed’s entry into the public markets is likely to give it an advantage. In addition to cash, it will be able to use its stock as currency to make another deal along the lines of its HuffPost purchase.

“We’ll have opportunities to pursue more acquisitions, and there are more exciting companies out there that we want to pursue,” Jonah Peretti, a BuzzFeed co-founder and the chief executive, said last month.

When asked if BuzzFeed would consider entering the subscription business, he said in a recent interview: “Sure, we’d consider it. Why not?”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/27/business/media/buzzfeed-vox-media-vice-group-nine-ipo.html

Filed Under: Media Business

Russian-Iranian trade turnover up 15% this year

July 27, 2021 by Leave a Comment

“Russian-Iranian trade grew in 2020. It also demonstrates positive dynamics at the beginning of this year: in the first six months of 2021, trade grew by 15%. Exports increased by 16%, while imports from Iran – by 14%,” Rustam Zhiganshin said at an online economic cooperation meeting between the two states.

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According to data published earlier by the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC), the volume of trade between Iran and Russia in 2020 amounted to some $2.22 billion, including $1.42 billion worth of goods exported from Russia to the Islamic Republic. Compared to 2019, the trade between the two countries grew by 39.8% last year.

The EEC earlier reported that Iran is soon to hold talks with the countries of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), which includes Russia, regarding the creation of a permanent free trade zone. An interim agreement has been in place since 2019, but the countries believe a firm deal would allow them to increase mutual trade volumes.

The current trade turnover between the EAEU and Iran reached $2.9 billion last year, up by 18.5% compared to 2019, with Russia being Iran’s main trade partner (78.6%), while Kazakhstan (11.2%) and Armenia (8.9%) came in second and third, respectively.

For more stories on economy finance visit RT’s business section

Article source: https://www.rt.com/business/530371-iran-russia-trade-turnover/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

Filed Under: Global Business

I.M.F. World Economic Outlook Forecasts 6 Percent Global Growth

July 27, 2021 by Leave a Comment

The International Monetary Fund warned on Tuesday that the gap between rich and poor countries was widening amid the pandemic, with low vaccination rates in emerging economies leading to a lopsided global recovery.

The I.M.F. maintained its 2021 global growth forecast of 6 percent in its latest World Economic Outlook report, largely as a result of advanced economies, including the United States, expecting slightly faster growth than the global body previously forecast. Economic growth in developing countries is expected to be more sluggish, and the global body said that the spread of more contagious variants of the virus poses a threat to the recovery. It called on nations to work together to accelerate protect their citizens.

“Multilateral action is needed to ensure rapid, worldwide access to vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics,” Gita Gopinath, the I.M.F.’s chief economist, wrote in the report. “This would save countless lives, prevent new variants from emerging, and add trillions of dollars to global economic growth.”

The I.M.F. projected that the U.S. economy will expand 7 percent in 2021. The euro area was projected to expand 4.6 percent and Japan was expected to expand 2.8 percent. Rapid expansion was expected for China, at 8.1 percent, and India, 9.5 percent, but both of their outlooks have been downgraded since April. The outlook in China was lowered because of a scaling back of public investment, while India was downgraded because of a severe second wave of the virus slowing the recovery.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/27/business/economy/IMF-World-Economic-Outlook.html

Filed Under: Economy News

Jeff Bezos offers NASA $2 billion to get moon mission contract he lost to Elon Musk

July 27, 2021 by Leave a Comment

“Blue Origin will bridge [NASA’s] budgetary funding shortfall by waiving all payments in the current and next two government fiscal years up to $2bn to get the program back on track right now,” Bezos wrote in an open letter to NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. In return, Bezos wants Blue Origin to get a fixed-priced contract for the construction of a spaceship for NASA’s moon mission.

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The space agency announced the contract earlier this year. It initially wanted at least two private-sector companies to compete for a part in the mission, but later decided to go for one firm, citing low funding.

In April, NASA inked the deal with Blue Origin’s rival, Elon Musk’s SpaceX, granting a $2.9 billion contract for SpaceX’s cylindrical Starship shuttle. Blue Origin and defense company Dynetics lost the bid, with NASA stating that SpaceX was “the best value to the government.” 

After losing the bid to SpaceX, both Blue Origin and Dynetics filed a protest with the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) claiming that NASA’s choice was unfair. Amid the legal challenge NASA had to suspend work on the project in May. In his letter, Bezos further warned that NASA’s mission may be delayed and will be more expensive without competition.

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Blue Origin calls its lunar lander the Blue Moon, designing it to resemble the iconic Apollo module that brought Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the lunar surface in 1969.

“We created a 21st Century lunar landing system inspired by the well-characterized Apollo architecture – an architecture with many benefits. One of its important benefits is that it prioritizes safety,” Bezos wrote.

NASA said it was informed of Bezos’ letter but declined to comment, Reuters reported.

For more stories on economy finance visit RT’s business section

Article source: https://www.rt.com/business/530346-bezos-offers-nasa-2bn-lunar-mission/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

Filed Under: Global Business
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