Russia 🇷🇺 cuts off gas to Netherlands 🇳🇱after Dutch state energy company GasTerra failed to make a required payment in rubles.

🔥 GasTerra earlier said it had taken measures to make up for the gas shortfall.
“The cessation of supply by Gazprom means that until October 1, 2022, the date on which the contract ends, approximately 2 bcm of contracted gas will not be supplied.

The EU 🇪🇺 will not discuss a ban on Russian natural gas imports as part of the next round of Ukraine-related sanctions against Moscow, 🇦🇹 Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer disclosed. “The gas embargo will not be a topic, [German Chancellor] 🇩🇪 Olaf Scholz has made this clear as well,”. Estonia 🇪🇪 and Belgium 🇧🇪 both share Austria’s view on a potential embargo of Russian gas deliveries to the bloc.

Countries cut off from Russian 🇷🇺 gas for failure to pay in rubles so far:
❌ Bulgaria 🇧🇬
❌ Poland 🇵🇱
❌ Finland 🇫🇮
❌ The Netherlands 🇳🇱
Will Denmark be next?

German inflation 🇩🇪 nears 50-year high. Annual inflation in Europe’s top economy has reached 7.9%, the highest level since the 1973 oil crisis. Energy prices reportedly rose 38.3% in May year-on-year, while food prices posted an 11.1% leap.

Euro zone 🇪🇺 inflation came in at 8.1% for the month, up from April’s record high of 7.4%. French inflation also surpassed expectations in May to a notch record 5.8%, up from 5.4% in April, while harmonized Spanish consumer prices jumped by an annual 8.5% in May.

UK 🇬🇧 consumers face additional hikes in shop prices after retail inflation is up again. Shop price annual inflation accelerated to 2.8% in May, up from 2.7% the month before — the highest rate since July 2011. Food inflation increased to 4.3% from 3.5% the month prior, the highest since April 2012.

Rising inflation 📈 also pushed people to borrow more on credit, with credit card borrowing rising at the fastest rate since 2005.

Rising costs 💷 have created a “ticking timebomb” for UK small business owners, with almost half a million firms at risk of going bust within weeks without a fresh wave of government support.

Russia cuts off gas to Denmark after Denmark’s largest power company and Shell Energy in Germany refused to pay for supplies in rubles. “As of the end of the business day on May 31, Gazprom Export had not received payment for gas supplies in April from Orsted Salg & Service,”.

In 2021, Gazprom Export supplied the Danish company with 1.97 bcm of gas, which amounted to about two thirds of total gas consumption in Denmark. Danish Energy Agency says, Denmark losing its supply would not have immediate consequences.

Countries cut off from Russian 🇷🇺 gas for failure to pay in rubles so far:
❌ Bulgaria 🇧🇬
❌ Poland 🇵🇱
❌ Finland 🇫🇮
❌ The Netherlands 🇳🇱
❌ Denmark 🇩🇰

Russian 🇷🇺 grain exports 🌾 can’t get to Europe because the sanctions imposed by the EU on Moscow effectively block supplies. The EU banned Russian vessels 🚢 from entering its ports as part of the fifth package of sanctions adopted in April.

“Although Western countries keep saying that grain has not been sanctioned, they for some reason fail to mention that the ships that transport Russian grain are in fact under sanctions. European ports do not allow them in, there’s no insurance available and in general Western sanctions have disrupted the logistical and financial infrastructure that Russia uses to export its own grain.

UN says reintegration of Russian food/fertilizer exports into global markets can prevent food crisis.

US rivals shunning dollar lifts yuan-ruble trading by 1,067% to almost $4 billion since the end of February. “The main players in the yuan-ruble market are corporations and banks, but there is also a growing interest from retail investors,”.

Volume in the dollar-ruble pair sank to the lowest level in a decade, based on its 20-day moving average. The ruble rallied 118% against the USD between early March and late May.

Russia's central bank could impose negative interest rates on certain dollar and euro deposits to encourage the use of other currencies, especially China's yuan. China's trade with Russia rose 12% in March year-on-year.

Comex copper up +5.2% to $4.556/lb in today's trading, as 🇨🇳 China's lockdowns appear to be on the wane and China's cabinet announced a package of fiscal, financial, investment and industrial policies to revive its economy. 🇨🇱 Chile - which accounts for more than 25% of the world's mined copper - reported a nearly 10% Y/Y decline in production in April.

Chile’s crown as the world’s largest producer of copper is at risk as the country’s output continues to be lower than expected despite the billions of dollars invested in new projects in the past 18 years. Lower ore quality, water scarcity and other transitory near-term issues were the reasons given for the sharp drop. production in neighboring 🇵🇪 Peru - the world's no. 2 copper producer - has been disrupted by increasingly violent community protests against mining. Two fires broke out at two key copper projects this week.

Fuel rationing may be coming to 🇪🇺 Europe – IEA. The fallout from sanctions/supply chains/war is likely to make the current energy crisis worse than the crises of the 1970s. “Back then it was all about oil. Now we have an oil, gas and electricity crisis.

UN Secretary-General called on the world’s advanced economies to eliminate coal infrastructure, 🏭 citing environmental issues. He also asked all financial institutions to move away from fossil fuel financing.

Finland 🇫🇮 has continued importing Russian 🇷🇺 LNG after being cut off by Moscow from its natural gas supply over its refusal to pay in rubles. Finnish Gasum has two different contracts to receive Russian gas. One of them entails pipeline supplies through the Imatra entry point and the other is for liquefied natural gas (LNG) transported by tankers.

Austria’s 🇦🇹 oil and gas conglomerate OMV has said its recent payment for Russian gas under the new ruble settlement mechanism was successful.

Neon, a critical gas in semiconductor manufacturing, fall to worryingly low levels in the midst of an ongoing chip shortage. Neon is required for the lasers that are used in a chip production process known as lithography, where machines carve patterns onto tiny pieces of silicon.

A major portion of the world’s exported neon is purified by a handful of Ukrainian/Russian companies. Neon is a by-product of large-scale Russian 🇷🇺 steel manufacturing which a portion is then transported to Ukraine to be purified. Russia has restricted the export of noble gases, including neon.

The chip shortage has brought car production 🚗 to a standstill and delayed consumer electronics 📱 product launches.

Crypto/Digital payments update:
❗️The White House 🇺🇸 is drafting policy to address bitcoin mining as it seeks to lessen energy consumption and emissions.

❗️Crypto investors 💰hope that the interest from Rockefellers, Rothschilds & Soros will help to take the heat off the market from global financial watchdogs. Up until now, financial regulators across the world have taken a tough stance toward cryptocurrencies.

❗️Major crypto firms 📉 reportedly cut up to 10% of staff amid bear market.

❗️New York Fed president 🇺🇸 urges colleagues to prepare for coming digital payment transformation, pushing CBDC's & stablecoins. Meanwhile, NY pursues efforts to ban proof-of-work (PoW) crypto mining, the attorney general reminded investors of the risks associated with investing in crypto.

❗️A top Russian central bank 🇷🇺 official said that the monetary authority will re-think previous ban so as to permit foreign trade with crypto.

❗️Bermuda's regulators 🇧🇲 aim to combine their international business expertise and a trained local workforce to become a digital-assets hub. Hopes to attract more cryptocurrency projects and firms.

👉 Iran 🇮🇷 proposed a new currency for trade with China, Russia, India, Pakistan, and other members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO- Picture shows participating states). This could help circumvent illegal Western sanctions and weaken US dollar hegemony.

👉 Russia 🇷🇺 says it will use an arrangement similar to that used for payments for its gas supplies to pay its dollar-denominated foreign bonds after being cut off from paying through SWIFT/American Banks.

👉 Yuan-ruble 🇨🇳 🇷🇺 trading up by 1,067% in past 3 months. Volumes between Russian, Chinese currencies near $4 billion.

👉 Last available report- A total of 20 European 🇪🇺 companies have opened ruble accounts, with another 14 clients asking for the paperwork needed to set them up.

CBDC update:
📌 The United States Federal Reserve 🇺🇸 released a study on the possible effects of a retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) on U.S. monetary policy implementation. The paper considered four scenarios that illustrate the potential effects of a retail CBDC from the perspective of the Fed, commercial banks and U.S. households.

📌 Thai 🇹🇭 Central Bank Governor @WEF in Davos - A retail CBDC will probably replace cash but not other means of payment out there. Thai CBDC pilot delayed to Q4 2022.

📌 Mastercard CEO & PayPal VP 💳 @ WEF in Davos in support of future with CBDC's and possibility of integrating crypto/private digital currencies.

📌 The central bank of India, 🇮🇳 (RBI), reveals report on a plan to launch a CBDC due to disruption of technology with the advent of Fintech.

Slovnaft, a Slovak oil refinery built in Bratislava, said a new package of sanctions against Russia would jeopardize the plant's supplies to the Central European market. The plant mainly refines Russian oil and exports most of its products. the plant mainly refines Russian oil and exports most of its products. The temporary exemption championed by Hungary's PM Victor Orban, allows for imports delivered by the Russian Druzhba pipeline to certain landlocked countries like Hungary and Slovakia.

A ban on oil imports from Russia by sea, will be supplemented "in the near future" by a ban on oil imports from Russia via pipeline. Exemption to Slovnaft would create rift between Slovakia and other European competitors because cheap Russian oil would allow Slovnaft to have higher profit margins and large amounts of diesel production.

❗️This post is not intended as fear-porn but people need to wake up to consequences of a power grid failure. 💡Electricity blackouts are becoming a real possibility in the near future and not only from a cyberattack. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) warned that two-thirds of the U.S. 🇺🇸 could experience blackouts this summer as stated in their report. There are also concerns in Europe 🇪🇺 too, since last year.

❌ Midcontinent ISO 🇺🇸 (MISO) faces a capacity shortfall in its North and Central areas, resulting in high risk of energy emergencies during peak 🌞 summer conditions.
❌ At the start of the summer, a key transmission line connecting MISO’s northern and southern areas will be out of service.

❌ Anticipated resource capacity in Saskatchewan 🇨🇦 will be strained to meet peak demand projections, which have risen by over 7.5% since 2021.
❌ Energy output from hydro generators ⚡️ throughout most of the Western United States is being affected by widespread drought and below-normal snowpack⛄️.

❌ Extreme drought ☀️ across much of Texas can produce weather conditions that are favorable to prolonged, wide-area heat events and extreme peak electricity demand.
❌ As drought conditions continue over the Missouri River Basin, output from thermal generators that use the Missouri River 💦 for cooling in Southwest Power Pool (SPP) may be affected in summer months.

❌ Supply chain 🚛 issues and commissioning challenges on new resource and transmission projects are a concern in areas where completion is needed for reliability during summer peak periods.
❌ Coal-fired 🏭 GOs are having difficulty obtaining fuel and non-fuel consumables as supply chains are stressed.

👉 Climate change policies are making the grid more vulnerable to vacillations in supply and demand. The forced transition to green energy is distorting energy markets and destabilizing the grid. Solar and wind are rapidly increasing, but they’re as erratic as the weather and can’t be commanded to ramp up when electricity 🔋demand surges.

👉 Subsidies enable wind and solar generators 🔌 to turn a profit even when the supply of electricity exceeds demand. Coal and nuclear plants, on the other hand, can’t make money running only some of the time, so many have shut down. Natural-gas-fired plants can help pick up the slack, but there aren’t enough of them to back up all of the renewables coming onto the grid.

🤔 What no one is talking about also, in the nuclear power generation arena is sanctions against Russia. 🇷🇺 Russian uranium exports and nuclear technology are used all over the world for power generation.

Please share this post to get more people thinking and preparing for such a situation.👍

💢 Credit union and banking trade groups have released a joint letter to the chair and ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee, warning of “devastating consequences” if the 🇺🇸 Federal Reserve moves forward with a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).

❗️“In effect, a CBDC will serve as an advantaged competitor to retail bank deposits that will move money away from banks and into accounts at the Federal Reserve where the funds cannot be lent back into the economy.
❗️“Contrary to the assertions of some CBDC proponents, a U.S. CBDC is not necessary to ‘digitize the dollar,’ as the dollar functions primarily in digital form today.
❗️“…a CBDC does not appear to be necessary to support the role of the U.S. dollar internationally. While many countries have experimented with a CBDC, many have focused on a wholesale model..."

📌 India's 🇮🇳 RBI deputy governor stated that banks will remain crucial for providing liquidity services to the general public in India, warning that technology is merely a tool and cannot be used to create currencies: “A currency needs an issuer or it needs intrinsic value. Many cryptocurrencies which are neither are still being accepted at face value. “We believe that CBDCs could actually be able to kill whatever little case that could be for private cryptocurrencies.”

❌ BIS paper written by Fabio Araujo, an economist at the Central Bank of Brazil 🇧🇷, revealed that the monetary authority will have greater control over the population’s money once its CBDC is rolled out. Through the so-called Real Digital, the central bank will be able to halt bank runs and impose other restrictions on citizens’ access to money.

❗️President Putin – about the accusations that 🇷🇺 Russia "does not allow the export of Ukrainian 🇺🇦 grain": This is a bluff! We do not prevent the export of Ukrainian grain. It can be exported through ports that are under the control of Ukraine. But we didn't mine the approaches to the ⚓️ ports! Ukraine mined them. I have already said many times: let them clear mines and let the grain ships go out. We guarantee their passage without any problems.

📌 He mentioned that, Ukrainian grain can be safely🚢 exported through Belarus 🇧🇾 if the EU/US sanctions against Belarus are lifted. Belarus and Ukraine share the same rail size and there is an existing better trade route to Europe 🇪🇺 via the Baltic sea than the Black sea.

⛽️ Diesel prices on international markets are moving faster than crude oil. The issue in the market is not just the loss of Russian 🇷🇺 crude supplies but a loss of refining capacity worldwide. This is aggravated by the effective loss of some Russian refining capacity and its output as a result of sanctions.

The US 🇺🇸 administration still doesn’t really have “tools” that would cut gasoline prices substantially. Global supply is constrained because Europe is now sourcing growing volumes of seaborne non-Russian crude, global refinery capacity has shrunk by a few million bpd since COVID, and fuel inventories in the U.S. are at multi-year lows.

UK 🇬🇧 fuel prices hit record.

Russian diesel exports to 🇪🇺 Europe declined by 8% in May to lowest since October 2020.

Natural gas🔥up almost 10% today!
LNG production in Qatar 🇶🇦 has fallen this year. Qatar exported less than 35 million tons of LNG from January to May—a loss of 1 million tons from the same period in 2021.

U.S. exports 🇺🇸 of liquefied natural gas remained close to record levels last month, at 7.29 million tons, or the second-highest since records of such exports began.

Switzerland’s 🇨🇭power supply remains uncertain for next winter. The higher power prices have been driven by the surge in natural gas, coal, and carbon prices.

The sanctions imposed by Russia against Gazprom 🇩🇪 Germania, could cost German gas customers and taxpayers an additional 5 billion euro ($5.4 billion) each year to purchase replacement gas.

Chairman of the African Union and Senegal's President Macky Sall has warned Russian President Vladimir Putin that African countries are suffering from surging food prices.
The talks between Putin and Sall in Sochi, Russia, last Friday was focused on how to get stuck grain supplies moving again.

Today- Russian government plans to allow ships carrying grain supplies to leave the port of Odessa in Ukraine. The Russian leadership has agreed with Kyiv and Ankara on a scheme to release grain shipments from Odessa. "In the territorial waters of the neighboring country, Turkish military forces will take over the demining (mines placed by Ukrainian forces) and they will also escort the ships as far as neutral waters,". Russian warships would then escort the vessels carrying grain to the Bosporus.

Update to previous post:
Ukraine 🇺🇦 hasn’t participated 'directly' in the talks, according to an official there.
Ukrainian diplomat claims Putin cannot be trusted.
“By commenting in advance on reaching the deal, Russia 🇷🇺 is seeking to shift responsibility to Ukraine” for disrupting supplies, Taras Kachka, Ukraine’s Deputy Economy Minister, said in a text message. “But the fact remains that the food 🌾 crisis has been artificially created by Russia and Russia alone.”
Russia is also demanding the ability to inspect ships 🚢 going to Ukraine for weapons, a condition Kyiv has resisted.

Part II to Europe's rising social credit system.

The Dutch 🇳🇱 government intends to ban new fossil fuel boilers as of 2026, while introducing the mandatory use of heat pumps or connections to heat networks.

Created by a Polish startup 🇵🇱 called Walletmor. Walletmor’s implant allows a user to pay at any terminal that accepts wireless payments by placing her hand on device.

A major new survey by Thales shows that two out of three 🇪🇺 Europeans citizens are looking forward to the arrival of an EU-backed Digital ID Wallet for storing their ID card, driving licence and other official documents and signed attestations on a smartphone. By 2023, every EU member state must make a Digital Identity Wallet (EDIW) available to citizens and businesses.

Statistics Norway (SSB) 🇳🇴 a state-owned entity, has ordered Norway's major supermarket chains to share all their receipt data with the agency. Payment processor Nets said they share concern “about the collection and compilation of data that may be problematic and intrusive for the individual citizen.”

MasterCard 💳 is currently testing a technology that will only require you to just show your face at checkout. This new Biometric Checkout Program will allow any shopper to scan their face at checkout.

Italy 🇮🇹 is all set to become the first European country to implement a rewards-based program for citizens. It is meant to have an impact on people’s reactions to climate change. The residents will be assessed based on their level of compliance. The city administration of Bologna, Italy, is piloting the program in autumn of 2022.