By Alex Kimani of OilPrice.com

The AI boom and Big Tech might be hogging all the media limelight right now, but the smart money is quietly piling into energy stocks. Indeed, the energy sector is the most crowded of all 11 U.S. market sectors, with the sector’s favorite benchmark, Energy Select Sector SPDR Fund up 10.7% in the year-to-date compared to a 7.9% return by the Technology Select Sector SPDR Fund and 9.4% gain by the S&P 500.

According to Citi, Energy is now the most crowded U.S. quant factor, noting that once it hits that level, it tends to underperform over the next one to six months.

The stock market is in “one of the longest overbought periods in history. Typically, such an extreme is followed by a churning market over the short to intermediate term rather than a dramatic pullback, which reinforces Canaccord’s view to buy weakness if/when it comes,” analysts at Canaccord Genuity say.

But not everybody is bothered by the energy sector’s huge momentum. Morgan Stanley remains pessimistic about the U.S. stock market overall; however, MS has upgraded energy stocks to overweight from neutral (full report available to zerohedge pro subscribers), noting that energy companies have lagged the performance of oil, and the sector is favorably valued.

“Taking the Fed’s recent messaging into account and assuming it is less concerned about inflation or looser financial conditions, commodity-oriented cyclicals and energy in particular could be due for a catch-up,” they said.

Bullish on Energy

Commodity analysts at Standard Chartered have noted that energy markets kicked off the new year with an overly pessimistic view of oil demand, and sees an oil price rally unfolding in the coming months. StanChart estimates that January oil demand clocked in at 100.24 million barrels per day (mb/d), good for a 2.67 mb/d year-over-year increase and 0.25 mb/d higher than StanChart’s latest forecast. StanChart has now revised its earlier 2024 demand growth forecast to 1.69 mb/d from 1.64 mb/d previously. The analysts have also predicted a sustained period of inventory draws in H1-2024, with the cumulative draw coming in at 185 mb compared with a H1-2023 build of 230 mb. 

StanChart has predicted that global demand will hit a new all-time high of 103.01 mb/d in May, with June setting a new record at 103.62 mb/d while August demand is expected to be even higher at 104.31 mb/d. StanChart says tightening oil markets will continue to power the oil price rally and has predicted Brent to average $94/bbl in Q2-2024.

Supply growth is likely to remain constrained, with StanChart predicting that U.S. crude supply will not grow significantly higher than November 2023’s all-time high of 13.319 mb/d. Meanwhile, Russia is intent on keeping supply tight in a bid to support higher prices. A few days ago, Moscow ordered oil companies to lower their output in the second quarter so that the country can meet its OPEC+ production target of 9 million barrels per day (bpd). Private sources have told Reuters that Moscow has given specific targets to each oil company, an indication of Moscow’s commitment to keep its OPEC+ pledge. Russian oil and gas condensate production has declined to 10.8 million currently from an annual peak of 11.7 million bpd in 2019 due to production cuts. The fall has come despite Russia experiencing a drilling boom even after concerted efforts by the U.S. and its allies to limit technology transfer. The withdrawal of major Western oil field service companies from Russia left their local subsidiaries to fill their void, and appear to be succeeding so far.

“Only some 15% of the nation’s domestic drilling market depends on technologies from so-called unfriendly nations,” Daria Melnik, vice-president for exploration and production at Rystad Energy, has revealed.

However, production disruptions due to Russia’s war in Ukraine continue. Last week, Russia’s Kuibyshev oil refinery halted one of its two primary refining units, effectively taking half of its capacity offline following a Ukraine drone attack. The attack over the weekend, the eighth on Russian refineries in the last three weeks, will knock another 35K bbl/day of Russian refinery capacity out of action, bringing a total of ~400K bbl/day offline on top of normal maintenance.

The full Morgan Stanley report is available to pro subscribers in the usual place

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Heart scarring was detected more than one year after COVID-19 vaccination in some people who suffered myocarditis following receipt of a shot, researchers reported in new studies.

A third of 60 patients with follow-up cardiac imaging done more than 12 months after their myocarditis diagnosis had persistent late gadolinium enhancement (LGE), which is, in the majority of cases, reflective of heart scarring, Australian researchers reported in a preprint of a new study, published on March 22.

Myocarditis is a form of heart inflammation.

The median time from receipt of a vaccine to follow-up imaging was 548 days, with the longest interval being 603 days.

“We found that the incidence of persistent myocardial fibrosis is high, seen in almost a third of patients at >12 months post diagnosis, which could have implications for the management and prognosis of this predominantly young cohort,” the researchers wrote.

“The long-term clinical implications of LGE in this condition are as yet unknown, but LGE has been demonstrated to confer worse prognosis in non-COVID-19 vaccine-associated myocarditis, especially if it persists beyond six months,” they added later, pointing to several previous papers.

Researchers in one of the previous papers, for instance, found that LGE was a “powerful prognosticator” of adverse outcomes in myocarditis patients.

Before the new testing, nine patients were determined to definitely have myocarditis, and 58 patients were labeled as probably having myocarditis. The findings of persistent LGE resulted in reclassifying 16 of the cases from probable myocarditis to definite myocarditis.

Exclusions included patients who were pregnant or allergic to agents used in gadolinium testing.

Among a subset of 20 patients who underwent imaging shortly after vaccination, 19 had LGE. In follow-up imaging, LGE was no longer visible in 10 of those patients. In five, it was reduced, but in four it was unchanged.

Andrew Taylor, a professor at Monash University’s Central Clinical School, and his co-authors conducted the study by recruiting patients who were diagnosed with myocarditis associated with COVID-19 vaccination between August 2021 and March 2022. The patients were invited to undergo imaging at Alfred Hospital or Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, Australia.

The study population with follow-up imaging included 44 adults and 16 adolescents.

Most of the patients had received a Pfizer-BioNTech shot. A minority had received a Moderna or AstraZeneca vaccination. The companies did not respond to requests for comment.

Limitations of the paper, which was published ahead of peer review, included possible selection bias, since participation in the study was voluntary. Authors listed no conflicts of interest or funding.

Another Paper

In the other recent paper, researchers in Canada reported finding about half of patients referred for imaging due to possible post-vaccination myocarditis had persistent LGE in follow-up imaging.

Overall, 60 patients were included in the retrospective study. Of those, seven reported persistent symptoms.

In a subset of 21 patients for whom follow-up MRIs were available, 10 had persistent LGE, the researchers said. On the other hand, function of the left ventricle, which pumps blood, had normalized in all patients.

The persistent LGE “likely reflects replacement fibrosis,” or heart scarring, Dr. Kate Hanneman, with the University of Toronto’s Department of Medical Imaging, and her co-authors wrote. They cited some of the same papers as the Australian group, including the study that found patients with persistent LGE had a higher risk of adverse outcomes, as well as a paper on what it represents when LGE is found on MRI in patients with myocarditis.

“However, the significance of LGE is uncertain in patients post-myocarditis with recovered normal left ventricular systolic function,” the researchers said. They called for additional studies to evaluate patients with persistent LGE and a recovered left ventricle.

The study included adult patients who were referred to a hospital network with suspected myocarditis and had new cardiac symptoms such as chest pain within 14 days of COVID-19 vaccination. The patients all received either the Pfizer or Moderna shot.

Limitations of the study, which was published by the Journal of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance, included a lack of biopsy-confirmed myocarditis.

The authors declared no funding and listed only one competing interest, that an author is an associate editor of the journal.

The corresponding authors for the two papers did not respond to requests for comment.

“My concern from reading these two studies is that myocardial damage and scarring is present in a significant number of COVID vaccine injured individuals at up to 18 months after vaccination. This suggests potential for permanent heart damage from the vaccines,” Dr. Danice Hertz, the research lead for the U.S. group React19, told The Epoch Times in an email. “The long-term implications are not yet known but need to be studied carefully.”

Earlier Findings

The new papers add to earlier studies, which found that LGE persists for months in some people following a COVID-19 shot.

Researchers in Washington state reported in 2022 that LGE persisted in children for up to eight months after vaccination. Later that year, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that more than half of 151 patients with follow-up imaging had residual LGE, which was described as “suggestive of myocardial scarring.”

The CDC has longer-term data on the patients, the agency confirmed to The Epoch Times in January, but has not yet published another paper describing that data. The CDC, which failed to warn the public about the risk of post-vaccination myocarditis, declined to comment on the new Australian and Canadian papers.

Hong Kong researchers in 2023 reported finding that about half of 40 patients with follow-up MRIs months after vaccination had LGE.

Symptoms have also persisted in some patients with post-vaccination myocarditis.

The CDC, describing preliminary updated results from its longer-term study, said in early 2023 that there were patients still suffering from symptoms more than one year after a shot. Researchers in Australia in late 2023 said that symptoms persisted at least six months after a shot in a majority of patients they followed. And some patients also told The Epoch Times they have lingering health issues years after vaccination.

A Russian military fighter jet has crashed into the Black Sea near Sevastopol, Crimea on Thursday, the region’s Governor Mikhail Razvozhayev has confirmed.

The announcement came after several social media videos surfaced showing what appears to be a Russian Su-35 aircraft falling from the sky in a large fireball. Many observers are speculating that the advanced Russian aircraft was shot down.

⚡️Russian Su-35 jet shot down over Sevastopol, Crimea pic.twitter.com/sGOXZ7SlZ5

— War Monitor (@WarMonitors) March 28, 2024

Russian Telegram channels are also widely reporting the Su-35 crash. However, so far Crimean officials are merely ambiguously describing that it “crashed” and have not verified a shoot-down.

“A military plane crashed into the sea…No civilian objects were hurt. The pilot ejected… his life is not in danger,” the governor posted to Telegram.

While it would be unusual for a Russian fighter to be intercepted by Ukrainian weapons over Crimea – given Sevastopol is so far from the battlefield – there is a possibility Ukraine might be behind the intercept.

Several videos from multiple angles have emerged showing the jet falling rapidly while on fire…

More video of a fighter jet crashing over Sevostopol

According to Ukrainian media, it could be a Russian Su-35 4th generation fighter jet. According to unconfirmed information, the military plane could allegedly have been shot down by Russian air defense systems. pic.twitter.com/blylMZ996y

— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) March 28, 2024

Throughout the war Crimea has come under frequent Ukraine attack, including with drones and medium to long-range missiles.

There are reports that earlier on Thursday local authorities in Sevastopol suspended maritime traffic, likely due to threat of new drone attacks. But some analysts have claimed it was a friendly fire incident – that the fighter may have been engaged by Russia’s own anti-air defenses.

Each Russian Su-35 jet costs an estimated $85 million. Russia has lost several aircraft throughout the conflict, including at least two or three large military transport planes.

Via Andrew Korybko’s Substack,

The emerging information warfare narrative being pushed by the West via Germany and the US right now is that India’s upcoming elections might be flawed.

India’s External Affairs Ministry summoned the US’ Acting Deputy Chief of Mission for a 40-minute meeting after State Department meddled in their country’s internal affairs by stating that “We encourage a fair, transparent, and timely legal process for Chief Minister Kejriwal.” The Chief Minister of Delhi was arrested over corruption claims last week ahead of India’s upcoming six-week-long elections, after which the Germany became the first to involve itself in this issue via a statement from its Foreign Ministry.

Its remarks were along the lines of the ones that America later made, thus leading to the External Affairs Ministry summoning its Deputy Chief of Mission for a tongue lashing. The fact that the US still issued the statement that it did despite knowing what India’s reaction would be can be interpreted as a political provocation aimed at meddling in its affairs. The emerging information warfare narrative being pushed by the West via Germany and the US right now is that India’s upcoming elections might be flawed.

Kejriwal is known as a vocal critic of the ruling BJP so some have speculated that the case against him is politically motivated and a means of intimidating the opposition ahead of the upcoming elections. There’s no basis to that claim but it nevertheless served as the pretext for those two countries to meddle in India’s affairs through their similar statements implying that he might not receive a fair trial. The larger context in which the US is involving itself in this affair concerns its newly troubled ties with India.

The preceding hyperlinked analyses touch upon the Justice Department’s charges against an unnamed Indian official in late November who’s accused of conspiring to assassinate a Delhi-designated terrorist-separatist with dual American citizenship on US soil last summer. The Anglosphere teamed up against India on this issue but it wasn’t until Monday that a non-Western country, notably China, chimed in to offer its input on this case.

Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Lin Jian was asked about it by a journalist from Dragon TV, to which he responded that “We hope relevant countries will earnestly observe international law and the basic norms governing international relations.” While his reaction might seem perfunctory to many, it was interpreted by some in India as meddling, with a few also claiming that it confirms previously speculated ties between China and Delhi-designated terrorist-separatist Sikhs.

The optics of Germany, the US, and even China commenting on India’s internal affairs, the first two of whom did so about the Kejriwal case without being prompted and while the third shared their thoughts about the terrorist-separatist one in response to a question, is that foreign pressure is being ramped up ahead of the upcoming six-week-long elections that’ll run from 19 April-1 June. Accordingly, India couldn’t let German and US meddling go on with impunity, especially since they’re fellow democracies.

They know better than to involve themselves in India’s internal affairs yet still did so anyhow with the intent of discrediting its electoral process, which is driven by their dislike of Prime Minister Modi’s conservative-nationalist domestic policies and his truly multipolar foreign policy. Under his leadership, India has partnered with the liberal–globalist West like never before, but it won’t compromise on its sovereignty. That’s a problem for this bloc, however, hence why it wants to pressure him on any grounds.

Looking forward, India isn’t expected to escalate the situation by involving itself in Germany or the US’ internal affairs, though patriotic members of its society – including those in the media and think tanks – might become more critical of those two and the West in general in response to their meddling. Under no circumstances will India let anyone interfere with its domestic processes, let alone discredit its electoral ones by innuendo, so hopefully the West learns this lesson and ceases its troubling behavior.

Authored by Laura Hollis via The Epoch Times,

It is becoming increasingly clear that some of America’s most serious problems can be traced back to our colleges and universities – or at least the ones educating the country’s most powerful people.

The Vietnam War era aside, it has traditionally been uncommon for events at universities to make national headlines. Absent something extraordinary, like a president giving a commencement address, a dramatic scientific breakthrough or the award of a prominent international prize to faculty, headlines with university names in them have tended to relate more to national championships in sports.

Not anymore.

Over the past few years, news items about events on college campuses have come to dominate headlines. The subjects are some of the country’s most fabled institutions. And the stories are often negative, if not outright shocking.

Last December, the congressional testimony of three university presidents—Claudine Gay from Harvard University, Elizabeth Magill from the University of Pennsylvania, and Sally Kornbluth of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—set off a firestorm. Under questioning by Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) about anti-Semitic speech and conduct on their campuses, the three women dodged and deflected, unwilling to state definitively that calls for the genocide of Jews violated university policies and codes of conduct.

The response was swift. Within days, Magill resigned. Gay survived the initial maelstrom, but the bad publicity prompted critics to start digging through her professional past, and she resigned less than a month later, following accusations of plagiarism in her research publications. Some of the nation’s largest donors to these universities—many of them Jewish—began announcing that they would cease or pull back donations totaling in the tens and even hundreds of millions of dollars.

The chaos on campuses has only increased since, with pro-Palestine protests and marches at dozens of colleges and universities, and horrific rhetoric bumping up against speech codes and demands for free speech. Across the country, Jewish students describe themselves as “living in a climate of hatred and fear” amid dramatic increases in anti-Semitic conduct, threats, slurs, and actual violence.

This week, Stanford University sophomore Theo Baker published “The War at Stanford” in The Atlantic, in which he describes how the Israel-Hamas war has affected his campus. One Arab American graduate student told Baker that he thinks President Joe Biden “should be killed” and that Hamas should rule America. Pro-Palestine protesters set up sit-in “camps” for months and shouted for the destruction of Israel, chanting, “We don’t want no two-state; we want all of ’48!” Guest speakers brought in to facilitate campus discussion of the complex issues have been shouted down. Stanford employees have been threatened (“We know where you live!”), the interim president’s home has been vandalized, and his effigy was carried around campus covered in fake blood. The administration, Baker says, seems paralyzed, indecisive and defeated.

This isn’t an isolated incident at Stanford, and the Israel-Hamas war hasn’t caused it. Last March—months before the Oct. 7 attack on Israel—Stanford Law School students shut down a talk being given by federal judge Kyle Duncan, shouting at him every time he attempted to speak or engage the audience, screaming epithets and holding up signs with vulgar accusations and calls for violence against Duncan’s daughters.

Similar behavior has been displayed at other schools, having nothing to do with claims of colonialism in the Middle East.

Swimmer and activist Riley Gaines was cornered and forced to hide in a classroom at San Francisco State University last year, prevented from giving her talk about limiting participation in women’s sports to biological women.

In 2017, author Charles Murray’s scheduled talk at Middlebury College was interrupted by a mob that later physically attacked him and his faculty host Allison Stanger. Stanger’s hair was pulled so hard by a protester that she suffered a concussion.

The poisonous rhetoric, intolerance, and violence is just the tip of the iceberg.

In an interview with The Daily Signal podcast host Rob Bluey last week, national pollster Scott Rasmussen described what he called “the most terrifying poll result I’ve ever seen.” A recent Rasmussen poll asked Americans “to suppose there was an election and it was close but your candidate lost. And if their campaign team knew they could win by cheating and not get caught, would you want them to do so?”

According to Rasmussen, only 7 percent of American voters overall said they’d rather cheat to win. But among the group that he calls “the elite,” that number jumped to 35 percent. Among the “politically obsessed elite” (those who “talk politics daily”), it was a staggering 69 percent!

So who are these “elite”?

Rasmussen explains that they are the top 1 percent of the population. They make more than $150,000 a year. They live in densely populated urban areas. They have not only college but postgraduate degrees. And large numbers of them “went to one of 12 elite schools.”

He doesn’t name them, but we can hazard a pretty good guess which schools they are.

“The reason I bring that up,” he continues, “is about half the policy positions in government, half the corporate board positions in America, are held by people who went to one of these dozen schools.” And, he says, they also shape “the mainstream media narrative.”

Not only does this group think it’s acceptable to cheat to win an election, but 70 percent believe there is too much individual freedom in the United States, and an equal number trusts the government—which, of course, they control. “They really believe,” Rasmussen says, “that if they could just make the decisions and get us out of the way, we would be a lot better off.”

What’s going on at our most prestigious and exclusive universities? How have they produced generations of amoral, condescending authoritarians? And how do we put a stop to it?

Those are questions Americans need answers to.

Is the long awaited – and overdue – restart of the American nuclear age finally here?

In a move which may force the lunatic greens to storm the White House, on Wednesday the federal government announced that it would provide a $1.5 billion loan to restart a nuclear power plant in southwestern Michigan. NJ-based Holtec International acquired the 800-megawatt Palisades plant in 2022 with plans to dismantle it, but with support from the state of Michigan and the Biden administration, the emphasis has shifted to restarting the nuclear power plant by late 2025 instead. 

What is remarkable is not that the US is throwing some money at a nuclear power plant – since the US sells $1 trillion in debt every 100 days, it may as well go full “Brewster’s Millions” (or rather “Trillions”) and spend it all asap; it is that this would be the first nuclear power plant to be reopened in the US, setting a precedent as atomic energy makes a triumphal comeback. Sure, it still faces hurdles, including inspections, testing and the blessing of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, but those are just formalities: watch as new NPPs start springing up across the country next.

“Nuclear power is our single largest source of carbon-free electricity, directly supporting 100,000 jobs across the country and hundreds of thousands more indirectly,” said Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, a former Michigan governor, who in turn is repeating what nuclear advocates have been saying for decades. Restarting this particular plant will protect 600 union jobs and 1,100 throughout the community.

The Palisades plant is along Lake Michigan, a two-hour drive from Chicago. A Michigan utility, CMS Energy, owned it from 1971 until the plant was sold to Louisiana-based utility Entergy in 2007. It was shut down in 2022.

Holtec said it has long-term commitments so far from two electric cooperatives to buy power from the plant.

“The repowering of Palisades will restore safe, around-the-clock generation to hundreds of thousands of households, businesses and manufacturers,” said Kris Singh, Holtec president and chief executive.

Critics, of course, have emerged. A coalition of “greens” opposed to restarting what it derisively calls a “zombie reactor” has requested a hearing at the NRC.

Holtec spokesman Patrick O’Brien said it will take four to five months to finalize the financial deal with the government.

“It is a loan we have to pay back,” he said, explaining that unlike US taxpayer funds embezzled by Ukraine’s corrupt leaders and the US Military-Industrial Complex, this particular loan will be tracked and eventually repaid.

Nuclear energy is in the spotlight. Thirty-four countries, including the U.S., last week pledged to use it to reduce reliance on fossil fuels. In California, regulators in December said the Diablo Canyon plant could operate through 2030 instead of 2025 to guard against blackouts as the state shifts toward renewable power sources. Owner Pacific Gas & Electric said federal aid helped it repay a state loan.

“There is more enthusiasm toward nuclear power — in Congress, in the industry and also internationally,” said Najmedin Meshkati, an engineering professor at the University of Southern California who has inspected nuclear plants around the world.

There is another reason why nuclear energy is suddenly back in vogue: with projections for electricity demand over the next five years doubling from just a year ago –  due to a building frenzy of AI data centers, federally subsidized manufacturing plants, and the government-driven electric-vehicle transition –  the US has no choice but to go full-on nuclear, despite the howls of outrage from green activists and progressive voters.

Still, restarting a plant is not easy.

“It puts the onus and burden on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Holtec to double down on efforts to make sure this plant is safe enough and all the safety measures are intact,” Meshkati said of Palisades.

Meanwhile, keep an eye on uranium stocks and more importantly, on the price of uranium itself: as the nuclear renaissance begins in earnest, the world will need lots of uranium, and the supply chains will need years to catch up to demand, which means that what has already been one of the best performing commodities in recent years is set to rise that much higher.

Via Middle East Eye

Palestinian banks could be cut off from the Israeli banking system starting next week following a decision by Israel’s finance minister to cease dealings between the two financial institutions, according to a report on Thursday by Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has two days to convene a cabinet meeting to discuss reversing plans by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich to isolate Palestinian banks from both the Israeli and international banking systems.

The Palestinian economy is based on the Israeli currency, the shekel, making it reliant on ties to Israel and its financial dealings with the rest of the world must go through the Bank of Israel and Israeli banks.

Earlier this month, the hardline minister Smotrich threatened to paralyze the Palestinian Authority’s economy in response to the United States imposing sanctions on four West Bank extremist settlers accused of violence against Palestinians. 

Israeli banks have heeded the sanctions despite calls by Smotrich not to comply. Two Israeli banks, Israel Discount Bank and Bank Hapoalim, currently maintain the connections of Palestinian banks with the banking system in Israel and globally. 

To protect them from lawsuits involving the Palestinian Authority for “transferring funds to terror groups”, the Israeli government has been issuing a waiver of protection for the two banks on an annual basis, signed by the finance minister. 

Smotrich is now refusing to renew the arrangement, which has been in place for years.  Without this protection, the PA will be stripped of immunity and the Israeli banks will be exposed to lawsuits and are expected to cut ties with Palestinian banks.

The consequences of isolating the PA from the financial world and Israel’s economy would significantly paralyze the Palestinian economy. 

Any Israeli company that has business relations with the PA will no longer be able to deposit Palestinian cheques or receive payments from Palestinian banks, according to Haaretz.  Even Palestinian workers, who must only receive their wages in a bank deposit according to a 2022 agreement between Palestinian and Israeli authorities, will not be able to continue receiving wages in Israel, unless they are made in cash.

Other areas that would be affected by Smotrich’s move include Palestinian export and import operations, which go through Israeli ports, and Palestinian tax funds, which are collected by Israel.

By Irina Slav of OilPrice.com

The latest crude oil purchase that the Department of Energy made as part of refill plans for the strategic petroleum reserve cost an average of over $81 per barrel, exceeding the $79 ceiling set by the federal government.

Per an Argus report, the DoE declined to comment on why it had bought the oil despite the higher price hinting at more news to come later today.

Back in 2022, to arrest an inexorable climb in retail fuel prices, the White House announced a release of 180 million barrels of crude oil from the strategic petroleum reserve. Critics warned the move would have a limited effect on prices but compromise the energy security of the country by reducing the level of crude in the SPR.

The final amount of oil released from the SPR ended up exceeding 180 million barrels with the DoE pledging to replenish the reserve in a timely fashion but only when prices were favorable. The SPR is currently close to a 40-year low as a result of the massive release.

The replenishing effort has been going on slowly, with three million barrels bought there and another three bought here as the very news of a planned purchase led to an uptick in prices.

WTI is $73 now https://t.co/lqzYBr9S9Q

— Joe Weisenthal (@TheStalwart) November 16, 2023

This forced the department to update the price range, at which it would be buying, raising the top end from $72 per barrel last year to $79 per barrel. Yet oil prices have been on a climb recently and WTI broke the $80-yer-barrel threshold earlier this month.

As of March 22, the SPR stood at 363 million barrels of crude, Argus reported, citing Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm as saying that it should be back to normal by the end of the year. This, however, will not be a result of the replenishment effort but of the cancellation of 140 million barrels in previously planned SPR sales for the period to 2031.

If the food-industrial complex had not flooded the nation’s food supply with junk, if the government actively encouraged healthy lifestyles, and if efforts to address the obesity crisis didn’t rely solely on ‘miracle weight loss drugs’ pushed by the pharmaceutical industry, then maybe – just maybe – politicians wouldn’t be clamoring on Capitol Hill, or the elderly (somewhat senile) president in the White House, about out-of-control drug prices.

But since common sense has vanished in America and folks have given up on Peloton bikes for $1,000 monthly injections of “Wegovy,” the blockbuster weight loss treatment (also a diabetes drug called “Ozempic”) from Novo Nordisk, then socialists, such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), wouldn’t be reviving the discussion about high drug prices. 

“Today, a new Yale study found that Ozempic costs less than $5 a month to manufacture. And yet, Novo Nordisk charges Americans nearly $1,000 a month for this drug, while the same exact product can be purchased for just $155 a month in Canada and just $59 in Germany,” Sanders said in a statement.

Sanders cited the study “Estimated Sustainable Cost-Based Prices for Diabetes Medicines,” conducted by researchers at Yale University, King’s College Hospital in London, and the nonprofit Doctors Without Borders. It was published in the journal JAMA Network Open on Wednesday. 

In the study, researchers found Novo could produce the blockbuster drug for 89 cents to $4.73 per month, as opposed to the monthly retail price of about $1,349 for Wegovy, a semaglutide injection. 

“As Chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP), I am calling on Novo Nordisk to lower the list price of Ozempic — and the related drug Wegovy — in America to no more than what they charge for this drug in Canada,” Sander said. 

He added: “The American people are sick and tired of paying, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs while the pharmaceutical industry enjoys huge profits.”

Sanders warned: “This outrageously high price has the potential to bankrupt Medicare, the American people and our entire health care system.

There is no rational reason, other than greed, for Novo Nordisk to charge Americans nearly $1,000 a month for Ozempic when it costs less than $5 to manufacture it and can be purchased in Germany for just $59. Novo must substantially reduce the price of Ozempic in the US now. pic.twitter.com/rdyF5MCQbX

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) March 27, 2024

Analysts have forecasted that the market for weight-loss drugs could reach at least $100 billion a year by the end of the decade, with the production of Wegovy and Eli Lilly’s Zepbound and Mounjaro. And a decent chunk of the weight loss drugs will likely be covered by Medicare. 

“The profit margin is immense” on weight loss drugs like Ozempic, Melissa Barber, a public health economist at Yale and the study’s lead author, told Bloomberg. She added, “There should be a conversation in policy about what is a fair price.”

Rounding back to the intro of this note, Americans should eat better and exercise. Then, we don’t have to rely on the pharmaceutical-industrial complex. What’s odd is the government does not promote ‘common sense’ healthy lifestyles. Why is that? Are their donors pharma companies?