FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was charged with eight criminal counts, including conspiracy and wire fraud for allegedly misusing billions of dollars in customers’ funds before the spectacular collapse of his cryptocurrency empire.

The indictment, unsealed this morning, alleges that Bankman-Fried agreed with others “to defraud customers of FTX.com by misappropriating those customers’ deposits and using those deposits to pay expenses and debts of Alameda Research.”

Bankman-Fried was indicted on eight counts, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud on customer and lenders, wire fraud on customers and lenders, conspiracy to commit commodities fraud, securities fraud, money laundering.

However, the final count is perhaps the most notable (and new), charging SBF with conspiracy to defraud the United States and Violate Campaign Finance Laws…

[SBF] willfully and knowingly did combine, conspire, confederate, and agree together and with each other to commit offenses against the United States by engaging in violations of federal law involving the making, receiving, and reporting of a contribution, donation, or expenditure, in violation of Title 52, United States Code, Sections 30109(d) (1) (A) & (0).

…

[SBF] did defraud the United States, and an agency thereof, by impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful functions of a department and agency of the United States through deceitful and dishonest means, to wit, the Federal Election Commission’s function to administer federal law concerning source and amount restrictions in federal elections…

Bankman-Fried had been under criminal investigation by US and Bahamian authorities after FTX collapsed last month. The company filed for bankruptcy on Nov. 11 after running out of money amid a crypto ‘bank run.’ Prior to the collapse, SBF was worth roughly $26.5 billion, according to Forbes. He was a prominent DC donor, contributing millions of dollars to mostly left-wing causes and Democratic political campaigns. 

Dear @RepMaxineWaters get those refunds ready pic.twitter.com/5qhtiviwFr

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) December 13, 2022

Read the full charge sheet below:

While Maxine Waters is ‘disappointed’ that her favorite crypto donor will not be attending this morning’s hearing on the FTX collapse (since he’s in jail), we do get to hear straight from one horse’s mouth on just what a shitshow the crypto exchange was.

With Sam Bankman-Fried languishing in Bahamian clink, the new FTX CEO John Ray III is free to explain to the House Committee on Financial Services about the total lack of governance when Sam Bankman-Fried ran the company:

“…never in my career have I seen such an utter failure of corporate controls at every level of an organization, from the lack of financial statements to a complete failure of any internal controls or governance whatsoever.”

Additionally, he blamed the failure of the crypto exchange on the lack of experience among prior management:

“FTX Group’s collapse appears to stem from the absolute concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of grossly inexperienced and unsophisticated individuals who failed to implement virtually any of the systems or controls that are necessary for a company that is entrusted with other people’s money or assets.”

Finally, and most notably, Ray outlines some of the unacceptable management practices at the FTX Group identified so far include:

• The use of computer infrastructure that gave individuals in senior management access to systems that stored customer assets, without security controls to prevent them from redirecting those assets;

• The storing of certain private keys to access hundreds of millions of dollars in crypto assets without effective security controls or encryption;

• The ability of Alameda, the crypto hedge fund within the FTX Group, to borrow funds held at FTX.com to be utilized for its own trading or investments without any effective limits;

• The commingling of assets;

Read Ray’s full prepared remarks here…

Watch Live here (due to start at 1000ET):

Ukraine now says that it has lost half of its energy system amid recent stepped-up Russian aerial attacks, which have continued to include suicide drones, some of which are believed supplied by Iran. President Volodymyr Zelensky communicated this in a Monday phone call with President Joe Biden, briefing the US leader on “the consequences of the Russian missile terror, as a result of which about 50% of the Ukrainian energy infrastructure was destroyed.”

In the mid-afternoon on Tuesday (local time), air raid alerts have reportedly been issued all across Ukraine, with sirens blaring in the capital after Zelensky warned that the next major wave of Russian airstrikes are imminent.

Starting Friday Kyiv authorities began revising their estimate upward from the 40% they had been estimating in statements as of weeks ago. Ukraine’s Prime Minister Denys Shmygal recently described, “Unfortunately, Russia continues missile strikes on Ukraine’s critical civilian infrastructure, fighting against the civilian population and depriving them of light, water, heat and communications during the winter… Nearly half of our energy system is disabled.”

The past month has witnessed some of the largest missile barrages targeting energy infrastructure to date, which has left whole cities, including Odesa and a number of cities in the south without power amid frigid temperatures.

Also on Monday Zelensky gave a virtual address before G7 leaders, wherein he urged more arms including “modern tanks” and “rocket artillery and more long-range missiles” while acknowledging his military is running low in the face of the more superior-armed Russian forces. He asked G7 nations for “about 2 billion cubic meters” of additional gas to help the population get through winter. 

Among the more interesting things he said was that Moscow must withdraw all forces by Christmas. “The occupier must leave. It will certainly happen. I see no reason why Russia should not do it now – at Christmas.” Vowing the the counteroffensive will not stop even as the ground freezes, he appealed for Russia to avoid “further confrontation with the world.”

“Very soon we’ll have holidays celebrated by billions of people. Christmas – according to the Gregorian calendar or the New Year and Christmas – according to the Julian calendar. This is the time for normal people to think about peace, not aggression. I suggest Russia to at least try to prove that it is capable of abandoning the aggression. It would be right to start the withdrawal of Russian troops from the internationally recognized territory of Ukraine this Christmas. If Russia withdraws its troops from Ukraine, it will ensure a lasting cessation of hostilities,” the President said, speaking at the G7 Summit.

Following this, on Tuesday Zelensky appealed to an international fundraising conference in Paris hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron, saying Ukraine needs 800 million euros to urgently repair damaged infrastructure. Other Ukrainian top officials put this figure at $1 billion…

“The approximate cost of urgent help for the power sector stands at $500 million,” Shmyahl told the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, according to Reuters. “The approximate cost of urgent help for the centralized heating sector stands at a further $500 million.”

Russian sources are saying that Ukrainian saboteurs damaged a bridge in Melitopol with planted explosives. https://t.co/GCQ56veP7X pic.twitter.com/7Ukd5wnRGW

— Rob Lee (@RALee85) December 12, 2022

“Of course it is a very high amount, but the cost is less than the cost of a potential blackout,” Zelensky said via video link. “I hope that decisions will be made accordingly.”

“Because of the destruction of our power plants by terror attacks we will need to use more gas this winter than expected,” he described. Zelensky’s wife Olena had traveled to be at the Paris conference in person. As for his appeal for Russia to exit Ukraine by Christmas, this is unlikely to happen given especially President Putin just warned his own citizens to settle in for a “long” campaign in order to achieve Moscow’s military objectives. 

Twitter has dissolved its Trust and Safety council after new owner Elon Musk criticized the group over a longstanding lack of action to rid the platform of child sexual abuse material.

“As Twitter moves into a new phase, we are reevaluating how best to bring external insights into our product and policy development work. As part of this process, we have decided that the Trust and Safety Council is not the best structure to do this,” read an email to the council’s members.

“Our work to make Twitter a safe, informative place will be moving faster and more aggressively than ever before and we will continue to welcome your ideas going forward about how to achieve this goal,” the email continues. “We will also continue to explore opportunities to provide focused and timely input into our work, whether through bilateral or small group meetings.”

The council, which was made up of around 100 stakeholders – including independent civil, human rights, and other organizations, was notified of the change shortly before it was set to meet on Monday night, the Associated Press reported. The Council’s webpage is now blank.

As The Epoch Times notes, the Trust and Safety Council has been criticized by Musk for not taking action to remove child sexual abuse material from Twitter.

The council was established in 2016 to address problems such as hate speech, child exploitation, suicide, self-harm, and other issues on the platform.

After three members of the council resigned in protest over allegations of increased hate speech on the platform on Dec. 8, Musk declared on Dec. 10 that it was “a crime that they refused to take action on child exploitation for years!”

Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey replied to Musk, saying: “This is false.”

“No, it is not,” Musk replied, adding: “When Ella Irwin, who now runs Trust & Safety, joined Twitter earlier this year, almost no one was working on child safety.”

Musk noted that, unlike Twitter’s former management, he “made it top priority immediately.”

No, it is not.

When Ella Irwin, who now runs Trust & Safety, joined Twitter earlier this year, almost no one was working on child safety.

She raised this with Ned & Parag, but they rejected her staffing request.

I made it top priority immediately.@ellagirwin

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 9, 2022

On Dec. 10, Twitter Safety announced that it had suspended 57 percent more “bad actor” accounts in November with child sexual exploitation material (CSE), which was significantly more than any other month year-to-date.

“We’ve been improving our detection and enforcement methods and expanding our partnerships with organizations that help prevent the trafficking of CSE material,” the company said.

Twitter’s former head of trust and safety. https://t.co/7dI1a0Wxpe

— Aaron Kheriaty, MD (@akheriaty) December 13, 2022

Maybe nobody had more power to censor & ban conservatives on Twitter than @yoyoel who colluded with FBI & interfered in elections. Meanwhile his “trust & safety” team ignored child porn on Twitter while he sympathized with teachers having sex with students. He’s a menace.

— Liz Wheeler (@Liz_Wheeler) December 10, 2022

Eliza Blue, a sex trafficking survivor, who has advocated for the removal of CSE material from Twitter, has noted an improvement in the way Twitter addresses the problem under Musk.

“There was basically no child safety team when he started. He made building the team his top priority. Then he built the team,” she said.

Twitters full email to “Trust and Safety” Council Members pic.twitter.com/7G0mJCLU7t

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) December 13, 2022

How did this slip through? What did Yoel et all do internally for accountability? Who was fired?https://t.co/EwRW1gSTtU

— Cernovich (@Cernovich) December 9, 2022

Hate Speech

Twitter has reported that hate speech is trending downward on the platform, while external critics have said it is increasing.

Inaugural members Anne Collier and Eirliani Rahman, as well as Lesley Podesta, resigned from Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council council in protest on Dec. 8, citing a rise in hate speech.

Three of us resigned from Twitter’s Trust & Safety Council today: @eirliani @podesta_lesley and me. Here’s why https://t.co/h05TblfGIO pic.twitter.com/iqcHvhbgms

— annecollier (@annecollier) December 8, 2022

The White House has also expressed concern about hate speech on the platform.

However, Twitter reported on Dec. 11 that data shows “a consistent downward trend in true hateful language impressions.”

“Counting the number of Tweets that contain a specific slur is not an accurate way to measure hateful speech. Context matters, and not all occurrences of slur words are used in a hateful way. Slur words may be used in counterspeech, reclaimed phrases, and song lyrics, for example,” the company said.

The platform noted that 10 accounts were responsible for a spike in hate speech. Twitter said it won’t amplify any tweets containing slurs or hate speech, nor will it serve ads next to them.

“We track all uses of slurs, not just the ones that are used in a hateful manner. However, the raw data alone doesn’t tell the full story,” the company said.

This is the former head of Twitter Trust and Safety who made the decision to ban President Trump.

Yoel Roth made a career out of telling all of us we are “hateful” & shouldn’t have a voice while he openly fantasizes on Twitter about murdering children.

Sick stuff @elonmusk. https://t.co/HQTUOluIhN

— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) December 11, 2022

On Monday, Twitter relaunched its paid subscription option as new owner Elon Musk ambitiously attempts to simultaneously make the platform profitable and less reliant on advertising dollars.  

It costs $8 a month if you sign up via Twitter’s website, but $11 if you do it through Apple’s App Store. Why the difference? Apple takes a 30% cut on subscriptions purchased through its store — something Musk has previously criticized. Twitter users who use Apple products can get the lower rate simply by signing up for Twitter Blue via twitter.com.  

“Twitter, evidently, has worked out that Apple’s 30% in-app payment tax will cut into the potential profits from the program too much, so rather than trying to work out an alternative system, or maybe give people even more for their dollar, Twitter’s instead looking to pass on the tax directly to users.” — Social Media Today

we’re relaunching @TwitterBlue on Monday – subscribe on web for $8/month or on iOS for $11/month to get access to subscriber-only features, including the blue checkmark 🧵 pic.twitter.com/DvvsLoSO50

— Twitter (@Twitter) December 10, 2022

Twitter Blue subscribers are promised several things…

• A blue check mark
• Higher visibility by “rocket[ing] to the top of replies, mentions and search”
• Half the ads
• Ability to post longer videos
• Early access to new features, such as editing tweets. 

…but not all right away.

Twitter’s explanation of the rollout of these features is rather foggy. It appear verified subscribers immediately receive the check mark, 1080p video uploads, tweet-editing and reader mode. The higher visibility, lower ads and longer videos are all labelled “coming soon.”

Musk’s prior rushed rollout of Twitter Blue with the check-mark feature was a short-lived disaster, albeit an amusing one. In that version of Twitter Blue, all one needed to receive a check mark was $8 — there was no verification.

That invited mayhem, as people bought check marks and simply changed their account names to the politician, celebrity or institution of their choice. Eli Lilly stock sank after a check-marked impersonator announced the company would give away insulin for free. 

This time around, Twitter will verify the phone number and profile name on each account before granting the blue check mark. Subsequently changing your handle, display name or profile photo will cause a temporary loss of your check mark until your account is reviewed.  

On Monday, Musk tweeted, “In a few months, we will remove all legacy blue checks. The way in which they were given out was corrupt and nonsensical.” 

Before Musk, blue check marks came free — but only if you could persuade some faceless tweep behind the curtains that your account was “notable.” Naturally, that highly subjective approach was applied unevenly — particularly where non-celebrities were concerned — with accounts that were pleasing to Twitter’s overwhelmingly leftist employee base more likely to be approved. 

Musk has already fired a shot across the bow of the legacy crowd. Click or tap on one of their check marks today, and you’ll see a message that reads, “This is a legacy verified account. It may or may not be notable.”   

In a few months, we will remove all legacy blue checks. The way in which they were given out was corrupt and nonsensical.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 12, 2022

Musk’s quest to gain some measure of independence from advertisers is laudable, but quite ambitious. Social Media Today’s Andrew Hutchinson figures that, for subscriptions to contribute 50% of revenue, Musk will need 24.6 million sign-ups for Twitter Blue. He also notes that $8 a month is much harder to come by in places like India, which has accounted for most of the platform’s growth in the last three years. 

Twitter has announced it will start replacing the “official” label on some business accounts with a gold checkmark. The company will also start issuing gray checkmarks to government and “multilateral” accounts.  

Twitter posted the following criteria for being granted a blue check mark:  

• Complete: Your account must have a display name and profile photo

• Active use: Your account must be active in the past 30 days to subscribe to Twitter Blue

• Security: Your account must be older than 90 days upon subscription and have a confirmed phone number

• Non-Deceptive:

  • Your account must have no recent changes to your profile photo, display name, or username (@handle)

  • Your account must have no signs of being misleading or deceptive

  • Your account must have no signs of engaging in platform manipulation and spam

Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

• Sanctions on key oil exporters have given rise to a lucrative black market for crude.

• The EU embargo on Russian crude oil imports and the price cap on Russian crude are set to further increase illicit shipments of oil.

• Russia is already thought to be amassing a “dark fleet” of tankers to ship its oil outside the price cap regime.

The sanctions on the oil exports of Venezuela and Iran, and now Russia, have given rise to a lucrative under-the-radar oil trade in which less scrupulous vessel owners, shipping firms, and traders continue to sell sanctioned oil to those willing to take the risk to buy it.

The EU embargo on Russian crude oil imports and the price cap on Russian crude – in force since December 5 – are set to further increase illicit shipments of oil to countries outside the EU and the G7 that haven’t joined the so-called Price Cap Coalition.  

Russia is already thought to be amassing a “dark fleet” of tankers to ship its oil outside the price cap regime and it has the playbooks of Iran and Venezuela to take a leaf out of and continue exporting large volumes of its crude and products. Russia could be using tried-and-tested tactics of labeling the oil as sourced from elsewhere, turning off tanker transponders, and even falsifying the positions of tankers via the Automatic Identification System (AIS) data to hide activity taking place hundreds of miles away from the false positioning data.

By using various spoofing tactics, producers and sellers of sanctioned oil still get to place their products with buyers who are happy to get heavily discounted crude.

But not all buyers, especially those in jurisdictions with strict controls and checks such as the U.S., are tempted to discard concerns and red flags about a cargo’s origin. Other buyers, especially independent Chinese refiners, are unfazed as their priority is to buy low-priced crude and make good profits refining it. China, the world’s top oil importer, continues to buy Iranian and Venezuelan crude, often masked as crude from Malaysia or Oman, various analysis and investigative reports have found over the past few years.

Outside China, buyers are wary of coming under sanctions and generally look to avoid mysterious crudes of suspicious origin.

One such recent case was an offer to buyers in the Houston area, the heart of the U.S. Gulf Coast refining industry. Trader Jonathan Plemel of Sidewalks Holdings has recently offered heavy crude documented as coming from Mexico, which, however, was being offered at the massive discount of $30 per barrel to the U.S. benchmark. Potential buyers passed on the offer because, as cheap and alluring as it looked like, they were concerned about the origin, doubting it was really from Mexico, Bloomberg reported this week, citing Plemel and other traders in the Houston area who have been approached with similarly attractive offers in the past year. 

Plemel told Bloomberg he couldn’t be certain of the origin of the crude and couldn’t answer many questions from prospective buyers 

“Could the oil potentially be from abandoned wells in Mexico? From Venezuela? I honestly can’t say.”

Venezuela is using false documents and tankers linked to Iran and known for carrying sanctioned Iranian crude in the past, a recent investigation by Reuters showed. Venezuela is selling oil to Chinese refiners, passing it off as Malaysian crude in documents, the investigation showed.

Malaysian waters are also notorious for ship-to-ship transfers and mixing of crude to hide the true origin of Iranian and Venezuelan oil. This year, Chinese customs data have at times shown so many imports from Malaysia that analysts and observers believe that China continues to import sanctioned oil passed off as coming from Oman or Malaysia.

Last month, China’s independent refiners imported record volumes of Iranian crude passed off as coming from Malaysia, Oman, or elsewhere, according to Vortexa tanker tracking data cited by Reuters.

Russia will also increasingly resort to sanction-evading practices such as masking its crude or deceiving positioning data, analysts say. Russia has already amassed a “shadow fleet” of tankers to ship its crude outside the price cap, and is copying some of the techniques used by Iran and Venezuela, which are on the list of Moscow’s “friendly” countries.

Tankers carrying Venezuelan crude have been found to falsify their positions over the past year, and this summer, a Russia-flagged tanker in the Mediterranean was caught falsifying its AIS, research by Global Fishing Watch and SkyTruth showed this week. 

The investigation into the movements of the Russian tanker Kapitan Schemilkin showed that the vessel altered its signal to show – falsely – that it was circling offshore Greece, while in reality, the ship traveled to locations near Malta and Cyprus. 

“It would prove to be the first detection ever of a Russian-flagged tanker broadcasting false coordinates—and it may be the first of many,” SkyTruth said.   

While the Biden administration claims to champion a free and transparent press – with Attorney General Merrick Garland instituting expanded protections for journalists in October, during which he said “a free and independent press is vital to the functioning of our democracy,” calls have been growing for Biden to release perhaps the most famous political prisoner in the world; Julian Assange.

According to The Guardian – which ironically has one of the worst records when it comes to pro-establishment / anti-Assange reporting, “the biggest test of Biden’s commitment remains imprisoned in a jail cell in London, where WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been held since 2019 while facing prosecution in the United States under the Espionage Act.”

Assange notably exposed US war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, which included 400,000 field reports about the Iraq War; 15,000 unreported deaths of Iraqi civilians; and systematic rape, torture and murder committed by Iraqi forces after the U.S. military “handed over detainees to a notorious Iraqi torture squad,” according to TruthOut.

WikiLeaks also disclosed the Afghan War Logs, which are 90,000 reports of more civilian casualties by coalition forces than the U.S. military had admitted to. And its revelations additionally included the Guantánamo Files, 779 secret reports showing that 150 innocent people had been held there for years and documenting the torture and abuse of 800 men and boys in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

And while former President Barack Obama commuted the sentence to leaker Chelsea Manning, a former Army intelligence analyst, Assange has been left to rot in prison as he awaits extradition to the United States to stand trial under the Espionage Act.

Now, Biden is facing a push from both inside the US and internationally, to drop charges against Assange that were levied against him by the Trump DOJ in 2019 – when UK authorities arrested the WikiLeaks foundre and dragged him out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London. As he was pulled from the building, Assange yelled “This is unlawful, I am not leaving.”

But the Biden administration immediately continued pursuing Assange. Within two weeks of his 2021 inauguration, the Biden DOJ repeatedly asked the UK courts to renew America’s request for Assange’s extradition – which was eventually approved by then-home secretary Priti Patel in June. Assange is appealing the decision, arguing that he is “being prosecuted and punished for his political opinions.”

Almost all of the 18 charges brought against Assange in the 2019 indictment center on the actual publication online of secret military and government material by WikiLeaks, much of it garnered from former US military whistleblower Chelsea Manning. Only one of the charges accuses Assange of actively working to help Manning secure the classified information. In that instance, prosecutors charged that Assange offered to help Manning to crack the password for one classified military system – an attempt that failed. -The Guardian

In late November, five major media outlets sent a letter to the Biden administration, including the NY Times and The Guardian, calling for the US government to end its prosecution of Assange.

Monday 28th Nov is the 12th anniversary of the beginning of the momentous #Cablegate publication

Nine days later its publisher Julian Assange was arrested and has been in detention ever since – facing a 175 year sentence if extradited for truthful reporting #FreeAssangeNOW pic.twitter.com/AeQdN94YXS

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) November 27, 2022

“This case is hugely significant,” said Columbia University law professor Jameel Jaffer, who runs the Knight First Amendment Institute at the university. “At the end of the day, I find it hard to believe that the Biden administration wants this case to be its press freedom legacy, and it will be its legacy if they continue to pursue it. That will overshadow everything else when it comes to press freedom.”

Justice department officials aren’t tipping their hand about where Assange’s prosecution might eventually lead, as he continues to challenge his extradition to the US before a British appeals court. The justice department declined to comment on all the outside calls to drop the case, but one official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Garland “has made clear that he will follow the law wherever it leads”, as he has in other politically charged cases.

For all the outside pressure on the justice department to drop the case, a critical factor could turn out to be the internal regulations that Garland announced in October banning the use of records seizures and other investigative steps against “news media acting within the scope of news gathering” except in what the department said would be limited circumstances. -The Guardian

A central argument by the West has been whether Assange should be considered a journalist – which would entitle him to First Amendment protections in the US, or a ‘rogue operative,’ who GOP Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska once called “an outlet for foreign propaganda and … an enemy of the American people.”

According to Barry J Pollack, Assange’s lead lawyer in the US, “the new regulations certainly cry out for someone at the highest levels of the justice department to take a fresh look at this prosecution to see whether it is really consistent with the new policy,” and to determine “is this the type of case we want to be pursuing?”

“The timing is ripe for that,” he continued.

By Josh Owens of OilPrice.com

As temperatures in the UK plummet, National Grid, the transmission system operator, asked two contingency coal-fired power plants to be ready to send more electricity to the grid on Monday if needed.

“We’ve issued a notification to warm two winter contingency coal units. This measure should give the public confidence in Monday’s energy supply,” National Grid said today, as temperatures dropped and snow fell in London, creating traffic chaos.

“This notification is not confirmation that these units will be used on Monday, but that they will be available to the ESO, if required,” the grid operator added.

Later on Monday, the National Grid ESO said it “can confirm that it has now stood down these coal units as there is adequate available contingency for this evening.”

With low temperatures and low wind speeds, wind generated just 7.6% of Britain’s electricity on Saturday, National Grid ESO said on Sunday.

Natural gas generated 62.0% of electricity, more than nuclear 14.4%, wind, and biomass 4.9%. Coal accounted for 3.9% of UK electricity supply on Saturday.

Although the two contingency coal plants were not used today, this was the first time the grid operator has asked those coal units to be on stand-by since the UK postponed in the summer the previously planned closure of several coal-fired plants or units.

In September, Uniper said it would keep a unit at a coal plant in the UK available until the end of March 2023, six months after the original date for closing the unit this month. This extension is driven by the need to boost the UK energy supply through what will be a difficult winter. 

Uniper, which operates the Ratcliffe on Soar coal power station in Nottinghamshire, had originally planned to accelerate the coal phase-out in the UK and to close one of four 500 MW units at Ratcliffe as early as the end of September 2022—two years ahead of the date announced by the UK government for the coal phase-out.

UK next day electricity prices surged yesterday to help attract power imports through interconnectors from Europe and record prices are expected during the peak demand hours between 5pm and 7pm on Monday.

Authored by Katarzyna Stañko via Remix News,

Poland aims to create the largest land army in Europe, according to a report from French newspaper Le Figaro, with the paper’s analysis pointing out the colossal weapons contracts signed by Warsaw, including tanks, self-propelled guns, and missile launchers.

Poland is arming quickly and securing weapons at a frantic pace. Prior to contracts with South Korea, Warsaw ordered 250 American Abrams tanks to replace the old Soviet-era tanks it sent to Ukraine and other heavy equipment. The deal signed with the South Korean company Hyundai Rotem for the delivery of tanks will amount to four times the number of Leclerc tanks currently used by the French army.

Le Figaro noted that Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Błaszczak promised in July that Poland will have the “strongest land forces in Europe.”

The Polish government also plans to increase its number of servicemen to 300,000 by 2035 from the current 170,000. At the same time, the country aims to increase military expenditures in 2023 to 3 percent of its GDP, surpassing all other EU countries, including France, which is planning to reach 2 percent.

Despite the increase in land forces, Poland still falls behind in the air and naval branches compared to France and Britain. However, Warsaw is modernizing these branches of the military as well by signing agreements to receive F-35 fighters and FA-50s, as well as three British frigates and two espionage ships made by the Swedish Saab company.

“For Poles, the Russian threat was always present and will remain this way in the long run,” said former head of the European Defence Agency, Claude-France Arnould.

“Poles were on standby already during the NATO Summit in Bucharest in 2008.”

“Those armaments are the evidence of the triumph of the concept of strategic autonomy,” said Frederic Mauro of the International and Strategic Relations Institute.

The Polish government aspires to take on the role as the “leader of NATO’s eastern flank,” while South Korea offers a very attractive price-quality ratio, he said.

“The war of attrition in Ukraine showed how important having large quantities of inexpensive equipment is,” Mauro added. “Today, in Europe with the Ukraine war, we are speaking of a war economy. Having advanced weaponry is not enough, you need to have plenty of it, fast,” concluded the analyst.

Europe’s cold blast is due to a weak, polar vortex split in the stratosphere, which allowed high pressure to build across Greenland last week. As a result, Arctic air poured over the energy-stricken continent, sending natural gas and power prices higher. 

The unseasonably cold weather will continue through this week. North West and Central Europe are recording average temperatures well below normal, boosting residential and commercial heating demand. 

In the North West region, temperatures are forecasted to average around 30 degrees Fahrenheit this week, about 10 degrees less than the 30-year mean. 

A similar setup is for Central Europe. 

The arrival of the cold snap has already sent UK electricity prices to record highs. 

Bloomberg’s energy crisis index shows gas storage percentages full for top European countries have already flipped from injections to drawing season. Power prices in France, Germany, Italy, and the UK are elevated as the cost of producing electricity is surging. 

Here’s a better view of the gas storage situation. Even though significant progress was made to refill storage in an unusually warm autumn, cold snaps will draw down supplies much quicker as supply gaps persist due to Russian flows to the continent severed at some key entry points. 

“The first winter blast is placing a heavy strain on European power grids, after a mild autumn allowed utilities to replenish depleted natural gas reserves. The energy crunch has forced some countries to return to coal, with the UK’s National Grid asking two coal-fired units from its winter reserve to run on Monday,” Bloomberg reported. 

In a separate report, Bloomberg outlined three reasons why Europe’s addiction to NatGas persists:

• First, nuclear outages in France have resulted in the loss of a sizable chunk of electricity generation. 
• Second, the region is also experiencing low wind output as the technology proves its fickleness during cold weather. 
• Finally, EU policymakers are discovering the limits of their demand reduction measures.

The arrival of the cold blast is Europe’s first real test of the power grid and NatGas supplies. All eyes will be on the rate of drawdown of NatGas storage.