Connect with us

Published

on

Workers during the production process of pipes at the Nord Stream 2 facility at Mukran on Ruegen Islandon in Sassnitz, Germany.
Carsten Koall | Getty Images

WASHINGTON – The United States and Germany reached an agreement to allow completion of the $11 billion Nord Stream 2 pipeline, a thorny, long-standing point of contention between the otherwise stalwart allies.

The agreement reached between Washington and Berlin, which was announced on Wednesday, aims to invest more than 200 million euros in energy security in Ukraine as well as sustainable energy across Europe.

“Should Russia attempt to use energy as a weapon or commit further aggressive acts against Ukraine, Germany will take action at the national level and press for effective measures at the European level, including sanctions to limit Russian export capabilities to Europe in the energy sector,” a senior State Department official said on a call with reporters on Wednesday.

The senior State Department official, who requested anonymity in order to discuss the agreement candidly, added that the U.S. will retain the prerogative of levying sanctions, as well, in the case if Russia uses energy as a tool of coercion.

The official said the United States and Germany are “resolutely committed to the sovereignty and territorial integrity” of Ukraine and therefore, consulted closely with Kyiv on this matter.

The unease surrounding the nearly complete Nord Stream 2 project, a sprawling undersea pipeline that will pump Russian gas directly into Germany, stems from Moscow’s history of using the energy sector to gain leverage over Russia’s neighbors, namely Ukraine.

When completed, the undersea pipeline will span 764 miles from Russia to Germany, making it one of the longest offshore gas pipelines in the world. Last month, the Kremlin said that only 62 miles of Nord Stream 2 were left to build.

In May, the United States waived sanctions on the Swiss-based company Nord Stream 2 AG, which is running the pipeline project, and its German chief executive. The waiver gave Berlin and Washington three more months to reach an agreement on Nord Stream 2.

The agreement comes on the heels of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s visit to the White House, the first by a European leader since Biden took office and likely her last trip to Washington after nearly 16 years at the helm of Europe’s largest economy.

Merkel, the first woman to lead Germany, has previously said she will step down after the September national elections.

During a joint press conference at the White House, Merkel pledged to take a tough stance against Russia if Moscow misused the energy sector for political gains.

On Wednesday, the White House announced that Biden will host Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy next month.

Ahead of the July 15 meeting, Biden administration officials and representatives from Germany told CNBC that the leaders of the world’s largest and fourth-largest economies were anxious to rebuild a frayed transatlantic relationship.

A handout photo provided by the German Government Press Office of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and U.S. President Joe Biden stand in the White House with a view of the Washington Monument on July 15, 2021 in Washington, DC.
Guido Bergmann | Handout | Getty Images News | Getty Images

“Obviously, over the past years, we had a number of fits and starts in the bilateral relationship,” said a senior German government official, who requested anonymity in order to speak candidly about Merkel’s agenda.

“The entire focus was on issues where we disagreed,” the official said, adding that sometimes “allies were seen as foes.”

Throughout his administration, former President Donald Trump frequently dressed down allies and often singled out Merkel’s Germany for being “delinquent in their payments” to NATO.

Last year, Trump approved a plan that would remove 9,500 U.S. troops stationed in Germany to other countries, another blow to the transatlantic relationship.

“The U.S.-German relationship was heavily negatively impacted during the Trump administration. So, there was no question that the relationship had to be renewed rebuilt, etcetera,” explained Jenik Radon, adjunct professor at Columbia University’s School of Public and International Affairs.

Radon, a legal scholar who has worked in more than 70 countries on energy issues, spoke to the complex nature of global energy deals.

The Nord Stream 2 pipeline aims to double the volume of natural gas exported directly to Germany via a network beneath the Baltic Sea, bypassing an existing route through Ukraine.

“Once you try to deliver gas or oil through a pipeline through transit countries, you always put yourself in a predicament because you have a third party that is also involved,” said Randon.

“It’s not just the seller, it’s not just the buyer, there’s also the transit one, but you have no absolute control over that third country,” he said, adding that “doing transit deals are among the most difficult.”

Workers are seen at the construction site of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, near the town of Kingisepp, Leningrad region, Russia, June 5, 2019.
Anton Vaganov | Reuters

Experts on the region see the undersea pipeline as a form of Russian aggression toward Ukraine.

“By eliminating Ukraine as a transit country, Russia can deny it the benefits that come from having gas delivered across its territory,” explained Stephen Sestanovich, senior fellow for Russian and Eurasian studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

There are two elements to the issue that people often mix up, he added, pointing to Russia’s ability to use natural gas as a political weapon against Ukraine as well as its ability to hurt Ukraine’s economy.

“That’s why the Biden administration has focused on trying to limit or compensate for any economic hit — and it wants a firm German buy-in on that goal,” he said.

However, Russia’s grip over American allies has weakened somewhat due to shifts in energy markets, according to Sestanovich.

“In the years that Nord Stream 2 has been discussed and now all but finished, energy markets have changed, and it’s become much harder for Russia to hold European countries hostage — there are just too many alternative sources of energy,” he said. “The image we have of Russia with a political stranglehold on our allies is becoming outdated.”

Continue Reading

Environment

I found this cheap Chinese e-cargo trike that hauls more than your car!

Published

on

By

I found this cheap Chinese e-cargo trike that hauls more than your car!

If you’ve ever wondered what happens when you combine a fruit cart, a cargo bike, and a Piaggio Ape all in one vehicle, now you’ve got your answer. I submit, for your approval, this week’s feature for the Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week column – and it’s a beautiful doozie.

Feast your eyes on this salad slinging, coleslaw cruising, tuber taxiing produce chariot!

I think this electric vegetable trike might finally scratch the itch long felt by many of my readers. It seems every time I cover an electric trike, even the really cool ones, I always get commenters poo-poo-ing it for having two wheels in the rear instead of two wheels in the front. Well, here you go, folks!

Designed with two front wheels for maximum stability, this trike keeps your cucumbers in check through every corner. Because trust me, you don’t want to hit a pothole and suddenly be juggling peaches like you’re in Cirque du Soleil: Farmers Market Edition.

Advertisement – scroll for more content

To avoid the extra cost of designing a linked steering system for a pair of front wheels, the engineers who brought this salad shuttle to life simply side-stepped that complexity altogether by steering the entire fixed front end. I’ve got articulating electric tractors that steer like this, and so if it works for a several-ton work machine, it should work for a couple hundred pounds of cargo bike.

Featuring a giant cargo bed up front with four cascading fruit baskets set up for roadside sales, this cargo bike is something of a blank slate. Sure, you could monetize grandma’s vegetable garden, or you could fill it with your own ideas and concoctions. Our exceedingly talented graphics wizard sees it as the perfect coffee and pastry e-bike for my new startup, The Handlebarista, and I’m not one to argue. Basically, the sky is the limit with a blank slate bike like this!

Sure, the quality doesn’t quite match something like a fancy Tern cargo bike. The rim brakes aren’t exactly confidence-inspiring, but at least there are three of them. And if they should all give out, or just not quite slow you down enough to avoid that quickly approaching brick wall, then at least you’ve got a couple hundred pounds of tomatoes as a tasty crumple zone.

The electrical system does seem a bit underpowered. With a 36V battery and a 250W motor, I don’t know if one-third of a horsepower is enough to haul a full load to the local farmer’s market. But I guess if the weight is a bit much for the little motor, you could always do some snacking along the way. On the other hand, all the pictures seem to show a non-electric version. So if this cart is presumably mobile on pedal power alone, then that extra motor assist, however small, is going to feel like a very welcome guest.

The $950 price is presumably for the electric version, since that’s what’s in the title of the listing, though I wouldn’t get too excited just yet. I’ve bought a LOT of stuff on Alibaba, including many electric vehicles, and the too-good-to-be-true price is always exactly that. In my experience, you can multiply the Alibaba price by 3-4x to get the actual landed price for things like these. Even so, $3,000-$4,000 wouldn’t be a terrible price, considering a lot of electric trikes stateside already cost that much and don’t even come with a quad-set of vegetable baskets on board!

I should also put my normal caveat in here about not actually buying one of these. Please, please don’t try to buy one of these awesome cargo e-trikes. This is a silly, tongue-in-cheek weekend column where I scour the ever-entertaining underbelly of China’s massive e-commerce site Alibaba in search of fun, quirky, and just plain awesomely weird electric vehicles. While I’ve successfully bought several fun things on the platform, I’ve also gotten scammed more than once, so this is not for the timid or the tight-budgeted among us.

That isn’t to say that some of my more stubborn readers haven’t followed in my footsteps before, ignoring my advice and setting out on their own wild journey. But please don’t be the one who risks it all and gets nothing in return. Don’t say I didn’t warn you; this is the warning.

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.

Continue Reading

Environment

OPEC+ members agree to larger-than-expected oil production hike in August

Published

on

By

OPEC+ members agree to larger-than-expected oil production hike in August

The OPEC logo is displayed on a mobile phone screen in front of a computer screen displaying OPEC icons in Ankara, Turkey, on June 25, 2024.

Anadolu | Anadolu | Getty Images

Eight oil-producing nations of the OPEC+ alliance agreed on Saturday to increase their collective crude production by 548,000 barrels per day, as they continue to unwind a set of voluntary supply cuts.

This subset of the alliance — comprising heavyweight producers Russia and Saudi Arabia, alongside Algeria, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Oman and the United Arab Emirates — met digitally earlier in the day. They had been expected to increase their output by a smaller 411,000 barrels per day.

In a statement, the OPEC Secretariat attributed the countries’ decision to raise August daily output by 548,000 barrels to “a steady global economic outlook and current healthy market fundamentals, as reflected in the low oil inventories.”

The eight producers have been implementing two sets of voluntary production cuts outside of the broader OPEC+ coalition’s formal policy.

One, totaling 1.66 million barrels per day, stays in effect until the end of next year.

Under the second strategy, the countries reduced their production by an additional 2.2 million barrels per day until the end of the first quarter.

They initially set out to boost their production by 137,000 barrels per day every month until September 2026, but only sustained that pace in April. The group then tripled the hike to 411,000 barrels per day in each of May, June, and July — and is further accelerating the pace of their increases in August.

Oil prices were briefly boosted in recent weeks by the seasonal summer spike in demand and the 12-day war between Israel and Iran, which threatened both Tehran’s supplies and raised concerns over potential disruptions of supplies transported through the key Strait of Hormuz.

At the end of the Friday session, oil futures settled at $68.30 per barrel for the September-expiration Ice Brent contract and at $66.50 per barrel for front month-August Nymex U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude.

Continue Reading

Environment

Podcast: Trump/GOP go after EV/solar, Tesla, Ford, GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more

Published

on

By

Podcast: Trump/GOP go after EV/solar, Tesla, Ford, GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more

In the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy. In this week’s episode, we discuss Trump’s Big Beautiful bill becoming law and going after EVs and solar, Tesla, Ford, and GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more

Today’s episode is brought to you by Bosch Mobility Aftermarket—A global leader and trusted provider of automotive aftermarket parts. To celebrate Amazon Prime Day July 8th through 11th, Bosch Mobility is offering exclusive savings on must-have auto parts and tools. Learn more here.

The show is live every Friday at 4 p.m. ET on Electrek’s YouTube channel.

As a reminder, we’ll have an accompanying post, like this one, on the site with an embedded link to the live stream. Head to the YouTube channel to get your questions and comments in.

Advertisement – scroll for more content

After the show ends at around 5 p.m. ET, the video will be archived on YouTube and the audio on all your favorite podcast apps:

We now have a Patreon if you want to help us avoid more ads and invest more in our content. We have some awesome gifts for our Patreons and more coming.

Here are a few of the articles that we will discuss during the podcast:

Here’s the live stream for today’s episode starting at 4:00 p.m. ET (or the video after 5 p.m. ET:

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.

Continue Reading

Trending