fuel

The Spanish atmosphere has been loaded with fuel and now it’s time to pay the bill

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Spain has been chaining one temperature record after another for a week and the culprit, as we have been explaining, is a subtropical ridge that the country has maintained between five and ten degrees above normal. Nothing particularly surprising, nothing that hasn’t happened two dozen times in the last few years. For complete the déjà vuIn fact, the same number has dragged a disproportionate amount of Saharan dust for days. And now, it’s time to suffer the consequences. Never corner a DANA. As I said, we can describe the third week of April with three words: heat, stability and suspended dust. But starting on the 23rd the situation changes and a trough is becoming detached from the general circulation and It is going to be configured in the form of DANA. The party starts here. The synoptic configuration is clear: a DANA in the southwest with the ridge still strong in the east and very warm air between the two structures. We have the basic ingredients of convection. What can we expect? AEMET forecast stormy showers locally stronghail and very strong gusts of wind in almost the entire interior of the Peninsula. Today, the highest risk areas are the west and center of the peninsula (Extremadura, Castilla-La Mancha, Castilla y León, western Andalusia), the Pyrenees and the Iberian System. If everything continues as it is, April will end up as the third warmest month on record and all that atmospheric energy will be channeled over the land. To put it in perspective: all this is going to cause average temperatures to drop more than 14 degrees in a matter of days. What does the heat have to do with the storm? Physicists use the Clausius-Clapeyron equation to explain that the atmosphere’s capacity to retain water vapor grows by approximately 7% for each degree of warming. The hotter, the more water vapor; more water vapor, (if the conditions are right) wilder storms. It is true that we are experiencing an unusual April… but the average temperature in Spain has risen 1.69 °C between 1961 and 2024 and heat waves last three days per decade. That is, the “outside the norm” in this case It means things are changing. and what we are going to experience (the passage from the 36 to the flood) is the new normal. Image | BenBaso | Xataka In Xataka | In two days, AEMET is clear that spring is suspended: an “early summer” arrives in Spain

The Iran war has disrupted the jet fuel market. So Lufthansa has canceled 20,000 flights

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The war in Iran has punished many sectors, but few have been as shaken as aviation. First for the closure of much of the Middle East airspace, causing the worst crisis that airlines have suffered since the pandemic, and later due to fear of an escalation in the price of flights. Now to these fears we have added another one that is already taking shape: the cancellation of thousands of servicesconvicted of the scarcity of jet fuel. Lufthansa just demonstrated How serious is that threat? The (other) hangover of the Iran war. That the war in Iran threatens to impact airports around the world is nothing new. In fact he already did it in its first barswhen Tehran launched a series of attacks on the rest of the Persian Gulf countries that they blocked part of the region’s air traffic and hubs as important as the terminals in Doha or Dubai. Over the last few weeks, however, two major threats have been taking shape, especially considering that we are on the verge of summer and the international flow of tourists. has been growing for years: that the war skyrocket the price of flights or (even worse) that forces Cancel services. Checking the grills. Proof of how real (and well-founded) these fears are is that between March and April several airlines have acknowledged that they will have to retouch their grills. On March 17 for example Reuters revealed that SAS, a Scandinavian company, planned to cancel a thousand flights due to the rise in fuel prices. Delta Airlines, Air Canada, Cathay Pacific either Air New Zealand They have taken similar measures, tweaking their operations. Even the Dutch KLM has had no choice but to suspend 160 services scheduled for April. One figure: 20,000 flights. If there is a company that has shown how critical the situation is, it is the German Lufthansa, one of the largest airlines of the world. Financial Times (FT) has advanced that the company will cancel around 20,000 flights between May and October to save fuel, which represents one of the biggest cuts in the sector to adapt to the war in Iran. To be more precise, the German company will eliminate 120 daily flights starting next week and will dispense with those routes departing from Munich and Frankfurt that are not profitable. Trimming will be applied well into the fall. “The price has doubled”. “In total, about 20,000 short-haul flights will be eliminated from the program through October, equivalent to approximately 40,000 metric tons of jet fuel, the price of which has doubled since the outbreak of the conflict with Iran,” explains the company, which has confirmed the cancellations coinciding with a summit of the EU focused on war. Click on the image to go to the tweet. Fuel for six weeks. Lufthansa’s decision is much better understood if one takes into account the latest wake up call of the International Energy Agency (IEA), which a few days ago warned that the jet fuel reserves that Europe manages guarantee operations only in the short term. The notice came from the mouth of the organization’s executive director, Fatih Birol, who took advantage an interview with the Associated Press to warn of the coming panorama. “We are in a critical situation and this will have serious consequences for the global economy. The longer this continues, the worse it will be for economic growth and inflation around the world. Some countries may have more energy than others, but none, absolutely none, is immune to the crisis,” Birol reflected. before stopping at the specific case of Europe and the aeronautical sector: “We have perhaps six weeks of jet fuel. Is it the only warning sign? No. Apart from Birol or the trickle of cancellations announced by airlines such as KLM or Lufthansa, there are other indicators that reveal the extent to which the sector views its jet supply with concern. The EU is already being considered impose a mandatory fuel distribution, in an effort reminiscent of that deployed during the pandemic. Not only that. In Brussels it is already spoken to look for alternative supply sources, such as jet fuel produced in the US, or the release of strategic reserves. Click on the image to go to the tweet. Tickets 24% more expensive. In the United Kingdom, airlines have asked also to the authorities to relax noise regulations or reduce taxes on flights to address supply shortages. It makes sense considering how the war is impacting prices. The BBC has disclosed a study by the consulting firm Teneo that estimates that the conflict is already being felt in air fares: on average, it estimates that the cheapest tickets are 24% more expensive than a year ago, which is explained both by the price of fuel and the route diversions caused by the war. A percentage: 40%. If the war in Iran has served anything, it is to understand (remember, rather) the strategic role that the Strait of Hormuz plays in global supply chains. Its waters not only circulate the fifth part of the world’s oil and LNG, as well urea moves for fertilizer, helium for technology industry…and (exactly!) good part of aircraft fuel. It is estimated that more than 20% of the jet fuel transported by sea last year was channeled through the strait. If we talk about Europe, that percentage is even bigger. The war has not only hit that traffic, strangled by the closure of Hormuz, it has also paralyzed supplies from Kuwait, heavy weight of the sector, and has led other countries to apply protectionist policies. For example, China it did not take long to prohibit exports of diesel, gasoline and jet fuel. As if all of the above were not enough, kerosene itself and its nature complicate the picture: Fuel cannot be stored for long without degrading, making their supply chains more sensitive to disruptions like those caused by war. Are these all warning signs? No. With summer just around the corner and a million-dollar … Read more

Turning plastic into fuel profitably was a pipe dream. A new process just made it possible

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A team from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in the United States, has achieved convert plastic bags and kitchen boards into gasoline and diesel without having to resort to high temperatures or expensive materials. The discovery, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, has raised some eyebrows and below we tell you all the details. The problem they are trying to solve. The plastic is one of the most difficult materials to recycle profitably. Specifically, polyethylene (the polymer that makes up supermarket bags, white plastic containers or kitchen cutting boards) accumulates millions of tons in landfills each year. Until now, the only technically viable way to turn it into fuel was through a process called pyrolysis, which requires heating the material to temperatures between 450 and 500 degrees Celsius. An expensive, energy inefficient process that is difficult to scale to an industrial level. What does the new method consist of?. Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have opted for a different path: introduce the plastic into a mixture of molten salts with aluminum chloride, which acts both as a solvent and as a catalyst. These salts are inorganic compounds that remain stable even under demanding reaction conditions. The key is that the aluminum atoms in the mixture bind to the polymer and generate areas of high acidity that break the long molecular chains of the plastic into smaller fragments, which are transformed into molecules typical of gasoline or diesel. And all this at less than 200 degrees Celsius, a temperature comparable to that of a conventional domestic oven. Why it represents a relevant technical leap. Beyond the reduction in temperature, the process dispenses with three elements that make traditional methods more expensive and complicated: noble metal catalysts (such as platinum), organic solvents and external contribution of hydrogen. According to Zhenzhen Yanga scientist at ORNL and one of the lead authors of the study, “this is the first time that molten salts have been used as a means to produce high value-added chemicals from waste without any catalytic initiators or solvents, and at a temperature below 200 degrees Celsius.” Gasoline efficiency reaches approximately 60% in moderate conditions, a result that the researchers themselves describe as promising for its future industrial application. As they verified that worked. To understand exactly what happens during the reaction, the team used a combination of advanced analysis techniques, including soft X-ray spectroscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance, neutron scattering, and gas chromatography. Thanks to isotopic labeling, they were able to track how carbon behaves during the process and confirm that the simplest polymer chains produce gasoline-like fuel, while the more complex ones derive into diesel molecules. By having this level of detail, the process could be optimized depending on the type of fuel you want to obtain. What remains to be resolved. The system is not ready to scale immediately. The main obstacle is that the aluminum salts used are hygroscopic, that is, they absorb moisture from the environment, which compromises their long-term stability. The team working now on ways to confine or protect these saltspossibly using halides or carbon materials, to make them more durable under real industrial conditions. Mbeyond the laboratory. If the process manages to scale successfully, the implications are considerable. Polyethylene is the most produced plastic in the world, abundant and cheap to obtain as a raw material. Aluminum salts, for their part, are low-cost commercial materials. According to Liqi Qiua postdoctoral researcher at the University of Tennessee, “the starting material is abundant in consumer waste, and our catalyst system, molten aluminum salts, is very cheap.” The result could be a cost-effective route to converting plastic waste into high-quality transportation and industrial fuels, while also clearing up our landfills. At the moment the patent is pending, so we will have to wait to find out if this remedy ends up coming to fruition. Cover image | Elbert Lora and Marek Studzinski In Xataka | An 11,000 km ring around the Moon: Japan’s incredible plan to light up the Earth

the price of fuel does not go down in the Canary Islands

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Last week, the Government launched an emergency plan to cushion the blow of the war in the middle east on the citizens’ pockets. The most visible measure is the reduction of VAT on fuel, from 21% to 10%, which in practical terms translates into around 30 cents less per liter of gasoline and about 20 euros in savings per tank. On the peninsula, thousands of drivers They have already noticed it at the pump since the royal decree It came into effect last Sunday. In the Canary Islands, however, this discount does not exist. And it is basically the consequence of a tax system that has been operating for centuries in a completely different way from the rest of the country. The Canary Islands do not pay VAT. When the Government cuts VAT on fuel, it is modifying a tax that is not applied in the archipelago. In the Canary Islands, the Value Added Tax does not apply, nor does the Special Tax on Hydrocarbons, which do apply in the rest of the national territory. Instead it works the Canary Islands General Indirect Tax (IGIC) and its own regional tax on fuels derived from petroleum. This is because the Canary Islands have a special tax regime within Spain and the European Union, with historical roots linked to its status as an outermost territory. Type difference. The IGIC works in a similar way to the VAT, but its percentages are much lower. While the general VAT rate is set at 21%, the general IGIC is set at 7%. And if the reduced VAT is 10%, the reduced IGIC drops to 3%. This means that every time a driver fills up the tank in the Canary Islands, the consumption tax he pays is less than half that of a driver in Madrid or Seville. In global figures, fuels on the islands support a tax burden of around 25%compared to 50% of the national average. This is done to compensate for the structural extra costs involved in being an archipelago far from the continent, without oil pipelines and with all the energy imported by ship. Margins. The gap in tax rates limits the scope for action on the islands. When the State reduces the VAT on fuel from 21% to 10%, it cuts 11 percentage points. If the Canary Islands Government wanted to apply an equivalent reduction, it would have to take the IGIC from 7% to 0%, and even then. In this way, the economic impact on the consumer’s pocket is not the same, although the proportional effort is comparable. This explains why the savings generated by this type of measures are structurally greater on the peninsula than on the islands. In the Canary Islands they already paid less, but the increase is suffered more. Before the crisis broke out, gasoline was cheaper in the Canary Islands thanks to REF (Economic and Fiscal Regime of the Canary Islands), the application of IGIC instead of VAT and price regulation. But when oil becomes more expensive, the effect is especially abrupt in the archipelago. Most consumer products in the archipelago arrive by ship, including fuel. The rapid rise in crude oil also affects maritime transport, which in the end makes everything more expensive. According to data from the Ministry for the Ecological Transition collected by Dieselogasolinethe average accumulated price of a liter of 95 gasoline in the Canary Islands has gone from 1,181 euros to 1,383 euros since the conflict began. The strategy that the Canary Islands are considering. The regional government of Fernando Clavijo is already working on its own anti-crisis shield. The central measure is to bring the IGIC of fuels to zero rate, eliminating the current 7%. It also contemplates a 99.9% bonus on fuel tax for transporters and deductions in the regional section of personal income tax. Of course, in order to be able to carry it out without breaking the spending rule, the Canary Islands Executive has asked the Ministry of Finance to make this limit more flexible. In Xataka | Chinese airlines are the only ones still flying over Russia. And that is why they are the winners of the Iran crisis

Many airlines are canceling flights due to the fuel crisis

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The conflict between the United States, Israel and Iran hits the air sector squarely. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has triggered a colossal energy crisis that the airlines have not seen coming, which has resulted in thousands of flights canceledrising rates and an uncertainty that, for the moment, has no expiration date. Start. On February 28, the United States and Israel launched coordinated attacks against Iran, triggering the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a sea lane through which about 20% of the world’s oil trade transits. According to Kevin Bookco-founder of the analytics firm Clearview Energy Partners, when analysts study what can go wrong in global oil markets, this is “the worst thing that can happen at any single point of failure,” he told NPR. Iran did not achieve this with a naval blockade, but with cheap drones. A few attacks in the vicinity of the strait were enough for insurers and shipping companies to decide that it was too risky to cross it. The result: The price of Brent exceeded $100 per barrel on March 8 for the first time in four years, reaching a high of $126. The impact in commercial aviation. The closure of airspace over the Middle East has caused complete chaos in global aviation. According to CNBC, more than 25,000 flights over the Middle East have been canceled since the attacks began, and the price of aviation fuel skyrocketed 58% in just days, reaching more than 170 euros per barrel. Who is canceling and how much. There is a flood of airlines that have canceled flights around the world. Among the main ones are: The Americans: United (5% of capacity); Delta, which already accounts losses of more than 400 million dollars for fuel; American and Southwest, which are also exposed without price coverage. “The price of fuel has more than doubled in the last three weeks. If prices remained at this level, it would mean an additional expenditure of $11 billion a year on fuel alone,” counted Scott Kirby, CEO of United. The Europeans:SAS, canceling about 1,000 flights in April; the entire Lufthansa Group (Lufthansa, Austrian, Swiss, Brussels Airlines), KLM, Finnair, ITA Airways, Wizz Air and easyJet, whose CEO publicly warned that the situation in Europe could become seriously complicated starting in mid-May. “Although we try to absorb cost increases as much as possible, it is a shock that directly hits the sector,” counted SAS CEO Anko van der Werff. Asia-Pacific: Air New Zealand, about 1,100 flights until May (affecting about 44,000 passengers); Cathay Pacific, which have applied supplements of fuel to all its routes; Thai Airways, which already plans to raise rates between 10-15%; AirAsia; Qantas, with price increases and suspending departures on specific routes, and Vietnam Airlines. Where it hurts the most. The crisis does not hit everyone the same. Southeast Asia is especially exposed due to its dependence on supplies from the Gulf. According to Aerotime, China and Thailand have restricted exports of fuel, and the possibility of further calendar disruptions and other potential problems looms over the entire Asia-Pacific region. On the other hand, the situation in Sri Lanka is particularly extreme. And the country not only faces rising prices, but also a real shortage of foreign currency to pay for it, to the point of having declared Wednesdays holidays to reduce fuel consumption throughout the country. What’s coming A recent assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) concludes that Iran could maintain the closure of the strait for between one and six months. kirby warned in its memo that United is preparing for a scenario in which oil reaches $175 per barrel and does not drop below $100 until the end of 2027. If this scenario comes to pass, the wave of cancellations and rate increases that we are seeing now could be just the beginning. Cover image | David Syphers In Xataka | The Government’s plan against the fuel crisis: lower the VAT on gasoline and diesel to 10%

the toxic hell of Tehran after the bombing of the worst fuel in the world

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The water in emergency reserves is no longer transparent; It has turned a thick black. The city’s once passable streets are covered in a slippery, dark layer. “Night became morning and morning, with all the smoke, became night again,” said one astonished resident. These are not scenes from a dystopian movie, but the reality that describe The New York Times after the bombings on the oil infrastructure in Iran. The attacks have left Tehran residents facing a rain laden with oil and toxins that stains cars, roofs and hanging clothes. Faced with this unprecedented situation, the Iranian authorities and the Red Crescent have been forced to ask the more than 9 million inhabitants of the capital to lock themselves in their homes, with severe warnings for children, the elderly and pregnant women. What falls from the sky is no longer just water; It’s poison. A fog that reaches space. The constant military bombings against multiple fuel facilities in and around Tehran, such as the Shahran and Aqdasieh depots, have left a black scar. As detailed GuardianDays after the impacts, satellite images showed that the facilities were still burning, sending columns of dense smoke into the atmosphere. But the problem is aggravated by the type of fuel that burns. An exhaustive analysis of The New York Times reveals that the clouds They are extraordinarily toxic because Iran burns and stores large quantities of “mazut.” This is a very low quality residual fuel, the “bottom of the barrel” that remains after refining the oil, and which contains very high levels of sulfur. Although much of the world prohibits its use, Iran depends on it due to its aging refineries and international sanctions. And it started to rain black. When the facilities were blown up, smoke laden with soot, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen compounds rose to the skies. Why did it rain black? Akshay Deoras, scientist at the University of Reading consulted by Guardianand the magazine Nature They explain it with a clear metaphor: the raindrops acted like “sponges or magnets”, absorbing all the pollutants and oil suspended in the air before collapsing on the city. Furthermore, Tehran is a victim of its own geography. As the magazine explains NaturelThe city is surrounded by the Alborz mountains. This generates a phenomenon known as “thermal inversion,” where a layer of warm air traps cold, contaminated air near the ground, functioning as a lid that prevents toxicity from dispersing. The invisible enemy. The citizens they expressed thatAlmost instantly, they began to suffer headaches, eye and skin irritation, and severe breathing difficulties. The Iranian Red Crescent issued urgent alerts warning that the mixture of humidity and sulfur dioxide was generating acid rain, capable of causing chemical burns on the skin. However, the medical community’s real fear is long-term. This is the “invisible enemy” that Professor Armin Sorooshian talks about in The Conversation. Not only do explosions release petroleum smoke, but the ammunition itself contains heavy metals such as lead and mercury. Exposure to fine particles (PM2.5) that penetrate deep into the lungs brings with it a devastating legacy. As John Balmes, professor emeritus at the University of California, warns, in The New York Times: “Can you imagine a fire in an oil depot in Manhattan? That’s what we’re talking about.” Experts predict a future increase in cardiovascular disease, cognitive damage, DNA alterations and various types of cancer due to the carcinogens present, such as benzene. The threat also filters into what the population drinks and eats. The World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) have warned that spilled oil and toxic rain are contaminating groundwater, public canals and farmland, poisoning the food chain in a country already suffering from a severe drought. Beyond: ecocide. The magnitude of the disaster brings legal loopholes and massive collateral damage to the table. Iran has called the attacks “ecocide,” a term that makes sense when analyzing international law. The legal limbo that allows this horror. It may seem paradoxical, but bombing a fuel tank is not technically a chemical attack. Expert Alexandra R. Harrington explained it in detail in The Conversation: Although the Geneva Conventions prohibit destroying civil infrastructure, they do not specifically shield gasoline tanks or industrial products. Added to this is that international treaties on chemical weapons only punish the use of weapons manufactured expressly for this purpose. The result? A huge legal loophole that allows a refinery to explode and an entire city to be poisoned without having fired a single factory-made toxic missile. A black sea in the Gulf. The disaster is not only in the sky of Tehran. If we look towards the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, the war has turned the water into another ground zero after direct hits against oil tankers and desalination plants. Oil spills are already spreading across the sea, putting local fishing communities on the ropes and drowning coral reefs. Species that were already on the verge of extinction, like dugongsthey are now swimming in a death trap. The smoke that crossed half the world. The gigantic column of black smoke that was born in the Iranian deposits has not remained stagnant there. The currents have been dragged eastwarddrawing a dark line over Afghanistan and China until it sneaks into Russian airspace. The big fear now is that if all that accumulated soot falls on the high mountain ranges, it will act as a magnet for the sun and drastically accelerate the melting of the glaciers. The hidden climate bill. There is collateral damage that is hardly talked about and that Deutsche Welle has put on the table: The military machinery is an insatiable devourer of fossil fuels. Bombings and troop movements are injecting millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere in record time. The most frustrating thing about this situation is that the current climate agreements have a “fine print” that exempts countries from accounting for emissions derived from war in their official balance sheets. An indelible toxic legacy. Historically, … Read more

Fuel prices are so high that airlines are at risk of disappearing, according to Deutsche Bank

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On February 28, the United States and Israel bombed several cities in Iran, starting a conflict that has already spread to other countries in the Middle East, when Iranian missiles responded to Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or Dubai and other emirates. One of the consequences has been the rise in fuel prices at a dizzying pace due to the paralysis of a key corridor for global energy: the Strait of Hormuz. The days go by, prices continue to rise and when something as strategic as oil rises, it is a matter of time before the accounts come together. Deutsche Bank warns: the sword of Damocles is on the neck of the airlines. The context. Bloomberg collects the information sent by the German financial institution to its clients: while the price of crude oil has increased by 50% so far this year, it is aviation fuel that takes the cake. The British Argus Media collects the price of the jet in recent days for the hubs of Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles and New York, where we see how it goes from 2.17 dollars per gallon on January 5 to 2.29 on February 5 until approaching 4 dollars per gallon on March 5 (3.95). In the United States, the price differentials between jet fuel and the price of crude oil range between $85 and $95 per barrel, equal to or higher than the cost of oil. That huge gap between the price of crude oil and that of refined products (called the crack spread) wreaks havoc. The last time a crack spread like this occurred was in 2005, when hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Why is it important. Because as the German entity highlights, 20 years ago the crack spread caused significant and widespread damage to the airline industry, which was the trigger for airlines to Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines filing for bankruptcy. The historical precedent sets off all the alarms. And Deutsche Bank is not alone: the CEO of United Airlines At the moment it has already warned that the increase in jet fuel prices will have a “significant” impact on first quarter results and that there could be an increase in air fares. Deutsche Bank analyst Michael Linenberg is forceful: Without immediate price relief, “some of the most financially vulnerable airlines could halt operations” and “airlines around the world could be forced to ground thousands of aircraft.” In detail. At the moment, airlines have plummeted on the stock market since the beginning of the conflict. American Airlines has lost 19% so far this year, but the blow is global: a group of 29 airlines, hotels and travel companies from Europe, Asia and North America together lost $22.6 billion in market capitalization in a single day, according to Reuters. In Xataka | The rocket and the pen: the theory that explains why the rise in gasoline is here to stay In Xataka | There is a hidden war to sell us the cheapest possible gasoline. One that Ballenoil and Plenergy already dominate Cover | Dawn McDonald and Daniel Shapiro

the refinery that supplies 90% of its fuel is owned by Russia

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If you travel north of Berlin, in Schwedt you come across a landscape of chimneys and rusty metal that seems stuck in the sixties. It was there that communist Germany and the former USSR sealed their energy alliance, and the amazing thing is that this heritage continues to fuel the Berliners’ tank today. Although the official rhetoric speaks of a total break with the Kremlin due to the invasion of Ukraine, the reality at the PCK plant is different: the majority of the property remains in Russian hands, a Soviet vestige that Germany has not yet dared to completely expropriate. It literally depends on the operation of PCK Schwedt that Berlin does not stop. The plant pumps 90% of the gasoline and kerosene consumed by the capital and the state of Brandenburg; It is the energetic heart that powers everything from domestic heating to airplanes at the international airport. As pointed out by an analysis of Financial Timesany stoppage in their machines – no matter how brief – would cause an immediate strangulation. It is not just a question of figures, but a real threat to the daily lives of millions of people that the energy sector monitors closely. A trapped refinery The PCK situation is a direct result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Following the start of the war, Germany decided to withdraw to the Russian state oil company Rosneft operational control of the refinery, placing it under state trusteeship. The measure was adopted under the Energiesicherungsgesetz (Energy Security Law) with the explicit objective of guaranteeing supply and avoiding an operational collapse of critical infrastructures, as explained by the German Government itself. The guardianship affects the subsidiaries Rosneft Deutschland and RN Refining & Marketing, through which the Russian group controls stakes in three German refineries: PCK Schwedt, MiRo (Karlsruhe) and Bayernoil (Bavaria). On the whole, according to OSW datathese assets represent about 12% of Germany’s total refining capacity, making Rosneft one of the main players in the sector in the country. However, Berlin avoided expropriation of the shares. Rosneft retains 54% of PCK, a decision made out of fear of Kremlin retaliation against German companies in Russia and the risk of international litigation. as explained in the Financial Times. Since then, the German Executive has been forced to renew the guardianship regime every six months by parliamentary vote. The State runs the plant, but cannot sell it freely, nor invest on a large scale in its modernization, nor offer stable legal guarantees to banks and suppliers, a legal limbo. which analysts consider unsustainable in the long term. However, the fragility of this balance was revealed in 2025, when the United States imposed new sanctions on Rosneft as part of its policy of pressure on Moscow. The measure, adopted without prior coordination with Berlin, had immediate effects: banks blocked payments, suppliers suspended contracts and the refinery was on the brink of insolvency. as reconstructed Financial Times. To avoid a collapse of supply in the German capital, Washington granted a temporary exemption of six months, which allows PCK to continue operating until April 29, 2026. At the same time, he made it clear that Germany must once and for all resolve the issue of ownership of Rosneft assets on its territory. Since then, Berlin has been negotiating against the clock with the US administration to achieve a new extension or design a legal framework that avoids future sanctions. Among the options studied is the conversion of the current guardianship into a public law trustlinked to the sanctions regime of the European Union. The goal is to demonstrate that Rosneft lacks effective control over the refinery without resorting to formal expropriation. A key piece of the German energy system Schwedt’s case is not anecdotal. A forced closure would force fuel to be transported to Berlin by thousands of trucks a day, coming from other regions of Germany, a scenario that industry sources describe as logistically chaotic and economically unfeasible. In an economy already hit by high energy prices, the industrial slowdown and the costs of the energy transition, the impact would be immediate. Furthermore, PCK is the main economic engine of Schwedt, a city of about 33,000 inhabitants in the northeast of the country. It directly and indirectly employs thousands of people and is perceived by the local population as a matter of survival. “All buses, all police cars, all rescue services run on PCK fuel,” he explained. to Financial Times the social democratic mayor Annekathrin Hoppe. But the question everyone will be asking: How is it possible that Germany still has a Russian refinery? The answer is in history. PCK Schwedt built in the sixtieswhen the then German Democratic Republic was integrated into the Soviet bloc. The refinery was designed to process Russian crude oil transported through the Druzhba – “friendship” in Russian – pipeline. a pipeline of more than 4,000 kilometers designed to seal energy interdependence between Moscow and Eastern Europe during the Cold War. For six decades, the system operated without interruption. Even after German reunification and the fall of the Soviet Union, the flow of Russian crude oil continued, reinforcing a dependence that today weighs like an uncomfortable legacy. Unlike gas—where Germany nationalized strategic assets like Gazprom Germania, today renamed SEFE—, in oil, Berlin chose not to cross the line of expropriation. Breaking that bond has proven more difficult than expected. Although PCK no longer processes Russian oil and sources mainly Kazakh crude and marine supplies through Poland and Germany, the transition has been more expensive and technically complex. As explained by the public channel Tagesschaualternative supply is largely dependent on the ports of Rostock and Gdansk, and doubts remain as to whether these routes allow sufficient plant load to be maintained. Possible exits: sale, expropriation or permanent patch Given the expiration of the US exemption, Germany is considering three main scenarios. The first is for Rosneft to voluntarily sell its stake. In recent years there have been conversations with the Qatar Investment Authority, … Read more

The Inditex rally has been its best fuel

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Amancio Ortega is once again among the ten greatest fortunes on the planet according to Forbes monitor in real time thanks to the rise in the stock market of Inditex and the solidity of its real estate holding Pontegadea, which have catapulted the fortune of the Spanish millionaire up to 143.5 billion dollars. This renewed stock market push has allowed him to re-enter the ‘Top 10’ of greatest fortunes on the planet, and even compete for ninth position with veteran investor Warren Buffett although, as how I collected Digital Economyonly occasionally. From the 2025 bump to the return to the ‘top 10’. In June 2025, the combination of Inditex’s weaker stock market performance and global market volatility ended removing Amancio Ortega from the exclusive group of the ten largest fortunes in the world by Forbes, falling below fourteenth place. The textile giant’s stock went on to chain several months of declines after quarterly results that grew, but not at the pace that the market expected, and that sharply cut the valuation of its assets, closely linked to the evolution of the company that it founded and of which it still retains 59.294%. The Inditex rally. However, as of December the situation took a 180 degree turn after the presentation of Inditex’s third quarter results and investors once again showed their confidence in the textile multinational. To put this boom in context, at the beginning of December, each share of Zara’s parent company was trading at just over 49 euros, and its capitalization was around 152,934 million euros. However, weeks later, the title is already trading at just over 56 euros and Inditex’s stock market value exceeded 172.2 billion euros. ​…And the solidity of Pontegadea. In parallel, Pontegadea, which channel and invest most of his participation in Inditex and the dividends generated by the textile empire he founded, acted as an amplifier of his wealth by closing some of the largest real estate transactions in its history. Pontegadea closed the year with a portfolio that has not stopped adding assets in offices, logistics and luxury residential in large international capitals, which has only increased the strength of your assets. ​The temporary “surprise” of Warren Buffett. The meteoric rise of Ortega, who has risen several positions at once, has reached its peak when the Forbes real-time index placed him in ninth position on the global list of fortunes, just ahead of the investor Warren Buffett retired. That day, the founder of Inditex closed the session with a fortune valued at 146.9 billion dollars, slightly above that of the Omaha investor, whose fortune was weighed down by a fall in the stock market, resulting in a cut of about 654 million euros. However, the stock market is what everyone else plays. While Buffett wins, so the veteran investor recovered his position the next day. Ortega, Ballmer and the new order among the ultra-rich. Ortega remains in tenth place, with a fortune estimated at 143.5 billion dollars. That level places him just ahead of Steve Ballmer, whose wealth linked to Microsoft The Los Angeles Clippers are now worth over $140 billion. The geographical distribution of the ‘top 10’ leave a photograph in which Ortega is once again the only great Spanish fortune in a select club dominated by American technology giants and the European figure of Bernard Arnaultat the head of the luxury conglomerate LVMH. In Xataka | Amancio Ortega: the billionaire who lives like another neighbor. Except for private jets and superyachts Image | GTRES, Flickr (Fortune Live Media)

whoever controls the fuel will control the AI

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In the deep mines of Kazakhstan and the data centers of Northern Virginia, two worlds that should never have touched are colliding. The digital speed of Artificial Intelligence faces the heavy inertia of nuclear physics. We have discovered, the hard way, that AI does not live in “the cloud” but on the ground. It has a ravenous hunger of a material that the world ignored for decades: uranium. The end of the myth of efficiency. For years, the official Silicon Valley narrative was that chip efficiency would offset energy consumption. However, cHow an OilPrice analysis explainsthis idea has died because of the “Jevons paradox“Basically, the more efficient we make a chip, the more units we deploy and the more complex the models become. AI not only consumes data, but incinerates energy to create them. This reality has forced a paradigm shift. According to a global survey to more than 600 investors, 63% already consider that AI electricity demand is a structural change in nuclear planning. It is not a temporary peak, it is the foundation on which the economy of the 21st century will be built. The gap between the code and the steel. The fundamental problem is that software is moving at the speed of light, while the uranium supply remains “stuck in the mud” of 20th century industrial timelines. This temporary disconnection reveals an uncomfortable reality: the world has run out of room to maneuver. For two decades, humanity survived thanks to secondary supplies —reusing old Cold War warheads and surplus inventories—, but these strategic warehouses are practically exhausted today. This shortage is a deep structural deficit. Uranium.io data reflect an alarming gap where the uranium coming out of the mines will cover less than 75% of what the reactors will need in the short term. This is what Sprott Asset Management define as a market that lives at “two speeds”: a superficial volatility that hides a deficit that widens like a canyon. “AND“The silence of the electric companies”. On the Sprott Radio podcastexpert John Ciampaglia explains that, although 2025 seemed like a stagnant year for the price of physical uranium—anchored between $77 and $80—mining stocks rose 40%. This disconnection reveals that, while investors are already betting heavily on what is to come, electricity companies (utilities) are at a “stalemate”. They are delaying signing new contracts and burning down their last reserves in the hope that prices don’t skyrocket, but the pressure from AI is such that sooner or later someone will have to blink first. Uranium as a strategic asset. If the semiconductors were the battlefield of the last decade, nuclear fuel is that of the next. Whoever controls the uranium will control the computing capacity. On the one hand, how the analyst describes for Oilpricewhen a tech giant signs a 20-year power agreement (PPA) with a nuclear plant, it is “locking up” the best clean electrons for private profit. The risk is the socialization of the cost, the companies take the clean energy, but the citizen pays to update the electrical network. On the other hand, “Atoms for Algorithms”. The Director General of the IAEA describe this union as a “structural alliance”. AI doesn’t just need nuclear; The nuclear industry needs AI for the predictive maintenance of reactors, the design of new materials and the improvement of safety. The strategy of the giants. The hyperscalers (Google, Microsoft, Amazon) have understood that to dominate AI they must secure the atoms before the competition. Vertical Integration: Google took a turn of the rudder by acquiring Intersect Power for $4.75 billion. The objective is to control the availability and cost of supply near your data centers, without depending on the public network. Modular Reactors (SMR): The International Atomic Energy Agency bet on SMRsmall reactors that allow a technology company to add nuclear power as it adds servers. It is literally bringing scalability from software to power. Sovereign AI: Companies like VivoPower they are redirecting capital towards markets such as Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates. There, where the electrical grid is a bottleneck, the solution is to create computing infrastructures with its own energy generated “behind the meter.” China: the provisional winner. While the West debates, China pours concrete. The Asian giant build reactors at a rate that no one else reaches, between ten and eleven per year. In fact, half of all the reactors being built in the world are in Chinese territory. According to the CNEAthe country will surpass France in nuclear capacity in 2026 and the United States in 2030. Beijing not only seeks firm energy to sustain its renewables, but also total technological independence. It already produces 100% of its nuclear equipment and leads the fourth generation with high-temperature modular reactors. They are even “fishing” uranium from the sea with new absorption technologies to ensure centuries of autonomy. China has understood that nuclear energy is both a tool of decarbonization and energy diplomacy. The wall of reality. In the software world, problems are solved by injecting capital or code; In the world of atoms, money cannot buy time. There are three physical obstacles that Silicon Valley capital will not be able to solve immediately: The bottleneck of enrichment. There is no point in extracting the mineral if you cannot convert it into fuel, and that industrial capacity in the West is at its limit. As they warn in the podcastmuch of this vital process remains tied to Russian state interests, making AI power a national security issue. The talent crisis. For an entire generation, the global message was that nuclear power was a dead technology. The result it’s a shortage criticism from engineers and specialists; There are simply no qualified “hands” to operate the new mines or manage the reactors. We have lost the know-how industrial while we were distracted with the digital world. The “asking price.” Although uranium aims for the range of $100-120/lb by 2026, the figure of $135 is the one that it really marks desperation of the sector. That … Read more

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