One of the major ques­tions still sur­round­ing the Naftogaz chap­ter of the larg­er #UkraineGate scan­dal is the ques­tion of who exact­ly Lev Par­nas and Igor Fru­man were work­ing with on the Ukrain­ian side of the Naftogaz nego­ti­a­tions. Par­nas and Fru­man were act­ing as mid­dle-men, and we have a decent idea of who they were work­ing with on the US side of the nego­ti­a­tion. All of those fig­ures in Trump’s orbit and ties to Rick Per­ry. But what about the Ukrain­ian side? Who exact­ly was it that Par­nas and Fru­man were work­ing for in Ukraine? And were the Ukrain­ian fig­ures inter­est­ed in the Naftogaz deals also part of the Biden/Burisma side of this sto­ry?

So here’s an arti­cle from back in Octo­ber that helps answer that ques­tion. It’s large­ly the answer we should expect at this point: Accord­ing to a US ener­gy exec­u­tive who was present at one of the meet­ings were Par­nas and Fru­man were mak­ing their pitch to Andrew Favorov — the Naftogaz senior exec­u­tive who this cabal want­ed to install as the head of Naftogaz so he could approve of their pro­posed deals — Par­nas and Fru­man were advo­cat­ing on behalf of Ukrain­ian nat­ur­al gas oli­garch Dmitro (Dmit­ry) Fir­tash. At least in part. That’s accord­ing to Dale Per­ry, who was at the meet­ing in Hous­ton in March of 2019 when Par­nas and Fru­man met with Favorov. Accord­ing to Per­ry (who is report­ed­ly not relat­ed to Rick Per­ry), one of the demands Par­nas and Fru­man had if their co-schemers were going to back Favorov as the new head of Naftogaz was that Naftogaz pay back $200 mil­lion dol­lars to Fir­tash that he believes is owed to him. Per­ry’s account does­n’t tell us whether or not Fir­tash was also going to be a direct par­tic­i­pant in the pro­posed export of US liq­uid nat­ur­al gas (LNG) to Ukraine that this scheme was focused on but it cer­tain­ly sug­gests Fir­tash had great deal of sway with Par­nas and Fru­man.

Recall how Dale Per­ry is the same fig­ure who pre­vi­ous­ly recount­ed to the AP that Favorov described that March 2019 meet­ing as feel­ing like a “shake­down”. Demand­ing that Fir­tash get paid $200 mil­lion from Naftogaz as one of the require­ments for get­ting their back­ing for mak­ing Favorov the next Naftogaz CEO would def­i­nite­ly help explain Favorov’s ‘shake­down’ sen­ti­ments:

NBC News

Ukrain­ian oli­garch Fir­tash linked to Giu­liani pals’ gas deals and Biden dirt dig­ging
A Ukrain­ian oli­garch who is fight­ing extra­di­tion to the U.S. may fig­ure in both the dirt dig­ging and the gas deals pur­sued by Lev Par­nas and Igor Fru­man.

By Ken Dilan­ian, Dan De Luce and Tom Win­ter
Oct. 16, 2019, 4:18 PM CDT

WASHINGTON — When two Rudy Giu­liani asso­ciates were arrest­ed last week and charged with fun­nel­ing for­eign mon­ey into polit­i­cal cam­paigns, two big ques­tions lin­gered: Which for­eign­ers were they work­ing for, and what was their ulti­mate goal?

There are grow­ing indi­ca­tions that a Ukrain­ian-backed oli­garch who is fight­ing extra­di­tion to the Unit­ed States fig­ures in the answers.

The evi­dence is emerg­ing from the mists of a com­pli­cat­ed sto­ry.

The indict­ed pair, Lev Par­nas and Igor Fru­man, were help­ing Rudy Giu­liani hunt for dirt on Don­ald Trump’s polit­i­cal oppo­nents in Ukraine, even as they were also pitch­ing poten­tial part­ners on a busi­ness deal with Ukraine’s gas com­pa­ny.

Oli­garch Dmytro Fir­tash appears to be linked to both efforts.

Par­nas and Fru­man were advo­cat­ing on his behalf as they pitched a nat­ur­al gas deal, accord­ing to an Amer­i­can exec­u­tive briefed on the meet­ing. And Fir­tash pro­duced a doc­u­ment that Giu­liani has used to attack for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden.

The oli­garch has been engaged in a long-run­ning legal bat­tle with the U.S. gov­ern­ment, fight­ing extra­di­tion to the U.S. on fed­er­al bribery charges. He bad­ly wants the case dis­missed, and there­fore has an inter­est in cur­ry­ing favor with the Trump admin­is­tra­tion.

On Mon­day, NBC News report­ed that the Jus­tice Depart­ment has yet to answer a ques­tion posed by a Repub­li­can sen­a­tor, Roger Wick­er of Mis­sis­sip­pi, about why Fir­tash has not been extra­dit­ed from Aus­tria to face the U.S. charges.

In an inter­view with NBC News on Mon­day, Giu­liani said he has “noth­ing to do with Fir­tash,” and he said he nev­er spoke to Trump about the Fir­tash case.

“I’m not even sure the pres­i­dent is aware of him,” Giu­liani said. “I think if you asked the pres­i­dent, ‘Who is Dmytro Fir­tash?’ He would say ‘I don’t know.’ As far as I know, we’ve nev­er dis­cussed him.”

The same may not be true for Giu­lian­i’s asso­ciates, how­ev­er. In March, at a meet­ing in Hous­ton, Par­nas and Fru­man men­tioned Fir­tash as they made a pro­pos­al to an offi­cial of Ukraine’s nat­ur­al gas com­pa­ny, accord­ing to Dale Per­ry, an Amer­i­can gas exec­u­tive who does busi­ness in Ukraine and was briefed on the meet­ing. Per­ry told NBC News the pair was urg­ing that the gas com­pa­ny pay Fir­tash a debt of more than $200 mil­lion that Fir­tash believes he is owed by the com­pa­ny.

Though the meet­ing has been described in news accounts, that ele­ment has not pre­vi­ous­ly been report­ed, and it rais­es the ques­tion of whether Fir­tash had a busi­ness arrange­ment with Par­nas and Fru­man. His lawyer says he did not.

Yet Fir­tash, still a major play­er in Ukraine’s gas sec­tor, stood to ben­e­fit hand­some­ly from the plan Par­nas and Fur­man were propos­ing.

At the same time, the oli­garch was play­ing a key role in the effort by Par­nas, Fru­man and Giu­liani to hunt for dirt on Don­ald Trump’s polit­i­cal oppo­nents in Ukraine.

Fir­tash’s lawyers in Vien­na were the ones who obtained an affi­davit from a fired Ukrain­ian pros­e­cu­tor, Vik­tor Shokin, that Giu­liani and oth­er Trump allies have used as a basis to accuse Biden of cor­rup­tion. Shokin is the pros­e­cu­tor whom then Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden urged be removed, in keep­ing with U.S. pol­i­cy at the time that viewed him as a bad actor.

...

‘That’s a crock’

A lawyer for Fir­tash, Vic­to­ria Toens­ing, told NBC News the oli­garch was not in busi­ness with Par­nas and Fru­man. “That’s a crock,” she said.

Toens­ing did acknowl­edge a finan­cial tie between Fir­tash and Par­nas, through her. She says she brought Par­nas to the Fir­tash legal team as a paid trans­la­tor.

Reuters was first to report Parnas’s link to Fir­tash.

A source famil­iar with Fir­tash’s oper­a­tion said Fir­tash, who lives in Vien­na, ques­tioned that account, not­ing that Fir­tash has a large staff that includes excel­lent pro­fes­sion­al trans­la­tors. “Nev­er was there a need for a trans­la­tor,” the source said. Toens­ing respond­ed that Par­nas was her per­son­al trans­la­tor in legal mat­ters because she need­ed her own.

Toens­ing and her hus­band, Joe diGen­o­va, were talk­ing about Ukraine and Trump long before they began rep­re­sent­ing Fir­tash in July. Once briefly con­sid­ered for a role as Trump’s per­son­al lawyers in the Rus­sia inves­ti­ga­tion, they say they sought to rep­re­sent “Ukrain­ian whistle­blow­ers” who had infor­ma­tion about mis­deeds by Democ­rats, includ­ing Vice Pres­i­dent Biden. They said they were blocked from going to Ukraine by the then‑U.S. ambas­sador, Marie Yovanovitch, whom Toens­ing said “we all want­ed to get rid of.”

But Fir­tash was able to help Trump try to dis­cred­it the Bidens, through the Shokin affi­davit, which the for­mer pros­e­cu­tor said he made “at the request of lawyers act­ing for Dmytro Fir­tash.”

The pres­i­den­t’s allies have used it as a weapon.

“I have an affi­davit here…that nobody both­ered to read from the gen­tle­man who was fired, Vik­tor Shokin, the so-called cor­rupt pros­e­cu­tor,” Giu­liani said on ABC’s This Week Sept. 29. “The Biden peo­ple say that he was­n’t inves­ti­gat­ing Hunter Biden at the time. He says under oath that he was.”

In fact, the Sep­tem­ber affi­davit did­n’t say that Hunter Biden was under inves­ti­ga­tion. It says, with­out evi­dence, that Biden forced Shok­in’s removal because he refused to stop his inves­ti­ga­tion into Buris­ma, the firm that put Hunter Biden on its board. Ukrain­ian offi­cials have since said that inves­ti­ga­tion already had been closed. U.S. offi­cials say Biden was artic­u­lat­ing long­stand­ing U.S. pol­i­cy, which advo­cat­ed Shok­in’s removal for alleged cor­rup­tion.

The affi­davit is not the only exam­ple of Fir­tash’s involve­ment in efforts sym­pa­thet­ic to Trump.

Fir­tash’s legal team also has alleged that a pros­e­cu­tor for Robert Mueller’s office, Andrew Weiss­mann, offered to drop the cor­rup­tion case against Fir­tash if the oli­garch helped in the inves­ti­ga­tion of Russ­ian inter­fer­ence in the 2016 cam­paign.

Weiss­mann did not respond to a request for com­ment. A source direct­ly famil­iar with the mat­ter says there was noth­ing inap­pro­pri­ate about the nego­ti­a­tions, which amount­ed to a pros­e­cu­tor seek­ing help from a poten­tial wit­ness in a legal jam — some­thing that hap­pens every day in the Amer­i­can legal sys­tem. In the end, there was no Mueller deal with Fir­tash, the source said.

On Sept. 29, Chris Wal­lace of Fox News report­ed that “accord­ing to a top U.S. offi­cial,” diGen­o­va and Toens­ing worked with Giu­liani “off the books…to get oppo research on Biden,” and that only Trump knew what they were doing.

Toens­ing and DiGen­o­va dis­put­ed that they shared the infor­ma­tion with Trump.

The bribery case

Fir­tash was indict­ed in 2014 for what fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors in the North­ern Dis­trict of Illi­nois allege was his role in brib­ing Indi­an offi­cials in order to get a lucra­tive min­ing deal to sell tita­ni­um to the Boe­ing Com­pa­ny. He was arrest­ed in Vien­na in March 2014, released on $174 mil­lion bail, and has been con­test­ing his extra­di­tion to the U.S. ever since.

Fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors said in a 2017 fil­ing that Fir­tash and his co-defen­dant in the alleged scheme, Andras Knopp, “have been iden­ti­fied by Unit­ed States law enforce­ment as two upper-ech­e­lon asso­ciates of Russ­ian orga­nized crime.”

In August 2016, NBC News report­ed that in 2008, accord­ing to court records, then Trump aide Paul Man­afort’s firm was involved with Fir­tash in a plan to rede­vel­op a famous New York hotel, the Drake. Fir­tash’s com­pa­ny planned to invest over $100 mil­lion, the records say.

That same year, Fir­tash acknowl­edged to the U.S. ambas­sador in Ukraine that he got his start in busi­ness with the per­mis­sion of a noto­ri­ous Russ­ian crime lord, accord­ing to a clas­si­fied State Depart­ment cable. Oth­er U.S. cables say Fir­tash made part of his for­tune through sweet­heart nat­ur­al gas deals between Rus­sia and the Ukraine. Mark Coral­lo, a spokesman for Toens­ing and diGen­o­va, told NBC News the alle­ga­tions in the Wick­er let­ter are “false, dis­parag­ing and defam­a­to­ry.”

It is the gas busi­ness that links Fir­tash to what the two Giu­liani asso­ciates were try­ing to do for per­son­al prof­it, even as they were work­ing with Giu­liani to dig up dirt on Biden in Ukraine, accord­ing to Per­ry. Fir­tash for years has owned upwards of 70 per­cent of Ukraine’s gas dis­tri­b­u­tion net­work, and he still runs it from Vien­na.

“Fir­tash still con­trols inter­me­di­aries in the Ukrain­ian gas indus­try,” Wick­er wrote in his let­ter to the U.S. attor­ney gen­er­al in 2018. “Fir­tash accepts the gas and sells to end-users, but he refus­es to pay Naftogaz and pock­ets the rev­enue. This scheme is esti­mat­ed to have cost Ukraine $2 bil­lion thus far.”

Per­ry and anoth­er source told NBC News that Par­nas and Fru­man were try­ing to make mon­ey by drum­ming up a deal to sell liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas to Ukraine’s big state ener­gy com­pa­ny, and to oust the man­age­ment at the com­pa­ny with help from their friends in the Trump admin­is­tra­tion.

Dur­ing that time, fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors said in last week’s indict­ment, the pair was also engaged in an ille­gal scheme to fun­nel mon­ey into polit­i­cal cam­paigns, includ­ing a Super PAC that sup­ports Trump, in order to “buy poten­tial influ­ence” and advance their busi­ness inter­ests.

The indict­ment says that that Par­nas and Fru­man, along with their co-con­spir­a­tors, hid the scheme from the can­di­dates and cam­paigns to which they donat­ed.

But there are ques­tions about where the mon­ey came from. Court records show Par­nas left a trail of debts, includ­ing a $500,000 judg­ment against him involv­ing a failed movie ven­ture. In 2014, Par­nas and his wife were evict­ed from a $15,000-per-month, six-bed­room house in Boca Raton, the Mia­mi Her­ald report­ed, cit­ing court records. Sep­a­rate­ly, his busi­ness, Fraud Guar­an­tee, was ordered to pay more than $26,000 to its land­lord.

That same busi­ness paid Giu­liani $500,000 in recent years for secu­ri­ty advice, Giu­liani now says, adding that he can prove the mon­ey came from the Unit­ed States.

Par­nas and Fru­man, both born in the for­mer Sovi­et Union, boast­ed of their con­nec­tions to Giu­liani and the White House when they invit­ed an exec­u­tive at Ukraine’s Naftogaz gas com­pa­ny, Andrew Fovorov, for a meet­ing in Hous­ton in March, where they made their pitch, the sources said.

As NBC News report­ed Octo­ber 17, they told Fovorov that they want­ed Naftogaz CEO Andriy Kobolev removed and Fovorov to take his place, the sources said. Kobolev had won high praise from U.S. and Euro­pean offi­cials for his anti-cor­rup­tion efforts.

The two told Fovorov that “they would pro­mote him to replace the cur­rent CEO,” said a source famil­iar with the dis­cus­sions. They would do that, they said, if he sup­port­ed their plan to sell Amer­i­can nat­ur­al gas to Ukraine — a plan that has sig­nif­i­cant logis­ti­cal hur­dles, the sources said.

As part of the arrange­ment, Par­nas and Fru­man told Fovorov he would need to make sure Naftogaz paid Fir­tash hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars he says he is owed by the com­pa­ny, said Per­ry, who said he spoke to Fovorov in detail about the mat­ter. Fovorov has not respond­ed to inquiries.

Fir­tash and Kobolev have been at odds for years over Fir­tash’s posi­tion in the Ukrain­ian nat­ur­al gas mar­ket.

Kobolev has been cred­it­ed with clean­ing up cor­rup­tion at the state ener­gy com­pa­ny and has repeat­ed­ly demand­ed that the Ukraine gov­ern­ment scrap a decree that allows for huge pay­ments to Fir­tash’s net­work, but to no avail.

For Fir­tash, Kobolev is a major obsta­cle to extend­ing his empire, and his removal as CEO at Naftogaz would have reaped big rewards, accord­ing to U.S. diplo­mats and oth­er sources famil­iar with the ener­gy indus­try.

At the same time Par­nas and Fru­man were work­ing with Giu­liani in Ukaine, Kobolev expressed fears that the inde­pen­dence of Naftogaz was again under threat and anti-cor­rup­tion efforts could be in jeop­ardy.

In a Feb. 8 inter­view with the Kyiv Post, Kobolev cit­ed plans by the then gov­ern­ment to weak­en the author­i­ty of the board over­see­ing Naftogaz and hand back pow­er to politi­cians to choose the fir­m’s man­age­ment.

If polit­i­cal med­dling resumes, “every­thing that has been achieved so far can be destroyed,” he told the paper.

...

In talk­ing points includ­ed in fed­er­al lob­by­ing fil­ings in March, Naftogaz man­age­ment argued that the cam­paign to replace them “would quick­ly result in the reestab­lish­ment of cor­rupt schemes in the nat­ur­al gas sec­tor, redi­rect­ing funds out of the com­pa­ny, away from the state bud­get, and into the pock­ets of indi­vid­u­als like Dmytro Fir­tash.”

Ukrain­ian courts even­tu­al­ly blocked the gov­ern­men­t’s bid to strip author­i­ty from the board.

In the Hous­ton meet­ing, Par­nas and Fru­man also pre­dict­ed that the U.S. ambas­sador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, would soon be forced out of her job by the White House, and that would help open the way to their pro­posed deal, accord­ing to Per­ry and the oth­er indi­vid­ual famil­iar with the meet­ing.

In May she was recalled, and now she is a key wit­ness in the House impeach­ment inquiry of Trump over efforts to pres­sure Ukraine to inves­ti­gate the Bidens.

———-

“Ukrain­ian oli­garch Fir­tash linked to Giu­liani pals’ gas deals and Biden dirt dig­ging” by Ken Dilan­ian, Dan De Luce and Tom Win­ter; NBC News; 10/16/2019

“It is the gas busi­ness that links Fir­tash to what the two Giu­liani asso­ciates were try­ing to do for per­son­al prof­it, even as they were work­ing with Giu­liani to dig up dirt on Biden in Ukraine, accord­ing to Per­ry. Fir­tash for years has owned upwards of 70 per­cent of Ukraine’s gas dis­tri­b­u­tion net­work, and he still runs it from Vien­na.”

Upwards of 70 per­cent of Ukraine’s gas dis­tri­b­u­tion net­work. That’s how cen­tral Dmytro Fir­tash is to Ukraine’s nat­ur­al gas mar­kets. And with the US play­ing a key role in the Naftogaz ‘reform’ efforts since 2014 at the same time it was seek­ing Fir­tash’s extra­di­tion it should come as no sur­prise that Par­nas and Fir­tash were work­ing on behalf of Fir­tash in their Naftogaz nego­ti­a­tions. We don’t know how Fir­tash’s nat­ur­al gas dis­tri­b­u­tion net­work may have been includ­ed in the rest of the deals that they were plan­ning to set up with the US-to-Ukraine LNG export scheme, but if pay­ing Fir­tash back $200 mil­lion was one of their demands of Favorov it seems like a good bet that Fir­tash’s nat­ur­al gas dis­tri­b­u­tion net­work would have been one of the key play­ers on the Ukrain­ian side of that import­ed US gas:

...
In an inter­view with NBC News on Mon­day, Giu­liani said he has “noth­ing to do with Fir­tash,” and he said he nev­er spoke to Trump about the Fir­tash case.

“I’m not even sure the pres­i­dent is aware of him,” Giu­liani said. “I think if you asked the pres­i­dent, ‘Who is Dmytro Fir­tash?’ He would say ‘I don’t know.’ As far as I know, we’ve nev­er dis­cussed him.”

The same may not be true for Giu­lian­i’s asso­ciates, how­ev­er. In March, at a meet­ing in Hous­ton, Par­nas and Fru­man men­tioned Fir­tash as they made a pro­pos­al to an offi­cial of Ukraine’s nat­ur­al gas com­pa­ny, accord­ing to Dale Per­ry, an Amer­i­can gas exec­u­tive who does busi­ness in Ukraine and was briefed on the meet­ing. Per­ry told NBC News the pair was urg­ing that the gas com­pa­ny pay Fir­tash a debt of more than $200 mil­lion that Fir­tash believes he is owed by the com­pa­ny.

...

“Fir­tash still con­trols inter­me­di­aries in the Ukrain­ian gas indus­try,” Wick­er wrote in his let­ter to the U.S. attor­ney gen­er­al in 2018. “Fir­tash accepts the gas and sells to end-users, but he refus­es to pay Naftogaz and pock­ets the rev­enue. This scheme is esti­mat­ed to have cost Ukraine $2 bil­lion thus far.”

Per­ry and anoth­er source told NBC News that Par­nas and Fru­man were try­ing to make mon­ey by drum­ming up a deal to sell liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas to Ukraine’s big state ener­gy com­pa­ny, and to oust the man­age­ment at the com­pa­ny with help from their friends in the Trump admin­is­tra­tion.

...

The two told Fovorov that “they would pro­mote him to replace the cur­rent CEO,” said a source famil­iar with the dis­cus­sions. They would do that, they said, if he sup­port­ed their plan to sell Amer­i­can nat­ur­al gas to Ukraine — a plan that has sig­nif­i­cant logis­ti­cal hur­dles, the sources said.

As part of the arrange­ment, Par­nas and Fru­man told Fovorov he would need to make sure Naftogaz paid Fir­tash hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars he says he is owed by the com­pa­ny, said Per­ry, who said he spoke to Fovorov in detail about the mat­ter. Fovorov has not respond­ed to inquiries.
...

It’s also impor­tant to note that this rela­tion­ship with Fir­tash poten­tial­ly fac­tors into the crim­i­nal charges against Par­nas and Fru­man over the cam­paign finance vio­la­tions. Recall that it was the $325,000 dona­tion to a pro-Trump super PAC in ear­ly 2018 that led to the April 2018 pri­vate din­ner with Trump. And it was that same pri­vate din­ner where Par­nas and Fru­man record­ed Trump call­ing for Yovanovitch to be fired after Par­nas told Trump, “The biggest prob­lem there, I think where we need to start is we got­ta get rid of the ambas­sador. She’s still left over from the Clin­ton administration...She’s basi­cal­ly walk­ing around telling every­body ‘Wait, he’s gonna get impeached, just wait.” That large dona­tion, along with their pre­vi­ous dona­tions to Repub­li­cans raised the ques­tion of whether or not they were pay­ing for these dona­tions them­selves or if some­one else was pay­ing for them. It would­n’t be supris­ing if Fir­tash was a finan­cial source, although there are plen­ty of oth­er pos­si­ble par­ties in Ukraine with the means and motive to use two fig­ures like Par­nas and Fru­man as a lob­by­ing front to buy influ­ence with the Repub­li­cans.

But also recall the NY Times sto­ry about how Giu­liani, Par­nas and Fru­man alleged­ly iden­ti­fied two Ukrain­ian oli­garchs with legal expo­sure in the US as indi­vid­u­als who would be vul­ner­a­ble to their over­tures and help­ful in pro­vid­ing dirt on Joe Biden. Fir­tash was one of those oli­garchs, along with with Ihor Kolo­moisky, the oli­garch seen as the key oli­garch back­ing pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­sky. Kolo­moisky claimed that Par­nas and Fru­man asked for $250,000 in exchange for hav­ing Vice Pres­i­dent Mike Pence show up at Zelen­sky’s inau­gu­ra­tion. He did­n’t pay and only Rick Per­ry showed up instead of of Pence (That was the trip to Ukraine where Per­ry first told the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment that the Trump admin­is­tra­tion want­ed a big over­haul in the Naftogaz board). Fir­tash claimed he was vis­it­ed by Par­nas and Fru­man in June of 2019. It was dur­ing that meet­ing that Par­nas and Fru­man offered Fir­tash legal assis­tance in his fight over the US extra­di­tion. That led to Fir­tash hir­ing the hus­band and wife legal team of Vic­to­ria Toens­ing and Joseph diGen­o­va for $1.2 mil­lion in legal ser­vices. Toens­ing and diGen­o­va had already been work­ing with Giu­liani on find­ing dirt on Biden in Ukraine for months. Fir­tash claims he paid Par­nas a $200,000 refer­ral fee. Short­ly after Fir­tash hired Toens­ing and diGen­o­va to work on his extra­dic­tion case, he end­ed up pro­vid­ing doc­u­ments from that case to Vik­tor Shokin for Shok­in’s legal chal­lenge that he was improp­er­ly. Shokin is the for­mer Ukrain­ian pros­e­cu­tor gen­er­al who was fired in ear­ly 2016 under pres­sure from Joe Biden. This fir­ing is at the core of the Trump team’s smear charges against Biden that Biden was try­ing to pro­tect his son Hunter by demand­ing Shok­in’s fir­ing to pre­vent Shokin from inves­ti­gat­ing Buris­ma. So that June 2019 meet­ing where Par­nas and Fru­man offered the legal ser­vices of Toens­ing and diGen­o­va that result­ed in Fir­tash pay­ing them $1.2 mil­lion in legal ser­vices and $200,000 to Par­nas as a find­ers fee took place a few months after the March 2019 meet­ing in Hous­ton where Par­nas and Fru­man made clear to Favorov that Naftogaz was going to have to pay Fir­tash back the $200,000 he felt the com­pa­ny owed him if Favorov was going to be their cho­sen suc­ces­sor CEO.

So was Fir­tash’s includ­ing in the Giuliani/Parnas/Fruman shake­down scheme as far back as ear­ly 2018 when Par­nas and Fru­man made that $325,000 dona­tion? Or was he only includ­ed lat­er once his use­ful­ly in dig­ging up dirt on the Bidens was rec­og­nized by Giu­liani? That’s not clear at this point. But when it comes to the ques­tion of whether or not Par­nas and Fru­man had a Ukrain­ian source for their dona­tions to Repub­li­cans, Fir­tash is an obvi­ous sus­pect for a lot of rea­sons:

...
Dur­ing that time, fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors said in last week’s indict­ment, the pair was also engaged in an ille­gal scheme to fun­nel mon­ey into polit­i­cal cam­paigns, includ­ing a Super PAC that sup­ports Trump, in order to “buy poten­tial influ­ence” and advance their busi­ness inter­ests.

The indict­ment says that that Par­nas and Fru­man, along with their co-con­spir­a­tors, hid the scheme from the can­di­dates and cam­paigns to which they donat­ed.

But there are ques­tions about where the mon­ey came from. Court records show Par­nas left a trail of debts, includ­ing a $500,000 judg­ment against him involv­ing a failed movie ven­ture. In 2014, Par­nas and his wife were evict­ed from a $15,000-per-month, six-bed­room house in Boca Raton, the Mia­mi Her­ald report­ed, cit­ing court records. Sep­a­rate­ly, his busi­ness, Fraud Guar­an­tee, was ordered to pay more than $26,000 to its land­lord.

That same busi­ness paid Giu­liani $500,000 in recent years for secu­ri­ty advice, Giu­liani now says, adding that he can prove the mon­ey came from the Unit­ed States.
...

And note how Kobolev, the Naftogaz CEO they want­ed to oust and replace with Favorov, had won high praise for US and EU offi­cials for his ‘anti-cor­rup­tion’ efforts. That strong­ly sug­gests that what what­ev­er Par­nas and Fru­man and their fel­low schemers had in mind for new Naftogaz deals involved rolling back those anti-cor­rup­tion reforms. And as we saw, the the Poroshenko was appar­ent­ly on board with rolling back the Naftogaz reforms and moved to weak­en the super­vi­so­ry board­’s inde­pen­dence. It’s some­thing Kobolev warned about in Feb­ru­ary of 2019, two months before Poroshenko lost his reelec­tion. Ukrain­ian courts blocked the Poroshenko gov­ern­men­t’s moves. The fact that the Poroshenko gov­ern­ment seemed to share the goals of weak­en­ing the Naftogaz super­vi­so­ry board­’s inde­pen­dence is a reminder that there are a lot of pos­si­ble Ukrain­ian inter­ests that may have been inter­est­ed in Par­nas and Fru­man’s influ­ence with the Trump admin­is­tra­tion which is part of what makes it unclear if Fir­tash was work­ing with Par­nas and Fir­tash as far back as ear­ly 2018 or not. There are a lot of oth­er viable sus­pects. But Fir­tash cer­tain­ly fits the sus­pect pro­file:

...
As NBC News report­ed Octo­ber 17, they told Fovorov that they want­ed Naftogaz CEO Andriy Kobolev removed and Fovorov to take his place, the sources said. Kobolev had won high praise from U.S. and Euro­pean offi­cials for his anti-cor­rup­tion efforts.

...

Fir­tash and Kobolev have been at odds for years over Fir­tash’s posi­tion in the Ukrain­ian nat­ur­al gas mar­ket.

Kobolev has been cred­it­ed with clean­ing up cor­rup­tion at the state ener­gy com­pa­ny and has repeat­ed­ly demand­ed that the Ukraine gov­ern­ment scrap a decree that allows for huge pay­ments to Fir­tash’s net­work, but to no avail.

For Fir­tash, Kobolev is a major obsta­cle to extend­ing his empire, and his removal as CEO at Naftogaz would have reaped big rewards, accord­ing to U.S. diplo­mats and oth­er sources famil­iar with the ener­gy indus­try.

At the same time Par­nas and Fru­man were work­ing with Giu­liani in Ukaine, Kobolev expressed fears that the inde­pen­dence of Naftogaz was again under threat and anti-cor­rup­tion efforts could be in jeop­ardy.

In a Feb. 8 inter­view with the Kyiv Post, Kobolev cit­ed plans by the then gov­ern­ment to weak­en the author­i­ty of the board over­see­ing Naftogaz and hand back pow­er to politi­cians to choose the fir­m’s man­age­ment.

If polit­i­cal med­dling resumes, “every­thing that has been achieved so far can be destroyed,” he told the paper.

...

In talk­ing points includ­ed in fed­er­al lob­by­ing fil­ings in March, Naftogaz man­age­ment argued that the cam­paign to replace them “would quick­ly result in the reestab­lish­ment of cor­rupt schemes in the nat­ur­al gas sec­tor, redi­rect­ing funds out of the com­pa­ny, away from the state bud­get, and into the pock­ets of indi­vid­u­als like Dmytro Fir­tash.”

Ukrain­ian courts even­tu­al­ly blocked the gov­ern­men­t’s bid to strip author­i­ty from the board.
...

So we can say with cer­tain­ty that Fir­tash was involved with the Naftogaz scheme. Demand­ing of Favorov that Fir­tash receive the $200 mil­lion he thinks he’s deserved from Naftogaz as part of the price of Favorov becom­ing the favored suc­ces­sor CEO makes it clear that Fir­tash was at least one of the par­ties involved get­ting paid off in this scheme. And his dom­i­nant posi­tion in the Ukrain­ian nat­ur­al gas dis­tri­b­u­tion mar­ket cou­pled with his US legal trou­bles makes him a log­i­cal part of this scheme. But we still don’t know if he was one of the fig­ures dri­ving this scheme from the begin­ning or if he was mere­ly some­one invit­ed into it lat­er? It’s pos­si­ble he was invit­ed into the nat­ur­al gas deal lat­er as part of the incen­tive to get him to work with Giu­liani on dig­ging up dirt on Joe Biden. Recall how Par­nas described the scheme unfold­ed, where he and Fru­man were hop­ing to exploit their ties to Giu­liani and Flori­da Repub­li­cans to make mon­ey as mid­dle-men on US-to-Ukraine nat­ur­al gas export deals and it was when Giu­liani learned of their con­tacts with Ukrain­ian who would be use­ful in his quest to dig up dirt in Ukraine to help Trump that Giu­liani brought Par­nas and Fru­man into his inner-cir­cle. That was where the Naftogaz scheme and the Biden/Burisma scheme merged. Through Giu­liani, who plays the role of some sort of Deep-Swamp Mid­dle-Man in this sto­ry. So it would­n’t be sur­prised if Fir­tash was invit­ed into the scheme lat­er when they real­ized Fir­tash’s legal trou­bles might make him use­ful in the Biden/Burisma stuff. But it also would­n’t be sur­pris­ing if Fir­tash real­ly was involved with Par­nas and Fru­man’s Naftogaz schemes from the begin­ning.

It’s also pos­si­ble Fir­tash was already in con­tact with Giu­liani before Par­nas and Fru­man approached him and Fir­tash. Recall that Fir­tash is the senior busi­ness parter of Sergei Lovochkin (Lyovochkin), the VP under Vik­tor Yanukovych who worked close­ly with Paul Man­afort on the Hab­s­burg Group ini­tia­tive and may have been involved with foment­ing the Maid­an protests after Yanukovych pulled Ukraine out of the EU trade asso­ci­a­tion agree­ment talks. Fir­tash and Man­afort must have been at least asso­ci­at­ed so it should be at all sur­pris­ing if the Trump team already had mul­ti­ple chan­nels of com­mu­ni­ca­tion to Fir­tash going back to 2016.

Also don’t for­get that the ‘dirt’ Fir­tash pro­vid­ed to Giu­liani on Joe Biden may not be lim­it­ed to what he allowed Toens­ing and diGen­o­va to pro­vide Vik­tor Shok­in’s legal team. It’s entire­ly pos­si­ble Fir­tash has giv­en much more polit­i­cal­ly use­ful ‘dirt’, whether real or man­u­fac­tured, on Biden that the Trump team is plan­ning on leak­ing out at strate­gic moments in the 2020 cam­paign, just like was done with Hillary Clin­ton’s emails in 2016. He might pro­vide more.

It’s all an exam­ple of why the #UkraineGate scan­dal is so com­pli­cat­ed. It’s real­ly a series of over­lap­ping scan­dals. All made woven togeth­er by the efforts of a few good mid­dle-men. One of whom hap­pens to be the pres­i­den­t’s lawyer.

@The Gary Webb Expe­ri­ence: It’s hard to dis­pute that the US pol­i­cy towards Ukraine dur­ing the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion was hor­ri­ble and did indeed involve the deci­sion to basi­cal­ly weaponize Ukrain­ian fas­cists for the pur­pose of accom­plish­ing the long-stand­ing US for­eign pol­i­cy objec­tive of Ukraine into the West­’s orbit. If for­eign poli­cies that involved empow­er­ing awful groups and doing long-term dam­age to oth­er coun­tries was an impeach­able offense it’s unclear how far back we’d have to go to find a pres­i­dent who was­n’t impeach­able. But that should­n’t some­how let Trump off the hook. The guy has been com­mit­ting arguably impeach­able offens­es since before he was elect­ed and is clear­ly beyond cor­rupt, but there’s no way he’s going to be impeached for all of the rea­sons he tru­ly deserves to be impeached. The impeach of Trump is more anal­o­gous to tak­ing down Al Capone for tax eva­sion. The crime is rel­a­tive­ly small pota­toes com­pared to the total­i­ty of his crimes. His open and ongo­ing embrace of for­eign emol­u­ments alone was arguably impeach­able right out of the gate. And then there’s the exten­sive obstruc­tion of jus­tice. But per­haps his great­est impeach­able offense is sim­ply the fact that the guy appears to be some sort of patho­log­i­cal fab­u­list who can’t stop lying. It’s like he has a lie tick. He makes most oth­er Repub­li­cans look rel­a­tive­ly hon­est in com­par­i­son. If mak­ing elect­ed Repub­li­cans look rel­a­tive­ly hon­est isn’t impeach­able under the 25th Amend­ment, what is?

In a way, the fact that Trump has com­mit­ted so many oth­er more impeach­able offens­es dur­ing his short time in office is a kind of iron­ic defense of Trump: That the grounds for impeach­ment is so vague it’s some­what arbi­trary. Which is a valid point. But it’s not real­ly a valid defense for a pres­i­dent that just keeps com­mit­ting one impeach­able offense after anoth­er after anoth­er. Trump kind of made this inevitable. At some point he was going to com­mit an impeach­able offense that was so crisply and clear­ly impeach­able that he would get nailed.

All that said, yes, there’s no real deny­ing that the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion and Euro­pean Union’s accep­tance of Ukraine embrace of Ukrain­ian fas­cists in the post-Maid­an peri­od has done mas­sive harm to the future Ukraine. There’s also no real deny­ing that the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion’s pol­i­cy towards Ukraine was broad­ly shared and encour­aged by Repub­li­cans in Con­gress and the nation­al secu­ri­ty state. It’s often cyn­i­cal­ly claimed that both the Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans are real­ly just one big par­ty which is the kind of analy­sis that ignores sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ences in domes­tic poli­cies. But there is a lot more truth to that cyn­i­cal sen­ti­ment when it comes to US for­eign pol­i­cy. And it’s that bipar­ti­san nature of that post-WWII US for­eign pol­i­cy that points towards what could be con­sid­ered a per­ma­nent emer­gency of US democ­ra­cy: if a pres­i­dent tru­ly stood up to the ‘mil­i­tary indus­tri­al com­plex’ of pow­er­ful defense con­trac­tors and hawk­ish think-tanks that’s been behind these long-stand poli­cies, that pres­i­dent would prob­a­bly get ‘JFKed’ with­in their first term. The bipar­ti­san nature of US for­eign pol­i­cy has a ‘hostage cri­sis’ dynam­ic. It’s one of the long-term con­se­quences of the JFK assas­si­na­tion and its suc­cess­ful coverup.

As Dave and Jim DiEu­ge­nio cov­ered in their 25-episode series on the con­text of the JFK assas­si­na­tion, the Cold War embrace of fas­cists — includ­ing Ukrain­ian fas­cists — was in part of reflec­tion of the qui­et under­ground glob­al alliance of fas­cists put in place by the US fas­cist sym­pa­thiz­ers (like Allen Dulles) in the post-WWII envi­ron­ment and encom­passed the kind of real ‘deep state’ that Trump’s defend­ers con­stant­ly harp on. In oth­er words, while Trump is intent on fram­ing ‘the CIA’ and ran­dom bureau­crats as the ‘deep state’, it’s the the clos­et fas­cist net­works in the US pow­er struc­ture — whether it’s the CIA or some oth­er posi­tion in the nation­al secu­ri­ty state or a pow­er­ful pri­vate inter­est — that can be mean­ing­ful­ly described as a ‘deep state’ and that’s who real­ly runs US for­eign pol­i­cy. US for­eign pol­i­cy has the appear­ance of being designed by and for pow­er­ful cor­po­rate inter­ests (for­eign and domes­tic) because it is designed by and for pow­er­ful inter­ests. The kind of pow­er­ful inter­ests that can assas­si­nate a pres­i­dent and get away with it. And the last time a Demo­c­rat or any­one was in a posi­tion to mean­ing­ful­ly oppose those inter­ests was FDR. As Dave often says, the US Democ­ra­cy effec­tive­ly blew its brains out on Novem­ber 22, 1963. We’re liv­ing in the splat­ter.

Regard­ing US pol­i­cy toward Ukraine, as Dave has point­ed out in a num­ber of shows, while the cod­dling of Ukrain­ian fas­cists is a long-stand­ing bipar­ti­san affair, it was pol­i­cy that was ini­tial put in place by the Amer­i­can fas­cist pri­mar­i­ly con­nect­ed to the Repub­li­can Par­ty. And it was the Repub­li­can Par­ty that actu­al­ly for­mal­ly incor­po­rat­ed Ukrain­ian fas­cists into the par­ty infra­struc­ture (the GOP’s eth­nic out­reach com­mit­tees) for use in domes­tic elec­tions. So when the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion or oth­er past Demo­c­ra­t­ic admin­is­tra­tions have adopt­ed for­eign poli­cies that uti­lize Ukrain­ian fas­cist net­works, they’re col­lab­o­rat­ing with long-time US assets that are kind of an arm of the Repub­li­can Par­ty. In oth­er words, the ‘orig­i­nal sin’ of Demo­c­ra­t­ic for­eign pol­i­cy is suc­cumb­ing to the very real ‘deep state’ threats of not adher­ing to a for­eign pol­i­cy that is fun­da­men­tal­ly craft­ed by the forces that ani­mate the Repub­li­can Par­ty. The ‘orig­i­nal sin’ of the Repub­li­can for­eign pol­i­cy is being the kind of for­eign pol­i­cy craft­ed by fas­cist author­i­tar­i­ans ded­i­cat­ed to prof­its for the few at all costs and wag­ing war on real democ­ra­cy and equal­i­ty. The for­mer is pret­ty dis­tress­ing but not near­ly as hope­less as the lat­ter.

It’s also impor­tant to point out that there real­ly isn’t much of a domes­tic con­stituen­cy in the US for a tru­ly human­i­tar­i­an for­eign pol­i­cy even among Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers sim­ply because there’s so lit­tle mean­ing­ful aware­ness of for­eign pol­i­cy by Amer­i­cans in gen­er­al. Peo­ple can’t care about that which they don’t know about. It’s when peo­ple come home in body bags that peo­ple start to real­ly care. Amer­i­cans haven’t yet real­ly fig­ured out that they have to tru­ly care about peo­ple liv­ing out­side the US to avoid hav­ing the world go to hell in a hand­bas­ket, and when they do start car­ing it’s like lambs to the slaugh­ter when it comes to resist­ing the inevitable pro­pa­gan­da telling them to back an awful pol­i­cy.

So can we say that Trump is being pun­ished by this same ‘deep state’ that’s large­ly dic­tat­ed the for­eign poli­cies of both par­ties for decades? Well, it’s prob­a­bly not a coin­ci­dence that, of all the impeach­able crimes com­mit­ted by Trump, it was a crime that involved with­hold­ing of mil­i­tary aid to Ukraine that arose from a CIA whistle­blow­er that actu­al­ly trig­gered the impeach­ment. But it’s hard to see that as an exam­ple of Trump some­how being mean­ing­ful­ly opposed to the ‘deep state’. After all, it was Trump who approved of the sale of Javelin mis­siles to Ukraine that Oba­ma long resist­ed. And beyond Ukraine, Trump has been a pret­ty typ­i­cal war­mon­ger­ing Repub­li­can. He did make John Bolton his nation­al secu­ri­ty advi­sor, after all. Trump’s biggest vio­la­tion from the ‘deep state’s per­spec­tive is sim­ply being so unin­formed and impul­sive that he’s not real­ly capa­ble of just get­ting out of the way and allow­ing the ‘deep state’ oper­a­tives he’s sur­round­ed by, like Mike Pom­peo, to man­age things. Trump is too intel­lec­tu­al­ly uncu­ri­ous to real­ly be a mem­ber of the ‘deep state’ but that does­n’t mean he isn’t ide­o­log­i­cal­ly aligned with it and not a will­ing accom­plice.

Also note that if Trump was tru­ly being impeached by the ‘deep state’, he prob­a­bly would­n’t have 100% Repub­li­can sup­port in Con­gress. The oli­garchs that own and oper­a­tive Repub­li­can politi­cians would make it clear to them that Trump has to go. That clear­ly has­n’t hap­pened. Instead, this whole impeach­ment fias­co looks like it was heav­i­ly dri­ven by the fact that the US for­eign pol­i­cy bureau­cra­cy has a lot of peo­ple who are VERY inter­est­ed in what’s hap­pen­ing in Ukraine and Trump hap­pened to be run­ning an absolute­ly egre­gious shad­ow for­eign pol­i­cy in Ukraine that real­ly was high­ly impeach­able. Of all of Trump’s impeach­able offens­es, the extortive shake­down of the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment via a shady for­eign pol­i­cy — one which was tied into a scheme to stack the board of Naftogaz with cronies for per­son­al prof­it — was the kind of scan­dal that was just beg­ging for a whistle­blow­er. And that’s what Trump final­ly got. And once some­one blew the whis­tle — CIA oper­a­tive or not — it was kind of guar­an­teed that there was going to be a call for impeach­ment giv­en that it was lit­er­al­ly extor­tion of Ukraine in order to force it to basi­cal­ly inject itself into the US elec­tion dynam­ics in the wake of the #Rus­si­a­Gate fias­co. It was like a per­fect storm of cor­rup­tion that made the seem­ing­ly impos­si­ble sud­den­ly inevitable. When the US’s dam­ag­ing for­eign pol­i­cy actu­al­ly blows back on the US Amer­i­cans start car­ing and Trump’s extortive demands for for­eign med­dling cre­at­ed that blow back.

So, while it’s cer­tain­ly valid and impor­tant to point out that the US admin­is­tra­tion of cod­dling and sup­port Ukraine’s fas­cists was and is a doing mas­sive long-term dam­age to Ukraine’s future, that’s not a valid defense of Trump in the impeach­ment. He just took a real­ly bad sit­u­a­tion and made it worse by being way more cor­rupt than nor­mal and bare­ly try­ing to hide it.

I have been lis­ten­ing to Mr. Emory for 3 decades. I am famil­iar with his past work and the Repub­li­can Nation­al Her­itage Groups Coun­cil.

I don’t believe that the “Deep State” (which is the con­cep­tu­al­iza­tion of P.D. Scott not these Trump fans as lis­ten­ers will recall) is at all opposed to Trump. I believe that it would be fair to argue that the “Impeach­ment” is a mas­sive exam­ple of polit­i­cal kabu­ki or “kay­fabe” in the par­lance of pro­fes­sion­al wrasslin’, of which Trump is a vet­er­an per­former.

I would argue that Trump was as much ‘select­ed’ by the Deep State as was Oba­ma — both for sim­i­lar rea­sons: Oba­ma, to put a “new and friend­ly face” on a US impe­ri­al­ism that had grown odi­ous to even its allies, and Trump as a reac­tion to the Impe­r­i­al Project going com­plete­ly awry despite the attempt­ed Makeover.

Let us not for­get that it was Oba­ma and not Bush or Trump, who estab­lished the pol­i­cy and pre­ci­dent of an impe­r­i­al pres­i­den­cy which claimed the “exec­u­tive priv­i­lege” to....execute Amer­i­can cit­i­zens with­out even a sem­blance of due process! (1) This itself is the very defin­tion of ‘fas­cism’ in its clas­sic, overt “Ger­man-Style” sense. And to ignore or jus­ti­fy this is to ignore the actu­al descent to fas­cism as rep­re­sent­ed by the claims of the State Appa­ra­tus to revise or ignore the Bill of Rights.

I would argue that Trump rep­re­sents the “bad cop” to Oba­ma’s “good cop” and both are and were full part­ners with the ‘deep state’ and that this ‘deep state’ (as you have not­ed) is indeed inter­twined with the fas­cist inter­na­tion­al.

I would fur­ther argue that the “Impeach­ment” is polit­i­cal the­ater and Spec­ta­cle (in the Guy DeBord sense) intend­ed to serve both the pur­pos­es of “fake pol­i­tics” in the US (see above — the “resis­tance” being noth­ing but a farce to dis­tract and focus Lib­er­als on “Trump” rather than oppos­ing US Impe­ri­al­ism and the For­ev­er War for Oth­er Peo­ples’ Resources) as well as the­ater intend­ed to dupe for­eign observers into con­tin­u­ing to believe that there are “Two” par­ties when all there real­ly is are two fac­tions of the Rul­ing Class in more or less “friend­ly” com­pe­ti­tion with one anoth­er for the spoils of empire and will­ing to even use overt nazis to achieve what­ev­er goals and objec­tives are deemed mutu­al­ly agree­able.

Let us not for­get the many bipar­ti­san con­nec­tions with these Col­or Rev­o­lu­tion­ists in the US who have col­lud­ed to bring these nazis to pow­er in Ukraine, includ­ing not just McCain and Biden but also impor­tant­ly John Ker­ry, the face of the “mod­er­ate” lib­er­al estab­lish­ment and a cen­tral play­er in US sup­port for Ukraine’s putschists.

(1) https://www.aclu.org/cases/al-aulaqi-v-obama-constitutional-challenge-proposed-killing-us-citizen

(2) https://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/11/world/europe/kerrys-statement-on-ukraine.html

(3) https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidens-son-kerry-family-friend-join-ukrainian-gas-producers-board-1400031749

(4) it was Porky who “nor­mal­ized” Ukrain­ian fas­cism for the US audi­ences and it was his asso­ci­a­tion with Ker­ry in the ear­ly days of the putsch that allowed this to hap­pen, as Ker­ry gave cred­i­bil­i­ty at a crit­i­cal time, on the world stage, to this char­ac­ter: https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/04/05/petro-poroshenkos-last-minute-nationalist-makeover/

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28033610

https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2014/03/why-is-the-u-s-sending-1-billion-to-ukraine

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/obama-meets-with-ukraines-president-elect/372122/

@G.W.E.: I can’t dis­pute the bipar­ti­san nature of the US’s long-stand­ing for­eign pol­i­cy agen­da that involved the open embrace of fas­cist net­works. That bipar­ti­san nature is self-evi­dent, as you point out. A for­eign pol­i­cy that ensures the glob­al spread of neolib­er­al­ism fuel­ing the multi­na­tion­al cor­po­rate pil­lag­ing of the envi­ron­men­tal in an insane glob­al econ­o­my that pur­sues max­i­mum prof­it at any cost. US impe­ri­al­ism done under the ban­ner of evan­ge­lis­tic spread­ing the mag­ic of the mar­kets (and if you don’t accept ‘the mar­ket’, you’re a dan­ger­ous com­mie and exis­ten­tial threat) is a trag­i­cal­ly wide­ly held ‘Amer­i­can’ view. So, yes, there’s going to be an effec­tive one par­ty rule on a lot of US for­eign pol­i­cy.

I don’t think the impeach­ment is all pro-wrestling style ‘kay­fabe” the­atrics intend­ed to giv­en the illu­sion of a two par­ty sys­tem. There’s going to be enough divi­sion with­in a rul­ing class for there to be two legit­i­mate­ly com­pet­ing par­ties that are in real com­pe­ti­tion. Although it’s hard to see how any­one ever expect­ed Trump to actu­al­ly be con­vict­ed by the Repub­li­can-con­trolled Sen­ate so in that sense it’s all been threatrics. But the Democ­rats had plen­ty of rea­sons to run with this impeach­ment once the whistle­blow­er sto­ry went pub­lic.

But that ques­tion of whether or not it’s all kay­fabe fake the­atric rais­es a grim but fas­ci­nat­ing ques­tion: since the dom­i­nant fac­tion of the rul­ing class — like the Koch donor net­work in the US — appears to be intent on dri­ving the world to the brink of col­lapse on vir­tu­al­ly all fronts, how much dis­sent is there with­in the bil­lion­aire class on the apoc­a­lyp­tic vision of their fel­low bil­lion­aires. Sure­ly there have to be some super-rich that aren’t fas­cist intent on stok­ing war and eco-col­lapse. They can’t all be secret dooms­day cultists schem­ing to cause and sur­vive the apoc­a­lypse, can they? Tom Stey­er seems nice. :D

Sim­i­lar­ly, John Ker­ry or Barack Oba­ma, for all their flaws on for­eign pol­i­cy and espe­cial­ly Ukraine and Syr­ia, still don’t seem like they should be placed in the same cat­e­go­ry as their Repub­li­cans coun­ter­parts in terms of the intent of their admin­is­tra­tions even if the for­eign poli­cies are often over­lap­ping. These might be dis­tinc­tions they don’t deserve but they’re dis­tinc­tions that are impor­tant for the rest of us in terms of fix­ing things because the ‘to hell with them all’ approach to polit­i­cal reform is high­ly unlike­ly in the US. There isn’t going to be a time when the entire polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic estab­lish­ment gets replaced overnight and that makes the rel­a­tive san­i­ty of the Democ­rats an impor­tant dis­tinc­tion. If there’s going to be any­thing decent done in the polit­i­cal realm in the US it will almost cer­tain­ly hap­pen via the Democ­rats. The Repub­li­cans are the par­ty of the dooms­day fas­cists, ded­i­cat­ed to burn­ing it all down. That just leaves the Democ­rats if there’s going to be any hope for reform from with­in the sys­tem. That’s why it’s unam­bigu­ous­ly bet­ter for the world if the Democ­rats win the White House and Sen­ate in Novem­ber. The two par­ties might be a ‘good cop’/‘bad cop’ duo when it comes to US for­eign pol­i­cy, but it’s still much bet­ter to go with the ‘good cop’ Democ­rats if you had to choose one. The ‘good cop’ does a lot less dam­age. Imag­ine if Trump had been Pres­i­dent dur­ing Oba­ma’s term. US for­eign pol­i­cy in places like Ukraine and Syr­ia would und­out­ed­ly be worse which is amaz­ing­ly awful to think about. The ‘good cop’ is always bet­ter than the bad cop and the GOP is an extreme­ly bad cop. One of the biggest ignored sto­ries of the last gen­er­a­tion of US pol­i­tics is how the Repub­li­can Par­ty oper­a­tives and elect­ed offi­cials have increas­ing­ly become die hard ide­o­log­i­cal­ly far right foot sol­diers who per­son­al­ly hold what amounts to an ‘Alt Right’ world­view. As a result, the spir­it of the Repub­li­can Par­ty has increas­ing­ly become opposed to the very idea of being com­pas­sion­ate. Doing the right thing is a weak­ness. That’s the ‘bad cop’.

Yes, the ‘good cop’ Democ­rats had a gen­er­a­tion of ‘Third Way’ pol­i­tics that facil­i­tat­ed the kind of right-wing for­eign and domes­tic poli­cies made the Democ­rats a much more ‘rul­ing class friend­ly’ par­ty than it had been before the Repub­li­can elec­toral dom­i­na­tion of the 80’s. It was the GOP’s dom­i­na­tion of the 80’s (Rea­gan did win 49 states in ’84) that scared the Democ­rats into the 90’s ‘Third Way’ pol­i­cy par­a­digm that haunts par­ty to this day. Third Way Democ­rats and Alt Right Repub­li­cans form the core of today’s US rul­ing class. That’s the de fac­to rul­ing par­ty in DC. But if Amer­i­ca is ever going to end the For­ev­er War for Oth­er Peo­ples’ Resources, it’s going to hap­pen through the Democ­rats. Trump is lit­er­al­ly try­ing to bring back the seizure of for­eign oil reserves. When the bad cop wants to apoc­a­lyp­ti­cal­ly burn it all down, it’s time to talk to the good cop. And yes, that might be falling for the ‘bad cop’/‘good cop’ the­atrics. But it’s also pos­si­ble the good cop does­n’t want to burn the place down and is will­ing to seri­ous­ly talk about what to do about the bad cop.

Here’s a pair of arti­cles that shed some light on the nature of the rela­tion­ship Pres­i­dent Trump had with Lev Par­nas and Igor Fru­man when they met for the April 30, 2018, pri­vate din­ner for big donors to a pro-Trump super­PAC. This was the din­ner where Trump called for the fir­ing of US ambas­sador to Ukrain­ian, Marie Yovanovitch, in the mid­dle of his con­ver­sa­tion with Par­nas and Fru­man where he’s told that Yovanovitch was telling peo­ple in Ukraine that Trump was going to be impeached. A full video was released that shows the con­text of what was being dis­cussed in the lead up to that “get rid of her” com­ment. The PBS arti­cle includes a link to the full video. At ~42 min­utes is when Trump calls for get­ting rid of Yovanovitch. As the arti­cle describes, the con­ver­sa­tion lead­ing up to that call was most­ly about the con­flict in Ukraine, the threat of a Russ­ian inva­sion, and the sup­port or lack of sup­port Ukraine was get­ting from Euro­pean nations. But right before that, the con­ver­sa­tion was turned to a dis­cus­sion of oil and the prospects for devel­op­ing the Ukrain­ian oil sec­tor. AT ~38 min­utes video, a voice is her men­tion­ing US LNG exports and how that could be used to eco­nom­i­cal­ly com­bat Rus­sia. At ~38:30, Par­nas men­tions to Trump how he and Fru­man had just cre­at­ed a new ener­gy com­pa­ny for US LNG exports to Ukraine, which is how the con­ver­sa­tion ends up on Ukraine’s con­flict with Rus­sia and the calls for Yovanovitch’s fir­ing. Note that it was on August 10, 2018, just a few weeks before this meet­ing, that Par­nas and Fru­man cre­at­ed Glob­al Ener­gy Pro­duc­ers, LLC, the com­pa­ny set up to prof­it from their Naftogaz takeover ambi­tions. So based on the con­tent if that full video, it would appear that the April 30, 2018, meet­ing was the point wehre Trump him­self was intro­duced to Par­nas and Fru­man’s US-to-Ukrain­ian nat­ur­al gas export scheme. A scheme that required the Trump admin­is­tra­tion using its lever­age over Naftogaz’s super­vi­so­ry board to give the group of investors behind Par­nas and Fru­man effec­tive con­trol over the state-owned nat­ur­al gas giant.

But we can’t be sure that meet­ing real­ly was when Trump was first intro­duced to the top­ic. Because the sec­ond arti­cle is about a sec­ond video released by Lev Par­nas last week of a gath­er­ing of Repub­li­cans that took place 10 days ear­li­er, on April 20, 2018. It’s around 37 min­utes long, and again shows Par­nas and Fru­man meet­ing Trump. This time it’s at Mar a Lago for a gath­er­ing that was orga­nized by the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee. It sounds like Par­nas and Fru­man met then-Con­gress­man Pete Ses­sions at this meet­ing and devel­oped a rela­tion­ship with him in the fol­low­ing months, that places Pete Ses­sions in the ear­ly months of this whole #UkraineGate mess. So it’s pos­si­ble Trump was first intro­duced to the nat­ur­al gas scheme at that ear­li­er meet­ing. We don’t know. The 37 min­utes does­n’t real­ly includes Par­nas or Fru­man talk­ing with Trump oth­er than some pho­tos with him in the last few min­utes. But it ends with Trump infor­mal­ly chat­ting with the group so it’s pos­si­ble the did their lob­by­ing after the video ends (it ends with Fru­man going to the restroom and turn­ing it off right before pee­ing). So there are a lot of ques­tions about that April 20 meet­ing, we do know now that the April 30, 2018, meet­ing was­n’t the first time Trump met Par­nas and Fru­man.

Keep in mind this is all just like a month after their $325,000 dona­tion to the pro-Trump super­PAC. Because it pays to play the ‘pay to play’ game. That’s why peo­ple pay so much to play. It pays off.

Ok, here’s the PBS arti­cle about the full video of the April 30, 2018, meet­ing and how the “get rid of her” com­ment was pre­ced­ed by a dis­cus­sion of Ukraine’s con­flict with Rus­sia and the the prospects of Ukraine’s ener­gy indus­try:

PBS News Hours

WATCH: Full video of Trump appear­ing to say Ukraine ambas­sador should be removed

by Yamiche Alcin­dor
Updat­ed on Jan 25, 2020 4:43 PM EST — Pub­lished on Jan 25, 2020 3:34 PM EST

A video released Sat­ur­day cap­tures Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump appear­ing to say he wants to “get rid” of the then‑U.S. ambas­sador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch.

The record­ing, which was pro­vid­ed to the PBS New­sHour by a lawyer for one of the peo­ple who heard the orig­i­nal con­ver­sa­tion, is said to be from a din­ner in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., on April 30, 2018– a year before Yovanovitch was actu­al­ly fired.

Joseph Bondy, an attor­ney for Lev Par­nas, told New­sHour that Par­nas, an asso­ciate of Trump’s per­son­al lawyer Rudy Giu­liani, was at the din­ner with the pres­i­dent and sev­er­al oth­ers when Trump said he want­ed Yovanovitch out.

About 42 min­utes into the hour-long video, Par­nas appears to say, “The biggest prob­lem there, I think where we need to start, is we got­ta get rid of the ambas­sador. She’s still left over from the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion.”

Trump then appears to say, “Where? The ambas­sador to Ukraine?”

Par­nas replies, “Yes. She’s basi­cal­ly walk­ing around telling every­body ‘Wait, he’s gonna get impeached, just wait.’”

A few sec­onds lat­er, Trump appears to say, “Get rid of her! Get her out tomor­row. I don’t care. Get her out tomor­row. Take her out. OK? Do it.”

Bondy said Par­nas attend­ed the din­ner along with Igor Fru­man, anoth­er of Giuliani’s busi­ness asso­ciates. Both Par­nas and Fru­man have been indict­ed on fed­er­al charges, includ­ing vio­lat­ing cam­paign finance laws.

Sat­ur­day, Bondy said he released the video because he saw it as crit­i­cal to the public’s under­stand­ing. “Giv­en its impor­tance to the nation­al inter­est, we decid­ed to release this record­ing in a man­ner intend­ed to ensure equal pub­lic access, and in an effort to pro­vide clar­i­ty to the Amer­i­can peo­ple and the Sen­ate as to the need to con­duct a fair tri­al, with wit­ness­es and evi­dence,” he said.

The record­ing made by Fru­man, reviewed and first report­ed by ABC News, appeared to cap­ture Trump mak­ing the com­ments. Bondy said that after news of the audio record­ing became pub­lic, Par­nas searched an online data­base con­nect­ed to his iPhone and found a video sent to him by Fru­man, from the din­ner that was more than an hour long. Bondy has turned the iPhone video over to con­gres­sion­al inves­ti­ga­tors.

Min­utes before dis­cussing Yovanovitch, Trump dis­cussed the con­flict between Rus­sia and Ukraine, which is part of the rea­son Ukraine sought mil­i­tary aid from the Unit­ed States.

In the video, some­one is heard say­ing, “The resources in Ukraine are tremen­dous.” A voice also says Ukraine is part of pipelines in Europe. In response, Trump appears to ask, “Ukraine has oil?” Some­one replies affir­ma­tive­ly. Trump then appears to ask, “Why aren’t com­pa­nies going in? Too risky?” Some­one says, “Exact­ly. They were sup­port­ing Clin­tons for all these years.”

Sec­onds lat­er, Trump appears to ask, “How long will [Ukraine] last in a fight with Rus­sia?” Some­one replies, “With­out us, not very long.” Trump appears to echo the voice say­ing, “With­out us.”

Trump has repeat­ed­ly said he does not know Par­nas well. He has also attacked Yovanovitch on Twit­ter by claim­ing that every place she went “turned bad.”

The video begins with shaky footage of a num­ber of peo­ple stand­ing around a din­ner table. Then about two and a half min­utes in, a voice announces that the pres­i­dent has arrived and the cam­era shows Trump tak­ing a seat in a din­ing chair.

Soon after, the cam­era turns to the ceil­ing of the room, cap­tur­ing audio of con­ver­sa­tions, and remains in that posi­tion for the remain­der of the video. Trump and oth­ers dis­cuss a num­ber of oth­er top­ics includ­ing inter­na­tion­al trade deals, nego­ti­at­ing with coun­tries like Chi­na and Argenti­na and try­ing to find a peace deal in the Mid­dle East.

Trump can also be heard crit­i­ciz­ing Ger­many for its ener­gy part­ner­ship with Rus­sia and say­ing oth­er Euro­pean nations con­tribute too lit­tle to NATO and Ukrain­ian efforts to com­bat Rus­sia.

At one point, Trump asks how Ukraine is feel­ing about the sit­u­a­tion with Rus­sia. “Do they feel they are going to be O.K.?” Trump asked.

Oth­ers at the din­ner say they will be O.K. with U.S. sup­port and tell Trump that Petro Poroshenko, who was then the pres­i­dent of Ukraine but is now fac­ing crim­i­nal cor­rup­tion charges since he left office, is a “good guy.”

Trump turns to the ques­tion of U.S. aid to Ukraine.

“It’s always us that has to sup­port every­body? You have to won­der why doesn’t Ger­many sup­port them? Why aren’t these oth­ers?”

“They are sup­port­ing Rus­sia,” some­one tells Trump. “A lot of coun­tries are back­stab­bing us and sup­port­ing Rus­sia.”

The name “Biden” can be heard men­tioned by some­one oth­er than Trump, but the con­text is unclear and the con­ver­sa­tion con­tin­ued to focus on oth­er issues relat­ing to Ukraine.

...

———-

“WATCH: Full video of Trump appear­ing to say Ukraine ambas­sador should be removed” by Yamiche Alcin­dor; PBS News Hours; 01/25/2020

“About 42 min­utes into the hour-long video, Par­nas appears to say, “The biggest prob­lem there, I think where we need to start, is we got­ta get rid of the ambas­sador. She’s still left over from the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion.””

“The biggest prob­lem there, I think where we need to start, is we got­ta get rid of the ambas­sador.” That’s the big mys­tery line said by Lev Par­nas to Pres­i­dent Trump at about 42 min­utes into the full video of the April 30, 2018, meet­ing for pro-Trump super­PAC mega-donors. And based on the full record­ing, we can now see that Trump made that com­ment min­utes into a con­ver­sa­tion that focused on a mix of Ukraine’s oil sec­tor poten­tial and US LNG exports in the con­text of the US show­down with Rus­sia and the Ukrainian/Russian con­flict:

...
Trump then appears to say, “Where? The ambas­sador to Ukraine?”

Par­nas replies, “Yes. She’s basi­cal­ly walk­ing around telling every­body ‘Wait, he’s gonna get impeached, just wait.’”

A few sec­onds lat­er, Trump appears to say, “Get rid of her! Get her out tomor­row. I don’t care. Get her out tomor­row. Take her out. OK? Do it.”

...

Min­utes before dis­cussing Yovanovitch, Trump dis­cussed the con­flict between Rus­sia and Ukraine, which is part of the rea­son Ukraine sought mil­i­tary aid from the Unit­ed States.

In the video, some­one is heard say­ing, “The resources in Ukraine are tremen­dous.” A voice also says Ukraine is part of pipelines in Europe. In response, Trump appears to ask, “Ukraine has oil?” Some­one replies affir­ma­tive­ly. Trump then appears to ask, “Why aren’t com­pa­nies going in? Too risky?” Some­one says, “Exact­ly. They were sup­port­ing Clin­tons for all these years.”

Sec­onds lat­er, Trump appears to ask, “How long will [Ukraine] last in a fight with Rus­sia?” Some­one replies, “With­out us, not very long.” Trump appears to echo the voice say­ing, “With­out us.”

...

Trump can also be heard crit­i­ciz­ing Ger­many for its ener­gy part­ner­ship with Rus­sia and say­ing oth­er Euro­pean nations con­tribute too lit­tle to NATO and Ukrain­ian efforts to com­bat Rus­sia.

At one point, Trump asks how Ukraine is feel­ing about the sit­u­a­tion with Rus­sia. “Do they feel they are going to be O.K.?” Trump asked.

Oth­ers at the din­ner say they will be O.K. with U.S. sup­port and tell Trump that Petro Poroshenko, who was then the pres­i­dent of Ukraine but is now fac­ing crim­i­nal cor­rup­tion charges since he left office, is a “good guy.”

Trump turns to the ques­tion of U.S. aid to Ukraine.

“It’s always us that has to sup­port every­body? You have to won­der why doesn’t Ger­many sup­port them? Why aren’t these oth­ers?”

“They are sup­port­ing Rus­sia,” some­one tells Trump. “A lot of coun­tries are back­stab­bing us and sup­port­ing Rus­sia.”
...

And yet it’s still not entire­ly clear what Par­nas intends to “start” by get­ting rid of Yovanovitch. Inter­est­ing­ly, if you lis­ten to the video direct­ly, right before Par­nas makes his “The biggest prob­lem there, I think where we need to start, is we got­ta get rid of the ambas­sador...” com­ment, Par­nas says “if we takeover...” Those are lit­er­al­ly the three words he says and then trails off before com­plet­ing the sen­tence before tran­si­tion to “The biggest prob­lem there...”. “If we take over...”. That of course rais­es the ques­tion of what he was propos­ing “we take over.” With the obvi­ous answer being the Naftogaz ener­gy board because that was lit­er­al­ly the scheme from the very beg­gin­ing. That was why they set up the ener­gy com­pa­ny and paid $325,000 to a Trump super­PAC. So they could lob­by about the scheme to take over the board of Naftogaz and set up self-enrich­ing deals export­ing US LNG to Ukraine. So when Par­nas says “If we take over” and trails off right before call­ing for Yovanovitch’s fir­ing, that strong­ly sug­gests Trump knew at that point about their Naftogaz takeover scheme.

That’s why it makes sense we hear in the min­utes lead­ing up to that moment a geopo­lit­i­cal dis­cus­sion about the ener­gy exports, Ukraine’s ener­gy sec­tor, and the con­flict with Ukraine and Rus­sia. It’s that con­text that’s used to jus­ti­fy US LNG exports to Ukraine. Par­nas’s and Fru­man’s Naftogaz scheme was osten­si­bly sup­posed to help with the con­flict with Rus­sia, which is pre­sum­ably the cov­er sto­ry that they were plan­ning on using for the plan to take over the Naftogaz board and set up a bunch of LNG export deals for their co-schemers. And that’s what makes Par­nas’s mys­te­ri­ous “If we take over” com­ment that he makes at exact­ly 42:05 in the video like­ly a ref­er­ence to the planned takeover of Naftogaz. Their takeover of Naftogaz’s super­vi­so­ry board so they could set up crony LNG export deals was cru­cial for the scheme and sell­ing it as good for Ukraine in its fight with Rus­sia was a cru­cial cov­er sto­ry for a scheme that auda­cious. And get­ting rid of Yovanovitch real­ly was crit­i­cal for tak­ing over Naftogaz. She would have blocked it.

And that’s what makes the sec­ond video of a meet­ing Par­nas and Fru­man had with Trump 10 days ear­li­er so intrigu­ing. Because Par­nas’s mys­te­ri­ous “if we take over” com­ment where he seems to catch him­self and cut him­self off make more sense if they had an ear­li­er meet­ing with Trump where they already dis­cussed this issue. And once again we have a 37 minute video made by Igor Fru­man (and released by Lev Par­nas) that appears to encom­pass the entire meet­ing. Lev, Igor, and a group of oth­er peo­ple who are pre­sum­ably donors gath­er in a room for a 20 minute meet­ing with Trump (Trump shows up around ~9 min­utes in the video). Trump gives a kind of self pep-talk for a few min­utes and even­tu­al­ly there’s a Syr­i­an Amer­i­can lob­by­ing group that makes their case to Trump for a a pol­i­cy to get rid of Assad. But Lev and Igor nev­er appear to make their case to Trump in the 37 min­utes. There’s a peri­od at the end of the offi­cial gath­er­ing where Trump is meet­ing with the atten­dees and shak­ing hands so it’s pos­si­ble they got to make their case to Trump about Naftogaz dur­ing that peri­od. And Lev does get his pic­ture with Trump (at 35:11 in the video) after the meet­ing. It looks like every­one its just tak­ing turns get­ting their pic­tures with Trump. Fru­man’s video ends with his appear to got to a restroom and almost pee before turn­ing it off. So it’s pos­si­ble he and Fru­man went and had a more detailed chat with Trump about Naftogaz after Fru­man was done pee­ing. We don’t know. We just know they did­n’t real­ly get a chance to do much oth­er than get Lev­’s pic­ture with Trump from what we see in the video.

The arti­cle describes the Syr­i­an-Amer­i­can lob­by­ing effort as being led by Rim Al-Bezem, a Penn­syl­va­nia car­di­ol­o­gist who is the pres­i­dent of the Syr­i­an oppo­si­tion group called Cit­i­zens for a Secure and Safe Amer­i­ca. Al-Bezam donat­ed a total of $18,800 to the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee and its Sen­ate cam­paign arm and rais­es mon­ey from oth­er Syr­i­an-Amer­i­can activists. That was part of the cost of get­ting into that din­ner. Five days before the April 20 meet­ing, Bri­an Bal­lard, a top fund-rais­er for Trump and the Repub­li­can Par­ty, reg­is­tered to lob­by for Al-Bezem’s Cit­i­zens for a Secure and Safe Amer­i­ca, which paid Bal­lard’s firm $350,000 in 2018 and 2019. This was two days after the April 13 US airstrikes on Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment air­fields in retal­i­a­tion for the alleged use of chem­i­cal weapons by the Assad gov­ern­ment against the rebels (based on OPCW find­ings that are now chal­lenged by whistle­blow­ers). Al-Bezem is heard on the video thank­ing Trump for the airstrikes and lob­by­ing for a hard­er line against Assad and the need for his over­throw. It’s anoth­er exam­ple of for­eign pol­i­cy lob­by­ing at one of these din­ners for large donors. It’s also now rel­e­vant in the con­text of the cur­rent show­down between Turkey and Assad/Russia over Idlib. The arti­cle men­tions how Dr. Al-Bezem had a lun­cheon with Trump months lat­er at a dif­fer­ent fundrais­er where she plead­ed for the US to pro­tect Idlib. There’s pre­sum­ably been a lot more lobbying/donations on the issue since.

So when we learn about this new ear­li­er April 20, 2018, meet­ing where Trump met Lev Par­nas and Igor Fru­man met with Trump, we can’t hear them dis­cussing the scheme in the full 37 minute video of a donor gath­er­ing with Trump. But we can see Trump min­gling with the donor infor­mal­ly at the end of the video so it’s pos­si­ble they dis­cussed it with him there. But they’re clear­ly top donors if they’re meet­ing Trump so it seems like a good bet they got to have their pri­vate chit chat with him at some point soon after that short meet­ing cap­tured in the record­ing and well before the sec­ond meet­ing ten days lat­er:

The New York Times

Record­ing Sur­faces of Anoth­er Trump Meet­ing With Par­nas and Fru­man
The pres­i­dent met twice in 10 days with donors who went on to become key play­ers in Rudolph W. Giuliani’s Ukraine pres­sure cam­paign.

By Ben Prot­ess and Ken­neth P. Vogel
Jan. 30, 2020

A lawyer for Lev Par­nas, the for­mer asso­ciate of Pres­i­dent Trump’s per­son­al lawyer Rudolph W. Giu­liani who has offered to tes­ti­fy at the impeach­ment tri­al, released a new record­ing on Thurs­day of Mr. Trump meet­ing in April 2018 with a small group of donors at his pri­vate club in Flori­da.

The record­ing doc­u­ment­ed the pres­ence of Mr. Par­nas and his busi­ness part­ner, Igor Fru­man, at the club, Mar-a-Lago, with the pres­i­dent, the first of two such donor gath­er­ings they par­tic­i­pat­ed in with him that month. They met with him again 10 days lat­er, on April 30, at his Wash­ing­ton hotel.

...

In the record­ing, Mr. Trump can be heard dis­cussing his polling num­bers, the 2018 midterm elec­tions and a range of pol­i­cy issues of inter­est to the guests, includ­ing immi­gra­tion and the war in Syr­ia. The exchanges offered anoth­er win­dow into the president’s inter­ac­tions with his top finan­cial sup­port­ers — and, in one case, his open­ness to their con­cerns about a high-pro­file ele­ment of his for­eign pol­i­cy.

The event was appar­ent­ly record­ed by Mr. Fru­man on his phone. In Octo­ber, fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors in New York charged Mr. Par­nas and Mr. Fru­man with cam­paign finance vio­la­tions, includ­ing what offi­cials said were efforts to mask their involve­ment in a $325,000 dona­tion to a pro-Trump fund-rais­ing com­mit­tee.

The event at Mar-a-Lago was orga­nized by the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee and the Nation­al Repub­li­can Con­gres­sion­al Com­mit­tee, and was attend­ed by Ron­na McDaniel, the chair­woman of the nation­al com­mit­tee, and Pete Ses­sions, a for­mer chair­man of the con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tee who was then a mem­ber of Con­gress from Texas.

Ms. McDaniel greet­ed Mr. Par­nas and Mr. Fru­man famil­iar­ly, in the man­ner of a politi­cian who shakes the hands of thou­sands of peo­ple whose acquain­tance she may — or may not — have pre­vi­ous­ly made.

“Hey, how are you?” she said to Mr. Fru­man. “Good to see you.”

A spokesman for the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee dis­missed the greet­ing as insignif­i­cant.

“On a giv­en day, the chair­woman greets hun­dreds if not thou­sands of peo­ple at events across the coun­try,” the spokesman said. “This is noth­ing more than that.”

It was at that event that Mr. Par­nas met Mr. Ses­sions. The two men devel­oped a rela­tion­ship over the fol­low­ing weeks and months, records show. They would even­tu­al­ly dis­cuss remov­ing the Unit­ed States ambas­sador to Ukraine at the time, Marie L. Yovanovitch, which became a focus of the impeach­ment tri­al.

Mr. Parnas’s lawyer, Joseph A. Bondy, had released anoth­er record­ing on Sat­ur­day of the donor din­ner held 10 days lat­er in Wash­ing­ton, at which the pres­i­dent dis­cussed Ms. Yovanovitch with Mr. Par­nas, Mr. Fru­man and oth­er donors.

Among those acknowl­edged at the April 20 meet­ing in Flori­da was Bri­an Bal­lard, an influ­en­tial lob­by­ist who is a top fund-rais­er for Mr. Trump and the Repub­li­can Par­ty.

Five days before the event, Mr. Bal­lard reg­is­tered to lob­by for a Unit­ed States-based Syr­i­an oppo­si­tion group called Cit­i­zens for a Secure and Safe Amer­i­ca, which paid his firm $350,000 in 2018 and 2019. He rec­om­mend­ed that the group’s lead­ers take their case against Pres­i­dent Bashar al-Assad direct­ly to Mr. Trump by pay­ing to attend a fund-rais­ing event, accord­ing to a report in The Wall Street Jour­nal last year.

Rim Al-Bezem, a Penn­syl­va­nia car­di­ol­o­gist who is the pres­i­dent of the Syr­i­an oppo­si­tion group, donat­ed a total of $18,800 to the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee and its Sen­ate cam­paign arm. In an inter­view, she said she raised addi­tion­al mon­ey from oth­er Syr­i­an-Amer­i­can activists.

As a result, she and an asso­ciate secured invi­ta­tions to the April 20, 2018, Mar-a-Lago round table, which came a week after Mr. Trump ordered airstrikes against Syr­i­an research, stor­age and mil­i­tary tar­gets to pun­ish Mr. Assad for a sus­pect­ed chem­i­cal attack that killed more than 40 peo­ple.

At Mar-a-Lago, Dr. Al-Bezem can be heard on the record­ing telling Mr. Trump: “I’m here to thank you very much for your coura­geous acts. I can­not tell you how much Syr­i­an Amer­i­cans are indebt­ed to you.”

Mr. Trump replied, “So they like the raid?”

Dr. Al-Bezem and her asso­ciate assured the pres­i­dent that Syr­i­an-Amer­i­cans were thank­ful, but also pushed Mr. Trump to take a hard­er line against Mr. Assad.

“Well, give me infor­ma­tion on that, O.K.?” Mr. Trump asked the women. “Because I talk about it all the time.”

Four months lat­er, Dr. Al-Bezem raised an even more acute con­cern at anoth­er round table with Mr. Trump — this one ben­e­fit­ing the Mike Braun’s cam­paign for Sen­ate in Indi­ana, to which Dr. Al-Bezem donat­ed $1,000. Mr. Assad’s mil­i­tary and its Russ­ian allies were prepar­ing to launch an attack on Idlib province, the lone remain­ing major rebel strong­hold in Syr­ia, Dr. Al-Bezem told the pres­i­dent, urg­ing him to inter­vene.

Days lat­er, Mr. Trump tweet­ed a warn­ing to Mr. Assad and his allies against “this poten­tial human tragedy,” which his top offi­cials echoed in a pres­sure cam­paign. Mr. Assad did not attack, and Mr. Trump cred­it­ed Dr. Al-Bezem with draw­ing atten­tion his atten­tion to the issue.

“I whole­heart­ed­ly believe that Pres­i­dent Trump’s inter­ven­tion had avert­ed that attack,” Dr. Al-Bezem said in an inter­view on Thurs­day. She reject­ed the sug­ges­tion that her dona­tions paved the way for Mr. Trump to hear her con­cerns.

“I don’t think it was a donor access thing. I think it was a human access thing,” she said. “The pres­i­dent lis­tened to me because he got the chance to maybe hear for the first time what’s hap­pen­ing in Syr­ia from a Syr­i­an-Amer­i­can.”

———-

“Record­ing Sur­faces of Anoth­er Trump Meet­ing With Par­nas and Fru­man” by Ben Prot­ess and Ken­neth P. Vogel; The New York Times; 01/30/2020

“The record­ing doc­u­ment­ed the pres­ence of Mr. Par­nas and his busi­ness part­ner, Igor Fru­man, at the club, Mar-a-Lago, with the pres­i­dent, the first of two such donor gath­er­ings they par­tic­i­pat­ed in with him that month. They met with him again 10 days lat­er, on April 30, at his Wash­ing­ton hotel.”

The first of two meet­ings with Trump in late April of 2018. That’s cer­tain­ly the sign of access. They bought Trump’s ear. But we don’t hear them whis­per­ing in his ear in the full 37 minute minute they released so it seems like there’s much to this part fo the sto­ry that we have yet to learn.

It sounds like this was the event were Par­nas and Fru­man met Jeff Ses­sion, who would go on to work with them. That makes Pete Ses­sions part of the whole Naftogaz scan­dal quite pos­si­bly:

...
The event at Mar-a-Lago was orga­nized by the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee and the Nation­al Repub­li­can Con­gres­sion­al Com­mit­tee, and was attend­ed by Ron­na McDaniel, the chair­woman of the nation­al com­mit­tee, and Pete Ses­sions, a for­mer chair­man of the con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tee who was then a mem­ber of Con­gress from Texas.

Ms. McDaniel greet­ed Mr. Par­nas and Mr. Fru­man famil­iar­ly, in the man­ner of a politi­cian who shakes the hands of thou­sands of peo­ple whose acquain­tance she may — or may not — have pre­vi­ous­ly made.

“Hey, how are you?” she said to Mr. Fru­man. “Good to see you.”

A spokesman for the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee dis­missed the greet­ing as insignif­i­cant.

“On a giv­en day, the chair­woman greets hun­dreds if not thou­sands of peo­ple at events across the coun­try,” the spokesman said. “This is noth­ing more than that.”

It was at that event that Mr. Par­nas met Mr. Ses­sions. The two men devel­oped a rela­tion­ship over the fol­low­ing weeks and months, records show. They would even­tu­al­ly dis­cuss remov­ing the Unit­ed States ambas­sador to Ukraine at the time, Marie L. Yovanovitch, which became a focus of the impeach­ment tri­al.

...

And then there’s the sep­a­rate sto­ry of the lob­by­ing by the Syr­i­an Amer­i­can group. Unlike Par­nas and Fruf­man’s scheme, the lob­by­ing by Dr. Rim Al-Bezem appeared to be entire­ly focused on the Syr­i­an rebels. It was very dif­fer­ent for­eign pol­i­cy lob­by­ing in that respect com­pared to Par­nas and Fru­man’s scheme. Dr. Al-Bezem does­n’t appear to be involved in self-deal­ing. But her pres­ences at this meet­ing cap­tured in the video is still notable in how it shows the price of lob­by­ing in DC. It’s what­ev­er it costs to get a din­ner with the pres­i­dent. Tens of thou­sands of dol­lars maybe? The prices pre­sum­ably fluc­tu­ate with the sleazi­ness of the admin­is­tra­tions. Dr. Al-Bezen had a lun­cheon with Trump again four months lat­er at a fundrais­er for Repub­li­can sen­a­tor Mike Braun. It’s a peek behind the cur­tain. A peek of very expen­sive meals where Trump goes around giv­ing these pri­vate din­ners to big mega donors. He does it for sen­a­tors or the RNC or pro-Trump super­PACs. Trump is there, ready to have din­ner with lob­by­ists, with it involves a for­eign nat­ur­al gas scheme or a for­eign civ­il war. It’s play to play for every­one:

...
Among those acknowl­edged at the April 20 meet­ing in Flori­da was Bri­an Bal­lard, an influ­en­tial lob­by­ist who is a top fund-rais­er for Mr. Trump and the Repub­li­can Par­ty.

Five days before the event, Mr. Bal­lard reg­is­tered to lob­by for a Unit­ed States-based Syr­i­an oppo­si­tion group called Cit­i­zens for a Secure and Safe Amer­i­ca, which paid his firm $350,000 in 2018 and 2019. He rec­om­mend­ed that the group’s lead­ers take their case against Pres­i­dent Bashar al-Assad direct­ly to Mr. Trump by pay­ing to attend a fund-rais­ing event, accord­ing to a report in The Wall Street Jour­nal last year.

Rim Al-Bezem, a Penn­syl­va­nia car­di­ol­o­gist who is the pres­i­dent of the Syr­i­an oppo­si­tion group, donat­ed a total of $18,800 to the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee and its Sen­ate cam­paign arm. In an inter­view, she said she raised addi­tion­al mon­ey from oth­er Syr­i­an-Amer­i­can activists.

As a result, she and an asso­ciate secured invi­ta­tions to the April 20, 2018, Mar-a-Lago round table, which came a week after Mr. Trump ordered airstrikes against Syr­i­an research, stor­age and mil­i­tary tar­gets to pun­ish Mr. Assad for a sus­pect­ed chem­i­cal attack that killed more than 40 peo­ple.

...

Four months lat­er, Dr. Al-Bezem raised an even more acute con­cern at anoth­er round table with Mr. Trump — this one ben­e­fit­ing the Mike Braun’s cam­paign for Sen­ate in Indi­ana, to which Dr. Al-Bezem donat­ed $1,000. Mr. Assad’s mil­i­tary and its Russ­ian allies were prepar­ing to launch an attack on Idlib province, the lone remain­ing major rebel strong­hold in Syr­ia, Dr. Al-Bezem told the pres­i­dent, urg­ing him to inter­vene.
...

Whether you’re look­ing to lob­by­ing to take over a for­eign state-owned nat­ur­al gas com­pa­ny for per­son­al prof­it or lob­by­ing on behalf of a rebel group, you’re to have to pay. Tens of thou­sands of dol­lars just as the cost of entry.

So at this point we still don’t quite know what Lev Par­nas meant when he talked about “get­ting start­ed” by hav­ing Trump fire Marie Yovanovitch dur­ing their con­ver­sa­tion at the April 30, 2018, donor gath­er­ing. And we don’t yet know if they dis­cussed their Naftogaz scheme with Trump ten days ear­li­er. But we do now know that the con­ver­sa­tion they were hav­ing at that April 30 meet­ing that led up to the “Get rid of her!” com­ment by Trump was prob­a­bly a con­tin­u­a­tion of con­ver­sa­tion they got start­ed ten days ear­li­er at the Mar a Lago event. Which was prob­a­bly a con­ver­sa­tion about Naftogaz because what else could it have been about.

There was a new lay­er of fraud added to the the whole #UkraineGate scan­dal this week. It involves Fraud Guar­an­tee, the com­pa­ny start­ed by Par­nas and Fru­man that end­ed up hir­ing Rudy Giu­liani for $500,000. Specif­i­cal­ly, it involves fraud by Fraud Guar­an­tee. More specif­i­cal­ly, it involves fraud relat­ed to what Rudy Giu­liani did in exchange for that $500,000. Yes, at the same time Giu­liani was orches­trat­ing the witch hunt against Hunter Biden he was hired by Par­nas and Fru­man’s com­pa­ny $500,000 to do what appears to be noth­ing. Or at least hard­ly any work. It’s unclear what, if any, work Giu­liani actu­al­ly did for Fraud Guar­an­tee which is where the fraud comes in. Sur­prise!

So what was the Fraud Guar­an­tee fraud involv­ing Rudy’s $500,000? Well, as part of their net­work­ing with Flori­da Repub­li­cans Par­nas and Fru­man had been pitch­ing their Fraud Guar­an­tee com­pa­ny look­ing for investors. They met with a num­ber of wealthy Repub­li­can donors in Flori­da and one, Charles Guc­cia­r­do, decid­ed to invest for $500,000. Guc­cia­r­do’s $500,000 invest­ment was the mon­ey Fraud Guar­an­tee paid to Giu­liani. And he paid with the expec­ta­tion that Giu­liani would actu­al­ly do real mar­ket­ing work­ing, pitch­ing Fraud Guar­an­tee’s ser­vices to the pub­lic in the same way Giu­liani was the pitch­man for Life­Lock, the iden­ti­fy-theft pro­tec­tion firm. Fraud Gau­ran­tee’s osten­sivle prod­uct was sim­i­lar to Life­Lock­’s in that it was sup­posed to be insur­ance against fraud. So Giu­liani made sense as a pitch­man for Fraud Guar­an­tee’s ser­vices and that’s what Guc­cia­r­do paid for but Giu­liani did­n’t do that at all.

It’s not clear what Giu­liani did for Fraud Guar­an­tee. His attor­ney said Giu­liani under­stand that his work would be sim­i­lar to what he did for Life­Lock and that he pro­vid­ed legal ser­vices. But sources close to the com­pa­ny say he did­n’t pro­vide any legal ser­vices and it’s clear he did­n’t do any of the pub­lic pitch­ing he did for Life­Lock. So it’s legit­i­mate­ly a mys­tery as to what Giu­liani did. And Guc­cia­r­do seems legit­i­mate­ly pissed about it. Like he was straight up scammed by Giu­liani. At least Hunter Biden is osten­si­bly over­paid to pro­vide some sort of inter­na­tion­al anti-cor­rup­tion stan­dards advice for Buris­ma. Giu­liani is straight-up scam­ming GOP mega-donors with his fake job at Fraud Guar­an­tee and that’s what SDNY inves­ti­ga­tors in New York are look­ing into:

CNN

Fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors weigh new charges that bring Lev Par­nas inves­ti­ga­tion clos­er to Giu­liani

By Kara Scan­nell and Eri­ca Orden,

Updat­ed 2:13 PM ET, Mon Feb­ru­ary 17, 2020

New York (CNN)Federal pros­e­cu­tors are weigh­ing new charges against asso­ciates of Rudy Giu­liani in con­nec­tion with a com­pa­ny that paid him $500,000, accord­ing to peo­ple famil­iar with the inves­ti­ga­tion.

Pros­e­cu­tors with the US attor­ney’s office for the South­ern Dis­trict of New York are con­sid­er­ing whether to charge Giu­liani asso­ciate Lev Par­nas and at least one of his busi­ness part­ners with mis­lead­ing poten­tial investors for Fraud Guar­an­tee, the Flori­da-based com­pa­ny that paid Giu­liani, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s per­son­al attor­ney, these peo­ple say. Par­nas co-found­ed Fraud Guar­an­tee with the idea of pro­vid­ing insur­ance to com­pa­nies to pro­tect against fraud.

The scruti­ny of Fraud Guar­an­tee brings the inves­ti­ga­tion clos­er to Giu­liani, Trump’s vocal defend­er, and rais­es ques­tions about what role the for­mer may­or played, if any, in the mar­ket­ing of the com­pa­ny. A lawyer for Giu­liani said his client nev­er had any con­ver­sa­tions about investor pitch­es or mar­ket­ing with Par­nas or his busi­ness part­ner David Cor­reia.

Fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors in Man­hat­tan for months have been inves­ti­gat­ing Giu­lian­i’s actions, includ­ing his efforts to oust Marie Yovanovitch, then-US ambas­sador to Ukraine, and push for an inves­ti­ga­tion into the son of Trump’s polit­i­cal rival Joe Biden. Giu­liani has not been accused of wrong­do­ing. Yovanovitch was recalled ear­ly from her posi­tion in April 2019.

In the case of Fraud Guar­an­tee, inves­ti­ga­tors have focused on the mar­ket­ing pitch, specif­i­cal­ly exam­in­ing whether the men duped investors about the val­ue of the com­pa­ny and how they intend­ed to use the pro­ceeds, the peo­ple famil­iar with the inves­ti­ga­tion say.

FBI agents and pros­e­cu­tors inter­viewed investors who were pitched on the com­pa­ny, and through sub­poe­nas have obtained text mes­sages and oth­er doc­u­ments relat­ed to the effort. One per­son with knowl­edge of the com­pa­ny has said the men spent pro­ceeds from investors on pricey per­son­al expens­es.

The new charges, if they are brought, would sig­nif­i­cant­ly increase the legal pres­sure on Par­nas and Cor­reia. Those men, plus Igor Fru­man, anoth­er Par­nas busi­ness asso­ciate, and Andrey Kukushkin, an asso­ciate in a mar­i­jua­na ven­ture, have been charged by Man­hat­tan fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors with cam­paign finance vio­la­tions relat­ing to dona­tions they made to US can­di­dates. All four have plead­ed not guilty.

The tim­ing of any addi­tion­al charges is not clear. Pros­e­cu­tors have said in court that new charges in the case against Par­nas and the oth­er defen­dants are like­ly, but they have not spec­i­fied which charges or when they might be filed. The case is sched­uled to go to tri­al in ear­ly Octo­ber, which would mean tes­ti­mo­ny involv­ing Trump’s cir­cle could emerge in the final weeks of the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion cam­paign.

“We have tak­en into account pros­e­cu­tors’ state­ments that they might bring addi­tion­al charges against Mr. Par­nas and oth­ers since the incep­tion of this case. We are there­fore not sur­prised, and remain pre­pared to defend Mr. Par­nas against any such charges,” said Joseph Bondy, a lawyer for Par­nas.

...

Court­ing Giu­liani

The $500,000 pay­ment to Giu­liani for work with Fraud Guar­an­tee came just as Par­nas and Fru­man began help­ing Giu­liani arrange meet­ings in Ukraine to dig up dirt on Biden, now a Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, and press the new­ly elect­ed pres­i­dent of Ukraine to announce an inves­ti­ga­tion into Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

Trump’s attempts to pres­sure Ukraine to inves­ti­gate the Bidens were at the cen­ter of the Pres­i­den­t’s impeach­ment tri­al. Trump and his allies have repeat­ed­ly made unfound­ed and false claims to allege that the Bidens act­ed cor­rupt­ly in Ukraine.

Fraud Guar­an­tee was set up by Par­nas and Cor­reia in 2013. They were pitch­ing their busi­ness as an insur­ance pol­i­cy for com­pa­nies to pro­tect against frauds. It isn’t clear whether they had any clients. In 2015, they were sued for not pay­ing $20,000 on a lease for office space the busi­ness claimed it was oper­at­ing from.

By 2018, Par­nas, Cor­reia and Fru­man set up anoth­er com­pa­ny, Glob­al Ener­gy Pro­duc­ers, to break into the liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas busi­ness in Ukraine. They began donat­ing to Repub­li­can cam­paigns and super PACs to gain entry into exclu­sive din­ners, includ­ing mul­ti­ple events that gave them access to Trump.

Accord­ing to the indict­ment, Par­nas and Fru­man had their own objec­tives and alleged­ly sought the removal of Yovanovitch to advance their own per­son­al finan­cial inter­ests, as well as the polit­i­cal inter­ests of at least one Ukrain­ian offi­cial.

That year, they crossed paths with Giu­liani, who was work­ing on his own inves­ti­ga­tion in Ukraine for Trump. The for­mer New York City may­or was in the midst of an expen­sive divorce and was strapped for cash. Giu­liani has said he bor­rowed $100,000 from a friend, which the friend con­firms has near­ly been paid back in full.

Giu­lian­i’s rela­tion­ship with Par­nas, Fru­man and Cor­reia appeared to solid­i­fy with the Fraud Guar­an­tee busi­ness deal. Par­nas and Fru­man would go on to help Giu­liani in his cam­paign to remove Yovanovitch in pur­suit of a Ukrain­ian inves­ti­ga­tion into the Bidens.

Par­nas and Cor­reia pitched many wealthy GOP donors in Flori­da, and ulti­mate­ly Charles Guc­cia­r­do, a Repub­li­can donor and plain­tiffs’ lawyer, agreed to invest, accord­ing to peo­ple famil­iar with their efforts.

Guc­cia­r­do pro­vid­ed a $500,000 loan to Fraud Guar­an­tee, his lawyer, Randy Zelin, has pre­vi­ous­ly explained.

“Pur­suant to the writ­ten agree­ments Mr. Guc­cia­r­do entered into with the Com­pa­ny, his invest­ment, which was and remains a loan to the Com­pa­ny, was paid to Giu­liani Part­ners LLC on the Com­pa­ny’s behalf, pur­suant to the Com­pa­ny’s writ­ten instruc­tions,” Zelin said in a state­ment in Novem­ber.

Accord­ing to Zelin, Guc­cia­r­do signed on with the invest­ment because of Giu­lian­i’s rep­u­ta­tion and because Guc­cia­r­do believed Giu­liani could pro­mote Fraud Guar­an­tee as he had anoth­er busi­ness, Life­Lock, which pitch­es itself as a way for clients to pro­tect against iden­ti­ty theft.

Guc­cia­r­do “believed what Mr. Giu­liani did for Life­Lock, Mr. Giu­liani could and would do for the Com­pa­ny,” Zelin said. He also said the loan could be con­vert­ed to an equi­ty stake in the busi­ness.

...

But Giu­liani nev­er did any pub­lic com­mer­cials or pitch­es for Fraud Guar­an­tee, and a per­son famil­iar with the com­pa­ny said Giu­liani did­n’t pro­vide any legal ser­vices.

An attor­ney for Giu­liani said the for­mer may­or believed the pur­pose of Fraud Guar­an­tee was intend­ed to be sim­i­lar to that of Life­Lock and that Giu­liani had per­formed legal work. He also said Giu­liani did­n’t autho­rize either Par­nas or Cor­reia to make rep­re­sen­ta­tions about his involve­ment.

———–

“Fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors weigh new charges that bring Lev Par­nas inves­ti­ga­tion clos­er to Giu­liani” by Kara Scan­nell and Eri­ca Orden; CNN; 02/17/2020

“Pros­e­cu­tors with the US attor­ney’s office for the South­ern Dis­trict of New York are con­sid­er­ing whether to charge Giu­liani asso­ciate Lev Par­nas and at least one of his busi­ness part­ners with mis­lead­ing poten­tial investors for Fraud Guar­an­tee, the Flori­da-based com­pa­ny that paid Giu­liani, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s per­son­al attor­ney, these peo­ple say. Par­nas co-found­ed Fraud Guar­an­tee with the idea of pro­vid­ing insur­ance to com­pa­nies to pro­tect against fraud.”

Charges could come from Fraud Guar­an­tee’s fraud­u­lent pay­ments to Giu­liani. And the $500,000 pay­ment Giu­liani got for Fraud Guar­an­tee came just as Par­nas and Fru­man began help­ing Giu­liani arrange meet­ings in Ukraine to dig up dirg on the Bidens. That pay­ment appears to be what solid­i­fies Giu­lian­i’s rela­tion­ship with Par­nas and Fru­man. But the $500,000 mon­ey was spent on pricey per­son­al items accord­ing to peo­ple famil­iar with the inves­ti­ga­tion. It’s unclear if that includes pricey per­son­al items for Giu­liani but he was the intend­ed recip­i­ent and it sounds like he got the entire $500,000 so he seems like­ly a rea­son­able sus­pect for the pricey per­son­al pur­chas­es:

...
In the case of Fraud Guar­an­tee, inves­ti­ga­tors have focused on the mar­ket­ing pitch, specif­i­cal­ly exam­in­ing whether the men duped investors about the val­ue of the com­pa­ny and how they intend­ed to use the pro­ceeds, the peo­ple famil­iar with the inves­ti­ga­tion say.

FBI agents and pros­e­cu­tors inter­viewed investors who were pitched on the com­pa­ny, and through sub­poe­nas have obtained text mes­sages and oth­er doc­u­ments relat­ed to the effort. One per­son with knowl­edge of the com­pa­ny has said the men spent pro­ceeds from investors on pricey per­son­al expens­es.

The new charges, if they are brought, would sig­nif­i­cant­ly increase the legal pres­sure on Par­nas and Cor­reia. Those men, plus Igor Fru­man, anoth­er Par­nas busi­ness asso­ciate, and Andrey Kukushkin, an asso­ciate in a mar­i­jua­na ven­ture, have been charged by Man­hat­tan fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors with cam­paign finance vio­la­tions relat­ing to dona­tions they made to US can­di­dates. All four have plead­ed not guilty.

...

Court­ing Giu­liani

The $500,000 pay­ment to Giu­liani for work with Fraud Guar­an­tee came just as Par­nas and Fru­man began help­ing Giu­liani arrange meet­ings in Ukraine to dig up dirt on Biden, now a Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, and press the new­ly elect­ed pres­i­dent of Ukraine to announce an inves­ti­ga­tion into Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

...

Giu­lian­i’s rela­tion­ship with Par­nas, Fru­man and Cor­reia appeared to solid­i­fy with the Fraud Guar­an­tee busi­ness deal. Par­nas and Fru­man would go on to help Giu­liani in his cam­paign to remove Yovanovitch in pur­suit of a Ukrain­ian inves­ti­ga­tion into the Bidens.
...

The fact that Giu­lian­i’s rela­tion­ship with Fraud Guar­an­tee was financed by this $500,000 invest­ment and hap­pened at the same time Par­nas and Fru­man began work­ing with Giu­lian­i’s Ukrain­ian adven­tures is part of what’s inter­est­ing about this case. The tim­ing makes it appear that the $500,000 was like a pay­ment by some­one to some­how pay Giu­liani for allow­ing Par­nas and Fru­man to get involved with the Ukrain­ian effort. And it’s entire­ly fea­si­ble that they would be in a posi­tion where Giu­liani could demand a pay­ment — in the form of $500,000 fake job — because Par­nas and Fru­man had the entire Naftogaz nat­ur­al gas scheme that required the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s coop­er­a­tion. Giu­liani was a gate­keep­er for Trump’s crony deals and that fake Fraud Guar­an­tee job was the price. So one might rea­son­ably assume the Flori­da Repub­li­can donor, Charles Guc­cia­r­do, made the $500,000 invest­ment that he knew was going to Giu­liani as some­how cov­er pay­ment for Giu­lian­i’s Ukrain­ian adven­tures with Par­nas and Fru­man.

But we can’t dis­count the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Par­nas and Fru­man and Giu­liani were all just kind of scam­ming Guc­cia­r­do in order to raise the $500,000 they need­ed to buy off Giu­liani. The fact that it seems like 100% per­cent of Guc­cia­r­do’s pay­ment to Fraud Guar­an­tee went to Giu­liani makes it seem like Guc­cia­r­do was mak­ing a pay­ment Giu­liani and Fraud Guar­an­tee was the vehi­cle for that pay­ment. But Guc­cia­r­do seems to be legit­i­mate­ly pissed about get­ting scammed and Giu­liani not act­ing like a Life­Lock pub­lic pitch­man for Fraud Guar­an­tee. So maybe Giu­liani demand­ed $500,000 as pay­ment for allow­ing Par­nas to get White House access for his Naftogaz schemes and Par­nas raised that mon­ey by lying to Guc­cia­r­do what Giu­liani would be will­ing to do for Fraud Guar­an­tee. That sce­nario would explain Guc­cia­r­do act­ing like he was being scammed. He was scammed to pay Giu­lian­i’s fee. Maybe. There’s an inves­ti­ga­tion yet to be com­plet­ed. An inves­ti­ga­tion that involves fig­ur­ing out if Giuiani did any work for Fraud Guar­an­tee at all because that remains unclear:

...
Par­nas and Cor­reia pitched many wealthy GOP donors in Flori­da, and ulti­mate­ly Charles Guc­cia­r­do, a Repub­li­can donor and plain­tiffs’ lawyer, agreed to invest, accord­ing to peo­ple famil­iar with their efforts.

Guc­cia­r­do pro­vid­ed a $500,000 loan to Fraud Guar­an­tee, his lawyer, Randy Zelin, has pre­vi­ous­ly explained.

“Pur­suant to the writ­ten agree­ments Mr. Guc­cia­r­do entered into with the Com­pa­ny, his invest­ment, which was and remains a loan to the Com­pa­ny, was paid to Giu­liani Part­ners LLC on the Com­pa­ny’s behalf, pur­suant to the Com­pa­ny’s writ­ten instruc­tions,” Zelin said in a state­ment in Novem­ber.

Accord­ing to Zelin, Guc­cia­r­do signed on with the invest­ment because of Giu­lian­i’s rep­u­ta­tion and because Guc­cia­r­do believed Giu­liani could pro­mote Fraud Guar­an­tee as he had anoth­er busi­ness, Life­Lock, which pitch­es itself as a way for clients to pro­tect against iden­ti­ty theft.

Guc­cia­r­do “believed what Mr. Giu­liani did for Life­Lock, Mr. Giu­liani could and would do for the Com­pa­ny,” Zelin said. He also said the loan could be con­vert­ed to an equi­ty stake in the busi­ness.

...

But Giu­liani nev­er did any pub­lic com­mer­cials or pitch­es for Fraud Guar­an­tee, and a per­son famil­iar with the com­pa­ny said Giu­liani did­n’t pro­vide any legal ser­vices.

An attor­ney for Giu­liani said the for­mer may­or believed the pur­pose of Fraud Guar­an­tee was intend­ed to be sim­i­lar to that of Life­Lock and that Giu­liani had per­formed legal work. He also said Giu­liani did­n’t autho­rize either Par­nas or Cor­reia to make rep­re­sen­ta­tions about his involve­ment.
...

And note how the tri­al Par­nas is cur­rent­ly fac­ing — that might face new charges relat­ed to all this — is sched­uled to start in Octo­ber, weeks before the elec­tion. So could become a par­tic­u­lar­ly polit­i­cal­ly impor­tant case if the #UkraineGate scan­dal ends up bring an elec­tion issue. Espe­cial­ly since the tri­al could involve the tes­ti­mo­ny of Trump’s inner cir­cle like Giu­liani:

...
The tim­ing of any addi­tion­al charges is not clear. Pros­e­cu­tors have said in court that new charges in the case against Par­nas and the oth­er defen­dants are like­ly, but they have not spec­i­fied which charges or when they might be filed. The case is sched­uled to go to tri­al in ear­ly Octo­ber, which would mean tes­ti­mo­ny involv­ing Trump’s cir­cle could emerge in the final weeks of the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion cam­paign.

“We have tak­en into account pros­e­cu­tors’ state­ments that they might bring addi­tion­al charges against Mr. Par­nas and oth­ers since the incep­tion of this case. We are there­fore not sur­prised, and remain pre­pared to defend Mr. Par­nas against any such charges,” said Joseph Bondy, a lawyer for Par­nas.
...

So we might learn more about the nature of what Charles Guc­cia­r­do thought he was buy­ing with his $500,000 invest­ment in Fraud Guar­an­tee that went straight to Giu­liani. Did he think he was buy­ing off Giu­liani or legit­i­mate­ly invest­ing in his pitch man ser­vices like he did for Life­Lock? If it’s the lat­ter, Guc­cia­r­do has a rea­son to be pissed. Giu­liani did noth­ing or at least has yet to explain what he did. So we’ll see if Par­nas scammed Guc­cia­r­do but the fact that Giu­liani appears to have done noth­ing in exchange for that $500,000 indi­cates he def­i­nite­ly grift­ed Guc­cia­r­do. Giu­liani just took the mon­ey and pro­vide some mys­tery ser­vices to Fraud Guar­an­tee in return. And that turns out to have been fraud. Maybe. We’ll see if there’s an inves­ti­ga­tion and what it says. Maybe right before the elec­tion.

So that’s an entire­ly new scan­dalous lay­er to the sto­ry of Lev Par­nas, Igor Fru­man, and Rudy Giu­liani and the ori­gin of their rela­tion­ship. They share the bond of scam­ming a Flori­da GOP mega-donor to pay off Rudy appar­ent­ly. That’s how they cement­ed their ties. Scam­ming Guc­cia­r­do. That’s got to be like blood broth­er stuff in Repub­li­can huck­ster cir­cles. And then Par­nas betrayed Giu­liani be turn­ing states evi­dence. The tri­al has it all.

The irony with all this is that the whole sto­ry is an exam­ple of why there should be a mar­ket for Fraud Guar­an­tee’s ser­vices. For deal­ing with right-wing oper­a­tives. It seems like there would be a big mar­ket.

It’s Baaaaack! Yes, it’s look­ing like the #UkraineGate fias­co is going to be return­ing to the head­lines now that Joe Biden is look­ing more and more like the like­ly Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee. If Joe Biden gets the nom­i­na­tion we’re in store for a mas­sive push by the Trump team to jus­ti­fy the entire scan­dalous #UkraineGate shake­down scheme by mak­ing it look like there real­ly was some mas­sive scan­dal involv­ing Joe and Hunter Biden that jus­ti­fied extort­ing the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment. It’s not just inevitable. It’s already start­ed with even Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Mitt Rom­ney, who vot­ed to con­vict Trump dur­ing the #UkraineGate impeach­ment tri­al, agree­ing to sup­port the Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors push­ing to sub­poe­na records on Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine that just start­ed up last week fol­low­ing Biden’s big Super Tues­day pri­ma­ry win.

And that all means the entire Naftogaz side of the #UkraineGate scan­dal is going to at least be tan­gen­tial­ly back in the news for the fore­see­able future too, which is par­tic­u­lar­ly tan­ta­liz­ing since this part of the #UkraineGate scan­dal has nev­er real­ly been ade­quate­ly explored. Part of the rea­son the Naftogaz chap­ter was­n’t giv­en near­ly as much cov­er­age as the Biden/Burisma side of the sto­ry is that it was the Biden/Burisma side that involved the obvi­ous­ly impeach­able offens­es of extort­ing the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment into open show tri­al inves­ti­ga­tions into Trump’s polit­i­cal oppo­nent. The Naftogaz side of the sto­ry is more just insid­er-deal­ing scan­dal that, while super cor­rupt, was more tra­di­tion­al­ly swampy. Shak­ing down a gov­ern­ment for show tri­als is the unam­bigu­ous­ly impeach­able offense in the larg­er #UkraineGate sto­ry. The Naftogaz side was the kind of offense that should be impeach­able but it so typ­i­cal of the cur­rent Trumpian swamp that it bare­ly gath­ered any out­rage.

But here’s an arti­cle that hints at one of the oth­er like­ly rea­sons the Naftogaz sto­ry has­n’t received near­ly as much atten­tion: The US real­ly has had a pol­i­cy of pro­mot­ing US liq­uid nat­ur­al gas (LNG) exports to Ukraine as part of its broad­er anti-Rus­sia pol­i­cy. And that pol­i­cy has broad bi-par­ti­san sup­port. It’s a sit­u­a­tion that gives poten­tial cov­er to the scheme involv­ing Lev Par­nas, Igor Fru­man, Ener­gy Sec­re­tary Rick Per­ry, Rudy Giu­liani and the oth­er cast of char­ac­ters involved in the plot to takeover Naftogaz’s board. They can always argue they were just try­ing to advance US inter­ests. That’s obvi­ous­ly going to be part of their expla­na­tion.

And that’s why it’s impor­tant for the pub­lic to under­stand that the Naftogaz side of the #UkraineGate sto­ry involved a scheme to first get ambas­sador Marie Yovanovitch fired and then stack the Naftogaz board with cronies who will approve lucra­tive LNG-export deals for the co-schemers. It was emblem­at­ic of ‘the Swamp’ in the worst way. Yes, it was a scheme that was con­sis­tent with a broad­er US pol­i­cy of replac­ing Russ­ian dom­i­na­tion of the Euro­pean LNG mar­ket with US exports so it’s not quite as easy to crit­i­cize the Naftogaz com­po­nent of this sto­ry as it was to crit­i­cize the deci­sion to with­hold mil­i­tary aide unless Ukraine open show tri­als against the Bidens. They’re both sto­ries of swampy cor­rup­tion, but there’s not real­ly any com­po­nent of the Biden/Burisma/shakedown part of the sto­ry that was con­sis­tent with broad­er US pol­i­cy oth­er than the absur­dist claims that it was moti­vat­ed by anti-cor­rup­tion charges. The Naftogaz sto­ry at least involved increas­ing US LNG exports to Ukraine which is one of the key defens­es made by the Trump team to jus­ti­fy it. And that’s why it’s going to be cru­cial for the pub­lic to rec­og­nize that the Naftogaz scheme was incred­i­bly cor­rupt and a per­fect exam­ple of ‘The Swamp’. It’s the kind of cor­rup­tion that should spark out­rage both because it was out­ra­geous and entire­ly pre­dictable. It’s so bad you have to imag­ine that, in addi­tion to mak­ing a pre­emp­tive polit­i­cal hit on one of Trump’s like­li­est oppo­nents in 2020, part of the motive for going as far as extort­ing Pres­i­dent Zelen­sky to force an inves­ti­ga­tion on the Bidens was to cre­ate cov­er over fear of the pub­lic response to the crazi­ly cor­rupt LNG scheme they were car­ry­ing out with Naftogaz. If there’s even­tu­al­ly a pub­lic uproar over the scan­dalous­ly swampy nature of Naftogaz scheme it will be extreme­ly handy for the GOP to just repeat ‘Biden/Burisma’ over and over as a whataboutism defense which had to be at least part of the motive of pur­su­ing the Biden Ukraine inves­ti­ga­tion so aggres­sive­ly.

So how does the fol­low­ing RFERL arti­cle relate to all of that? Well, it sounds like there’s a new sit­u­a­tion aris­ing involv­ing Ukraine’s nat­ur­al gas sec­tor and US LNG exports where US sanc­tions on Rus­sia could lead to an increase in US LNG exports to Ukraine. It’s pro­posed US sanc­tions on Euro­pean com­pa­nies that are involved with the con­struc­tion of the Nord Stream 2 under­sea nat­ur­al gas pipeline from Rus­sia to Ger­many that the US has been oppos­ing. The argu­ments against the pipeline aren’t with­out mer­it. Ger­many is an obvi­ous major ben­e­fi­cia­ry of the pipeline but Nord Stream 2 is going to have a huge impact on the trea­suries of East Euro­pean coun­tries like Ukraine which will no longer be able to col­lect the tran­sit fees for the nat­ur­al gas pipelines run­ning from Rus­sia to the rest of Europe. It’s not a triv­ial event in terms of the rel­a­tive lever­age of Rus­sia to its east­ern Euro­pean neigh­bors and it’s cer­tain­ly not the kind of devel­op­ment that’s in keep­ing with the West­’s ongo­ing Russ­ian eco­nom­ic con­tain­ment pol­i­cy (Ger­many being an obvi­ous excep­tion). Ukraine espe­cial­ly has a rea­son to freak out about it because one thing that’s ensure Ukraine’s access to Russ­ian gas in recent years despite Ukraine’s extreme hos­til­i­ties with Rus­sia is Rus­si­a’s need to use Ukraine to trans­fer nat­ur­al gas to the rest of Europe. When Nord Stream 2 comes online it’s going to be be a lot eas­i­er to cut Ukraine’s nat­ur­al gas off when ten­sions flare up. That’s why US offers of LNG sup­plies to Ukraine are such a big part of the Nord Stream 2 fight.

The US is offi­cial­ly against Nord Stream 2 and has been try­ing to thwart its con­struc­tion through var­i­ous legal maneu­vers. As the fol­low­ing arti­cle notes, the US sanc­tioned in Decem­ber any ships help­ing Gazprom lay under­sea cable in the Baltic Sea, forc­ing Switzer­land’s Allseas Group to aban­don the project and leav­ing a gap in the Den­mark por­tion of the pipeline. And the US still has the sanc­tion­ing pow­er it needs to end Nord Stream 2. At least that’s accord­ing to Andriy Kobolyev, the cur­rent CEO of Naftogaz. Recall that Kobolyev is one of the fig­ures the co-schemers want­ed to replace on Naftogaz’s board with Andrew Favorov who was seen as pass­ing Repub­li­can muster, but Favorov was per­son­al friends with Kobolyev and told him about it. Kobolyev is still Naftogaz’s CEO and now he’s lob­by­ing the US to stop Nord Stream 2 with addi­tion­al sanc­tions.

Kobolyev has even float­ed the idea of US LNG pro­duc­ers stor­ing their EU-bound LNG in Ukraine’s stor­age facil­i­ties over the sum­mer. So he seems very keen on get­ting US LNG pumped into Ukraine.

That’s the sto­ry that’s devel­op­ing involv­ing Naftogaz and it’s a sto­ry that involves US LNG export con­tracts to Ukraine because the US is the obvi­ous replace­ment for the Russ­ian nat­ur­al gas that Europe is sup­posed to be weened off of as part of this larg­er Russ­ian con­tain­ment pol­i­cy. So the ques­tion of who might get those US LNG export con­tracts is sud­den­ly more rel­e­vant which is fas­ci­nat­ing since those were the exact con­tracts the co-schemers were try­ing to cor­rupt.

Koboloyev had a meet­ing with mem­bers of Con­gress on March 3rd. The mem­bers, led by Ted Cruz, appear inter­est­ing in doing what they can to stop the pipeline and accord­ing to Kobolyev fol­low­ing the meet­ing, “There is a very ele­gant and effi­cient way avail­able to the U.S. gov­ern­ment to make sure this pipeline will nev­er hap­pen and we believe that this should be done.” So it’s very pos­si­ble the US gov­ern­ment is going to be using the build­ing of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline as an addi­tion rea­son to export US LNG to Ukraine. We’ll see if the US decides to use that “very ele­gant and effi­cient way” to stop Nord Stream 2 from being com­plet­ed but either way there will prob­a­bly be offers of US LNG exports. Who is going to get those US-to-Ukraine export con­tracts? That’s all why that is going to be a sto­ry to watch. And since it’s a sto­ry that involves the poten­tial sign­ing of US-Ukraine LNG exports it’s a sto­ry that could be use­ful remind­ing the pub­lic of how deeply cor­rupt the Naftogaz com­po­nent of the #UkraineGate sto­ry real­ly was:

Radio Free Europe/Radio Lib­er­ty

More Nord Stream 2 Sanc­tions On Hori­zon? U.S. Sen­a­tor And Ukraine’s Naftogaz Dis­cuss Ways To Halt Con­tro­ver­sial Gas Pipeline

By Todd Prince
March 07, 2020 21:37 GMT

U.S. and Ukrain­ian efforts to stop Rus­si­a’s Nord Stream 2 project from being com­plet­ed have not end­ed with the Decem­ber pas­sage of U.S. sanc­tions that have effec­tive­ly pre­vent­ed ves­sels from lay­ing the final stretch of the nat­ur­al-gas pipeline.

Andriy Kobolyev, the chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of Ukraine’s state-owned gas giant Naftogaz, trav­eled to the Unit­ed States in ear­ly March to lob­by for mea­sures to fur­ther stall the $11 bil­lion pipeline that aims to reroute Euro­pean Union-bound Russ­ian gas sup­plies, cir­cum­vent­ing estab­lished routes through Ukraine.

Krem­lin-con­trolled Gazprom is seek­ing to use its own ves­sel to com­plete the last 160 kilo­me­ters of the pipeline along the bot­tom of the Baltic Sea from Rus­sia to Ger­many.

Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin said in Jan­u­ary dur­ing a press con­fer­ence with Ger­man Chan­cel­lor Angela Merkel that he hoped the project would be com­plet­ed in ear­ly 2021 at the lat­est. Sev­er­al U.S. ana­lysts have said that time­frame was rea­son­able.

But mem­bers of the U.S. Con­gress and Ukraine appear to be work­ing on their next move.

“There is a very ele­gant and effi­cient way avail­able to the U.S. gov­ern­ment to make sure this pipeline will nev­er hap­pen and we believe that this should be done,” Kobolyev told RFE/RL in Wash­ing­ton on March 3 fol­low­ing his meet­ings with con­gress­mem­bers, includ­ing Sen­a­tor Ted Cruz (Repub­li­can, Texas), who is seen as a lead­ing voice in the effort.

The Unit­ed States in Decem­ber passed a pro­vi­sion as part of the Nation­al Defense Autho­riza­tion Act that impos­es sanc­tions on any ves­sels help­ing Gazprom lay the Nord Stream 2 pipeline along the Baltic Sea.

The pro­vi­sion forced Switzer­land’s Allseas Group to imme­di­ate­ly aban­don its work on the project, leav­ing a gap in the Den­mark por­tion of the waters. The two par­al­lel legs of the pipeline total just over 2,400 kilo­me­ters.

Sanc­tions ‘Deter­rent’

The U.S. oppos­es Nord Stream 2 because it says the pipeline increas­es Europe’s depen­dence on Russ­ian ener­gy and gives the Krem­lin more lever­age over East­ern Europe by cut­ting it out of lucra­tive tran­sit rev­enue.

The Nord Stream 2 pipeline, once oper­at­ing at its full capac­i­ty of 55 bil­lion cubic meters (bcm) a year, could deprive Ukraine of bil­lions of dol­lars in annu­al tran­sit fees. Rus­sia and Ukraine signed a new, five-year gas-tran­sit agree­ment just days after the sanc­tions went into force.

Rus­sia claims Wash­ing­ton is seek­ing to block the pipeline in order to open the Euro­pean mar­ket to more U.S. liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas (LNG). U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump in June rec­om­mend­ed that Ger­many buy more U.S. LNG rather than Russ­ian piped gas.

A mem­ber of the Sen­ate For­eign Rela­tions Com­mit­tee, Cruz was the co-author of the sanc­tions bill against Nord Stream 2 passed in Decem­ber. Texas is the largest pro­duc­er of nat­ur­al gas in the Unit­ed States.

A spokesper­son for Cruz told RFE/RL that the sen­a­tor is focused on mak­ing sure the exist­ing sanc­tions “con­tin­ue to serve as a deter­rent, and ensure Nord Stream 2 nev­er comes on line.”

What exact­ly the Unit­ed States will do if Rus­sia comes close to com­plet­ing the project is unclear, and Kobolyev declined to give any details, say­ing it’s a “sen­si­tive issue.”

“If the U.S. real­ly wants this pipeline not to hap­pen, there is a way to achieve that out­come. That is why we are here” in Wash­ing­ton, he said.

Rus­sia has two ships it could poten­tial­ly use to com­plete the project: the Akademik Cher­sky and the For­tu­na. How­ev­er, Rus­sia would first need to receive a per­mit from Den­mark to deploy the ships in its waters and that could be com­pli­cat­ed, ana­lysts said.

Bombs On The Seabed

Den­mark requires ships con­struct­ing the off­shore pipeline to pos­sess dynam­ic posi­tion­ing sys­tems, which allow a ship to main­tain its posi­tion and head­ing with­out the use of an anchor.

Den­mark restricts the use of anchors because its Baltic seabed is scat­tered with bombs from World War II that could cause envi­ron­men­tal dam­age if they explod­ed, said Mar­gari­ta Assen­o­va, a senior fel­low at the Jamestown Foun­da­tion spe­cial­iz­ing on Euro­pean ener­gy issues.

The Akademik Cher­sky, which recent­ly set sail from Rus­si­a’s Far East toward the Suez Port in Egypt, does pos­sess dynam­ic posi­tion­ing. The For­tu­na, locat­ed in the Baltic Sea, does not.

Cher­sky, though, requires a tech­nol­o­gy upgrade to be able to lay pipes. That could take two to three months, Assen­o­va told RFE/RL. It will then take addi­tion­al time for the Akademik Cher­sky to reach the Baltic, she said.

...

Assen­o­va said Rus­sia may seek to con­vince Den­mark to ease its require­ments so it can com­plete the project. The Dan­ish Ener­gy Agency told RFE/RL on March 5 that Rus­sia had not yet request­ed per­mis­sion for its own ships.

‘Haz­ardous Alter­na­tives’

Sen­a­tor Jeanne Sha­heen (Demo­c­rat, New Hamp­shire), a co-author of the orig­i­nal Nord Stream 2 bill, said Rus­sia was con­sid­er­ing “haz­ardous alter­na­tives” to fin­ish the project that could harm Europe’s envi­ron­ment and secu­ri­ty.

“I hope Euro­peans remain clear-eyed about these risks and choose not to put their publics in dan­ger. Rest assured, the Unit­ed States will not stand idly by if mis­guid­ed efforts to com­plete the project are pur­sued — all options are on the table,” she told RFE/RL in a state­ment.

For­mer U.S. Ambas­sador to Ukraine John Herb­st, who has been a strong sup­port­er of Nord Stream 2 sanc­tions, said he expects the Unit­ed States to craft anoth­er nar­row­ly focused sanc­tions bill to fur­ther delay the project.

“As the Rus­sians pro­ceed to try to build this capac­i­ty, [Con­gress] will be pay­ing close atten­tion. I sus­pect that some smart per­son is going to come up with anoth­er smart sanc­tion that will deal with the next iter­a­tion of this [pipeline con­struc­tion] if that is nec­es­sary,” he said March 3 at an Atlantic Coun­cil con­fer­ence which Kobolyev also attend­ed.

Sep­a­rate­ly, Kobolyev said he raised the idea of stor­ing U.S. liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas in Ukraine, which has under­uti­lized stor­age capac­i­ty amid its stand­off with Rus­sia.

Kobolyev said gas prices in Europe this sum­mer could fall below $100 for 1,000 cubic meters amid an over­sup­ply. U.S. ener­gy pro­duc­ers could store their E.U.-bound LNG in Ukraine dur­ing the sum­mer as they wait for high­er prices to kick in with the arrival of cold­er weath­er.

————-

“More Nord Stream 2 Sanc­tions On Hori­zon? U.S. Sen­a­tor And Ukraine’s Naftogaz Dis­cuss Ways To Halt Con­tro­ver­sial Gas Pipeline” By Todd Prince; Radio Free Europe/Radio Lib­er­ty; 03/07/2020

““There is a very ele­gant and effi­cient way avail­able to the U.S. gov­ern­ment to make sure this pipeline will nev­er hap­pen and we believe that this should be done,” Kobolyev told RFE/RL in Wash­ing­ton on March 3 fol­low­ing his meet­ings with con­gress­mem­bers, includ­ing Sen­a­tor Ted Cruz (Repub­li­can, Texas), who is seen as a lead­ing voice in the effort.”

There is a very ele­gant and effi­cient way avail­able to the U.S. gov­ern­ment to make sure this pipeline will nev­er hap­pen. That’s what Naftogaz’s CEO was telling the press fol­low­ing his meet­ing with Ted Cruz and oth­er mem­bers of Con­gress inter­est­ed in block­ing the pipeline. And they aren’t inca­pable of putting obsta­cles in front of the project. That’s what Con­gress did in Decem­ber when it sanc­tioned any com­pa­nies help­ing lay the pipe down and forced a Swiss com­pa­ny to aban­don the project. But Kobolyev would­n’t say­ing what spe­cif­ic ele­ment and effi­cient solu­tion he had in mind and Rus­sia has its own ships that can poten­tial­ly fin­ish the pipeline but they would require Den­mark’s approval. So it’s pos­si­ble the idea is to have the US sanc­tion all non-Russ­ian ships work­ing on the project and then have Den­mark block the Russ­ian ships leav­ing no ship left to com­plete it. We’ll see, but it sounds like Cruz’s group is intent on stop­ping it:

...
The Unit­ed States in Decem­ber passed a pro­vi­sion as part of the Nation­al Defense Autho­riza­tion Act that impos­es sanc­tions on any ves­sels help­ing Gazprom lay the Nord Stream 2 pipeline along the Baltic Sea.

The pro­vi­sion forced Switzer­land’s Allseas Group to imme­di­ate­ly aban­don its work on the project, leav­ing a gap in the Den­mark por­tion of the waters. The two par­al­lel legs of the pipeline total just over 2,400 kilo­me­ters.

...

What exact­ly the Unit­ed States will do if Rus­sia comes close to com­plet­ing the project is unclear, and Kobolyev declined to give any details, say­ing it’s a “sen­si­tive issue.”

“If the U.S. real­ly wants this pipeline not to hap­pen, there is a way to achieve that out­come. That is why we are here” in Wash­ing­ton, he said.

Rus­sia has two ships it could poten­tial­ly use to com­plete the project: the Akademik Cher­sky and the For­tu­na. How­ev­er, Rus­sia would first need to receive a per­mit from Den­mark to deploy the ships in its waters and that could be com­pli­cat­ed, ana­lysts said.
...

But if Nord Stream 2 isn’t stopped, that means the loss of bil­lions of dol­lars for Ukraine each year in tran­sit fees. It real­ly is a huge deal for Ukraine so we should expect Ukraine to do every­thing it can to stop the pipeline. That’s going to be part of what will make the award­ing of con­tracts of US-Ukraine LNG exports so inter­est­ing: Ukraine is in an extreme­ly needy posi­tion right now with respect to its LNG access with Nord Stream 2 and Koba­lyev is prob­a­bly going to be will­ing to offer what­ev­er LNG deal to US exporters the Trump admin­is­tra­tion asks for. But it’s not just about US exports to Ukraine. The Nord Stream 2 fight is about US LNG export to much of the rest of Europe includ­ing and espe­cial­ly Ger­many:

...
Sanc­tions ‘Deter­rent’

The U.S. oppos­es Nord Stream 2 because it says the pipeline increas­es Europe’s depen­dence on Russ­ian ener­gy and gives the Krem­lin more lever­age over East­ern Europe by cut­ting it out of lucra­tive tran­sit rev­enue.

The Nord Stream 2 pipeline, once oper­at­ing at its full capac­i­ty of 55 bil­lion cubic meters (bcm) a year, could deprive Ukraine of bil­lions of dol­lars in annu­al tran­sit fees. Rus­sia and Ukraine signed a new, five-year gas-tran­sit agree­ment just days after the sanc­tions went into force.

Rus­sia claims Wash­ing­ton is seek­ing to block the pipeline in order to open the Euro­pean mar­ket to more U.S. liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas (LNG). U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump in June rec­om­mend­ed that Ger­many buy more U.S. LNG rather than Russ­ian piped gas.

A mem­ber of the Sen­ate For­eign Rela­tions Com­mit­tee, Cruz was the co-author of the sanc­tions bill against Nord Stream 2 passed in Decem­ber. Texas is the largest pro­duc­er of nat­ur­al gas in the Unit­ed States.

A spokesper­son for Cruz told RFE/RL that the sen­a­tor is focused on mak­ing sure the exist­ing sanc­tions “con­tin­ue to serve as a deter­rent, and ensure Nord Stream 2 nev­er comes on line.”
...

And note how Koblyev was get­ting sup­port­ive com­ments from for­mer US Ambas­sador to Ukraine John Herb­st at an Atlantic Coun­cil con­fer­ence dur­ing his lob­by­ing trip the US. It’s a reminder that oppo­si­tion to Nord Stream 2 is prob­a­bly going to find a lot of sup­port at the Atlantic Coun­cil mak­ing it all the more like­ly we’ll see bit US-Ukraine LNG export con­tracts award­ed soon­er or lat­er:

...
For­mer U.S. Ambas­sador to Ukraine John Herb­st, who has been a strong sup­port­er of Nord Stream 2 sanc­tions, said he expects the Unit­ed States to craft anoth­er nar­row­ly focused sanc­tions bill to fur­ther delay the project.

“As the Rus­sians pro­ceed to try to build this capac­i­ty, [Con­gress] will be pay­ing close atten­tion. I sus­pect that some smart per­son is going to come up with anoth­er smart sanc­tion that will deal with the next iter­a­tion of this [pipeline con­struc­tion] if that is nec­es­sary,” he said March 3 at an Atlantic Coun­cil con­fer­ence which Kobolyev also attend­ed.
...

Will the bat­tle over Nord Stream 2 involve the award­ing of export con­tracts to fig­ures asso­ci­at­ed with the Naftogaz chap­ter of the #UkraineGate scan­dal? Who knows but if there’s one thing the Naftogaz side of the #UkraineGate sto­ry taught us it’s that the Trump admin­is­tra­tion is will­ing to engage in deeply cor­rupt secret side deals for the prof­it of close asso­ciates when it comes to LNG exports to Ukraine. And that’s all why this unfold­ing sto­ry over the Nord Stream 2 bat­tle is could be a sto­ry that increas­ing­ly inter­sects with teh Naftogaz chap­ter of #UkraineGate. It’s a mas­sive oppor­tu­ni­ty for swampy cor­rup­tion and there’s no rea­son to assume Trump is will­ing or able to pass up that kind of oppor­tu­ni­ty.

This was prob­a­bly just a mat­ter of time: the #UkraineGate sto­ry now has a bizarre COVID-19 angle. Yep. And of course it cen­ters around Rudy Giu­lian­i’s arch-con­spir­a­cy troll antics.

It sounds like Rudy Giu­liani now has a team that’s rais­ing $10 mil­lion to cre­ate a doc­u­men­tary that they claim will prove to the world Joe Biden’s guilt regard­ing Hunter Biden, Burisa and the fir­ing of Ukrain­ian pros­e­cu­tor gen­er­al Vik­tor Shokin. Accord­ing to sources they are like­ly seek­ing fund­ing from over­seas investors which they are deny­ing. As the arti­cle notes, if they do end up rais­ing from for­eign sources (and it’s not hard to imag­ine plen­ty of Ukraini­ans who could be inter­est­ed in financ­ing this doc­u­men­tary), that might make the doc­u­men­tary run afoul of cam­paign finance laws if the film is con­sid­ered to be intend­ed to per­suade vot­ers. As such, the film’s pro­duc­ers are por­tray­ing it as a pure­ly jour­nal­is­tic enter­prise that’s real­ly just on cor­rup­tion in Ukraine and isn’t specif­i­cal­ly try­ing to turn vot­ers against Biden. So the crew that brought us the shake-down of Ukraine’s gov­ern­ment to force an inves­ti­ga­tion into Biden his appar­ent­ly seek­ing out for­eign fund­ing for what would inevitably be a garbage hit piece of high­ly dubi­ous jour­nal­is­tic val­ue. At least they’re the­mat­i­cal­ly con­sis­tent.

The fig­ure who appear to be the pri­ma­ry dri­ving forces behind mak­ing the ‘doc­u­men­tary’ is vet­er­an Cal­i­for­nia Repub­li­can fix­er and fundrais­er Tim Yale. In 2016, Yale raised mon­ey for a pro-Trump super PAC formed by Roger Stone to help Trump and after Trump won the nom­i­na­tion Yale sat on anoth­er pro-Trump super PAC. So Yale has been an ear­ly Trump sup­port­er mak­ing him some­one Trump will be heav­i­ly inclined to want to please. The com­pa­ny pro­duc­ing the film was incor­po­rat­ed in Feb­ru­ary of this year by Yale and George Dick­son III. It’s described by a source as “very pro­pa­gan­dis­tic” and involves actors por­tray­ing peo­ple like Hunter Biden and Ukrain­ian offi­cials. So we’re get­ting a lot of hints that this is going to go off into all sort of right-wing fan­ta­sy direc­tions.

Now here’s the COVID-19 angle: Tim Yale start­ed anoth­er project this year that has busi­ness involv­ing the White House. Devel­op­ing ther­a­pies for COVID-19. Yale claims that back in Jan­u­ary a “con­sor­tium of con­cerned pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor peo­ple” called and asked if he’d put togeth­er a team that could devel­op alter­na­tive ther­a­pies for the emerg­ing pan­dem­ic. His com­pa­ny, Lin­ear Ther­a­pies, is report­ed­ly devel­op­ing an antivi­ral drug ther­a­py aimed at stop­ping the coro­n­avirus from repli­cat­ing itself deliv­ered through an oral inhaler.

Lin­ear Ther­a­pies’s vice pres­i­dent is Phil Oak­ley, a for­mer Army intel­li­gence ana­lyst who worked with Michael Flynn’s lob­by­ing firm Fly­nn Intel Group. Also, they’ve paid Dana Rohrabacher’s lob­by­ing firm, R&B Strate­gies, to lob­by Vice Pres­i­dent Mike Pence. So it sounds like Yale’s Lin­ear Ther­a­pies is one of the many com­pa­nies work­ing on an anti-viral ther­a­py. But unlike most com­pa­nies, Lin­ear Ther­a­pies has very clear and deep ties to the Trump White House. In terms of com­pa­nies that might get either fed­er­al assis­tance or fed­er­al reg­u­la­to­ry lenience when bring­ing a ther­a­py to mar­ket this sounds like the kind of com­pa­ny posi­tioned for extra help from the White House. Its own­er is mak­ing a Biden hit piece, after all. And that’s why these aren’t just two sep­a­rate sto­ries involv­ing Tim Yale and the Trump White House. They’re two inter­re­lat­ed sto­ries because the fact that Tim Yale is mak­ing a doc­u­men­tary to help Trump defeat Biden is obvi­ous­ly going to be a fac­tor when it comes to polit­i­cal pres­sure from the White House on agen­cies like the FDA to approve new COVID-19 treat­ments. In oth­er words, the cre­ation of the Biden ‘doc­u­men­tary’ might also rep­re­sent an effec­tive bribe for spe­cial treat­ment on the COVID ther­a­py approvals in addi­tion to being a vio­late for­eign cam­paign finance laws.

And accord­ing to Yale at the begin­ning of June, they were plan­ning on sub­mit­ting a request to the FDA for approval of human clin­i­cal tri­als for their ther­a­py in a cou­ple of weeks (so right around now), and if they com­plete the tri­als and get the ther­a­py approved they are lined up to start pro­duc­tion in 30 to 45 days. But they’re giv­ing basi­cal­ly no infor­ma­tion to the pub­lic about the nature of their mys­tery ther­a­py. Keep in mind that Trump is going to be keen­ly inter­est­ed in find­ing some sort of effec­tive drug ther­a­py by Novem­ber and with Gilead­’s remde­sivir increas­ing­ly look­ing like a flop that makes Tim Yale’s COVID project the per­fect storm for Trump push­ing for risky gam­bles on inad­e­quate­ly test­ed ther­a­pies.:

Moth­er Jones

Rudy Giu­liani Is Look­ing for $10 Mil­lion to Finance a Ukraine-Biden Film
Is Trump’s per­son­al lawyer orches­trat­ing for­eign involve­ment in the 2020 elec­tion?

David Corn, Dan Fried­man, and Russ Choma
May 28, 2020

Rudy Giu­liani won’t give up. Even though his cru­sade to man­u­fac­ture dirt on Joe Biden in Ukraine led to the impeach­ment of his client, Don­ald Trump’s per­son­al lawyer con­tin­ues to use this Ukrain­ian non-scan­dal to try to undo Biden’s pres­i­den­tial bid. To that end, Giu­liani and two associates—a Repub­li­can fundrais­er and a Cal­i­for­nia cannabis entrepreneur—have been try­ing to round up $10 mil­lion to finance the pro­duc­tion of a Biden-Ukraine doc­u­men­tary that can be released this year. Doc­u­ments obtained by Moth­er Jones indi­cate that Giu­liani and his col­lab­o­ra­tors are recruit­ing investors at $1 mil­lion a pop and that they have con­sid­ered the pos­si­bil­i­ty of draw­ing in investors from overseas—though Giuliani’s lawyer denies there has been any effort to bring in for­eign mon­ey. Any over­seas invest­ment in the project would raise the ques­tion of whether Giu­liani, who has been look­ing for infor­ma­tion from past and present Ukrain­ian offi­cials for his anti-Biden work, is attempt­ing to orches­trate for­eign involve­ment in the cur­rent pres­i­den­tial elec­tion.

It’s no secret that Giu­liani has been plot­ting to cook up a doc­u­men­tary focused on Hunter Biden and Ukraine that will pre­sum­ably con­cen­trate on the unfound­ed alle­ga­tions that Joe Biden pres­sured the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment to smoth­er an inves­ti­ga­tion of Buris­ma, an ener­gy com­pa­ny of which the younger Biden was a board mem­ber. Yahoo News report­ed on this effort in Feb­ru­ary, not­ing that the project was being led at that time by vet­er­an Cal­i­for­nia Repub­li­can fix­er and fundrais­er Tim Yale and that pre­lim­i­nary footage for the film includ­ed actors por­tray­ing Ukrain­ian offi­cials and Hunter Biden. The doc­u­ments obtained by Moth­er Jones reveal new details about this ven­ture and its financ­ing.

Giu­liani has already pro­duced a pro­gram pro­mot­ing his Biden-Ukraine con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry for the ardent­ly pro-Trump One Amer­i­ca News Net­work. And he bangs away on this top­ic on his pod­casts. But accord­ing to one source famil­iar with the doc­u­men­tary project, Giu­liani envi­sions this film as the cul­mi­na­tion of his efforts and a pos­si­ble “kill shot” on Biden. “The goal is to do a doc­u­men­tary, get it dis­cussed on Twit­ter, shown in the White House,” this source says. “It’s very pro­pa­gan­dis­tic.”

Accord­ing to the doc­u­ments, a com­pa­ny named See­View Media, which was incor­po­rat­ed in Delaware in Feb­ru­ary, has been set up to finance the film. Two key prin­ci­pals of the project are Yale and George Dick­son III. In 2016, Yale was on the advi­so­ry com­mit­tee of a super PAC formed to help Trump, once Trump became the like­ly Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee. Pri­or to that, he raised mon­ey for a sep­a­rate pro-Trump super PAC estab­lished by Roger Stone, the long­time Trump advis­er and polit­i­cal trick­ster who this year was con­vict­ed of lying to Con­gress relat­ed to the Trump-Rus­sia scan­dal.

Dick­son is the founder and CEO of Can­na­sor­tium, which is based in Scotts Val­ley, Cal­i­for­nia. “Launch­ing from the heart of California’s cannabis indus­try and with a glob­al reach,” the firm’s web­site says, “the Can­na­sor­tium com­bines proven busi­ness mod­els with pro­pri­etary indus­try exper­tise to cre­ate the world’s pre­mier seed-to-con­sumer cannabis orga­ni­za­tion. Can­na­sor­tium rep­re­sents the next-gen­er­a­tion of cannabis companies—strategically posi­tioned and unique­ly diver­si­fied across every major sec­tor of the indus­try.” Dick­son has also been the CEO and pres­i­dent of Seis­mic Warn­ing Sys­tems, which boast­ed it “man­u­fac­tures sys­tems and ser­vices that pro­vide reli­able earth­quake detec­tion.” (Giuliani’s pre­vi­ous part­ners in skulduggery—Lev Par­nas and Igor Fru­man, who each were indict­ed for cam­paign finance vio­la­tions relat­ed to Ukraine scandal-chasing—were also pur­su­ing deals in the cannabis busi­ness. When Giu­liani was may­or of New York City, he presided over a mas­sive increase in mar­i­jua­na arrests.)

The See­View Media documents—a term sheet and draft agree­ments for poten­tial investors—note that Yale and Dick­son are seek­ing $10 mil­lion for the project, with a min­i­mum invest­ment of $1 mil­lion. Investors are promised a 5 per­cent annu­al return and a “prof­it share per­cent­age” of 2 per­cent, accord­ing to the term sheet. A draft “note pur­chase agree­ment” says the mon­ey raised would be for “gen­er­al work­ing cap­i­tal and oth­er cor­po­rate pur­pos­es, with approx­i­mate­ly 50% used for pro­duc­tion (e.g. tal­ent, writ­ers, film crew, post-pro­duc­tion activ­i­ties, trav­el and admin­is­tra­tive over­head) and approx­i­mate­ly 50% used for pro­mo­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion.” None of the doc­u­ments men­tion Giu­liani by name and do not state whether he will receive any of the funds that are raised. But Yale tells Moth­er Jones that Giu­liani is the dri­ving force of this project and that he should be con­tact­ed for any details regard­ing it. “The may­or is the knowl­edge base,” he says.

...

The draft note pur­chase agree­ment sug­gests that the group has con­sid­ered sell­ing shares in the project to for­eign­ers, for it con­tains a clause regard­ing the oblig­a­tions of any “Non-Unit­ed States per­son” who signs up as an investor. Accord­ing to the source famil­iar with the ven­ture, the project has been seek­ing finan­cial back­ers over­seas. Giu­liani did not respond to text mes­sages ask­ing about for­eign invest­ment in the film, but his lawyer Robert Costel­lo says, “I’ve checked with Mr. Giu­liani and you are mis­in­formed. There are no for­eign investors. There has been no mon­ey raised or solicit­ed from any for­eign cit­i­zens.” (Costel­lo would not answer ques­tions about oth­er aspects of the project.) The term sheet also has a con­fi­den­tial­i­ty clause: “No Investor will dis­close the terms or exis­tence of this Term Sheet to any per­son, oth­er than…[those] who have a need to know.”

A project like this could run into prob­lems with the Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion. The doc­u­ments indi­cate that Yale and Dick­son are attempt­ing to fash­ion this ven­ture as a com­mer­cial and not a polit­i­cal oper­a­tion. But if the movie engages in what the FEC calls “express advo­ca­cy” (urg­ing view­ers to vote for or against Biden) or “elec­tion­eer­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion” (an effort clear­ly intend­ed to sway vot­ers with­in 60 days of a gen­er­al elec­tion), the com­mis­sion could regard this endeav­or as no dif­fer­ent than the work of a cam­paign or a super PAC. That would mean that it would be sub­ject to cam­paign spend­ing and dis­clo­sure rules. One such rule pro­hibits con­tri­bu­tions from over­seas. “For­eign nation­als are not allowed to make polit­i­cal ads,” says Daniel Wein­er, deputy direc­tor of the Bren­nan Center’s Elec­tion Reform Pro­gram.

In the case of any FEC action—which is unlike­ly giv­en the FEC is bare­ly func­tion­ing these days—Yale, Dick­son, and Giu­liani would prob­a­bly claim the doc­u­men­tary is an act of jour­nal­ism, not a polit­i­cal hit piece, and should be free of any cam­paign reg­u­la­tion. Yale insists the movie will focus on cor­rup­tion in Ukraine and is not direct­ly aimed at Biden. “I haven’t sat through a meet­ing [about the film] that Biden is the focus,” Yale says. “I have sat through lots of meet­ings that the focus is cor­rup­tion.” He notes that they hope to release the movie this year but that there is no tar­get date.

If the movie or ads for the film are overt­ly polit­i­cal, the FEC would have a case for requir­ing the dis­clo­sure of investors (as it does for super PACs). If there are over­seas investors and any are tied to for­eign gov­ern­ments, the project might be sub­ject to the For­eign Agents Reg­is­tra­tion Act (FARA), and Giu­liani and his crew could be com­pelled to reg­is­ter with the Jus­tice Depart­ment as for­eign agents. (In recent years, sev­er­al for­eign-owned media out­lets, includ­ing RT, the Eng­lish-lan­guage Russ­ian media oper­a­tion backed by the Krem­lin, have had to reg­is­ter as for­eign agents, even as they osten­si­bly pro­duce jour­nal­ism.) “If Giu­liani accepts for­eign fund­ing to con­duct a PR cam­paign aimed at influ­enc­ing the US pub­lic with regard to the nation­al poli­cies of the US or with ref­er­ence to Ukrain­ian nation­al inter­ests then there may be a FARA prob­lem,” says Josh Rosen­stein, a lawyer who spe­cial­izes in FARA at San­dler, Reiff, Lamb, Rosen­stein & Birken­stock

Yale, who notes that his par­tic­i­pa­tion in the project has decreased in recent months because he has been in Rome work­ing on what he calls a poten­tial COVID-19 cure, tells Moth­er Jones that he has been involved with pro­duc­tion efforts for the doc­u­men­tary and with ver­i­fy­ing tips that Giu­liani and oth­ers have received from Ukraine. He notes that the project has col­lect­ed “60 hours of video or more of peo­ple telling incred­i­bly wild sto­ries.” And he says, “Can­celed checks and wire trans­fers typ­i­cal­ly don’t lie.” Yale declines, though, to explain what he means by that. He describes the film project as an effort to find “the truth” after what he says was a mis­lead­ing ver­sion of events pre­sent­ed dur­ing Trump’s impeach­ment. He adds, “I’m not the pro­duc­er.” As for the financ­ing of the film, Yale says he’s not aware of any fund­ing hav­ing yet been secured.

Last week, a Ukrain­ian par­lia­men­tar­i­an named Andriy Derkach, a for­mer mem­ber of Ukraine’s pro-Russ­ian Par­ty of Regions who met with Giu­liani a few months ago, released edit­ed audio­tapes of con­ver­sa­tions in 2016 between Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden and then-Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Petro Poroshenko, claim­ing the tran­scripts proved that Biden leaned on Ukraine to kill an inves­ti­ga­tion of Buris­ma. But the tapes proved noth­ing of the sort. To the con­trary, they sup­port­ed Biden’s account that he had pushed Poroshenko to fire a pros­e­cu­tor wide­ly seen as cor­rupt so the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment could secure inter­na­tion­al loans. The release of these record­ings appeared to be a con­tin­u­a­tion of the long-run­ning Giu­liani effort—cheered on by Fox News and oth­er con­ser­v­a­tive media—to taint Biden with base­less Ukraine-relat­ed accu­sa­tions. Giu­liani declined to tell the Wash­ing­ton Post if he had known of the release of the Biden record­ings in advance. But he texted to a Post reporter they are “just the tip of ice­berg.”

————-

“Rudy Giu­liani Is Look­ing for $10 Mil­lion to Finance a Ukraine-Biden Film” by David Corn, Dan Fried­man, and Russ Choma; Moth­er Jones; 05/28/2020

“Giu­liani has already pro­duced a pro­gram pro­mot­ing his Biden-Ukraine con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry for the ardent­ly pro-Trump One Amer­i­ca News Net­work. And he bangs away on this top­ic on his pod­casts. But accord­ing to one source famil­iar with the doc­u­men­tary project, Giu­liani envi­sions this film as the cul­mi­na­tion of his efforts and a pos­si­ble “kill shot” on Biden. “The goal is to do a doc­u­men­tary, get it dis­cussed on Twit­ter, shown in the White House,” this source says. “It’s very pro­pa­gan­dis­tic.” ”

“It’s very pro­pa­gan­dis­tic.” That’s how the source describes the ‘doc­u­men­tary’. It also includes actors por­tray­ing fig­ures like Hunter Biden and Ukrain­ian offi­cials so it should be inter­est­ing to how those actor por­tray­als play out. And it’s Tim Yale, who was rais­ing mon­ey for Roger Stone’s pro-Trump super PAC back before Trump got the nom­i­na­tion in 2016, who is lead­ing the pro­duc­tion of this movie. He’s cer­tain­ly some­one who should have ready access to the pres­i­den­t’s ear:

...
It’s no secret that Giu­liani has been plot­ting to cook up a doc­u­men­tary focused on Hunter Biden and Ukraine that will pre­sum­ably con­cen­trate on the unfound­ed alle­ga­tions that Joe Biden pres­sured the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment to smoth­er an inves­ti­ga­tion of Buris­ma, an ener­gy com­pa­ny of which the younger Biden was a board mem­ber. Yahoo News report­ed on this effort in Feb­ru­ary, not­ing that the project was being led at that time by vet­er­an Cal­i­for­nia Repub­li­can fix­er and fundrais­er Tim Yale and that pre­lim­i­nary footage for the film includ­ed actors por­tray­ing Ukrain­ian offi­cials and Hunter Biden. The doc­u­ments obtained by Moth­er Jones reveal new details about this ven­ture and its financ­ing.

...

Accord­ing to the doc­u­ments, a com­pa­ny named See­View Media, which was incor­po­rat­ed in Delaware in Feb­ru­ary, has been set up to finance the film. Two key prin­ci­pals of the project are Yale and George Dick­son III. In 2016, Yale was on the advi­so­ry com­mit­tee of a super PAC formed to help Trump, once Trump became the like­ly Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee. Pri­or to that, he raised mon­ey for a sep­a­rate pro-Trump super PAC estab­lished by Roger Stone, the long­time Trump advis­er and polit­i­cal trick­ster who this year was con­vict­ed of lying to Con­gress relat­ed to the Trump-Rus­sia scan­dal.
...

But Tim Yale isn’t putting up all the mon­ey for this. He’s find­ing investors. Who might include for­eign investors which arguably makes this movie a cam­paign finance vio­la­tion of law bar­ring for­eign dona­tions in US elec­tions:

...

The draft note pur­chase agree­ment sug­gests that the group has con­sid­ered sell­ing shares in the project to for­eign­ers, for it con­tains a clause regard­ing the oblig­a­tions of any “Non-Unit­ed States per­son” who signs up as an investor. Accord­ing to the source famil­iar with the ven­ture, the project has been seek­ing finan­cial back­ers over­seas. Giu­liani did not respond to text mes­sages ask­ing about for­eign invest­ment in the film, but his lawyer Robert Costel­lo says, “I’ve checked with Mr. Giu­liani and you are mis­in­formed. There are no for­eign investors. There has been no mon­ey raised or solicit­ed from any for­eign cit­i­zens.” (Costel­lo would not answer ques­tions about oth­er aspects of the project.) The term sheet also has a con­fi­den­tial­i­ty clause: “No Investor will dis­close the terms or exis­tence of this Term Sheet to any per­son, oth­er than…[those] who have a need to know.”

A project like this could run into prob­lems with the Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion. The doc­u­ments indi­cate that Yale and Dick­son are attempt­ing to fash­ion this ven­ture as a com­mer­cial and not a polit­i­cal oper­a­tion. But if the movie engages in what the FEC calls “express advo­ca­cy” (urg­ing view­ers to vote for or against Biden) or “elec­tion­eer­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion” (an effort clear­ly intend­ed to sway vot­ers with­in 60 days of a gen­er­al elec­tion), the com­mis­sion could regard this endeav­or as no dif­fer­ent than the work of a cam­paign or a super PAC. That would mean that it would be sub­ject to cam­paign spend­ing and dis­clo­sure rules. One such rule pro­hibits con­tri­bu­tions from over­seas. “For­eign nation­als are not allowed to make polit­i­cal ads,” says Daniel Wein­er, deputy direc­tor of the Bren­nan Center’s Elec­tion Reform Pro­gram.
...

So the film that’s sup­posed to exon­er­ate Trump over the #UkraineGate impeach­ment is pos­si­ble going to be a for­eign financed piece of pro­pa­gan­da that vio­lates cam­paign finance laws. Again, at least they’re con­sis­tent.

Ok, now here’s an Orange Coun­ty Reg­is­ter piece on Tim Yale’s new COVID-19 mys­tery ther­a­py. A mys­tery ther­a­py they refuse to describe to the pub­lic oth­er than that it’s an anti-viral drug that would be deliv­ered via an oral inhaler. But they also informed the pub­lic that soon going to apply for human clin­i­cal tri­als and if they get approval they can have man­u­fac­tur­ing up and run­ning in 30 to 45 days. So if the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has some sort of mir­a­cle COVID drug ther­a­py announce­ment ‘Octo­ber Sur­prise’ kind of last minute polit­i­cal gam­bit in mind — which is some­thing Yale and Giu­liani are obvi­ous­ly very inter­est­ed in cre­at­ing one way or anoth­er — it’s worth not­ing that Tim Yale’s Lin­ear Ther­a­pies is well posi­tioned to play that role as the Trump-blessed deliv­er­er of a COVID ther­a­py:

The Orange Coun­ty Reg­is­ter

Dana Rohrabach­er begins lob­by­ing for start­up that’s try­ing to cure coro­n­avirus
Com­pa­ny is lead by GOP vet­er­ans with ties to Trump admin­is­tra­tion.

By BROOKE STAGGS | bstaggs@scng.com | Orange Coun­ty Reg­is­ter
PUBLISHED: June 3, 2020 at 6:48 p.m. | UPDATED: June 3, 2020 at 6:48 p.m.

Orange County’s longest-serv­ing for­mer con­gress­man, Dana Rohrabach­er, is now lob­by­ing Vice Pres­i­dent Mike Pence on behalf of a biotech­nol­o­gy start­up led by vet­er­an GOP oper­a­tives who say they’re devel­op­ing a ther­a­py that could effec­tive­ly “cure” COVID-19.

Rohrabach­er, who now lives in Maine, launched the lob­by­ing firm R&B Strate­gies short­ly after leav­ing office in Jan­u­ary 2019.

He formed the busi­ness with Paul Behrend, who was a top aide for Rohrabach­er and staff direc­tor with the House For­eign Affairs Com­mit­tee until Rep. Ed Royce fired him in 2017 over grow­ing con­cerns about Behrends’ ties to Rus­sia. The scan­dal led to Rohrabach­er being dubbed “Putin’s favorite Con­gress mem­ber” — a label that con­tributed to Rohrabacher’s 2018 loss for re-elec­tion in the coastal Orange Coun­ty 48th Dis­trict. The seat went to Rep. Harley Rou­da, end­ing Rohrabacher’s 15 terms in con­gress.

For­mer con­gress mem­bers have to wait one year after leav­ing office to start lob­by­ing on Capi­tol Hill. With that cool­ing peri­od over, Rohrabach­er began lob­by­ing under his own LLC on March 10 for a com­pa­ny called Lin­ear Ther­a­pies, accord­ing to reports filed this week and first report­ed by Politi­co. The Vir­ginia-based com­pa­ny paid him less than $5,000 in the first quar­ter of the year to lob­by Pence, who’s head­ing up the White House’s coro­n­avirus task force.

Rohrabach­er didn’t respond to requests to speak for this sto­ry. But Tim Yale, pres­i­dent of Lin­ear Ther­a­pies, told the Reg­is­ter his com­pa­ny is devel­op­ing an oral inhaler aimed at stop­ping the coro­n­avirus from repli­cat­ing itself in peo­ple who’ve been exposed to, or already sick­ened by, the virus.

Yale, an Orange Coun­ty native, said he’s known Rohrabach­er for 20 years. He’s a vet­er­an GOP fundrais­er who helped sup­port Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s elec­tion, includ­ing work­ing with a super PAC start­ed by indict­ed for­mer Trump advis­er Roger Stone. Yale was also tapped by Trump attor­ney Rudy Guil­iani to help make a doc­u­men­tary about Hunter Biden, which Yale said is still in the works.

But in Jan­u­ary, Yale said, a “con­sor­tium of con­cerned pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor peo­ple” called and asked if he’d put togeth­er a team that could devel­op alter­na­tive ther­a­pies for the emerg­ing coro­n­avirus. Yale said Royce, a Repub­li­can from Yor­ba Lin­da who long rep­re­sent­ed CA-39, had sim­i­lar­ly tapped him to help work on treat­ments for Ebo­la virus, so he had con­nec­tions in the world of anti-viral research.

Also on the Lin­ear Ther­a­pies team as vice pres­i­dent is Phil Oak­ley. He’s a for­mer Army intel­li­gence ana­lyst who worked with Michael Flynn’s lob­by­ing firm Fly­nn Intel Group, which became a focus of Spe­cial Coun­sel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russ­ian inter­fer­ence in the 2016 elec­tion.

Yale said Oak­ley has spent his life learn­ing to nav­i­gate bureau­cra­cy and that he’s con­fi­dent Rohrabacher’s con­nec­tions will set them up for suc­cess.

Yale said his team has been self-fund­ing research with sci­en­tists in Italy, Japan, Cana­da and the Unit­ed States, though he declined to name them. He said they’re rough­ly two weeks from apply­ing with the Food & Drug Admin­is­tra­tion to begin human trails under the agency’s accel­er­at­ed emer­gency rules for coro­n­avirus treat­ments. If they com­plete those tri­als and the drug gains approval, Yale said man­u­fac­tur­ers are lined up to start pro­duc­ing the ther­a­py in 30 to 45 days..

The com­pa­ny web­site offers very lit­tle infor­ma­tion. That’s by design, accord­ing to Yale, who said he enjoys being the “David” against the “Goliaths” of the major phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies chas­ing coro­n­avirus treat­ments.

But five bio­chemists who spe­cial­ize in the type of treat­ment Lin­ear Ther­a­pies expressed skep­ti­cism about the claim, in part because of the company’s lack of trans­paren­cy and its inex­pe­ri­ence in devel­op­ing nov­el drugs. None of the five would com­ment direct­ly on the drug or the com­pa­ny, say­ing they don’t have access to the details of the sci­ence involved.

...

————-

“Dana Rohrabach­er begins lob­by­ing for start­up that’s try­ing to cure coro­n­avirus” by BROOKE STAGGS; Orange Coun­ty Reg­is­ter; The Orange Coun­ty Reg­is­ter; 06/03/2020

“Rohrabach­er didn’t respond to requests to speak for this sto­ry. But Tim Yale, pres­i­dent of Lin­ear Ther­a­pies, told the Reg­is­ter his com­pa­ny is devel­op­ing an oral inhaler aimed at stop­ping the coro­n­avirus from repli­cat­ing itself in peo­ple who’ve been exposed to, or already sick­ened by, the virus.”

Good luck to them. If Lin­ear Ther­a­pies devel­ops a gen­uine­ly effec­tive ther­a­py that’s great and hope­ful­ly they’ll get appro­pri­ate fed­er­al assis­tance in test­ing and pro­duc­ing the drug. It’s the inap­pro­pri­ate fed­er­al assis­tance that we have to wor­ry about. Because all we know is that some mys­tery con­sor­tia approached Yale back in Jan­u­ary and they are now try­ing to get FDA approval for human clin­i­cal tri­als of their mys­tery ther­a­py. A mys­tery ther­a­py that leaves experts skep­ti­cal. But they can’t be too skep­ti­cal because they know so lit­tle about it:

...
But in Jan­u­ary, Yale said, a “con­sor­tium of con­cerned pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor peo­ple” called and asked if he’d put togeth­er a team that could devel­op alter­na­tive ther­a­pies for the emerg­ing coro­n­avirus. Yale said Royce, a Repub­li­can from Yor­ba Lin­da who long rep­re­sent­ed CA-39, had sim­i­lar­ly tapped him to help work on treat­ments for Ebo­la virus, so he had con­nec­tions in the world of anti-viral research.

Also on the Lin­ear Ther­a­pies team as vice pres­i­dent is Phil Oak­ley. He’s a for­mer Army intel­li­gence ana­lyst who worked with Michael Flynn’s lob­by­ing firm Fly­nn Intel Group, which became a focus of Spe­cial Coun­sel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russ­ian inter­fer­ence in the 2016 elec­tion.

...

Yale said his team has been self-fund­ing research with sci­en­tists in Italy, Japan, Cana­da and the Unit­ed States, though he declined to name them. He said they’re rough­ly two weeks from apply­ing with the Food & Drug Admin­is­tra­tion to begin human trails under the agency’s accel­er­at­ed emer­gency rules for coro­n­avirus treat­ments. If they com­plete those tri­als and the drug gains approval, Yale said man­u­fac­tur­ers are lined up to start pro­duc­ing the ther­a­py in 30 to 45 days..

...

But five bio­chemists who spe­cial­ize in the type of treat­ment Lin­ear Ther­a­pies expressed skep­ti­cism about the claim, in part because of the company’s lack of trans­paren­cy and its inex­pe­ri­ence in devel­op­ing nov­el drugs. None of the five would com­ment direct­ly on the drug or the com­pa­ny, say­ing they don’t have access to the details of the sci­ence involved.
...

Yes, a com­pa­ny set up by the guy work­ing with Rudy Giu­liani to cre­ate their Biden/Ukraine hit ‘doc­u­men­tary’ was approach in Jan­u­ary by a mys­tery con­sor­tia about alter­na­tive COVID ther­a­pies and is now try­ing to get FDA approval for human clin­i­cal tri­als of a mys­tery COVID ther­a­py. You have to won­der what the odds are that his some­how involves hydrox­y­chloro­quine. It would be a very Trumpian twist. But we have no idea at this point because we are told noth­ing about what they want to test on humans. It’s all a mys­tery. We just know that if they get approval they claim they can get man­u­fac­tur­ing up and run­ning in 30 to 45 days. But in terms of polit­i­cal effect you don’t need the pro­duc­tion of a work­ing drug. You just need the announce­ment of one close enough to the elec­tion. So get ready for many excit­ing updates from Lin­ear Ther­a­pies about their mys­tery ther­a­py. Around the last week of Octo­ber through the first week of Novem­ber most like­ly.

While it remains to be seen what kind of long-term impact John Bolton’s new book is going to have on our under­stand­ing of what was hap­pen­ing inside the Trump White House, one of the unam­bigu­ous­ly pos­i­tive aspects of Bolton’s new book release is that it’s going to give us all sorts of excus­es to review pre­vi­ous­ly cov­ered, but large­ly for­got­ten, sto­ries are yes­ter­year that were nev­er real­ly ful­ly explored and under­stood. Espe­cial­ly the entire tale of #UkraineGate and its cast of char­ac­ters. So it’s worth not­ing that Bolton’s book has already giv­en us a real­ly big rea­son to reex­am­ine the nature of one of the large­ly for­got­ten chap­ters of the the for-pri­vate-prof­it schem­ing cen­ter­ing around Lev Par­nas and Igor Fru­man’s nat­ur­al gas ambi­tions. And this chap­ter does­n’t involve Ukraine. It cen­ters on a shad­ow-diplo­ma­cy ini­tia­tive in Venezuela which looks more like a shad­ow-shake­down. And it involves many of the same #UkraineGate char­ac­ters: Rudy Giu­liani, Lev Par­nas, and US petro­le­um investor Har­ry Sargeant III. Sargeant appears to have been one of many in the US petro­le­um sec­tor that who was keen­ly inter­est­ed in see­ing regime change in Venezuela.

But what’s so inter­est­ing about this sto­ry is how it seems to be a kind of shake­down effort designed to cre­ate a ‘good cop’/‘bad cop’ nego­ti­a­tion dynam­ic with the Maduro gov­ern­ment where a pri­vate­ly-run diplo­mat­ic ini­tia­tive done seem­ing­ly on behalf of pri­vate oil inter­ests were play­ing the ‘good cop’ role. From a shake­down per­spec­tive it makes sense: have the US offi­cial­ly take a very hard line against a gov­ern­ment and then have a pri­vate ‘nicer’ secret diplo­mat­ic ini­tia­tive con­duct­ed by oil inter­ests who are promis­ing less harsh terms of sur­ren­der, pre­sum­ably in exchange for favor­able con­tracts. It looks like some­thing like that may have been tak­ing place here.

The scheme also also involves then-Con­gress­man Pete Ses­sions, the Repub­li­can from Texas who long rep­re­sent­ed the heart of Tex­as­’s oil indus­try. Recall how Pete Ses­sion was seen in the video of the pri­vate din­ner with Trump record­ed by Lev Par­nas and Igor Fru­man that was released back in Jan­u­ary. As we’ll see in the fol­low­ing Wash­ing­ton Post arti­cle from the end of 2019 (Decem­ber 30), Ses­sions claims his secret diplo­ma­cy was done with the bless­ing of the State Depart­ment but the State Depart­ment is describ­ing it as counter to US pol­i­cy at the time and John Bolton was say­ing he was com­plete­ly opposed to it.

Here’s the gen­er­al time­line of the scheme:

* When Trump first took office he pledged to take a hard line against Maduro, a pol­i­cy that had the back­ing of the Flori­da Repub­li­cans which includes pow­er­ful Cuban and Venezue­lan com­mu­ni­ties.

* In Feb­ru­ary 2018, Maduro announced a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion would be held in the spring. US busi­ness exec­u­tives with inter­ests in Venezuela, includ­ing Har­ry Sargeant, began encour­ag­ing nego­ti­a­tions to ease Maduro out of office.

* In the Spring of 2018, Pete Ses­sions vis­it­ed Maduro in Cara­cas to serv­er as an emmis­sary for this secret diplo­mat­ic push. Ses­sion­s’s spokesman claims this was done in coor­di­na­tion with the high­est lev­els of the State Depart­ment but the State Depart­ment denies this. Ses­sions was host­ed by Raúl Gor­rín Belis­ario, the own­er of a major tele­vi­sion net­work in Venezuela who was viewed with dis­trust by some U.S. offi­cials. Months lat­er Gor­rín would be indict­ed in Flori­da on charges of mon­ey-laun­der­ing and bribery. Ses­sions left the meet­ing in Cara­cas Ses­sions with a list of con­ces­sions that had been agreed to by Maduro — his depar­ture from pow­er and a com­mit­ment to allow free and fair elec­tions in exchange for lenien­cy from the Unit­ed States — accord­ing to Ses­sion’s spokesman. But some US offi­cials feared the deal was intend­ed to legit­imize the upcom­ing elec­tion by open­ing up the vote to at least some oppo­si­tion can­di­dates, which could help Maduro remain in pow­er, rather than ease him from office. So it sounds like Ses­sions actu­al­ly got Maduro to agree to step down but it was opposed by some in the US gov­ern­ment over fears that the agree­ment would actu­al­ly help Maduro remain in pow­er. That’s quite a twist. Keep in mind that it’s very pos­si­ble the con­cerns weren’t so much that Maduro him­self would remain in pow­er but instead that a social­ist gov­ern­ment that would­n’t give for­eign investors every­thing they want would win the upcom­ing elec­tions. In oth­er words, the US pol­i­cy towards Venezuela has­n’t sim­ply been that Maduro needs to go. It’s been that Maduro needs to be replaced with a pup­pet gov­ern­ment that will effec­tive­ly hand the coun­try’s resource over to inter­na­tion­al inter­ests and crush any whiff of social­ism Free and fair elec­tions aren’t actu­al­ly a part of that agen­da.

* About five weeks after return­ing from Cara­cas, Ses­sions met in his Capi­tol Hill office with Lev Par­nas to dis­cuss a pro­pos­al to sell liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas in Ukraine. Fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors assert that this is when Par­nas sought Sessions’s assis­tance in oust­ing then‑U.S. Ambas­sador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch at the behest of “one or more Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment offi­cials.” On May 9, the same day that Par­nas post­ed pho­tos of his meet­ing with Ses­sions on Face­book, Ses­sions sent Sec­re­tary of State Mike Pom­peo a let­ter urg­ing Yovanovitch’s removal.

* In August 2018, U.S. pros­e­cu­tors charged Gor­rín with par­tic­i­pat­ing in a $1 bil­lion mon­ey-laun­der­ing and bribery scheme. Pros­e­cu­tors call Gor­rín a fugi­tive. Around that time, Rudy Giu­liani Giu­liani met in New York with Par­nas and two Amer­i­can busi­ness exec­u­tives with invest­ments in Venezuela to dis­cuss the Venezue­lan back-chan­nel effort. One of the par­tic­i­pants of the meet­ing describe it as focused on whether or not there was a way to nego­ti­ate with Maduro and reach a diplo­mat­ic solu­tion to the polit­i­cal chaos and eco­nom­ic col­lapse over­tak­ing the coun­try. So Venezuela was fac­ing a grow­ing crises and we have this pri­vate oil-led back-chan­nel play­ing the ‘good cop’.

* In Sep­tem­ber 2018, there was a secret phone call between Rudy Giu­lian, Pete Ses­sions, and Maduro where they reviewed the con­ces­sions Maduro had agreed to back dur­ing Ses­sion­s’s secret trip to Cara­cas in March. Not long after this phone call Giu­liani met with Bolton to explain the secret pro­pos­al. Bolton was vehe­ment­ly opposed.

* In Jan­u­ary of 2019, the oppo­si­tion-led Venezue­lan leg­is­la­ture declared that the elec­tion had been ille­git­i­mate and named leg­isla­tive leader Juan Guaidó the nation’s new pres­i­dent. He was quick­ly rec­og­nized by the Unit­ed States and dozens of oth­er coun­tries, lead­ing to the inter­na­tion­al push to top­ple Maduro and install Guaidó in a de fac­to coup.

* In August of 2019, Giu­liani, Par­nas, and Fru­man stayed at the Span­ish estate of wealthy Venezue­lan bil­lion­aire Ale­jan­dro Betan­court López where they met with a top aide of Ukrain­ian pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­sky. This was around the time Betan­court López Giu­liani to rep­re­sent him against US charges in a $1.2 bil­lion mon­ey-laun­der­ing case in Flori­da. So between Ses­sions have his March 2018 trip host­ed by Raúl Gor­rín Belis­ario and Giu­liani being host­ed by Ale­jan­dro Betan­court López there’s a clear theme of wealth Venezue­lan’s fac­ing mon­ey-laun­der­ing charges. You have to won­der how much Flori­da real estate inter­ests (like Trump) have an inter­est in not see­ing those kinds of charges ful­ly inves­ti­gat­ed.

So based on this Wash­ing­ton Post report from back in Decem­ber it real­ly does sound like there was some sort of ‘good cop/bad cop’ par­al­lel sets of nego­ti­a­tions tak­ing place with the Maduro gov­ern­ment where the pri­vate oil-led side of the nego­ti­a­tions played the ‘good cop’ role. A role that involved mak­ing an offer that Maduro appar­ent­ly agreed to! And that rais­es the obvi­ous ques­tion: so what did these oil inter­ests get in return under this pro­pos­al? We haven’t heard about those details because we know almost noth­ing about what was actu­al­ly offered. We just know that Maduro report­ed­ly took the offer to step down and hold free and fair elec­tions and that was a deal the State Depart­ment reject­ed osten­si­bly over fears that it would some­how help Maduro stay in pow­er. And it was Pete Ses­sion, the con­gress­man of the oil giants, who was lead­ing this secret back-chan­nel effort. Again, what did those oil inter­ests get in return in these ‘good cop’ nego­ti­a­tions. We have no idea. So maybe now that John Bolton’s book is reopen­ing this incom­plete chap­ter of his­to­ry we can final­ly get those details:

The Wash­ing­ton Post

Trump’s lawyer and the Venezue­lan pres­i­dent: How Giu­liani got involved in back-chan­nel talks with Maduro

By Ros­alind S. Hel­der­man, Tom Ham­burg­er, Antho­ny Faio­la and Josh Dawsey
Decem­ber 30, 2019 at 7:38 AM EST

The inter­na­tion­al call came in Sep­tem­ber 2018, after months of ris­ing ten­sion between the Unit­ed States and Venezuela, a key strate­gic play­er in South Amer­i­ca.

On one end of the line was Venezuela’s social­ist pres­i­dent, the pari­ah leader of a dis­in­te­grat­ing econ­o­my whom Pres­i­dent Trump’s admin­is­tra­tion was seek­ing to iso­late.

On the oth­er end: the U.S. president’s per­son­al attor­ney Rudolph W. Giu­liani and then-Rep. Pete Ses­sions (R‑Tex.).

Both were part of a shad­ow diplo­mat­ic effort, backed in part by pri­vate inter­ests, aimed at engi­neer­ing a nego­ti­at­ed exit to ease Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro from pow­er and reopen resource-rich Venezuela to busi­ness, accord­ing to peo­ple famil­iar with the endeav­or.

Ses­sions had served as emis­sary in the back-chan­nel effort, vis­it­ing Maduro in Cara­cas that spring. The phone call, which Giu­liani joined, was a fol­low-up to that vis­it, Sessions’s spokesman Matt Mack­owiak told The Wash­ing­ton Post.

The phone con­ver­sa­tion involv­ing the Venezue­lan pres­i­dent and Trump’s per­son­al lawyer, which has not been pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed, pro­vides anoth­er exam­ple of how Giu­liani used his pri­vate role to insert him­self into for­eign diplo­ma­cy, alarm­ing admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials con­fused about whose inter­ests he was rep­re­sent­ing.

Giu­liani oper­at­ed a sim­i­lar cam­paign this year in Ukraine, where he pres­sured offi­cials to announce inves­ti­ga­tions to ben­e­fit Trump — an endeav­or that led to the president’s impeach­ment this month.

The impeach­ment inquiry pushed into the spot­light con­sult­ing work Giu­liani has under­tak­en around the globe even as he has been rep­re­sent­ing Trump at no charge. His free­lanc­ing has trig­gered con­cerns among White House offi­cials that his inter­ces­sions have mud­died and at times under­cut offi­cial U.S. pol­i­cy, accord­ing to peo­ple famil­iar with the wor­ries, who, like oth­ers cit­ed in this sto­ry, spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to describe inter­nal dis­cus­sions. Mean­while, fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors are scru­ti­niz­ing the for­mer New York may­or as part of an inves­ti­ga­tion into pos­si­ble for­eign lob­by­ing vio­la­tions.

Word of Giuliani’s call with Maduro even­tu­al­ly reached White House offi­cials who did not know why he was involved, accord­ing to one for­mer senior admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial.

Giuliani’s will­ing­ness to talk with Maduro in late 2018 flew in the face of the offi­cial pol­i­cy of the White House, which, under nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er John Bolton, was then ratch­et­ing up sanc­tions and tak­ing a hard­er line against the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment.

Around the time of the phone call, Giu­liani met with Bolton to dis­cuss the off-the-books plan to ease Maduro from office — a plan Bolton vehe­ment­ly reject­ed, two peo­ple famil­iar with the meet­ing said.

Giu­liani did not respond to mul­ti­ple requests for com­ment. A lawyer for Bolton declined to com­ment. The White House did not respond to requests for com­ment.

In Jan­u­ary 2019, the Unit­ed States for­mal­ly rec­og­nized Maduro’s rival Juan Guaidó as pres­i­dent, a pol­i­cy move backed by Bolton. Lat­er in the year, Giu­liani would pick up a client in the region: a Venezue­lan tycoon under inves­ti­ga­tion by the Jus­tice Depart­ment for pos­si­ble mon­ey-laun­der­ing.

It is not clear why Giu­liani became involved in the back-chan­nel nego­ti­a­tions with Venezuela’s pres­i­dent or the extent of his role. But the tale of behind-the-scenes talks with Maduro offers anoth­er exam­ple in which the president’s per­son­al attor­ney aligned with pri­vate inter­ests to try to sway U.S. for­eign pol­i­cy. And the episode involves some of the fig­ures who played a role in the Ukraine effort — includ­ing Ses­sions, an 11-term con­gress­man who pushed for the ouster of the U.S. ambas­sador to Ukraine around the time he met with Giu­liani asso­ciate Lev Par­nas in 2018.

Ses­sions, who lost his seat that Novem­ber and is now run­ning for Con­gress in anoth­er Texas dis­trict, said through his spokesman that he has known Giu­liani for three decades but has nev­er worked with him on any pri­vate-sec­tor activ­i­ties.

Back-chan­nel mis­sion

When Trump took office, he promised to take a tougher stand against Maduro, who has been Venezuela’s pres­i­dent since the 2013 death of leader Hugo Chávez and has grown increas­ing­ly repres­sive, even as his coun­try has sunk into eco­nom­ic cri­sis.

That approach had the back­ing of Repub­li­cans in Flori­da, which has large and polit­i­cal­ly engaged Venezue­lan and Cuban com­mu­ni­ties. Sen. Mar­co Rubio (R‑Fla.) accused then-Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma of fail­ing to hold Maduro account­able and of naive­ly pur­su­ing nego­ti­a­tions that failed to remove him from office.

Trump’s per­son­al inter­est in the coun­try was piqued by a Feb­ru­ary 2017 White House vis­it by Lil­ian Tin­tori, the wife of a promi­nent Venezue­lan polit­i­cal pris­on­er. She was also a for­mer kite-surf­ing cham­pi­on who had appeared in that country’s ver­sion of the real­i­ty show “Sur­vivor.”

Trump quick­ly adopt­ed Venezuela as a cause, sur­pris­ing some in the human rights com­mu­ni­ty, who not­ed that he did not show sim­i­lar inter­est in abus­es in coun­tries such as North Korea and Rus­sia.

That year, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion labeled Venezuela’s vice pres­i­dent a drug king­pin and froze his assets in the Unit­ed States. It also imposed eco­nom­ic sanc­tions on Venezue­lan com­pa­nies and banned trav­el to the Unit­ed States by gov­ern­ment offi­cials and their fam­i­lies.

“This cor­rupt regime destroyed a pros­per­ous nation by impos­ing a failed ide­ol­o­gy that has pro­duced pover­ty and mis­ery every­where it has been tried,” Trump declared before the U.N. Gen­er­al Assem­bly in Sep­tem­ber 2017. “To make mat­ters worse, Maduro has defied his own peo­ple, steal­ing pow­er from their elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives to pre­serve his dis­as­trous rule.”

Con­di­tions wors­ened in Venezuela, where there were fre­quent short­ages of basic goods includ­ing food and med­i­cine, run­away infla­tion and spates of civ­il unrest. But Maduro remained in pow­er.

In Feb­ru­ary 2018, Maduro announced that a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion would be held that spring. But most oppo­si­tion can­di­dates would be banned from run­ning, lead­ing to fears that the vote would be a sham elec­tion used to con­sol­i­date his pow­er.

U.S. busi­ness exec­u­tives with inter­ests in Venezuela — among them Har­ry Sargeant III, the chief exec­u­tive of a Flori­da-based glob­al ener­gy and ship­ping com­pa­ny who has worked exten­sive­ly in the coun­try — began encour­ag­ing nego­ti­a­tions to ease Maduro out of office.

In a state­ment, Sargeant said he “sup­port­ed the idea of a back chan­nel based on my over 30 years of first­hand expe­ri­ence in Venezuela and my obser­va­tion of the polit­i­cal dynam­ic going on in Cara­cas at the time.”

“I believed then and now that an adver­sar­i­al sanc­tions pol­i­cy alone would have two pro­found­ly neg­a­tive effects,” he added. “First, it would exac­er­bate Venezuela’s human­i­tar­i­an cri­sis. Sec­ond, I believed it would under­mine key U.S. busi­ness inter­ests in Venezuela to the ben­e­fit of Amer­i­can adver­saries like the Rus­sians and Chi­nese.”

It was against this back­drop that Mack­owiak said Ses­sions accept­ed an invi­ta­tion from Maduro to qui­et­ly vis­it Cara­cas and try to nego­ti­ate a path to improved rela­tions between the Unit­ed States and Venezuela.

Ses­sions, a for­mer chair­man of the Nation­al Repub­li­can Con­gres­sion­al Com­mit­tee who chaired the House Rules Com­mit­tee at the time, had long been inter­est­ed in Venezuela, in part because many of his Texas con­stituents had ener­gy inter­ests there, accord­ing to his spokesman.

“He was pleased to help with this back-chan­nel mis­sion, which was coor­di­nat­ed with the high­est lev­els of the U.S. State Depart­ment,” Mack­owiak said, adding that Ses­sions met with top U.S. offi­cials before and after his trip.

...

But peo­ple famil­iar with State Depart­ment offi­cials’ role said those offi­cials did not ini­ti­ate the trip or orga­nize or par­tic­i­pate in Sessions’s meet­ing with Maduro. And sev­er­al U.S. offi­cials dis­put­ed the notion that the trip was done with the government’s back­ing, not­ing that the White House at the time want­ed to take a hard­er line with Maduro and was not inter­est­ed in mak­ing con­ces­sions.

Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil offi­cials, in par­tic­u­lar, were opposed to the kind of set­tle­ment with Maduro that Ses­sions was advo­cat­ing.

“There was absolute­ly no inter­est or appetite for nego­ti­a­tions,” said a for­mer White House offi­cial. “We gen­er­al­ly did not wel­come efforts like this one. It wasn’t con­sis­tent with our pol­i­cy goals. We saw it as a nui­sance and a dis­trac­tion.”

Sessions’s spokesman dis­missed such com­plaints as part of a “turf bat­tle” among Wash­ing­ton bureau­crats.

“There might have been a dis­agree­ment between the State Depart­ment and the NSC about how best to bring peace to Venezuela,” Mack­owiak said. “But Rep. Ses­sions was pleased to be part of an effort, coor­di­nat­ed close­ly with the State Depart­ment, to bring a demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed pres­i­dent to Venezuela.”

List of con­ces­sions

Sessions’s dis­trict is home to Exxon­Mo­bil and oth­er oil com­pa­nies that were once active in Venezuela but were forced to scale back amid polit­i­cal tur­bu­lence. But Ses­sions told the Dal­las Morn­ing News in 2018 that the oil inter­ests did not play a role in his deci­sion to become involved. He said he had been work­ing with var­i­ous play­ers, includ­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Venezue­lan oppo­si­tion, to nego­ti­ate a solu­tion for more than a year.

Ses­sions told the news­pa­per he was work­ing to fos­ter “dia­logue between par­ties that are try­ing to make progress.”

Mack­owiak said Ses­sions used his own mon­ey to pay for the two-day trip.

Two peo­ple with knowl­edge of the vis­it said he was host­ed by Raúl Gor­rín Belis­ario, the own­er of a major tele­vi­sion net­work in Venezuela who was viewed with dis­trust by some U.S. offi­cials and months lat­er would be indict­ed in Flori­da on charges of mon­ey-laun­der­ing and bribery.

The peo­ple said that rather than stay­ing in a U.S. facil­i­ty, Ses­sions stayed at Gorrín’s lav­ish, mod­ernist, walled com­pound in a fash­ion­able part of the cap­i­tal.

Mack­owiak said that Sessions’s trip, includ­ing where Ses­sions stayed, was coor­di­nat­ed with State Depart­ment offi­cials.

Ses­sions left Cara­cas with a list of con­ces­sions that had been agreed to by Maduro — his depar­ture from pow­er and a com­mit­ment to allow free and fair elec­tions in exchange for lenien­cy from the Unit­ed States — accord­ing to Mack­owiak.

But some U.S. offi­cials said they wor­ried that the deal Ses­sions was float­ing was intend­ed to legit­imize the upcom­ing elec­tion by open­ing up the vote to at least some oppo­si­tion can­di­dates, which could help Maduro remain in pow­er, rather than ease him from office, accord­ing to a per­son famil­iar with the con­ver­sa­tions. And they were con­cerned that the back-chan­nel over­tures sent mixed mes­sages to the Maduro gov­ern­ment.

A cig­ar bar meet­ing

About five weeks after return­ing from Cara­cas, Ses­sions met in his Capi­tol Hill office with Par­nas, who Mack­owiak said want­ed to dis­cuss a pro­pos­al to sell liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas in Ukraine.

In an indict­ment this fall charg­ing Par­nas and his busi­ness part­ner Igor Fru­man with ille­gal­ly chan­nel­ing for­eign mon­ey into U.S. elec­tion cam­paign accounts, fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors said Par­nas sought Sessions’s assis­tance in oust­ing then‑U.S. Ambas­sador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch at the behest of “one or more Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment offi­cials.”

On May 9, the same day that Par­nas post­ed pho­tos of his meet­ing with Ses­sions on Face­book, the con­gress­man sent Sec­re­tary of State Mike Pom­peo a let­ter urg­ing Yovanovitch’s removal.

Mack­owiak said Ses­sions did not act at the request of Par­nas but wrote the let­ter after hear­ing con­cerns about the ambas­sador from sev­er­al mem­bers of Con­gress who had trav­eled to Ukraine.

Mean­while, in Venezuela, Maduro won reelec­tion in May with near­ly 68 per­cent of the vote. The inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty large­ly reject­ed the vote because of alle­ga­tions of fraud and the ban­ning of key oppo­si­tion par­ties, and civ­il unrest ensued as Maduro pre­pared to begin anoth­er term.

In August, U.S. pros­e­cu­tors charged Gor­rín, Sessions’s host for the congressman’s Venezuela vis­it, with par­tic­i­pat­ing in a $1 bil­lion mon­ey-laun­der­ing and bribery scheme. Pros­e­cu­tors have said Gor­rín is a fugi­tive. Nei­ther Gor­rín nor his Mia­mi-based lawyer respond­ed to requests for com­ment.

Around that time, Giu­liani, who had joined Trump’s legal team months ear­li­er, began talks with indi­vid­u­als who were part of the back chan­nel to Maduro. In August, Giu­liani met in New York with Par­nas and two Amer­i­can busi­ness exec­u­tives with invest­ments in Venezuela to dis­cuss the effort, accord­ing to peo­ple famil­iar with the gath­er­ing.

The meet­ing took place at a favorite Giu­liani hang­out, the Grand Havana Room cig­ar bar, blocks from Trump Tow­er in Man­hat­tan. Over whiskey and cig­ars, Giu­liani agreed to try to dis­cern whether there was a way to nego­ti­ate with Maduro and per­haps reach a diplo­mat­ic solu­tion to the polit­i­cal chaos and eco­nom­ic col­lapse over­tak­ing the coun­try, one of the par­tic­i­pants said.

The phone call

About a month lat­er, Maduro was on the phone with Ses­sions. In the room with the Venezue­lan pres­i­dent at the time was the country’s first lady, who serves as a close advis­er to her hus­band, as well as Venezuela’s vice pres­i­dent and infor­ma­tion min­is­ter, accord­ing to a per­son famil­iar with the con­ver­sa­tion.

Giu­liani was intro­duced at the begin­ning of the call but appeared most­ly to lis­ten as Maduro and Ses­sions spoke, Mack­owiak said.

In the near­ly hour-long con­ver­sa­tion, they reviewed the con­ces­sions that Maduro had agreed to make dur­ing Sessions’s vis­it months ear­li­er, accord­ing to the per­son famil­iar with the call.

The Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­istry of Venezuela did not respond to a request for com­ment.

Lat­er, word fil­tered to the White House that Giu­liani and Ses­sions had par­tic­i­pat­ed in a call with Maduro, caus­ing con­fu­sion, said a for­mer senior admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial.

“We didn’t know why Rudy was involved at the time,” the per­son said.

Not long after the call, Giu­liani told some of his asso­ciates that he had tak­en the idea of a soft land­ing for Maduro to Bolton, the president’s nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er. But he said the meet­ing had not gone well, accord­ing to peo­ple famil­iar with his account.

Charles Coop­er, a lawyer for Bolton, declined to com­ment.

Bolton’s dis­taste for Giuliani’s for­eign pol­i­cy free­lanc­ing emerged dur­ing the impeach­ment inquiry. For­mer nation­al secu­ri­ty offi­cial Fiona Hill tes­ti­fied that Bolton warned her not to inter­act with the president’s lawyer, call­ing him “a hand grenade who’s going to blow every­body up.”

In Jan­u­ary of this year, the sit­u­a­tion in Venezuela dis­in­te­grat­ed as Maduro pre­pared to be for­mal­ly inau­gu­rat­ed for anoth­er term. The leg­is­la­ture, led by Maduro’s oppo­si­tion, declared that the elec­tion had been ille­git­i­mate and named leg­isla­tive leader Guaidó the nation’s new pres­i­dent. He was quick­ly rec­og­nized by the Unit­ed States and dozens of oth­er coun­tries.

Some Venezue­lan busi­ness lead­ers who had amassed vast wealth under Maduro but had been severe­ly con­strained by U.S. sanc­tions switched sides and began to assist Guaidó.

Among them was Gor­rín, who played a key role in a failed effort to per­suade the nation’s Supreme Court to rec­og­nize Guaidó over Maduro, part of an effort to cur­ry favor with the Amer­i­cans, as The Post has report­ed.

This sum­mer, anoth­er wealthy Venezue­lan ener­gy exec­u­tive, Ale­jan­dro Betan­court López, hired Giu­liani to serve as his lawyer and help argue that he should not be charged in a $1.2 bil­lion mon­ey-laun­der­ing case in Flori­da.

Eight men — includ­ing Betancourt’s cousin — have already been charged in the case, which alleges that top offi­cials of Venezuela’s state-owned oil com­pa­ny, busi­ness lead­ers and bankers con­spired to steal mon­ey from the com­pa­ny and then laun­der it through Mia­mi real estate pur­chas­es and oth­er invest­ment schemes. Two peo­ple famil­iar with the mat­ter said that Betan­court is referred to in the crim­i­nal com­plaint as a uncharged co-con­spir­a­tor.

Jon Sale, a Mia­mi-based lawyer rep­re­sent­ing Betan­court, has said his client denies any wrong­do­ing. He declined to com­ment on Betancourt’s rela­tion­ship with ­Giu­liani.

In ear­ly August, Giu­liani was host­ed at Betancourt’s lav­ish estate out­side Madrid when Giu­liani met at Trump’s direc­tion with a top aide to the Ukrain­ian pres­i­dent, as The Post pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed.

Giu­liani lat­er met with Jus­tice Depart­ment offi­cials and urged them not to charge Betan­court, The Post report­ed.

In response to ques­tions about his work for Betan­court, Giu­liani wrote in a text mes­sage last month: “This is attor­ney client priv­i­lege so I will with­stand what­ev­er mali­cious lies or spin you put on it.”

The news that Giu­liani was rep­re­sent­ing the wealthy ener­gy exec­u­tive before the admin­is­tra­tion while also serv­ing as the president’s per­son­al attor­ney dis­turbed vet­er­an U.S. offi­cials who have expe­ri­ence in Venezuela.

“You have to ask, ‘Why is he doing this?’?” said one for­mer senior admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial.

———–

“Trump’s lawyer and the Venezue­lan pres­i­dent: How Giu­liani got involved in back-chan­nel talks with Maduro” by Ros­alind S. Hel­der­man, Tom Ham­burg­er, Antho­ny Faio­la and Josh Dawsey; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 12/30/2019

“It is not clear why Giu­liani became involved in the back-chan­nel nego­ti­a­tions with Venezuela’s pres­i­dent or the extent of his role. But the tale of behind-the-scenes talks with Maduro offers anoth­er exam­ple in which the president’s per­son­al attor­ney aligned with pri­vate inter­ests to try to sway U.S. for­eign pol­i­cy. And the episode involves some of the fig­ures who played a role in the Ukraine effort — includ­ing Ses­sions, an 11-term con­gress­man who pushed for the ouster of the U.S. ambas­sador to Ukraine around the time he met with Giu­liani asso­ciate Lev Par­nas in 2018.”

It’s hard to ignore the over­lap of char­ac­ters. Lev Par­nas, Rudy Giu­liani, and Har­ry Sargeant were key char­ac­ters in the #UkraineGate nat­ur­al gas schemes. And now we are learn­ing that the three were involved with a scheme that has the look of ‘good cop’/‘bad cop’ regime change ploy intend­ed to some­how ben­e­fit the US oil indus­try. It’s the kind of rev­e­la­tion that should be rais­ing all sorts of ques­tions about who was actu­al­ly behind both of schemes. Did Har­ry Sargeant rep­re­sent larg­er oil inter­ests in his role in #UkraineGate? We don’t know because we know very lit­tle about this entire episode. All we know is that “U.S. busi­ness exec­u­tives with inter­ests in Venezuela” began to lob­by the Trump admin­is­tra­tion for encour­ag­ing regime change nego­ti­a­tions with Maduro after Maduro announce new elec­tions in Feb­ru­ary of 2018 and it was Har­ry Sargeant who appeared to be rep­re­sent­ing these US busi­ness inter­ests. And Pete Ses­sions, the con­gress­man of Exxon­Mo­bil, was the elect­ed offi­cial who led these secret nego­ti­a­tions:

...
In Feb­ru­ary 2018, Maduro announced that a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion would be held that spring. But most oppo­si­tion can­di­dates would be banned from run­ning, lead­ing to fears that the vote would be a sham elec­tion used to con­sol­i­date his pow­er.

U.S. busi­ness exec­u­tives with inter­ests in Venezuela — among them Har­ry Sargeant III, the chief exec­u­tive of a Flori­da-based glob­al ener­gy and ship­ping com­pa­ny who has worked exten­sive­ly in the coun­try — began encour­ag­ing nego­ti­a­tions to ease Maduro out of office.

In a state­ment, Sargeant said he “sup­port­ed the idea of a back chan­nel based on my over 30 years of first­hand expe­ri­ence in Venezuela and my obser­va­tion of the polit­i­cal dynam­ic going on in Cara­cas at the time.”

“I believed then and now that an adver­sar­i­al sanc­tions pol­i­cy alone would have two pro­found­ly neg­a­tive effects,” he added. “First, it would exac­er­bate Venezuela’s human­i­tar­i­an cri­sis. Sec­ond, I believed it would under­mine key U.S. busi­ness inter­ests in Venezuela to the ben­e­fit of Amer­i­can adver­saries like the Rus­sians and Chi­nese.”

It was against this back­drop that Mack­owiak said Ses­sions accept­ed an invi­ta­tion from Maduro to qui­et­ly vis­it Cara­cas and try to nego­ti­ate a path to improved rela­tions between the Unit­ed States and Venezuela.

...

Sessions’s dis­trict is home to Exxon­Mo­bil and oth­er oil com­pa­nies that were once active in Venezuela but were forced to scale back amid polit­i­cal tur­bu­lence. But Ses­sions told the Dal­las Morn­ing News in 2018 that the oil inter­ests did not play a role in his deci­sion to become involved. He said he had been work­ing with var­i­ous play­ers, includ­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Venezue­lan oppo­si­tion, to nego­ti­ate a solu­tion for more than a year.

...

Two peo­ple with knowl­edge of the vis­it said he was host­ed by Raúl Gor­rín Belis­ario, the own­er of a major tele­vi­sion net­work in Venezuela who was viewed with dis­trust by some U.S. offi­cials and months lat­er would be indict­ed in Flori­da on charges of mon­ey-laun­der­ing and bribery.
...

And per­haps the most remark­able part of this entire sto­ry is that it sounds like Pete Ses­sions actu­al­ly suc­ceed­ed! He got Maduro to agree to step down and hold free and fair elec­tions. But the State Depart­ment report­ed­ly feared it would actu­al­ly help leave Maduro in place. At the same time, while Ses­sions claims he con­duct­ed this secret trip to Cara­cas with the high­est lev­els of the US State Depart­ment, the State Depart­ment denies this. So it sounds like Ses­sion­s’s trip may have been done with the bless­ings of some gov­ern­ment offi­cials and over the oppo­si­tions of oth­ers:

...
Ses­sions, a for­mer chair­man of the Nation­al Repub­li­can Con­gres­sion­al Com­mit­tee who chaired the House Rules Com­mit­tee at the time, had long been inter­est­ed in Venezuela, in part because many of his Texas con­stituents had ener­gy inter­ests there, accord­ing to his spokesman.

“He was pleased to help with this back-chan­nel mis­sion, which was coor­di­nat­ed with the high­est lev­els of the U.S. State Depart­ment,” Mack­owiak said, adding that Ses­sions met with top U.S. offi­cials before and after his trip.

...

But peo­ple famil­iar with State Depart­ment offi­cials’ role said those offi­cials did not ini­ti­ate the trip or orga­nize or par­tic­i­pate in Sessions’s meet­ing with Maduro. And sev­er­al U.S. offi­cials dis­put­ed the notion that the trip was done with the government’s back­ing, not­ing that the White House at the time want­ed to take a hard­er line with Maduro and was not inter­est­ed in mak­ing con­ces­sions.

Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil offi­cials, in par­tic­u­lar, were opposed to the kind of set­tle­ment with Maduro that Ses­sions was advo­cat­ing.

“There was absolute­ly no inter­est or appetite for nego­ti­a­tions,” said a for­mer White House offi­cial. “We gen­er­al­ly did not wel­come efforts like this one. It wasn’t con­sis­tent with our pol­i­cy goals. We saw it as a nui­sance and a dis­trac­tion.”

Sessions’s spokesman dis­missed such com­plaints as part of a “turf bat­tle” among Wash­ing­ton bureau­crats.

“There might have been a dis­agree­ment between the State Depart­ment and the NSC about how best to bring peace to Venezuela,” Mack­owiak said. “But Rep. Ses­sions was pleased to be part of an effort, coor­di­nat­ed close­ly with the State Depart­ment, to bring a demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed pres­i­dent to Venezuela.”

...

Ses­sions left Cara­cas with a list of con­ces­sions that had been agreed to by Maduro — his depar­ture from pow­er and a com­mit­ment to allow free and fair elec­tions in exchange for lenien­cy from the Unit­ed States — accord­ing to Mack­owiak.

But some U.S. offi­cials said they wor­ried that the deal Ses­sions was float­ing was intend­ed to legit­imize the upcom­ing elec­tion by open­ing up the vote to at least some oppo­si­tion can­di­dates, which could help Maduro remain in pow­er, rather than ease him from office, accord­ing to a per­son famil­iar with the con­ver­sa­tions. And they were con­cerned that the back-chan­nel over­tures sent mixed mes­sages to the Maduro gov­ern­ment.

...

Then, in May of 2018, Ses­sions meets with Lev Par­nas in his Capi­tol Hill office where Par­nas appears to lob­by Ses­sions about the removal of Ukrain­ian ambas­sador Marie Yovanovitch. Maduro also wins reelec­tion:

...
About five weeks after return­ing from Cara­cas, Ses­sions met in his Capi­tol Hill office with Par­nas, who Mack­owiak said want­ed to dis­cuss a pro­pos­al to sell liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas in Ukraine.

In an indict­ment this fall charg­ing Par­nas and his busi­ness part­ner Igor Fru­man with ille­gal­ly chan­nel­ing for­eign mon­ey into U.S. elec­tion cam­paign accounts, fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors said Par­nas sought Sessions’s assis­tance in oust­ing then‑U.S. Ambas­sador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch at the behest of “one or more Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment offi­cials.”

On May 9, the same day that Par­nas post­ed pho­tos of his meet­ing with Ses­sions on Face­book, the con­gress­man sent Sec­re­tary of State Mike Pom­peo a let­ter urg­ing Yovanovitch’s removal.

...

Mean­while, in Venezuela, Maduro won reelec­tion in May with near­ly 68 per­cent of the vote. The inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty large­ly reject­ed the vote because of alle­ga­tions of fraud and the ban­ning of key oppo­si­tion par­ties, and civ­il unrest ensued as Maduro pre­pared to begin anoth­er term.
...

It was in August of 2018 that Rudy Giu­liani joins the back chan­nel nego­ti­a­tions to oust Maduro. That also hap­pens to be the month US pros­e­cu­tors charged Gor­rín with mon­ey-laun­der­ing. So it looks like mon­ey-laun­der­ing charges, and the prospect of hav­ing them lift­ed, were part of the lever­age used in these secret nego­ti­a­tions:

...
In August, U.S. pros­e­cu­tors charged Gor­rín, Sessions’s host for the congressman’s Venezuela vis­it, with par­tic­i­pat­ing in a $1 bil­lion mon­ey-laun­der­ing and bribery scheme. Pros­e­cu­tors have said Gor­rín is a fugi­tive. Nei­ther Gor­rín nor his Mia­mi-based lawyer respond­ed to requests for com­ment.

Around that time, Giu­liani, who had joined Trump’s legal team months ear­li­er, began talks with indi­vid­u­als who were part of the back chan­nel to Maduro. In August, Giu­liani met in New York with Par­nas and two Amer­i­can busi­ness exec­u­tives with invest­ments in Venezuela to dis­cuss the effort, accord­ing to peo­ple famil­iar with the gath­er­ing.

The meet­ing took place at a favorite Giu­liani hang­out, the Grand Havana Room cig­ar bar, blocks from Trump Tow­er in Man­hat­tan. Over whiskey and cig­ars, Giu­liani agreed to try to dis­cern whether there was a way to nego­ti­ate with Maduro and per­haps reach a diplo­mat­ic solu­tion to the polit­i­cal chaos and eco­nom­ic col­lapse over­tak­ing the coun­try, one of the par­tic­i­pants said.
...

Then in Sep­tem­ber of 2018, we have the phone call between Maduro, Ses­sions, and Giu­liani where they review the agree­ment Ses­sions and Maduro arrived at in March. This is after Maduro won the elec­tion in May so it’s a sign of how seri­ous­ly Maduro was poten­tial­ly treat­ing this secret back chan­nel. It’s anoth­er hint that these nego­ti­a­tions real­ly were being done with the back­ing of the Trump White House despite the State Depart­men­t’s denials. Giu­liani, being Trump’s per­son­al attor­ney, implic­it­ly plays the role of lend­ing cred­i­bil­i­ty to the nego­ti­a­tions. And it was short­ly after this call that Giu­liani reviewed the nego­ti­a­tions with John Bolton who com­plete­ly reject­ed the idea. It would be fas­ci­nat­ing to know what it was that Bolton reject­ed. Maduro was appar­ent­ly will­ing to step down. What was it Bolton found so objec­tion­able? It’s a reminder that we still know almost noth­ing about the nature of these nego­ti­a­tions and what sort of agree­ment they arrived at:

...
About a month lat­er, Maduro was on the phone with Ses­sions. In the room with the Venezue­lan pres­i­dent at the time was the country’s first lady, who serves as a close advis­er to her hus­band, as well as Venezuela’s vice pres­i­dent and infor­ma­tion min­is­ter, accord­ing to a per­son famil­iar with the con­ver­sa­tion.

Giu­liani was intro­duced at the begin­ning of the call but appeared most­ly to lis­ten as Maduro and Ses­sions spoke, Mack­owiak said.

In the near­ly hour-long con­ver­sa­tion, they reviewed the con­ces­sions that Maduro had agreed to make dur­ing Sessions’s vis­it months ear­li­er, accord­ing to the per­son famil­iar with the call.

...

Lat­er, word fil­tered to the White House that Giu­liani and Ses­sions had par­tic­i­pat­ed in a call with Maduro, caus­ing con­fu­sion, said a for­mer senior admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial.

“We didn’t know why Rudy was involved at the time,” the per­son said.

Not long after the call, Giu­liani told some of his asso­ciates that he had tak­en the idea of a soft land­ing for Maduro to Bolton, the president’s nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er. But he said the meet­ing had not gone well, accord­ing to peo­ple famil­iar with his account.
...

And was in Jan­u­ary of 2019 that the nego­ti­a­tions had clear­ly col­lapsed entire­ly, with Maduro prepar­ing to start a new term and the West start­ing ‘Venezue­lan Spring’-style regime change oper­a­tion to install Juan Guaidó. Venezue­lan oli­garchs like Gor­rín fac­ing US sanc­tions start switch­ing sides and back­ing Guaidó. Flash for­ward to the sum­mer of 2019 and we have Venezue­lan ener­gy exec­u­tive, Ale­jan­dro Betan­court López, hir­ing Rudy Giu­liani to rep­re­sent him over US charges of mon­ey-laun­der­ing in Flori­da. It’s at the Span­ish estate of Betan­court López where Lev Par­nas meets with the pres­i­den­tial aide to Ukraine’s pres­i­dent to dis­cuss the Ukrain­ian shake­down that Giu­liani and Par­nas were engaged in at the time:

...
In Jan­u­ary of this year, the sit­u­a­tion in Venezuela dis­in­te­grat­ed as Maduro pre­pared to be for­mal­ly inau­gu­rat­ed for anoth­er term. The leg­is­la­ture, led by Maduro’s oppo­si­tion, declared that the elec­tion had been ille­git­i­mate and named leg­isla­tive leader Guaidó the nation’s new pres­i­dent. He was quick­ly rec­og­nized by the Unit­ed States and dozens of oth­er coun­tries.

Some Venezue­lan busi­ness lead­ers who had amassed vast wealth under Maduro but had been severe­ly con­strained by U.S. sanc­tions switched sides and began to assist Guaidó.

Among them was Gor­rín, who played a key role in a failed effort to per­suade the nation’s Supreme Court to rec­og­nize Guaidó over Maduro, part of an effort to cur­ry favor with the Amer­i­cans, as The Post has report­ed.

This sum­mer, anoth­er wealthy Venezue­lan ener­gy exec­u­tive, Ale­jan­dro Betan­court López, hired Giu­liani to serve as his lawyer and help argue that he should not be charged in a $1.2 bil­lion mon­ey-laun­der­ing case in Flori­da.

...

In ear­ly August, Giu­liani was host­ed at Betancourt’s lav­ish estate out­side Madrid when Giu­liani met at Trump’s direc­tion with a top aide to the Ukrain­ian pres­i­dent, as The Post pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed.
...

So as we can see, at a min­i­mum there’s an inter­est­ing over­lap in the char­ac­ters and ener­gy inter­ests involved with the #UkraineGate scheme and this secret Venezue­lan back chan­nel nego­ti­a­tion that was revealed in Decem­ber. The same cast of char­ac­ters who appear to be using their inside track with the Trump White House as lever­age in ener­gy con­tract nego­ti­a­tions with for­eign coun­tries. But we don’t real­ly know how much over­lap there is between these two sto­ries because we still know bare­ly any­thing about this secret Venezue­lan backchan­nel. There was this late Decem­ber report and that’s been large­ly it. So let’s hope John Bolton’s new book prompts fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tions about what actu­al­ly hap­pened with these secret nego­ti­a­tions. Secret nego­ti­a­tions that have the dis­tinct feel of being part anoth­er secret Trumpian for-prof­it shake­down of a gov­ern­ment.

TRUMP’S LIES DEBUNKED:

“For­mer Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Petro Poroshenko DENIED that Joe Biden EVER approached him about Buris­ma Hold­ings, a gas com­pa­ny Biden’s son Hunter was a board mem­ber of.”

For­mer Ukrain­ian pres­i­dent says Biden nev­er pressed him on Buris­ma
“My absolute­ly clear answer: no, nev­er,” Petro Poroshenko told CNN.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/21/ukraine-president-hunter-joe-biden-burisma-331779

Here’s a quick Ukraine-relat­ed update that involves the ongo­ing US fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tion into Ukrain­ian bil­lion­aire Ihor Kolo­moisky’s shady deal­ings that, giv­en the tim­ing, is also poten­tial­ly an update on the Trump team’s ongo­ing plans to pull some sort of Ukraine-relat­ed smear stunt tar­get­ing Joe Biden:

The FBI raid­ed the Cleve­land and Mia­mi offices of Ihor Kolo­moisky on Tues­day. While they would­n’t say what exact­ly they were inves­ti­gat­ing, the raid includ­ed the Cleve­land and Mia­mi offices of Opti­ma, which indi­cates this involves the alle­ga­tions by Pri­vat­Bank. Those were the 2016 charges by Pri­vat­Bank that Kolo­moisky and his Ukrain­ian bil­lion­aire part­ner Hen­nadiy Boholyubov laun­dered $780 mil­lion through the US using a series of bogus loans issued to com­pa­nies they con­trol. It was dubbed the Opti­ma Schemes because the US com­pa­nies Kolo­moisky and Boholyubov con­trolled at the time at the time all had “Opti­ma” in the name. So Tues­day’s FBI raids appears to be Opti­ma Scheme-relat­ed raids.

Now, it’s pos­si­ble this is part of the some nor­mal course of the ongo­ing FBI inves­ti­ga­tion. But the fact that this tar­gets Kolo­moisky, the bil­lion­aire con­sid­ered to be the key Ukrain­ian backer of Ukraine’s pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­sky, and this raid is hap­pen­ing three months before a US elec­tion where the Trump cam­paign has made a huge invest­ment in con­coct­ing a kind of ‘Ukrain­ian Beng­hazi’ around Buris­ma and Bidens, rais­es the obvi­ous ques­tion as to whether or not we’re see­ing the Trump admin­is­tra­tion begin turn­ing the screws on Ukraine’s gov­ern­ment in antic­i­pa­tion of demand­ing coop­er­a­tion dur­ing their upcom­ing Biden smear. In oth­er words, we could be look­ing at anoth­er Trumpian shake­down in Ukraine with the aim of smear­ing the Bidens:

Radio Free Europe/Radio Lib­er­ty

FBI Raids Offices Of U.S. Com­pa­nies Belong­ing To Ukrain­ian Tycoons

By Todd Prince
August 04, 2020 16:30 GMT

The FBI has raid­ed the offices of U.S. com­pa­nies owned by a pow­er­ful Ukrain­ian tycoon linked to Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­skiy.

The FBI searched offices in Cleve­land and Mia­mi on August 4 belong­ing to bil­lion­aire Ihor Kolo­moyskiy, whose media com­pa­ny infor­mal­ly backed Zelen­skiy’s suc­cess­ful pres­i­den­tial bid in 2019.

“I can con­firm that we are at both loca­tions,” FBI Spe­cial Agent Vic­ki Ander­son-Gregg said in an August 4 tele­phone inter­view with RFE/RL from Cleve­land.

She said she could not dis­cuss the details of the inves­ti­ga­tion as the case “is under seal right now.” Ander­son-Gregg said that no one had been detained in the raid.

Kolo­moyskiy and his Ukrain­ian part­ner, Hen­nadiy Boholyubov, con­trol sev­er­al com­pa­nies run out of Mia­mi that own U.S. real estate as well as steel and alloy plants.

U.S. media reports in April 2019 and May 2020 said that the FBI was inves­ti­gat­ing Kolo­moyskiy for mon­ey laun­der­ing. How­ev­er, the FBI nev­er con­firmed those sto­ries.

Kolo­moyskiy and Boholyubov — bil­lion­aires who own ener­gy, met­als and media assets in Ukraine — are among the most influ­en­tial busi­ness­men in the coun­try.

The tycoons returned to Ukraine from self-imposed exile a month after Zelen­skiy won the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in a land­slide in April 2019.

Kolomoyskiy’s 1+1 chan­nel aired the TV com­e­dy series pro­duced by Zelenskiy’s pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny.

Zelen­skiy appoint­ed Andriy Bohdan, Kolo­moyskiy’s for­mer lawyer, as his first chief of staff before replac­ing him in Feb­ru­ary.

The pres­i­den­t’s report­ed close ties to Kolo­moyskiy have been a con­cern for Ukraine’s West­ern part­ners, who have tied finan­cial and polit­i­cal sup­port to Kyiv to reforms that reduce the influ­ence of tycoons.

The Unit­ed States does not have an extra­di­tion agree­ment with Ukraine, mean­ing the tycoons will like­ly nev­er face pros­e­cu­tion in a U.S. court even if the Depart­ment of Jus­tice were to bring charges against them.

...

Pri­vat­Bank Law­suit

The con­fir­ma­tion of the FBI inves­ti­ga­tion fol­lows on the heels of a civ­il law­suit filed against the tycoons by Ukrain­ian lender Pri­vat­Bank in Delaware in May 2019.

Kolo­moyskiy and Boholyubov owned Pri­vat­Bank until Decem­ber 2016, when Ukraine nation­al­ized it after the tycoons failed to inject cap­i­tal to sta­bi­lize the lender dur­ing a severe eco­nom­ic down­turn.

Pri­vat­Bank claims the men laun­dered $780 mil­lion into the U.S. finan­cial sys­tem through a series of bogus loans issued to com­pa­nies they con­trol.

The tycoons then used the mon­ey to acquire com­mer­cial prop­er­ty, fer­roal­loy plants, and spe­cial­ty steel com­pa­nies in the Unit­ed States — along with sev­er­al Cleve­land office build­ings — with­out ever return­ing the mon­ey, the bank claims.

Pri­vat­Bank has dubbed the alleged fraud the Opti­ma Schemes because the U.S. assets were large­ly con­trolled by com­pa­nies with the name Opti­ma. The bank is seek­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars in resti­tu­tion.

The Opti­ma busi­ness­es are run out of Mia­mi by the tycoons’ U.S. busi­ness part­ners, Mordechai Korf and Uriel Laber. A spokesper­son for Korf and Laber declined an RFE/RL request for com­ment about the August 4 raids.

Ander­son-Gregg con­firmed the FBI agents were at the Cleve­land office of Opti­ma Man­age­ment, which over­sees the tycoons’ local real-estate invest­ments.

Opti­ma Man­age­ment is locat­ed inside One Cleve­land Cen­ter, which is one of the local com­mer­cial build­ings owned by the tycoons.

The Ukrain­ian bil­lion­aires owned five com­mer­cial build­ings in Cleve­land by the ear­ly 2010s and were the city’s largest com­mer­cial real estate own­er at the time.

How­ev­er, they have since sold off two of the build­ings as well as prop­er­ties in Dal­las and Louisville.

———–

“FBI Raids Offices Of U.S. Com­pa­nies Belong­ing To Ukrain­ian Tycoons” by Todd Prince; Radio Free Europe/Radio Lib­er­ty; 08/04/2020

“The FBI searched offices in Cleve­land and Mia­mi on August 4 belong­ing to bil­lion­aire Ihor Kolo­moyskiy, whose media com­pa­ny infor­mal­ly backed Zelen­skiy’s suc­cess­ful pres­i­den­tial bid in 2019.”

Things are heat­ing up in the FBI’s inves­ti­ga­tion of the Pri­vat­Bank mon­ey-laun­der­ing alle­ga­tions. An inves­ti­ga­tion that could involve quite a bit of mon­ey-laun­der­ing involv­ing US prop­er­ties:

...
Pri­vat­Bank claims the men laun­dered $780 mil­lion into the U.S. finan­cial sys­tem through a series of bogus loans issued to com­pa­nies they con­trol.

The tycoons then used the mon­ey to acquire com­mer­cial prop­er­ty, fer­roal­loy plants, and spe­cial­ty steel com­pa­nies in the Unit­ed States — along with sev­er­al Cleve­land office build­ings — with­out ever return­ing the mon­ey, the bank claims.

Pri­vat­Bank has dubbed the alleged fraud the Opti­ma Schemes because the U.S. assets were large­ly con­trolled by com­pa­nies with the name Opti­ma. The bank is seek­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars in resti­tu­tion.

The Opti­ma busi­ness­es are run out of Mia­mi by the tycoons’ U.S. busi­ness part­ners, Mordechai Korf and Uriel Laber. A spokesper­son for Korf and Laber declined an RFE/RL request for com­ment about the August 4 raids.

Ander­son-Gregg con­firmed the FBI agents were at the Cleve­land office of Opti­ma Man­age­ment, which over­sees the tycoons’ local real-estate invest­ments.
...

And it’s the fact that this is an inves­ti­ga­tion involv­ing alle­ga­tions of mon­ey-laun­der­ing using US prop­er­ties that makes this such an inter­est­ing move by the FBI. Because while Kolo­moisky him­self may have no risk of get­ting extra­dit­ed to the US to face charges his prop­er­ties are pre­sum­ably vul­ner­a­ble to seizure in the US and he’s clear­ly got a lot of it. And that means the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has very real lever­age of Kolo­moisky and there­fore over Zelen­sky.

So the fact that a very potent new form of lever­age of Kolo­moisky is now in place is going going to be some­thing to keep in mind when­ev­er Rudy Giu­liani gets around to spring his Ukrain­ian ‘Octo­ber Sur­prise’ that should be com­ing any day now. Will it be an August or Sep­tem­ber Sur­prise? Time will tell, but it’s got to be com­ing soon if it’s com­ing at all before the elec­tion. The smear-clock is tick­ing.

I believe that this is a coor­di­nat­ed media cam­paign by the new con­trollers of US Intel­li­gence media out­lets.

This arti­cle includes the fol­low­ing:
Mon­day’s res­ig­na­tions renewed con­cerns that Pack, an ally of for­mer White House chief strate­gist Steve Ban­non, will attempt to clean house at VOA, which is part of the US Agency for Glob­al Media, USAGM for short.
A well-placed VOA employ­ee said there are inter­nal dis­cus­sions about a siz­able shake­up com­ing to the agency that may include for­mer White House offi­cial and con­ser­v­a­tive radio host Sebas­t­ian Gor­ka tak­ing on a lead­er­ship posi­tion. Giv­en Gorka’s par­ti­san back­ground, such an appoint­ment would send a major mes­sage about VOA shift­ing to become a mouth­piece for the admin­is­tra­tion.
A source close to the White House said there is some dis­cus­sion among the pres­i­den­t’s advis­ers about mak­ing Gor­ka a USAGM board mem­ber

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/15/media/voice-of-america-top-officials-resign/index.html

Here’s just a quick update on the recent FBI raid of the prop­er­ties in Mia­mi and Cleve­land relat­ed to Ihor Kolo­moisky’s Opti­ma group of com­pa­nies and the fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tion into alle­ga­tions that mon­ey from Ukraine’s Pri­vat­Bank was laun­dered by Kolo­moisky through those com­pa­nies. It also relates to the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tion will be used by the Trump admin­is­tra­tion to ‘encour­age’ a coop­er­a­tive approach from Ukraine’s Pres­i­dent Zelen­sky dur­ing any upcom­ing smear cam­paigns by the Trump cam­paign against Joe Biden:

While the FBI inves­ti­ga­tion of Kolo­moisky’s Opti­ma offices acts as a form of lever­age over Kolo­moisky, it’s impor­tant to recall that Kolo­moisky has report­ed­ly been approach­ing Rudy Giu­liani and the Trump admin­is­tra­tion over the last year or so with tales of Biden cor­rup­tion that have the strong appear­ance of being an active cam­paign by Kolo­moisky to win the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s favor. Which is an entire­ly plau­si­ble goal giv­en how Trump inter­acts with cor­rupt flat­tery. So as the fol­low­ing TPM piece reminds us, the FBI raid is the raid of some­one who has already been active­ly inter­est­ed in fuel­ing Rudy Giu­lian­i’s smear cir­cus:

Talk­ing Points Memo
Muck­rak­er

FBI Raids Com­pa­ny Tied To Ukrain­ian Oli­garch Who Pushed Biden Dis­in­fo

By Josh Koven­sky
August 4, 2020 1:35 p.m.

FBI and IRS agents in Cleve­land and Mia­mi on Tues­day raid­ed the offices of a com­pa­ny tied to a Ukrain­ian oli­garch sus­pect­ed of push­ing dirt on Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden.

Vic­ki Ander­son, a spokesper­son for the FBI’s Cleve­land office, con­firmed the raids of Opti­ma Man­age­ment to TPM, declin­ing to com­ment any fur­ther because the mat­ter “is still under seal.” Nobody was tak­en into cus­tody, Ander­son added.

Opti­ma Man­age­ment is part­ly owned by Ukrain­ian oli­garch Ihor Kolo­moisky, per court doc­u­ments filed in Delaware last year.

Kolo­moisky has faced a fed­er­al crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion out of the North­ern Dis­trict of Ohio for at least a year. The oli­garch told the New York Times in Novem­ber 2019 that, were he the Pres­i­dent of Ukraine, he would open the inves­ti­ga­tions into Biden that Trump and Giu­liani have sought.

The next month, asso­ciates and polit­i­cal allies of Kolomoisky’s met with Trump attor­ney Rudy Giu­liani in Kyiv, offer­ing the for­mer NYC may­or a fab­ri­cat­ed nar­ra­tive about Biden..

The meet­ings fueled sus­pi­cion that, in the words of one West­ern offi­cial based in Kyiv who spoke to TPM on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, Kolo­moisky was “try­ing to become friends with Trump and Giu­liani” as the feds’ inves­ti­ga­tion of him pro­gressed.

The oli­garch appears to have stayed involved in the cam­paign to dam­age Biden since then.

Ear­li­er this year, after a Ukrain­ian mem­ber of par­lia­ment began releas­ing sup­posed audio record­ings of Biden speak­ing with Ukraine’s pres­i­dent in 2016, Kolo­moisky released a state­ment demand­ing that a crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion be opened based off of the tapes.

...

Anoth­er attor­ney for Kolo­moisky, Bud Cum­mins, told TPM in Novem­ber 2019 that he tried to con­vince fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors at the South­ern Dis­trict of New York in Octo­ber 2018 to inves­ti­gate alle­ga­tions around Biden and sep­a­rate charges that Paul Man­afort was brought down by a Ukrain­ian plot — anoth­er Trump­world hob­by­horse. Cum­mins has denied to TPM that his work for Kolo­moisky was relat­ed to his con­ver­sa­tions with SDNY.

Giu­liani has con­tin­ued to ref­er­ence Cum­mins’ attempt, crit­i­ciz­ing then‑U.S. Attor­ney for the South­ern Dis­trict of New York Geoff Berman for fail­ing to take on the inves­ti­ga­tion.

Two oth­er asso­ciates of Kolomoisky’s who co-own Opti­ma have also lawyered up in Trump­world, hir­ing Trump lawyer Marc Kasowitz to rep­re­sent them in a civ­il suit.

————-

“FBI Raids Com­pa­ny Tied To Ukrain­ian Oli­garch Who Pushed Biden Dis­in­fo” by Josh Koven­sky; Talk­ing Points Memo; 08/04/2020

“The meet­ings fueled sus­pi­cion that, in the words of one West­ern offi­cial based in Kyiv who spoke to TPM on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, Kolo­moisky was “try­ing to become friends with Trump and Giu­liani” as the feds’ inves­ti­ga­tion of him pro­gressed.”

Was Ihor Kolo­moisky try­ing to become the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s friend in order to get out of his fed­er­al bind when he was eager­ly offer­ing some sort of dirt on Joe Biden in Decem­ber of 2019? That’s one of the key ques­tions we have to ask fol­low­ing the FBI raid of these prop­er­ties. A key ques­tion with a very obvi­ous answer that should raise a lot of ques­tions about the nature of the dirt Kolo­moisky was offer­ing:

...
The oli­garch appears to have stayed involved in the cam­paign to dam­age Biden since then.

Ear­li­er this year, after a Ukrain­ian mem­ber of par­lia­ment began releas­ing sup­posed audio record­ings of Biden speak­ing with Ukraine’s pres­i­dent in 2016, Kolo­moisky released a state­ment demand­ing that a crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion be opened based off of the tapes.

...

Anoth­er attor­ney for Kolo­moisky, Bud Cum­mins, told TPM in Novem­ber 2019 that he tried to con­vince fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors at the South­ern Dis­trict of New York in Octo­ber 2018 to inves­ti­gate alle­ga­tions around Biden and sep­a­rate charges that Paul Man­afort was brought down by a Ukrain­ian plot — anoth­er Trump­world hob­by­horse. Cum­mins has denied to TPM that his work for Kolo­moisky was relat­ed to his con­ver­sa­tions with SDNY.
...

So when the FBI car­ried out those raids on Kolo­moisky’s Opti­ma offices it was­n’t just an action that cre­at­ed a form of legal lever­age over a key Ukrain­ian backer of the Zelen­sky gov­ern­ment. It was also a form of legal lever­age over some­one who had already eager­ly offered tales of dirt on Joe Biden back in Decem­ber in order to get out of the legal pres­sure he was already under. In oth­er words, if Ihor Kolo­moisky ends up being a key source of the Trump cam­paign’s upcom­ing Ukraine-relat­ed smear job against Joe Biden it’s going to be worth keep­ing in mind that he’s an extreme­ly moti­vat­ed wit­ness.

Here’s an arti­cle from last week that rais­es a point that’s eas­i­ly for­got­ten as the 2020 US pres­i­den­tial elec­tion gets ful­ly under­way. A point that gets more and more rel­e­vant the clos­er we get to the elec­tion, espe­cial­ly if Rudy Giu­lian­i’s threats of a cir­cus of Ukraine/Biden alle­ga­tions becomes real­i­ty: there’s still a fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tion in Lev Par­nas, Igor Fru­man, and Rudy Giu­liani. The under­ly­ing cast of char­ac­ters that result­ed in Trump’s impeach­ment haven’t been for­mal­ly pros­e­cut­ed yet because fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors are still inves­ti­gat­ing. That seems like the kind of fun fact that might come up dur­ing the elec­tion.

But as the fol­low­ing arti­cle also notes, while it’s hypo­thet­i­cal­ly pos­si­ble that fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors will for­mal­ly bring or drop charges between now and the elec­tion day, that’s high­ly unlike­ly to hap­pen. Although as we’ll also see, it does sound like fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors had indeed been plan­ning on for­mal­ly bring­ing charges against Par­nas and Fru­man by the end of July. That was the envi­sioned time­line at the begin­ning of the year. Then the coro­n­avirus hit and the entire inves­ti­ga­tion ground to halt.

It sounds like the inves­ti­ga­tion picked up speed in June but there’s anoth­er anoth­er rea­son charges are unlike­ly before the elec­tion: the Jus­tice Depart­men­t’s pol­i­cy against bring­ing crim­i­nal charges that could impact an elec­tion. The same pol­i­cy that for­mer FBI direc­tor James Comey vio­lat­ed in 2016 when he revealed to Con­gress 10 days before the elec­tion that the FBI was reopen­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion into Hillary Clin­ton’s pri­vate email serv­er. There’s report­ed­ly great con­cern inside the Jus­tice Depart­ment today that any charges against Par­nas, Fru­man, or Giu­liani announced before the elec­tion could vio­late that Jus­tice Depart­ment pol­i­cy.

And then there’s the still omi­nous sur­prise dis­missal of Geof­frey Berman — the New York fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor who hap­pened to be inves­ti­ga­tion a large array of Trump-relat­ed cas­es — back in June. Berman’s inves­ti­ga­tions includ­ed the inves­ti­ga­tions of Par­nas, Fru­man, and Giu­liani. So the halt­ing of the inves­ti­ga­tions into these key #UkraineGate fig­ures by the coro­n­avirus in April was fol­lowed by the appar­ent sab­o­tage of the inves­ti­ga­tion by Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bill Barr in June.

Anoth­er rea­son fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors are report­ed­ly hes­i­tant to bring charges against Rudy Giu­liani before the next pres­i­den­tial term is they’re con­cerned that Pres­i­dent Trump will sim­ply par­don him after the elec­tion if any charges are announced. And that’s all why we’re unlike­ly to see any charges before the elec­tion against the fig­ures at the cen­ter of the scan­dal that got Trump impeached:

CNN

As elec­tion looms, win­dow nar­rows for action in crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion into Rudy Giu­liani and asso­ciates

By Kara Scan­nell and Eri­ca Orden,

Updat­ed 7:40 PM ET, Fri August 7, 2020

New York (CNN) With the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion few­er than 90 days away, fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors in New York face a nar­row­ing win­dow in which to take overt steps — includ­ing bring charges — in their inves­ti­ga­tion of Rudy Giu­liani, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s per­son­al attor­ney, and his Sovi­et-born asso­ciates.

Since ear­ly last year, pros­e­cu­tors with the US attor­ney’s office in Man­hat­tan have been inves­ti­gat­ing Giu­liani along with busi­ness­men Lev Par­nas and Igor Fru­man in con­nec­tion with their efforts to oust the then-US ambas­sador to Ukraine and ini­ti­ate inves­ti­ga­tions by the coun­try into Trump’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial rival Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

In Octo­ber 2019, pros­e­cu­tors brought charges against Par­nas, Fru­man and two oth­er asso­ciates, indict­ing them in an alleged cam­paign-finance scheme involv­ing dona­tions to a pro-Trump super PAC. They have plead­ed not guilty.

The inves­ti­ga­tion expand­ed into Giu­liani. Pros­e­cu­tors sent sub­poe­nas to polit­i­cal donors and fundrais­ers ask­ing about any busi­ness deal­ings they had with the for­mer New York City may­or or his firm Giu­liani Part­ners.

The sprawl­ing inves­ti­ga­tion into all of the men, how­ev­er, was upend­ed by the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, lim­it­ing pros­e­cu­tors’ abil­i­ty to inter­view wit­ness­es, col­lect fur­ther evi­dence, and meet with the grand jury. Now, with the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion approach­ing, pros­e­cu­tors must decide, if they believe there is evi­dence of a crime, to bring charges or wait until after the elec­tion to avoid a so-called Octo­ber sur­prise.

While pros­e­cu­tors pri­vate­ly indi­cat­ed as recent­ly as April that they intend­ed to bring addi­tion­al charges against Par­nas and Fru­man by the end of July, which CNN has report­ed, that time­line expired last week. And in recent dis­cus­sions with at least one defense coun­sel, pros­e­cu­tors pro­vid­ed no update on the tim­ing of addi­tion­al charges, accord­ing to a per­son famil­iar with the mat­ter.

The inves­ti­ga­tion received renewed atten­tion in late June when Geof­frey Berman, the for­mer US attor­ney for Man­hat­tan, was oust­ed from his post, and pub­lic scruti­ny cen­tered on whether his dis­missal was linked to his office’s pur­suit of those close to Trump.

Mean­while, Jus­tice Depart­ment guide­lines and long­stand­ing prac­tices dis­cour­age pros­e­cu­tors from bring­ing a polit­i­cal­ly sen­si­tive case — such as any that might involve a sit­ting Pres­i­den­t’s per­son­al attor­ney — in close prox­im­i­ty to an elec­tion. In New York in recent years, fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors have charged sim­i­lar­ly polit­i­cal­ly sen­si­tive cas­es no lat­er than August of an elec­tion year.

In Giu­lian­i’s case, while he has been under scruti­ny for months, he has not had any con­tact with pros­e­cu­tors, accord­ing to his attor­ney. That is not uncom­mon for a tar­get of an inves­ti­ga­tion but, for a prospec­tive defen­dant like Giu­liani, a for­mer Man­hat­tan US attor­ney him­self, it is like­ly he would be informed of pos­si­ble charges and giv­en a chance to make his case to pros­e­cu­tors before they make a final deci­sion.

“We have had no con­tact at all, nor do I sus­pect we’ll have any con­tact with fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors,” Robert Costel­lo, an attor­ney for Giu­liani, told CNN. “We don’t have any rea­son to believe that any­body is real­ly active­ly look­ing at Rudolph Giu­liani for hav­ing done any­thing wrong, because he has­n’t done any­thing wrong.”

...

Covid caused delays

Still, the inquiry involv­ing Giu­liani, Par­nas, Fru­man and their asso­ciates appears to have remained active in recent months, fol­low­ing some delays due to the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic.

Pros­e­cu­tors and FBI agents inter­viewed mul­ti­ple wit­ness­es in Feb­ru­ary and March as the pan­dem­ic was tak­ing hold in New York. By April, how­ev­er, pros­e­cu­tors asked the judge over­see­ing the case to post­pone the Octo­ber tri­al date for Par­nas and Fru­man until next year. The tri­al is now set for Feb­ru­ary 1.

They not­ed their time­line on bring­ing charges had been pushed back by the pan­demic’s impact on their abil­i­ty to inter­view wit­ness­es and con­vene a grand jury. At the time, they pri­vate­ly told lawyers for the men that they antic­i­pat­ed they would bring new charges by the end of July.

By June, accord­ing to two peo­ple famil­iar with the mat­ter, the inves­ti­ga­tion picked up again, with pros­e­cu­tors and FBI agents active­ly inter­view­ing wit­ness­es as part of their inves­ti­ga­tion con­cern­ing Giu­liani, Par­nas and Fru­man. The peo­ple famil­iar with the mat­ter said pros­e­cu­tors’ ques­tions appeared to relate more to the con­duct of Par­nas and Fru­man and mat­ters that were charged in their orig­i­nal indict­ment — includ­ing a mar­i­jua­na busi­ness ven­ture and dona­tions the two made to Repub­li­can can­di­dates and a pro-Trump super PAC as an alleged effort to spread their influ­ence — than they did to Giu­liani.

And in recent weeks, grand juries have recon­vened in New York, includ­ing in White Plains, which is part of the Man­hat­tan US Attor­ney’s office juris­dic­tion. For exam­ple, ear­li­er this month, a White Plains grand jury issued an indict­ment charg­ing Ghis­laine Maxwell, a for­mer girl­friend and asso­ciate of Jef­frey Epstein, with recruit­ing, groom­ing and ulti­mate­ly sex­u­al­ly abus­ing girls, some as young as 14. She has plead­ed not guilty.

As part of their inves­ti­ga­tion, pros­e­cu­tors have con­tin­ued to inquire about Par­nas’s Flori­da-based com­pa­ny Fraud Guar­an­tee, which paid Giu­liani $500,000 in 2018, these peo­ple said, and while CNN has report­ed that pros­e­cu­tors have weighed addi­tion­al charges in con­junc­tion with the com­pa­ny, it isn’t clear that those charges would be filed against Giu­liani.

Giu­liani is more direct­ly under scruti­ny for his efforts to remove the US ambas­sador to Ukraine, accord­ing to peo­ple famil­iar with the inves­ti­ga­tion, who say a charge could be brought as a vio­la­tion of for­eign lob­by­ing laws. Any charges under that statute, known as the For­eign Agents Reg­is­tra­tion Act, or FARA, would require the approval of the nation­al secu­ri­ty divi­sion in Wash­ing­ton, oper­at­ing under Attor­ney Gen­er­al William Barr.

Berman dis­missal

In July, fol­low­ing his dis­missal, Berman told law­mak­ers he was con­cerned that his removal — and an ini­tial deci­sion by Barr to replace him with an attor­ney from out­side the office with no pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al expe­ri­ence — was an effort to dis­rupt or delay inves­ti­ga­tions. Berman, who did­n’t cite spe­cif­ic inves­ti­ga­tions of con­cern, was ulti­mate­ly replaced by his deputy Audrey Strauss, a well-respect­ed attor­ney. There is no indi­ca­tion that inves­ti­ga­tions have been impact­ed.

Dur­ing a hear­ing before the House Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee last week, Barr was quizzed on Berman’s fir­ing and whether he inter­fered in any inves­ti­ga­tions in the office.

“Num­ber one, any­one famil­iar with the Depart­ment of Jus­tice would say that remov­ing a com­po­nent head is not going to have an impact on a pend­ing inves­ti­ga­tion,” Barr said in defend­ing the move.

He added, “I have not inter­fered in any inves­ti­ga­tion. I’ve raised ques­tions on occa­sion about cer­tain mat­ters, but as far as I’m aware, the office was sat­is­fied with the res­o­lu­tion.”

Impact of the elec­tion

Even with pros­e­cu­tors’ con­tin­ued scruti­ny of Giu­liani, Par­nas and Fru­man, how­ev­er, the clock is tick­ing toward the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion peri­od, when pros­e­cu­tors are less like­ly to bring charges.

Jus­tice Depart­ment mem­o­ran­dums advise pros­e­cu­tors against bring­ing any cas­es or tak­ing any overt inves­tiga­tive steps with the pur­pose of impact­ing an elec­tion or pro­vid­ing an advan­tage or dis­ad­van­tage to either can­di­date.

Cur­rent and for­mer Jus­tice Depart­ment offi­cials say there is an unwrit­ten rule that extends that pol­i­cy to with­in 60 days of an elec­tion.

In Giu­lian­i’s case, some observers say there is no rush for the US attor­ney’s office in Man­hat­tan to bring a case before the elec­tion. If pros­e­cu­tors believe they have evi­dence of a crime, they will have remain­ing time under the statute of lim­i­ta­tions after the elec­tion cycle.

Oth­er lawyers have sug­gest­ed the out­come of the elec­tion could influ­ence the tim­ing of any case. If pros­e­cu­tors believe they have evi­dence of a crime and Trump los­es re-elec­tion, they could delay announc­ing charges until Jan­u­ary, after Trump leaves office, remov­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty that he might par­don an ally.

If pros­e­cu­tors were to move toward charg­ing Giu­liani, pro­to­col dic­tates that they would brief senior Jus­tice Depart­ment offi­cials, like­ly includ­ing Barr, in advance of mak­ing such an announce­ment. Pros­e­cu­tors with the US Attor­ney’s office in Man­hat­tan ini­tial­ly briefed Barr on the inves­ti­ga­tion con­cern­ing Par­nas, Fru­man and Giu­liani ear­ly last year, short­ly after Barr was sworn in.

The sen­si­tiv­i­ty of charg­ing deci­sions and inves­tiga­tive steps with respect to elec­tions has been a source of ten­sion for the Jus­tice Depart­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly in recent years.

Days before the 2016 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, then-FBI Direc­tor James Comey sent a let­ter to Con­gress con­cern­ing the reopen­ing of an inves­ti­ga­tion involv­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee Hilary Clin­ton’s emails.

The Jus­tice Depart­men­t’s Inspec­tor Gen­er­al lat­er crit­i­cized Comey’s deci­sion, say­ing his “descrip­tion of his choice as being between ‘two doors,’ one labeled ‘speak’ and one labeled ‘con­ceal,’ was a false dichoto­my. The two doors were actu­al­ly labeled ‘fol­low policy/practice’ and ‘depart from policy/practice.’ ”

Pros­e­cu­tors in the Man­hat­tan office have recent­ly been faced with sim­i­lar issues con­cern­ing charg­ing deci­sions in advance of elec­tions.

In 2018, the year of the con­gres­sion­al midterm elec­tions, the office charged two polit­i­cal­ly sen­si­tive cas­es in August: one against Michael Cohen, Trump’s for­mer per­son­al attor­ney, and anoth­er against Chris Collins, then a Repub­li­can con­gress­man and ear­ly Trump sup­port­er who was up for reelec­tion that year.

In both cas­es, pros­e­cu­tors made their charg­ing deci­sions with the elec­tions in mind.

Cohen plead­ed guilty that August and is serv­ing a prison sen­tence in home con­fine­ment. Collins, who won his reelec­tion while under indict­ment, ini­tial­ly plead­ed not guilty, but lat­er changed his plea and resigned his seat. Collins was sen­tenced to 26 months in prison, but has yet to report because of the pan­dem­ic.

————

“As elec­tion looms, win­dow nar­rows for action in crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion into Rudy Giu­liani and asso­ciates” by Kara Scan­nell and Eri­ca Orden; CNN; 08/07/2020

“Pros­e­cu­tors and FBI agents inter­viewed mul­ti­ple wit­ness­es in Feb­ru­ary and March as the pan­dem­ic was tak­ing hold in New York. By April, how­ev­er, pros­e­cu­tors asked the judge over­see­ing the case to post­pone the Octo­ber tri­al date for Par­nas and Fru­man until next year. The tri­al is now set for Feb­ru­ary 1.”

By April of this year, as the pan­dem­ic took hold, the Octo­ber 1 tri­al date for Par­nas and Fru­man that pros­e­cu­tors had planned at the begin­ning of the year as pushed back to Feb­ru­ary of 2021. That had to be one of those events ear­ly on in the pan­dem­ic that demon­strat­ed to the the Trump White House the many hid­den ben­e­fits a pan­dem­ic presents to those will­ing to exploit it. But the pan­dem­ic did­n’t freeze the inves­ti­ga­tion indef­i­nite­ly. By June it was pick­ing up again...until Geof­frey Berman’s omi­nous mys­tery fir­ing in July:

...
They not­ed their time­line on bring­ing charges had been pushed back by the pan­demic’s impact on their abil­i­ty to inter­view wit­ness­es and con­vene a grand jury. At the time, they pri­vate­ly told lawyers for the men that they antic­i­pat­ed they would bring new charges by the end of July.

By June, accord­ing to two peo­ple famil­iar with the mat­ter, the inves­ti­ga­tion picked up again, with pros­e­cu­tors and FBI agents active­ly inter­view­ing wit­ness­es as part of their inves­ti­ga­tion con­cern­ing Giu­liani, Par­nas and Fru­man. The peo­ple famil­iar with the mat­ter said pros­e­cu­tors’ ques­tions appeared to relate more to the con­duct of Par­nas and Fru­man and mat­ters that were charged in their orig­i­nal indict­ment — includ­ing a mar­i­jua­na busi­ness ven­ture and dona­tions the two made to Repub­li­can can­di­dates and a pro-Trump super PAC as an alleged effort to spread their influ­ence — than they did to Giu­liani.

...

In July, fol­low­ing his dis­missal, Berman told law­mak­ers he was con­cerned that his removal — and an ini­tial deci­sion by Barr to replace him with an attor­ney from out­side the office with no pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al expe­ri­ence — was an effort to dis­rupt or delay inves­ti­ga­tions. Berman, who did­n’t cite spe­cif­ic inves­ti­ga­tions of con­cern, was ulti­mate­ly replaced by his deputy Audrey Strauss, a well-respect­ed attor­ney. There is no indi­ca­tion that inves­ti­ga­tions have been impact­ed.
...

And then there’s the con­cerns that pro­ceed­ing ahead with these pros­e­cu­tions before the elec­tion could influ­ence the elec­tion. Con­cerns that were iron­i­cal­ly ignored to Trump’s immense ben­e­fit in 2016:

...
The sen­si­tiv­i­ty of charg­ing deci­sions and inves­tiga­tive steps with respect to elec­tions has been a source of ten­sion for the Jus­tice Depart­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly in recent years.

Days before the 2016 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, then-FBI Direc­tor James Comey sent a let­ter to Con­gress con­cern­ing the reopen­ing of an inves­ti­ga­tion involv­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee Hilary Clin­ton’s emails.

The Jus­tice Depart­men­t’s Inspec­tor Gen­er­al lat­er crit­i­cized Comey’s deci­sion, say­ing his “descrip­tion of his choice as being between ‘two doors,’ one labeled ‘speak’ and one labeled ‘con­ceal,’ was a false dichoto­my. The two doors were actu­al­ly labeled ‘fol­low policy/practice’ and ‘depart from policy/practice.’ ”
...

And that’s the sto­ry of how the coro­n­avirus — and Bill Barr — saved Trump from the embar­rass­ment of hav­ing the fig­ures at the cen­ter of the scan­dal that got him impeached charged by fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors before the elec­tion. A sto­ry that will be worth keep­ing in mine when Rudy Giu­liani trots out his Biden-Ukraine smear cam­paign right before the elec­tion.

With the grow­ing focus on the role nat­ur­al gas played in the col­lapse of the Texas elec­tric­i­ty grid, here’s a set of arti­cles that raise some fas­ci­nat­ing ques­tions about whether or not Tex­as­’s liq­uid nat­ur­al gas (LNG) indus­try played a role in the Texas grid-plo­sion a week ago. And and since Tex­as­’s LNG sec­tor is a key ele­ment of #UkraineGate, this is the kind of angle that could yield some fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ries. It depends on what’s under this rock, but as we’ll see, the state’s LNG indus­try is very new. So it’s not a par­tic­u­lar­ly big rock.

First, there’s arti­cle from last Tues­day, Feb 16, when the ‘rolling’ black­outs were just a day old and the scale of the cri­sis was­n’t entire­ly appar­ent. The arti­cle is about the first ever order by a Texas Gov­er­nor to the state’s young liq­uid nat­ur­al gas (LNG) indus­try to pull back oper­a­tions. Yes, Tex­as­’s LNG indus­try was appar­ent­ly still par­tial­ly oper­at­ing last Sun­day and Mon­day. At least at Freeport LNG, which had report­ed­ly already shut down its ter­mi­nal 1 oper­a­tions on Mon­day but was still oper­at­ing its ter­mi­nal 2 and 3 ter­mi­nals when gov­er­nor Abbott made the request to exporters on Tues­day. And if LNG export oper­a­tions were tak­ing place on Mon­day that means it was oper­at­ing at the same time the elec­tri­cal grid descend­ed into a self-induced self-rein­forc­ing death spi­ral after the grid cut pow­er to the nat­ur­al gas wells pro­vid­ing the real-time gas sup­ply required to fuel the elec­tric­i­ty plants. Oops.

Keep in mind that, as we’ll see in the third arti­cle below, Texas only became an LNG exporter in Decem­ber 2018, so in that sense it’s not par­tic­u­lar­ly sur­pris­ing Abbot­t’s request to the LNG export indus­try to cut back oper­a­tions was the first time a Texas gov­er­nor has ever done so. But it also high­lights anoth­er under­ap­pre­ci­at­ed aspect of the ongo­ing Texas self-inflict­ed dis­as­ter sto­ry: Texas was already known to have lit­tle nat­ur­al gas stor­age capac­i­ty before it became an LNG exporter. But after Texas became an LNG exporter a cou­ple of years ago (as #UkraineGate was play­ing out), some of that stor­age capac­i­ty prob­a­bly shift­ed from con­sumer gas stor­age to gas intend­ed for LNG plants and export. It’s at least worth look­ing into.

And as the fol­low­ing arti­cle describes, one of the ten­sions asso­ci­at­ed with Abbot­t’s order to cut back on LNG exports last week was the dam­age it would do to Amer­i­ca’s rep­u­ta­tion as a reli­able LNG sup­pli­er. The US is new in the LNG export sec­tor, so the US’s per­ceived reli­a­bil­i­ty is a poten­tial­ly sig­nif­i­cant concern...to investors in the US LNG export sec­tor.

So LNG exports were the big new hot thing Texas has been excit­ed about — so hot the whole #UkraineGate scan­dal cir­cled around it — and yet the sec­tor was also dia­met­ri­cal­ly opposed to the main­te­nance of the elec­tri­cal grid when nat­ur­al gas sup­plies became the lim­it­ing fac­tor that set off a grid death spi­ral. LNG may have been an unrec­og­nized gas black hole when the col­laps­ing nat­ur­al gas sup­plies turned Mon­day’s rolling black­outs into a days-long icy night­mare. And that’s all why we have to ask: Did the emer­gence of a new LNG export indus­try over the last few years fuel last week’s elec­tric death-spi­ral?

Bloomberg

Texas Gov­er­nor Asks LNG Exporter Freeport to Use Less Gas

By Chris­tine Buur­ma, Ser­gio Cha­pa, and Ger­son Fre­itas Jr
Feb­ru­ary 16, 2021, 12:55 PM EST Updat­ed on Feb­ru­ary 16, 2021, 2:51 PM EST

Texas Gov­er­nor Greg Abbott’s office has asked the Freeport liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas export ter­mi­nal to dial back oper­a­tions in keep­ing with the state’s dis­as­ter dec­la­ra­tion amid a polar blast.

To lim­it gas and pow­er con­sump­tion, Freeport will shut down LNG pro­duc­tion units 2 and 3, which will result in unplanned flar­ing, the com­pa­ny said Tues­day in a reg­u­la­to­ry fil­ing. Freeport also said it had to shut unit 1 on Mon­day because of freez­ing con­di­tions affect­ing a pre­treat­ment facil­i­ty.

Che­niere Ener­gy Inc.’s Cor­pus Christi LNG ter­mi­nal is also reduc­ing its demand on the grid, accord­ing to a spokesman. Both the Texas ter­mi­nals start­ed up in 2019, with anoth­er still under con­struc­tion and oth­ers pro­posed.

The governor’s order marks the first time Texas has asked LNG exporters to curb oper­a­tions amid emer­gency con­di­tions. Though the indus­try is still nascent, exports of the heat­ing and pow­er-plant fuel climbed to a record late last year. The cur­rent deep freeze is like­ly to call LNG’s role in the ener­gy mar­ket into ques­tion amid con­cern that ship­ments to over­seas buy­ers are con­tribut­ing to a domes­tic gas short­age dur­ing extreme cold.

“LNG exports are def­i­nite­ly con­tribut­ing to a gas short­age, and con­tin­ued LNG exports are dri­ving scarci­ty for nat­ur­al gas for pow­er gen­er­a­tion in the U.S.,” said Katie Bays, man­ag­ing direc­tor at Fis­cal­Note Mar­kets. “Amer­i­can con­sumers gen­er­al­ly have zero patience for see­ing for­eign buy­ers take pri­or­i­ty. So the ques­tion is more whether there will be a polit­i­cal response, not what that response would be.”

The most like­ly response would be addi­tion­al scruti­ny as to whether the Ener­gy Depart­ment can pull back LNG exports when demand is par­tic­u­lar­ly high, Bays said. U.S. ener­gy reg­u­la­tors said Tues­day that they’re open­ing a joint inquiry into oper­a­tions of the pow­er sys­tem dur­ing the intense cold.

...

Freeport’s shut­down may play into the per­cep­tion among LNG buy­ers in Asia that the U.S. isn’t a reli­able source of sup­ply, Bays said. U.S. exports also plunged last year when a hyper­ac­tive hur­ri­cane sea­son forced ter­mi­nals along the Gulf Coast to go offline.

“In LNG mar­kets, reli­a­bil­i­ty is every­thing,” Bays said. “So that is a poten­tial­ly neg­a­tive long-term impli­ca­tion.”

———–

“Texas Gov­er­nor Asks LNG Exporter Freeport to Use Less Gas” by Chris­tine Buur­ma, Ser­gio Cha­pa, and Ger­son Fre­itas Jr; Bloomberg; 02/16/2021

“The governor’s order marks the first time Texas has asked LNG exporters to curb oper­a­tions amid emer­gency con­di­tions. Though the indus­try is still nascent, exports of the heat­ing and pow­er-plant fuel climbed to a record late last year. The cur­rent deep freeze is like­ly to call LNG’s role in the ener­gy mar­ket into ques­tion amid con­cern that ship­ments to over­seas buy­ers are con­tribut­ing to a domes­tic gas short­age dur­ing extreme cold.”

It was the first time ever a Texas gov­er­nor issued such an order to the LNG export sec­tor. Because the sec­tor did­n’t exist three years ago. And Freeport LNG answered that order with a pledge to shut down its units 2 and 3...which means units 2 and 3 were run­ning on Mon­day when the grid was col­laps­ing. Isn’t that kind of scan­dalous?

...
To lim­it gas and pow­er con­sump­tion, Freeport will shut down LNG pro­duc­tion units 2 and 3, which will result in unplanned flar­ing, the com­pa­ny said Tues­day in a reg­u­la­to­ry fil­ing. Freeport also said it had to shut unit 1 on Mon­day because of freez­ing con­di­tions affect­ing a pre­treat­ment facil­i­ty.

Che­niere Ener­gy Inc.’s Cor­pus Christi LNG ter­mi­nal is also reduc­ing its demand on the grid, accord­ing to a spokesman. Both the Texas ter­mi­nals start­ed up in 2019, with anoth­er still under con­struc­tion and oth­ers pro­posed.

...

“LNG exports are def­i­nite­ly con­tribut­ing to a gas short­age, and con­tin­ued LNG exports are dri­ving scarci­ty for nat­ur­al gas for pow­er gen­er­a­tion in the U.S.,” said Katie Bays, man­ag­ing direc­tor at Fis­cal­Note Mar­kets. “Amer­i­can con­sumers gen­er­al­ly have zero patience for see­ing for­eign buy­ers take pri­or­i­ty. So the ques­tion is more whether there will be a polit­i­cal response, not what that response would be.”
...

““LNG exports are def­i­nite­ly con­tribut­ing to a gas short­age, and con­tin­ued LNG exports are dri­ving scarci­ty for nat­ur­al gas for pow­er gen­er­a­tion in the U.S.,” said Katie Bays, man­ag­ing direc­tor at Fis­cal­Note Mar­kets. Bays’s words would appear to con­firm that LNG exports con­tributed to the gas short­age that brought down the grid. How big a role was this? We still have no idea, but Bays is pre­dict­ing a very dif­fer­ent kind of inves­ti­ga­tion after this: an inves­ti­ga­tion by reg­u­la­tors as to whether or not the Depart­ment of Ener­gy can cur­tail LNG exports when demand is par­tic­u­lar­ly high. It’s a reminder that US fed­er­al law might end up sid­ing with keep­ing the LNG exporter sup­plied dur­ing future Texas win­ter storms. It’s an open ques­tion:

...
The most like­ly response would be addi­tion­al scruti­ny as to whether the Ener­gy Depart­ment can pull back LNG exports when demand is par­tic­u­lar­ly high, Bays said. U.S. ener­gy reg­u­la­tors said Tues­day that they’re open­ing a joint inquiry into oper­a­tions of the pow­er sys­tem dur­ing the intense cold.

...

Freeport’s shut­down may play into the per­cep­tion among LNG buy­ers in Asia that the U.S. isn’t a reli­able source of sup­ply, Bays said. U.S. exports also plunged last year when a hyper­ac­tive hur­ri­cane sea­son forced ter­mi­nals along the Gulf Coast to go offline.

“In LNG mar­kets, reli­a­bil­i­ty is every­thing,” Bays said. “So that is a poten­tial­ly neg­a­tive long-term impli­ca­tion.”
...

So was Freeport LNG not just still oper­at­ing on Tues­day, when Abbott issued the order, but was it also tak­ing in nat­ur­al gas sup­ply from the Texas sup­ply grid? It sounds like that’s the case based on an arti­cle from Hel­lenic Ship­ping News about the impact the win­ter dis­as­ter is hav­ing on the US’s LNG exports indus­try. As the arti­cle states, part of what has plagued the Texas LNG export indus­try has been delays in sup­plies of nat­ur­al gas, with Freeport LNG get­ting cut off on Tues­day. Which means Freeport LNG, and like­ly many oth­ers in the LNG export sec­tor, were like­ly suck­ing up nat­ur­al gas out of the gas grid right when the elec­tri­cal grid col­lapsed under under a lack of nat­ur­al gas and the rolling black­outs of Mon­day turned into per­ma­nent black­outs of Tues­day and beyond:

Hel­lenic Ship­ping News

LNG tankers pile up in US Gulf as load­ings slow­ly restart

in Inter­na­tion­al Ship­ping News 22/02/2021

More than 10 tankers were wait­ing to load in the US Gulf Coast as LNG plants there slow­ly resumed exports after com­pli­ca­tions from win­ter storms pre­vent­ed tankers from load­ing and sail­ing since Feb. 14.

Twelve LNG tankers were either wait­ing to load or in tran­sit to one of the four USGC-based LNG export facil­i­ties late Feb. 17, accord­ing to S&P Glob­al Platts ship track­ing soft­ware, cFlow.

Exports from the US halt­ed sud­den­ly as the polar vor­tex affect­ing much of North Amer­i­ca caused oper­a­tional com­pli­ca­tions at liq­ue­fac­tion plants and at ship chan­nels.

The first US-sourced tankers to set sail since the extreme cold weath­er set in depart­ed from Freeport LNG late Feb. 17.

Since then, anoth­er two ves­sel have left ports in the US Gul Coast: anoth­er from Freeport on Feb. 18 and one from Sabine Pass on the same date.

Two for the three tankers had been berthed at their respec­tive export facil­i­ty for a num­ber of days. Ship chan­nels across the gulf had expe­ri­enced clo­sures or oper­a­tional com­pli­ca­tions at the start of the polar vor­tex, due to essen­tial per­son­nel being unable to access the ports.

Slow­er-than-nor­mal rate of load­ing

Tanker load­ings and depar­tures have, how­ev­er, only resumed at two of the four USGC-locat­ed facil­i­ties. Con­se­quent­ly, the rate of load­ing from the gulf, and the US as a whole, is sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er than just a week ago. The sev­en-day mov­ing aver­age load­ing rate for the US as whole fell to 5 Bcf/d on Feb. 19, down by more than half from ear­li­er in the month, data from S&P Platts Ana­lyt­ics showed.

As the sit­u­a­tion stands, the aver­age export rate for Feb­ru­ary stands at about 7.4 Bcf/d, below the rough­ly 9.3 Bcf/d aver­age seen in Decem­ber and Jan­u­ary.

Gulf Coast Facil­i­ties con­tin­ued to be affect­ed by unusu­al cir­cum­stances stem­ming from the inclement weath­er in North Amer­i­ca. Aggre­gate feedgas flows to US facil­i­ties remained slug­gish on Feb. 19, with flows nom­i­nat­ed at an ane­mic 5.9 Bcf, com­pared to nor­mal rates of around 11 Bcf/d ear­li­er in the month.

The two Texas-based facil­i­ties, Freeport LNG and Cor­pus Christi LNG, were like­ly to be affect­ed by a man­date issued by that state’s Gov­er­nor pri­or­i­tiz­ing nat­ur­al gas use for pow­er gen­er­a­tion with­in the state.

Flows to Freeport LNG had effec­tive­ly halt­ed from Feb 16.

The Che­niere-con­trolled Cor­pus Christi facil­i­ty, how­ev­er, had flows for Feb. 19 deliv­ery nom­i­nat­ed at almost 1 Bcf, Che­niere did not respond for a request for com­ment on the issue.

Out­side of Texas, flows to Cameron LNG were also nom­i­nat­ed at a frac­tion of their usu­al lev­el at just 567 MMcf. A force majeure was heard to have been declared at the facil­i­ty for the can­cel­la­tion of at least one car­go and for the delay of up to anoth­er three car­goes. Cameron LNG did imme­di­ate­ly respond for a request for com­ment.

The largest export facil­i­ty in the coun­try, Sabine Pass LNG, was, how­ev­er, nom­i­nat­ing to pull gas at close to its nor­mal rate of around 3.8 Bcf/day on Feb. 19.

...

———–

“LNG tankers pile up in US Gulf as load­ings slow­ly restart”; Hel­lenic Ship­ping News; 02/22/2021

“Flows to Freeport LNG had effec­tive­ly halt­ed from Feb 16.”

Flows to Freeport LNG had effec­tive­ly halt­ed from Feb 16., which means flows were indeed still flow­ing to Freeport LNG on Feb 15, as rolling black­out hit much of Texas. Was that planned? Or did it just kind of work out that way because this sce­nario had­n’t been planned for? LNG exports are only a two year old thing for Texas so this is real­ly the first stress test of how the sys­tem would oper­ate when gas triage needs to be employed. Who knows if there were any plans for this sce­nario when the elec­tric­i­ty and gas grid oper­a­tors chose what to pri­or­i­tize. Because as this dead­ly deba­cle makes clear, it’s “the Wild West” by design in Texas. It’s pos­si­ble there was no plan­ning for what to do and it’s pos­si­ble there’s was plan­ning and the plan was to have no plan:

Hous­ton Chron­i­cle

Texas now an exporter of LNG

Ser­gio Cha­pa, Staff writer
Dec. 11, 2018
Updat­ed: Dec. 11, 2018 7:27 p.m.

The Lone Star State is now an exporter of liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas.

A tanker named the Maria Express left Che­niere Energy’s Port of Cor­pus Christi facil­i­ty with the terminal’s first car­go of LNG on Tues­day morn­ing. The des­ti­na­tion is not imme­di­ate­ly known, but the voy­age marks the first LNG export ship­ment from Texas.

...

Already export­ing from its Sabine Pass facil­i­ty in Louisiana, Che­niere is invest­ing up to $13 bil­lion to devel­op its Cor­pus Christi ter­mi­nal, where it plans to add at least three LNG pro­duc­tion units known as trains. Train 1 was com­plet­ed last month, while Train 2 is expect­ed to come into ser­vice by June 2019. Train 3 is expect­ed to be com­plet­ed by June 2021.

Hous­ton-based Cheniere’s ini­tial cus­tomers for the Cor­pus Christi facil­i­ty hold long-term sup­ply con­tracts and hail from three con­ti­nents — Europe, Asia and Aus­tralia. On the list are Span­ish com­pa­nies Ende­sa, Iber­dola and Gas Nat­ur­al Fenosa; Per­t­a­m­i­na of Indone­sia, Wood­side of Aus­tralia, the French com­pa­ny Élec­tric­ité De France, and the Por­tuguese com­pa­ny Ener­gias de Por­tu­gal. A long-term sup­ply deal with Chi­na Nation­al Petro­le­um Corp. paved the way for a final invest­ment deci­sion and con­struc­tion of Train 3 at the South Texas facil­i­ty.

In a state­ment, Che­niere Pres­i­dent and CEO Jack Fus­co said Train 1 was com­plet­ed ahead of sched­ule and marks the first LNG export facil­i­ty build from scratch in the low­er 48 states.

“This mile­stone fur­ther rein­forces Cheniere’s posi­tion as the leader in U.S. LNG, with a world-scale liq­ue­fac­tion plat­form that pro­vides sig­nif­i­cant com­pet­i­tive advan­tages as we con­tin­ue to exe­cute on our growth strat­e­gy,” Fus­co said.

Port of Cor­pus Christi CEO Sean Straw­bridge hailed Cheniere’s ship­ment as a his­toric day for the port, the State of Texas and the Unit­ed States. LNG exports are expect­ed to boost traf­fic at the South Texas water­way, which has already become a busy hub for exports of crude oil, gaso­line, diesel and a vari­ety of refined prod­ucts.

“Sup­ply­ing LNG to U.S. allies and trad­ing part­ners is a tri­fec­ta of ensur­ing eco­nom­ic growth, ener­gy inde­pen­dence and bal­ance of trade,” Straw­bridge said.

Tues­day morning’s ship­ment comes as the Ener­gy Infor­ma­tion Admin­is­tra­tion fore­casts that U.S. LNG export capac­i­ty will reach 4.9 bil­lion cubic feet of nat­ur­al gas per day by year-end. In addi­tion to the first ship­ment from its Cor­pus Christi facil­i­ty, Che­niere is also expect­ed to send its first ship­ment from a fifth train at the company’s Sabine Pass facil­i­ty in Louisiana by month’s end.

And with 16 more trains from Che­niere and three oth­er com­pa­nies expect­ed to come into ser­vice over the next 12 months, U.S. LNG export capac­i­ty is expect­ed to reach 8.9 bil­lion cubic feet of nat­ur­al gas per day by the end of 2019.

Cur­rent mar­ket con­di­tions favor exports to East Asian nations, where LNG prices are high­est. With more of the world’s elec­tric­i­ty pro­duc­tion com­ing from nat­ur­al gas, Muqsit Ashraf with the Hous­ton office of glob­al con­sult­ing firm Accen­ture said the long-term out­look for the LNG indus­try looks favor­able.

“If you look at the world, elec­tric­i­ty demand is going to dou­ble or maybe even triple in some high sus­tain­abil­i­ty-focused tran­si­tion sce­nar­ios,” Ashraf said. “A sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the source of that elec­tric­i­ty is going to be a com­bi­na­tion of nat­ur­al gas and renew­ables — not coal, not oil and not many of the oth­er sources.”

———–

“Texas now an exporter of LNG” by Ser­gio Cha­pa; Hous­ton Chron­i­cle; 12/11/2018

“Cur­rent mar­ket con­di­tions favor exports to East Asian nations, where LNG prices are high­est. With more of the world’s elec­tric­i­ty pro­duc­tion com­ing from nat­ur­al gas, Muqsit Ashraf with the Hous­ton office of glob­al con­sult­ing firm Accen­ture said the long-term out­look for the LNG indus­try looks favor­able.”

In Decem­ber of 2018, Texas ships out its first ever LNG ship to who knows where and skies were the lim­it for Tex­as­’s brand new LNG export sec­tor. Asian mar­kets promised grow­ing pop­u­la­tions with grow­ing nat­ur­al gas demand for years to come, along with high­er prices than they can get in the US. It’s the kind of sce­nario that again, rais­es the ques­tion: when the Texas util­i­ty grid oper­a­tors imple­ment­ed their black­outs on Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 15, why were the LNG export plants still run­ning and why was Freeport LNG still received nat­ur­al gas sup­plies the next day? It’s a bit of a mys­tery. With a range of pos­si­ble answers. Specif­i­cal­ly the range of incom­pe­tence to neg­li­gence.

Here’s a set of arti­cles that at least sort of address one of the big ques­tions that has yet to be answered regard­ing what exact­ly hap­pened to bring down ‑Tex­as­’s elec­tric­i­ty and nat­ur­al gas grids last week: the ques­tion of whether or not liq­uid nat­ur­al gas (LNG) exporters were active­ly accept­ing and export nat­ur­al gas dur­ing that cru­cial point when Tex­as­’s grid oper­a­tors were putting in place rolling black­outs. Rolling black­outs that turned into per­ma­nent black­outs after the grid cut pow­er off to both the nat­ur­al gas well pumps and the gas pipeline com­pres­sor sta­tions.

First, recall how Tex­as­’s gov­er­nor Abbott made the first ever dec­la­ra­tion by a Texas gov­er­nor last Tues­day (Feb 16) order­ing Tex­as­’s LNG pro­duc­ers to pull back oper­a­tions. And at least in the case of the Freeport LNG port, it sounds like they had been oper­at­ing two out of three of their ter­mi­nals at the time of Abbot­t’s order (as the grid was already col­laps­ing for a lack of nat­ur­al gas), and pledged to cut back oper­a­tions. But Abbott only ordered Freeport to ‘use less gas’, leav­ing wig­gle-room in the order to, say, con­tin­ue fill­ing up a tanker. And Freeport’s admis­sion that it was going to cut back ter­mi­nals 2 and 3 dou­bled as an admis­sion that the facil­i­ty had been suck­ing up gas from the grid Mon­day as the ‘rolling’ black­outs were com­ing into effect.

So the answer appears to be, yes, Freeport kept fill­ing up tankers for anoth­er cou­ple of days. At least one tanker. We know this because on Thurs­day last week we got reports that an LNG tanker was arriv­ing in Mex­i­co to address the sud­den nat­ur­al gas short­age caused by the drop in imports from the US. And accord­ing to those reports, the tanker left Freeport on Wednes­day and had been filled up last week, which would have been right dur­ing the heart of the cri­sis in the ear­ly part of the week.

But there’s anoth­er big clue that nat­ur­al gas exports were still tak­ing place last Wednes­day not just from LNG tankers but also US-to-Mex­i­co gas pipeline: Abbott issued a new order on Wednes­day (Feb 17), bar­ring nat­ur­al gas from leav­ing the state. At least that was what he told reporters. It’s the kind of order that implies gas was indeed leav­ing the state at that crit­i­cal point in the state’s freeze. And as we’ll see, it appears the Texas-to-Mex­i­co gas pipelines were still run­ning last week, still ful­fill­ing con­tracts. Abbot­t’s order last Wednes­day was pre­sum­ably in response to those ongo­ing exports via pipeline.

Keep in mind that Mex­i­co is high­ly depen­dent on US nat­ur­al gas for its elec­tric­i­ty so those con­tracts are a big deal to the indus­try and to one of its biggest export mar­kets. And as we’ll see in the last arti­cle below, also from last Thurs­day, at least one mem­ber of the Texas Rail­road Com­mis­sion, Com­mis­sion­er Jim Wright, was pub­licly say­ing he doubt­ed the state of Texas had the right to cut off exports to Mex­i­co because it vio­lat­ed the com­merce clause in the US Con­sti­tu­tion. And the Texas Rail­road Com­mis­sion is the state agency that reg­u­lates the state’s oil and gas indus­tries which means there was a debate inside the reg­u­la­to­ry agency over­see­ing Freeport going on last week as to whether or not Freeport and oth­er exporters had to fol­low Abbot­t’s orders to halt oper­a­tions.

But the nature of Abbot­t’s emer­gency order Wend­nes­day became even more neb­u­lous when the Texas Rail­road Com­mis­sion put a notice up on its web­site say­ing that nat­ur­al gas sourced in the state be made avail­able to local gas pro­duc­ers before leav­ing the state. That’s wig­gle-room lan­guage. Busi­ness-as-usu­al wig­gle-room. The kind of a wig­gle-room that com­pa­nies fac­ing export con­tracts are going to be very tempt­ed to employ.

Did Freeport and the rest of the nat­ur­al gas indus­try use this ambi­gu­i­ty as an excuse to con­tin­ue grab­bing gas from the grid for anoth­er cou­ple of days? Again, we don’t know. But we do know that no one knew for sure if Freeport had to fol­low those orders. They still don’t know. And we also know that a tanker filled with LNG left Freeport on Wednes­day and was loaded that week, a day after Abbott ordered Freeport specif­i­cal­ly to cut back oper­a­tions and the same day Abbott issued a new blan­ket ban on gas exports from the state. Texas was still leak­ing gas on Wednes­day, and not just from the LNG tankers.

It’s part of the over­all mega-scan­dal that under­scores the per­il of Tex­as­’s ill-con­ceived sys­tem that seems built to fail: The state’s ‘free-market’-based con­sumer elec­tric­i­ty mar­kets that failed brought both black­outs and record high prices were built to be brit­tle and built to ben­e­fit the gas pro­duc­er indus­try at the expense of con­sumers. And that brit­tle mar­ket­place is cur­rent­ly heav­i­ly reliant nat­ur­al gas (around 45%) and that brit­tle mar­ket­place is designed to ben­e­fit gas pro­duc­ers when there’s a huge sup­ply-demand imbal­ance. Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, Texas is a grow­ing inter­na­tion­al nat­ur­al gas exporter, with major exports to Mex­i­co and LNG exports poten­tial­ly to world. And exporters can’t have brit­tle mar­ket­places that self-implode because not prepar­ing is more prof­itable.

So the domes­tic and export sides of Tex­as­’s nat­ur­al gas mar­kets have fun­da­men­tal­ly oppos­ing needs. The domes­tic side is just a cash cow for the indus­try while the export side is oper­at­ing in world mar­kets. They aren’t the same thing. And yet they are both hooked into the same sup­ply of Texas-pro­duced nat­ur­al gas. So when Texas expe­ri­ences a major sup­ply and demand shock like it did last week, and there’s a need to choose between exports and domes­tic con­sump­tion, it’s a choice between exports where reli­a­bil­i­ty is a top pri­or­i­ty and the domes­tic mar­ket where reli­a­bil­i­ty is a bur­den that low­ers prof­its. In oth­er words, Texas set up its nat­ur­al gas mar­kets to strong­ly incen­tivize steer­ing those lim­it­ed gas flows to exports, not domes­tic con­sump­tion, when sup­plies are lim­it­ed. And that clear­ly hap­pened to some extent last week.

So the ques­tion of whether or not Tex­as­’s young LNG export indus­try was still suck­ing up gas and export­ing it last week dur­ing the height of this cri­sis is real­ly just part of the much larg­er ques­tion of how much gas over­all, includ­ing the pipeline to Mex­i­co, was being export­ed last week? And giv­en the ambigu­ous nature of the Rail­road Com­mis­sions direc­tives, we also have to ask how much export­ing was still going on late last week after Abbot­t’s Wednes­day order.

Ok, first, here’s a Bloomberg excerpt from Wednes­day about Abbot­t’s new order ban­ning all exports from the state that rais­es the ques­tion of whether Freeport and the rest of the state’s LNG indus­try no doubt raised them­selves after receiv­ing Abbot­t’s order: do we actu­al­ly have to fol­low this? Or can we cite the Con­sti­tu­tion and ignore it? It real­ly was an open ques­tion:

Bloomberg

Texas’ Gas-Export Clam­p­down Shocks Mar­ket as Black­outs Ebb

By Joe Car­roll, Javier Blas, and Jen­nifer A Dlouhy
Feb­ru­ary 17, 2021, 5:07 PM EST Updat­ed on Feb­ru­ary 18, 2021, 1:08 PM EST

* State ener­gy reg­u­la­tor moves to car­ry out governor’s order
* One West Coast trad­er takes mil­lion-dol­lar hit in just min­utes

Texas is restrict­ing the flow of nat­ur­al gas across state lines in an extra­or­di­nary move that some are call­ing a vio­la­tion of the U.S. Constitution’s com­merce clause.

Texas Gov­er­nor Greg Abbott on Wednes­day told a media brief­ing that he was ban­ning gas from leav­ing the state through Feb. 21 to ensure in-state pow­er gen­er­a­tors had ample sup­plies. Less than 24 hours lat­er, Texas’s top ener­gy reg­u­la­tor told gas pro­duc­ers to offer sup­plies for sale in-state before ship­ping it else­where, cit­ing the governor’s man­date.

Under the Constitution’s so-called com­merce clause, state gov­ern­ments are pro­hib­it­ed from inter­fer­ing in inter­state trade. Abbott said a dis­as­ter dec­la­ra­tion he issued on Feb. 12 gave him lat­i­tude to impose such restric­tions.

Abbott said he was forced to act as mil­lions of Tex­ans remain with­out pow­er. By late Thurs­day morn­ing, the num­ber of blacked-out cus­tomers was down to about 500,000 from more than 4 mil­lion two days ear­li­er, accord­ing to PowerOutage.us. Mean­while, gas prices at a key trad­ing hub in Okla­homa slumped 99% in a sign that the worst of the gas squeeze may be over. Still, the time­line to a full restora­tion of pow­er is unclear.

“Oper­a­tors should take notice that under this man­date, all ‘sourced nat­ur­al gas’ be made avail­able for sale to local pow­er gen­er­a­tion oppor­tu­ni­ties before leav­ing the state of Texas, effec­tive through Feb­ru­ary 21, 2021,” the rail­road com­mis­sion said in its direc­tive to drillers.

‘Max­i­mum With­draw­al’

Abbott’s announce­ment caught some gas traders flat­foot­ed and sowed con­fu­sion in a mar­ket already deal­ing with huge upheaval. One West Coast-based trad­er said he lost $1 mil­lion with­in min­utes. With­out being able to read the order, oth­ers hur­ried­ly sought answers: Can gas still be export­ed to Mex­i­co? Is LNG affect­ed?

“This is an author­i­ty that is a state author­i­ty,” Deputy Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Advi­sor Liz Sher­wood-Ran­dall said dur­ing a media brief­ing on Thurs­day. “And we’re in dis­cus­sion with our Mex­i­can part­ners as well as with the state offi­cials around the deci­sion that the state offi­cials are tak­ing.”

Bench­mark U.S. gas futures fell 3.7% to $3.101 per mil­lion Britsh ther­mal units at 1:07 p.m. on the New York Mer­can­tile Exchange after ris­ing as much as 2.5% in overnight trad­ing.

Sup­ply for next-day deliv­ery at the Oneok Gas Trans­porta­tion hub in Okla­homa trad­ed at $4 per mil­lion British ther­mal units on Thurs­day, accord­ing to traders. That’s down from $1,250 on the pre­vi­ous day and in line with prices seen just over a week ago. The Oneok hub is a key tran­sit point for gas head­ed for major pop­u­la­tion cen­ters such as Chica­go.

“This is an abuse of the Texas Dis­as­ter Act,” said Jared Wood­fill, a promi­nent Repub­li­can attor­ney who repeat­ed­ly chal­lenged Abbott over coro­n­avirus restric­tions in 2020. “It’s amaz­ing that there are no lim­its in Abbott’s mind to what his author­i­ty is under the Texas Dis­as­ter Act. He’ll take as much pow­er as the courts and the Leg­is­la­ture will let him have.”

The crum­bling of the state’s gas sup­plies as Arc­tic tem­per­a­tures took hold at the start of the week has been one of the dri­ving fac­tors behind the cas­cade of out­ages.

The calami­ty unfold­ing across Texas is some­what rem­i­nis­cent of the Cal­i­for­nia pow­er cri­sis of 2000–2001 when ener­gy sup­pli­ers with­held and redi­rect­ed elec­tric­i­ty and gas out of state even as it faced short­falls, prompt­ing law­suits. And yet again, even as Cal­i­for­ni­ans endured rolling black­outs amid an extreme heat wave last year, ener­gy sup­pli­ers were export­ing pow­er to neigh­bor­ing states. The state’s grid oper­a­tor lat­er blamed mar­ket-design flaws.

Dan Woodfin, an exec­u­tive at Ercot, said in an inter­view that a lack of gas sup­ply is one of the rea­sons why it’s hav­ing trou­ble get­ting pow­er plants back online.

...

Top State

Texas pro­duces more gas than any oth­er state, with out­put at about 23 bil­lion cubic feet a day before the deep freeze, BloombergNEF data show. That’s about a quar­ter of total pro­duc­tion from the Low­er 48 states. Its two liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas export ter­mi­nals con­sumed about 4 bil­lion cubic feet a day of gas before the polar blast.

Abbott asked the Freeport LNG export ter­mi­nal ear­li­er in the week to dial back its oper­a­tions. Freeport said it was shut­ting down two LNG pro­duc­tion units in response. Gas flows to all U.S. LNG export ter­mi­nals fell to a 2‑year low on Tues­day.

Texas also exports gas by pipeline to Mex­i­co. Gas is flow­ing again via the Nue­va Era con­duit between the two nations after the extreme cold inter­rupt­ed its oper­a­tion ear­li­er in the week, accord­ing to one of the pipeline’s own­ers.

Abbott also said Wednes­day he and oth­er state gov­er­nors had expressed con­cern on a con­fer­ence call with Pres­i­dent Joe Biden about the severe spikes in nat­ur­al gas prices amid the cri­sis. Spot prices in neigh­bor­ing Okla­homa rock­et­ed to over $1,000 per mil­lion British ther­mal units Wednes­day, increas­ing more than 100-fold from a week ear­li­er.

———–

“Texas’ Gas-Export Clam­p­down Shocks Mar­ket as Black­outs Ebb” by Joe Car­roll, Javier Blas, and Jen­nifer A Dlouhy; Bloomberg; 02/17/2021

“Texas Gov­er­nor Greg Abbott on Wednes­day told a media brief­ing that he was ban­ning gas from leav­ing the state through Feb. 21 to ensure in-state pow­er gen­er­a­tors had ample sup­plies. Less than 24 hours lat­er, Texas’s top ener­gy reg­u­la­tor told gas pro­duc­ers to offer sup­plies for sale in-state before ship­ping it else­where, cit­ing the governor’s man­date.”

On Wednes­day, Feb 17, Gov­er­nor Abbott issues an order ban­ning nat­ur­al gas exports from the state. The Rail­road Com­mis­sion over­see­ing the indus­try puts Abbot­t’s words into action. Dif­fer­ent action that leaves a giant loop­hole: the indus­try can con­tin­ue export­ing, but only after first giv­ing local gas pro­duc­ers the oppor­tu­ni­ty to buy the gas instead. Word­ing like that is designed to main­tain a state of ‘busi­ness-almost-as-usu­al’. And with the Nue­va Era US-to-Mex­i­co pipeline report­ed­ly back up and run­ning last Wednes­day, even more gas could have been shipped via pipeline (and loop­hole) in the lat­ter half of last week:

...
Under the Constitution’s so-called com­merce clause, state gov­ern­ments are pro­hib­it­ed from inter­fer­ing in inter­state trade. Abbott said a dis­as­ter dec­la­ra­tion he issued on Feb. 12 gave him lat­i­tude to impose such restric­tions.

...

“This is an author­i­ty that is a state author­i­ty,” Deputy Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Advi­sor Liz Sher­wood-Ran­dall said dur­ing a media brief­ing on Thurs­day. “And we’re in dis­cus­sion with our Mex­i­can part­ners as well as with the state offi­cials around the deci­sion that the state offi­cials are tak­ing.”

...

Abbott asked the Freeport LNG export ter­mi­nal ear­li­er in the week to dial back its oper­a­tions. Freeport said it was shut­ting down two LNG pro­duc­tion units in response. Gas flows to all U.S. LNG export ter­mi­nals fell to a 2‑year low on Tues­day.

Texas also exports gas by pipeline to Mex­i­co. Gas is flow­ing again via the con­duit between the two nations after the extreme cold inter­rupt­ed its oper­a­tion ear­li­er in the week, accord­ing to one of the pipeline’s own­ers.
...

But US-to-Mex­i­co exports still clear­ly plunged, and that’s why the arrival of two US-ori­gin LNG tankers in Mex­i­co was notable news on Thurs­day. One had left Texas before the storm on its way to Asia and was turned around in response to the US’s pipeline flow drop­ping. But the oth­er tanker was from Freeport and it left the day before, the same day Abbott ordered a halt to gas exports from the state (and the Rail­road Com­mis­sion issued its loop­holes to that order):

Reuters

UPDATE 1‑LNG tankers to arrive in Mex­i­co’s ports from the U.S. ‑data

By Reuters Staff
Feb­ru­ary 18, 2021 10:25 AM Updat­ed

(Adds car­go detail, con­text)

MEXICO CITY, Feb 18 (Reuters) — Two tankers car­ry­ing U.S. liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas (LNG) for Mex­i­co are expect­ed to arrive on Thurs­day in the country’s Altami­ra and Man­zanil­lo ports, gov­ern­ment offi­cials said and Refini­tiv Eikon data showed, part of emer­gency pur­chas­es by the gov­ern­ment to ease inter­rupt­ed gas sup­plies.

Mex­i­co resort­ed to LNG sup­plies to par­tial­ly off­set a gas deficit for pow­er gen­er­a­tion after cold weath­er froze sev­er­al key gaslines cross­ing the U.S. bor­der. The gov­er­nor of Texas on Wednes­day banned out-of-state gas sup­plies through Feb. 21 to pri­or­i­tize the state’s util­i­ties.

The Latin Amer­i­can nation is also ramp­ing up elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion for its north­ern states by using coal and fuel oil while ask­ing house­holds and fac­to­ries to lim­it con­sump­tion to avoid out­ages.

Malaysia-flagged LNG tanker Seri Bal­haf could be the first to arrive in Mex­i­co after depart­ing from Freeport, Texas, on Wednes­day. Loaded this week, it is car­ry­ing 151,300 cubic meters of LNG bound for Altami­ra in the Gulf, the data showed.

The sec­ond car­go, on Mar­shall Island-flagged tanker Flex Coura­geous, loaded 162,850 cubic meters of LNG in ear­ly Feb­ru­ary at the Sabine Pass ter­mi­nal, also on the Texas coast.

It was head­ing to Asia after pass­ing the Pana­ma Canal when it was divert­ed on Feb. 16, the data also showed.

The tanker is now head­ing for the Man­zanil­lo port on Mexico’s Pacif­ic coast.

...

Mex­i­co gen­er­ates the bulk of its elec­tric­i­ty from nat­ur­al gas, which most­ly arrives by pipelines from sev­er­al U.S. states.

...

————

“UPDATE 1‑LNG tankers to arrive in Mex­i­co’s ports from the U.S. ‑data” by Reuters Staff; Reuters; 02/18/2021

“Malaysia-flagged LNG tanker Seri Bal­haf could be the first to arrive in Mex­i­co after depart­ing from Freeport, Texas, on Wednes­day. Loaded this week, it is car­ry­ing 151,300 cubic meters of LNG bound for Altami­ra in the Gulf, the data showed.”

Well, hope­ful­ly Freeport even­tu­al­ly got around to halt­ing its exports. At the same time, Mex­i­co needs gas too, which, again, under­scores the real prob­lem here that Texas set up a domes­tic nat­ur­al gas mar­ket built to fail and tried to sprout an export sec­tor out of a it. The only way for Texas to main­tain cred­i­bil­i­ty with its export clients while keep­ing the state’s built-to-fail infra­struc­ture is for the state to man­date the pri­or­i­ti­za­tion of exports over domes­tic con­sump­tion even dur­ing emer­gen­cies like what just tran­spired.

And as the fol­low­ing arti­cle describes, Tex­as­’s gas export clients just might get legal con­fir­ma­tion that exports will be pri­or­i­tized in the future. At least if Rail­road Com­mis­sion­er Jim Wright was cor­rect in his assess­ment that Abbot­t’s ban on exports was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. But whether or not Abbot­t’s rul­ing was unen­force­able, the fact that one of the com­mis­sion­ers on the Rail­road Com­mis­sion over­see­ing the gas pro­duc­ers was say­ing he felt it was unen­force­able is the kind of thing that could have had a lot of the indus­try treat­ing it as unen­force­able:

Reuters

Texas man­date to bar nat­ur­al gas exports dur­ing pow­er cri­sis like­ly unen­force­able — offi­cial

By Jen­nifer Hiller
Feb­ru­ary 18, 2021 11:35 AM Updat­ed

(Reuters) — The Texas oil and gas reg­u­la­tor on Thurs­day alert­ed state nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­ers of a direc­tive to reserve their sup­plies for in-state elec­tric gen­er­a­tion even as one mem­ber ques­tioned whether the direc­tive could be enforced.

Gov­er­nor Greg Abbott on Wednes­day issued an exec­u­tive order restrict­ing gas exports and asked the state reg­u­la­tor to “take all rea­son­able steps” to keep fuel in Texas until Sun­day, a deci­sion chal­lenged by gas importer Mex­i­co.

Days of freez­ing tem­per­a­tures shut in about one-fifth of the region’s refin­ing capac­i­ty, shut­tered oil and nat­ur­al gas wells and affect­ed pow­er gen­er­a­tion in Mex­i­co, which imports Texas nat­ur­al gas.

The Texas Rail­road Com­mis­sion, the state’s oil and gas reg­u­la­tor, like­ly does not have the author­i­ty to inter­fere with con­tracts between com­pa­nies to sell gas out of state, Com­mis­sion­er Jim Wright said in an inter­view on Thurs­day.

Pro­duc­ers “are cer­tain­ly focused on sell­ing every­thing they can into Texas, but they’re oblig­at­ed under con­tract,” said Wright, one of three elect­ed com­mis­sion­ers. “I’m not sure we have author­i­ty to mess with that, nor do I real­ly want to.”

There has been no prac­ti­cal impact from Abbott’s order on the gas mar­ket, said Bernadette John­son, vice pres­i­dent at data firm Enverus. Less nat­ur­al gas has been leav­ing Texas, but that was because pro­duc­ers had to shut in wells because they lost pow­er and equip­ment froze.

“You can’t just stop a pipe at the bor­der and turn it around. That’s not a thing,” said John­son. “The sys­tems are not designed with these crazy orders in mind.”

Wright said he had spo­ken with Enter­prise Prod­uct Part­ners and oth­er pipeline com­pa­nies, and those with extra sup­plies of nat­ur­al gas are sell­ing into the local mar­ket when­ev­er pos­si­ble.

The pow­er cri­sis in Texas is like­ly to be resolved by the week­end, Wright said, echo­ing com­ments by util­i­ty exec­u­tives.

...

Texas pro­duc­ers export gas by pipelines that stretch from Cal­i­for­nia to New Eng­land and ship liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas (LNG) from Freeport and Cor­pus Christi. LNG pro­duc­ers declined to com­ment on the governor’s exec­u­tive order.

————-

“Texas man­date to bar nat­ur­al gas exports dur­ing pow­er cri­sis like­ly unen­force­able — offi­cial” by Jen­nifer Hiller; Reuters; 02/18/2021

“Pro­duc­ers “are cer­tain­ly focused on sell­ing every­thing they can into Texas, but they’re oblig­at­ed under con­tract,” said Wright, one of three elect­ed com­mis­sion­ers. “I’m not sure we have author­i­ty to mess with that, nor do I real­ly want to.””

That was Com­mis­sion­er Jim Wright’s mes­sage to Tex­as­’s gas pro­duc­ers in an inter­view pub­lished on Thurs­day, when the cri­sis has con­sumed the state. The kind of mes­sage that forces us to ask: did the gas pro­duc­ers fol­low­er Abbot­t’s orders or did the exports con­tin­ue? The track-record isn’t great.

And notice the state­ment from Bernadette John­son, vice pres­i­dent at data firm Enverus, about the impact of Abbot­t’s order to halt exports: there has been no prac­ti­cal impact on the gas mar­ket (this is a day after Abbot­t’s order):

...
There has been no prac­ti­cal impact from Abbott’s order on the gas mar­ket, said Bernadette John­son, vice pres­i­dent at data firm Enverus. Less nat­ur­al gas has been leav­ing Texas, but that was because pro­duc­ers had to shut in wells because they lost pow­er and equip­ment froze.

“You can’t just stop a pipe at the bor­der and turn it around. That’s not a thing,” said John­son. “The sys­tems are not designed with these crazy orders in mind.”
...

So you have you to won­der if the lack of impact from Abbot­t’s export halt order was because the exporters did­n’t halt or because the mar­ket­place for gas was already so bro­ken and stuck at the top that it did­n’t mat­ter if more was added? Or per­haps there was no impact because the mar­kets were being manip­u­lat­ed, as they were set up to be? Or per­haps it was because the util­i­ty grid cut the pow­er to the com­pres­sor sta­tions that keep the gas pipelines flow­ing? We don’t know, we just know that Texas broke its elec­tri­cal grid well in advance of this his­toric win­ter storm, and a belat­ed emer­gency ban on exports was­n’t going sud­den­ly fix it, although it did­n’t even help, appar­ent­ly.

How will Texas man­age the ten­sion of being a reli­able inter­na­tion­al exporter while hold­ing onto a domes­tic grid that oper­ates like a rick­ety shake-down sys­tem? Pre­sum­ably with more of the same. But there is one way of help the state main­tain its export capac­i­ties even dur­ing emer­gen­cies while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly secur­ing domes­tic pow­er sup­plies, even dur­ing win­ter emer­gen­cies that impact the whole stat: More wind tur­bines. A lot more wind tur­bines.

Remem­ber that time Don­ald Trump made mil­i­tary aide con­tin­gent on Ukraine inves­ti­gat­ing Joe Biden, and then got impeached over it? It’s one of the sad­der chap­ters of the Trump pres­i­den­cy that’s sud­den­ly become quite top­i­cal fol­low­ing the Russ­ian inva­sion of Ukraine. But there’s anoth­er aspect to that entire sor­did affair that should be much more top­i­cal right now, and would be top­i­cal if it had­n’t large­ly been ignored: the role Har­ry Sargeant III played in the schemes cen­tered around Lev Par­nas and Igor Fru­man to cap­ture the US-to-Ukraine liq­uid nat­ur­al gas (LNG) export mar­kets. Recall how the scheme was cen­tered around replac­ing the super­vi­so­ry board of Ukraine’s state-owned Naftogaz at the same time Fru­man and Par­nas would be grant­ed the author­i­ty to bro­ker the sale of US LNG got Naftogaz on the com­pa­ny’s behalf. In oth­er words, they were try­ing to set up a rigged self-enrich­ing deal that was so cor­rupt it required the pre­emp­tive cor­rup­tion of Naftogaz’s super­vi­so­ry board.

So now that the US LNG exports to not just Ukraine but the whole of Europe look like­ly to explode in com­ing years, it would be inter­est­ing to know how this turn of events has played out in rela­tion to Sar­gen­t’s LNG export busi­ness. And as we’ll see in the fol­low­ing pair of arti­cles, it’s pos­si­ble the con­flict in Ukraine could end up ben­e­fit­ing Sargeant immense­ly. But it has noth­ing to do with Ukrain­ian or Euro­pean LNG exports. Instead, it turns out Sargeant was work­ing on anoth­er major scheme in recent years involv­ing a state-owned com­pa­ny at the same time he was cavort­ing with Par­nas and Fru­man: a part­ner­ship with Venezue­la’s oil giant PDVSA.

It was a poten­tial­ly sig­nif­i­cant deal, involv­ing the reha­bil­i­ta­tion of three oil fields. Sargean­t’s com­pa­ny would get to keep near­ly half the rev­enue. As we’ll see, the deal was more sig­nif­i­cant than just the devel­op­ing of these fields. It was intend­ed to sig­nal to the US that Venezuela was ready to do busi­ness with the US.

There was one big prob­lem: the US sanc­tions against Venezuela that only got worse as time went on. But that was then. With glob­al oil short­ages loom­ing over the US, those sanc­tions are sud­den­ly now look­ing a lot less sol­id.

So should we end up see­ing a lift­ing of those sanc­tions that allows for Venezue­lan oil, it’s going to be worth not­ing that one key play­ers involved with the Trump team’s schemes to cap­ture the Ukrain­ian LNG export mar­kets is set to be one of the big win­ners from the lift­ing of those sanc­tions.

Ok, first, here’s an arti­cle from last week about the open­ing of dis­cus­sions between the US and Venezuela over the lift­ing of sanc­tion. Dis­cus­sions that appear to be cen­tered around PDVSA:

Reuters

UPDATE 2‑U.S., Venezuela dis­cuss eas­ing of sanc­tions, make lit­tle progress ‑sources

By Mar­i­an­na Par­ra­ga, Vivian Sequera, Matt Spetal­nick, Diego Oré
March 6, 2022 6:03 PM Updat­ed

* Both sides made ‘max­i­mal­ist’ demands — sources

* U.S. del­e­ga­tion agreed to fol­low-up meet­ing, no date set (Adds that U.S. hostage envoy was part of vis­it­ing del­e­ga­tion)

CARACAS/WASHINGTON, March 6 (Reuters) — U.S. and Venezue­lan offi­cials dis­cussed the pos­si­bil­i­ty of eas­ing oil sanc­tions on Venezuela but made scant progress toward a deal in their first high-lev­el bilat­er­al talks in years, five sources famil­iar with the mat­ter said, as Wash­ing­ton seeks to sep­a­rate Rus­sia from one of its key allies.

Both sides used Saturday’s meet­ing in Cara­cas to present what one of the sources described as “max­i­mal­ist” demands, reflect­ing long­time ten­sions between the West­ern Hemisphere’s main pow­er and one of its biggest ide­o­log­i­cal foes.

A U.S. del­e­ga­tion led by Juan Gon­za­lez — the top White House Latin Amer­i­ca advis­er — and Ambas­sador James Sto­ry held talks at the Miraflo­res palace with social­ist Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro and his Vice Pres­i­dent, Del­cy Rodriguez, the sources said.

Roger Carstens, the spe­cial pres­i­den­tial envoy for hostage affairs, was also a mem­ber of the U.S. group and made the case to the Venezuela gov­ern­ment for the release of Amer­i­can cit­i­zens and dual nation­als held there, includ­ing six Cit­go exec­u­tives, accord­ing to one per­son famil­iar with the mat­ter.

U.S. offi­cials saw the meet­ing as a chance to gauge whether Venezuela, one of Russia’s clos­est Latin Amer­i­can allies, is pre­pared to dis­tance itself from Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin over his inva­sion of Ukraine, a source in Wash­ing­ton said.

Wash­ing­ton also wants to iden­ti­fy alter­na­tive oil sup­plies to fill the gap if it seeks a boy­cott of Moscow’s ener­gy indus­try. Venezuela could boost crude exports if Wash­ing­ton eas­es sanc­tions.

The White House, the U.S. State Depart­ment and Venezuela’s Infor­ma­tion min­istry declined com­ment.

The U.S. will­ing­ness to re-engage after years of shun­ning such con­tact appeared to be a boost for Maduro.

The meet­ing came as Venezuela’s finan­cial life­line to Rus­sia is fray­ing under sanc­tions on Moscow fol­low­ing its mil­i­tary onslaught in Ukraine, which Rus­sia calls a “spe­cial oper­a­tion”. Cara­cas used the talks to press for U.S. sanc­tions relief.

Venezuela has asked Rus­sia in recent days to unfreeze oil pro­ceeds at sev­er­al Russ­ian banks black­list­ed by the Unit­ed States, espe­cial­ly the Promsvyazbank (PSB), where Venezuela’s state-run oil com­pa­ny PDVSA and the Defense Min­istry have bank accounts, two sep­a­rate sources said.

In 2019, as part of U.S. sanc­tions on Venezuela, anoth­er bank wide­ly used for trade with Rus­sia, the Evro­fi­nance Mosnar­bank, was black­list­ed, forc­ing PDVSA to move its col­lect­ing accounts to oth­er banks.

In the talks, Wash­ing­ton sought guar­an­tees of free pres­i­den­tial elec­tions, broad reforms of Venezuela’s oil indus­try to facil­i­tate pro­duc­tion and exports by for­eign firms and the government’s pub­lic con­dem­na­tion of the Ukraine inva­sion, which Maduro has defend­ed, three peo­ple famil­iar with the mat­ter said.

As a con­ces­sion, the U.S. offi­cials were will­ing to con­sid­er tem­porar­i­ly allow­ing Venezuela to use the SWIFT sys­tem, which facil­i­tates finan­cial trans­ac­tions between banks world­wide, to move mon­ey to oth­er accounts, one of the sources said.

Maduro sought a total lift­ing of sanc­tions pro­hibit­ing Venezuela’s oil exports, the removal of sanc­tions on him and oth­er Venezue­lan offi­cials and the return to the state’s con­trol of PDVSA’s U.S. sub­sidiary Cit­go Petro­le­um, sources said.

Eas­ing oil sanc­tions could start by allow­ing com­pa­nies includ­ing U.S. Chevron Corp, India’s ONGC and Euro­peans Eni, Rep­sol and Mau­rel & Prom to trade car­goes of Venezue­lan oil. Those firms have made sep­a­rate requests to Biden’s admin­is­tra­tion, but no deci­sions have been made.

‘ANXIOUS FOR SANCTIONS RELIEF’?

Even if Wash­ing­ton does not accede to Maduro’s demands, he could use the U.S. meet­ing to pres­sure Rus­sia to allow Venezue­lan mon­ey to con­tin­ue flow­ing, two of the sources said.

“Yes, Maduro is anx­ious for sanc­tions relief. No, he is not inter­est­ed in shift­ing alliances. This is tac­ti­cal,” Eric Farnsworth, head of the Wash­ing­ton office of the Coun­cil of the Amer­i­c­as, said on Sat­ur­day on Twit­ter. “(The) U.S. must be clear-eyed about this, not naive.”

...

The U.S. offi­cials agreed to a fol­low-up meet­ing but no date was set, sources said.

Aides to Venezue­lan oppo­si­tion leader Juan Guai­do were only noti­fied about the meet­ing on Sat­ur­day morn­ing. Guai­do was rec­og­nized by the Unit­ed States and dozens of oth­er nations as Venezuela’s right­ful leader after they dis­missed Maduro’s 2018 re-elec­tion as a sham, but sev­er­al coun­tries have since dropped their recog­ni­tion.

...

———–

“UPDATE 2‑U.S., Venezuela dis­cuss eas­ing of sanc­tions, make lit­tle progress ‑sources” by Mar­i­an­na Par­ra­ga, Vivian Sequera, Matt Spetal­nick, Diego Oré; Reuters; 03/06/2022

“Wash­ing­ton also wants to iden­ti­fy alter­na­tive oil sup­plies to fill the gap if it seeks a boy­cott of Moscow’s ener­gy indus­try. Venezuela could boost crude exports if Wash­ing­ton eas­es sanc­tions.”

It’s not a mys­tery. The West is fac­ing an oil shock and one of the fastest ways to address it is the eas­ing of exist­ing sanc­tions against sanc­tioned coun­tries. Hence the sud­den nego­ti­a­tions, with an empha­sis on Venezuela’s state-run oil com­pa­ny PDVSA:

...
Venezuela has asked Rus­sia in recent days to unfreeze oil pro­ceeds at sev­er­al Russ­ian banks black­list­ed by the Unit­ed States, espe­cial­ly the Promsvyazbank (PSB), where Venezuela’s state-run oil com­pa­ny PDVSA and the Defense Min­istry have bank accounts, two sep­a­rate sources said.

In 2019, as part of U.S. sanc­tions on Venezuela, anoth­er bank wide­ly used for trade with Rus­sia, the Evro­fi­nance Mosnar­bank, was black­list­ed, forc­ing PDVSA to move its col­lect­ing accounts to oth­er banks.

In the talks, Wash­ing­ton sought guar­an­tees of free pres­i­den­tial elec­tions, broad reforms of Venezuela’s oil indus­try to facil­i­tate pro­duc­tion and exports by for­eign firms and the government’s pub­lic con­dem­na­tion of the Ukraine inva­sion, which Maduro has defend­ed, three peo­ple famil­iar with the mat­ter said.

As a con­ces­sion, the U.S. offi­cials were will­ing to con­sid­er tem­porar­i­ly allow­ing Venezuela to use the SWIFT sys­tem, which facil­i­tates finan­cial trans­ac­tions between banks world­wide, to move mon­ey to oth­er accounts, one of the sources said.

Maduro sought a total lift­ing of sanc­tions pro­hibit­ing Venezuela’s oil exports, the removal of sanc­tions on him and oth­er Venezue­lan offi­cials and the return to the state’s con­trol of PDVSA’s U.S. sub­sidiary Cit­go Petro­le­um, sources said.
...

Next, here’s a look back at the sur­prise deal worked out by Har­ry Sargeant back at the begin­ning of 2019. A deal to reha­bil­i­tate PDVSA’s oil fields in exchange for near­ly half the rev­enue. A block­buster deal with one nag­ging prob­lem: the major US sanc­tions:

Reuters

Exclu­sive: Meet­ing Maduro — Inside a U.S. busi­ness­man­’s oil deal with Venezuela

By Aram Ros­ton
Feb­ru­ary 28, 2019 12:20 AM Updat­ed

GULF STREAM, Fla. (Reuters) — In Novem­ber 2017, Har­ry Sargeant III, a wealthy Amer­i­can busi­ness­man, flew to Venezuela to see about buy­ing some oil.

Sargeant, the for­mer finance chair­man of the Flori­da Repub­li­can Par­ty, was look­ing to pur­chase a New Jer­sey asphalt plant that need­ed a steady sup­ply of the heavy crude that Venezuela has in abun­dance.

Nev­er mind that the South Amer­i­can coun­try was in the cross-hairs of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion.

The trip got off to a wor­ry­ing start when Sargeant’s plane was direct­ed to a spe­cial hangar in Cara­cas and sur­round­ed by sol­diers. But what fol­lowed, he says, was priv­i­leged treat­ment, includ­ing an unex­pect­ed meet­ing the next day with Nico­las Maduro, Venezuela’s social­ist pres­i­dent.

With­in a year, Sargeant had inked an attrac­tive oil­field agree­ment to help raise plum­met­ing crude pro­duc­tion in Venezuela, whose econ­o­my is in a free fall. A new Delaware com­pa­ny called Ere­pla Ser­vices LLC, of which Sargeant is a share­hold­er, would reha­bil­i­tate three trou­bled oil­fields in exchange for almost half the rev­enue.

...

Sargeant’s tim­ing for the ven­ture turned out to be lousy: On Jan­u­ary 28, just weeks after news broke of Sargeant’s part­ner­ship with Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA), the U.S. gov­ern­ment unleashed tough new sanc­tions ban­ning Amer­i­cans from work­ing with Venezuela’s state-run oil firm. It was part of a wider U.S. pres­sure cam­paign to top­ple Maduro’s gov­ern­ment.

Sargeant acknowl­edges sanc­tions have derailed his deal.

Still his will­ing­ness to do busi­ness with a ruler the Trump admin­is­tra­tion seeks to under­mine reflects a long tra­di­tion of oil com­pa­nies mak­ing deals with dis­fa­vored gov­ern­ments around the world. Pri­or to the Jan­u­ary sanc­tions, the Unit­ed States had been the biggest cash-pay­ing cus­tomer for Venezuela’s oil, import­ing more than 500,000 bar­rels dai­ly.

The intend­ed part­ner­ship also high­lights Venezuela’s des­per­a­tion. With West­ern oil majors steer­ing clear of new invest­ment there, the coun­try has turned to Chi­na and Rus­sia as well as upstart firms like Ere­pla. Maduro has long sought an end to what he calls an eco­nom­ic war being waged against his gov­ern­ment by the Unit­ed States. His embrace of an Amer­i­can com­pa­ny belies his pub­lic denun­ci­a­tions of Trump.

“There is no doubt they want­ed to send a mes­sage that Venezuela was open to Amer­i­can busi­ness,” Sargeant said.

...

FACE TO FACE WITH MADURO

Sargeant says his busi­ness deal­ings in Venezuela date to the late 1980s. A Sargeant fam­i­ly com­pa­ny claimed in court that it was forced out of Venezuela’s asphalt busi­ness by PDVSA in 2005. And the firm, records show, once owed a $52 mil­lion judg­ment to PDVSA.

He says he decid­ed to give the coun­try anoth­er shot on his search for heavy crude because he still had indus­try con­tacts there.

The day after Sargeant’s Novem­ber 2017 arrival, he said, a small con­voy of SUVs took him to a house at the Fuerte Tiu­na mil­i­tary base in Cara­cas. Inside, he said offi­cials showed off a room with var­i­ous live snakes, some ven­omous, on dis­play in glass cages.

Sargeant thought he would be meet­ing only with a PDVSA offi­cial he knew. Instead he said he found him­self face-to-face with Maduro, whom he said was “friend­ly but seri­ous.”

Maduro, he said, want­ed him to explain why Amer­i­can com­pa­nies were not invest­ing in the oil sec­tor there. And, with the help of a trans­la­tor, the Venezue­lan pres­i­dent waxed philo­soph­i­cal about the rav­aged econ­o­my, Sargeant recalls.

“He said Chi­na rein­vent­ed itself and the Venezue­lans can rein­vent them­selves,” Sargeant said.

Sargeant did not end up pur­chas­ing the New Jer­sey asphalt plant. Instead, a few months lat­er, he and his team began dis­cussing a pro­duc­tion ven­ture with PDVSA, accord­ing to Ali Rah­man, a Wash­ing­ton DC-based exec­u­tive at Ere­pla.

“We went in say­ing ‘Hey, we’re an Amer­i­can oil com­pa­ny, we want to help revi­tal­ize the Venezue­lan oil sec­tor, and we want to do it wav­ing the Amer­i­can flag.’”

CONTROVERSIAL PAST

Sargeant’s tol­er­ance for risk-tak­ing has tak­en him to haz­ardous cor­ners of the globe where some of his busi­ness deal­ings have become tan­gled in inves­ti­ga­tions and law­suits.

Dur­ing the height of the Iraq War, one of his firms, Inter­na­tion­al Oil Trad­ing Com­pa­ny (IOTC,) won lucra­tive con­tracts from the Defense Logis­tics Agency to sup­ply the U.S. mil­i­tary with fuel.

Dis­putes ensued at the Armed Forces Board of Con­tract Appeals. The U.S. gov­ern­ment in the civ­il pro­ceed­ings claimed IOTC used “bribery and fraud” to win per­mis­sion from the nation of Jor­dan to trans­port oil across its ter­ri­to­ry. IOTC and Jor­dan denied those alle­ga­tions at the time.

Ear­ly last year the U.S. gov­ern­ment set­tled, and agreed to pay IOTC $40 mil­lion, in what Sargeant says is a full vin­di­ca­tion.

His pro­posed deal with PDVSA is at odds with Repub­li­can Par­ty efforts in his home state of Flori­da, a key bat­tle­ground for the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion and where an esti­mat­ed 200,000 Venezue­lans have recent­ly set­tled.

Trump made an appeal to Venezue­lan exiles at a recent ral­ly in Flori­da, where he con­demned Maduro’s social­ist gov­ern­ment. Flori­da Sen­a­tor Mar­co Rubio pushed for the U.S. ban on Venezue­lan oil imports.

Nei­ther the White House or Rubio respond­ed to a request for com­ment about Sargeant.

Sargeant insists it is not his con­cern who rules Venezuela.

“Our busi­ness is with PDVSA, the insti­tu­tion,” he said. “We are not into the pol­i­tics of the sit­u­a­tion.”

————-

“Exclu­sive: Meet­ing Maduro — Inside a U.S. busi­ness­man­’s oil deal with Venezuela” by Aram Ros­ton; Reuters; 02/28/2019

“With­in a year, Sargeant had inked an attrac­tive oil­field agree­ment to help raise plum­met­ing crude pro­duc­tion in Venezuela, whose econ­o­my is in a free fall. A new Delaware com­pa­ny called Ere­pla Ser­vices LLC, of which Sargeant is a share­hold­er, would reha­bil­i­tate three trou­bled oil­fields in exchange for almost half the rev­enue.”

Things were look­ing up for Har­ry Sargeant in the begin­ning of 2019. On top of all the schem­ing involv­ing the cap­ture of the US LNG export mar­ket to Ukraine, Sargeant was set to secure a major part­ner­ship with Venezue­la’s state oil pro­duc­er. The only prob­lem was the new sanc­tions:

...
Sargeant’s tim­ing for the ven­ture turned out to be lousy: On Jan­u­ary 28, just weeks after news broke of Sargeant’s part­ner­ship with Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA), the U.S. gov­ern­ment unleashed tough new sanc­tions ban­ning Amer­i­cans from work­ing with Venezuela’s state-run oil firm. It was part of a wider U.S. pres­sure cam­paign to top­ple Maduro’s gov­ern­ment.

Sargeant acknowl­edges sanc­tions have derailed his deal.
...

And now the nego­ti­a­tions over the lift­ing of those sanc­tions are under­way, at the same time the US LNG export mar­ket is poised to explode. The future is bright for Hen­ry oil and gas petro­le­um empire.

Of course, the oth­er big win­ners to the lift­ing of those sanc­tions would be the Venezue­lan peo­ple. In that sense it’s hard to argue against these nego­ti­a­tions. Still, it’s all a reminder that the war in Ukraine is a major boon for some of the worst inter­ests on the plan­et, regard­less of the out­come.

In oth­er news...

Fol­low­ing up on the sto­ry of Har­ry Sargeant III’s renewed efforts to secure Venezue­lan oil from the state-owned PVSDA fol­low­ing the Russ­ian inva­sion of Ukraine and West­’s sanc­tion­ing of Russ­ian oil, here’s an inter­est­ing twist­ed to that already twist­ed sit­u­a­tion: It turns out Sargeant Marine, one of the largest asphalt sup­pli­ers in the world, was found guilty of brib­ing gov­ern­ment offi­cials in mul­ti­ple South Amer­i­can coun­tries, includ­ing Venezuela. The bribery report­ed­ly took place from 2010–2018, with a guilty plea com­ing in Sep­tem­ber 2018.

The same month, a for­mer PDVSA man­ag­er once in charge of asphalt sales was arrest­ed in a relat­ed case. This was the sev­enth per­son among a group of Sargeant Marine exec­u­tives, traders, agents and for­mer Venezue­lan offi­cials charged in the bribery scheme.

Har­ry him­self was­n’t charged in the scheme, but his broth­er, Daniel, end­ed up plead­ing guilty. The broth­ers were co-own­ers of the asphalt com­pa­ny and had been involved in a legal dis­pute over con­trol. Har­ry even­tu­al­ly walked away from the fam­i­ly firm in 2015. That means at least some of the bribes were paid while he was still part of the com­pa­ny.

Of note, 2015 is the same year dutch firm Vitol acquired a 50% stake in the firm. At the same time Marine Sargeant was fac­ing these charges, a for­mer oil trad­er for Vitol was charged with pay­ing brides to Petroe­cuador. It’s the kind of news coin­ci­dence that sug­gests the bribery did­n’t end with Vitol’s invest­ment. And also sug­gests this is a real­ly cor­rupt indus­try.

So it remains unclear just how direct­ly involved Har­ry Sargeant III was in the bribes his asphalt firm was pay­ing to PVDSA and oth­er Venezue­lan offi­cials back when he was still part of the Sargeant Marine fam­i­ly firm. But the fact that his oil com­pa­ny is cur­rent­ly poised to get new PVSDA con­tract sure sug­gests the bribes did­n’t hurt Sargean­t’s stand­ing in Venezuela. Quite the oppo­site:

Asso­ci­at­ed Press

US firm pleads guilty to pay­ing bribes in Brazil, Venezuela

By JOSHUA GOODMAN
Sep­tem­ber 23, 2020

MEDELLIN, Colom­bia (AP) — A major U.S. asphalt com­pa­ny agreed to pay $16.6 mil­lion in fines while plead­ing guilty Tues­day to fed­er­al charges that it paid mil­lions in bribes to offi­cials in Brazil, Ecuador and Venezuela for almost a decade to win lucra­tive con­tracts.

The plea agree­ment by Sargeant Marine Inc. is part of a broad­er crack­down on cor­rupt deal­ings in South America’s com­modi­ties mar­kets.

In what appears to be a relat­ed case, a for­mer oil trad­er at Switzer­land-based Vitol was charged Tues­day with pay­ing $870,000 in bribes to for­mer Ecuado­ri­an offi­cials from 2015 to 2020 in exchange for fuel oil con­tracts. Vitol, which is not named in the indict­ment, pur­chased half of Sargeant Marine in 2015.

Fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors in Brook­lyn said Sargeant Marine and its affil­i­ates paid bribes between 2010 and 2018 for con­tracts with state-run oil com­pa­nies in the three South Amer­i­can coun­tries, all of which were run by left­ist gov­ern­ments at the time. The Boca Raton, Flori­da-com­pa­ny net­ted more than $38 mil­lion in prof­its as a result of the bribes.

Recip­i­ents in Brazil, where the bulk of prof­its were earned, includ­ed a con­gress­man, a Cab­i­net min­is­ter and senior exec­u­tives at state-run Petro­bras dur­ing the admin­is­tra­tions of for­mer Pres­i­dents Luiz Ina­cio Lula da Sil­va and his hand­picked suc­ces­sor, Dil­ma Rouss­eff. None of the for­eign offi­cials are iden­ti­fied by name in the plea agree­ment but Brazil­ian pros­e­cu­tors in 2018 charged a for­mer con­gress­man, Can­di­do Vac­carez­za, for nego­ti­at­ing with Sargeant Marine the bribes paid to Petro­bras. Vac­carez­za at the time was leader of the rul­ing Work­ers’ Par­ty in the low­er house.

Recent­ly unsealed court fil­ings indi­cate that Daniel Sargeant, who used to run Sargeant Marine, qui­et­ly plead­ed guilty last Decem­ber to con­spir­a­cy to com­mit mon­ey laun­der­ing and vio­late the For­eign Cor­rupt Prac­tices Act, which bars Amer­i­cans from pay­ing over­seas offi­cials in exchange for busi­ness. He is await­ing sen­tenc­ing after pay­ing $300,000 in cash bail. This month, a for­mer PDVSA man­ag­er once in charge of asphalt sales was arrest­ed in a relat­ed case, bring­ing to sev­en the total num­ber of Sargeant Marine exec­u­tives, traders, agents and for­mer Venezue­lan offi­cials tied to the long run­ning bribery scheme.

An attor­ney rep­re­sent­ing Sargeant Marine declined to com­ment.

False con­sult­ing con­tracts and fake invoic­es were used to pay inter­me­di­aries who nego­ti­at­ed the bribes in the three coun­tries, accord­ing to the plea agree­ment. Mem­bers of the con­spir­a­cy, who are not iden­ti­fied by name, would nego­ti­ate the pay­ments by com­pos­ing draft mes­sages in a U.S.-based email account for which they shared the login and pass­word infor­ma­tion.

After a com­pa­ny affil­i­at­ed with Sargeant Marine com­plet­ed ship­ments of asphalt to Petro­bras in August 2010, the affiliate’s exec­u­tive emailed Daniel Sargeant stat­ing, “Wow, guess last Brazil trip with crooks paid off. Should go again before con­tract next year gets hot and heavy,” accord­ing to the plea agree­ment.

Sim­i­lar tac­tics were used in Venezuela, whose tar-like crude is among the best in the world for mak­ing asphalt. Con­fi­den­tial infor­ma­tion obtained through the bribery scheme and which gave Sargeant Marine a com­pet­i­tive edge in its deal­ings with PDVSA after 2015 was called by the code name “choco­lates.”

Sargeant Marine was “one of the largest asphalt providers in the world,” accord­ing the indict­ment. But the com­pa­ny is a shad­ow of its for­mer self amid a sell off of assets that fol­lowed a bit­ter, mul­ti-year legal fight between Sargeant and his old­er broth­er, Har­ry Sargeant III, for con­trol of the asphalt trad­ing com­pa­ny start­ed by their father.

The old­er Sargeant, a promi­nent Repub­li­can donor in Flori­da, was not named in the indict­ment or his brother’s plea agree­ment. Some of the bribes were paid before he was oust­ed from the fam­i­ly busi­ness.

Sargeant Marine also acknowl­edged pay­ing bribes in 2014 from off­shore accounts to an offi­cial work­ing for state-run Petroe­cuador, which was look­ing to sup­ply the coun­try with asphalt.

Sep­a­rate­ly, Javier Aguilar, a for­mer oil trad­er for Vitol, was charged with pay­ing bribes to Petroe­cuador, accord­ing to a crim­i­nal com­plaint also brought by fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors in Brook­lyn and unsealed Tues­day. Vitol acquired a 50% stake in Sargeant Marine in 2015 for an undis­closed amount.

...

————

“US firm pleads guilty to pay­ing bribes in Brazil, Venezuela” by JOSHUA GOODMAN; Asso­ci­at­ed Press; 09/23/2020

“Fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors in Brook­lyn said Sargeant Marine and its affil­i­ates paid bribes between 2010 and 2018 for con­tracts with state-run oil com­pa­nies in the three South Amer­i­can coun­tries, all of which were run by left­ist gov­ern­ments at the time. The Boca Raton, Flori­da-com­pa­ny net­ted more than $38 mil­lion in prof­its as a result of the bribes.”

The ‘ol quid pro quo strikes again. Bribes for asphalt con­tracts. That’s what Sargeant Marine plead guilty engag­ing in from 2010–2018, includ­ing in Venezuela where bribes involv­ing PDVSA:

...
After a com­pa­ny affil­i­at­ed with Sargeant Marine com­plet­ed ship­ments of asphalt to Petro­bras in August 2010, the affiliate’s exec­u­tive emailed Daniel Sargeant stat­ing, “Wow, guess last Brazil trip with crooks paid off. Should go again before con­tract next year gets hot and heavy,” accord­ing to the plea agree­ment.

Sim­i­lar tac­tics were used in Venezuela, whose tar-like crude is among the best in the world for mak­ing asphalt. Con­fi­den­tial infor­ma­tion obtained through the bribery scheme and which gave Sargeant Marine a com­pet­i­tive edge in its deal­ings with PDVSA after 2015 was called by the code name “choco­lates.”
...

And notice how Vitol, which pur­chased half of Sargeant Marine in 2015, had one of its own traders plead guilty to bribery around this same time in a seem­ing­ly unre­lat­ed bribery case. The indus­try runs on graft:

...
In what appears to be a relat­ed case, a for­mer oil trad­er at Switzer­land-based Vitol was charged Tues­day with pay­ing $870,000 in bribes to for­mer Ecuado­ri­an offi­cials from 2015 to 2020 in exchange for fuel oil con­tracts. Vitol, which is not named in the indict­ment, pur­chased half of Sargeant Marine in 2015.

...

Sep­a­rate­ly, Javier Aguilar, a for­mer oil trad­er for Vitol, was charged with pay­ing bribes to Petroe­cuador, accord­ing to a crim­i­nal com­plaint also brought by fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors in Brook­lyn and unsealed Tues­day. Vitol acquired a 50% stake in Sargeant Marine in 2015 for an undis­closed amount.
...

And it just so hap­pens that the per­son who ran Sar­gent Marine and plead­ed guilty to these charges was Daniel Sargeant, the younger broth­er of Har­ry Sar­gent III. The two were report­ed­ly involved in a bit­ter mul­ti-year dis­pute over con­trol of com­pa­ny. And while Har­ry Sargeant III was­n’t named in the indict­ment, there’s no indi­ca­tion he did­n’t ben­e­fit from the graft:

...
Recent­ly unsealed court fil­ings indi­cate that Daniel Sargeant, who used to run Sargeant Marine, qui­et­ly plead­ed guilty last Decem­ber to con­spir­a­cy to com­mit mon­ey laun­der­ing and vio­late the For­eign Cor­rupt Prac­tices Act, which bars Amer­i­cans from pay­ing over­seas offi­cials in exchange for busi­ness. He is await­ing sen­tenc­ing after pay­ing $300,000 in cash bail. This month, a for­mer PDVSA man­ag­er once in charge of asphalt sales was arrest­ed in a relat­ed case, bring­ing to sev­en the total num­ber of Sargeant Marine exec­u­tives, traders, agents and for­mer Venezue­lan offi­cials tied to the long run­ning bribery scheme.

...

Sargeant Marine was “one of the largest asphalt providers in the world,” accord­ing the indict­ment. But the com­pa­ny is a shad­ow of its for­mer self amid a sell off of assets that fol­lowed a bit­ter, mul­ti-year legal fight between Sargeant and his old­er broth­er, Har­ry Sargeant III, for con­trol of the asphalt trad­ing com­pa­ny start­ed by their father.

The old­er Sargeant, a promi­nent Repub­li­can donor in Flori­da, was not named in the indict­ment or his brother’s plea agree­ment. Some of the bribes were paid before he was oust­ed from the fam­i­ly busi­ness.

Sargeant Marine also acknowl­edged pay­ing bribes in 2014 from off­shore accounts to an offi­cial work­ing for state-run Petroe­cuador, which was look­ing to sup­ply the coun­try with asphalt.
...

But as we can see from the piece, when news of the Sargeant Marine graft pros­e­cu­tion broke, Har­ry has an answer for ques­tions revolv­ing around whether or not he was involved or aware of the bribery while it was still with the fam­i­ly firm: nope, but because he effec­tive­ly left the firm in the ear­ly 2000’s to start his own com­pa­nies. At least that’s the sto­ry, which was prob­a­bly an impor­tant sto­ry to put out there giv­en Sargean­t’s sta­tus as a Flori­da GOP mys­tery sug­ar­dad­dy who helps out Repub­li­cans in legal trou­ble:

Flori­da Phoenix

A peek at bil­lion­aire Har­ry Sargeant III, a some­what mys­te­ri­ous fig­ure in FL GOP cir­cles and else­where

Lucy Mor­gan
Sep­tem­ber 27, 2020 7:00 am

For years, Flori­da ener­gy bil­lion­aire Har­ry Sargeant III has been a some­what mys­te­ri­ous fig­ure who sur­faces from time to time in Repub­li­can polit­i­cal cir­cles.

A grad­u­ate of Flori­da State Uni­ver­si­ty and fra­ter­ni­ty broth­er of for­mer Flori­da Gov. Char­lie Crist, St. Peters­burg devel­op­er Brent Sem­bler and oth­er notable Pi Kap­pa Alpha broth­ers at the uni­ver­si­ty, Sargeant is a for­mer marine fight­er pilot who has donat­ed more than a mil­lion dol­lars to ath­let­ic pro­grams, the busi­ness school and his old fra­ter­ni­ty.

A plaque at the Pike House describes him as “the most pow­er­ful man no one knows.’’

Sargeant, a res­i­dent of Gulf Stream, a tiny exclu­sive town in Palm Beach Coun­ty, has often been a finan­cial bene­fac­tor to GOP can­di­dates and Repub­li­cans in trou­ble with the law, such as for­mer GOP Chair­man Jim Greer. He has also pro­vid­ed air­planes for Crist and oth­er Repub­li­cans as they trav­eled the state for cam­paigns.

Sargeant is also some­thing of a cit­i­zen of the world. He was sued by the broth­er of the King of Jor­dan in Palm Beach who won a $28.8‑million ver­dict for being cut out of a $1.4‑billion defense con­tract that allowed Sargeant to trans­port fuel through Jor­dan to Amer­i­can troops in Iraq. He has pur­sued oil and asphalt and marine deals in some of the most dan­ger­ous places in the world.

Sargeant has also gained some fame in the inves­ti­ga­tions swirling around Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump.

News sto­ries pub­lished ear­li­er this year sug­gest Sargeant met with Trump at Mar-A-Lago and was involved in Ukraine busi­ness affairs with Lev Par­nas and Igor Fru­man, two Sovi­et born busi­ness­men who worked with for­mer New York City May­or Rudy Giu­liani on back chan­nel efforts to tar­nish for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden.

Sargeant, in a writ­ten state­ment, denied any involve­ment in the Ukraine affair.

He did recall an infor­mal din­ner with Par­nas and Fru­man at an ener­gy trade show in Hous­ton in March 2019, but said there was no Ukraine deal. He said he has nev­er vis­it­ed Mar-a-Lago.

Last week, Sargeant Marine Inc., a fam­i­ly owned com­pa­ny run by his father, moth­er and two broth­ers, was indict­ed in New York on charges of brib­ing offi­cials in Brazil, Venezuela and Ecuador.

The com­pa­ny has admit­ted guilt and agreed to pay a $16.6‑million fine. His broth­er, Daniel Sargeant, has also plead­ed guilty and been released on $300,000 bail pend­ing sen­tenc­ing.

Fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors in New York say the com­pa­ny paid mil­lions of dol­lars in bribes to for­eign offi­cials in the three coun­tries to obtain con­tracts for the pur­chase or sale of asphalt to state owned or con­trolled oil com­pa­nies. The pay­ments were made between 2010 and 2018.

Act­ing Assis­tant Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bri­an C. Rab­bitt said the charges against Sargeant Marine’s ille­gal schemes are part of an effort to hold com­pa­nies and their exec­u­tives respon­si­ble for inter­na­tion­al cor­rup­tion.

Har­ry III was not involved in the busi­ness, although he owns sev­er­al ener­gy and marine busi­ness­es.

For sev­er­al years he has been at odds with oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers, par­tic­u­lar­ly his broth­ers. The entire fam­i­ly was embroiled in a long-run­ning bit­ter series of law­suits that end­ed with a 2015 bank­rupt­cy set­tle­ment.

Har­ry III walked away with a cool $56-mil­lion. In return he gave up any claim to own­er­ship of Sargeant Marine and oth­er fam­i­ly com­pa­nies.

There were 14 dif­fer­ent law­suits in sev­er­al states in addi­tion to the bank­rupt­cy.

The law­suits pro­duced sala­cious tes­ti­mo­ny that could only arise in a vicious dis­pute between mil­lion­aires.

Har­ry III accused his broth­er Daniel of spend­ing mil­lions on his sons’ pur­suits of race car dri­ving and oth­er ven­tures. Mean­while, Daniel accused Sargeant III of being a spend­thrift on things such as a $7.5‑million man­sion, pri­vate jets and exot­ic cars.

There were alle­ga­tions of sex tapes and accu­sa­tions that Har­ry III’s tele­phone mes­sages were stolen.

Har­ry III’s long­time lawyer, Chris Kise of Tal­la­has­see, explained the sit­u­a­tion sur­round­ing the law­suits Fri­day, say­ing Har­ry III went his sep­a­rate way in the ear­ly 2000’s, with his own asphalt, marine and oil com­pa­nies and was not involved in the busi­ness­es his father and broth­ers were oper­at­ing.

...

And Har­ry III, a tough ex-Marine fight­er pilot, now 62 years old, has spent the last six months strug­gling to recov­er from COVID-19. He spent much of it in the hos­pi­tal on a ven­ti­la­tor and arti­fi­cial lung.

“His doc­tors can’t fig­ure out which drug helped, Kise said, because the only thing they didn’t do was put bleach in his veins.”

————

“A peek at bil­lion­aire Har­ry Sargeant III, a some­what mys­te­ri­ous fig­ure in FL GOP cir­cles and else­where” by Lucy Mor­gan; Flori­da Phoenix; 09/27/2020

“A plaque at the Pike House describes him as “the most pow­er­ful man no one knows.’’”

The most pow­er­ful man no one knows. It’s kind of an iron­ic plaque if you think about it. And yet there’s more than a grain of truth to it. The guy clear­ly has clout. At least in Flori­da’s Repub­li­can Par­ty.

But when it comes to the fam­i­ly’s Sargeant Marine firm, Har­ry was appar­ent­ly bare­ly involved since the ear­ly 2000’s. At least that was the sto­ry back in Sep­tem­ber of 2020:

...
For sev­er­al years he has been at odds with oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers, par­tic­u­lar­ly his broth­ers. The entire fam­i­ly was embroiled in a long-run­ning bit­ter series of law­suits that end­ed with a 2015 bank­rupt­cy set­tle­ment.

Har­ry III walked away with a cool $56-mil­lion. In return he gave up any claim to own­er­ship of Sargeant Marine and oth­er fam­i­ly com­pa­nies.

...

Har­ry III’s long­time lawyer, Chris Kise of Tal­la­has­see, explained the sit­u­a­tion sur­round­ing the law­suits Fri­day, say­ing Har­ry III went his sep­a­rate way in the ear­ly 2000’s, with his own asphalt, marine and oil com­pa­nies and was not involved in the busi­ness­es his father and broth­ers were oper­at­ing.
...

But Sargeant has­n’t just been focused on his busi­ness­es all these years. He became a major fig­ure in the Flori­da GOP too. And not just a finan­cial backer. He pro­vides planes and even help for GOP­ers in trou­ble with the law like for­mer Flori­da GOP Chair­man Jim Greer:

...
Sargeant, a res­i­dent of Gulf Stream, a tiny exclu­sive town in Palm Beach Coun­ty, has often been a finan­cial bene­fac­tor to GOP can­di­dates and Repub­li­cans in trou­ble with the law, such as for­mer GOP Chair­man Jim Greer. He has also pro­vid­ed air­planes for Crist and oth­er Repub­li­cans as they trav­eled the state for cam­paigns.
...

So to get a bet­ter sense of Sargean­t’s his­to­ry as a GOP sug­ar­dad­dy oper­a­tor, here’s an arti­cle from Feb 2013 about some of the sor­did details that were com­ing out in Greer’s court case. Details like an employ­ee of Sargeant appar­ent­ly being seen dri­ving a golf cart full of pros­ti­tutes dur­ing one of the ‘for men only’ trips made by Flori­da GOP offi­cials around 2008. These ‘for men only’ trips were appar­ent­ly fre­quent occur­rences. Sargeant was the Par­ty Finance Chief at this time. Those kinds of sor­did details:

WFSU

A Vet­er­an Reporter’s Take on the Jim Greer Case

By Tom Flani­gan
Pub­lished Feb­ru­ary 22, 2013 at 5:13 PM EST

A vet­er­an news­pa­per reporter often called “The Most Feared Woman in Flori­da” gives her take on the case of for­mer Repub­li­can Par­ty of Flori­da Chair Jim Greer. Tom Flani­gan reports Lucy Mor­gan shared her thoughts with the Cap­i­tal Tiger Bay Club on Fri­day, Feb­ru­ary 22nd.

The news­pa­per was called the “St. Peters­burg Times” when Lucy Mor­gan signed on as a reporter back in 1968. Today the paper is the “Tam­pa Bay Times” and Mor­gan told Tiger Bay mem­bers she’d sort of hoped to cov­er one more big sto­ry before retir­ing.

“But I’d real­ly want­ed to see a tri­al and see what would hap­pen with all of this. How­ev­er, I didn’t want to spend two weeks in Orlan­do watch­ing one, so it’s a mixed bless­ing.”

The tri­al had been set for Feb­ru­ary eleventh. On the very day it was to begin, the defen­dant, for­mer Repub­li­can Par­ty of Flori­da Chair Jim Greer, plead­ed guilty to mul­ti­ple counts of fraud, grand theft and mon­ey laun­der­ing. But Mor­gan says it’s like­ly there were oth­er peo­ple involved.

“Greer him­self described in depo­si­tion a group of leg­isla­tive lead­ers who were spend­ing like ‘drunk­en sailors’ . That’s some of the tes­ti­mo­ny we missed by not hav­ing a tri­al. I would have loved to have more iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the drunk­en sailors and what they might have done with it.”

The pub­lic, Mor­gan says, will also be spared the details of numer­ous jun­kets with many high-pow­ered Flori­da Repub­li­cans on the guest list. What info that is avail­able came from for­mer Par­ty Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Del­mar John­son and appar­ent­ly involved then Par­ty Finance Chief Har­ry Sargeant.

“There were fre­quent­ly ‘for men only’ trips that involved women who were essen­tial­ly paid to be there. But Del­mar added the detail of see­ing a golf cart dri­ven by one of Har­ry Sargeant’s employ­ees that was filled with pros­ti­tutes.”

That alleged­ly hap­pened in the Bahamas in Jan­u­ary of 2008. Greer’s asso­ci­a­tions also includ­ed then-Repub­li­can Gov­er­nor Char­lie Crist, as well as for­mer U‑S Sen­a­tor and long­time Crist polit­i­cal pal George LeMieux. Mor­gan says one of Greer’s biggest prob­lems was that he had so few oth­er sup­port­ers.

...

At the height of his pow­er, Greer rou­tine­ly stayed in hotel rooms cost­ing up to thou­sands of dol­lars a night. Mor­gan says his accom­mo­da­tions will soon be some­what more mod­est.

“He faces sen­tenc­ing next month. He could get as much as three-and-a-half years. My guess is, look­ing at sen­tenc­ing guide­lines, and the fact he has no felony con­vic­tions in his back­ground, could put it clos­er to 18-months is what he’ll come out of it with.”

And what about the oth­er play­ers in the Jim Greer saga?

“I actu­al­ly think that some of these peo­ple may be worse off for their not hav­ing been a tri­al than they would have been with a tri­al. Because the tri­al itself might have been less spec­tac­u­lar than some of the facts in the back­ground that we know from read­ing depo­si­tions and dis­cov­ery.”

A notable excep­tion to that, Mor­gan believes, is Char­lie Crist, the man who put Greer in the posi­tion that led to his down­fall. Now a Demo­c­rat, Crist’s approval rat­ings remain sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er than his suc­ces­sor Repub­li­can Rick Scott. And it’s wide­ly assumed that Crist is gear­ing up for anoth­er guber­na­to­r­i­al run.

———-

“A Vet­er­an Reporter’s Take on the Jim Greer Case” by Tom Flani­gan; WFSU; 02/22/2013

“The tri­al had been set for Feb­ru­ary eleventh. On the very day it was to begin, the defen­dant, for­mer Repub­li­can Par­ty of Flori­da Chair Jim Greer, plead­ed guilty to mul­ti­ple counts of fraud, grand theft and mon­ey laun­der­ing. But Mor­gan says it’s like­ly there were oth­er peo­ple involved.”

The tri­al of for­mer Flori­da GOP Chair Jim Greer may have been focused on Greer, but it’s pret­ty obvi­ous there were oth­ers involved. Like the Par­ty Finance Chief Har­ry Sargeant. You have to won­der if the pros­ti­tutes seen dri­ven around in a golf car by one of Sargean­t’s employ­ees were paid for with par­ty cash. It’s one of many sor­did ques­tions raised by this one case:

...
“Greer him­self described in depo­si­tion a group of leg­isla­tive lead­ers who were spend­ing like ‘drunk­en sailors’ . That’s some of the tes­ti­mo­ny we missed by not hav­ing a tri­al. I would have loved to have more iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the drunk­en sailors and what they might have done with it.”

The pub­lic, Mor­gan says, will also be spared the details of numer­ous jun­kets with many high-pow­ered Flori­da Repub­li­cans on the guest list. What info that is avail­able came from for­mer Par­ty Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Del­mar John­son and appar­ent­ly involved then Par­ty Finance Chief Har­ry Sargeant.

“There were fre­quent­ly ‘for men only’ trips that involved women who were essen­tial­ly paid to be there. But Del­mar added the detail of see­ing a golf cart dri­ven by one of Har­ry Sargeant’s employ­ees that was filled with pros­ti­tutes.”
...

How many more ‘for men only’ trips involved Sargean­t’s employ­ees dri­ving around golf carts full of pros­ti­tutes? We can only spec­u­late. But giv­en that these were appar­ent­ly “fre­quent” trips, we can rea­son­ably spec­u­late quite a few golf carts full of pros­ti­tutes. Dozens of golf carts more? Hun­dreds? Who knows, but those are the kinds of ques­tions raised by Greer’s court case. Ques­tions that will pre­sum­ably remain large­ly unan­swered, like all the oth­er ques­tions swirling around “the most pow­er­ful man no one knows.”

Just how per­ma-screwed are Tex­as­’s elec­tric­i­ty con­sumers? That’s the ques­tion raised by the fol­low­ing arti­cle last week in the Texas Tri­bune about the sky­rock­et­ing elec­tric­i­ty bills that are once again plagu­ing Tex­as­’s elec­tric­i­ty mar­kets. But unlike the win­ter weath­er dis­as­ter of 2021 — which was large­ly trig­gered by a lack of prepa­ra­tion for cold tem­per­a­tures and tur­bo-charged by grid oper­a­tors cut­ting off pow­er to the nat­ur­al gas pumps and a mar­ket­place design that incen­tivized grid oper­a­tors to pull pow­er back as demand surged — the cur­rent cri­sis in Tex­as­’s elec­tric­i­ty mar­kets have a very dif­fer­ent cause: the war in Ukraine and sub­se­quent cut­off of Russ­ian gas to Euro­pean mar­kets. Euro­pean mar­kets that are now increas­ing­ly inter­twined with US ener­gy mar­kets. Espe­cial­ly Tex­as­’s ener­gy mar­kets, with liq­uid nat­ur­al gas (LNG) not only plays a mas­sive role in the state’s local elec­tric­i­ty and heat­ing needs but is also a grow­ing export. It’s the kind of sit­u­a­tion that fore­tells more ‘mar­ket events’ for Tex­as­’s con­sumers.

And, of course, it’s also the kind of sit­u­a­tion that hear­kens back quite direct­ly to the whole Naftogaz takeover scheme that was at the heart of Lev Par­nas and Igor Fru­man’s cor­rupt ambi­tions with the Trump admin­is­tra­tion. A scheme that was part of the larg­er scan­dal that led up to Don­ald Trump’s first impeach­ment but nev­er real­ly received much recog­ni­tion. And export­ing US LNG out of Texas to Ukraine, and even­tu­al­ly the rest of Europe, was a major part of their shady wheel­ing and deal­ing. They did­n’t pull it off, but they tried.

So the war in Ukraine has cause exact­ly the kind of explo­sion in Euro­pean demand for US LNG that Par­nas and Fru­man were hop­ing to cul­ti­vate. But now, thanks to Tex­as­’s bonkers ‘free mar­ket’ ener­gy mar­kets, the con­sumers of Texas get to com­plete with a grow­ing Euro­pean demand for that Texas LNG. It’s the kind of mar­ket Texas con­sumers are feel­ing it whether they real­ize it or not.

Also recall how major ques­tions have already been raised as to whether or not the grow­ing Texas LNG export mar­ket was play­ing a role in dri­ving the ener­gy-grid death-spi­ral Texas expe­ri­enced last Feb­ru­ary. A death spi­ral that was­n’t just dri­ven by the star­va­tion of gas to the grid when elec­tric­i­ty was cut to the gas pumps. Recall the evi­dence indi­cat­ing that the major Freeport LNG export facil­i­ty in TX was still oper­at­ing and export­ing LNG dur­ing the cri­sis, feed­ing explod­ing demand from Europe. Gov­er­nor Abbott even asked them to please dial back their export oper­a­tions in the mid­dle of the cri­sis. It’s just busi­ness, as the res­i­dents of Texas are once again learn­ing:

The Texas Tri­bune

Tex­ans face sky­rock­et­ing home ener­gy bills as the state exports more nat­ur­al gas than ever

The cost of elec­tric­i­ty in Texas is tight­ly tied to the price of nat­ur­al gas, which has more than dou­bled since Rus­sia invad­ed Ukraine in late Feb­ru­ary.

by Mitchell Fer­man
July 5, 2022 5 AM Cen­tral

Tex­ans are see­ing sky­rock­et­ing home elec­tric bills this spring and sum­mer, with many cus­tomers pay­ing at least 50% more than they did for elec­tric bills at this time last year.

And nobody seems to know when costs will go down.

“I am wor­ried peo­ple are going to be shocked,” said John Bal­lenger, vice pres­i­dent at Texas retail elec­tric provider Cham­pi­on Ener­gy. “Real­iz­ing this is 50 or 60 or 70% high­er than what they had paid before, I’m just not sure it’s real to peo­ple yet. If it’s not, it will be very, very soon when the bills hit this sum­mer.”

Here’s what Tex­ans need to know about why util­i­ty bills are get­ting more expen­sive:

What’s dri­ving elec­tric­i­ty and gas bills high­er?

The ele­vat­ed util­i­ty bills have pri­mar­i­ly been dri­ven by the price of nat­ur­al gas, which has shot up more than 200% since late Feb­ru­ary when Rus­sia, a top gas-pro­duc­ing coun­try, invad­ed Ukraine and upend­ed the world’s ener­gy mar­ket.

Since then, Texas, the lead­ing nat­ur­al gas-pro­duc­ing state in the U.S., has not been able to keep offer­ing its own res­i­dents cheap ener­gy.

Since the war in Ukraine began, Texas has been export­ing more nat­ur­al gas than ever before, send­ing much of it to Europe as many coun­tries try to wean them­selves off Russ­ian gas. Con­gress lift­ed a long­time ban on export­ing U.S. oil and gas in 2015, which opened world mar­kets to Texas oil and gas pro­duc­ers.

“Peo­ple are lin­ing up around the world to get our prod­uct,” said Todd Sta­ples, pres­i­dent of the Texas Oil and Gas Asso­ci­a­tion.

But demand for nat­ur­al gas has also been grow­ing at home as more peo­ple and busi­ness­es con­tin­ue to flock to Texas. A hot­ter-than-nor­mal spring and ear­ly sum­mer also have dri­ven demand for pow­er to record-high lev­els. Most Texas pow­er plants run on nat­ur­al gas.

“We’ve seen Texas gas go over to Europe, which has then cre­at­ed a sup­ply issue local­ly in the state of Texas,” said Cory Kuchin­sky, chief finan­cial offi­cer and trea­sur­er for CPS Ener­gy, San Antonio’s munic­i­pal util­i­ty that pro­vides ener­gy to more than 1 mil­lion cus­tomers. “Our cus­tomers feel the real-time impact of chang­ing fuel costs.”

...

How long will Tex­ans see high­er util­i­ty bills?

With the war in Ukraine drag­ging on and upend­ing the world ener­gy mar­ket, Texas elec­tric­i­ty providers are cau­tion­ing cus­tomers that the high rates could linger for months or longer.

The high­er prices will, how­ev­er, ben­e­fit some Tex­ans. As a major gas pro­duc­er, the state typ­i­cal­ly ben­e­fits from high oil and gas prices in the form of jobs and state tax­es on oil and gas pro­duc­tion. Cities locat­ed in the state’s oil fields usu­al­ly ben­e­fit even more.

...

But despite the spike in demand, the oil and gas indus­try isn’t see­ing major pro­duc­tion growth because of a back­log of orders for vital equip­ment due to sup­ply chain issues stem­ming from the pan­dem­ic, said Gar­rett Gold­ing, ener­gy econ­o­mist with the Fed­er­al Reserve Bank of Dal­las.

“There’s also a short­age of labor across most of the oil­field ser­vices,” Gold­ing said, not­ing that com­pa­nies are try­ing to hire aggres­sive­ly. “But we’ve seen it for sev­er­al quar­ters now: It is a strug­gle to get qual­i­fied peo­ple into the posi­tions (com­pa­nies) want right now.”

Is the price of nat­ur­al gas the only cause?

While they agree the price of nat­ur­al gas is the pri­ma­ry dri­ver behind Texas util­i­ty bills, ener­gy experts say there are oth­er fac­tors at play.

The state’s main pow­er grid oper­a­tor, the Elec­tric Reli­a­bil­i­ty Coun­cil of Texas, has been man­ag­ing the grid more cau­tious­ly since last Feb­ru­ary, when mil­lions of peo­ple were with­out pow­er for days in sub­freez­ing tem­per­a­tures after a com­bi­na­tion of cold weath­er across the state and sky­rock­et­ing demand for ener­gy shut down pow­er plants as well as the nat­ur­al gas facil­i­ties that sup­ply them with fuel. Hun­dreds of peo­ple died.

Pub­lic Util­i­ty Com­mis­sion chair Peter Lake, appoint­ed by Gov. Greg Abbott after the win­ter storm to lead the agency in charge of ERCOT, has said the grid oper­a­tor is no longer pri­or­i­tiz­ing pro­vid­ing Tex­ans cheap pow­er. Instead, Lake said, its main focus is the grid’s reli­a­bil­i­ty, espe­cial­ly dur­ing extreme hot or cold weath­er. But that has a price.

“Con­ser­v­a­tive oper­a­tions add costs,” said Cathy Webking, a long­time Texas ener­gy lawyer.

ERCOT’s new approach to oper­at­ing the grid means ask­ing pow­er plants to be online and avail­able in case they’re need­ed, and that means pay­ing gen­er­a­tors a pre­scribed price to oper­ate no mat­ter what hap­pens. Before the 2021 win­ter storm, pow­er plants ramped up or went offline based on mar­ket demand.

Gold­ing, with the Fed­er­al Reserve Bank of Dal­las, said Tex­ans are pay­ing for last year’s grid dis­as­ter — and will for years. Texas law­mak­ers last year approved rough­ly $7 bil­lion in ratepay­er-backed bonds to deal with the finan­cial fall­out from the storm. Some elec­tric­i­ty util­i­ties were strapped with bil­lions in new debt after pay­ing exor­bi­tant prices for elec­tric­i­ty set by ERCOT dur­ing the storm — the high prices were an incen­tive for pow­er plants to pro­vide more elec­tric­i­ty — and the debt drove some util­i­ties into bank­rupt­cy.

“On everybody’s bill, there are also these sur­charges for pay­ing for what hap­pened in 2021,” Gold­ing said.

———-

“Tex­ans face sky­rock­et­ing home ener­gy bills as the state exports more nat­ur­al gas than ever” by Mitchell Fer­man; The Texas Tri­bune; 07/05/2022

“Since the war in Ukraine began, Texas has been export­ing more nat­ur­al gas than ever before, send­ing much of it to Europe as many coun­tries try to wean them­selves off Russ­ian gas. Con­gress lift­ed a long­time ban on export­ing U.S. oil and gas in 2015, which opened world mar­kets to Texas oil and gas pro­duc­ers.”

Record gas exports. It may not be the expla­na­tion Tex­ans once again pay­ing exor­bi­tant elec­tric­i­ty prices want­ed to hear, but that’s the under­ly­ing mar­ket force dri­ving cur­rent elec­tric­i­ty price surge: Tex­an gas exporters are fill­ing the gap cre­at­ed by Europe’s gas short­age trig­gered by Euro­pean sanc­tions on Rus­sia. And it’s not like this should in any way been seen as a sur­prise. With most of Tex­as­’s pow­er plants run­ning on nat­ur­al gas, the impli­ca­tions for Tex­as­’s domes­tic ener­gy mar­kets in the face of any sort of glob­al nat­ur­al gas short­age that result­ed in an dra­mat­ic increase in exports was obvi­ous:

...
The ele­vat­ed util­i­ty bills have pri­mar­i­ly been dri­ven by the price of nat­ur­al gas, which has shot up more than 200% since late Feb­ru­ary when Rus­sia, a top gas-pro­duc­ing coun­try, invad­ed Ukraine and upend­ed the world’s ener­gy mar­ket.

Since then, Texas, the lead­ing nat­ur­al gas-pro­duc­ing state in the U.S., has not been able to keep offer­ing its own res­i­dents cheap ener­gy.

...

“Peo­ple are lin­ing up around the world to get our prod­uct,” said Todd Sta­ples, pres­i­dent of the Texas Oil and Gas Asso­ci­a­tion.

But demand for nat­ur­al gas has also been grow­ing at home as more peo­ple and busi­ness­es con­tin­ue to flock to Texas. A hot­ter-than-nor­mal spring and ear­ly sum­mer also have dri­ven demand for pow­er to record-high lev­els. Most Texas pow­er plants run on nat­ur­al gas.
...

So when should Tex­ans expect a resump­tion of the ‘cheap’ prices they’ve were promised when Texas set up its wacky elec­tric­i­ty mar­ket­place? Well, that’s obvi­ous­ly going to depend in part on how long Europe remains cut off from Russ­ian gas. But as the arti­cle warns, there’s anoth­er dynam­ic at work: at lack of new invest­ments by the gas indus­try. In oth­er words, instead of respond­ing to high­er prices with new invest­ments, the indus­try appears to be plan­ning on cap­tur­ing high­er prof­its. It’s how ‘the mar­ket’ has decid­ed to deal with the sit­u­a­tion. Sur­prise!

...
And nobody seems to know when costs will go down.

“I am wor­ried peo­ple are going to be shocked,” said John Bal­lenger, vice pres­i­dent at Texas retail elec­tric provider Cham­pi­on Ener­gy. “Real­iz­ing this is 50 or 60 or 70% high­er than what they had paid before, I’m just not sure it’s real to peo­ple yet. If it’s not, it will be very, very soon when the bills hit this sum­mer.”

...

With the war in Ukraine drag­ging on and upend­ing the world ener­gy mar­ket, Texas elec­tric­i­ty providers are cau­tion­ing cus­tomers that the high rates could linger for months or longer.

The high­er prices will, how­ev­er, ben­e­fit some Tex­ans. As a major gas pro­duc­er, the state typ­i­cal­ly ben­e­fits from high oil and gas prices in the form of jobs and state tax­es on oil and gas pro­duc­tion. Cities locat­ed in the state’s oil fields usu­al­ly ben­e­fit even more.

...

But despite the spike in demand, the oil and gas indus­try isn’t see­ing major pro­duc­tion growth because of a back­log of orders for vital equip­ment due to sup­ply chain issues stem­ming from the pan­dem­ic, said Gar­rett Gold­ing, ener­gy econ­o­mist with the Fed­er­al Reserve Bank of Dal­las.

“There’s also a short­age of labor across most of the oil­field ser­vices,” Gold­ing said, not­ing that com­pa­nies are try­ing to hire aggres­sive­ly. “But we’ve seen it for sev­er­al quar­ters now: It is a strug­gle to get qual­i­fied peo­ple into the posi­tions (com­pa­nies) want right now.”
...

So with the con­flict in Ukraine lead­ing to what appears to be sus­tained peri­od of record nat­ur­al gas exports and high­er prices with no appar­ent end in sight, it’s worth keep­ing in mind that the whole scheme by Lev Par­nas, Igor Fru­man, and the the Trump admin­is­tra­tion to cap­ture con­trol of Naftogaz and rig the Ukrain­ian nat­ur­al gas mar­kets to arrange for large-scale imports of US nat­ur­al gas was basi­cal­ly a scheme to arrange for this kind of sce­nario. A sce­nario of much high­er ener­gy prices for US (and Ukrain­ian) con­sumers and much high­er prof­its for the insid­ers on the US-to-Europe LNG mar­ket they were try­ing to cap­ture and expand.

But as the fol­low­ing Reuters arti­cle describes, the Euro­pean demand for US LNG isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly done spik­ing in response to the con­flict in Ukraine. It was some­thing we were remind­ed of over the week­end when Cana­da agreed to a “time-lim­it­ed and revo­ca­ble per­mit” to allow the release of a large tur­bine used to pow­er the Nord Stream 1 LNG pipeline that is cur­rent­ly being ser­viced in Cana­da. Siemen­s’s Cana­da unit was doing the ser­vic­ing when the Cana­di­an sanc­tions against Rus­sia were put in place. As a result, Siemen­s’s was blocked from releas­ing the tur­bine, caus­ing the Krem­lin to order Gazprom to cut the Nord Stream 1 flows down to 40% capac­i­ty, cit­ing main­te­nance issues. Cana­da just announced its “time-lim­it­ed and revo­ca­ble per­mit” on Sun­day. Ukraine’s gov­ern­ment has already denounced Canada’s deci­sion to tem­porar­i­ly release the tur­bine.

The tim­ing of Canada’s deci­sion is rather notable in that it comes the day before the begin­ning of a planned 10 day full shut­down of Nord Stream 1 from July 11–21. As the arti­cle describes, Euro­pean lead­ers are keep­ing their fin­gers crossed that the shut­down real­ly is just 10 days. As shut­downs of the pipeline in pri­or years have demon­strat­ed, unex­pect­ed legit­i­mate main­te­nance con­cerns can pop up and these things can take a lot longer than 10 days. We’ll see.

As the arti­cle also notes, the tim­ing of a dis­rup­tion in Nord Stream 1’s flows could be worse. At least it’s hap­pen­ing in the sum­mer when heat­ing demand is rel­a­tive­ly low. But this is a nor­mal sum­mer, with Euro­pean coun­tries plan­ning on build­ing up large stores of LNG by the fall. Plans that are seri­ous­ly thwart­ed by an extend­ed Nord Stream 1 cut­off, and will only require more US LNG exports the longer that cut­off goes. So while the Texas elec­tric­i­ty con­sumers might think it’s bad now, just wait until the Nord Stream 1 main­te­nance issues real­ly start flar­ing up and Europe’s demand for that Texas LNG spikes even more:

Reuters

Europe on edge as Nord Stream Russ­ian gas link set for planned shut-down

By Nina Chest­ney and Vera Eck­ert
July 10, 2022 6:20 PM CDT
Updat­ed

* Nord Stream 1 main­te­nance to run from July 11–21
* Fears out­age could be extend­ed
* Krem­lin says shut­down is reg­u­lar event
* Extend­ed halt would hurt economies, increase prices

LONDON/FRANKFURT, July 11 (Reuters) — The biggest sin­gle pipeline car­ry­ing Russ­ian gas to Ger­many starts annu­al main­te­nance on Mon­day, with flows expect­ed to stop for ten days, but gov­ern­ments, mar­kets and com­pa­nies are wor­ried the shut-down might be extend­ed due to war in Ukraine.

The Nord Stream 1 pipeline trans­ports 55 bil­lion cubic metres (bcm) a year of gas from Rus­sia to Ger­many under the Baltic Sea. It will under­go main­te­nance from July 11 to 21.

Last month, Rus­sia cut flows to 40% of the pipeline’s total capac­i­ty, cit­ing the delayed return of equip­ment being ser­viced by Ger­many’s Siemens Ener­gy (ENR1n.DE), in Cana­da. read more

Cana­da said at the week­end it would return a repaired tur­bine, but it also said it would expand sanc­tions against Rus­si­a’s ener­gy sec­tor. read more

Europe fears Rus­sia may extend the sched­uled main­te­nance to restrict Euro­pean gas sup­ply fur­ther, throw­ing plans to fill stor­age for win­ter into dis­ar­ray and height­en­ing a gas cri­sis that has prompt­ed emer­gency mea­sures from gov­ern­ments and painful­ly high bills for con­sumers.

Ger­man econ­o­my min­is­ter Robert Habeck has said the coun­try should con­front the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Rus­sia will sus­pend gas flows through Nord Stream 1 beyond the sched­uled main­te­nance peri­od.

“Based on the pat­tern we’ve seen, it would not be very sur­pris­ing now if some small, tech­ni­cal detail is found and then they could say ‘now we can’t turn it on any more’,” he said at an event at the end of June.

Krem­lin spokesper­son Dmit­ry Peskov dis­missed claims that Rus­sia was using oil and gas to exert polit­i­cal pres­sure, say­ing the main­te­nance shut­down was a reg­u­lar, sched­uled event, and that no one was “invent­ing” any repairs. read more

There are oth­er big pipelines from Rus­sia to Europe but flows have been grad­u­al­ly declin­ing, espe­cial­ly after Ukraine halt­ed one gas tran­sit route in May, blam­ing inter­fer­ence by occu­py­ing Russ­ian forces.

Rus­sia has cut off gas sup­plies com­plete­ly to sev­er­al Euro­pean coun­tries that did not com­ply with its demand for pay­ment in rou­bles.

“The last few months have shown one thing: Putin knows no taboos. A com­plete halt to gas sup­plies through the Nord Stream pipeline can­not there­fore be ruled out,” Timm Kehler, man­ag­ing direc­tor of Ger­man indus­try asso­ci­a­tion Zukun­ft Gas, said.

TURBINE TROUBLE

Ger­many at the week­end wel­comed Canada’s deci­sion to issue a “time-lim­it­ed and revo­ca­ble per­mit” to allow equip­ment to be returned for the Nord Stream 1 pipeline.

But Ukraine’s ener­gy and for­eign min­istries said in a state­ment they were “deeply dis­ap­point­ed” and urged Cana­da to reverse a deci­sion they said amount­ed to adjust­ing the sanc­tions imposed on Moscow “to the whims of Rus­sia”.

Siemens Ener­gy said it was work­ing on fur­ther for­mal approvals and logis­tics to get the equip­ment in place as soon as pos­si­ble. read more

Zongqiang Luo, gas ana­lyst at con­sul­tan­cy Rys­tad Ener­gy, said it was “not impos­si­ble” Gazprom could use any delay as a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to extend the main­te­nance peri­od.

In pre­vi­ous years, the annu­al main­te­nance peri­od on Nord Stream 1 has last­ed around 10–12 days and has fin­ished on time.

It is not uncom­mon for addi­tion­al faults to be detect­ed dur­ing rou­tine main­te­nance at pipelines or gas infra­struc­ture and oper­a­tors can pro­long out­ages if nec­es­sary.

While a com­plete halt of gas is con­sid­ered unlike­ly, Gazprom has not been re-rout­ing flows via oth­er pipelines, mean­ing a pro­longed reduced flow rate is prob­a­ble, ana­lysts at Gold­man Sachs said.

MULTI-BILLION ECONOMIC BLOW

Ger­many has moved to stage two of a three-tier emer­gency gas plan, which is one step before the gov­ern­ment rations fuel con­sump­tion.

It has also warned of reces­sion if Russ­ian gas flows are halt­ed. The blow to the econ­o­my could be 193 bil­lion euros ($195 bil­lion) in the sec­ond half of this year, data from the vbw indus­try asso­ci­a­tion of the state of Bavaria showed last month.

“The abrupt end of Russ­ian gas imports would also have a sig­nif­i­cant impact on the work­force in Germany...around 5.6 mil­lion jobs would be affect­ed by the con­se­quences,” vwb’s man­ag­ing direc­tor Bertram Brossardt said. read more

The effects would be wider still. A com­plete halt would keep Euro­pean gas prices, which have already stung indus­try and house­holds, high­er for longer.

Whole­sale Dutch gas prices, the Euro­pean bench­mark, have risen more than 400% since last July.

“If Nord Stream gets cut off, or if Ger­many los­es all its Russ­ian imports, then the effect will be felt on the whole of north-west­ern Europe,” Dutch ener­gy min­is­ter Rob Jet­ten said.

In an inter­view with Reuters on Thurs­day, he said the Dutch Gronin­gen gas field could still be called upon the help neigh­bour­ing coun­tries in the event of a com­plete cut off in Russ­ian sup­plies, but ramp­ing up pro­duc­tion would risk caus­ing earth­quakes. read more

...

———-

“Europe on edge as Nord Stream Russ­ian gas link set for planned shut-down” by Nina Chest­ney and Vera Eck­ert; Reuters; 07/10/2022

“Europe fears Rus­sia may extend the sched­uled main­te­nance to restrict Euro­pean gas sup­ply fur­ther, throw­ing plans to fill stor­age for win­ter into dis­ar­ray and height­en­ing a gas cri­sis that has prompt­ed emer­gency mea­sures from gov­ern­ments and painful­ly high bills for con­sumers.”

US LNG exporters aren’t just scram­bling to sat­is­fy Europe’s imme­di­ate demands. Europe is tak­ing advan­tage of the rel­a­tive­ly low sum­mer demand to stock­pile LNG in antic­i­pa­tion of the win­ter. In oth­er words, Texas elec­tric­i­ty prices aren’t just due for anoth­er sus­tained spike this fall due to increased demand for local heat­ing needs as win­ter sets in. Texas is also going to be sup­ply­ing Europe’s grow­ing sea­son­al demand too. That’s part of the con­text of the cur­rent fret­ting over the planned Nord Stream 1 10 day main­te­nance shut­down. These are 10 pre­cious days for Europe’s stor­age plans. 10 days that could eas­i­ly become some­thing clos­er to a per­ma­nent cut­off of Nord Stream 1. A cut­off that would­n’t just threat­en Ger­many’s ener­gy sup­plies but all of North-West Europe:

...
The effects would be wider still. A com­plete halt would keep Euro­pean gas prices, which have already stung indus­try and house­holds, high­er for longer.

Whole­sale Dutch gas prices, the Euro­pean bench­mark, have risen more than 400% since last July.

“If Nord Stream gets cut off, or if Ger­many los­es all its Russ­ian imports, then the effect will be felt on the whole of north-west­ern Europe,” Dutch ener­gy min­is­ter Rob Jet­ten said.
...

And note how it real­ly does sound quite plau­si­ble that there could be extend­ed delays beyond the planned 10 day Nord Stream 1 shut­down pure­ly due to legit­i­mate main­te­nance con­cerns that have noth­ing with sanc­tions and lever­age. That’s just the track record of the pipeline. Delays aren’t uncom­mon. Texas had bet­ter be ready to keep the LNG flow­ing:

...
Zongqiang Luo, gas ana­lyst at con­sul­tan­cy Rys­tad Ener­gy, said it was “not impos­si­ble” Gazprom could use any delay as a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to extend the main­te­nance peri­od.

In pre­vi­ous years, the annu­al main­te­nance peri­od on Nord Stream 1 has last­ed around 10–12 days and has fin­ished on time.

It is not uncom­mon for addi­tion­al faults to be detect­ed dur­ing rou­tine main­te­nance at pipelines or gas infra­struc­ture and oper­a­tors can pro­long out­ages if nec­es­sary.

While a com­plete halt of gas is con­sid­ered unlike­ly, Gazprom has not been re-rout­ing flows via oth­er pipelines, mean­ing a pro­longed reduced flow rate is prob­a­ble, ana­lysts at Gold­man Sachs said.
...

And note how the West­’s sanc­tions against Rus­sia are play­ing into the stand­off: Siemens’ con­tract to ser­vice one of the tur­bines used to pow­er Nord Stream 1 took place in Cana­da, leav­ing the return of that tur­bine up to the fates of Canada’s sanc­tions against Rus­sia. In response, Rus­sia has already cut the flow of the pipeline down to 40% capac­i­ty, cit­ing those main­te­nance con­cerns and the lack of a ser­viced tur­bine. And Cana­da just agreed issue a “time-lim­it­ed and revo­ca­ble per­mit” allow­ing the return of the tur­bine. So it sounds like Cana­da is going to hold out the threat of tak­ing the tur­bine back, sug­gest­ing a new round of sanc­tions-induced nat­ur­al gas short­ages are up to Cana­da going for­ward:

...
Last month, Rus­sia cut flows to 40% of the pipeline’s total capac­i­ty, cit­ing the delayed return of equip­ment being ser­viced by Ger­many’s Siemens Ener­gy (ENR1n.DE), in Cana­da. read more

Cana­da said at the week­end it would return a repaired tur­bine, but it also said it would expand sanc­tions against Rus­si­a’s ener­gy sec­tor. read more

...

Ger­many at the week­end wel­comed Canada’s deci­sion to issue a “time-lim­it­ed and revo­ca­ble per­mit” to allow equip­ment to be returned for the Nord Stream 1 pipeline.

But Ukraine’s ener­gy and for­eign min­istries said in a state­ment they were “deeply dis­ap­point­ed” and urged Cana­da to reverse a deci­sion they said amount­ed to adjust­ing the sanc­tions imposed on Moscow “to the whims of Rus­sia”.
...

With all of the uncer­tain­ty over the Nord Stream 1 flow only exac­er­bat­ing Euro­pean demand for LNG stored in reserved, that rais­es the ques­tion of just how much space there is left to fill in those stor­age tanks for Ger­many and the oth­er oth­er North West­ern Euro­pean coun­tries that rely on that shared net­work of pipelines and sources. Well, accord­ing to the fol­low­ing arti­cle from mid-June, Ger­many was at 52% capac­i­ty with a goal of reach­ing 80% by Octo­ber and 90% by Novem­ber. The rest of the EU has sim­i­lar goals, with an EU-wide goal of 80 per­cent capac­i­ty by Novem­ber. So Europe isn’t just scram­bling for sources to fill its imme­di­ate demands. It’s also scram­bling even hard­er to get those reserves in antic­i­pa­tion of a win­ter that’s bound to involve a lot more scram­bling. Scram­bling and shiv­er­ing and pay­ing exor­bi­tant prices. Exor­bi­tant prices that will pre­sum­ably be shared in part with the res­i­dents of Texas:

Reuters

Russ­ian gas flows to Europe fall, hin­der­ing bid to refill stores

By Nina Chest­ney
June 16, 2022 9:24 AM CDT
Updat­ed

Sum­ma­ry

* Nord Stream 1 pipeline capac­i­ty down to 40%
* Europe’s gas price jumps up to 30% after dis­rup­tion news
* Gazprom blames cuts on equip­ment delays from Cana­da
* Freeport LNG ter­mi­nal in U.S. offline until Sep­tem­ber

LONDON, June 16 (Reuters) — Russ­ian gas sup­ply to Europe via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline fell fur­ther on Thurs­day and Moscow said more delays in repairs could lead to sus­pend­ing all flows, putting a brake on Europe’s race to refill its gas inven­to­ries.

The fal­ter­ing flows came as the lead­ers of Ger­many, Italy and France vis­it­ed Ukraine, which is press­ing for swifter weapons deliv­er­ies to bat­tle invad­ing Russ­ian forces and wants sup­port for Kyiv’s bid to join the Euro­pean Union. read more

Rus­si­a’s state-con­trolled Gazprom said it was reduc­ing gas sup­ply for a sec­ond time in as many days via Nord Stream 1, which runs under the Baltic to Ger­many. The lat­est move cuts sup­ply to just 40% of the pipeline’s capac­i­ty.

Krem­lin spokesper­son Dmit­ry Peskov said reduc­tions in sup­ply were not pre­med­i­tat­ed and relat­ed to main­te­nance issues, a ref­er­ence to ear­li­er com­ments say­ing Rus­sia was unable to secure the return of equip­ment sent to Cana­da for repairs. read more

Ger­many said Rus­si­a’s excuse was tech­ni­cal­ly “unfound­ed” and was instead aimed at dri­ving up gas prices. Italy said Moscow might be use the issue to exert polit­i­cal pres­sure. read more

Dutch whole­sale gas prices , the Euro­pean bench­mark, jumped around 30% on Thurs­day after­noon.

Rus­si­a’s ambas­sador to the Euro­pean Union told state news agency RIA Novosti flows via the pipeline could be com­plete­ly sus­pend­ed because of prob­lems in repair­ing tur­bines in Cana­da.

Alex­ey Miller, the chief exec­u­tive of Gazprom, the state-con­trolled com­pa­ny with a monop­oly on Russ­ian gas exports by pipeline, said West­ern sanc­tions made it impos­si­ble to secure the return of equip­ment from Cana­da for the pipeline’s Por­to­vaya com­pres­sor sta­tion. read more

EUROPE RACES TO REFILL STORAGE

Nord Stream 1 has capac­i­ty to pump about 55 bil­lion cubic metres (bcm) a year to the Euro­pean Union, which last year import­ed about 140 bcm of gas from Rus­sia via pipelines.

Ger­many, like oth­er Euro­pean coun­tries, is rac­ing to refill its gas stor­age facil­i­ties so they are 80% full by Octo­ber and 90% by Novem­ber before win­ter arrives. Stores are 52% full now.

Cut­ting flows through Nord Stream 1 would make that job hard­er, the head of the Ger­many ener­gy reg­u­la­tor said.

“We could per­haps get through the sum­mer as the heat­ing sea­son is over. But it is imper­a­tive that we fill the stor­age facil­i­ties to get through the win­ter,” Klaus Mueller told Thurs­day’s edi­tion of Rheinis­che Post dai­ly.

Uniper (UN01.DE), Ger­many’s biggest importer of Russ­ian gas, said sup­plies were down a quar­ter on agreed vol­umes but it could fill miss­ing vol­umes from oth­er sources. Pow­er pro­duc­er RWE (RWEG.DE) said it had seen restric­tions in the past two days.

Slo­va­ki­a’s state-owned gas importer SPP said it expect­ed Thurs­day’s Russ­ian gas deliv­er­ies to be reduced by about 30%, while Czech pow­er util­i­ty CEZ (CEZP.PR) said it had seen a sim­i­lar fall but was fill­ing the gap from oth­er sources.

The Euro­pean Union aims to ensure gas stor­age facil­i­ties across the 27-nation bloc are 80% full by Novem­ber. read more

The lat­est reduc­tion in sup­ply could mean north­west Euro­pean stor­age only 88% full by the end of Octo­ber — 1 bcm less than planned — instead of 90%, ana­lysts at Gold­man Sachs said.

DRAWING UP CONTINGENCY PLANS

Ger­many is not alone in fac­ing falling sup­plies.

Aus­tri­a’s OMV (OMVV.VI) said Gazprom informed it of reduced deliv­er­ies, France’s Engie (ENGIE.PA) said flows had down but clients were not affect­ed, while Italy’s Eni (ENI.MI) said it would receive 65% of the vol­umes it had request­ed from Gazprom.

The Ital­ian gov­ern­ment said all pos­si­ble mea­sures were in place to deal with the sit­u­a­tion if gas sup­ply cuts from Rus­sia con­tin­ued in com­ing days. Oth­er Euro­pean coun­tries have also drawn up con­tin­gency plans.

...

Nor­way, Europe’s sec­ond biggest exporter behind Rus­sia, has been push­ing up pro­duc­tion to help the Euro­pean Union towards it tar­get of end­ing reliance on Russ­ian fos­sil fuels by 2027.

Britain’s Cen­tri­ca (CNA.L) signed a deal with Nor­way’s Equinor (EQNR.OL) for extra gas sup­plies to the Unit­ed King­dom for the next three win­ters. Britain does not rely on Russ­ian gas and can also export to Europe via pipelines.

Euro­pean states have also boost­ed liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas (LNG) imports but Europe has lim­it­ed LNG import capac­i­ty and the already tight LNG mar­ket has faced addi­tion­al chal­lenges with dis­rup­tions to U.S. LNG pro­duc­tion. read more

A fire last week at a U.S. LNG export plant in Texas, oper­at­ed by Freeport LNG, means the plant will be offline until Sep­tem­ber and will oper­ate only par­tial­ly from then until the end of 2022.

The facil­i­ty, which accounts for about 20% of U.S. LNG exports, has been a major sup­pli­er to Euro­pean buy­ers.

“There is risk of fur­ther delay, in our view,” ana­lysts at invest­ment bank Jef­feries said, adding that reg­u­la­tors need to approve the restart while two inves­ti­ga­tions were ongo­ing into the cause of the LNG leak at the plant.

———-

“Russ­ian gas flows to Europe fall, hin­der­ing bid to refill stores” by Nina Chest­ney; Reuters; 06/16/2022

“Ger­many, like oth­er Euro­pean coun­tries, is rac­ing to refill its gas stor­age facil­i­ties so they are 80% full by Octo­ber and 90% by Novem­ber before win­ter arrives. Stores are 52% full now.”

Ger­many’s got a lot of stor­age capac­i­ty to fill and not enough gas flow to fill it. That was the prob­lem Ger­many and the rest of West­ern Europe was fac­ing a few weeks ago when Gazprom cut the Nord Stream 1 flow down to 40% capac­i­ty in response to Canada’s refusal to release the ser­viced tur­bine. A prob­lem that is hope­ful­ly only tem­porar­i­ly worse now that the planned 10 day main­te­nance shut­down has com­menced:

...
Cut­ting flows through Nord Stream 1 would make that job hard­er, the head of the Ger­many ener­gy reg­u­la­tor said.

“We could per­haps get through the sum­mer as the heat­ing sea­son is over. But it is imper­a­tive that we fill the stor­age facil­i­ties to get through the win­ter,” Klaus Mueller told Thurs­day’s edi­tion of Rheinis­che Post dai­ly.

...

The Euro­pean Union aims to ensure gas stor­age facil­i­ties across the 27-nation bloc are 80% full by Novem­ber. read more

The lat­est reduc­tion in sup­ply could mean north­west Euro­pean stor­age only 88% full by the end of Octo­ber — 1 bcm less than planned — instead of 90%, ana­lysts at Gold­man Sachs said.
...

And note how Ger­many is claim­ing that the Krem­lin’s cit­ing of main­te­nance issues as the rea­son for the fur­ther cuts in Nord Stream 1’s flow was tech­ni­cal­ly “unfound­ed” is one of those asser­tions that can be both true and false at the same time. It’s a mat­ter of pri­or­i­ties and risk, which is some­thing Tex­as­’s spec­tac­u­lar grid col­lapse of 2021 taught the world. It’s cer­tain­ly pos­si­ble Nord Stream 1 could con­tin­ue run­ning just fine with­out that ser­viced tur­bine. But it’s obvi­ous­ly not ide­al to not have a ser­viced tur­bine put in ser­vice. It was ser­viced for a rea­son, after all. And just as Tex­as­’s ener­gy grid was fine until it was­n’t under the duress of cold weath­er the Texas pow­er indus­try neglect­ed to pre­pare for, we prob­a­bly should­n’t assume Nord Stream 1 does­n’t have its own worst case sce­nar­ios involv­ing key hard­ware fail­ure. In oth­er words, yes, it’s prob­a­bly fine to con­tin­ue run­ning Nord Stream 1 with­out that ser­viced tur­bine in the short run. But the longer that low-main­te­nance sit­u­a­tion per­sists, the greater the risk of the kind of event that does actu­al­ly trig­ger a com­plete shut­down of Nord Stream 1 at a time when no one is plan­ning on it or in con­trol of the sit­u­a­tion:

...
Krem­lin spokesper­son Dmit­ry Peskov said reduc­tions in sup­ply were not pre­med­i­tat­ed and relat­ed to main­te­nance issues, a ref­er­ence to ear­li­er com­ments say­ing Rus­sia was unable to secure the return of equip­ment sent to Cana­da for repairs. read more

Ger­many said Rus­si­a’s excuse was tech­ni­cal­ly “unfound­ed” and was instead aimed at dri­ving up gas prices. Italy said Moscow might be use the issue to exert polit­i­cal pres­sure. read more

Dutch whole­sale gas prices , the Euro­pean bench­mark, jumped around 30% on Thurs­day after­noon.
...

And that brings us to one of the oth­er rea­sons Europe is hav­ing a hard time fill­ing those LNG tanks: The first last month at the Freeport, TX, LNG export facil­i­ty, a major source of exports to Europe. A Freeport facil­i­ty that hap­pens to have a long his­to­ry of safe­ty issues. Once again, we get to see the inevitable cost of tak­ing the ‘low-main­te­nance’ approach to ener­gy. You don’t know when you’re going to pay, but you can be con­fi­dent it will hap­pen at some point with painful costs:

...
Euro­pean states have also boost­ed liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas (LNG) imports but Europe has lim­it­ed LNG import capac­i­ty and the already tight LNG mar­ket has faced addi­tion­al chal­lenges with dis­rup­tions to U.S. LNG pro­duc­tion. read more

A fire last week at a U.S. LNG export plant in Texas, oper­at­ed by Freeport LNG, means the plant will be offline until Sep­tem­ber and will oper­ate only par­tial­ly from then until the end of 2022.

The facil­i­ty, which accounts for about 20% of U.S. LNG exports, has been a major sup­pli­er to Euro­pean buy­ers.

“There is risk of fur­ther delay, in our view,” ana­lysts at invest­ment bank Jef­feries said, adding that reg­u­la­tors need to approve the restart while two inves­ti­ga­tions were ongo­ing into the cause of the LNG leak at the plant.
...

But let’s not for­get one of the oth­er con­se­quences of the Freeport LNG fire: less exports means more domes­tic sup­ply for Tex­as­’s strained ener­gy mar­kets. The fire may have effec­tive­ly saved Texas from anoth­er ‘free market’-driven out-of-con­trol sup­ply-crunch dis­as­ter. Or at least pushed it off for a few months. The facil­i­ty is expect­ed to be back online in the fall, just in time for what should be mam­moth sea­son­al demand from Europe.

So when you read head­lines about Texas res­i­dents once against expe­ri­enc­ing bro­ken ener­gy mar­kets, keep in mind that the mar­ket forces break­ing them this time are the very same ones Lev Par­nas and Igor Fru­man were try­ing to cap­ture and cul­ti­vate with the help of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion. A mar­ket that has now explod­ed as a result of the war in Ukraine and promis­es to con­tin­ue explod­ing the longer that war goes. While Par­nas and Fru­man may not have won out in the end, any of their col­lab­o­ra­tors in the LNG indus­try who escaped pun­ish­ment are sure sit­ting pret­ty today.

All in all, it’s not look­ing great for Tex­ans strug­gling to pay their elec­tric­i­ty bills for the fore­see­able future. And that’s assum­ing it does­n’t get real­ly cold again.

Yowza! That’s big. Except maybe not. It’s weird big busi­ness news that just came out of Ukraine: Naftogaz went into default on a debt pay­ment. Mak­ing it the first Ukrain­ian state-owned enti­ty to do so since the start of the war. Some­thing it warned two weeks ago it would do if it did­n’t get a two-year debt freeze. This was­n’t the weird part. The weird part was that Naftogaz is flush with $2 bil­lion in cash, plen­ty to cov­er the $335mn Eurobond debt pay­ment it just default­ed on.

So why did state-owned Naftogaz threat­en to go into an unforced default two weeks ago and then actu­al­ly do it? Well, we got a big clue the fol­low week, last week, when the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment also demand­ed a two year debt freeze, with what appeared to be sup­port of its inter­na­tion­al cred­i­tors. It was clear two-year debt-freezes were the line in a broad­er Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment nego­ti­a­tion with its cred­i­tors. Naftogaz was the open­ing sal­vo.

And then when Naftogaz final­ly default­ed on Mon­day, the com­pa­ny gave the clear­est expla­na­tion yet of what is going on: the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment ordered the com­pa­ny to not pay its debt pay­ment. It was a gov­ern­ment-ordered default. We also learned that the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment is plan­ning on order­ing all state-owned enter­pris­es to stop debt pay­ments and demand a two-year freeze.

So Naftogaz did­n’t just default. It made the next move in some sort of larg­er Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment nego­ti­a­tion. This is where it’s impor­tant to recall the larg­er con­text of this Naftogaz news: the neolib­er­al cap­ture of Ukraine’s war econ­o­my and the gross oppor­tunism being deployed to use the war as an excuse to gut Ukraine’s work­er con­di­tions and rights to col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing.

But as we’re also going to see, there’s anoth­er aspect to this threat of mass default to keep in mind: the EU’s plans for rebuild­ing Ukraine might be a mul­ti-tril­lion-dol­lar ‘pub­lic-pri­vate’ part­ner­ship, with state-backed banks insur­ing pri­vate investors against heavy loss­es. A a sub­si­dized for-prof­it-only Mar­shall Plan for Ukraine. That was the vision for rebuild­ing Ukraine laid out by Wern­er Hoy­er, the pres­i­dent of the Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank (EIB), two and a half months ago in an exclu­sive Reuters inter­view. And the EIB is report­ed­ly the agency the EU is tap­ping to lead the Ukrain­ian rebuild­ing efforts. We kind of have to take Hoy­er’s plan seri­ous­ly. He arguably has a big­ger say than any­one else on these mat­ters.

Of course, for some­thing like Hoy­er’s plan to hap­pen it requires a lot more stake­hold­ers than just him to agree to the plan. Major pri­vate investors have to buy in too. So when we’re see­ing Ukraine’s gov­ern­ment and its cred­i­tors engage in giant debt rene­go­ti­a­tion, and it seems like the major cred­i­tors like the IMF and World Bank and major pri­vate investors are per­fect­ly fine with the big rene­go­ti­a­tion, don’t be shocked if the final grand debt rene­go­ti­a­tion for Ukraine starts look­ing a lot more like the EIBs ‘pub­lic-pri­vate’ Ukrain­ian mul­ti-tril­lion-dol­lar fire sale. And don’t be sur­prised if it starts with the ‘pub­lic-pri­vate’ sell­off of pieces of Naftogaz, the crown jew­el of Ukraine’s state enter­pris­es that makes so much cash it had to be ordered into bank­rupt­cy by the gov­ern­ment:

Reuters

Ukraine’s Naftogaz bond­hold­ers urged to reject debt freeze plan

By Marc Jones
July 14, 2022 11:28 AM CDT
Updat­ed

LONDON, July 14 (Reuters) — Cred­i­tors of Ukraine’s state-owned ener­gy firm Naftogaz have been urged to reject the com­pa­ny’s request this week for a two-year debt pay­ment freeze.

Naftogaz made the pro­pos­al on Mon­day, say­ing Rus­si­a’s inva­sion of the coun­try has left it short of cash as cus­tomers have been unable to pay their bills. read more

In a call organ­ised by Lon­don-based legal firm Dechert, which has been appoint­ed by cred­i­tors, advi­sors said they did not think the com­pa­ny was fac­ing an imme­di­ate cash crunch and was viewed as a prof­itable going con­cern.

As a result, they would demand full repay­ment of one of the fir­m’s bonds which is due next week, along with an addi­tion­al ‘coupon’ inter­est pay­ment on anoth­er bond that runs until 2024.

“The advice is to vote this down,” one investor on the call said.

...

Naftogaz is a major source of income for Ukraine, account­ing for almost 17% of the coun­try’s total state bud­get rev­enue last year and employ­ing more than 50,000 peo­ple before the war.

Its under­ground stor­age facil­i­ties hold over 30 bil­lion cubic metres of gas, mak­ing them the third largest in the world after the Unit­ed States and Rus­sia. It also has Europe’s sec­ond largest oil trans­porta­tion pipeline net­work.

The com­pa­ny’s request on Mon­day caught many cred­i­tors off guard, com­ing with lit­tle over a week to go before a $335 mil­lion bond is due to pay out on July 19.

It has also raised expec­ta­tions that Ukraine’s gov­ern­ment may look to do some­thing sim­i­lar itself ahead of a near $1 bil­lion sov­er­eign bond pay­ment due in Sep­tem­ber.

Kyiv has so far said that it intends to make that pay­ment but many of the Naftogaz bond­hold­ers also lent mon­ey to the gov­ern­ment, mean­ing that sen­ti­ment could suf­fer.

The Inter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund, which the coun­try relies on heav­i­ly for sup­port, said on Thurs­day that it expects Kyiv to con­tin­ue pay­ing its debt. read more

———–

“Ukraine’s Naftogaz bond­hold­ers urged to reject debt freeze plan” by Marc Jones; Reuters; 07/14/2022

“Naftogaz made the pro­pos­al on Mon­day, say­ing Rus­si­a’s inva­sion of the coun­try has left it short of cash as cus­tomers have been unable to pay their bills.”

It was almost two weeks ago when Naftogaz shocked its bond­hold­ers with a sur­prise dec­la­ra­tion that it could­n’t meet its pay­ments and need­ed a two-year debt freeze. A sur­pris­ing and per­plex­ing dec­la­ra­tion that did­n’t appear to match real­i­ty for a com­pa­ny that had $2 bil­lion in cash on hand and a $335 mil­lion pay­ment it had to meet the fol­low­ing week. Hence the bond­hold­ers flat ‘No’ response. Some­thing was­n’t right about what Naftogaz was claim­ing:

...
In a call organ­ised by Lon­don-based legal firm Dechert, which has been appoint­ed by cred­i­tors, advi­sors said they did not think the com­pa­ny was fac­ing an imme­di­ate cash crunch and was viewed as a prof­itable going con­cern.

...

Naftogaz is a major source of income for Ukraine, account­ing for almost 17% of the coun­try’s total state bud­get rev­enue last year and employ­ing more than 50,000 peo­ple before the war.

...

The com­pa­ny’s request on Mon­day caught many cred­i­tors off guard, com­ing with lit­tle over a week to go before a $335 mil­lion bond is due to pay out on July 19.
...

The move was so odd, and sig­nif­i­cant for the state-owned cash cow, that it imme­di­ate­ly raised ques­tions about the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­men­t’s own cred­it­wor­thi­ness. And yet Kyiv was insis­tent it was going to pay on its upcom­ing bond pay­ments and the IMF appears to be uncon­cerned about the pos­si­bil­i­ty:

...
It has also raised expec­ta­tions that Ukraine’s gov­ern­ment may look to do some­thing sim­i­lar itself ahead of a near $1 bil­lion sov­er­eign bond pay­ment due in Sep­tem­ber.

Kyiv has so far said that it intends to make that pay­ment but many of the Naftogaz bond­hold­ers also lent mon­ey to the gov­ern­ment, mean­ing that sen­ti­ment could suf­fer.

The Inter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund, which the coun­try relies on heav­i­ly for sup­port, said on Thurs­day that it expects Kyiv to con­tin­ue pay­ing its debt.
...

Also note the size of Ukraine’s nat­ur­al gas stor­age capac­i­ty: the third largest in the world, behind the US and Rus­sia. Recall how Naftogaz has been build­ing up its gas stor­age capac­i­ty in recent years at the same time Texas was going through its LNG boom, which appeared to fac­tor into the whole scheme being led by Lev Par­nas and Igor Fru­man and the Trump White House. It’s that mas­sive stor­age capac­i­ty that’s worth keep­ing in mind when we learn lat­er that that Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment cit­ed the rel­a­tive­ly low 22% full lev­el of Ukraine’s stor­age capac­i­ty as the rea­son for is demand that Naftogaz not pay its debt pay­ments, osten­si­bly to spend that mon­ey on gas to fill up the tanks:

...
Its under­ground stor­age facil­i­ties hold over 30 bil­lion cubic metres of gas, mak­ing them the third largest in the world after the Unit­ed States and Rus­sia. It also has Europe’s sec­ond largest oil trans­porta­tion pipeline net­work.
...

So two weeks ago Naftogaz sur­pris­es its bond­hold­ers with a demand for two-year debt freeze despite hav­ing plen­ty of cash on hand to pay its upcom­ing debt pay­ment and the bond­hold­ers were like ‘f#ck that, it makes no sense’. All the while, Kyiv and the IMF were like ‘don’t wor­ry, Kyiv is def­i­nite­ly going to not do the same thing’. And now here’s a Reuters report from a week lat­er about Kyiv did the same thing. Which seemed to be just fine with a lot of those bond­hold­ers:

Reuters

Ukraine seeks debt freeze as war rav­ages econ­o­my

By Natalia Zinets and Marc Jones
July 20, 2022 3:17 PM CDT
Updat­ed

KYIV/LONDON, July 20 (Reuters) — Ukraine has asked its inter­na­tion­al cred­i­tors, includ­ing West­ern pow­ers and the world’s largest invest­ment firms, to freeze its debt pay­ments for two years so it can focus its dwin­dling finan­cial resources on repelling Rus­sia.

Fac­ing an esti­mat­ed 35% to 45% crash in GDP this year fol­low­ing Moscow’s inva­sion in Feb­ru­ary, Ukraine’s finance min­istry said on Wednes­day it was hop­ing to finalise the defer­ral on its rough­ly $20 bil­lion of debt by Aug. 9.

The delay, which was quick­ly backed by both the major West­ern gov­ern­ments and heavy­weight funds that have lent to Kyiv, would come just in time to put off around $1.2 bil­lion of debt pay­ments due at the start of Sep­tem­ber.

The gov­ern­men­t’s pro­pos­al, post­ed on its web­site, said all its bond inter­est pay­ments would be deferred under the plan, although to avoid what would be classed as a hard default it also offered lenders addi­tion­al inter­est pay­ments once the freeze ends.

...

Ukraine has esti­mat­ed the costs of the war com­bined with low­er tax rev­enues has left a $5 bil­lion-a-month fis­cal short­fall — or 2.5% of pre-war GDP. Econ­o­mists cal­cu­late that push­es the annu­al deficit to 25% of GDP, com­pared with just 3.5% before the con­flict.

On top of that, researchers from the Kyiv School of Eco­nom­ics esti­mate that it will already take over $100 bil­lion to rebuild Ukraine’s bombed infra­struc­ture, while the head of the EU’s pow­er­ful financ­ing arm, the Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank, has warned it could run into tril­lions. read more

It is esti­mat­ed that the debt freeze could save Ukraine around $5 bil­lion over the defer­ral peri­od.

“We, as offi­cial bilat­er­al cred­i­tors of Ukraine, intend to pro­vide a coor­di­nat­ed sus­pen­sion of debt ser­vice,” a group of gov­ern­ments includ­ing the Unit­ed States, Cana­da, France, Ger­many, Japan and Britain said short­ly after Ukraine made its pro­pos­al.

“We also strong­ly encour­age all oth­er offi­cial bilat­er­al cred­i­tors to swift­ly reach agree­ment” the group added.

SUPPORT

Ukraine’s finance min­is­ter, Sergii Marchenko, said in a state­ment that the plan had also received “explic­it indi­ca­tions of sup­port” from some of the world’s biggest invest­ment funds includ­ing Black­Rock, Fideli­ty, Amia Cap­i­tal and Gems­stock.

Wednes­day’s move had marked some­thing of a U‑turn from Kyiv, which had repeat­ed­ly said in recent months that it planned to keep up debt pay­ments despite the war.

...

Tymofiy Mylo­vanov, an advis­er to the Ukrain­ian pres­i­den­tial office, had urged West­ern coun­tries to increase their finan­cial sup­port in recent weeks.

Glob­al insti­tu­tions such as the Inter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund, World Bank and West­ern gov­ern­ments have com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing $38 bil­lion since the inva­sion, although almost 80% of that sup­port is made up of loans rather than aid.

Through a spokesper­son, the IMF said “in gen­er­al, vol­un­tary pre-emp­tive agree­ments would be a net pos­i­tive for the out­look.”

Last week the Fund said inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty grant financ­ing was a pri­or­i­ty for Ukraine’s imme­di­ate and short-term, as that would allow the gov­ern­ment to remain oper­a­tional with­out incur­ring fur­ther debt. read more

Wednes­day’s move had lit­tle impact on Ukraine’s bonds, most which had already slumped more than 80% since Rus­sia began build­ing up its troops on Ukraine’s bor­ders late last year.

“There is quite a bit of sup­port in the mar­ket to agree to this,” said Petar Atanasov, the co-head of sov­er­eign research at spe­cial­ist dis­tressed debt fund Gramer­cy.

“Unfor­tu­nate­ly there are no signs of peace or a cease-fire on the hori­zon.”

———–

“Ukraine seeks debt freeze as war rav­ages econ­o­my” by Natalia Zinets and Marc Jones; Reuters; 07/20/2022

“The delay, which was quick­ly backed by both the major West­ern gov­ern­ments and heavy­weight funds that have lent to Kyiv, would come just in time to put off around $1.2 bil­lion of debt pay­ments due at the start of Sep­tem­ber.”

Less than a week lat­er, the cyn­ics were proven cor­rect: In a com­plete U‑turn, Ukraine’s gov­ern­ment now want­ed a two year debt freeze too on its bonds. It’s a big deal. Espe­cial­ly since Ukraine’s inter­na­tion­al back­ers have been almost entire­ly ‘help­ing’ Ukraine with loans. That’s a lot more bonds Ukraine is going to have to pay back as this plays out:

...
Wednes­day’s move had marked some­thing of a U‑turn from Kyiv, which had repeat­ed­ly said in recent months that it planned to keep up debt pay­ments despite the war.

...

Glob­al insti­tu­tions such as the Inter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund, World Bank and West­ern gov­ern­ments have com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing $38 bil­lion since the inva­sion, although almost 80% of that sup­port is made up of loans rather than aid.
...

And yet while the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­men­t’s announce­ment last week was sur­prise, it did­n’t move mar­kets and already had the appar­ent back­ing of major inter­na­tion­al funds like Black­Rock. It’s the kind of recep­tion that indi­cates this plan was­n’t actu­al­ly news to these funds. Some sort of deal has been worked out:

...
Ukraine’s finance min­is­ter, Sergii Marchenko, said in a state­ment that the plan had also received “explic­it indi­ca­tions of sup­port” from some of the world’s biggest invest­ment funds includ­ing Black­Rock, Fideli­ty, Amia Cap­i­tal and Gems­stock.

...

Wednes­day’s move had lit­tle impact on Ukraine’s bonds, most which had already slumped more than 80% since Rus­sia began build­ing up its troops on Ukraine’s bor­ders late last year.

“There is quite a bit of sup­port in the mar­ket to agree to this,” said Petar Atanasov, the co-head of sov­er­eign research at spe­cial­ist dis­tressed debt fund Gramer­cy.
...

Also note the two year debt freeze is expect­ed to save Ukraine around $5 bil­lion. This is at the same time the coun­try is run­ning a rough­ly $5 bil­lion month­ly deficit. It’s an indi­ca­tion of how lit­tle Ukraine is real­ly gain­ing at the cost of risk­ing its cred­it­wor­thi­ness. And yet the mar­kets seemed find with it. Some sort of deal was worked out:

...
Ukraine has esti­mat­ed the costs of the war com­bined with low­er tax rev­enues has left a $5 bil­lion-a-month fis­cal short­fall — or 2.5% of pre-war GDP. Econ­o­mists cal­cu­late that push­es the annu­al deficit to 25% of GDP, com­pared with just 3.5% before the con­flict.

...

It is esti­mat­ed that the debt freeze could save Ukraine around $5 bil­lion over the defer­ral peri­od.
...

Or to put that $5 bil­lion in sav­ings in a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive, the head of the EU’s Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank (EIB) recent­ly warned that the rebuild­ing costs for Ukraine are going to run in the tril­lions. Tril­lions that Ukraine can’t pos­si­bly pay itself:

...
On top of that, researchers from the Kyiv School of Eco­nom­ics esti­mate that it will already take over $100 bil­lion to rebuild Ukraine’s bombed infra­struc­ture, while the head of the EU’s pow­er­ful financ­ing arm, the Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank, has warned it could run into tril­lions. read more
...

So what hap­pened with Naftogaz’s threat to default? Well, a week after the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­men­t’s request for a two year debt freeze, we reached Naftogaz’s due date and learned whether or not it would go through with the default. And yep. Naftogaz default­ed. But at least now it pro­vid­ed an expla­na­tion why: the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment ordered Naftogaz to default. And is plan­ning on order­ing the rest of the Ukraine’s state-owned com­pa­nies to go into default:

BNE Intellinews

Ukraine’s Naftogaz faces default on $335mn bond pay­ment

By bne IntelliNews July 26, 2022

Ukraine’s nation­al gas com­pa­ny Naftogaz faces default on July 26 after it failed to per­suade enough of its bond­hold­ers to accept a two-year freeze on pay­ments at the eleventh hour and the gov­ern­ment refused the com­pa­ny per­mis­sion to make good on its oblig­a­tions.

Naftogaz has already missed the dead­line to pay off a $335mn Eurobond and has been nego­ti­at­ing with the investors to delay pay­ments dur­ing the month-long grace peri­od that expires on July 26.

A coupon pay­ment on anoth­er bond that matures in 2024 is also due on the same day.

The com­pa­ny said that too few investors had agreed to the plan, ordered by the gov­ern­ment to “pre­serve cash” to buy bad­ly need­ed gas sup­plies for the win­ter, and with­out the government’s per­mis­sion the com­pa­ny can­not make the pay­ment, despite hav­ing more than $2bn on its bal­ance sheet.

With the start of the heat­ing sea­son only a few months away Ukraine has only filled its gas stor­age tanks to 22% of capac­i­ty and needs to buy about 5bcm of gas at an esti­mat­ed cost of $7.8bn. It is not clear where it will find the mon­ey, nor where it can source the gas since it ceased buy­ing gas from Rus­sia and all Euro­pean coun­tries are scram­bling to fill their own tanks after Gazprom reduced gas flows to 20% this week.

As bne IntelliNews report­ed, the com­pa­ny issued a state­ment on July 25 say­ing that the com­pa­ny has the mon­ey and is keen to main­tain its good cred­it his­to­ry but after apply­ing to the Cab­i­net of Min­is­ters for per­mis­sion to pay the bond off on July 22 it had not received the go-ahead.

Naftogaz said in a state­ment that with so few bond­hold­ers sup­port­ing its debt freeze pro­pos­al ahead of a July 26 dead­line, the “required quo­rum” need­ed to pass the plan was “not expect­ed to be met”, report­ed Reuters.

“It seems inevitable now that they will be in default at least for a bit,” one of Naftogaz’s bond­hold­ers, Tri­um Cap­i­tal’s Peter Kisler, told Reuters. “It is just a ques­tion of what the gov­ern­ment allows them to do.”

Ukraine is run­ning out of mon­ey. The EU and US have promised a total of about $16bn in finan­cial bud­getary aid, but the West­ern finan­cial aid has been dogged by bureau­crat­ic delays. The Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank (EIB) announced that it would lend the gov­ern­ment a total of €1.6bn and that the first €1bn was being made imme­di­ate­ly avail­able. But with the gov­ern­ment burn­ing through $8bn a month and run­ning a $4bn-5bn deficit each month the EIB loan is sim­ply paper­ing over the cracks.

Naftogaz first asked investors to delay its pay­ment oblig­a­tions for two years on July 12, but was met with a luke­warm response. The gov­ern­ment fol­lowed up with its own request for a two-year defer­ral on its rough­ly $20bn worth of inter­na­tion­al bonds, which was approved by the Paris Club of sov­er­eign cred­i­tors, who called on pri­vate investors to also freeze pay­ments for up to two years.

The gov­ern­ment has in the mean­time ordered all the state-owned com­pa­nies with bonds to lob­by their investors for a two-year pay­ment hia­tus. If Naftogaz fails to make the pay­ment on July 26 it will be the first of sev­er­al state-owned com­pa­nies that will for­mal­ly default on their oblig­a­tions.

...

———–

“Ukraine’s Naftogaz faces default on $335mn bond pay­ment” by bne IntelliNews; BNE Intellinews; 07/26/2022

“The com­pa­ny said that too few investors had agreed to the plan, ordered by the gov­ern­ment to “pre­serve cash” to buy bad­ly need­ed gas sup­plies for the win­ter, and with­out the government’s per­mis­sion the com­pa­ny can­not make the pay­ment, despite hav­ing more than $2bn on its bal­ance sheet.”

It turns out Naftogaz had a good excuse after all. A con­fus­ing excuse but an under­stand­able one: The gov­ern­ment told them not to make the pay­ments. A gov­ern­ment-forced default. Or at least a gov­ern­ment-forced threat of default. It will be up to the cred­i­tors to ulti­mate­ly decide to take the two year debt freeze in a deal that avoids default or not. Naftogaz’s cred­i­tors were ready to sue two weeks ago, but we’ll see if last week’s threat to default by the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment changes their will­ing­ness to nego­ti­ate:

...
With the start of the heat­ing sea­son only a few months away Ukraine has only filled its gas stor­age tanks to 22% of capac­i­ty and needs to buy about 5bcm of gas at an esti­mat­ed cost of $7.8bn. It is not clear where it will find the mon­ey, nor where it can source the gas since it ceased buy­ing gas from Rus­sia and all Euro­pean coun­tries are scram­bling to fill their own tanks after Gazprom reduced gas flows to 20% this week.
...
As bne IntelliNews report­ed, the com­pa­ny issued a state­ment on July 25 say­ing that the com­pa­ny has the mon­ey and is keen to main­tain its good cred­it his­to­ry but after apply­ing to the Cab­i­net of Min­is­ters for per­mis­sion to pay the bond off on July 22 it had not received the go-ahead.

...

“It seems inevitable now that they will be in default at least for a bit,” one of Naftogaz’s bond­hold­ers, Tri­um Cap­i­tal’s Peter Kisler, told Reuters. “It is just a ques­tion of what the gov­ern­ment allows them to do.”

...

But then we get to this remark­able fun fact: the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment is order­ing all oth­er state-owned com­pa­nies to fol­low Naftogaz’s lead and do the same, demand­ing a two year debt freeze. The Naftogaz ‘sur­prise’ announce­ments the open­ing act in a much larg­er bond mar­ket play:

...
The gov­ern­ment has in the mean­time ordered all the state-owned com­pa­nies with bonds to lob­by their investors for a two-year pay­ment hia­tus. If Naftogaz fails to make the pay­ment on July 26 it will be the first of sev­er­al state-owned com­pa­nies that will for­mal­ly default on their oblig­a­tions.
...

What is Ukraine’s gov­ern­ment plan­ning? A giant pub­lic-pri­vate show­down with Ukraine’s bond­hold­ers? Or is this all the­atrics in sup­port of some pre­arranged back­room deal. We’ll see, but as that May 12 Reuters report describ­ing the mul­ti-tril­lion dol­lar pro­pos­al to rebuild Ukraine makes clear, it’s not just a ran­dom plan. It’s a plan being pro­posed by the head of the EIB, the EU agency that’s going to be lead­ing the EU’s rebuild­ing efforts in Ukraine. And it sounds like the kind of plan that could have broad sup­port. Espe­cial­ly in the investor com­mu­ni­ty since its a plan to have state-backed banks across the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty pro­vide guar­an­tees against heavy loss­es. The pub­lic guar­an­tee­ing the pri­vate investors. For tril­lions in invest­ment in Ukraine. That was appar­ent­ly the plan back in May from the guy who is task is lead­ing the EU’s Ukrain­ian rebuild­ing effort:

Reuters

Exclu­sive: Top EU offi­cial backs mul­ti-tril­lion plan to rebuild Ukraine

By Marc Jones
May 12, 2022 3:12 AM CDT
Updat­ed

Sum­ma­ry

* Rebuild­ing Ukraine will cost tril­lions of euros — top EU banker
* EIB chief Hoy­er calls for Mar­shall-style Plan for Ukraine
* Urges West and its banks to under­write Ukraine finances

BRUSSELS, May 11 (Reuters) — A top Euro­pean offi­cial has backed a mul­ti-tril­lion-euro “Marshall”-style plan to rebuild Ukraine, pledg­ing the fire­pow­er of the EU’s lend­ing arm for what he said must be a glob­al res­cue effort.

Wern­er Hoy­er, pres­i­dent of the Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank (EIB), said Europe must not be left alone to foot the vast bill from Rus­si­a’s inva­sion of Ukraine that he pre­dict­ed could run into the tril­lions.

Under the Mar­shall Plan imple­ment­ed after World War Two, the Unit­ed States grant­ed Europe the present-day equiv­a­lent of some $200 bil­lion over four years in eco­nom­ic and tech­ni­cal help.

Address­ing the need for a sim­i­lar pro­gramme for Ukraine, Hoy­er told Reuters the cost of rebuild­ing the coun­try had been dis­cussed at recent meet­ings at the Unit­ed Nations, the Inter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund and World Bank in Wash­ing­ton.

“What will it cost to rebuild, recon­struct Ukraine? Fig­ures were fly­ing around the room ... but one thing is quite clear to me: We are not talk­ing about mil­lions but tril­lions” said Hoy­er, a for­mer Ger­man for­eign office min­is­ter under Chan­cel­lor Hel­mut Kohl fol­low­ing the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Hoy­er’s remarks under­score how the Euro­pean Union is prepar­ing to tack­le the ever-grow­ing eco­nom­ic impact of the war, using the clout of the pan-nation­al EIB, which typ­i­cal­ly funds roads, bridges and oth­er infra­struc­ture.

“It’s a chal­lenge for the entire free world to make sure that this (sup­port) will be pro­vid­ed,” said Hoy­er.

“The polit­i­cal lead­ers must make up their mind as soon as pos­si­ble,” Hoy­er said. “But I think we need a struc­ture that is real­ly tar­get­ing a glob­al audi­ence and not just the tax­pay­ers in the Euro­pean Union.”

‘ENORMOUS PRICE’

Russ­ian forces have flat­tened cities, towns and vil­lages in Ukraine, destroy­ing infra­struc­ture, dis­rupt­ing nor­mal eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty and dis­plac­ing an esti­mat­ed 11 mil­lion peo­ple. The inva­sion has trig­gered sweep­ing West­ern sanc­tions on Rus­sia.

In a speech deliv­ered at a mil­i­tary parade on Mon­day, Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin gave no indi­ca­tion as to how long what he describes as a “spe­cial mil­i­tary operation“would last. U.S. intel­li­gence say they expect a pro­longed con­flict.

Ukraine’s econ­o­my is expect­ed to con­tract by 45% this year, its finance min­is­ter, Ser­hiy Marchenko, said on Wednes­day. read more

...

Ukraine’s cen­tral bank esti­mates a third of firms have com­plete­ly halt­ed pro­duc­tion for now, while the Unit­ed Nations esti­mates that near­ly 6 mil­lion peo­ple — around 13% of the pop­u­la­tion — have fled abroad.

Eco­nom­ic Pol­i­cy Research, a net­work of econ­o­mists, esti­mate that the over­all cost of rebuild­ing Ukraine is already 500 bil­lion-600 bil­lion euros ($528 billion-$633 bil­lion) — more than three times its annu­al eco­nom­ic out­put before the war.

Hoy­er’s fore­cast sug­gests this could yet rise sharply.

GUARANTEES

Hoy­er said a crit­i­cal part of the plan would be for the West­’s large state-spon­sored banks to pro­vide “guar­an­tees” to under­write Ukraine’s gov­ern­ment once the war ends.

Doing that should help Kyiv regain access to glob­al cap­i­tal mar­kets, much as Iraq did after the sec­ond Gulf War that over­threw Sad­dam Hus­sein, and speed up its recon­struc­tion.

“If we want to entice the investor com­mu­ni­ty to give us their mon­ey... we need to give them reas­sur­ances,” Hoy­er said, refer­ring to the guar­an­tees against heavy loss­es for investors.

“I’m con­vinced that the cap­i­tal mar­kets will be open to this.”

Many of the pri­vate­ly run glob­al invest­ment funds that have lent to Ukraine’s gov­ern­ment and firms since a 2015 debt write­down — fol­low­ing Rus­si­a’s 2014 seizure of Crimea — say they under­stand that anoth­er one will now inevitably be need­ed.

Kyiv has an almost $1 bil­lion bond pay­ment due in Sep­tem­ber, which it has repeat­ed­ly said it intends to hon­our.

...

Hav­ing already made some finance avail­able to Ukraine, Hoy­er said the EIB had a fur­ther 1.5 bil­lion euros of imme­di­ate sup­port avail­able if approved by the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion.

The “big uncer­tain­ty” for both Ukraine and investors, he said,is whether Rus­sia will be deci­sive­ly repelled or remain locked in a series of frozen con­flicts as in Crimea.

Hoy­er said inter­na­tion­al aid could be used to fund rail infra­struc­ture to trans­port Ukraine’s wheat har­vest from last year, adding that an esti­mat­ed 8 bil­lion euros worth of wheat was still strand­ed in the coun­try.

“Part of this scan­dal is that Ukraine is sit­ting on a huge amount of wealth which it can­not mon­e­tize. This must be addressed.”

He said some finan­cial assis­tance could be sent even before the con­flict was over, for instance to repair bridges in safer parts of the coun­try.

———–

“Exclu­sive: Top EU offi­cial backs mul­ti-tril­lion plan to rebuild Ukraine” by Marc Jones; Reuters; 05/12/2022

“Hoy­er’s remarks under­score how the Euro­pean Union is prepar­ing to tack­le the ever-grow­ing eco­nom­ic impact of the war, using the clout of the pan-nation­al EIB, which typ­i­cal­ly funds roads, bridges and oth­er infra­struc­ture.”

The EIB is the insti­tu­tion the EU report­ed­ly had in mind for lead­ing Ukraine’s rebuild­ing efforts and it’s the head of the EIB, Wern­er Hoy­er, who was talk­ing about a mul­ti-tril­lion dol­lar rebuild­ing effort two and a half months ago. A Mar­shall Plan for Ukraine on a scale so large Europe alone can’t finance it. An inter­na­tion­al mul­ti-tril­lion dol­lar effort that does’t just include insti­tu­tions like the IMF and World Bank, but also tril­lions in pri­vate invest­ments. A pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship on a Mar­shall Plan-scale:

...
Wern­er Hoy­er, pres­i­dent of the Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank (EIB), said Europe must not be left alone to foot the vast bill from Rus­si­a’s inva­sion of Ukraine that he pre­dict­ed could run into the tril­lions.

Under the Mar­shall Plan imple­ment­ed after World War Two, the Unit­ed States grant­ed Europe the present-day equiv­a­lent of some $200 bil­lion over four years in eco­nom­ic and tech­ni­cal help.

Address­ing the need for a sim­i­lar pro­gramme for Ukraine, Hoy­er told Reuters the cost of rebuild­ing the coun­try had been dis­cussed at recent meet­ings at the Unit­ed Nations, the Inter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund and World Bank in Wash­ing­ton.

...

“The polit­i­cal lead­ers must make up their mind as soon as pos­si­ble,” Hoy­er said. “But I think we need a struc­ture that is real­ly tar­get­ing a glob­al audi­ence and not just the tax­pay­ers in the Euro­pean Union.”

...

Eco­nom­ic Pol­i­cy Research, a net­work of econ­o­mists, esti­mate that the over­all cost of rebuild­ing Ukraine is already 500 bil­lion-600 bil­lion euros ($528 billion-$633 bil­lion) — more than three times its annu­al eco­nom­ic out­put before the war.

Hoy­er’s fore­cast sug­gests this could yet rise sharply.
...

And here’s the sweetener/catch in Hoy­er’s envi­sioned public/private part­ner­ship: state-spon­sored banks will pro­vide “guar­an­tees” against heavy loss­es. So this is a pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship with pub­licly-backed guar­an­tees for the pri­vate part­ners. It’s that kind of part­ner­ship:

...
Hoy­er said a crit­i­cal part of the plan would be for the West­’s large state-spon­sored banks to pro­vide “guar­an­tees” to under­write Ukraine’s gov­ern­ment once the war ends.

...

“If we want to entice the investor com­mu­ni­ty to give us their mon­ey... we need to give them reas­sur­ances,” Hoy­er said, refer­ring to the guar­an­tees against heavy loss­es for investors.

“I’m con­vinced that the cap­i­tal mar­kets will be open to this.”
...

This is a good point to recall how then-Euro­pean Com­mis­sion Pres­i­dent Jean-Claude Junck­er’s 2014 ‘New Deal’ plan to dig the EU out of the eco­nom­ic dol­drums: incen­tivize the pri­vate sec­tor to invst 300 bil­lion euros for big infra­struc­ture invest­ments, where the EU pub­lic incurs the great­est risk and assumes “first loss­es”. The Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank (EIB) was part of Junck­er’s plan. Are we see­ing a ‘Mar­shall Plan’-level revival of Junck­er’s 2014 scheme for Ukraine? We’ll see. The pub­lic will undoubt­ed­ly end up sub­si­diz­ing pri­vate investors. Of that we can be sure. But most of the oth­er major ques­tions revolv­ing around a rebuild­ing plan for Ukraine have yet to be worked out. Like whether or not Ukraine will still own itself by the end of its ‘Mar­shall Plan’ mul­ti-tril­lion dol­lar fire sale rebuild­ing process.

In what seemed like a sto­ry from a bygone era, we’re get­ting reports that infla­tion has start­ed to cool sig­nif­i­cant­ly in the US, with falling gas prices lead­ing the way. At the same time, we’re get­ting reports of a “tsuna­mi” of upcom­ing elec­tric­i­ty ser­vice cut­offs as 1 in 6 US house­holds fall behind on their elec­tric­i­ty bills. Ris­ing elec­tric­i­ty bills are replac­ing gas as the new night­mare for US con­sumers.

Now, as we’ve seen, there’s a pret­ty huge ‘gas’ com­po­nent to ris­ing US elec­tric­i­ty bills. Espe­cial­ly in the state of Texas: the boom in US liqui­fied nat­ur­al gas (LNG) exports to Europe fol­low­ing the out­break of war in Ukraine. So here’s a pair of arti­cles that are a reminder that you can’t real­ly dis­en­tan­gle ris­ing US elec­tric­i­ty prices from the grow­ing US LNG exports to Europe. And it’s not just Texas being impact­ed, even if the state is at the epi­cen­ter of this export-dri­ven rise in prices.

And as we’re going to see in the sec­ond arti­cle excerpt below from OilPrice.com, this is all hap­pen­ing in the absence of a glob­al ‘Gas OPEC’ car­tel. But that car­tel is on the way. Russ­ian and Iran are already tak­ing steps in that direc­tion and they only need Qatar on board to secure con­trol near­ly 60 per­cent of the glob­al gas reserves. It sounds like Qatar is indeed inter­est­ed in get­ting on board. But the ambi­tions aren’t lim­it­ed to those three gas giants. Gas exporters across the Mid­dle East are going to be invit­ed to join.

And don’t for­get that all of this is con­text for the still-under-explored Naftogaz takeover plot that was at the heart of Lev Par­nas and Igor Fru­man’s quid pro quo scheme with the Trump admin­is­tra­tion. While the war in Ukraine had­n’t bro­ken out yet when the scheme was under­way, it was still pret­ty obvi­ous at the time that the US was poised to play a much larg­er poten­tial LNG sup­ply role to Europe...as long as Rus­si­a’s sta­tus as the con­ti­nen­t’s default gas provider was left ambigu­ous. In oth­er words, the high­ly prof­itable sit­u­a­tion for US LNG exporters the the scheme was pred­i­cat­ed around has already come to fruition.

So nat­ur­al gas prices look set for even high­er prices as we head into win­ter with the US and Europe. And that’s with­out ‘Gas OPEC’:

Hous­ton Chron­i­cle

Rus­si­a’s war against Ukraine con­tin­ues to dri­ve up U.S. nat­ur­al gas prices. Here’s what we know.

Kyra Buck­ley, Staff Writer
Aug. 24, 2022
Updat­ed: Aug. 24, 2022 4:06 p.m.

The price of U.S. nat­ur­al gas – the pri­ma­ry fuel used to gen­er­ate elec­tric­i­ty in the coun­try – soared this week to its high­est lev­el of the year as Europe con­tin­ues to grap­ple with how to replace Russ­ian gas.

Nat­ur­al gas prices in the U.S. on Tues­day rose to about $9.95 per mil­lion British ther­mal units, after aver­ag­ing less than $8 in June and July. Prices retreat­ed toward $9.20 at the end of the day, and closed around $9.23 Wednes­day.

“(Nat­ur­al gas in the U.S.) has typ­i­cal­ly aver­aged about $2 to $4 per (mil­lion British ther­mal units) in pre­vi­ous sum­mers,” said Rys­tad Ener­gy ana­lyst Lu Ming Pang in a research brief, “although pro­longed abnor­mal weath­er and a high demand for LNG inter­na­tion­al­ly has applied upwards pres­sure on prices.”

Across the coun­try, house­holds have seen their elec­tric­i­ty bills sky­rock­et. In Hous­ton, prices have near­ly dou­bled over the past year, most­ly because of the price of nat­ur­al gas.

Nat­ur­al gas prices were already on the rise this year as economies recov­ered from the pan­dem­ic. When major gas exporter Rus­sia invad­ed Ukraine in Feb­ru­ary, eco­nom­ic sanc­tions against Moscow helped push nat­ur­al gas prices to a 14-year high.

Until recent­ly, inter­na­tion­al events had lit­tle effect on U.S. nat­ur­al gas prices. The coun­try’s gas mar­ket was most­ly a domes­tic one until 2016, when the U.S. began export­ing liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas.

Con­verse­ly, Europe has tra­di­tion­al­ly import­ed most of its nat­ur­al gas. Last year 40 per­cent of the gas the con­ti­nent con­sumed came from Rus­sia. As Europe has sought alter­na­tives to Russ­ian gas this year, prices inter­na­tion­al­ly have risen dra­mat­i­cal­ly.

In response, the U.S. began steer­ing most of its LNG exports to the EU, and in the first four months of the year 74 per­cent went to Europe, accord­ing to the Ener­gy Depart­ment. In 2020 and 2021, most export­ed U.S. LNG went to Asia.

This week in Europe nat­ur­al gas prices spiked on news that Nord Stream 1, a pipeline still deliv­er­ing gas from Rus­sia, will be down for main­te­nance at the end of August. The move also casts fur­ther uncer­tain­ty over the secu­ri­ty of Russ­ian sup­ply and is con­tribut­ing to high prices in the U.S., Pang said.

“Rus­sia for now sits at the heart of glob­al gas mar­kets,” Pang said in the brief. “Its abil­i­ty to impact pric­ing and sup­plies beyond its region­al mar­ket is becom­ing clear­er and like­ly to solid­i­fy as demand picks up in the win­ter months.”

...

“Mar­ket sen­ti­ment is a mix­ture of price record fatigue with qui­et accep­tance that this new nor­mal is here to stay,” Pang said.

———–

“Rus­si­a’s war against Ukraine con­tin­ues to dri­ve up U.S. nat­ur­al gas prices. Here’s what we know.” by Kyra Buck­ley; Hous­ton Chron­i­cle; 08/24/2022

““Rus­sia for now sits at the heart of glob­al gas mar­kets,” Pang said in the brief. “Its abil­i­ty to impact pric­ing and sup­plies beyond its region­al mar­ket is becom­ing clear­er and like­ly to solid­i­fy as demand picks up in the win­ter months.””

If it was­n’t clear before the war in Ukraine, it’s clear now and becom­ing clear­er as win­ter approach­es: Rus­sia is cur­rent­ly in the dri­ver’s seat in the glob­al nat­ur­al gas mar­kets. Although it’s obvi­ous­ly not just Rus­sia. The West­ern sanc­tions against Rus­sia that result­ed in cuts to Europe’s sup­ply of Russ­ian gas played a pret­ty sig­nif­i­cant role here. That along with the will­ing­ness of the US to step in and pro­vide those Euro­pean gas supplies...at much high­er prices, of course. It’s why you can’t sim­ply blame the dou­bling of elec­tric­i­ty prices in Tex­as­’s cities like Hous­ton over the past year can’t be just attrib­uted to ris­ing nat­ur­al gas prices. It’s the ris­ing gas prices cou­pled with Tex­as­’s grow­ing role as an LNG exporter that caused that dou­bling in price:

...
Across the coun­try, house­holds have seen their elec­tric­i­ty bills sky­rock­et. In Hous­ton, prices have near­ly dou­bled over the past year, most­ly because of the price of nat­ur­al gas.

Nat­ur­al gas prices were already on the rise this year as economies recov­ered from the pan­dem­ic. When major gas exporter Rus­sia invad­ed Ukraine in Feb­ru­ary, eco­nom­ic sanc­tions against Moscow helped push nat­ur­al gas prices to a 14-year high.

Until recent­ly, inter­na­tion­al events had lit­tle effect on U.S. nat­ur­al gas prices. The coun­try’s gas mar­ket was most­ly a domes­tic one until 2016, when the U.S. began export­ing liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas.

Con­verse­ly, Europe has tra­di­tion­al­ly import­ed most of its nat­ur­al gas. Last year 40 per­cent of the gas the con­ti­nent con­sumed came from Rus­sia. As Europe has sought alter­na­tives to Russ­ian gas this year, prices inter­na­tion­al­ly have risen dra­mat­i­cal­ly.

In response, the U.S. began steer­ing most of its LNG exports to the EU, and in the first four months of the year 74 per­cent went to Europe, accord­ing to the Ener­gy Depart­ment. In 2020 and 2021, most export­ed U.S. LNG went to Asia.
...

And that brings us to the fol­low­ing piece in OilPrice.com flagged by Ives Smith at NakedCapitalism.com. As the piece describes, we prob­a­bly should­n’t expect the inter­na­tion­al demand for US LNG exports to dis­si­pate any time soon. Or any time at all for the fore­see­able future. At least that’s what we can expect should Rus­sia and Iran suc­ceed in their ambi­tions to cre­ate a kind of glob­al gas NATO. Ambi­tions that are far clos­er to becom­ing real­i­ty than one might sus­pect due in large part to the fact that Russ­ian and Iran alone hold such a huge share of the glob­al reserves. And if they can just get Qatar to get on board, the three gas giants will alone con­trol near­ly 60 of the glob­al reserves. But the plan isn’t for just a three-mem­ber car­tel. The rest of the Mid­dle East­’s major gas pro­duc­ers are also going to be invit­ed to join. So if Texas elec­tric­i­ty con­sumers think elec­tric­i­ty prices are bad now, just wait for com­ing Gas OPEC era:

OilPrice.com

Iran And Rus­sia Move To Cre­ate A Glob­al Nat­ur­al Gas Car­tel

By Simon Watkins — Aug 23, 2022, 7:00 PM CDT

* Rus­sia and Iran are build­ing the foun­da­tion for a poten­tial nat­ur­al gas car­tel.
* The Rus­sia-Iran alliance aims to con­trol as much of the two key ele­ments in the glob­al sup­ply matrix as pos­si­ble.
* “Gas is wide­ly seen as the opti­mal prod­uct in the tran­si­tion from fos­sil fuels to renew­able ener­gy, so con­trol­ling as much of the glob­al flow of that will be the key to ener­gy-based pow­er over the next ten to twen­ty years”, accord­ing to a senior source who works close­ly with Iran’s Petro­le­um Min­istry.

The US$40 bil­lion mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing (MoU) signed last month between Gazprom and the Nation­al Iran­ian Oil Com­pa­ny (NIOC) is a step­ping stone to enabling Rus­sia and Iran to imple­ment their long-held plan to be the core par­tic­i­pants in a glob­al car­tel for gas sup­pli­ers in the same mold as the Orga­ni­za­tion of the Petro­le­um Export­ing Coun­tries (OPEC) for oil sup­pli­ers. With a foun­da­tion in the cur­rent Gulf Export­ing Coun­tries Forum (GECF), this ‘Gas OPEC’ would allow for the coor­di­na­tion of an extra­or­di­nary pro­por­tion of the world’s gas reserves and con­trol over gas prices in the com­ing years. Occu­py­ing the num­ber one and num­ber two posi­tions in the world’s largest gas reserves table, respec­tive­ly – Rus­sia with just under 48 tril­lion cubic meters (tcm) and Iran with near­ly 34 tcm – the two coun­tries are in an ide­al posi­tion to do this.

The Rus­sia-Iran alliance, as evi­denced in the most recent mul­ti-faceted MoU between Gazprom and the NIOC, wants to con­trol as much of the two key ele­ments in the glob­al sup­ply matrix – gas sup­plied over land via pipelines and gas sup­plied via ships in liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas (LNG) — as pos­si­ble. Accord­ing to a state­ment last week from Hamid Hos­sei­ni, chair­man of Iran’s Oil, Gas, and Petro­chem­i­cal Prod­ucts Exporters’ Union, in Tehran, after the Gazprom-NIOC MoU had been signed: “Now the Rus­sians have come to the con­clu­sion that the con­sump­tion of gas in the world will increase and the ten­den­cy towards con­sump­tion of LNG has increased and they alone are not able to meet the world’s demand, so there is no room left for gas com­pe­ti­tion [between Rus­sia and Iran].” He added: “The win­ner of the Rus­sia-Ukraine war is the Unit­ed States, and it will cap­ture the Euro­pean mar­ket, so if Iran and Rus­sia can reduce the influ­ence of the Unit­ed States in the oil, gas and prod­uct mar­kets by work­ing togeth­er, it will ben­e­fit both coun­tries.”

The Gazprom-NIOC MoU, as ini­tial­ly ana­lyzed by OilPrice.com, con­tains four key ele­ments that are geared towards the build-out of a ‘Gas OPEC’. One ele­ment is that the Russ­ian state-backed gas giant has pledged its full assis­tance to the NIOC in the US$10 bil­lion devel­op­ment of the Kish and North Pars gas fields with a view to the two fields pro­duc­ing more than 10 mil­lion cubic meters of gas per day. A sec­ond ele­ment is that Gazprom will also ful­ly assist with a US$15 bil­lion project to increase pres­sure in the super­giant South Pars gas field on the mar­itime bor­der between Iran and Qatar. A third ele­ment is that Gazprom will pro­vide full assis­tance in the com­ple­tion of var­i­ous liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas (LNG) projects and the con­struc­tion of gas export pipelines. The fourth ele­ment is that Rus­sia will exam­ine all oppor­tu­ni­ties to encour­age oth­er major gas pow­ers in the Mid­dle East to join in the grad­ual roll-out of the ‘Gas OPEC’ car­tel, accord­ing to a senior source who works close­ly with Iran’s Petro­le­um Min­istry. “Gas is wide­ly seen as the opti­mal prod­uct in the tran­si­tion from fos­sil fuels to renew­able ener­gy, so con­trol­ling as much of the glob­al flow of that will be the key to ener­gy-based pow­er over the next ten to twen­ty years, as has already been seen on a small­er scale in Russia’s hold over Europe through its gas sup­plies,” he added.

...

A new coop­er­a­tion accord was reached between Tehran and Doha in 2017 on the shared reser­voir and beyond, as ana­lyzed in depth in my lat­est book on the glob­al oil mar­kets. Since then, Qatar has overt­ly tried to avoid alien­at­ing either of the major two geopo­lit­i­cal pow­er blocs. At the begin­ning of this year of Qatar’s Emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, vis­it­ed the White House, and in March he met with Ger­man econ­o­my min­is­ter, Robert Habeck, the lat­ter vis­it being to dis­cuss how Qatar could help alle­vi­ate bans on Russ­ian gas into Europe. Pri­or to these vis­its, though, Qatar con­clud­ed a slew of long-term LNG sup­ply deals with Chi­na that caused con­sid­er­able con­cern in Wash­ing­ton (hence the vis­it of Al Thani to the U.S. in Jan­u­ary).

Over and above the need for a good rela­tion­ship between Qatar and Iran to ensure the opti­mal func­tion­ing of their huge joint gas reser­voir, Rus­sia and Iran see anoth­er area of par­tic­u­lar vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty in Doha’s polit­i­cal make­up that can be exploit­ed in the build­ing out of a Gas OPEC, and that is its dis­like for its oth­er neigh­bor, Sau­di Ara­bia. The block­ade of Qatar from 2017 to 2021 was orches­trat­ed by Sau­di Ara­bia and active­ly endorsed by the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt ini­tial­ly, with lat­er sup­port com­ing from Jor­dan, Libya, and oth­er small­er states. It has nev­er been for­got­ten by Qatar, and nor has the sup­port that was giv­en to Doha dur­ing the peri­od by Iran, and by Rus­sia, both inde­pen­dent­ly and via Turkey.

Togeth­er, Rus­sia, Iran, and Qatar account for just under 60 per­cent of the world’s gas reserves, and they were the three coun­tries instru­men­tal in the found­ing of the GECF, whose 11 mem­bers con­trol over 71 per­cent of glob­al gas reserves, 44 per­cent of its mar­ket­ed pro­duc­tion, 53 per­cent of its gas pipelines, and 57 per­cent of its LNG exports. Its long-term mis­sion state­ment agreed upon in Moscow, is to: ‘Enhance the role of GECF in the glob­al ener­gy scene in order to sup­port the sov­er­eign rights of Mem­ber Coun­tries over their nat­ur­al gas resources, to max­i­mize their val­ue for the ben­e­fit of their peo­ple, and to pro­mote their coor­di­na­tion on glob­al ener­gy devel­op­ments with a view to con­tribut­ing to glob­al sus­tain­able devel­op­ment and ener­gy secu­ri­ty’.

There have long been state­ments on plans to enhance the depth of coop­er­a­tion between GECF mem­bers to the degree that it becomes as pow­er­ful in the gas mar­ket as OPEC once was (before the 2014–2016 Oil Price War was insti­gat­ed against the U.S. shale oil sec­tor and lost by Sau­di Ara­bia). As far back as Octo­ber 2008, high-lev­el fig­ures from Rus­sia, Iran, and Qatar met in Tehran to dis­cuss tri­lat­er­al coop­er­a­tion and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of form­ing a car­tel of gas-export­ing coun­tries sim­i­lar to OPEC. A key part of the rea­son why the idea has not been ful­ly real­ized has been the unwill­ing­ness on the part of Qatar to firm­ly align itself to the Rus­sia-Iran alliance, which means that the swing sup­ply part of the gas sup­ply matrix – LNG – had remained out­side the con­trol Moscow and Tehran. It is true that Iran has suf­fi­cient gas resources to even­tu­al­ly become an LNG super­pow­er, and part of the Gazprom-NIOC deal is geared towards mak­ing that hap­pen, but it is also true that this is a medi­um- to long-term project.

Short­er-term, though, there are signs that Qatar’s ret­i­cence to com­mit to Gas OPEC may be ebbing away. The crit­i­cal fea­ture of Doha’s eco­nom­ic plans is for it to stay as the num­ber one exporter of LNG in the world, hav­ing lost that spot for a peri­od rel­a­tive­ly recent­ly, and in this con­text, the long-term deals with Chi­na are enor­mous­ly impor­tant to it. The ear­ly notable exam­ple – that set a tem­plate for sub­se­quent deals – was the long-term pur­chase and sales agree­ment by the Chi­na Petro­le­um & Chem­i­cal Corp. (Sinopec) and Qatar Petro­le­um for 2 mil­lion tons per annum (mtpa) of LNG for a term of 10 years. Fol­low­ing these ear­ly deals with Chi­na, Qatar signed LNG sup­ply agree­ments with Iran­ian (and Chi­nese and Russ­ian) ally, Pak­istan – specif­i­cal­ly, a 10-year sale and pur­chase agree­ment for Qatar Petro­le­um to sup­ply the Pak­istan State Oil Com­pa­ny with up to 3 mtpa of LNG to var­i­ous ports in the coun­try. This agree­ment builds on the ear­li­er deal signed in 2016 for Qatar to sup­ply Pak­istan with 3.75 mtpa of LNG and came at around the same time as close Pak­istan ally, Bangladesh, made a sim­i­lar deal with Qatar.

———-

“Iran And Rus­sia Move To Cre­ate A Glob­al Nat­ur­al Gas Car­tel” by Simon Watkins; OilPrice.com; 08/23/2022

“Togeth­er, Rus­sia, Iran, and Qatar account for just under 60 per­cent of the world’s gas reserves, and they were the three coun­tries instru­men­tal in the found­ing of the GECF, whose 11 mem­bers con­trol over 71 per­cent of glob­al gas reserves, 44 per­cent of its mar­ket­ed pro­duc­tion, 53 per­cent of its gas pipelines, and 57 per­cent of its LNG exports. Its long-term mis­sion state­ment agreed upon in Moscow, is to: ‘Enhance the role of GECF in the glob­al ener­gy scene in order to sup­port the sov­er­eign rights of Mem­ber Coun­tries over their nat­ur­al gas resources, to max­i­mize their val­ue for the ben­e­fit of their peo­ple, and to pro­mote their coor­di­na­tion on glob­al ener­gy devel­op­ments with a view to con­tribut­ing to glob­al sus­tain­able devel­op­ment and ener­gy secu­ri­ty’.”

The three core mem­bers of the Gulf Export­ing Coun­tries Forum (GECF) — Rus­sia, Iran, and Qatar — have big plans. OPEC-sized plans. In the mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing (MoU) signed last month between Gazprom and the Nation­al Iran­ian Oil Com­pa­ny (NIOC)
, the foun­da­tions for a new gas OPEC were laid. And if they can get Qatar on board, these three coun­tries along will account for just under 60 per­cent of the world’s gas reserves:

...
The US$40 bil­lion mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing (MoU) signed last month between Gazprom and the Nation­al Iran­ian Oil Com­pa­ny (NIOC) is a step­ping stone to enabling Rus­sia and Iran to imple­ment their long-held plan to be the core par­tic­i­pants in a glob­al car­tel for gas sup­pli­ers in the same mold as the Orga­ni­za­tion of the Petro­le­um Export­ing Coun­tries (OPEC) for oil sup­pli­ers. With a foun­da­tion in the cur­rent Gulf Export­ing Coun­tries Forum (GECF), this ‘Gas OPEC’ would allow for the coor­di­na­tion of an extra­or­di­nary pro­por­tion of the world’s gas reserves and con­trol over gas prices in the com­ing years. Occu­py­ing the num­ber one and num­ber two posi­tions in the world’s largest gas reserves table, respec­tive­ly – Rus­sia with just under 48 tril­lion cubic meters (tcm) and Iran with near­ly 34 tcm – the two coun­tries are in an ide­al posi­tion to do this.

The Rus­sia-Iran alliance, as evi­denced in the most recent mul­ti-faceted MoU between Gazprom and the NIOC, wants to con­trol as much of the two key ele­ments in the glob­al sup­ply matrix – gas sup­plied over land via pipelines and gas sup­plied via ships in liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas (LNG) — as pos­si­ble. Accord­ing to a state­ment last week from Hamid Hos­sei­ni, chair­man of Iran’s Oil, Gas, and Petro­chem­i­cal Prod­ucts Exporters’ Union, in Tehran, after the Gazprom-NIOC MoU had been signed: “Now the Rus­sians have come to the con­clu­sion that the con­sump­tion of gas in the world will increase and the ten­den­cy towards con­sump­tion of LNG has increased and they alone are not able to meet the world’s demand, so there is no room left for gas com­pe­ti­tion [between Rus­sia and Iran].” He added: “The win­ner of the Rus­sia-Ukraine war is the Unit­ed States, and it will cap­ture the Euro­pean mar­ket, so if Iran and Rus­sia can reduce the influ­ence of the Unit­ed States in the oil, gas and prod­uct mar­kets by work­ing togeth­er, it will ben­e­fit both coun­tries.”
...

But the plans aren’t lim­it­ed to Rus­sia, Iran, and Qatar. They want to enlist the rest of the major Mid­dle East­ern gas pro­duc­ers:

...
The Gazprom-NIOC MoU, as ini­tial­ly ana­lyzed by OilPrice.com, con­tains four key ele­ments that are geared towards the build-out of a ‘Gas OPEC’. One ele­ment is that the Russ­ian state-backed gas giant has pledged its full assis­tance to the NIOC in the US$10 bil­lion devel­op­ment of the Kish and North Pars gas fields with a view to the two fields pro­duc­ing more than 10 mil­lion cubic meters of gas per day. A sec­ond ele­ment is that Gazprom will also ful­ly assist with a US$15 bil­lion project to increase pres­sure in the super­giant South Pars gas field on the mar­itime bor­der between Iran and Qatar. A third ele­ment is that Gazprom will pro­vide full assis­tance in the com­ple­tion of var­i­ous liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas (LNG) projects and the con­struc­tion of gas export pipelines. The fourth ele­ment is that Rus­sia will exam­ine all oppor­tu­ni­ties to encour­age oth­er major gas pow­ers in the Mid­dle East to join in the grad­ual roll-out of the ‘Gas OPEC’ car­tel, accord­ing to a senior source who works close­ly with Iran’s Petro­le­um Min­istry. “Gas is wide­ly seen as the opti­mal prod­uct in the tran­si­tion from fos­sil fuels to renew­able ener­gy, so con­trol­ling as much of the glob­al flow of that will be the key to ener­gy-based pow­er over the next ten to twen­ty years, as has already been seen on a small­er scale in Russia’s hold over Europe through its gas sup­plies,” he added.
...

Anoth­er fac­tor to keep in mind in all of this is that the US has a spe­cial rela­tion­ship with Qatar in the form of a giant US air base in Doha. It’s a reminder that any deci­sions Qatar makes regard­ing this pro­posed ‘Gas OPEC’ will be made with that US rela­tion­ship in mind. But as the same time, as we’ve seen, it’s not like this whole scheme is actu­al­ly bad for US LNG exporters. Quite this oppo­site. It’s boom times ahead. And the tighter a grip the Gas OPEC gets on the glob­al mar­kets, the big­ger the boom for US LNG exports. And, of course, the big­ger the boom in US elec­tric­i­ty con­sumers’ wal­lets. The bad kind of ‘boom’.

With the Biden admin­is­tra­tion cel­e­brat­ing the pas­sage of the his­toric cli­mate bill, here’s some con­text for that his­toric leg­is­la­tion. It’s not great con­text. And it’s con­text that includes the moves by Rus­sia and Iran to enlist Qatar in the cre­ation of a new ‘nat­ur­al gas OPEC’, poten­tial­ly lead­ing to ele­vat­ed gas prices in Euro­pean and US and con­sumers for the fore­see­able future. Fore­see­able at least until the world belat­ed­ly tran­si­tions past ‘clean­er’ fos­sil fuels like nat­ur­al gas to green­er renew­able tech­nolo­gies.

How long will that tran­si­tion peri­od be? That’s one of the ques­tions raised by the fol­low­ing OilPrice.com piece that reminds us of one of the fun facts around that post-gas renew­able future: Chi­na already has half the world’s renew­able ener­gy capac­i­ty and is far and away out­strip­ping the US in new green-tech invests. This would­n’t be a major prob­lem if we lived in a world that was­n’t locked in a mul­ti-front cold war inch­ing ever clos­er to a mul­ti-front hot one. But that’s a world. A zero-sum win­ner-takes-all game being played out before an eco-apoc­a­lypse.

So with the West already locked in a new Cold War with Rus­sia with no end in sight and the prospects of a hot war with Chi­na seem­ing­ly grow­ing by the day, it’s going to be worth keep­ing in mind that if the world is going to avoid eco­log­i­cal cat­a­stro­phe the entire world needs to make that tran­si­tion to a green econ­o­my. Avoid­ing an ecopoca­lypse is a group effort. The kind of group effort that won’t be very amenable to end­less cold wars. Or, obvi­ous­ly hot ones. Which means it’s also going to be impor­tant to fig­ure out a way Chi­na can advance its green rev­o­lu­tion even fur­ther while ensur­ing the rest of the world are prime ben­e­fi­cia­ries too. In oth­er words, the oppo­site of the zero-sum games we keep play­ing:

OilPrice.com

Chi­na Accounts For Near­ly Half Of The World’s Renew­able Ener­gy Capac­i­ty

By Felic­i­ty Brad­stock — Aug 21, 2022, 10:00 AM CDT

* The West has been quick to crit­i­cize Chi­na for its per­ceived lack­lus­ter car­bon emis­sions tar­gets.
* While Chi­na remains one of the world’s most pol­lut­ing coun­tries, it is ramp­ing up renew­able ener­gy capac­i­ty in a big way.
* Chi­na now accounts for near­ly half of glob­al renew­able capac­i­ty and has even big­ger clean ener­gy tar­gets in its sights.

Despite big talk from the West, Chi­na is pump­ing huge amounts of fund­ing into its renew­able ener­gy sec­tor as it seeks to become com­pet­i­tive in its green ener­gy oper­a­tions. Heavy invest­ment in research and devel­op­ment has helped Chi­na devel­op sev­er­al inno­v­a­tive tech­nolo­gies to sup­port its renew­able ener­gy roll­out. In addi­tion, gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies on elec­tric vehi­cles (EVs) have helped to increase uptake and build a strong con­sumer mar­ket.

The U.S. has just passed its biggest cli­mate change bill, with $370 bil­lion in sub­si­dies going toward solar and wind ener­gy devel­op­ment, elec­tric vehi­cles, and oth­er clean ener­gy projects. The U.S. intro­duced the bill to help it reach its ambi­tious emis­sions tar­gets between 2030 and 2050. The oth­er ben­e­fit of boost­ing its renew­able ener­gy indus­try is the abil­i­ty to become more com­pet­i­tive with oth­er major world pow­ers, such as Chi­na.

How­ev­er, Chi­na achieved $380 bil­lion in pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor clean ener­gy invest­ments in 2021 alone. In addi­tion, thanks to its strong man­u­fac­tur­ing and con­struc­tion indus­tries, Chi­na can build large-scale wind and solar farms at a rapid pace. And this is just the lat­est in China’s green ener­gy achieve­ments, hav­ing been invest­ing in clean ener­gy for years. This is not to say that Chi­na isn’t still a mas­sive pol­luter. In 2021, China’s car­bon emis­sions exceed­ed those of all devel­oped nations com­bined. But its con­tri­bu­tion to the devel­op­ment of the glob­al renew­able ener­gy sec­tor is sub­stan­tial.

The Chi­nese gov­ern­ment start­ed pump­ing funds into solar and wind pow­er over a decade ago, see­ing the poten­tial for green invest­ments to make it a world leader in renew­ables, as well as help­ing it alle­vi­ate some of the wors­en­ing air pol­lu­tion being seen across major cities. Chi­na sup­port­ed pri­vate com­pa­nies invest­ing in renew­ables by extend­ing cred­it and intro­duc­ing sev­er­al sub­si­dies to encour­age green ener­gy use over coal. Now, Chi­na pro­vides near­ly half of the world’s renew­able ener­gy capac­i­ty, as home to the world’s largest solar plant and fur­ther planned con­struc­tion mean­ing its solar capac­i­ty could dou­ble this year. Chi­na con­tin­ues to dra­mat­i­cal­ly out­pace the U.S in its solar and wind ener­gy out­put. Chi­na has used its renew­able ener­gy indus­try to sup­port its econ­o­my, mak­ing it more com­pet­i­tive with oth­er major pow­ers at a time when everyone’s tran­si­tion­ing to green. BloombergNEF (BNEF) head of Chi­na analy­sist Nan­nan Kou stat­ed “Green infra­struc­ture is the most impor­tant invest­ment area that Chi­na is rely­ing on to boost its weak econ­o­my in the sec­ond half of 2022.” Chi­na has seen $41 bil­lion in solar invest­ments in the first six months of 2022, sup­port­ing its goal of 1,200 GW of wind and solar capac­i­ty by 2030. By com­par­i­son, the U.S. invest­ed $7.5 bil­lion in solar over the same peri­od.

While sev­er­al clean ener­gy bills dri­ven by the Democ­rats were halt­ed in the U.S., par­tic­u­lar­ly Obama’s Clean Ener­gy Plan which was quashed under Trump, Chi­na has been pass­ing green bills for years. Last year it intro­duced its 14th five-year plan, from 2021–2025, in which it makes sev­er­al ambi­tious tar­gets includ­ing deriv­ing 25 per­cent of China’s ener­gy from non-fos­sil fuel resources by the end of the decade and sup­ply­ing at least half of the elec­tric­i­ty demand increase by renew­ables. Chi­na has exceed­ed its ener­gy tar­gets in the past three five-year-plans and is expect­ed to con­tin­ue excelling in renew­able ener­gy.

...

But all this green ener­gy invest­ment has not meant a huge reduc­tion in the country’s emis­sions, with Chi­na still hav­ing a long way to go to achieve its emis­sions peak in 2030 before trend­ing down­wards. Last year, ahead of the COP26 cli­mate sum­mit, Chi­na set a tar­get to peak its car­bon diox­ide emis­sions before 2030, also aim­ing to decrease its “car­bon inten­si­ty” (mea­sur­ing its emis­sions per unit of GDP) by 25 per­cent by this date, com­pared to 2005 lev­els.

Many world pow­ers have crit­i­cized Chi­na for not being ambi­tious enough in its car­bon tar­gets. In addi­tion, Chi­na still relies heav­i­ly on coal. Chi­na pledged last year that it would no longer con­struct over­seas coal plants, mak­ing many think it may be turn­ing its back on coal, only to dou­ble down on sev­er­al domes­tic coal devel­op­ments. At present, Chi­na con­tin­ues to be the world’s biggest emit­ter, respon­si­ble for around 27 per­cent of glob­al emis­sions. And despite its renew­able ener­gy devel­op­ments, this issue is expect­ed to con­tin­ue with­out greater efforts to tran­si­tion nation­al­ly away from coal, oil, and gas to green­er alter­na­tives. Yet, the U.S. will cer­tain­ly have to recon­sid­er the quan­ti­ty of renew­able ener­gy fund­ing required to knock Chi­na off the top spot.

——

“Chi­na Accounts For Near­ly Half Of The World’s Renew­able Ener­gy Capac­i­ty” By Felic­i­ty Brad­stock; OilPrice.com; 08/21/2022

“The Chi­nese gov­ern­ment start­ed pump­ing funds into solar and wind pow­er over a decade ago, see­ing the poten­tial for green invest­ments to make it a world leader in renew­ables, as well as help­ing it alle­vi­ate some of the wors­en­ing air pol­lu­tion being seen across major cities. Chi­na sup­port­ed pri­vate com­pa­nies invest­ing in renew­ables by extend­ing cred­it and intro­duc­ing sev­er­al sub­si­dies to encour­age green ener­gy use over coal. Now, Chi­na pro­vides near­ly half of the world’s renew­able ener­gy capac­i­ty, as home to the world’s largest solar plant and fur­ther planned con­struc­tion mean­ing its solar capac­i­ty could dou­ble this year. Chi­na con­tin­ues to dra­mat­i­cal­ly out­pace the U.S in its solar and wind ener­gy out­put. Chi­na has used its renew­able ener­gy indus­try to sup­port its econ­o­my, mak­ing it more com­pet­i­tive with oth­er major pow­ers at a time when everyone’s tran­si­tion­ing to green. BloombergNEF (BNEF) head of Chi­na analy­sist Nan­nan Kou stat­ed “Green infra­struc­ture is the most impor­tant invest­ment area that Chi­na is rely­ing on to boost its weak econ­o­my in the sec­ond half of 2022.” Chi­na has seen $41 bil­lion in solar invest­ments in the first six months of 2022, sup­port­ing its goal of 1,200 GW of wind and solar capac­i­ty by 2030. By com­par­i­son, the U.S. invest­ed $7.5 bil­lion in solar over the same peri­od.”

The new US cli­mate bill was clear­ly a step in the right direc­tion. A rel­a­tive­ly tepid step in the right direc­tion com­pared to the enor­mous invest­ments Chi­na has been mak­ing for years now.

And as the arti­cle describes, those enor­mous Chi­nese invest­ments are dwarfed by its ambi­tions. Ambi­tions that are going to require an even greater nation­al com­mit­ment if those goals have any shot of being met:

...
While sev­er­al clean ener­gy bills dri­ven by the Democ­rats were halt­ed in the U.S., par­tic­u­lar­ly Obama’s Clean Ener­gy Plan which was quashed under Trump, Chi­na has been pass­ing green bills for years. Last year it intro­duced its 14th five-year plan, from 2021–2025, in which it makes sev­er­al ambi­tious tar­gets includ­ing deriv­ing 25 per­cent of China’s ener­gy from non-fos­sil fuel resources by the end of the decade and sup­ply­ing at least half of the elec­tric­i­ty demand increase by renew­ables. Chi­na has exceed­ed its ener­gy tar­gets in the past three five-year-plans and is expect­ed to con­tin­ue excelling in renew­able ener­gy.

...

But all this green ener­gy invest­ment has not meant a huge reduc­tion in the country’s emis­sions, with Chi­na still hav­ing a long way to go to achieve its emis­sions peak in 2030 before trend­ing down­wards. Last year, ahead of the COP26 cli­mate sum­mit, Chi­na set a tar­get to peak its car­bon diox­ide emis­sions before 2030, also aim­ing to decrease its “car­bon inten­si­ty” (mea­sur­ing its emis­sions per unit of GDP) by 25 per­cent by this date, com­pared to 2005 lev­els.
...

There’s a short-term scram­ble to con­tain the EU’s imme­di­ate ener­gy cri­sis at the same time Chi­na is dom­i­nat­ing in the race to cre­ate a green econ­o­my. And yet even Chi­na’s efforts look unlike­ly to be enough to achieve its lofty goals. Lofty goals that aren’t lofty enough. It’s part of the con­text of the US pas­sage of a his­toric cli­mate bill, and also the con­text of the Russian/Iranian push to cre­ate a nat­ur­al gas OPEC at the same time the US moves to become Europe’s new sup­pli­er. A nat­ur­al gas cri­sis trig­gered by Rus­si­a’s show­down with the West that is like­ly going to form the basis for deep­en­ing the US’s reliance on nat­ur­al gas, despite the pledges in the new leg­is­la­tion. The longer the con­flict in Ukraine leads to a dis­rup­tion of Russ­ian gas sup­plies to Europe, the deep­er the US’s short-term needs for nat­ur­al gas are going to be. Well, that is until Europe is able to ween itself of gas com­plete and tran­si­tion to the post-gas econ­o­my we all need it to get to as soon as pos­si­ble.

So while we can expect Chi­na’s lead in the next gen­er­a­tion of green infra­struc­ture to cause alarm and a sense of exis­ten­tial dread in cap­i­tals across the West, it’s worth keep­ing in mind that there are few things that could resolve Europe’s strate­gic reliance on Russ­ian gas — and the future ‘gas OPEC’ — more effec­tive­ly and per­ma­nent­ly than a green tech­nol­o­gy rev­o­lu­tion. The kind of gen­uine tech­no­log­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion that is like­ly to only hap­pen when gov­ern­ments make mas­sive invest­ments in research and devel­op­ment and made dis­cov­er­ies that ‘the mar­ket’ unlike­ly to do on its own. Hope­ful­ly the US’s new invest­ments in green tech­nol­o­gy will yield some of the need­ed tech­no­log­i­cal advances. But we’re going to need a lot of them. And right now it’s Chi­na mak­ing the biggest invest­ments in gen­er­at­ing those break­throughs. It’s nice that the US is final­ly, belat­ed­ly, join­ing in on the effort. Let’s hope a lot more is on the way. Because we’re going to need it. The US, Chi­na, and every­one else. We either all win or all lose the race to a green future. If we’re look­ing for an exis­ten­tial threat, there is it. Let’s get to work.