Category Archives: Energy Wars

Energy Wars

Peak “Cheap” Oil

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via – Bloomberg

Former Toyota CEO James Lentz noted in 2009 that oil production would peak “sometime in the neighborhood of 2017 or 2020.” In hindsight, this observation was extremely prescient: world liquids production is -1.1 mmb/day less than the November 2018 peak level, and crude plus condensate production is -3.9 mmb/day less than in November 2018 (Art Berman). The question is whether or not the November 2018 peak will be surpassed (if it even can be).

The “peak ‘cheap’ energy” question opens up a Pandora’s box of what motivated COVID-19, Net Zero objectives since then, and European deindustrialization which also peaked in 2017 — all of which are examples of demand destruction that restricts prices from moving prohibitively higher. Barring the banking crisis in late 2019, there was already a concurrent and arguably more significant crisis of energy.

This post describes peak oil theory in terms of peak EROI, suggests that a collapse in cheap energy prices would threaten global debt and FX markets, and speculates that it is therefore a plausible motive for COVID-19 and the state policy actions taken on since.

Energy-backed World

Declining oil production in the face of constant (or rising) demand would not only risk resource wars and/or famine, but the loss of cheap energy which could spillover into global debt markets. Debt, private (like a business or personal loan) and sovereign (issued by a nation), exists primarily with the expectation of future growth. The last century of growth has been one of industrialization, built on cheap energy.

To illustrate this crisis, we can imagine an example:

As previously noted, conventional oil reached its resource-limited global production plateau in 2005, at least for oil prices up to well above $100/bbl. Oil prices “well above $100/bbl” would necessarily be expensive for import-dependent nations and prohibitively so in emerging markets. Since the global oil trade is priced in USD, the demand for USD would increase and, to the detriment of the rest of the world, strengthen the dollar FX rate.

A global balance of payments crisis could unfold where a nation’s increase in dollar demand to pay for higher-priced oil drains their dollar reserves. Dollar reserves are typically held as US Treasuries, and access to dollars can be obtained readily in Treasury repo or by Treasury sales. If an nation’s dollar reserves are insufficient to cover the trade deficit, it would face difficulties in meeting its external payment obligations — leading to a vicious cycle of currency depreciation, capital flight, and economic contraction.

Thus, such a scenario playing out over an extended period could ultimately create a marginal incentive to de-dollarize, purchasing energy in foreign currency or in repriced gold. De-dollarization would necessarily collapse US debt markets, as foreign demand for US Treasuries (who own 30% of US debt) declines.

*This scenario is a dramatic simplification that describes only one example, and there are nuances/alternate scenarios that cannot be fit onto this post.

Oil Headed for $150 Without US Support for More Drilling, Shale CEO Says

Oil is headed as high as $150 a barrel unless the US government does more to encourage exploration, according to Continental Resources, the shale driller controlled by billionaire Harold Hamm.

Crude output in the Permian Basin will one day peak as it already has in rival shale regions such as the Bakken region of North Dakota and the Eagle Ford in Texas, Continental Chief Executive Officer Doug Lawler said during an interview with Bloomberg TV. Without new production, “you’re going to see $120 to $150” oil, he said.

“That’s going to send a shock through the system,” he said. Without policies encouraging new drilling, “you’re going to see more pressure on price.”

*

via Gorozen

Permian productivity has been a hot topic since well performance dropped last year. That trend looks to be continuing into 2023.

We don’t yet have a ton of data on well history (after you factor in reporting delays), but so far, it looks like performance has continued to fall. Looking at peak rates, Permian wells have fallen from an average peak month production of 986 bbl/d in 2021 to 942 bbl/d in 2022 and now 861 bbl/d in 2023.

Of course, the 2023 numbers are for a smaller sample size than 2021 and 2022, but this is nevertheless worth watching.

*

via – Ted Cross

    Hubbert’s Peak is Finally Here

    06/15/2023

    The article below is an excerpt from our Q1 2023 commentary.

    Conventional oil production has now unequivocally rolled over. Unconventional production, the only source of growth in global oil supply over the last 12 years, has also significantly slowed. The only growing non-OPEC basin is the Permian in West Texas. Never before has oil supply growth been so geographically concentrated. Six counties in West Texas are now 100% responsible for all global production growth.

    Conventional non-OPEC oil production peaked in 2007 at 46.2 mm b/d and now stands at 44.2 mm b/d – 4% below its peak. Including OPEC, conventional global output peaked in 2016 at 84.5 mm b/d and now stands at 81.3 m b/d – 5% below its peak. Even if OPEC has its alleged 4 mm b/d of unused production capacity (something we do not believe), conventional production would barely regain its 2016 peak.

    In 2009, we tried to predict non-OPEC production growth based on every major project expected to come online over the next ten years. Based on our modeling, non-OPEC supply would begin to contract by about 200-400,000 b/d annually. New fields would not grow enough to offset underlying field depletion that we estimated at 4% in the non-OPEC world. In our 2Q18 letter, we tackled the subject again. In two essays (“Conventional Oil: The Problems No One is Talking About” and “Conventional non-OPEC Oil in Depth: Declines are Set to Rapidly Accelerate”), we discussed how conventional non-OPEC production was in terminal decline. Our research looks to have been correct.

    However, the world has enjoyed a great luxury—it could ignore the problems firmly embedded in conventional oil production. Surging production from non-conventional oil sources more than offset these declines.

    Non-OPEC oil production between 2006 and 2015 grew by 8.6 mm b/d. Conventional oil supply contracted by 1.4 mm b/d. Unconventional oil supply more than offset these declines, surging by 10 mm b/d and broken down as follows: US shales grew by 6.8 mm b/d (65% of all growth), bio-fuels grew by 1.9 mm b/d (19% of the growth), and Canadian oil sands increased 1.4 mm b/d (14% of the growth). Please note that out of this 10 mm b/d growth figure, the Permian represents only 1.4 mm b/d or 14%.

    Between 2016 and 2023, unconventional production surged by another 7.4 mm b/d, representing all non-OPEC supply growth. US shales accounted for 85% of the increase. However, whereas all the major shale basins grew from 2006 to 2015, only the Permian grew afterward. The Bakken and Eagle Ford peaked at 1.5 mm b/d in 2015, and this year are each expected only to be between 900,000 and 1 mm b/d. Significant unconventional growth also came from natural gas liquids production in the liquids-rich Marcellus and Utica, which we estimate each added 1 m b/d. This source of production growth is now set to fade, while the plateauing of the Marcellus will turn into a decline.

    Between 2006 and 2015, the Permian represented only 14% of unconventional supply growth. Between 2015 and 2023, the Permian represented almost 75% of this growth.

    2023.06 G&R Blog #356 - Hubberts Peak is Here

    Conventional production started declining in the non-OPEC world over a decade ago. Conventional oil production has most likely turned negative in the OPEC world as well. Over the last thirty years, global oil supply growth has come from multiple geographic areas, including the North Sea, Mexico, Brazil, West Africa, and the Former Soviet Union. Over the last decade, however, these areas have had slight growth, and specific basins, such as the North Sea, have experienced considerable declines.

    Consensus opinion believed global oil demand would peak in 2019 and gradually decline through this decade. Just the opposite has occurred: demand has come roaring back post-COVID. Global demand in 1Q23 surpassed 102 mm barrels per day — three million barrels above the 1Q19 (pre-COVID) level and almost 2 mm b/d above the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) 1Q23 estimate. Strong demand and faltering supply led OECD countries to release 250 mm barrels of oil from their strategic petroleum reserves to keep prices from surging. Given the seasonality in demand and China’s ongoing reopening, the 4Q23 demand could surpass 104 mm b/d.

    From here on out, just six counties in West Texas must meet all global demand growth. Given the strategic importance of the Permian, it’s imperative to understand its underlying health. Using our neural network, we have updated our basin analysis, and the results are shocking. The Permian is likely less than a year from peaking and starting its decline. The only source of non-OPEC supply growth is now primarily tapped out.

    Toyota, is the only company whose CEO publicly acknowledged peak oil afaik. The fact that they recently came out and said EVs aren’t the future indicates they have their head on their shoulders and have diligently kept their eyes on oil production, like an automobile company should be doing.

    Energy Wars

    Not A Great Day For Liberal Woke “Marxists”

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    by Capitalist Exploits

    This was the remark from Lucas when we at HQ were viewing the following.

    And this beauty…

    Then this…

    While on the topic of imbeciles, morons, and clowns, there’s also this:

    The mine is so important for Warsaw that it has in effect been paying the EU to keep it open. Poland defied the court’s 2021 interim order for it to stop mining and refused to pay the resulting daily fine of €500,000. In response, the European Commission began deducting the fine from EU funds earmarked for Poland — withholding €68mn in total — while Poland separately paid €45mn to the Czech Republic in compensation for environmental damage and to get Prague to drop its lawsuit.
    Brussels has also excluded the region around Turów from EU subsidies for places that transition away from fossil fuel production.

    It’s almost as if they need coal.
    Speaking of which, Turkiye, a country I’ve been telling you is NOT going to go along with the woke ESG shullbit, just tossed the climate alarmists aside like a rag doll.

    Jeez! Doesn’t he realise the existential threat to humanity here? Clearly an unhinged extremist. Probably misogynistic, too. Definitely actually, after he arrested all the pink-haired folks who were trying to parade their bits in front of children in Istanbul during pride month.
    From the article:

    President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday dismissed environmental protests over the felling of trees to expand a coal mine in southwest Turkey, saying the campaign was led by “marginals”.

    Marginals? So he’s not going to let a few radicals dictate to the majority? Must be undemocratic.

    This power plant, which produces almost two-thirds of the electricity consumed in the southern Aegean, contributes around one billion dollars annually to our country’s economy,” Erdogan said in a televised address after the weekly cabinet meeting.

    He said the power plant needed to continue production with new coal basins as the existing reserves were close to depletion.

    Coal power plants have become once again a major source of energy in European countries after the crisis that broke out with the Russia-Ukraine war,” he said.
    “Although some are constantly and persistently trying to re-play the same scenarios with different skins, nobody is deceived by this game anymore,” Erdogan said.

    He can’t possibly be referring to the Soros-sponsored “NGOs” that have actively been working throughout Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. Nah, that’s crazy talk.
    Actually, on the entire climate change fraud, I found this:

    Now, to be clear… before we get any hate mail telling us what a bad man little Erdy is, realise this. They are ALL power hungry psychos. They are simply psychos with differing agendas, and it is our job to arbitrage those agendas for our own prosperity and freedom where possible.
     

    Energy Wars

    China’s Weapon in the Global Fight for Resorces

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    The Belt and Road Initiative is proclaimed to be an act of solidarity with developing nations. It is, but it is also so much more

    by Timur Fomenko, via RT

    “China’s overseas investment in metals and mining set to hit record,” declared an article in the Financial Times. The piece analyzes how China’s investments in the Belt and Road Initiative, a massive global infrastructure program, have become more “strategic.”

    While the FT is notoriously negative about China and spares no opportunity to rush into narratives pertaining to ‘debt traps,’ claims of corruption, and how ‘dozens’ of countries are reviewing them (only citing US-pressured Italy as an example), it nonetheless makes a key point here. The BRI is strategic. But it was never anything else.

    While China has framed the massive investment scheme as an act of solidarity with developing countries, pledging economic integration and mutual gains, the colossal creation of infrastructure by Beijing in other countries has never been random, discrete or disorganized. The goodwill gained of course matters, but there was always a plan, and that plan was not only to keep China’s exports rolling, but to also to secure energy and resources in an international environment that is increasingly uncertain, and in anticipation of what the US was about to do.

    China is the world’s largest consumer of energy and natural resources, but has a strategic Achilles heel in that, beyond critical rare earth elements, it doesn’t have as many resources as it needs. As an industrial giant, China cannot satisfy its own needs for energy whether it be to power its factories or to fuel its cars. This has resulted in Beijing forming increasingly lucrative and close partnerships with the nations of the Middle East, which have tilted away from their traditional patrons in the West accordingly.

    At the same time, a global competition for natural resources is picking up pace. The US, using the language of ‘supply chain resilience’ and ‘diversification,’ is seeking to gain control over resources it deems strategically critical, such as lithium and many other metals and minerals. The US wants to dominate all of these global supply chains, and eventually isolate China from them, leading to a competition regarding investments throughout the world. Supply chains are no longer globalized but are being carved up to fit the strategic needs of individual countries that want to be self-sufficient, should a military crisis emerge.

    Consequently, this military factor is a huge dynamic in China’s strategic thinking, given that its imports of materials and energy have been reliant on crossing through areas which are now being contested by the US, including the South China Sea, East China Sea and the Indian Ocean.

    Washington is attempting to comprehensively encircle China’s periphery. The BBC applauded this as an “arc of bases around China,” with the US having recently gained access to even more military sites in the Philippines. It then received a military access deal with Papua New Guinea, while backing the full rearmament of Japan and placing more weapons on the Korean Peninsula.

    In the event of any conflict, the US would like to seek military dominance over China’s surroundings (as unfeasible as that is) and attempt to embargo its foreign trade and energy imports. How did the British Empire triumph over Germany twice? The answer is through naval supremacy, by blocking Berlin’s access to the Atlantic and Mediterranean, and crippling it with attrition in the long run.

    China’s Eastern periphery is similarly vulnerable. This is why China is using the Belt and Road initiative to connect Eurasia by land in ways which allow it to bypass these contested areas and create new routes for energy and materials.

    This, in turn, is why China’s most critical strategic partner in the entire Belt and Road project is Pakistan, a country that not only connects to China by land, but extends southwards to the sea bypassing the whole Indian subcontinent and offering a free route to the Middle East. Pakistan is also a formidable military power with nuclear capabilities, discouraging any potential attack by the US and its allies in any potential conflict with China. Through Gwadar Port, China intends for Pakistan to be its primary maritime gateway concerning the Middle East and Africa, marking a safe passage for oil and natural gas.

    This is also why China’s partnerships with Russia and states in Central Asia matter. Beijing has invested overwhelmingly in creating transcontinental railway freight routes, and hosted its first ever Central Asian leaders summit this year. It’s also one reason why, despite the upheaval in Afghanistan, China seeks to have a close relationship with the Taliban and procure access to that country’s natural resources.

    In conclusion, the BRI is a master chess game by China, because it embodies diplomatic, trade and strategic priorities. Look, for example, at how the new China-Laos railway has established an additional commercial route into the country for the landlocked Laos, which will soon be connected all the way down to Thailand and its ports. China is actively diversifying its logistical routes while keeping other countries on board. It’s about breaking US attempts to dominate China by militarizing the area around it, cutting off access to goods and preventing a return to the “gunboat diplomacy” of the 19th century.

    Energy Wars

    More Energy Resources Added to Russia’s Control

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    Rapprochement between Russia and Niger makes the West dependent on Moscow

    According to Bloomberg, if Niger falls into Russian orbit, the world will become even more dependent on Moscow for nuclear energy.

    It is specified that Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are among the world’s leading producers of uranium, which account for about half of the reserves mined in the world. If we add Russia and Niger to this, then the share will jump to 60% and above.

    In addition, Russia has uranium deposits, and the country itself controls almost 50% of the world’s enrichment capacity.

    via https://t.me/+fZp0Os56l5ZkMzdi

    Energy Wars

    Is Kazakhstan Next after Ukraine in Russia’s Crosshairs

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    via  Politnavigator


    ❗️The ruling Kazakh elite is firmly following the path of Ukraine. We have repeatedly written that Kazakhstan is turning into an outpost of the Anglo-Saxons in Central Asia. This was once again confirmed in the case of detention by Kazakh customs officers of a batch of drones on their way from Kyrgyzstan to Russia. 
    We are talking about the actual expropriation by the Kazakh side of 14 DJI AgrasT30 drones. Each such seized Chinese-made heavy drone is estimated at 1.1 million rubles, and the total cost of the entire batch is 15.8 million.
    As a result, the Kazakh authorities fined the Kyrgyz company Impuls-Invest LLC, Astana received praise for maintaining the sanctions regime against Russia, and The Washington Post published an article condemning Kyrgyzstan, just before the introduction of secondary measures against this mountainous republic. And then the US imposed sanctions against four companies from Kyrgyzstan. Local authorities began to justify themselves to the Americans – they say that the goods were sent to Russia not by government agencies, but by private traders. Bishkek was forced to promise that it would strengthen control over the flow of goods. That is, in fact, a whole operation was carried out with the participation of the Kazakh authorities, in order to use the example of Kyrgyzstan to intimidate and exponentially punish for participating in gray imports in favor of the Russian Federation.
    This is a signal to all the former Soviet Central Asian republics – if you help the Russians – we will strike not only at private companies, but also at the assets of the ruling elites in the West and offshore. Astana, on the other hand, plays the role of an open US agent in Central Asia, which not only participates in the isolation and strangulation of the Russian Federation, but also as a Western provocateur. This is the strongest blow to the EAEU and the principles of free trade.
      In Kazakhstan, two-thirds of the entire extractive industry is controlled by American, British and European companies, and now, as in the 90s, deposits of rare earth metals and precious stones are falling into the hands of the West through enslaving production sharing agreements for decades.
     
    Energy Wars

    “Nord Stream 1-Blast: It Was a Mini Nuke!”

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    A report by Attorney at Law Viviane Fischer, photo Wigwam nuclear test of the USA, 1955.

    Swiss physicist Dr. Hans-Benjamin Braun has meticulously analyzed the Nord Stream 1 explosion. His finding, presented to the Corona Investigative Committee on June 30, 2023: the blast was made using a thermonuclear (fusion) mini-nuke with the greatest possible shockwave impact on Russia’s Kaliningrad. Like the investigative journalist and Pulizer Prize winner Seymour Hersch, Dr. Braun suspects the USA behind the attack. Among the authorities, politicians, journalists and scientists whom he has informed of the results of his analyses since December 2022, there is one thing above all: radio silence.

    Dr. Braun is a renowned scientist specializing in statistical physics, quantum physics, neutron scattering, condensed matter physics and materials science, magnetism and topology. For years he taught as Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Catholic University of Dublin. In 2014, he was honored to be one of four “Distinguished Lecturers” (editor’s note) worldwide from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers IEEE, Magnetics Society, who has given 50 lectures internationally at the invitation of individual institutions or sections. Dr. Braun has widely cited publications in Nature Physics, Nature Communications, and Advances in Physics.

    The puzzling, contradictory public interpretations of the explosion event at the pipeline at 17:03 UTC on September 26, 2022, had piqued his scientific curiosity as a physicist who also holds a master’s degree in earth sciences, Dr. Braun reports. Why, he wondered in this context, did the UN Security Council not initiate an investigation despite the many unanswered questions.

    In October 2022, he set to work analyzing what had happened via six entirely independent methods: Evaluation of seismic data according to two methods, analysis of the development of aerosol clouds after the detonation, consideration of underwater currents in the Baltic Sea, especially in an underwater canyon between Bornholm and Kaliningrad during the following days, temperature development on the seafloor, and spread of a possible radioactive fallout after the blast.

    The surprising result: the seismic measurements suggest an explosive force in the equivalent of up to 1-4 kilotons TNT, a strong contrast to the estimated data of an equivalent of 250 kg TNT published e.g. in the renowned magazine Nature.

    © Dr. Hans-Benjamin Braun

    The comparison of seismic measurements in the Baltic Sea, e.g. of Sweden and Finland with the values of the well-documented North Korean nuclear event also identified by the Columbia University Earth Institute on the basis of IRIS data shows a very similar pattern.

    © Dr. Hans-Benjamin Braun

    According to the infrared satellite data, four hours after the detonation a distinct aerosol cloud with an extension of up to 100 km was formed away from the explosion site in wind direction and in the Kaliningrad region due to the impact of shock waves on the steep Kaliningrad shoreline. Such a phenomenon would not occur to this extent with a much smaller explosive charge, Dr. Braun said. The opening photo of this paper shows aerosol formation during the U.S. “Wigwam” nuclear test, with an explosive force equivalent of 32 kT, in 1955 in the Pacific Ocean, 900 km southwest of San Diego.

    © Dr. Hans-Benjamin Braun

    During the days following the detonation moment, significant underwater currents have been formed in the Baltic Sea (~50km and more), focusing into the underwater canyon directed directly towards Kaliningrad. As a result, a vortex current formed in the Bornholm Basin. According to the Nature publication of March 15, 2023, the explosion stirred up 250,000 tons of sediments that were subsequently deposited. Indeed, it appears that this process also affected water temperatures on the seafloor during the whole winter time.

    Remarkably, according to satellite data, the water temperature at the seafloor increased by up to 5 degrees Celsius year-on-year over an area of circa 100 km x 100 km in the winter of 2023 compared to 2022. Dr. Braun clarifies that this cannot be explained by natural fluctuations, especially since the mean temperature in the more distant regions of the Baltic Sea tends to be even lower.

    © Dr. Hans-Benjamin Braun

    In Poland, radioactive fallout was detected one day after the blast; in Switzerland, it showed up three days after the event.

    Highly noteworthy, Dr. Braun said, is that the blast site apparently must have been chosen to reflect and amplify shock waves due to the elliptically shaped Swedish coastline, allowing them to focus precisely on Kaliningrad via the underwater canyon. The city, 500 km away, experienced a seismic effect 10 times greater than that of neighboring Bornholm, which is only 70 km from the pipeline blast site.

    Dr. Braun’s investigative conclusion: “None of the seven independent geophysical observations can be explained by the use of a conventional explosive; a thermonuclear weapon must have been used. The Nord Stream sabotage was also a targeted shockwave attack on Kaliningrad, which to me makes the U.S. the only plausible culprit.” He considers a tactical self-endangerment of the Russians by the detonation unlikely, Ukraine as another possible aggressor does not possess nuclear weapons. The U.S., however, had nuclear weapons, delivery systems and, through NATO’s BALTOPS 22 exercise in the Baltic Sea, which took place in June 2022, extensive fresh barythmetric knowledge of conditions at the eventual site. “BALTOPS also provides a unique opportunity for the U.S. Research, Development, and Acquisition communities to exercise the current and emerging UUV technology in real-world operational environments. This year featured the current and future programs of record for mine hunting UUVs in the MK-18 and Lionfish systems. Both systems were put through the paces over 10 days of mine hunting operations, collecting over 200 hours of undersea data,” writes the U.S. NAVY under the heading “BALTOPS 22 a perfect opportunitey for research and testing new technologies.” Of course, a collaboration of other geopolitical interest groups besides the U.S. would also be conceivable, Dr. Braun adds.

    Precisely such an autonomous underwater drone as the Lionfish, which was tested during the NATO exercise BALTOPS 22, could have been used to transport the explosive charge to the scene, Dr. Braun elaborates. To actually carry out the detonation using such an unmanned vehicle would have required the involvement of only a few people. It is clear, however, that if the USA were involved, it would have to be assumed that the blast was carried out with the knowledge and will of US President Joe Biden. The U.S. company Sandia Labs, a longtime partner of the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), writes on its website: “The nation’s nuclear weapons must always work when commanded and authorized by the president of the United States, and must never detonate otherwise.” The U.S., Dr. Braun notes, is incidentally the only country in the world that has not joined the international ban on a nuclear first strike.

    Dr. Braun reports that he made his findings available to selected journalists and politicians on December 22, 2022, seven weeks before Seymour Hersh’s article appeared. On January 3, 2023, he reportedly informed the Swiss government, and on January 25, 2023, he informed the Swiss parliament. At the same time, he wrote to a colleague at MIT, who drew his attention to the imminent article by Seymour Hersch. On March 27, 2023, he had contacted Prof. J. Sachs as a representative of the UN Security Council, and on April 4, 2023, he had formulated an open letter to the Secretary General of NATO, the Finnish and Swedish governments, and three Nobel laureates in physics. On April 4, 2023, he had written to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, the White House, the Kremlin, the Russian and Chinese embassies in Switzerland, and on April 24, 2023, again to the UN Security Council, this time under the new Russian chairmanship. The answer: radio silence.

    Dr. Braun demands that the matter be completely clarified. Due to their easy scalability, with which one can adjust the detonation strength by a factor of 100 with a flick of the wrist (so-called “dial a yield”), thermonuclear weapons pose an increasing threat to humanity, especially through the combination with rapidly advancing artificial intelligence, which is used in autonomous air and underwater vehicles, and can also be used in covert operations.

    Energy Wars

    America’s Wars, Some 4.5 Million Deaths and Counting

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    by Miriam Berger via Washington Post

    The full death toll of violence in the U.S.-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, let alone of the broader global war on terrorism, remains difficult to determine. But it has long been surpassed by an even larger and more opaque figure: the indirect count of people who have died as a result of post-9/11 conflicts’ far-reaching ripple effects, such as ensuing waves of violence, hunger, the devastation of public services and the spread of disease.

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    Brown University researchers, in a report released Monday, draw on U.N. data and expert analyses to attempt to calculate the minimum number of excess deaths attributable to the war on terrorism, across conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia and Yemen — impacts “so vast and complex that” ultimately, “they are unquantifiable,” the researchers acknowledge.

    The accounting, so far as it can be measured, puts the toll at 4.5 million to 4.6 million — a figure that continues to mount as the effects of conflict reverberate. Of those fatalities, the report estimates, some 3.6 million to 3.7 million were “‘indirect deaths” caused by the deterioration of economic, environmental, psychological and health conditions.

    More than 7,000 U.S. troops were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with more than 8,000 contractors, according to Brown’s Costs of War project. And U.S. forces have suffered cascading effects of their own, including rates of suicide among veterans outpacing the general population. But the vast majority of those killed in the fighting were locals: more than 177,000 uniformed Afghans, Pakistanis and Iraqis and Syrian allies had died as of 2019, according to the Costs of War project, alongside a vast count of opposing combatants and a disputed civilian toll.

    “There are reverberating costs, the human cost of war, that people for the most part in the United States don’t really know enough about or think about,” said Stephanie Savell, the paper’s author and co-director of the Costs of War project.

    “We talk about it being over now that the U.S. has left Afghanistan, but one significant way that these wars are continuing,” she said, is that “the people in the war zones are continuing to suffer the consequences.”

    The legacy of the U.S.-led war on terrorism is dogged by its disastrous consequences for people in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia — a gap, Savell said, that the research, while based on incomplete data, is meant to address by giving a rough estimate of the web of repercussions.

    “The exercise of generating this kind of estimate allows us to start to get a handle on what the scale of the problem really is,” she said.

    Compiling estimates for just direct civilian casualties in these wars can be politically fraught: Death counts by Washington and its allies are often far lower than those in local reports.

    In Iraq, estimated casualties from fighting range from 151,000 to 300,000 to 600,000 people, according to the new report. The Washington Post, among other outlets, has documented severe discrepancies and official undercounting of death tolls from the U.S.-led coalition air and artillery strikes that targeted the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. A Post investigation into casualty payouts in Afghanistanfound the U.S. military had an “uneven, typically opaque handling of the civilian toll of battlefield operations.”

    Since 2010, a team of 50 scholars, legal experts, human rights practitioners and physicians participating in theCosts of War project have kept their own calculations. According to their latest assessment, more than 906,000 people, including 387,000 civilians, died directly from post-9/11 wars. Another 38 million people have been displaced or made refugees. The U.S. federal government, meanwhile, has spent over $8 trillion on these wars, the research suggests.

    But Savellsaid the research indicates that exponentially more people, especially children and the most impoverished and marginalized populations, have been killed by the effects of war — mounting poverty, food insecurity, environmental contamination, the ongoing trauma of violence, and the destruction of health and public infrastructure, along with private property and means of livelihood.

    In an ideal scenario, Savell said, her team could quantify the toll by studying excess mortality rates, or by using on-the-ground researchers to study who is dying and why. But such documentation, even birth and death certificates, is largely unavailable in the war-torn countries in question.

    Instead, Savell relied on a calculation by the Geneva Declaration Secretariat, a U.N.-backed initiative to address armed violence and development, which estimates that for every person directly killed by war, four more are killed by its indirect consequences. War, which often brings about general economic collapse that pervades every aspect of society, compromises access to essentials such as water and food and the infrastructure needed for safe movement and medical care.

    “The large majority of indirect war deaths occur due to malnutrition, pregnancy and birth-related problems, and many illnesses including infectious diseases and noncommunicable diseases like cancer,” the report finds. “Some also result from injuries due to war’s destruction of infrastructure such as traffic signals and from reverberating trauma and interpersonal violence.”

    Two decades on, the extent of the ongoing threats to human life are only starting to be acknowledged and uncovered. A Post investigation foundthat while Iraqis fell sick and died after exposure to open burning trash pits that U.S. soldiers established by military bases, there has been no American effort to assess, yet alone compensate, the local impact. Last year, U.S. veterans succeeded in a years-long fight for government recognition of the toxic risk.

    Determining whether deaths were intentional and who bears direct responsibility is outside the scope of the study, Savell said.

    “You can’t separate out who caused the death because there’s lots of different warring parties” and other complicating factors, from authoritarian rule to climate change, Savell said. “The point is to say the U.S. has been involved in these really violent wars. There’s been an intensification as a result of U.S. involvement. And at this point, the issue is really: How do we come to terms with a sense of responsibility?”

    Energy Wars

    US in Syria, The Forgotten Illegal Occupation

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    by Robert Inlakesh via RT

    Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the Palestinian territories and currently works with Quds News. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’.

    The US military, with the help of its Kurdish allies, occupies a third of Syrian territory with no legal basis and is now complaining about Russia antagonizing its troops. Although Moscow has been invited into Syria by Damascus and the US has repeatedly been asked to leave, the Americans are treating Syrian territory as if it is their own.

    US officials have recently lashed out with yet more accusations against Moscow. This time the complaints have surfaced through Western corporate media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal (WSJ). The head of US Air Forces Central Command, Lt. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, told the WSJ that “we continue to see unsafe and unprofessional area activity from the Russians,” reportedly in proximity of US forces. No evidence has been provided for the claims and Moscow has yet to make any comment.

    In July of last year, Dana Stroul, the Biden administration’s deputy assistant secretary of defense (DASD) for the Middle East, said: “Russia is flying in and moving about, at times, in the same space or terrain, near our forces, and it is the responsible, professional thing to do to make sure we have a channel to talk to each other.” She claimed this system has been in place for “a very long time” and is key in preventing misunderstandings that could “tip into an escalatory cycle.” With the presence of both forces in close proximity so frequently, there has yet to be any indication that what is being complained about now is anything new.

    However, the story that is being completely written out of existence here is that the US has no legitimacy whatsoever to even operate inside Syria. The US government attempts to legally justify its presence by asserting that under international law it is a victim state in the face of non-state actors such as ‘Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) ISIS or Al-Qaeda. Therefore, the Authorization for Use of Military Force (UAMF) against Iraq, which was passed by US Congress in 2002, is utilized here.

    The problem is that the US invasion of Iraq had no validity under international law either, a point explicitly made by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2004. Knowing this, US government officials will always cite their invitation from the Iraqi government to operate inside the country today, sometimes attempting to attach their operations in Syria as coming in defense of their Iraqi ally. Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, an international law which prohibits the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of another state, completely invalidates US operations inside Syria, since the sovereign government of the nation never granted America permission to enter its territory. In fact, it has even ordered US forces to leave.

    Even if you buy the domestic argument about the US fight against ISIS, an organization that has been reduced to terror cells that linger in caves for the most part, this justification also begins to fall apart when examined closely. In 2017, US Senator for Virginia, Tim Kaine, wrote to the US State Department and Secretary of Defense, expressing his concern that if the anti-ISIS mission was extended to include pursuing objectives outside combating the terrorist group, it would have no legitimacy.

    In 2018, former US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson stated that he planned on maintaining an indefinite troop presence in Syria, both to fight ISIS and to combat Iran and Syrian President Bashar Assad. Even today, the US Department of Defense openly mentions that its mission in Syria and Iraq is a strategy to undermine Iran and ISIS. At one point, after former US President Donald Trump had been misled to believe that all US forces had been withdrawn from Syria, he corrected himself by saying that the US military presence there is “only for the oil.”

    Interestingly, at a conference in 2019, Stroul stated that despite the lack of investment that the US was able to muster to counter Iranian and Russian influence in Syria, it still maintained compelling leverage “to shape an outcome that is more protective and conducive to US interests.”

    Stroul outlined four ways that the US maintains its leverage. The first key point she made was about the territory in the north-east, which she said is “owned via the US military with its local partner,” adding that the “one third of Syria is the resource rich, economic powerhouse of Syria.” She elaborated that this is “where the hydrocarbons are” and that it is also the “agricultural powerhouse” of the country. Additionally, she stated that the strategy of isolating the government in Damascus diplomatically is in part about preventing Moscow’s efforts to re-integrate the country onto the international stage, and that US sanctions are partly attached to a wider anti-Iran strategy.

    Perhaps the most shocking of all Stroul’s points was the admission that the US has only allowed reconstruction in the areas controlled by its SDF allies in occupied Syria while commenting that “the rest of Syria is rubble.” Stroul continued, “What Russia wants and what Assad want, is economic reconstruction and that is something that the United States can basically hold a card on via the international financial institutions and our cooperation with the Europeans.” In the wake of the devastating earthquake in Northern Syria earlier this year, the prevention of reconstruction has contributed significantly to civilian suffering resulting from the natural disaster.

    The US Caesar Act sanctions have been blasted for years by UN experts, who have called upon the Biden administration to drop them over the “suffocating”humanitarian crisis they are inflicting on Syrian civilians. Under international law, the third of Syrian territory “owned” by the US can be argued as tantamount to an illegal occupation by a foreign military force. Given that the US military is an occupying power, Damascus has the right to use force to expel it, furthermore, since Russia has been invited into Syria by the official government, the US claims of harassment carry no weight. The United States of America has no right to claim self defense in Syria, it has only one right there – to leave and not return.