News Round-up, August 7, 2023
Latest news:
“China shows it is 'not backing Russian aggression'; Peskov denies comment about Putin re-election. China's attendance at peace talks in Saudi Arabia show it is not backing Vladimir Putin's aggression, an analyst has told Sky News - but the talks conclude without concrete plan to end the war.
Sky News NowMost read…
U.S. lab says it repeated fusion energy feat — with higher yield
Scientists are striving to harness the potential of fusion energy, yet they still face significant challenges.
TWP By Ben Brasch, Kyle Rempfer and Shannon Osaka, August 6, 2023 Big Oil’s Talent Crisis: High Salaries Are No Longer Enough
Energy companies scramble to attract engineers as young workers fret over climate and job security
WSJ By Mari Novik, and Collin Eaton, Aug. 6, 2023Rising Money Flows, Fueled by Record Migration, Prop Up Autocrats
Remittances to the developing world hit record $647 billion, aiding the poor but helping keep strongmen from Nicaragua to Tajikistan in power African migrants recently sailed in a wooden boat in the Mediterranean Sea toward Europe.
WSJ by Ryan Dubé, Aug. 6, 2023“Pope” calls for action on migrant deaths calling the Mediterranean 'a cemetery'
Euronews Digital with AP, AFP, EVN, August 7, 2023Colombia in —Petrified State—
The initial year of Gustavo Petro's administration has been full of ups and downs, with the government demonstrating both boldness in breaking paradigms and disappointing periods, creating a sense of freefall.
"El Pais", written by Maria Jimena Duzan on August 7, 2023/ Translations and English editions provided by Germán & Co.Siemens Energy books $2.4 billion in charges on wind turbines
A significant increase in its net loss for 2023, projecting a more than six-fold jump to 4.5 billion euros.
Reuters By Christoph Steitz and Alexander Hübner, August 7, 2023
At the COA Spring Gala 2023, Andrés Gluski, the CEO & President of AES and Chairman of the Americas Society/Council of the Americas, presented President Lacalle Pou with the prestigious Gold Insigne. This award was given in recognition of President Lacalle Pou's outstanding leadership in successfully transforming Uruguay into a prominent technology and innovation hub, all while upholding a thriving democracy and robust economy.
An illustration provided by the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory depicts a target pellet inside a hohlraum capsule with laser beams entering through openings on either end. The beams compress and heat the target to the necessary conditions for nuclear fusion to occur. (AP)U.S. lab says it repeated fusion energy feat — with higher yield
Scientists are striving to harness the potential of fusion energy, yet they still face significant challenges.
TWP By Ben Brasch, Kyle Rempfer and Shannon Osaka, August 6, 2023 A group of U.S. scientists say they have repeated their landmark energy feat — a nuclear fusion reaction that produces more energy than is put into it. But this time, they say the experiment produced an even higher energy yield than one in December that got international attention for making a major step forward toward the long elusive goal of producing energy through fusion.
This second achievement by researchers at the federal Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California is another crucial step — albeit in a journey that may still take decades to complete — in the quest for an unlimited source of cheap and clean power. The successful effort was initially reported by the Financial Times on Sunday.
“We have continued to perform experiments to study this exciting new scientific regime. In an experiment conducted on July 30, we repeated ignition at (the National Ignition Facility),” Paul Rhien, a spokesman for the federal laboratory, said in a emailed statement. “Analysis of those results is underway, but we can confirm the experiment produced a higher yield than the December test.”
Rhien said the lab “won’t be discussing further details” of the July experiment until after more analysis. But the team plans to “share the results at scientific conferences and peer-reviewed publications as part of our normal process for communicating scientific results.”
What you need to know about the U.S. fusion energy breakthrough
Right now, nuclear power plants use fission, which creates energy by splitting atoms — the science at the center of the current blockbuster “Oppenheimer.” While nuclear power produces bountiful clean energy, it has long drawn concerns over safety, though it is getting renewed attention amid an international push to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and slow global warming.
Fusion, on the other hand, creates energy by merging atoms together. It’s long been a dream because it could create limitless clean energy without the radioactive byproducts of nuclear power or the risk of meltdown. Plus, the fuel to make fusion happen is simply heavy hydrogen atoms, which can be found in something that Earth has in abundance: seawater. No mining of uranium is required.
Researchers have produced fusion reactions before, but it has taken more energy to cause the reaction than they could get back. The key thing about these last two experiments is that they get more energy back than they put in to create the reaction. That efficiency has been the elusive holy grail of fusion research.
(Still, it is limited in the sense that they are considering the amount of energy required to power lasers that were used to smush the hydrogen atoms together — not the power that’s necessary to make the whole project work.)
The White House praised the work at the time of the first breakthrough in December.
“This is such a wonderful example of a possibility realized, a scientific milestone achieved, and a road ahead to the possibilities for clean energy,” Arati Prabhakar, the White House science adviser, said during a news conference.
U.S. announces milestone on fusion energy, sparking hopes for clean power
Still, scientists are far away from using the energy produced by fusion.
Researchers can only create a fusion reaction about once a day because they have to let the lasers cool and replace the fuel target. But a commercially viable fusion plant would need to be able to do it several times per second, Dennis Whyte, director of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center at MIT, previously told The Washington Post.
“Once you’ve got scientific viability,” he said, “you’ve got to figure out engineering viability.”
Source: www.energyportal.eu Big Oil’s Talent Crisis: High Salaries Are No Longer Enough
Energy companies scramble to attract engineers as young workers fret over climate and job security
WSJ By Mari Novik, and Collin Eaton, Aug. 6, 2023“The Shrinking Pool of Petroleum Engineers
energyportal.eu By Howard Rhodes, AUG 6, 2023…European universities, which have traditionally provided engineers for companies operating in the Middle East and Asia, are also witnessing a decline in interest.
The decrease in interest from students and high-skilled workers is primarily driven by concerns about the industry’s impact on climate change and the long-term job security. As global economies transition away from fossil fuels, many individuals are wary of choosing a career path that may become obsolete. This shift in perspective marks a departure from previous cycles, where the industry’s workforce fluctuated with oil prices.
Good news from the oil patch: Jobs are plentiful and salaries are soaring.
The bad news is that young people still aren’t interested.
Even as oil-and-gas companies post record profits, the industry is facing a worsening talent drought.
At U.S. colleges, the pool of new entrants for petroleum-engineering programs has shrunk to its smallest size since before the fracking boom began more than a decade ago. European universities, which have historically provided many of the engineers for companies with operations across the Middle East and Asia, are seeing similar trends.
Diverging Paths
Numbers of U.S. undergraduate students studying petroleum engineering have traditionally fluctuated with the price of oil, but that hasn't been the case recently.
Change since 1990
Source: Lloyd Heinze/ *Brent crude spot price a barrel, annual average.Students and high-skilled young workers are concerned about the industry’s role in climate change, as well as long-term job security given that global economies are transitioning away from fossil fuels to other energy sources, according to executives, analysts and professors.
The trend is a stark departure from previous cycles, when the industry’s workforce ebbed and flowed with the rise and fall of oil prices.
Between 2016 and 2021—a period when the Brent crude price nearly doubled—the number of petroleum-engineering graduates more than halved, according to the U.S. Department of Education.
The number of undergraduates pursuing petroleum engineering has dropped 75% since 2014, according to Lloyd Heinze, a Texas Tech University professor.
It is a trend that has continued even as other recent studies have shown that the average graduate earns 40% more than a peer with a computer science degree.
That puts students, including Hayden Gregg, in high demand.
The 21-year-old Kansas City, Mo., native is studying petroleum engineering at Colorado School of Mines. His graduating class of 36 students is down from around 200 in the years before oil prices collapsed in the mid-2010s, according to a college official.
Encouraged by his roommates and a visit to the oil-and-gas heartland of Texas, he became convinced that the industry offers a range of engineering possibilities as it transitions to a broader mix of energy sources.
“Even if oil and gas is going away, I can deploy my skills in other engineering fields,” he said.
Jennifer Miskimins, head of the petroleum engineering department at Colorado School of Mines, said Gregg’s graduating class is benefiting from a pickup in oil-industry hiring and many have gotten good internships. “They’re a hot commodity,” she said. “I think this class is going to be sitting pretty.”
Oil-and-gas companies are pouring money into fellowships and other programs designed to cultivate a new generation of talent. Much of the focus is on white-collar careers that tend to attract college graduates, but the trend is broadly true among the industry’s blue-collar workers as well.
A big part of the pitch is that the industry is increasingly dynamic and creative, requiring employees who can run carbon capture, hydrogen and geothermal projects, said Barbara Burger, who served in several leadership roles at Chevron and is now a senior adviser at investment bank Lazard.
Part of the challenge, she said, is that there are more startups and fast-growing companies in those fields that don’t carry the same baggage as the giants that earn most of their profits from fossil fuels.
“There’s competition in a way that probably wasn’t there 15 years ago,” she said.
Burger recently attended an event hosted by Fervo Energy, a startup that uses the shale boom’s horizontal drilling and fracking techniques to develop geothermal wells for electricity generation. Around 60% of Fervo’s employees previously worked at oil-and-gas outfits, the company said.
To attract workers, she said, oil-and-gas companies need to better articulate their energy transition strategies, including efforts to carve out new businesses or curb emissions.
“That’s a hook for employees—current and future,” Burger said. “They want to know there’s a future in the actual companies, the industries and the skill sets they have.”
The talent shortage represents a long-term problem at a moment when energy security—largely dependent on fossil fuels for the foreseeable future—is increasingly a global priority. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, Europe has become desperate for new supplies of oil and gas, though countries around the world are trying to keep fuel affordable.
Darian Kane-Stolz said that growing up in New York, she was always concerned with climate change. She taught neighbors how to recycle.
When Kane-Stolz, 25, enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin seven years ago, she felt that joining the petroleum-engineering program was consistent with her desire to have a positive impact on the planet.
Now a BP engineer bringing wells online in the Gulf of Mexico, she said the attitude toward the industry has drastically shifted within her cohort. Before she goes out with friends, she sometimes prepares talking points in case someone attacks the industry.
“There’s definitely a negative perception out there,” said Kane-Stolz.
BP this year launched a new $4 million fellowship program with U.S. universities to provide students with exposure to the energy industry. It also said last year that it planned to double the size of its apprenticeship program to 2,000 people this decade.
“To achieve our goal of reimagining energy, we need the brightest talent,” said a BP spokesperson.
Meanwhile, Kane-Stolz’s alma mater, the University of Texas, is working on adding a new master’s degree without the word “petroleum” to capture a broader group of students who still want to work in energy-related engineering, said Jon E. Olson, the department chair of petroleum and geoscience at UT.
Other universities are ending their petroleum engineering degrees or rebranding them. Imperial College London—formerly housing the Royal School of Mines—shut its program last year and replaced it with one in geo-energy with machine learning and data science.
Analysts and company officials say a steady flow of talent is critical to company efforts to build out infrastructure needed to curb emissions and develop clean-energy and low-carbon businesses.
“One of the scarcest resources at the moment seems to be people,” said Aslak Hellestø, a business adviser for Northern Lights, a carbon capture and storage project off the coast of Norway operated by European energy companies Equinor, Shell and TotalEnergies.
“This is groundbreaking technology and we cannot afford to try and fail,” he said. “We need young people with new ideas and bright minds to make it right the first time.”
“AES El Salvador Team Awarded the “Golden Hard Hat” Award 2022.
Bernerd Da Santos, First AES Executive Vice President - President Global Renewable and AES Clean EnergyAES Executive Vice President - President Global Renewable and AES Clean Energy“The AES El Salvador team has been awarded the 2022 "Golden Hard Hat" Award, a highly prestigious accolade that recognizes their unwavering commitment to safety. This award, presented by AES Corporation, highlights the team's exceptional dedication to making safety a priority. The team demonstrated professionalism and dedication by working 8 million hours, conducting 30,000 inspections, and dedicating 45,000 hours to technical and environmental training to ensure safety standards. However, the most important thing to note here is that the AES El Salvador team achieved a remarkable feat without any fatalities, demonstrating their exceptional commitment.
I would like to congratulate the union's leader and management team of AES El Salvador: Abraham Bichara, Daniel Bernardez, Roberto Sandoval, John Davenport, and Wilfredo Flores. Their combined efforts have been instrumental in making this outstanding achievement possible.
Once again, my heartfelt congratulations to the AES El Salvador team for this well-deserved recognition. Their tireless efforts and unwavering commitment to safety are an inspiration to us all.
African migrants recently sailed in a wooden boat in the Mediterranean Sea toward Europe. JOAN MATEU PARRA/ASSOCIATED PRESSRising Money Flows, Fueled by Record Migration, Prop Up Autocrats
Remittances to the developing world hit record $647 billion, aiding the poor but helping keep strongmen from Nicaragua to Tajikistan in power African migrants recently sailed in a wooden boat in the Mediterranean Sea toward Europe.
WSJ by Ryan Dubé, Aug. 6, 2023LIMA, Peru—More people than ever are migrating worldwide, with millions of people sending home record amounts of cash that fund small businesses in Uganda and feed families from Ecuador to Nepal.
But the remittances also provide critical support to fragile states and autocratic regimes which rely on money earned by their citizens abroad to keep their economies afloat.
In Venezuela, a third of households depend on money transferred home from the more than 7.3 million migrants who fled the country’s economic collapse, according to the Inter-American Dialogue policy group in Washington. In Central Asia, where many former Soviet officials rule, migrants send so much money that the funds cover their nations’ trade deficits, economists say. In Nicaragua, remittances have become so vital to the tax revenue of President Daniel Ortega’s regime that some economists say reducing the flow of the funds would be a form of political resistance.
“If you didn’t have remittances, the national economy would collapse,” said Enrique Sáenz, an exiled Nicaraguan economist. “And in macroeconomic terms, Ortega would be in deep trouble.”
The growing flow of money creates a challenge for reformers seeking to exert economic pressure on autocratic leaders. But limiting remittances would hurt the vulnerable families of migrants who remain back home and reliant on money transfers.
“Remittances are one of the most difficult issues we can deal with,” said Ryan Berg, a political scientist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “Nobody really wants to touch that issue because who would ever, from a policy standpoint, try to interfere with remittances as a point of pressuring dictatorships when we all know people are suffering.”
Since 2010, remittances to the developing world have nearly doubled, rising to a record $647 billion last year, more than foreign direct investments to those countries and more than international development aid, according to the World Bank.
In Nepal, a young and fragile democracy where remittances account for close to a quarter of GDP, inflows from migrant workers have helped keep a lid on bubbling anger at the government over its handling of the pandemic and a recent recession, said Jeevan Baniya, an expert on migration at the Kathmandu-based research institute Social Science Baha.
“Had it not been for the inflow of remittances, we would have likely experienced some kind of social or political upheaval,” Baniya said. “Remittances end up reinforcing the existing power structure.”
In Egypt, money sent by migrants provides three times more revenue than the government takes in from the state-owned Suez Canal, while remittances to Mexico surpassed the dollars generated by international tourism and oil exports.
“Remittances have become a financial lifeline for developing countries,” said Dilip Ratha, a World Bank economist and remittances expert.
The millions of money transfers a year, each one often just a few hundred dollars at a time, are being spurred by soaring migration to the U.S. and Europe since the Covid-19 pandemic. Migrants are arriving in affluent countries that have labor shortages, allowing them to find higher-paying jobs and send more money home.
Some economists say that if remittances become too big, they can hurt longer-term development and create governance problems.
Connel Fullenkamp, a Duke University economist, said remittances can start to become problematic once they go above 5% to 10% of a nation’s gross domestic product. The money can reduce incentives to work for those who receive the funds, he said. They can also curb demands on the government to fix domestic problems that cause migration in the first place.
“If you get remittances, it causes you to care less about what is really going on in your own backyard, because you can always tap your relatives overseas for more transfers,” said Fullenkamp, who has written studies on remittances for the International Monetary Fund. “Politicians are well aware.”
Some of the world’s most remittance-dependent nations are ruled by autocratic regimes where people have few economic opportunities—save for leaving.
“These countries have stronger currencies than they would otherwise have, and they have less inflation than what they would otherwise have,” said Roman Mogilevskii, an economist at the Philippines-based Asian Development Bank.
In the Central Asian nation of Tajikistan, money from migrants mainly working in Russia make up close to half of the country’s GDP, according to the World Bank.
Remittances there have helped authoritarian President Emomali Rahmon maintain his three-decades-old grip on power, according to scholars on the country. Navruz Nekbakhtshoev, a political scientist from Tajikistan who lives in Nebraska, said the remittances calm grievances and demands on officials by feeding families back home. The mass outflow of young people to fund the cash flow also removes people who might otherwise challenge the political status quo.
“It works to stabilize the regime,” he said. “As long as this exit path exists for the people, the autocratic regime can basically stay in power.”
With Russia’s economy struggling because of the war in Ukraine and Western sanctions, migrants could have fewer job opportunities, affecting remittances, economists say.
That is prompting Tajikistan and other Central Asian governments to try to reduce their dependence on Russia by promoting migrant paths to other places such as Turkey and England, said Zachary Witlin, an expert on the region at the Eurasia Group.
In fragile, democratic countries, a large drop in remittances can contribute to unrest. In Sri Lanka, where more money arrives from the diaspora than what is earned from tea exports, remittances fell by nearly half from 2020 to 2022. That contributed to a balance-of-payment crisis that drained the country’s foreign-exchange reserves and left it unable to pay for imports or service its external debt. Amid mass unrest, the president fled the country last year.
Elsewhere, a decline in remittances could just push more people to leave as rulers repress dissent.
Cuba first allowed remittances after the unraveling in the 1990s of its benefactor, the Soviet Union, brought about a sharp economic contraction. The Western Hemisphere’s lone Communist country realized that allowing some people to leave could serve as an important source of hard currency, historians say.
“Remittances can in some ways grease the wheel of a system that doesn’t work,” said Ted Henken, author of books on Cuba and a professor at New York’s Baruch College. “A Cuban in Miami or Madrid might be worth more to the Cuban government just in terms of GDP.”
Then from 2019 to 2021, remittances to Cuba fell more than 70% as a result of the pandemic and tougher U.S. sanctions designed partly to block the Cuban military from profiting from the transfers. The Cuban military was taking a cut of the “well-intentioned, generous funds” that Cuban-Americans sent back to their families, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in 2020.
With tourism to Cuba also drying up, people took to the streets to demand an end to a regime in power since 1959.
Today, remittances remain far below prepandemic levels and Cuban immigrant families in the U.S. increasingly bankroll the departure of their relatives from the island, said Emilio Morales, president of the Havana Consulting Group, a Miami-based firm that tracks Cuba’s economy.
“The situation is so chaotic that people prefer to invest in getting their family out of Cuba,” he said.
In Venezuela, an economy that has contracted 75% over the past decade, remittances are crucial for the people who have stayed in the country under the autocratic and bankrupt government of President Nicolás Maduro, said Angel Alvarado, a Venezuelan economist at the University of Pennsylvania.
“You can ask, ‘How are people not dying of hunger in Venezuela?’” Alvarado said. “The answer is that they have at least one child living abroad, sending money for food and medicine.”
In Nicaragua, remittances more than doubled from 2018 to 2022 after President Ortega violently put down protests. This year, they are expected to account for about 33% of the country’s GDP, one of the highest rates in Latin America, said Manuel Orozco, a Nicaraguan economist at the Inter-American Dialogue.
Marta Ortega, 45, a Nicaraguan who found work cooking in homes in Costa Rica, said she never considered her transfers could support a regime she opposes. She just wanted to help her mother.
“It wasn’t a lot,” said Ortega. “But it was really important.”
Image: Germán & CoCooperate with objective and ethical thinking…
Image by Germán & Co“Pope” calls for action on migrant deaths calling the Mediterranean 'a cemetery'
Euronews Digital with AP, AFP, EVN, August 7, 2023Pope Francis calls for action to save the lives of migrants who perish in the Mediterranean, or the deserts of North Africa, trying to reach Europe
Pope Francis has expressed his concerns for the welfare of migrants trying to reach Europe, saying the seas of the Mediterranean and the deserts of North Africa have become ‘cemeteries’ for them.
The Pope was speaking to journalists on his flight home from Portugal where he had held a mass for 1.5 million people to mark World Youth Day.
He told reporters the migration issue would be discussed thoroughly when the Diocese of Marseille holds its Mediterranean Meetings event from 18 to 24 September. Pope Francis will participate in some of the meetings in September where senior clerics and politicians will discuss economic equality, migration and climate change.
The remarks come two weeks after the leader of the world's 1.3 billion Roman Catholics called on global leaders to help migrants stranded in the deserts of North Africa, and also recalled extreme climate events and the need to address global warming.
Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country…
…“More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.
Nicolás Petro with his father, President Gustavo Petro, in an image shared on his social networks on 14 January 2023, under the slogan "You have the floor".
NICOLASPETROBURGOS (COURTESY)/Editions by Germán & CoColombia in —Petrified State—
The initial year of Gustavo Petro's administration has been full of ups and downs, with the government demonstrating both boldness in breaking paradigms and disappointing periods, creating a sense of freefall.
"El Pais", written by Maria Jimena Duzan on August 7, 2023/ Translations and English editions provided by Germán & Co.The first year of Gustavo Petro's administration has been like riding a rollercoaster. Sometimes an ascent can be exhilarating, especially if the government is eager to break from convention. But one cannot ignore the feeling of despair during a descent. His first year in power ends amidst a disaster, leaving us feeling helpless.
On this occasion, the fall from grace happened due to an unexpected betrayer - his son Nicolás. He, an anguished young man who was deprived of his father's affection, recently accused him of a non-existent offence. Nicolás told the prosecutor's office that he had evidence suggesting that his father, President Petro, knew about unreported financial contributions made to his campaign, which is an offence in Colombia.
So far, Nicolás Petro has not provided any evidence incriminating his father in the alleged corruption and his narrative has been inconsistent. At first, he stated that his father was not aware of the illegal funding of his campaign, however, he later contradicted himself by claiming the opposite. In a recent interview, Nicolás partly excused his father from involvement in the case by stating that he did not inform him about the funds he had solicited from unreliable sources under his father's name. Nevertheless, he implied that President Petro was aware of donations made to his campaign by established contractors, which were not reported in the accounts. Despite Nicolás Petro's contradictory statements, his accusations against his father have triggered a crisis that has left the country in a state of fear.
The political crisis unleashed by Nicolás Petro, without exaggeration, has turned into a Greek tragedy, being the product of an act of spite.
Nicolás' ex-wife Day Vásquez revealed his corruption in an interview with Semana magazine. She was hurt and envious after he abandoned her for her best friend. Day revealed that Nicolás had set up a corruption network behind his father's back. He took advantage of being the president's son and diverted money from unscrupulous contractors. Nicolás and his accomplices claimed that the money was intended for his father's presidential campaign, but it was diverted for their own personal gain. Nicolás is under investigation by the Attorney General's Office.
When Nicolás was seeking support from his father during this difficult time, the president withdrew his support. The president guaranteed the nation that he wouldn't exercise his authority to manipulate the proceedings against his son. Following the declaration of his dedication to the Constitution, he wished his son good luck in these challenging moments.
In a country more accustomed to seeing presidents use their power to protect family members who have run afoul of the law, Petro's reaction came as a refreshing balm, but the calm did not last long. His son Nicolás felt that his father had left him alone. He tried to call him several times but got no answer and according to his own confession in an interview, he even tried to threaten him, letting him know that if he was left alone, he could tell many things about the campaign, but he did not get an answer either.
Then came another freefall, after he was captured together with his ex-wife. Shattered, he decided to plunge the knife and point the finger at his father.
This act of revenge hits Petro where it hurts the most because it equates him with traditional and corrupt politics, which moves clienteles and buys votes and is nourished by a perverse network of contractors, a political world from which Petro has wanted to dissociate himself.
His son has given his enemies new incentives and they will surely use this family tragedy to take advantage of it, magnify the scandal and fill it with superlatives, especially now that the regional elections are coming up.
Presidential campaign finance scandals in Colombia have always been a circus. The control bodies in charge of investigating have been quick to shelve these processes, despite the evidence. This happened with the presidential campaign of pro-Uribe candidate Óscar Iván Zuluaga in 2014, which was investigated for having received money from Odebrecht under the table. It was shelved by the National Electoral Council for lack of evidence, even though there was evidence that the campaign had received 1.6 million dollars from Odebrecht under the table (six years later, without knowing why, the Attorney General's Office dusted off this evidence and has just charged Óscar Iván Zuluaga).
Something similar happened with Juan Manuel Santos' re-election campaign. Despite evidence showing how the campaign had been financed with money from a mega highway to be built by Odebrecht and its partner Episol, part of the Sarmiento group, the investigation was shelved by the National Electoral Council due to expiry of time limits, and the Attorney General's Office did not even investigate it. Even more grotesque is what the current attorney general, Francisco Barbosa, did when the scandal about possible illegal financing of the campaign of Iván Duque, his university roommate, was uncovered. According to the complaint, a criminal gang led by a —narco— businessman who was later murdered in Brazil had collected money to finance the second round of Iván Duque's campaign. The Prosecutor's Office closed the investigation without having made any arrests.
With Petro, things seem to be going to be at a different price. On this occasion, the regulatory bodies do not want to turn a blind eye as they did in the past, and they have their antennae up. This should be good news if it were not for the fact that they are not very interested in investigating in accordance with the law. In an unprecedented act, the prosecutor Barbosa raided the Casa de Nariño (Presidential Palace) as if it were Ali Baba's cave, with the aim of obtaining information that he could have requested through official means. Without evidence, he insinuated that there were illegal interceptions from the Casa de Nariño, when he has shelved an investigation that was opened based on a complaint made by Petro's campaign at the time. There is evidence that it was intercepted by police agents operating from the Casa de Nariño when Duque was president.
Nicolás Petro was captured when he had not even been charged, but in other cases in which those under investigation are right-wing politicians, the Attorney General's Office is generous and condescending. In the hearing of the president's son, the Prosecutor's Office arbitrarily designed a flow chart to show the connections that Nicolás Petro had, in which it included half the government. This organigram was later presented by several media outlets as if all these names were part of a criminal network. The Prosecutors investigations were so arbitrary that they had the luxury of not including the name of Alex Char in the organigramme, the dauphin of the powerful “Char” clan, Corrected version: Whom the Barbosa Prosecution has decided not to touch even with the petal of a rose, despite the fact that he has more than thirty investigations for corruption and that he also appears in Day Vásquez's chats.
Many predict that the same thing will happen to Petro as happened to Ernesto Samper, the progressive president whose campaign was accused of having been financed by the “Cali cartel” in the 1994 elections. He was unable to push through his agenda for change because he ran out of time defending himself.
If this country were the same as it was 30 years ago, the comparison would be valid, but it is not. Samper managed to stay in power because he always had the support of the big economic powers that kept him in power even though the US embassy and many of us media and journalists were on the other side. Petro, who is Colombia's first left-wing president, has (curiously) good relations with the Americans, but he is still viewed with distrust by the economic groups, which now also own the few remaining media outlets. Several of these media outlets have become the main mouthpieces of an increasingly selective Attorney General's Office, generous to its friends but implacable towards anything that has to do with Petro's government. The president does not have it easy.
Despite this panorama, it would be foolish to say that the ones to blame for Petro's reformist agenda being stuck are the media and the elites who oppose the reforms. So far, the main culprit for his reforms not seeing the light of day is Petro's lack of leadership when it comes to putting together a coalition government.
However, this tragedy that exposes a dysfunctional presidential family, which navigates between revenge, hatred, feelings of guilt, jealousy, betrayal, and power, is the best ammunition Petro's enemies must strike at his political project. Anything that moves the baser instincts is worth gold in this world governed by digital networks.
The logo of energy technology company Siemens Energy is displayed during the LNG 2023 energy trade show in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, July 12, 2023. REUTERS/Chris Helgren/File PhotoSiemens Energy books $2.4 billion in charges on wind turbines
A significant increase in its net loss for 2023, projecting a more than six-fold jump to 4.5 billion euros.
Reuters By Christoph Steitz and Alexander Hübner, August 7, 2023FRANKFURT/MUNICH, Aug 7 (Reuters) - Siemens Energy (ENR1n.DE) on Monday said problems recently unveiled at its wind turbine unit would cost it 2.2 billion euros ($2.4 billion), well short of worst-case estimates but still casting doubt over the future of the business.
The charges will inflate Siemens Energy's net loss more than six-fold in 2023 to 4.5 billion euros, the company said, as it published third-quarter results showing a record order backlog of 106 billion euros due to strong demand.
The company also cut its sales outlook, and issued a new, lower profit outlook after withdrawing it in the wake of the disclosed issues, which include faulty components for its newer onshore turbines and ramp-up problems for offshore production.
Siemens Energy shares reversed an opening fall of as much as 7% to stand 2.7% higher at 0819 GMT, with analysts saying that the price tag should provide relief to those that feared even higher financial fallout.
"While the results are negative, they are not as bad as feared by some investors," JP Morgan analysts said, adding an additional 700 million euro writedown on deferred tax assets meant the group may take the opportunity to "clear the decks".
Siemens Energy shocked markets in late June when it announced a wide set of problems at Siemens Gamesa, one of the world's biggest wind turbine makers, just weeks after it managed to fully acquire the business it formerly only partly owned.
While in line with Siemens Energy's own estimate of more than 1 billion euros, Monday's cost tally for the issues is below the most pessimistic market estimate of more than 5 billion euros issued by UBS.
Siemens Energy CEO Christian Bruch said that while the situation at Siemens Gamesa was a "massive setback", the performance of the group's remaining units, including gas turbines and power converter stations, provided a silver lining.
The new set of problems at Siemens Gamesa, including faulty blades and gears at some of its 4.X and 5.X onshore models, have cost the company around a third, or more than 6 billion euros, in market value.
Siemens Energy, which has drafted in Alix Partners to help fix quality issues with Siemens Gamesa's newer onshore models, said it was currently reviewing its wind strategy and would update markets at a capital markets day in November.
Bruch said wind remained a strategically relevant growth market but added that it was paramount that the business is profitable, something which Siemens Gamesa has failed to achieve in recent years.