Category Archives: Industry Jobs Oil Economics

The Harbinger of the Colonial Pipeline Ransomware

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The harbinger is what protections against hacks and ransomware are underway? Stopping oil and gas flow and delivery is how to stop life and economies. Apply some critical thinking here…it goes way beyond cost as supply is crucial. If the FBI was well aware of the DarkSide in 2020….we need to rethink the Bureau completely.

PC Magazine provides this update in part:

The FBI today confirmed that the cyberattack that forced Colonial Pipeline to take its network offline over the weekend is due to ransomware known as DarkSide.

“The FBI confirms that the DarkSide ransomware is responsible for the compromise of the Colonial Pipeline networks,” the agency says. “We continue to work with the company and our government partners on the investigation.”

During a Monday White House press briefing, Anne Neuberger, Deputy National Security Advisor for Cyber and Emerging Technology, said the FBI has been investigating the DarkSide variant since October 2020, and has determined that it’s a ransomware-as-a-service attack, meaning “criminal affiliates conduct attacks and then share the proceeds with ransomware developers,” she said.

Though news reports have tied DarkSide to Russian operatives, President Biden said Monday that “so far, there’s no evidence…from our intelligence people that Russia is involved, although there is evidence that the actors [behind the ransomware are] in Russia, [so] they have some responsibility to deal with this.”

Colonial Pipeline cyberattack shuts down pipeline that ...

The Chicago Tribune along with other media sources post the notion that this should not last long:

The operator of a major U.S. pipeline hit by a cyberattack said Monday it hopes to have service mostly restored by the end of the week.

Colonial Pipeline offered the update after revealing that it had halted operations because of a ransomware attack the FBI has linked to a criminal gang.

The ransomware attack on the pipeline, which the company says delivers roughly 45% of fuel consumed on the U.S. East Coast, raised concerns that supplies of gasoline, jet fuel and diesel could be disrupted in parts of the region if the disruption continues.

At the moment, though, officials said there is no fuel shortage.

The Colonial Pipeline transports gasoline and other fuel through 10 states between Texas and New Jersey, according to the company.

Colonial is in the process of restarting portions of its network. It said Sunday that its main pipeline remained offline, but that some smaller lines were operational. The company has not said when it would completely restart the pipeline.

“The time of the outage is now approaching critical levels and if it continues to remain down we do expect an increase in East Coast gasoline and diesel prices,” said Debnil Chowdhury, IHS Markit Executive Director. The last time there was an outage of this magnitude was in 2016, he said, when gas prices rose 15 to 20 cents per gallon. But the Northeast had significantly more local refining capacity at that time, potentially intensifying any impact.

The FBI and others got the attribution right on this one and did so very quickly.

The group behind the ransomware that took down Colonial Pipeline late last week has apologized for the “social consequences,” claiming that its goal is to make money, not cause societal problems.

According to Vice, the group’s apology was posted to its dark web site. It reads:

We are apolitical, we do not participate in geopolitics, do not need to tie us with a defined government and look for other our motives.

Our goal is to make money and not creating problems for society.

From today, we introduce moderation and check each company that our partners want to encrypt to avoid social consequences in the future.

According to NYT cybersecurity reporter Nicole Perlroth, DarkSide isn’t necessarily associated with a specific nationstate, but it does tend to avoid holding victims for ransom if their systems are running in certain Russian and Eastern European languages (see embedded tweet below). Bloomberg reports that the group is known to speak Russian.

Source:

Imagine the other worldwide pipeline systems and their respective responses such as all of Europe.

Natural gas pipelines of Europe and surrounding regions ...

 

Biden and Democrats are Draining Northern Triangle Countries of Labor

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Few may remember when FNC show host Tucker Carlson visited el Salvador to interview President Nayib Bukele. President Bukele validated a condition this author has talked about often, labor. With migrants leaving these countries to find a better economic/working environment, employment and economic stability can never be achieved in countries such as Honduras, Guatemala or el Salvador.

President Bukele told Tucker Carlson: “the best thing for both of is to keep our people here’.

He is right.

Sure these countries are suffering for many reasons causing their respective citizens to seek new lives elsewhere, but draining the population over enticements given by the Biden administration has long term devastating consequences. The better policy would be for the Biden administration to have meaningful conversations with US corporations to move their manufacturing operation from China to Latin America, in our own hemisphere and help stabilize these countries, stop illegal immigration and punish China for all the offenses, deadly and economically.

The numbers are getting worse for both sides. In a feeble attempt to go the diplomatic route on the causes of the migrant crisis, the Biden administration dispatched an envoy to el Salvador for discussions. Well, that did not go well as President Bukele has refused the meeting and rightly so.

The Hill has reported:

The president of El Salvador reportedly refused to meet with a senior diplomat from the U.S. this week, while demanding the Biden administration cease criticizing his government.

The Associated Press reported that President Nayib Bukele declined a meeting with Ricardo Zuniga, the U.S.’s envoy to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, the so-called “Northern Triangle.”

Bukele also reportedly said that he would not meet with any U.S. diplomats until the Biden administration ceases its criticism of his government, following a statement from State Department spokesman Ned Price on Monday referring to the separation of powers in El Salvador’s constitutional government as “eroded.”

The Salvadoran president was also denied a meeting with President Biden after traveling to Washington unannounced a few weeks ago.

The State Department did not immediately return a request for comment from The Hill.

“[W]e enjoy … strong relations with El Salvador and its people, and we’ll continue to work closely with our Salvadoran partners to address the challenges in the region. And that includes, as we’ve been talking about, irregular migration. It includes corruption and impunity, it includes governance challenges. It includes respect for human rights, economic opportunity, and security,” Price said on Wednesday at a press briefing.

Bukele has also lashed out at U.S. Rep. Norma Torres (D-Calif.) over her frequent criticism of his government and other Central American governments.

In part from the AP: Specifically, the two said Bukele was angered by State Department spokesman Ned Price’s comments Monday that the U.S. looks forward to Bukele restoring a “strong separation of powers where they’ve been eroded and demonstrate his government’s commitment to transparency and accountability.”

Price’s comments followed a spat between Bukele and one of his fiercest U.S. critics, Rep. Norma Torres, a Democrat who co-chairs the Central America caucus in Congress.

In a series of Tweets last week, Torres accused Bukele of behaving like a “narcissistic dictator” indifferent to the plight of Central American migrants who undertake great risks to reach the U.S.

She attached a photograph that was widely circulated in 2019 showing the bodies of a Salvadoran migrant and his daughter laying lifeless in the Rio Grande on the Texas border.

“Send me a pair of glasses so I may see the suffering of your people through your eyes,” wrote Torres, who came to the U.S. as a child from Guatemala.

Bukele pointed out that he wasn’t even in office at the time of the deaths, which came during a previous surge in Central American migration under the Trump administration. He urged Salvadoran and other immigrants living in Torres’ Southern California district to vote her out of office.

“She doesn’t work for you, but to keep our countries underdeveloped,” he wrote.

*** Top Attractions in El Salvador - Hooked On Everything

U.S. policy in El Salvador has focused on promoting economic prosperity, improving security, and strengthening governance under the U.S. Strategy for Engagement in Central America.Congress has appropriated nearly$2.6 billion for the strategy since FY2016, at least$410million of which has been allocated to El Salvador. The Trump Administration has requested $445 million for the strategy in FY2020, including at least $45.7 million for El Salvador, and an unspecified amount allocated for the country under the Central American Regional Security Initiative(CARSI). Future U.S. engagement in El Salvador is uncertain, however, as the Administration announced in March 2019 that it intended to end foreign assistance programs in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras due to continued unauthorized U.S.–bound migration. In June 2019, the Administration identified FY2017 and FY2018 bilateral and regional funds subject to withholding or reprogramming. It is unclear how funds appropriated for FY2019 in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2019(P.L. 116–6)and FY2020funds maybe affected.Bilateral relations also have been tested by shifts in U.S. immigration policies, including the Trump Administration’s decision to rescind the temporary protected status (TPS) designation that has shielded up to250,000 Salvadorans from removal since 2001.A House–passed bill, H.R. 6, would allow certain TPS designees to apply for permanent resident status. More country details here.

 

Operation Choke Point 2.0 is Emerging

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I was just thinking about this old Obama administration program this week as it is a web tag it used years ago. Additionally, there was a time that Congressman Darryl Issa came to Clearwater to speak, an event I attended and he spoke on this disgusting program among other topics.

Well, Kelsy Bolar is on the case and a big hat tip to her for the alarm she is sounding. Let’s keep in mind the moves that Bank of America made in partnership with the FBI to report their own customers’ banking records for that they asserted went to Washington DC to begin a revolution at the Capitol on January 6. You can imagine that this program is quite the top in the halls of Congress by progressives.

Operation Choke Point: The Government's Covert War on ...

Here goes:

Amongst the record-breaking number of executive actions taken by President Joe Biden was one related to a little-known, frightening Obama-era program called Operation Choke Point. The program, dubbed so under former Attorney General Eric Holder, uses the power of the federal government to target legal yet leftist-disfavored businesses. These include gun sellers, pawnshops, and short-term money lenders.

The Trump administration did its best to end this blatantly unconstitutional program that sought to discriminate against legal industries. In 2017, the Justice Department declared the program “formally over.” At the end of Trump’s term, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency established the Fair Access rule to solidify its culmination.

Operation Choke Point... DOJ Cuts Businesses From Banks

But on Jan. 28, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency under President Biden announced it would pause the Trump-era rule intended to prevent another Operation Choke Point from happening again.

The Backstory of Operation Choke Point

The Trump administration rule appeared innocuous enough, instructing banks to “conduct risk assessments of individual customers, rather than make broad-based decisions affecting whole categories or classes of customers when providing access to services, capital, and credit.”

Under Operation Choke Point, federal regulators instructed banks to do the opposite — to openly discriminate against entire industries the Obama administration found objectionable. Weaponizing the power of banking regulators at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Office of Comptroller of the Currency, the Obama administration realized it could block entire industries from the banking system that it didn’t like. This made it difficult — if not impossible — for politically unfavored businesses such as gun sellers and short-term lenders to operate.

Essentially, by using the power of federal banking regulators to intimidate banks from providing their services to these industries, the administration choked off their access to the financial system, leaving them paying more for essential banking services, or unable to use a bank at all.

The Obama administration claimed the program was intended to root out fraud by cutting off “high risk” industries from the banking system. But the administration didn’t make any differentiation between legal and illegal “high risk” industries, intentionally grouping lawful industries such as firearms sellers with patently illegal activities like Ponzi and credit-card schemes.

Different agencies within the Obama administration denied wrongdoing in various ways. At least one bank, however, admitted to choking off three legal enterprises at the government’s behest. Dozens of business owners — many of them gun sellers and short-term lenders — said their bank accounts and access to credit card processing platforms were suddenly stymied or shut down with no explanation and no opportunity for recourse.

Given its stained reputation, we shouldn’t expect the Biden administration to bring back Operation Choke Point under the same shameless name. But the return of the larger strategy behind Operation Choke Point appears here to stay.

Whereas seven years ago the idea of using the powers of the federal government to choke certain Americans from public life was controversial enough for the Obama administration to deny wrongdoing, in today’s era of social justice and cancel culture, it’s applauded.

Build Your Own Banks

Within corporate America, an employee was run out of Boeing over an article he published 33 years beforehand arguing women shouldn’t serve in combat (a position many Americans hold today). In the media, a Jewish, pro-Israel, pro-choice, bisexual writer was choked from The New York Times for not being leftist enough.

In Hollywood, a conservative actress was choked from Disney for expressing politically incorrect views on her private social media account. In the beauty blogging world, a conservative blogger was ousted from her role as a Sephora representative.

For all intents and purposes, Operation Choke Point is happening every day on a massive scale. Yet instead of “just” choking off access to capital and banking services, we’re witnessing a stranglehold on information, speech, and the broader marketplace of ideas. Concerningly, the government is now playing an active role.

As exemplified by Parler and the recent Twitter purge, Big Tech is choking conservatives off their social media platforms while Democrats cheer it on. In an attempt to choke conservatives out of entire industries of employment, critical race theory training and pledges are being forced on schools, government workplaces, and the armed forces.

This Dynamic Is Now Worse

Signs of Operation Choke Point’s formal resurrection are symbolic of the larger attempt by government actors to choke politically disfavored industries and individuals from the mainstream. While cancel culture has led to a politicized economy, the federal government’s arbitrarily targeting of individuals, groups, and entire companies will increase the politicization of the country, where the only acceptable views are from those in power.

Operating in the dark corners of the federal bureaucracy, Operation Choke Point bypasses public input and the legislative process, leaving politically unpopular individuals and businesses to fend for themselves. If the Biden administration’s rule reversal is any sign, the next four years won’t be about unifying the country to “Build Back Better.”

After being choked from essential services in the economy, conservatives and right-of-center businesses will have no choice but to Build Your Own — if that’s even still tolerated or allowed. Build your own banks, build your own credit card processing companies, build your own web hosting platforms, build your own social media platforms, build your own companies, build your own media, build your own schools, and build your own country — because you’re choked from “ours.”

Of course, all this will do nothing to further the causes of bipartisanship, unity, and healing President Biden claims to desire. Capitalizing on the trend of cancel culture, a return of Operation Choke Point would devastate an already damaged country. By abusing the powers of federal regulators, Operation Choke Point 2.0 would solidify what most right-of-center Americans already know: Instead of unity, Democrats want you choked from everyday life.

Three years ago, former President Obama infamously claimed his administration “didn’t have a scandal that embarrassed us.” While it’s tempting to point to Operation Choke Point to refute this, perhaps Obama was right. With Biden sitting by Obama’s side, the Obama administration wasn’t the least bit embarrassed about using its powers to choke legal businesses from existence. Indeed, it was the entire goal and they appear poised to do it again.

Biden Ends Remain in Mexico, 25,000 Migrants Coming to U.S.

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The plan offers one of the fastest pathways to citizenship of any proposed measure in recent years, it does so without offering any enhanced border security, which past immigration negotiations have used as a way to win Republican votes. Without enhanced security, it faces tough odds in a closely divided Congress.

The migrants are first in line to receive the Covid vaccine and the Biden immigration plan has no real chance to pass but in a comprehensive form but the president’s Executive Orders on immigration are forcing other other measures. ICE is not prepared and neither is Border Patrol. Further, schools, the medical systems along with housing, transportation, general employment are not prepared either. So, big taxpayer money will go to refugee resettlement along with free legal assistance to the migrant population. The plan includes $4 billion spread over four years to try to boost economic development and tackle corruption in Latin American countries.

Joe Biden's immigration reform plans must address enforcement

 

While the number of 11 million illegals has been broadcasted for years, that is hardly the real number. No one really knows how many are here, but various estimates from studies and agency reviews report the real number is closer to 20 million and could be as high as 30 million.

Meanwhile, there is no foreign policy discussions or plans to solve the issues in the failing countries such as Honduras, El Salvador, Mexico or Guatemala to list a few, just throwing money at those countries.

Biden's work cut out for him in plan to undo Trump ...

 

The first real mission is to challenge the exact number of how many illegals are in the United States and what the cost will be to taxpayers before any immigration legislation can move through Congress.

Biden’s plan includes the following:

  • An 8 year pathway to citizenship
  • Immediate green cards for agriculture workers
  • Green cards for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA)
  • No additional money for Border Patrol
  • $ billion over 4 years to confront corruption and foster prosperity (whatever that is)
  • Three 3 years to apply for citizenship
  • Re-unify children separated from parents (about 400 and most entered with mules and not parents as proven by DNA)
  • Reduce the time for citizenship from 13 years to 8 years.
  • For domestic arrests of illegals for criminal activity will require a phone call to Washington to get approval before the arrest.
  • Green cards for family members, how far within the family unit is unclear.
  • Changing word use including no more applying ‘alien’.
  • No consideration for visa over-stays or for E-Verify.
  • Increase diversity visas.

The Biden White House has posted a Immigration Bill Fact sheet

In part it includes:

  • Promote immigrant and refugee integration and citizenship. The bill provides new funding to state and local governments, private organizations, educational institutions, community-based organizations, and not-for-profit organizations to expand programs to promote integration and inclusion, increase English-language instruction, and provide assistance to individuals seeking to become citizens.
  • Grow our economy. This bill clears employment-based visa backlogs, recaptures unused visas, reduces lengthy wait times, and eliminates per-country visa caps. The bill makes it easier for graduates of U.S. universities with advanced STEM degrees to stay in the United States; improves access to green cards for workers in lower-wage sectors; and eliminates other unnecessary hurdles for employment-based green cards. The bill provides dependents of H-1B visa holders work authorization, and children are prevented from “aging out” of the system. The bill also creates a pilot program to stimulate regional economic development, gives DHS the authority to adjust green cards based on macroeconomic conditions, and incentivizes higher wages for non-immigrant, high-skilled visas to prevent unfair competition with American workers.

Grow the economy? Overload schools where many of them are not open?

  • Manage the border and protect border communities.  The bill provides funding for training and continuing education to promote agent and officer safety and professionalism. It also creates a Border Community Stakeholder Advisory Committee, provides more special agents at the DHS Office of Professional Responsibility to investigate criminal and administrative misconduct, and requires the issuance of department-wide policies governing the use of force. The bill directs the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to study the impact of DHS’s authority to waive environmental and state and federal laws to expedite the construction of barriers and roads near U.S. borders and provides for additional rescue beacons to prevent needless deaths along the border. The bill authorizes and provides funding for DHS, in coordination with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and nongovernmental experts, to develop guidelines and protocols for standards of care for individuals, families, and children in CBP custody.

Manage Border Patrol? The real brain trust is already in the Border Patrol. Has President Joe even visited the border?

Border Walls and Pipelines, Unacceptable with Exceptions

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So, the most immediate Executive Order signed by President Biden was to shutter the Keystone XL pipeline project. It has devastated the energy industry and the true costs to Americans are still growing outside the scope of higher prices of gasoline and the loss of jobs. The effects include revenues to states that provide funding the public education, tax increases, alterations in foreign policy and relations, slowing economic recovery across many industry sectors and destabilizing power sources for businesses and homes. For some finer points and financial context, go here. 

But, did you know the United States is actually funding a pipeline across Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India? Yes, in all the peace talks with the Taliban, we have for decades been providing financial aid, the amount is too convoluted to determine but this goes back to collaboration between the United States and the Taliban and even Russia.

A Taliban delegation has paid a surprise visit to Turkmenistan to pledge support for a planned natural gas pipeline across Afghanistan, providing welcome reassurance for a project whose viability has long been rendered doubtful by security concerns.

Signs point to the trip having been brokered by the U.S. government, which has long championed what is known as TAPI, named after the four countries the pipeline would cross: Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.

Other projects alluded to by the Taliban spokesman are the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan high-voltage power transmission lines, or TAP, and railways from Turkmenistan to Afghanistan.

Should such reassurances hold, the main hurdle facing TAPI’s developers would be raising the necessary funds. Estimated costs for the project have been placed at anywhere up to $10 billion, although the chief executive of the TAPI Pipeline company, Muhammetmyrat Amanov, stated in 2018 that he was forecasting outlays closer to $7 billion.

Global energy majors have latterly shown no enthusiasm for TAPI, but that was not always the way. In 1997, a consortium comprised of six companies and the government of Turkmenistan was formed with the goal of building a 1,271-kilometer pipeline to Pakistan. India was not yet part of the plan. The largest share in that consortium, 54 percent, was held by California-based Unocal Corporation. In 1997, the American company even arranged travel to Texas for a senior Taliban delegation for negotiations. Deadly terrorist attacks in 1998 against U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya organized by Al-Qaeda, whose leader Osama bin Laden had been provided safe haven by the Taliban, put paid to all that.

The Taliban was not entirely deterred, though. In 1999, the militant group, which had by then extended its control to almost all of Afghanistan, entered into talks on the route with Turkmenistan and Pakistan. Lack of cash and the rapidly evolving geopolitical landscape made it all pointless. By the end of that year, Turkmenistan had reached an agreement with Russia’s Gazprom on the delivery of 20 billion cubic meters of gas in 2000.Geofinancial: Turkmenistan Pushing TAPI, the Original ... source

Breakthroughs on the Afghan and Caspian fronts come at an extremely propitious time for Turkmenistan, which has struggled to find viable buyers for its vast gas reserves.

Turkmenistan is currently almost entirely reliant on China. Russia buys paltry amounts of gas.

Since the launch of the Central Asia-China pipeline in 2009, Turkmenistan has pumped 290 billion cubic meters of gas to China. But whereas it was once predicted that the Beijing-funded pipeline would be carrying 65 billion cubic meters of Turkmen gas annually by 2020, the entire route still only has capacity for 55 billion cubic meters per annum, and both Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan also use the pipeline.

Considering Turkmenistan has the fourth-largest reserves of natural gas in the world – an estimated 19.5 trillion cubic meters, nearly 10 percent of the world’s total – current export figures nowhere near reflect its potential. source

Crazy huh?

But hold on…there is the matter of Biden cancelling the border wall construction between the United States and Mexico.

Border walls around the world is a sign of the times and the Unites States also provides some foreign funding for walls far away. Someone ask Joe, Jen or Kamala about this…

Going back to 2016, Donald Trump promoted the construction of the border wall while the rest of the critics attacked the whole mission. The Atlantic in part included some of the top complaints. Clinton is suggesting that walls are useless against today’s borderless threats. Obama is suggesting that the world is marching toward ever-more interconnectedness, trampling the walls in its way. Both seem to present walls as a thing of the past. In fact, though, border walls and fences are currently going up around the world at the fastest rate since the Cold War

Ramo, a former journalist and the co-CEO and vice chairman of the consulting firm Kissinger Associates, applies network theory to international affairs. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War helped usher in unfettered globalization, he argues, but now a backlash is underway. Globalization has gradually produced a desire in certain parts of the world for separation—particularly after a series of traumas, including the 9/11 attacks and the global financial crisis, exposed the hazards of freewheeling integration. And separation is increasingly being achieved through physical barriers.

The statistic Ramo cites about the spread of walls comes from a study by the political scientists Ron Hassner and Jason Wittenberg: Of the 51 fortified boundaries built between countries since the end of World War II, around half were constructed between 2000 and 2014. Hassner and Wittenberg found that such boundaries—structures like the existing U.S.-Mexico border fence, the Israel-West Bank barrier, and the Saudi Arabia-Yemen border fence—tend to be constructed by wealthy countries seeking to keep out the citizens of poorer countries, and that many of these fortifications have been built between states in the Muslim world.

“The walls, fences, and trenches of the modern world seem to be getting longer, more ambitious, and better defended with each passing year,” Ramo writes. “The creation of gates is … the corollary of connection.”

Recently, many of those fences have been appearing in Europe, as countries there struggle to process an influx of migrants and refugees. (The chart above doesn’t account for all of these new barriers, a number of which have been constructed since 2014.) The Economist observed in January that, as a result of the refugee crisis and the conflict in Ukraine, “Europe will soon have more physical barriers on its national borders than it did during the Cold War.” New border controls and barriers, including Austria’s proposed fence along the border with Italy, are threatening the viability of the European Union’s passport-free Schengen zone.

“Talking about walls or no walls is not the right discussion,” Ramo added. He would rather the discussion be about how gatekeeping should work, including questions like “what kind of immigration do we want to encourage and how do we want to structure that process.”

One of the reasons these trends are important is that they reframe the 2016 election from a contest between the past and the future, as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama imply, to one between two plausible futures. Ramo might call it a divide over the relative wisdom of more open versus more closed networks.

For an interactive migrant map for recent years go here. 

Hypocrisy right? The Daily Mail of the UK did a piece in 2015 of 65 countries that have erected walls and fences.