The previously nonexistent relations between Iran and China began to blossom after the Iranian Revolution of 1979. It is no coincidence that pariah nations seem to find each other and do business together, in one way or another, although Islamists and communists make strange ideological bedfellows. An alignment of the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism (for 39 years in a row according to the US State Dept) with a country that has practiced cultural genocide and forced organ harvesting for decades could be construed to be a match made in Hell.
Be that as it may, the relationship started slowly and followed an upward trajectory that paralleled China’s economic and military expansion and outreach that has been greatly accelerated by Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Some of the highlights:
China recognized the IRI in February 1979. Relations improved after China shifted away from supporting global communist revolutions in pursuit of “diplomatic pragmatism” and economic modernization in the 1980s. In Iran’s case, this meant withdrawing support from the communist Tudeh Party in favor of state-to-state diplomatic relations.
China provided approximately $2 billion worth of military hardware to Iran during the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), including 107mm rockets, aircraft, main battle tanks, and surface-to-air missile systems.
In 1984, the Isfahan Nuclear Research Center was opened with Chinese assistance, which included technical support for the installation of a 30-kilowatt Miniature Neutron Source Reactor (MNSR), a Light Water Sub-Critical Reactor (LWSCR), a Heavy Water Zero Power Reactor (HWZPR), a Fuel Fabrication Laboratory (FFL) for producing experimental nuclear fuel, and a Zirconium Production Plant (ZPP) for manufacturing alloys used in nuclear reactors, all of which were vital for Iranian nuclear research.
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China has much to lose depending on the outcome of the Israel-Iran war. As the largest buyer of Iranian oil, China imports over 90% of Iran’s crude oil exports. Any disruption of flow of those exports through the Strait of Hormuz, whether through blockage or severe damage to Iran’s oil infrastructure, would be a significant blow to China’s economy.
Israeli and US attacks on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure reminds the world of the important Chinese assistance in support of Iran’s nuclear research and development capabilities. While ostensibly developed for “peaceful use of nuclear energy,” the Isfahan Nuclear Technology Center has long been suspected of contributing to Iran’s covert nuclear weapons program, and China was the main player in jump-starting Isfahan when France ended its technical support after the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Were any of the 1000+ Chinese who have left Iran since the 14 June attacks began involved in Iran’s nuclear programs in any way?
Finally, in pursuit of its goal to displace the US in the Middle East, China would lose significant diplomatic leverage with Gulf Cooperation Council states if it China sides with Iran in a major way (diplomatically or material support).
OPEC+ plans to further accelerate oil output hikes and could unwind its 2.2 million barrels per day of voluntary cuts by the end of October if members do not improve compliance with their production quotas, four sources from the group said.
OPEC+ shocked the oil market in April by agreeing a faster-than-expected unwinding of cuts despite weak prices and demand. The move was designed by OPEC+ leader Saudi Arabia to punish some members for poor quota compliance, sources have said.
The group, which includes the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies such as Russia, agreed another big output hike for June on Saturday, taking the total it plans to release in April, May and June to nearly 1 million bpd.
In a statement published on the OPEC website Thursday, Secretary General Haitham Al Ghais said the concept of “peak oil demand” is nowhere to be seen in the cartel’s projections for future global crude oil demand.
“[A]s we look to the future it is the very versatility of oil that ensures that we do not see peak oil demand on the horizon,” Al Ghais said.
“Just as peak oil supply has never transpired, predictions of peak oil demand are following a similar trend.”
In my own research, I have been able to trace predictions for the world reaching so-called “peak oil” all the way back to the 1880s.
From that distant beginning through around 2010, peak oil theory was always about the world having somehow reached a peak in crude oil supply as all the big reserves had supposedly already been discovered.
For about 125 years, constant advances in technology and a creative and innovative industry invariably proved such pronouncements wrong, often laughably so.
With the ramping-up of the climate alarmist movement in the first decade of this century, narratives surrounding this always-wrong theory began to shift over to the demand side of the equation. Some anti-oil-and-gas activist groups even adopted the theory as a means of promoting the equally silly notion that the world’s remaining oil resources could simply be left in the ground as demand for them would soon be overwhelmed by rising demand for alternatives.
A decade later, that theory has also been proven laughably wrong, despite the “investment” of many trillions of dollars in debt-funded subsidies.
OPEC’s statement stands in stark contrast to the projection by the International Energy Agency that the world will somehow achieve peak oil demand by 2030. Al Ghais alludes to this preposterous notion, calling it a “dangerous commentary, especially for consumers,” that “will only lead to energy volatility on a potentially unprecedented scale.”
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Al Ghais’ statement comes in the wake of revised oil-demand growth projections from the IEA and OPEC, along with Goldman Sachs and the US Energy Information Administration for the remainder of 2024 and into 2025. Where the IEA revised its 2024 projection downward to 1 million barrels per day for 2024, even it projects a more robust 1.5 million bpd in growth for 2025.
The EIA raised its own growth estimate for 2024 from a very conservative 900,000 bpd to 1.1 million bpd.
Goldman Sachs comes in at a stronger 2024 estimate of 1.25 million bpd, based on strong global economic growth. The bank cites robust growth in jet fuel, petrochemical-driven LPG and naphtha, and gasoline and diesel demand as key drivers of this growth.
We used to be a net exporter of oil and the America haters had to take a back seat. That ended in January of 2021.
As a result of the Hamas pogrom in southern Israel, another type of antisemitism has clearly emerged: “oil antisemitism,” antisemitism imported from the Arab oil-producing countries of the Middle East to various regions of the world, particularly in the U. S.
A study by the Institute for the Study of Antisemitism found a direct correlation between the volume of donations and the presence of pro-Palestinian groups on campuses. According to a study published in 2022 by the U.S. National Association of Academics, which did not generate much buzz at the time, Qataris donated an impressive $4.7 billion to U.S. universities between 2001 and 2021, just after the September 11 attacks.
This antisemitism is bought with oil money. This antisemitism is imported from the Middle East. This antisemitism can also be a product of the oil business. Qatar buys academic freedom and public opinion, funds Hamas terrorists and European soccer teams whose many fans become spokespeople for the sponsors’ political views. Qatar’s oil refining industry includes refining oil into antisemitism and shipping petrodollars in antisemitic packages to the U.S. university and colleges campuses.
The democrats love foreign oil so they can sit on their high horses of climate idiocy while collecting checks from the middle east. Vote them out in November.
The Oil countries hate America at every chance they get.
There must be some people who are afraid of him running again. They are friends of Epstein, who didn’t kill himself. He must be a threat to their power base and them hiding the evidence and the client list at the Island.
They want power and control. We know how that eventually works out. In 2 short years, the best economy ever, for most of the world just went in the toilet.
Naturally, those currently in charge are claiming that Constitutionalists are Fascist’s. Let’s look at one of the real fascists to see. After all, politicians are doing what they say the other side is doing as they get up on the alter of high holiness.
You gotta admit, that’s pretty fricken’ high in that picture. It’s just like the price of gas, which is still way over $1 from just 2 years ago, when we were energy independent.
That reminds me of the song, Roll Me Up And Smoke Me When I Die, with both of these gentlemen singing. Enjoy.
During the 2020 Election, Biden warned Americans that it’s going to be a “dark winter”.
At the final presidential debate, Democratic nominee Joe Biden warned Americans that it’s going to be a “dark winter” and said President Trump has “no clear plan” to deal with the continuing coronavirus pandemic.
While it turns out he never had a plan for Covid, Biden is going to deliver on a fuel and food shortage that will make the prediction come true. By waging a war on fossil fuels, it is going to come true, just not about Covid-19.
After being elected and approving the Nord Stream pipeline, Russia had a death grip on the throats of most of Europe. Germany decided to ignore the warnings of the prior president about shutting down their power plants in a Green Washing campaign.
Let’s see how the predictions are coming.
First, Covid is pretty much over. Ivermectin worked and the Jab didn’t and we didn’t have a Covid Winter.
Next, the cold dark winter was really about energy. Tell the story about Climate Change to move money around based on scare tactics.
Unfortunately, they have come through.
German public broadcaster DW News reported a few of the new energy regulations:
Illuminated advertising must be switched off after 10p.m., with only a few exceptions. If advertisements serve traffic safety, they remain switched on, for example, at railroad underpasses. Street lamps also remain on, and store windows may continue to be illuminated.
Monuments and other buildings may no longer be illuminated at night. At least not for purely aesthetic reasons. However, emergency lighting will not be switched off, and illumination is permitted for cultural events and public festivals.
In public buildings, halls and corridors will generally no longer be heated, and the temperature in offices will be limited to a maximum of 19 degrees. In places where heavy physical work is performed, temperatures will be even lower in the future. However, the restrictions do not apply to social facilities such as hospitals, daycare centers, and schools, where higher air temperatures are essential for the “health of the people who spend time there,” according to the Economy Ministry.
In 2011, German Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to quit nuclear energy, and run Europe’s biggest economy on solar and wind power. “Merkel, her allies say, is ready to lead Germany into an era in which wind and solar energy can replace nuclear plants,” The New York Times declared at that time.
Since these renewable energy sources were highly unreliably, Merkel’s government decided to plug the gap with Russian natural gas. Berlin invested billions in joint pipeline projects with Moscow, including the now-defunct 760-mile Nord Stream 2 pipeline that ran under the Baltic Sea.
German politicians and media scoffed at every criticism of their dealings with Russia. President Donald Trump was widely mocked in Germany for suggesting that the country was getting fatally dependent on the Kremlin for its energy requirement.
As Russia now shuts down the gas supply, President Trump’s words appear almost prophetic. The German weekly Der Spiegel notes: “Europeans, and Germans in particular, risk running out of gas in the winter if supplies through Nord Stream, the pipeline that delivers gas directly from Russia to Germany, don’t increase again.” With the remaining nuclear power plants going out of commission and no viable substitute to Russian gas, Germany faces a disaster of its own making
Next warning from a WEF Young Global Leader: ‘Up to ten difficult winters ahead’
Government officials across Europe are warning that a “difficult winter” is ahead. Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum, has stated that not only this winter but also the coming years will be difficult.
“The next five to ten winters will be difficult,” said De Croo at port company ICO Terminals in Zeebrugge. “The coming months will be difficult, the coming winters will be difficult. That’s what you can expect. Hope for the best, be prepared for the worst.”
The year 2030 will dawn in eight “difficult winters”. Coincidence?
Following De Croo, French President Emmanuel Macron, also a WEF Young Global Leader and former Rothschild banker, also warned of a difficult winter and other problems ahead. “Perhaps this is the end of an era of plenty,” he said ominously.
“Our country is at a turning point. It’s going to be a difficult winter,” Macron said at his government’s first meeting after the summer break. “This could be the end of an era of abundance. From a plethora of technical products that always seemed to be available. Of wealth on land and water.”
The Spanish government also warned of bad times. “We don’t know what kind of winter is coming. The winter will be very harsh,” Defense Minister Margarita Robles said in an interview with the radio station NRE.
It’s called the “Grand Solar Minimum”. The last mini-ice age started roughly 1250 and lasted until 1850 with a few minor warming spells in between. Although I assume that the current and coming crises are staged and staged and staged some more by those fear-porn starlets that are bending over backwards to please their pimps and the fear-porn pusher and addicts of the MSM. The real problem is the world’s unbelievably high national debt. Why else was there suddenly “Corona” all over the world? No country can ever repay its debt. The current crises are then ideal for assigning blame, and the result will be a basic income for ordinary people. This will be processed digitally. There will be no more cash and nothing to be made on the side to put food on the table. Then the “Great Reset” is complete and there will only the big corporations left. The small businesses will have been destroyed, and it will be similar to China. This means we are completely at the mercy of the “elites”, who have shown that they have NONE.
With even Zoltan Pozsar warning that Europe faces an apocalypse of sorts now that the Eurussia divorce is complete and energy prices in Europe are hitting fresh daily record highs every single day – just today, German 1Year forward baseload electricity rose above €1000, or 10x where they were a year ago, before easing after European nat gas prices plunged the most since March after Germany said its gas stores are filling up faster than planned ahead of winter…
… moments ago the European Union appears to have finally realized that it faces an armed revolt this winter, or worse, when millions face freezing cold without power and heat (see “This Is Beyond Imagination”: Polish Homeowners Line Up For Days To Buy Coal Ahead Of Winter“), and announced that it was planning “urgent steps” to push down soaring power prices, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Monday.
“The skyrocketing electricity prices are now exposing, for different reasons, the limitations of our current electricity market design,” von der Leyen said in a speech at the Bled Strategic Summit in Slovenia, pointing out what has been obvious for years to those who warned repeatedly that Europe should probably not take make its energy policy based on the idiotic ravings of a self-absorbed, petulant, Scandinavian teenager (Greta T). “It was developed under completely different circumstances and completely different purposes.”
RUSSIA CUTTING OFF THE OIL, GREEN FAILS
With Russia squeezing gas deliveries, power-plant outages further sapping supply, while droughts and lack of wind make a mockery of “green” energy sources, the pressure is growing on EU leaders to act quickly or risk social unrest and political upheaval. Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala is seeking backing for his price-cap plan and plans to discuss possible limits with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
“High energy prices are a Europe-wide problem that we need to tackle at European level,” Fiala said on his Twitter account. “Ahead of the EU Energy Council we want to find a way to help people and businesses that we can agree on with other European leaders.”
Czech officials are proposing to cap prices of natural gas used for power generation, Industry and Trade Minister Jozef Sikela said on Monday.
“We may open the question of emission allowances, as some other member states have done in past, that also present a major part of the total price,” Sikela said. “We may open the question of the overall market regulation, total decoupling of the prices,” adding that the bloc cannot meddle too much with the market or fuel speculation.
Amusingly, EU member states have already earmarked about 280 billion euros (or roughly the same in USD now that we are at parity) in measures such as tax cuts and subsidies to ease the pain of surging energy prices for businesses and consumers, but the aid risks being dwarfed by the scale of the crisis. In other words, the ECB will be hiking rates even as it has to inject even more liquidity into the market to enable the latest helicopter money stimulus. Governments have also started to limit energy use, banning outside lighting for buildings in Germany and lowering indoor heating temperatures, to meet the EU voluntary target of cutting gas demand by 15%.
On Saturday, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo warned that the EU can’t continue resolving the problem of sky-rocketing energy costs by cutting taxes and called for a price cap instead. Should the bloc fail to reach an agreement, Belgium will consider national measures, he told VTM television.
Summer is over. The winter is coming. So are the elections.
And in Germany, who was warned not to trust their energy needs by a recent president or they would lose their self-sustenance. Instead, they closed all the petroleum fired plants :
German Food & Ag Minister: Some Of You Will Have To Starve, And That Is A Sacrifice I’m Willing To Make
The zealots of the Sustainable Organic Church Of The Carbon Apocalypse are no longer hiding the fact that they expect many of you to die in order for them to achieve their green utopia. (Isn’t it weird how left-wing utopias always have such an awful body count?)
The German Food and Agriculture Minister, Cem Özdemir, recently stated that “Hunger is no argument against bio diversity and protection of the climate.”
And in Colorado:
Tens of thousands of Colorado residents found themselves unable to turn down their smart thermostats after energy company Xcel took control of them, citing an “energy emergency.”
On Tuesday, around 22,000 customers of Xcel, a Minnesota-based energy company who supplies customers across a number of western states, found themselves unable to turn down the temperature in their homes, despite the outside temperature reaching into the 90s, Summit News reported.
I’ve stayed away from talking about Biden, like I stayed away from Trump. I’m not going to try to change anyone’s opinion of either, nor will I change mine. Politics is poison, so I’ll talk economics instead (OK, I’ll make a few sarcastic points because, that’s why).
I do see how this problem can easily be solved.
Today, the President announced that he’s opening up the strategic oil reserve to bring down the prices. This is little more than a band aid to a problem rather than a solution. That reserve was meant for a crisis, of which we are not in right now. By crisis, I mean an attack, an actual climate disaster like a hurricane or a non man made disruption in fuel production.
When taking office, he shut down production of fossil fuels via the Keystone Pipeline, Fracking and other independent (of other countries) production of oil. All was done in the name of sustainable sources and devices like electric cars. What is not said is that the generators of electricity are fossil fuel based, even for a Tesla. Also not said is we are not ready for decades to leave oil as a base for our energy and electricity needs.
Irony, hypocrisy and sarcasm, all in one.
The cynical me steps back and looks at the executive orders signed and it seems that Biden is just against anything the previous president did. Lots of presidents do that. One of them was energy independence. Recently, he asked the Saudi’s to produce more for us, although we have the ability to be the largest producer and exporter. They thumbed their noses at us.
To me, if you produce more, the price would go down. It seemed to work a couple of years ago and there is no reason not to have it work again. Stop the restrictions on fracking (which helped reduce our carbon footprint btw), get rid of the restrictions on fracking and get rid of the bureaucratic laws against our being energy independent and the price goes back down. It has nothing to do with production anywhere else, other than driving down the price worldwide.
It would be a step in the right direction of inflation reduction.
Tapping the strategic oil reserved leaves us with our pants down in the case of an actual emergency.
I’m pretty sure most who have an IQ above a grain of rice could see this and know I’m stating the obvious.
Do I expect this to happen? Not a chance. I lived through lines during the Carter years and expect the same to happen until production returns. It’s simple economics.
It’s time to put pettiness aside and do what is right for the people of the country. It’s not getting better than it was. Cutting fuel costs would be a good start.
Delusions of Adequacy 
