Blog – Page 186 – Pecos Operating

Energy News Beat

A trial run of Houston-based Sage Geosystems’ underground battery has delivered “groundbreaking” results, the company reported.

The tech, sometimes called an “earthen” battery, is meant to store electricity generated from renewable sources. It’s also geared to be an alternative to lithium-ion battery storage systems, which require expensive and hard-to-gather materials to make.

Field tests from 2022 to 2023 demonstrated that Sage’s system, marketed as EarthStore, can provide more than 18 hours of energy storage, with the ability to give 24/7 power “when paired with solar or wind generation,” a news release on the results stated. What’s more, the unique tech can help provide renewable energy during peak demand times, which is a sometimes elusive prospect for intermittent solar and wind systems.

“We have cracked the code to provide the perfect complement to renewable energy, yielding reliable alternative baseload in a manner that is cost competitive with lithium-ion batteries and natural gas peaker plants,” Sage CEO Cindy Taff said in the release.

The tech is promoted as having a small ground-level footprint. Most of the mechanism is buried. Sage drills several thousand feet into the earth, opening fissures with fracture technology. The fractures serve as reservoirs to store water deep underground. The fractures also store energy like a spring, using subsurface pressure to propel the water upward when a valve is opened on the surface, powering a turbine, all per a video clip from Sage.

The water is pumped underground by energy bought from the grid (the video clip shows wind turbines supplying the juice) when there’s a glut of electricity. The water is stored below until it is needed. Sage has a couple of variations of the tech. One version with deeper wells uses heat to help push the water to the surface and is more efficient. EarthStore is what the company calls its “mechanical” version of the concept, which boasts a still impressive efficiency rate of 70%, all according to the clip.

The recent news from Sage touts an energy production cost lower than or competitive with other innovations, including lithium-ion power packs. The release noted a “round-trip efficiency” of up to 75% for EarthStore.

Using water to store electricity, while a seemingly odd combination, is being studied around the world. Energy leaders in Scotland are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in a water battery that leverages reservoirs and gravity to store power. The innovations are part of the way we can better generate and use electricity, reducing the amount of planet-warming dirty energy sources we burn.

“The opportunities for our energy storage to provide power are significant — from remote mining operations to data centers to solving energy poverty in remote locations,” Taff stated in the release.

There was no indication of earthquakes created from drilling and fracturing the ground during the pilot project. Sage reported that EarthStore can operate in new wells or existing oil and gas holes.

The tech is now “ready to scale” without geographic limits, per the company.

“We can interconnect with power grids or develop island/microgrids with a cleaner energy solution that is proven and ready to scale,” Taff stated in the release.

Source: Yahoo.com

1031 Exchange E-Book

ENB Top News
ENB
Energy Dashboard
ENB Podcast
ENB Substack

The post Texas startup delivers landmark results with ‘earthen’ battery technology: ‘The opportunities … are significant’ appeared first on Energy News Beat.

Energy News Beat

When Congress voted to spend hundreds of billions to switch electricity production to solar and wind, it forgot something: transmission lines. New ones will be needed going to the locations of the new power sources, but nobody bothered to figure out who will pay for it or how much it will cost.

Congressmen Sean Casten (D-IL) and Mike Levin (D-CA) introduced a bill last month to fix their omission, largely at your expense. The bill has already picked up 76 co-sponsors, including eight from Illinois.

Grab your wallet. Here are the details:

In 2022, Congress passed the mislabeled Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which will cost an estimated $1.2 trillion, far exceeding initial claims. The IRA actually was the largest energy bill in U.S. history. Tax credits for renewable energy production, among the biggest elements of the law, are estimated to cost $263 billion.

No cap was placed on those tax credits and they were generous – 30% of project costs. That’s part of the reason for the cost overrun but it also means that new solar and wind production projects are underway. All the better, say IRA supporters.

Now, however, there’s widespread, bipartisan recognition that those projects are futile without transmission linking them into the electrical grid. Progressive economist Paul Krugman, for example, cheered the IRA but wrote despairingly in the New York Times that “we may need a third, bureaucratic miracle to fix the electricity grid and make this whole thing work.”

Casten, also an avid IRA supporter, now admits to the gravity of the problem saying that “80% of the clean energy progress we made with the Inflation Reduction Act will be lost unless we reform transmission and permitting.”

Enter Casten and Levin with their solution, the Clean Electricity and Transmission Acceleration Act (CETA), which they introduced in the House last month.

What’s in it?

More tax credits, which is to say more subsidies by taxpayers. A 30% tax credit would go toward qualifying new transmission lines going to renewable sources. The total amount of credits available is again uncapped.

That’s just part of the 210-page bill. It would also amend the IRA to let the Department of Energy finance transmission facilities designated by DOE as “national interest.”

It would give the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission exclusive siting authority for “national interest” transmission lines, directing FERC to base its decision to exercise such authority on factors that include enabling the use of renewable energy. That’s important because it appears to be an attempt to override growing roadblocks local citizens have been putting up to new renewable projects on their landscape.

The bill also contains a range of provisions under the label of “empowerment.” It would, among many other things, establish an Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights; codify the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights in the EPA; codify the White House Environmental Justice Interagency Council; provide for development an Interagency Federal Environmental Justice Strategy to address “current and historical environmental injustice,” and designate “Tribal Community Engagement Officers” in each agency.

The bill has 76 House co-sponsors and counting, all Democrats, in addition to Casten and Levin, including Illinoisans Jan Schakowsky, Nicole Budzinski, Jonathan Jackson, Eric Sorensen, Bill Foster, Brad Schneider, Raja Krishnamoorthi and Mike Quigley.

What will all this cost?

So far, I have seen nothing at all from bill sponsors or in the press. As always, cost matters little if the results are green.

But lots of evidence suggests that the cost would certainly be many tens of billions and perhaps hundreds of billions of dollars. For example, interconnection costs sometimes 10 times higher than projects that ultimately got built. Earlier this year, a renewable executive told The New York Times that interconnection costs have become the “no. 1 project killer.” For Texas alone, according to one study, extending the reach of transmission lines to connect more zero-carbon power sources would cost $11 billion by 2035.

And stories abound about individual projects facing huge interconnection problems. CNBC devoted a three-part series to it.

Remember that the cost to the government from tax credits or grants to fix the problem is just the start. Utilities would bear a large part of the remaining cost which gets passed through to consumers in rate increases. Insofar as other private sector investors fund the rest of the price, there’s an opportunity cost of capital that might have been invested elsewhere.

The bill has no chance of passing in its current form in the Republican-majority House. It’s important nevertheless because it represents the progressive starting point of negotiations on a massive problem that both parties recognize. Republicans unanimously opposed the IRA in the House and Senate, but may negotiate a bill to address the problem in order to salvage something of value from what’s already been spent.

The new bill is also important because it reflects the thinking of progressives and what they’d like to do if they regain full control of Congress. “While acknowledging that the bill stood little chance of passage in the current House,” The Hill reported, “Casten said it would serve as an ‘anchor of democratic energy policy when a window opens up to have that conversation again.”

Is the public ready to pay up once again for renewable electricity? Most Americans support renewable sources but want a balance with traditional, fossil fuel sources. Good. That’s sensible. But where’s the balance?

There’s a final, huge kicker near the end of the bill that has nothing to do with energy or transmission lines: It would amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to prohibit disparate impact discrimination.

I found the buried section by chance when going through the bill. No bill sponsor or reporter has mentioned it. “Disparate impact” is a critical issue in discrimination cases. It’s about whether the mere fact of unequal outcomes proves illegal discrimination and what excuses there may be for it. It’s complicated, and Supreme Court rulings depend on who is getting sued, among other variables.

Suffice it to say, however, that Section 603 of CETA would vastly expand the scope of what would constitute illegal discrimination under the Civil Rights Act, making it easier to sue based on unequal outcomes.

Why did they hide this proposal in an energy bill. Afraid of what voters would think it they put it up straight as a standalone bill?

Getting back to the main thrust of CETA, when Paul Krugman wrote that it would take a “bureaucratic miracle to fix the electricity grid and make this whole thing work,” he must have been fantasizing about CETA.

CETA is that fantasy and more.

Source: Zerohedge.com

1031 Exchange E-Book

ENB Top News
ENB
Energy Dashboard
ENB Podcast
ENB Substack

The post Progressive Lawmakers Line Up Behind Costly Fix For Error They Made In Renewable Energy Plan appeared first on Energy News Beat.

Energy News Beat

The Pakistani government has condemned an alleged Iranian missile strike in the Balochistan province on Tuesday, claiming it has caused civilian casualties. Islamabad said it would lodge a protest with Tehran over the “unilateral action” and violation of its sovereignty.

Several Iranian news outlets reported on Tuesday evening that missiles and drones were launched at the headquarters of Jaish al-Adl, a group that Tehran has accused of the attack that killed a dozen Iranian police in December. There was no official statement on the operation from Iran, however.

“Pakistan strongly condemns the unprovoked violation of its airspace by Iran and the strike inside Pakistani territory which resulted in the death of two innocent children while injuring three girls,” the Foreign Ministry in Islamabad said in a statement, adding that the violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty was “completely unacceptable and can have serious consequences.”

Terrorism is a threat to all countries in the region and requires “coordinated” action rather than unilateral moves that are “not in conformity with good neighborly relations and can seriously undermine bilateral trust,” the ministry added.

The Iranian charge d’affaires has been summoned to receive a protest note about the “blatant violation” of Pakistani sovereignty, while an appropriate demarche was sent to Tehran as well, the Pakistani Foreign Ministry said.

A series of explosions were reported on Tuesday night in Panjgur, a city in the Pakistani province of Baluchistan, near the Iranian border. According to Iranian media, “two key strongholds” of Jaysh al-Adl were “obliterated by precision strikes” by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

On Monday, the IRGC launched ballistic missiles and drones against what they described as an Israeli headquarters in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil, as well as Islamic State (IS, also known as ISIS) targets in Syria’s Idlib province.

The IRGC vowed to continue the strikes “until the last drops of martyrs’ blood are avenged,” referring to the January 3 bombings that killed almost 100 people in the Iranian city of Kerman, where thousands of pilgrims had gathered to mourn the late General Qassem Soleimani, assassinated by the US in 2020. The group also mentioned last month’s attack in Rask, in southeastern Iran, in which militants killed 11 Iranian police officers.

1031 Exchange E-Book

ENB Top News
ENB
Energy Dashboard
ENB Podcast
ENB Substack

The post Pakistan threatens Iran with ‘serious consequences’ appeared first on Energy News Beat.

Energy News Beat

Oil and Gas 360

One of the highlights of the business programme of the Transportation Oil and Gas Congress (TOGC 2024) is the topic of hydrogen readiness of infrastructure. C-level audience and leading technical specialists gather to discuss cases of hydrogen implementation and how to adapt, maintain and monitor hydrogen infrastructure. The Congress is held in Milan, Italy, on February, 19-21.

The hydrogen readiness of the pipeline infrastructure is a critical factor in the development of a hydrogen economy. By repurposing existing natural gas pipelines to transport hydrogen, governments and industry players can reduce the costs and accelerate the deployment of hydrogen infrastructure.

For instance, in order to enlarge export capacity and zero out the emissions, Israel Natural Gas Lines LTD (INGL), the leader in natural gas distribution in Israel, started a hydrogen transfer project. The company is going to share initial insights from the project in frames of the Transportation Oil and Gas Congress.

The Congress brings together oil and gas majors, EPCs, pipeline operators, storage operators and traders to network and discuss the trends of the industry and the potential for market growth.

Representatives from PETROBRAS, Linde Engineering, TECHINT Engineering & Construction, Wood, ElinOil are already registered for participation. TOGC 2024 delegates are going to share the experience and thoughts on infrastructure adaptation for hydrogen, cases of hydrogen implementation, safety of H2 injection, and also the question of how to monitor and maintain H2 infrastructure.

Hydrogen pipeline safety and operations are also going to be discussed at TOGC 2024. The development of a hydrogen economy requires the construction of a vast network of hydrogen pipelines.

By taking the necessary safety precautions, hydrogen pipeline operators can ensure the safe transportation of hydrogen. During the Congress, Colin McKinnon, Technical Director at Wood, is going to talk about hydrogen pipeline safety and operations and what are the differences from a natural gas pipeline.

Another topic that is going to be highlighted at the Congress by Chris Nowak, Specialist Consultant at Danish Energy Agency, is called “From methane infrastructure – onto hydrogen”.

To ramp up hydrogen as an energy source in Denmark, the company has put down national market legislation for hydrogen infrastructure before the EU is ready. Using the schematics of what works well in the methane and electricity sector, the company is trying to apply it to hydrogen.

Learn more about the hydrogen pipeline infrastructure with TOGC 2024: https://sh.bgs.group/15o

1031 Exchange E-Book

ENB Top News
ENB
Energy Dashboard
ENB Podcast
ENB Substack

The post Hydrogen Pipeline Infrastructure: Assessing Readiness with TOGC 2024 appeared first on Energy News Beat.

Energy News Beat

Nasdaq

NEW YORK – Developers of renewable energy projects selling unused U.S. tax credits to other companies now account for a market worth between $7 billion and $9 billion, buoyed by legislation in 2022 that made these trades possible, a new study shows.

President Joe Biden’s climate law aimed to stoke trillions of dollars of investment to wean the economy off planet-warming fossil fuels, partly through tax breaks for builders of projects like wind farms and solar plants.

The government made some of these new credits tradable, in the hope of bringing fresh money to projects which have long relied on a group of banks that are big and expert enough to invest directly and take the associated tax breaks.

In the first six months since tax authorities set guidance for the trades in June of last year, deals were struck to transfer credits worth between $7 billion and $9 billion, online platform Crux calculated.

That represents more than one third of the roughly $20 billion traditionally raised each year through tax equity for such projects in the United States. In total, $64 billion was invested nationally in clean energy and transportation in the three months to September, the Rhodium Group think tank says.

Crux, which lets sellers post details of their projects and buyers browse and make bids, surveyed developers selling the credits, corporate buyers and intermediaries like banks and brokers in late 2023, and received 150 responses.

They counted deals worth $3.5 billion, and separately parsed other accessible information to reach the $7-9 billion estimate for the 2023 tax year.

“This market has scaled faster than anyone anticipated,” said Crux CEO and co-founder Alfred Johnson, a former Treasury Department staffer.

Buyers paid an average 92-94 cents on the dollar for credits. Crux and other companies like it say they charge fees ranging from less than 1% to 3% of the value of the credits, which can only be sold once.

“We saw behavior like a bidding war on the platform.” Johnson said. “In 2024 we expect many more net new buyers.”

(Reporting by Isla Binnie; Editing by Andrea Ricci) (([email protected]; Reuters Messaging: [email protected])) Keywords: USA RENEWABLES/TAX CREDITS (PIX)

1031 Exchange E-Book

ENB Top News
ENB
Energy Dashboard
ENB Podcast
ENB Substack

The post US energy tax credit trading grows to as much as $9 billion, study finds appeared first on Energy News Beat.

Energy News Beat

“In the near term, the markets are not balanced; supply, demand is not balanced,” Hollub said, adding that: “2025 and beyond is when the world is going to be short of oil”.

Hollub said that from the mid-1950s to the late 1970s, oil companies were finding around five times as much oil as was used, a ratio that has steadily declined to about 25% in 2023.

She said that from 2012, U.S. oil companies moved away from exploration and focused on tapping shale oil reserves, which have a much shorter lifespan than conventionally produced oil.

She added that she expected energy transition scenarios will have to be adjusted to accommodate for more oil exploration.

“I think the industry is looking at a scenario where we will be able to do all the things that we need to do as a part of the transition”.

The market will move from near term oversupply, to a long period when the world is going to need more oil, she added.

(Reporting by Dmitry Zhdannikov in Davos Writing by Ahmad Ghaddar in London Editing by Mark Potter)

1031 Exchange E-Book

ENB Top News
ENB
Energy Dashboard
ENB Podcast
ENB Substack

The post Market to be short oil from 2025 onwards, Occidental CEO at Davos appeared first on Energy News Beat.

Energy News Beat

Oil Price

Back in the middle of 2023, the International Energy Agency reported that electricity demand is on the decline in advanced economies. The IEA said at the time that demand for electricity in the U.S. alone was set to drop by 2% in 2023. Instead, demand is surging. And warnings of blackouts are multiplying.

This weekend, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas issued a call for electricity conservation to Texans for Monday morning to avoid a shortage. The reason: a spike in demand due to winter weather combined with insufficient wind speeds for the state’s massive wind power generation capacity.

It is not just Texas, however. And it is not just in winter—and summer—when demand is reaching new peaks. It’s all over the States. And it is a long-term problem that may lead to blackouts.

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation reported the danger in its latest Long-Term Reliability Assessment, released in December. It then reported, last week, that retail sales of electricity this year are likely to hit a record high of close to 4 billion kWh. Not only that, but demand over the next ten years in the U.S. is going to grow at a rate twice as high as it used to over the last five years. And it’s not because of households being reckless with their electricity consumption.

“The explosion in data centres is very, very real . . . a lot of utilities are having issues keeping up with that demand,” NERC chief executive Jim Robb told the Financial Times last week.

Because of that explosion, some utilities were stalling data center connections to the grid for fear of causing reliability problems for themselves, Robb explained. Yet it is not only data centers driving the demand surge. It is also the Inflation Reduction Act and the money it has pledged in support of transition technology such as EVs and batteries—and heat pumps.

The FT cited in an article a report produced by consultancy Grid Strategies that calculated the largest driver of this higher electricity demand in the U.S. going forward would be some $481 billion worth of industrial projects announced since 2021. Including things like chip and battery manufacturing.

There is also some $150 billion in new data center projects that have been announced and are set to be built by 2028. And, of course, there are the millions of EVs that should hit U.S. roads in the coming years—provided carmakers and dealers somehow reverse the slowdown in sales.

Meanwhile, electricity generation capacity additions will be dominated by wind and solar, the Energy Information Administration said in its latest Short-Term Energy Outlook. Per the report, solar would be the biggest source of new generation capacity, at 36 GW in additions this year and 43 GW in 2025.

Output from solar would also increase, from 162 billion kWh last year to 230 billion kWh this year. So would output from wind turbines, the EIA said, estimating the 2024 gain at 30 billion kWh.

With such abundant wind and solar projected output, exceeding this year’s expected retail electricity sales many times over, all should be well. And it would have been if wind and solar generated round the clock and peak production coincided with peak demand. Also, the forecast additions are not certain to materialize: opposition to new wind and solar installations in on the rise in parts of the United States, leading to project cancellations.

While this is happening, electricity demand is growing—and coal and gas power plants are being retired as it becomes increasingly difficult to compete with heavily subsidized wind and solar installations.

This accelerated retirement of baseload generation capacity led NERC to warn last December that two-thirds of the country risks sinking into blackouts in peak winter weather. Loss of coal and gas generation capacity caused rolling blackouts in Tennessee in winter 2022 amid Winter Storm Elliott—though in the case of Tennessee it was not retirement that was the reason but rather bad maintenance and the cold.

There appears to be a growing divide between electricity demand trends, which appear to involve strong growth and, with it, the unavoidable need for reliable supply, and trends in the supply half of the equation, which are focused on so-called low-carbon sources of energy such as wind and solar. As long as utilities can build all the necessary transmission lines to take the electricity from the wind and solar installations to the consumers—including data centers.

In mid-2023, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission warned there would be blackouts. The warning was spelled out by Commissioner Mark C. Christie at a testimony to the House Subcommittee on Energy, Climate, and Grid Security.

Detailing developments in grid security, Christie said that the problem was not “the addition of intermittent resources such as wind and solar, but the far too rapid subtraction of dispatchable resources, especially coal and gas.”

“One nameplate megawatt of wind or solar is simply not equal to one nameplate megawatt of gas, coal or nuclear,” the commissioner went on to add, as quoted by media at the time.

Yet it seems that, if the EIA is right, the trend of adding wind and solar, and retiring coal and gas is set to continue. How this will fit with rising demand for electricity is perhaps the most important question about the energy transition right now.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

1031 Exchange E-Book

ENB Top News
ENB
Energy Dashboard
ENB Podcast
ENB Substack

The post Surging electricity demand increases the risk of blackouts in the U.S. appeared first on Energy News Beat.

Energy News Beat

The situation is “extremely difficult” so Kiev needs more weapons, Jens Stoltenberg has said

Russia is advancing on many parts of the front in Ukraine while Kiev’s big offensive did not deliver the desired results, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Tuesday in Davos.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum panel titled ‘Securing an Insecure World’, Stoltenberg described the situation on the battlefield as “extremely difficult.”

“The Russians are now pushing on many frontlines. And of course the big offensive that the Ukrainians launched last summer didn’t give the results we all hoped for,” he told WEF President Borge Brende.

“Russia is pushing hard. And this is serious and we should never underestimate Russia,” he added.

Stoltenberg insisted that there was also cause for optimism, because Kiev wasn’t taken within a few days as “most [Western] experts believed” in 2022. He described it as a “big win” for Ukraine that it “has survived as a sovereign independent nation.”

According to Stoltenberg, Russia has already lost the war because it wanted to “control Ukraine” and the Ukrainians now “want to be part of the West, of the European Union and NATO, and they’re closer to us than ever before.”

Asked about the NATO strategy going forward, Stoltenberg repeated the thesis that the West needs to keep propping up Kiev until Moscow submits.

“At some stage Russia will understand that they’re paying a too high price and sit down and agree to some kind of just peace, but we need to stand by Ukraine,” he told the crowd in Davos. “If we want that to happen, a peaceful just end to this war, the way to get there is more weapons to Ukraine.”

By Russian estimates, the US and its allies have poured over $200 billion worth of weapons, ammunition and equipment into Ukraine over the past two years. By their own admission, the US and the UK helped plan last summer’s offensive in Zaporozhye that utterly failed to break the Russian defenses. Kiev is now struggling to replace its losses, issuing a call for drafting 500,000 more troops.

1031 Exchange E-Book

ENB Top News
ENB
Energy Dashboard
ENB Podcast
ENB Substack

The post NATO issues downbeat update on Ukraine appeared first on Energy News Beat.

Energy News Beat

After winning Iowa’s Republican Caucuses, the ex-US president has claimed he can achieve “peace through strength”

Donald Trump has marked the first victory in his campaign to reclaim the US presidency by reiterating a boast that he will quickly end the Russia-Ukraine conflict when he returns to the White House.

Speaking after securing a record margin of victory in Iowa’s Republican Caucuses on Monday night, Trump claimed that neither the Ukraine crisis nor the Israel-Hamas war would have happened if he were still the US commander-in-chief. He expressed confidence that he will bring the Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky to the negotiating table to hammer out a peace deal.

“The Ukraine situation is so horrible, the Israeli situation is so horrible, what’s happened, and we’re going to get them solved,” Trump told supporters in Des Moines, the Iowa capital. “We’re going to get them solved very fast… I know President Putin very well, I know Zelensky well. I’m gonna get them in, we’re gonna get it solved very quickly.”

Trump defeated the rest of the Republican field by around 30 percentage points in the Iowa race, more than doubling a record that had stood since 1988 and securing his status as the leading candidate to win the party’s 2024 presidential nomination. He has repeatedly claimed that he will resolve the Russia-Ukraine conflict within 24 hours when he returns to the White House.

Trump also has claimed that the “weak” leadership of his successor, President Joe Biden, led to the Ukraine conflict and the Hamas attack that triggered Israel’s war in Gaza. He vowed to prevent such tragedies by achieving “peace through strength.”

“It should have never happened, would have never happened,” Trump said of the Ukraine crisis. “Now you have all that death, far greater than people understand. The numbers are far, far greater than anybody would even think possible. You’re going to find that out in the years to come.”

1031 Exchange E-Book

ENB Top News
ENB
Energy Dashboard
ENB Podcast
ENB Substack

The post Trump renews vow to quickly end Ukraine crisis appeared first on Energy News Beat.

Energy News Beat

The Russian president has commented on Latvia’s announced deportation of pensioners

Deportations of ethnic Russians, in many cases elderly retirees, from Latvia and other Baltic states is a serious matter threatening the security of Russia, President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday.

Speaking at a meeting with municipal leaders in Moscow, Putin linked the actions of Baltic states with how the Ukrainian government treated Russian speakers after the US-backed coup in 2014, which triggered the Donbass conflict.

“In 2014 there was also a coup d’etat and the declaration of Russians in Ukraine as a non-titular nation. This was followed by a whole series of other decisions that nullified and actually led to what is now happening in Latvia and in other Baltic republics, when Russian people are simply dumped across the border,” Putin said.

You see, these are very serious things that directly affect the security of our country.

In 2022, the Latvian parliament adopted a law that all Russian nationals must obtain a certificate proving their command of the Latvian language by September 1, 2023, or face deportation.

Latvia confirmed on Tuesday that it wanted to deport 985 Russians for either not taking or failing the language test. One of the people affected by the order is a 72-year-old Russian woman from the town of Liepaja, who could not pass the test because she has been visually impaired since childhood, according to the Russian embassy in Riga.

About 36% of Latvia’s residents consider Russian their mother tongue. Significant populations of Russian-speakers also exist in Estonia and Lithuania – former Baltic republics of the Soviet Union that declared independence in 1991 and have since joined the EU and NATO.

All three have sought to disenfranchise the ethnic Russians, demanding loyalty oaths and qualification tests. After Moscow launched its military operation in Ukraine, their governments rushed to support Kiev and banned all displays of Russian symbols as “supporting aggression.” The ban was later extended to celebrations of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in WWII.

1031 Exchange E-Book

ENB Top News
ENB
Energy Dashboard
ENB Podcast
ENB Substack

The post EU state expelling elderly Russians is a ‘security threat’ – Putin appeared first on Energy News Beat.

Current and prospective investors, please call our Pecos Country Operating offices at (817) 581-3877.

About