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Qatar & The US Warn EU Of Gas Crunch Over Methane Regulation
Authored by Irina Slav via OilPrice.com,
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Major LNG suppliers say the EU’s methane regulations are too burdensome to comply with and could lead to reduced gas supplies.
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The U.S. and Qatar contend that tracking methane emissions across complex gas supply chains is technically difficult or impossible.
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With nearly 60% of its LNG imports coming from the U.S., the EU risks straining relations with key suppliers as it pursues stricter climate policies.
The United States and Qatar have once again warned the European Union against doubling down on climate policies seeking to penalize the LNG industry, saying that if it continues on this course, the EU will face a gas crunch and higher prices.
“There is no viable path to compliance with the regulation”, the top energy officials of the U.S. and Qatar, Chris Wright and Saad al-Kaabi, wrote in a letter quoted by the Financial Times.
“Because legal compliance remains paramount, exporters and importers alike are unwilling to enter into contractual agreements that knowingly violate EU law,” the U.S. energy secretary and the Qatari energy minister also wrote. “Significant supply and price impacts are a certainty.”
The letter comes ahead of a meeting on Friday when the energy ministers of EU member states will discuss the policies of the bloc. It was also signed by two other large gas suppliers to the European Union, Algeria and Nigeria, the FT also reported.
The so-called methane regulation, adopted by the European Union two years ago, aimed at reducing not only the bloc’s own emissions of the greenhouse gas that constitutes almost 100% of natural gas but also forcing countries outside the EU that do business with the bloc to cut their emissions as well, notably gas suppliers.
The regulation, starting this year, extends to all energy suppliers to the EU, and these suppliers were anything but happy about it.
Both the United States and Qatar have already repeatedly warned the EU that they are unwilling to do business with it under the methane regulation that requires gas producers to track their methane emissions from the wellhead to the liquefaction plant and the LNG carrier after that, report them, and take pains to reduce these emissions, or face financial penalties.
Qatar was blunt about it, saying last year that if the EU was so concerned about methane emissions, they should look for some other source of LNG because Qatar would stop selling to the bloc. Secretary Wright also said last year that the methane regulation was impossible to implement and described it as “a critical non-tariff trade barrier that imposes an undue burden on U.S. exporters and our trade relationship.”
In response, Brussels caved partially, saying it will not enforce the penalties stipulated in the regulation until 2030. LNG exporters are still not happy with this option, insisting on what would effectively be the cancellation of the regulation—and they are not alone because there are EU member states that are not really eager to pay the additional cost of low-methane LNG, which would be inevitable, as pointed out by Wright and al-Kaabi.
Not only are higher gas prices for European buyers inevitable, but Secretary Wright was not exaggerating when he said the regulation would be impossible to enforce in the U.S. shale gas patch. The reason is quite simple: U.S. natural gas is produced by multiple companies that then feed their output into a complex gas network that takes the gas to the liquefaction facilities on the Gulf Coast. Tracking every molecule to ensure it was produced and shipped with as few methane emissions as possible is quite literally, physically impossible.
According to energy consultancy Rystad Energy, however, there is no problem with the EU methane regulation, because there are three times as much compliant natural gas available in the world as the EU imports, it said in a study commissioned by climate outlet the Environmental Defense Fund, as cited by the FT. One wonders, however, if that is indeed the case, why would both Qatar and the United States, which together account for a pretty solid portion of global LNG output, claim compliance is impossible, meaning there is not enough compliant gas in the world.
The EU, for all its power posturing, is not in a position of strength. Bloomberg’s Javier Blas reported in a recent column that the bloc buys some 59% of its LNG from the United States, with the figure going all the way to 64% in April. As a result, Blas wrote, some in Brussels are starting to worry that the EU has become too dependent on a single supplier of a vital commodity—and it does not exactly have many alternatives should anything strain relations, such as, perhaps, an ill-conceived methane regulation.
Yet it appears the purpose of the methane regulation is not necessarily to make sure the gas that Europeans buy is “clean”. The purpose, as described by the FT and attributed to proponents such as the Environmental Defense Fund, is to reduce gas consumption, apparently by making the conditions for purchasing that gas unpalatable. For those proponents, reducing gas consumption would improve the EU’s energy security. European industrial energy consumers beg to differ. Who will prevail should become clear pretty soon.
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NATO Chief Challenged On The "Defensive" Alliance's History Of Offensive Regime Change
After his Oval Office visit today, an affair dominated by foreign reporters speaking truth to power by clamoring for more global military spending, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte had to defend his alliance’s often-touted moral assertion: that NATO is defensive in nature.
Asked by ZeroHedge whether NATO’s good deeds in Libya and Iraq (a de facto NATO "coalition of the willing") operation) qualified as defensive, Rutte had this to say:
NATO chief Mark Rutte often refers to his alliance as “defensive.”
I asked whether Hillary Clinton’s regime war in Libya or Cheney’s Iraq — both NATO operations — were defensive operations. pic.twitter.com/sa8X1qcsFt
Rutte: Again, NATO is there to defend 1 billion people living in NATO territory, from California up to and including Turkey, and everything in between. This is a transatlantic, North Atlantic Treaty Organization Alliance. It is extremely powerful. It is the strongest defensive alliance in world history. And we have our discussions, as you have seen this afternoon. There are always debates. These are democracies.
ZH: But what about those wars? What about Libya and Iraq?
Rutte: I'm not going to comment on everything, but I can assure you, NATO is there to defend. But if we would be attacked, you can be assured, that if we get attacked by anyone, for example the Russians or whoever, that our reaction would be devastating.
One million Iraqis may be dead. Libya may no longer be a cohesive country, with sub-Saharan slave auctions returning post-NATO liberation… but hey! It was debated. We’re democratic.
Libya was infamously a Hillary Clinton operation, something she reportedly believed would be a slam dunk victory and propel her into the presidency in 2016. Instead, after killing Gaddafi, Benghazi happened, where embassy officials and CIA contractors were murdered in a surprise attack.
Most know of this scandal but few know why there was a secret CIA compound still located in Benghazi, Libya after Gaddafi had been murdered. As investigative reporter Seymour Hersh broke in 2014, it was to smuggle weapons from the no-longer-needed Libyan “rebels” to the freedom fighters in Assad’s Syria… a regime change that would eventually be achieved and was publicly celebrated by Israeli PM Netanyahu, who took partial credit.
Western values:
Hillary Clinton,on hearing about Gaddafi's death in Sirte, Libya.
20 Oct 2011.
Hillary Clinton: "We came, we saw, he died!"
Q:"Did it [Gaddafi's death] have anything to do with your visit?
Clinton: "Nah...I'm sure it did (giggles)"
🤔 pic.twitter.com/QoUQS0sp4d
Mark Rutte has been successful at ratcheting up weaponry spending across Europe, combining his ability to flatter Trump and by leveraging Trump’s threats against NATO members to “pay their fair share”. Rutte is apparently an aspiring Lindsay Graham as he approaches 60 years of age with no kids, wife, nor girlfriend and a seemingly singular focus at prolonging wars.
His latest attempt, today, to seduce Trump included a posterboard-demonstration featuring the global increases in European NATO spending that has occurred under Trump’s terms:
Rutte's presentation Wednesday in the Oval. Screenshotted from White House feed.Nothing like cheerful, childless men trying to drag you into World War III while they constantly remind you of their moral virtuosity. Reminiscent of the Biden years.
Trump and Vance deserve great credit and support as they try to resist the warmongers in the Levant. Let's hope they can resist the ones in Brussels as well. And yes, yes.. Trump started the war in Iran. But, to anyone paying attention, it was against his will and now he and Vance are entering uncharted territory in their defiance towards Israel. To reference Sey Hersh again, from his latest Substack post:
“Last week President Donald Trump walked away from a postwar alliance dating back almost eight decades by telling Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu that America’s romance with Israel is over. The bond between the two nations, officially dating back to 1948, when Israel was recognized by the United Nations, was shredded. Perhaps forever. Trump has told the New York Times and its columnists who bemoan what they fear will be a bereft and vulnerable Israel, in constant peril from a potential Iranian nuclear weapon, that Israel is on its own.
It had been an American political ritual, like kissing babies when campaigning, to support Israel in all things, as did President Joe Biden”
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Police Took 8 Minutes To Locate Henry Nowak's Fatal Stab Wound... Then Performed CPR Directly Over It
Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,
The case of 18-year-old white British student Henry Nowak has delivered yet another layer of disturbing detail.
Officers from Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary arrived at the Southampton scene roughly five to ten minutes after he was stabbed five times with a ceremonial knife. Henry remained conscious and spoke loudly at first. He told them he had been stabbed and could not breathe. They chose instead to believe the man who had just knifed him.
New evidence released this week shows it took those officers a full eight minutes to discover the fatal wound. During that time they lifted Henry, striking his head against a wall, and later began CPR. A female officer started compressions. According to the transcript and reports, officers performed chest compressions over his clothing and directly onto the area of the stab wound.
? BREAKING: Newly released evidence shows how police officers took eight minutes to discover the stab wound that killed Henry Nowak.
The attending officers also hit Henry's head on a wall as he was lifted, before a female officer begins CPR.https://t.co/C5Wb1IQZ93
It took police officers 8 minutes to check Henry Nowak for stab wounds. When they realised he wasn't breathing they did chest compressions over his clothes ONTO A STAB WOUND, somehow managing to make the situation even worse.
— Patrick Christys (@PatrickChristys) June 24, 2026Bodycam footage shows officers dragging Henry across gravel, turning him, and forcefully pulling his arms behind his back to apply handcuffs. He lost consciousness within about three minutes of that restraint and was pronounced dead at 00:37 on 4 December 2025 after 51 minutes of resuscitation efforts.
A paediatric critical care specialist with battlefield medicine experience, Dr Krzysztof Magier, reviewed the footage and post-mortem report. He concluded there is a high probability that the police actions contributed to Henry's death.
The main source of bleeding was damage to the subclavian vein. Venous bleeding under low pressure often forms a natural clot that can slow or stop on its own. Forcefully twisting the arms behind the back and handcuffing likely stretched the vein, tore the forming clot, and triggered sudden massive internal haemorrhage.
Dr Magier stated: "I am convinced that if Henry had arrived there alive, the doctors would not have let him die." He added that paramedics arriving first could have given Henry a roughly 50% chance of survival through fluids, tranexamic acid to stabilise the clot, and other interventions. Southampton University Hospital, a major trauma centre, was only two to three minutes away by ambulance.
Serving and former Hampshire officers have now admitted that mandatory "Inclusion Matters" DEI training played a direct role in how they processed the incident. They described sessions that drummed in "white privilege" and "unconscious bias."
One officer said: "we had it drummed into us about our white privilege and unconscious bias." The outsourced trainer was described as "deeply hateful of white people and our culture." Officers feared career damage if they pushed back.
This ideological environment framed the white teenager as the likely aggressor and gave credence to the attacker's fabricated claim of racial abuse.
Vickrum Digwa, from a Sikh background, lied to police and his family reinforced the narrative on the 999 call, downplaying any knife involvement. Officers initially accepted the story. One was heard telling Henry: "Don't think you have mate."
An ex-police officer appearing on BBC Newsnight called the response "unfathomable." Basic procedure requires immediate medical assessment and priority for anyone reporting a stab wound and breathing difficulty - not restraint and dismissal. The BBC presenter appeared visibly surprised at the unsparing assessment.
Judge William Mousley KC noted the attending officer's "genuine shock" upon realising CPR was being given over a serious chest wound and suggested it showed officers "doing his best in a very difficult situation." The judge also observed that "sometimes, someone arrested and handcuffed will feign injury."
Dr Magier directly challenged that leniency: "I fear that the Judge and pathologist were too lenient towards the police."
A full jury inquest opens at Winchester Coroner's Court on 20 September 2027. It will examine whether any act or omission by police caused or contributed to the death.
The release of bodycam footage earlier this month triggered protests and disorder in Southampton. Henry's father, Mark Nowak, stated: "My son was dragged across gravel, handcuffed and called racist as he lay dying. Being read his rights was the last thing he heard."
Vickrum Digwa was jailed for life with a minimum of 21 years. His sentence has been referred to the Court of Appeal as potentially unduly lenient. Prior warnings about Digwa - including 2022 reports of him firing an illegal air pistol in his garden - were reportedly not acted upon effectively by police.
The pattern fits a broader picture of institutional capture. Training that elevates identity politics over impartial procedure produces exactly this outcome: a dying white teenager treated as a threat while his attacker's narrative receives deference.
Critics from across the spectrum have highlighted the double standard compared with other high-profile custody deaths that triggered institutional upheaval and global campaigns.
He wasn't breathing ? you start chest compressions immediately.
That's basic first aid protocol.
Taking 8 minutes to check for stab wounds, handcuffing him while he's saying he can't breathe, and then compressing over clothes directly onto the wound is a complete failure of...
I read that they also banged his head when they moved him after realising that he'd been stabbed. Honestly, when you think this case can't get any worse, it does. ?
— Leanne (@LeanneSpurs) June 24, 2026They were told he had blood coming out of his mouth when they arrived, and he repeatedly said he'd been stabbed.
Totally unacceptable dereliction of duty.
It would help if the police were taught life saving rather than DEI protocol.
— Pat Herbert (@PatHerbert2) June 24, 2026Henry's family has asked that his death not be used to sow further division. The facts, however, speak for themselves. When police training and culture elevate racial grievance narratives above the immediate duty to preserve life, the result is not justice - it is preventable tragedy.
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Rome Rebukes Rutte: Italy Rejects Claim US Flew Iran War Missions From Its Bases
It's no longer just a Trump-Meloni spat on the level of public rhetoric, but Italy is newly making clear that it is imposing real policy and limitations on the US, now clarifying that it had formally denied US use of its bases to strike Iran for past and future potential missions.
This has been a long time in coming, as Italy already clearly restricted at least some US use of its bases within the past months related to the Iran war, but now it is official.
On Thursday Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs Antonio Tajani reportedly told his Iranian counterpart by phone he firmly rejects NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte's recent claims that US forces used Italian military bases in operations against Iran.
Tajani has insisted that Italian bases were never used for any kind of offensive strikes on the Islamic Republic. According to US military publication Stripes, "The Iranian foreign minister thanked Italy for the clarification and said a clear, formal denial was necessary."
via US NavyItaly of course remains a member of NATO, and so the fact that Rome was responding to recent remark's of the organization's leader is glaring, and reveals a serious inter-NATO rift.
The NATO chief had been interviewed on Fox earlier this week, wherein he claimed that some 500 American military flights had taken off from bases in Italy in support of Operation Epic Fury. Italy's foreign ministry is firmly rejecting the claim.
In addition, the Italian Defense Ministry came out and said that Rutte "has nothing to do with Operation Epic Fury" - which might explain whey he's making "completely misleading" remarks.
"Italy only authorizes flights that are provided for by the treaties and totally exclude kinetic activities," said that Italian defense ministry statement.
It seems Italy is trying to appease both the Iranian and US sides at once, by trying to shroud its role in ambiguity and abstract definitions of terms:
In a post analyzing how Italy’s bases were used to support the war, the site ItaMilRadar said this week that Navy MQ-4C Triton surveillance drones from Sigonella “conducted extensive intelligence and reconnaissance missions over the Persian Gulf area” before the Triton operations appeared to shift to Jordan in April. Navy P-8 Poseidon patrol aircraft operated from the base before and during the war, and several deployed to Djibouti to support U.S. naval forces in the Indian Ocean, according to the site.
Back in late March, as US-Israeli bombs were still being unleashed on Iran, a statement from PM Meloni’s office had also alluded to matters of procedure, stating that Italy is "acting in full compliance with existing international agreements" - while underscoring that each request must be "carefully examined on a case-by-case basis, as has always been the case in the past."
Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto had also at the time confirmed that "some US bombers" were denied landing at Sigonella – one of seven US navy bases in Italy. The complaint is that the US didn't follow required permission protocol, and requested landing only while in the air and already en route to Sicily.
But the truth also is that American hegemonic action in the Middle East, and the Iran conflict in particular, remains deeply unpopular among the Italian population, which has long had a strongly anti-war bent especially among the youth.
In a display of obedience to the US, the NATO Secretary General bragged about NATO's participation in the war of aggression against Iran:
- “If you take Italy for example, 500 U.S. planes took off from U.S. bases in Italy to support Operation Epic Fury." pic.twitter.com/cuJWD6Uy7N
The Guardian previously wrote, "The unpopularity of Trump in Italy has also started to erode the popularity of Meloni, who is ideologically in tune with the US president and has established good working relations with him." However, she's lately sought to distance her government from the war, having told parliament earlier this month there's a growing dangerous trend of interventions "outside the scope of international law."
Tyler Durden Fri, 06/26/2026 - 02:45