Aggregator

Ras Laffan Explosion Threatens To Slow Qatar LNG Ramp, Goldman Says

Zero Rss
1 month 3 weeks ago
Ras Laffan Explosion Threatens To Slow Qatar LNG Ramp, Goldman Says

A powerful explosion tore through Qatar's key natural gas plant late Sunday, killing at least 13 people and injuring 66 others. While the incident does not appear to have directly impaired LNG export capacity, it has certaintly raised the risk that Qatar may slow the restart of operations as a precaution.

The timing could not be worse. The blast at Qatar's giant Ras Laffan energy complex comes just a week or so after the US-Iran interim peace deal was signed and days after the Strait of Hormuz was reopened.

Latest maritime ship tracking data shows a notable uptick in transits of tankers and cargo vessels on the critical waterway.

Goldman Sachs energy expert Samantha Dart penned a note on Monday detailing how the explosion at Qatar’s Barzan gas plant in Ras Laffan does not appear to have directly affected the country’s LNG export capacity, but it has raised questions over whether Qatar Energy may slow the restart of export trains as a precaution, potentially tightening Europe’s winter gas balance.

Dart said the blast likely adds a one-month delay in the full ramp-up of Qatari LNG exports, relative to a base case of exports reaching 83% of capacity by the end of July, would reduce northwest Europe’s end-October storage level by about 4 percentage points to 70%, compared with a 74% base case.

Dart's four takeaways:

1. While yesterday's accident at Barzan, a Qatari natural gas supply facility that services domestic gas users, does not appear to have directly impacted the country's LNG export capacity, it has raised questions as to whether the pace of restart at Qatari LNG export trains might slow as a precautionary measure.

2. We estimate that a one-month delay in the full ramp of Qatari LNG exports (to 83% of capacity, net of the 13 mtpa under long-term damage) relative to our end-Jul26 base case would lower the NW Europe end-Oct26 gas storage fill by 4pp to 70% full (vs our 74% base case).

3. We believe such a scenario would lend only very limited (if any) incremental support to European gas prices vs our 41 EUR/MW 2H2026 forecast. This is because our implied end-Mar27 storage estimate, which would move to 28% (vs our 32% base case) under an average winter, would still be high enough to withstand a 1-2 standard-deviation colder-than-average winter

4. A scenario of a two-month delay for the ramp in Qatari LNG exports, however, to end-Sep26, would be more worrisome for winter gas availability. In this scenario, we would expect end-Mar27 storage fill 8pp lower vs our 32% base case, suggesting a risk of stock-out under a two-standard deviation colder-than-average winter. This increased risk of a NW Europe gas inventory stock-out would, in turn, likely support 4Q26 TTF closer to 50 EUR/MWh than to our 40 EUR/MWh forecast to reflect a higher probability that the market might need to rally towards 65 EUR/MWh ($22/mmBtu) to disincentivize Asia LNG demand

Any delay in Qatar’s LNG ramp-up would complicate the early stages of Hormuz normalization after being shuttered for several months due to the US-Iran conflict and would impact global gas markets, particularly the hardest-hit in Europe, where storage remains very sensitive to the pace of Qatari export recovery.

Professional subscribers can read much more on energy and the Hormuz chokepoint at our Marketdesk.ai portal.

Tyler Durden Tue, 06/23/2026 - 14:45
Tyler Durden

US Senate Passes Housing Bill With Four-Year Fed CBDC Ban

Zero Rss
1 month 3 weeks ago
US Senate Passes Housing Bill With Four-Year Fed CBDC Ban

Authored by Micah Zimmerman via BitcoinMagazine.com,

The U.S. Senate passed a sweeping housing affordability bill Monday night — and tucked inside its pages is a provision that could permanently reshape America’s digital currency landscape: a formal ban on a Federal Reserve-issued central bank digital currency through the end of 2030.

The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act cleared the Senate 85-5, with Republican leaders insisting the CBDC restriction ride along with one of the most bipartisan bills in years. The House was poised to fast-track a vote as early as Tuesday, putting the measure on a direct path to President Donald Trump’s desk for signature.

The bill’s language is sweeping: the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System or any Federal Reserve bank may not issue, create, or circulate a central bank digital currency — directly or through any intermediary — through December 31, 2030. 

It explicitly shields private stablecoins, carving out any “open, permissionless, and private” dollar-denominated asset.

Trump set the political foundation for the ban in January 2025, signing an executive order barring his administration from any CBDC activity, warning it would threaten “the stability of the financial system, individual privacy, and the sovereignty of the United States”.

New Fed Chair Kevin Warsh, who replaced Jerome Powell, has called a U.S. CBDC a “bad policy choice” — making the Fed and the White House, for once, aligned.

The crypto market, meanwhile, isn’t celebrating. Bitcoin was trading near $62,000 Tuesday morning — down more than 3.7% on the day — as a Nasdaq tech selloff bled into digital assets. 

BTC has now lost roughly half its value since setting an all-time high above $125,000 in July 2025, and some analysts say the pain may not be over: at least one widely-followed technical indicator is pointing to a potential additional drop of 15% or more before a bottom forms.

Additional crypto Senate legislation in the works 

The CBDC ban is the latest piece in a three-part legislative puzzle the Trump-era Congress has been assembling.

In July 2025, Trump signed the GENIUS Act — the first federal stablecoin law in U.S. history — requiring issuers to hold one-to-one reserves, make monthly disclosures, and obtain federal licensing. The law essentially gave private digital dollars a legal green light at the same moment the government’s version was being blocked.

The third and most complex piece is still pending.

The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act — the industry’s long-sought framework for determining when a crypto token is a security versus a commodity — cleared the Senate Banking Committee 15-9 on May 14 and landed on the Senate Legislative Calendar on June 1. 

Galaxy Research has put the odds of passage this year as high as 60%, but the clock is running out.

The bill needs at least seven Democratic votes to clear the Senate floor, and senators must act before August — when the legislative calendar effectively shuts down ahead of midterm campaigning. 

Senator Bill Hagerty told Fox Business on June 18 that he hoped the Clarity Act could clear the floor in the weeks ahead. Without it, a key question — who actually regulates crypto, the SEC or the CFTC — remains unanswered heading into an election cycle.

If Trump signs the housing bill this week, it will mark the most concrete federal action against a government digital dollar yet.

The message from Washington is becoming harder to misread: private crypto has a seat at the table, and the Fed’s version of a digital dollar does not. 

Tyler Durden Tue, 06/23/2026 - 14:25
Tyler Durden

Trump says Iran ‘wrong,’ UN nuclear watchdog will inspect Iran’s facilities

NY Post
1 month 3 weeks ago
WASHINGTON — President Trump told reporters Tuesday that nuclear inspectors will be on the ground in Iran “at the appropriate time” and the officials in Tehran were “wrong” to say there would be no scrutiny of their enrichment sites by the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog agency. “There’s no rush, but they’ll be on the ground...
Josh Christenson

The Burden Of History: Justice Jackson's Curious Call To Overturn Critical 2nd Amendment Precedent

Zero Rss
1 month 3 weeks ago
The Burden Of History: Justice Jackson's Curious Call To Overturn Critical 2nd Amendment Precedent

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Since her confirmation in 2022, Justice Kentaji Brown Jackson has established a legacy that is fast becoming one of the most radical in the Court’s history. Her sole dissents have drawn sharp criticism from both her conservative and liberal colleagues. However, for critics of some of these decisions, Justice Jackson continues to publish opinions that are not just, as she describes it, cathartic but chilling. Worse yet, the latest judicial jump scare was shared by her colleague, Justice Sonya Sotomayor, in her concurring opinion in United States v. Hemani..

At issue in the case was an effort to prosecute Ali Hemani for recreational use of marijuana, a prosecution that threatened up to 15 years and to strip him of his gun rights under  18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3)

Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch ruled that the provision was not "consistent with the Second Amendment." Gorsuch noted that Hemani was not alleged to be a drug addict or to have used his guns in a menacing manner.

Gorsuch wrote that the "historical laws on which it relies targeted different kinds of people, did so for different reasons, and operated in different ways."

However, Jackson used the concurrence to argue for overturning NYSRPA v. Bruen, a case critical to laying the foundation for interpreting the Second Amendment based on historical precedent. Jackson lashed out at the"'history and tradition' metric" and called for the Court to "revisit" the case.

Declaring Bruen "unworkable," Jackson called for the restoration of the "means-end scrutiny - the approach courts applied before we adopted Bruen's 'history and tradition' metric - offers a more rational way of assessing the constitutionality of firearm regulations."

The reason for undoing Bruen? According to Jackson, "it imposes on judges the unfamiliar and difficult tasks of sifting through centuries-old evidence in order to answer 'contested historical questions,' and 'applying those answers to resolve contemporary problems.'"

Justice Jackson added that "Given those challenges, it is unsurprising that Bruen's test is vulnerable to inconsistent and arbitrary application, as judges draw different conclusions from the same historical evidence and reach divergent assessments of the same laws."

The burden of actually seeking to understand the intended meaning of a constitutional provision is certainly greater than the more free-style approach of Jackson who focused on how to "resolve contemporary problems" under a living Constitution. However, to suggest that her outcome-determinative approach is less inconsistent and arbitrary is only true when you control the Court with justices who have like-minded "solutions" for contemporary problems.

That is precisely what many Democrats have in mind as they openly pledge to pack the Court with an insistent liberal majority if they can retake power. Moreover, Jackson is often cited as the model of the left, a justice who is unburdened by the language and history of constitutional provisions.

Just last week, liberal Wisconsin State Supreme Court justices heralded Jackson’s approach in arguing for the restoration of race-based gerrymandering. The state jurists lamented not being able to interpret the Constitution to address the “harms this country has caused to those who are marginalized, disempowered, or disenfranchised,” including the “preference for White Americans and to burden Black Americans and those of other disadvantaged races or backgrounds.”

These federal and state Supreme Court opinions are a glimpse into what awaits the country if Democratic leaders carry out their threat to take over the Supreme Court by adding four liberal justices in the image of Justice Jackson.

It is not simply the desire to immediately overturn prior cases but to establish a largely untethered jurisprudence driven by judicial fiat and impulse. It is certainly an easier way to write opinions and would clear the way for a stated agenda on the left to maintain power indefinitely.

Before voters "unburden" these jurists, they need to seriously consider the costs of eviscerating an institution that has been vital in maintaining this Republic for the last 250 years.

Here is the opinion: United States v. Hemani

onathan Turley is a law professor and the New York Times best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”

Tyler Durden Tue, 06/23/2026 - 13:45
Tyler Durden

zero rss