2024-12-19 21:39

Biden administration seeks EU alignment on methane standards EU law requires all oil and gas imports to meet emissions limits Obtaining "equivalence" for US EPA rules could cement them even as Trump takes office WASHINGTON, Dec 19 (Reuters) - U.S. officials doubled down on their appeal to EU counterparts to ensure liquefied natural gas shipments that meet current U.S. methane regulations also automatically comply with Europe's new standards for gas imports, a letter seen by Reuters on Thursday showed. President Joe Biden's administration sent a second letter to Ditte Juul Jørgensen, EU Director-General for Energy on Dec. 17, to speed up support for its case that US Environmental Protection Agency rules should be deemed "equivalent" to the EU regulations, whose emission reporting requirements begin to kick in in 2025. European Union countries approved a law in May to impose methane emissions limits on Europe's oil and gas imports from 2030, pressuring international suppliers to cut leaks of the potent greenhouse gas. Linking U.S. and EU methane standards would safeguard the United States' growing LNG trade with Europe while also cementing Biden's strict rules on methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, even if they are eventually repealed by President-elect Donald Trump's incoming administration. "The letter is meant to emphasize in detail the full suite of substantive emissions standards, their robust implementation and compliance, and the reporting requirements' role in ensuring transparency and accountability," EPA Assistant Administrator for air and radiation Joe Goffman told Reuters. Goffman co-signed the letter with Brad Crabtree, assistant secretary at the Energy Department's Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management. They sent their first letter to the EU at the end of October, just days before the U.S. election. EU officials were not immediately available for comment. The United States is the world's top oil and gas producer, and its exports of LNG surged after Russia's invasion of Ukraine led European countries to cut their dependence on Russian energy and seek other sources. The DOE has paused permits for new LNG exports and said this week it had found that rising LNG exports risk dramatically raising greenhouse gas emissions and could also trigger price hikes for U.S. energy consumers. The EPA has finalized rules that crack down on releases of methane, the main component in natural gas and LNG, from existing and new oil and gas facilities, and set a fee targeting large methane leaks from energy infrastructure. In its letter to the EU this week, the officials highlighted the emissions reductions potential of the regulations. EPA methane standards would reduce 58 million tons of methane emissions from 2024 to 2038 while the Waste Emissions Charge rule would result in cumulative 34 million metric tons CO2-equivalent reductions through 2035, they wrote. The EU has not yet designed the exact methane limits, or determined how another country's domestic methane regulations could be considered "equivalent" to its own. Trump, a climate-change skeptic and a big supporter of fossil fuel development, has promised to immediately end the moratorium on new LNG export permits when he returns to the White House on Jan. 20 and has vowed to roll back most of Biden's climate-focused rules. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/us-presses-eu-align-methane-regulations-lng-2024-12-19/

2024-12-19 21:31

President Macron visits storm-ravaged Mayotte People beg for more help Accusations of neglect by French state Many areas remain inaccessible MAMOUDZOU/PARIS, Dec 19 (Reuters) - People in storm-ravaged Mayotte , opens new tab implored French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday to do more to help as he toured the overseas territory, where scores are feared dead in the rubble left by Cyclone Chido. Some in the crowds that gathered outside the airport booed the presidential motorcade, while others said they were grateful for Macron's visit and urged him to stay longer. Officials in France's poorest overseas territory , opens new tab have only been able to confirm 31 fatalities more than five days after the cyclone, but some have said they fear thousands could have been killed. A lawmaker told Macron that some victims had been buried in mass graves. Reuters could not immediately confirm that. Many areas remain inaccessible. Heavy rain in the capital Mamoudzou and other areas has worsened the plight of thousands of people whose shantytown dwellings were flattened. As Macron disembarked from a plane carrying food and medical aid, airport workers pleaded for support. "Take your time. Stay with us. Give us solutions," an airport security worker named Assane Haloi told him. "Give us emergency help, because in Mayotte, there is nothing." Macron's office said he would stay on the islands overnight and visit neighbourhoods on Friday. It had not previously been clear how long he would stay. His government has been accused by opposition politicians of neglecting Mayotte, and several residents of impoverished areas told Reuters they had not received any help since Chido struck. "Your services are overwhelmed," one man at the hospital told Macron in a testy exchange. "Help has not reached where I live." Macron said his government would send more support soon, including 400 more gendarmes to ensure security, and noted a surge of food and water arriving by air and sea. "We all have to get together. From the first day people mobilized day and night. We must not divide ourselves," he said. He later announced that France would observe Dec. 23 as a day of national mourning. He also said a special law suspending usual regulations would be passed to speed up reconstruction, on the model used for the Notre-Dame Cathedral. "We were able to do it for the Olympics. We did it to rebuild Notre-Dame, and so we will do it to rebuild Mayotte," he told local officials. He faced more angry questions from crowds waiting for him at a roundabout in Pamandzi, a smaller island of the archipelago. "We just need water, why don't you put the water for us?" a woman asked him, while others booed. "I'm here to receive some of that anger, it's my role," Macron said, promising 50% of locals would have water by the weekend. DEATH TOLL UNCLEAR The authorities have warned it will be difficult to work out how many have died in a territory that is home to large numbers of undocumented migrants from Comoros, Madagascar and other countries. Official statistics put Mayotte's population at 321,000, but many say it is much higher. Some victims were buried immediately, in accordance with Muslim tradition, before their deaths could be counted. Health workers say they are bracing for a surge of disease as dead bodies lie unburied and people struggle to get clean drinking water. "We are facing open-air mass graves, there are no rescuers, no one has come to collect the buried bodies," Estelle Youssoufa, who represents Mayotte in the national parliament, told Macron. She did not say where the graves were. Mayotte residents crowded water distribution points and wells to fill up jerrycans and buckets. Others did laundry or washed themselves in rivers. "When we got here it was all devastated, nothing was standing," El-Yassine Ibrahim told Reuters in Doujani, a poor neighbourhood south of Mamoudzou. "Everything was ravaged. Since then, little by little, we've been sorting and gathering things, and we'll see what we do next," he said, as his relatives combed through the rubble. Three out of four people in Mayotte live below the national poverty line. While it exports vanilla, coffee and cinnamon, it remains heavily dependent on support from metropolitan France and attracts relatively few tourists. "All the pipes are broken everywhere. There is no more water in Mayotte. We need water to do the housework, to cook, to wash, to bathe. To drink water, we buy it in the stores," Zalahta M'Madi, 44, said. "No one tells us whether the water will be back tomorrow or the day after tomorrow or in a month. So we are all worried." The death toll in continental Africa, where the storm hit after passing through Mayotte, jumped to 73 in Mozambique and stood at 13 in Malawi, according to officials in those countries. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/mayotte-residents-demand-more-help-macron-after-deadly-cyclone-2024-12-19/

2024-12-19 21:01

Micron, Lennar fall after results Banks firm as U.S. bond yields rise Q3 GDP revised higher Dow up 0.04%, S&P down 0.09%, Nasdaq off 0.10% NEW YORK, Dec 19 (Reuters) - U.S. stocks ended little changed on Thursday, giving up an initial rebound from a sharp drop in the prior session after the Federal Reserve forecast fewer-than-expected interest rate cuts and higher inflation next year. Economic data was in sync with the Fed's view, with weekly initial jobless claims falling more than expected while gross domestic product for the third quarter was revised to show a 3.1% increase from the previously reported 2.8% pace. "It clearly sent a message that rates weren't going to keep going down if inflation didn't continue its decline, and we've seen inflation tick up a bit here, and that's a concern to the Fed," said Tim Ghriskey, senior portfolio strategist at Ingalls & Snyder in New York. "The market is skittish, because we've had such a big move." The Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI) , opens new tab rose 15.37 points, or 0.04%, to 42,342.24, the S&P 500 (.SPX) , opens new tab lost 5.08 points, or 0.09%, to 5,867.08 and the Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC) , opens new tab lost 19.92 points, or 0.10%, to 19,372.77. The Dow barely managed to snap a ten-session losing skid, its longest streak since 1974. The Dow and S&P 500 suffered their biggest one-day percentage drop since early August, while the Nasdaq suffered its biggest daily fall since July after the Fed on Wednesday said it expects to make just two 25 basis point cuts in 2025, half a percentage point less than its September forecast for the first year of the new Trump administration. Even with the recent declines, the S&P 500 is up 23% on the year, with the Dow up more than 12% and the Nasdaq up 29%. Traders now see just one quarter-point rate reduction by mid-2025, and see less than two cuts in total by the end of the year, compared with last week's expectations of three rate cuts. Longer-dated Treasury yields were higher after the economic data, with the benchmark 10-year note reaching a near 7-month high of 4.594%. The CBOE volatility index (.VIX) , opens new tab, Wall Street's fear gauge, eased to close at 24.09 after closing at a 5-1/2-month high of 27.62 a day earlier. Bank stocks (.SPXBK) , opens new tab advanced 0.3% as a rise in yields tends to improve the profitability of lenders, while the incoming Trump administration is expected to loosen regulations on the sector. Micron (MU.O) , opens new tab slumped 16.2% following its forecast of quarterly revenue and profit below estimates, pulling the PHLX Semiconductor index (.SOX) , opens new tab down 1.6%. Homebuilder Lennar (LEN.N) , opens new tab shares retreated 5.2% after reporting fourth-quarter results below estimates, weighing on the PHLX housing index, which dropped 2.6%. Declining issues outnumbered advancers by a 2.18-to-1 ratio on the NYSE and by a 1.3-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq. The S&P 500 posted two new 52-week highs and 40 new lows, while the Nasdaq Composite recorded 29 new highs and 276 new lows. Volume on U.S. exchanges was 16.33 billion shares, compared with the 14.52 billion average for the full session over the last 20 trading days. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/futures-steady-after-wall-street-swoons-fed-view-fewer-rate-cuts-2024-12-19/

2024-12-19 20:44

Dec 19 (Reuters) - Funds stolen by hacking cryptocurrency platforms surged 21% from a year ago to $2.2 billion in 2024, a report from blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis showed on Thursday. The hacking amount exceeded $1 billion for the fourth straight year and the number of incidents rose to 303 from 282 in 2023, it said. Hackers had stolen $1.8 billion in 2023. The rise in crypto heists comes as bitcoin BTC= jumped 140% this year to surpass $100,000 mark, drawing institutional participation and backing from U.S. President-elect Donald Trump. "As the digital asset market booms, it is typical to see the illicit use of crypto grow in tandem," Chainalysis' cybercrimes research lead Eric Jardine said. "Countering the proliferation of these crimes — especially fraud — will undoubtedly be a key challenge for the industry in the new year." Compromises to private key that controls access to users' assets accounted for the majority of stolen crypto this year with most of the attacks targeting centralized platforms, the report said. Among the most notable hacks are the theft of more than $305 million from Japan's crypto exchange DMM Bitcoin in May and the loss of $235 million from India's WazirX in July. Crypto hacking linked to North Korea more than doubled from a year ago to a record high of $1.3 billion in 2024, Chainalysis said. Cryptocurrency allows North Korea to circumvent international sanctions, the United Nations has said. The country routinely denies involvement in cyber hacking or crypto heists. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/technology/losses-crypto-hacks-jump-22-bln-2024-report-says-2024-12-19/

2024-12-19 20:43

MADRID, Dec 19 (Reuters) - Sam Altman's company Worldcoin must delete all iris scanning data collected since the start of the project that has sparked privacy concerns in several countries, Spanish data protection watchdog AEPD said on Thursday. AEPD cited a decision earlier on Thursday by its Bavarian counterpart BayLDA, with whom the agency has cooperated on the case, that found the venture in breach of the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation. World, as Worldcoin has rebranded itself, has its European headquarters in the German city of Erlangen, in Bavaria. Spain's High Court in March upheld a temporary ban on the iris-scanning venture, dismissing an appeal by Worldcoin owners. Co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in 2019, Worldcoin aims to create a global identity system by getting people to have their irises scanned in exchange for free cryptocurrency and a digital ID. (This story has been corrected to clarify that the AEPD was referring to a decision by its German counterpart, not its own, and to specify that Worldcoin’s European headquarters is in Bavaria) Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/markets/currencies/spanish-watchdog-tells-worldcoin-delete-all-iris-scan-data-2024-12-19/

2024-12-19 20:25

Dec 19 (Reuters) - Kinder Morgan (KMI.N) , opens new tab said on Thursday its unit Tennessee Gas Pipeline will proceed with the nearly $1.4 billion Mississippi Crossing Project (MSX Project), strengthening the pipeline operator's position in the Southeast U.S. markets. Shares of the company rose 2.4% to $26.44 in afternoon trade. The project is designed to transport up to 1.5 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) of natural gas and involves the construction of nearly 206 miles of pipeline, the company said. The project will originate near Greenville, Mississippi, and end near Butler, Alabama, with connections to the existing Tennessee Gas Pipeline (TGP) system and third-party pipelines, the company added. "KMI has sanctioned about $3.1 billion (KMI shares) in expansion capital between the SNG South System 4 Expansion and TGP's Mississippi Crossing Project...expect to announce additional projects in the coming months." said Kinder Morgan CEO Kim Dang. The project is expected to be operational in November 2028. Meanwhile, Natural Gas Pipelines president Sital Mody added, "We are in final discussions with customers for up to an additional 0.4 Bcf/d of long-term commitments." In November, U.S. natural gas producers said they will boost production in 2025 following a series of production cuts this year, as rising demand from liquefied natural gas export plants is expected to increase prices. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/kinder-morgans-unit-go-ahead-with-14-bln-mississippi-crossing-project-2024-12-19/