Nine people were injured and 1 dead in an explosion and a fire on Thursday at a major 580,000-bpd refinery in South Korea. The fire and the possible shutdown of a large refinery come at a time when global refining margins are sky-high amid insufficient refinery capacity worldwide.

Refinery capacity globally is now lower than before the pandemic after some refineries closed permanently after COVID crippled fuel demand in early 2020. South Korea's 2022 Q1 petroleum exports soared 20% as reported 3 weeks ago. The Ulsan refinery has three crude distillation units. Market participants say a full shutdown of the refinery is likely.

🛢 WTI crude price surpasses Brent Crude. Since 2013, Brent has been the more expensive crude blend thanks to its status as the global oil benchmark. WTI has lately been gaining due to Europe's move to impose a formal embargo on oil from Russia.

🇨🇳 🇮🇷 China is scheduled to receive around 2 million barrels of Iranian crude oil this week despite US sanctions.

📉 Slower economic growth will likely slow down global oil demand growth- FED. For oil demand to actually contract, a recession has to be severe.

🚢 Protesters, yesterday, fired shots outside Libya’s Hariga port in a failed attempt to stop the loading of 1 million barrels of crude oil bound for the UK.

⛽️ Low fuel inventories could lead to a crisis this summer in the U.S. Refinery outages could be disastrous during this period of supply tightness.

🚛 Truckers are facing an existential crisis as sky-high fuel prices weigh on their bottom line. Soaring diesel prices have pushed many owner-operator drivers to seek the protection of company driving.

US 🇺🇸 Federal health officials now advises clinicians to watch out for symptoms of monkeypox. They say it “is highly unusual” because it doesn’t appear to have any direct link to any of the countries in Western Central Africa.

🇪🇺 The WHO was holding an emergency meeting yesterday, after over 100 cases were confirmed or suspected in Europe. 🇧🇪 Belgium’s three confirmed cases of monkeypox have been linked to a large-scale fetish festival in Antwerp.

Coincidentally, NTI (non-profit org.- Nuclear Threat Initiative) partnered with the Munich Security Conference last year for a biological pandemic wargame simulating a release of an engineered (gain-of-function) strain of monkeypox. The simulation's date of bioweapon release coincidently happens to be this week in 2022. (Photo) 🤷‍♂️

🦠 Monkeypox is a DNA viral illness that causes fever and a distinctive, bumpy rash. It predominantly spreads via spillover events from infected animals to humans. People can spread it mostly through blood and respiratory droplets.

Russia has halted natural gas deliveries to 🇫🇮 Finland after state energy wholesaler Gasum failed to make a required payment in rubles, the Finnish gas system operator Gasgrid Finland said on Saturday. “Gas imports through Imatra entry point have been stopped”.

🇷🇺 Russia could earn a record $100 billion from gas sales to European countries in 2022 due to the sharp rise in energy prices,

⛽️ Cases of theft of gasoline and diesel fuel have become more frequent in Finland. The reason is high prices. This is with reference to the police of South-Eastern Finland. Most often, fuel is stolen from large construction sites, in agriculture or forestry, there have also been cases of theft from trucks and fuel tanks of refrigeration units.

More western media spew fear propaganda, beginning to create a narrative that Russia launched a bioweapon. While the very same media says US run biolabs in Ukraine is a conspiracy theory amid actual evidence. 🤡

🇳🇱 Netherlands- Up to three weeks of quarantine after contact with monkeypox patients.
🇧🇪 Monkeypox Quarantine: Belgium Becomes 1st Country to Introduce Compulsory Isolation Measures

Two corrupt BigPharma companies, Emergent Biosolutions and SIGA Technologies already cashing in with their share prices climbing. Their main smallpox-focused products are, conveniently, also used to protect against or treat monkeypox as well.

Western media have not reported on NTI (non-profit org.- Nuclear Threat Initiative) partnering with the Munich Security Conference last year for a biological pandemic wargame simulating a release of an engineered (gain-of-function) strain of monkeypox and the simulation date coinciding with reality.

I hope subscribers would excuse me for going off topic on the channel to make a ‘political/religious post’. It is truly disturbing to see the west’s silence about attacks against Russian Orthodox Churches around the world and especially in Ukraine.

As I said in my last article “this ideology of political correctness reminds Orthodox Christians of bolshevism” which becomes more profound with each passing day. The western political creation of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) so as to undermine the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Russian connected) is bearing it’s true colours as an apostate church.

Recently, the following attacks have been totally ignored by westerners.

❗️Ukraine’s Azov fighters broke into the Mariupol cathedral during the baptism of a child and stole all the cars they had.
❗️A child in western Ukraine at an OCU prays for Putin's death to the approving silence of adult parishioners.

❗️Orthodox priest Father Parfeniy (Parthnenis), the head of the church in Mikhailovka, Donbass, was killed by shelling of the Ukrainian Army.
❗️Olga Shapovalova tells how in Mariupol, Ukrainian tanks shot at residential buildings and churches.

❗️Ukraine Forces Target Russian Orthodox church "Everyday" (Special Report Church Under Fire)
❗️Ukrainian militants abducted a priest and some parishioners of a Russian Orthodox Church in the city of Smila, Cherkasy Oblast.

❗️Ukraine's Rada (Parliament) publishes text of bill to ban Ukrainian Orthodox Church
❗️Ukraine’s Kyiv deputies unanimously decided to ban the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the city and three other villages in the district.

❗️Father Vladimir, priest of the UOC in the city of Stryi, Lviv region, during the service, he had green paint poured over his face by Ukrainian nationalists who were seizing Orthodox churches.
❗️Ukrainian neo-Nazis attacked Orthodox parishioners going to pray in the church.

❗️Russian Orthodox Church has been vandalised in Auckland New Zealand by supporters of Ukraine.
❗️The Russian Orthodox Church of St. Sophia in Victoria, B.C. Canada was vandalized by anti-Russian thugs after attacking another Orthodox Church in Calgary.

❗️Israeli police blocks Christians from attending The Holy Sepulchre
❗️'Tolerant' and 'inclusive' Britons ransacked a Russian Orthodox Church in Oxford, England after hearing calls to violence against Russians.

❗️The infamous hacker group Anonymous announced a cyber war against the Russian Orthodox Church.
❗️When satan worshipper Marina Abramovic is promoted by the church of Lucifer to denounce Putin and Russia, the attack is open and in plain sight.

CBDC/digital currency regulation updates this week:
🇧🇸 Bahamas - Face biometric verification platform introduced to a central bank digital currency (CBDC) for the first time.
🇺🇸 SWIFT, in collaboration with Capgemini, is testing interlinking domestic CBDC networks.

🇨🇱 Banco Central de Chile, the central bank of Chile, released a report saying that it focused on the benefits and risks posed by a CBDC.
🇿🇦 South Africa - the central bank said that a digital rand is being explored as a way to improve international banking.

🇳🇴 Norway’s central bank is embracing Ethereum’s Layer 2 for its CBDC pilot.
🇺🇸 US Congress has reached a milestone of seeing 50 bills and resolutions that have been introduced so far which cover the crypto regulatory landscape.

This week's fertilizer developments:

🇷🇺 Russian gov’t says that their fertilizer producers are trying to fulfil contracts despite Western sanctions against them, sanctions pose a risk to global food security.

🇮🇳 🇯🇴 India has signed key fertilizer pacts to secure phosphate/potash from Jordan.

🇦🇺 🇨🇦 Australian miner, BHP to accelerate construction timelines on its Jansen potash mine project in Saskatchewan, Canada

🇯🇴 🇧🇷 Arab Potash Company (Jordan) also intends to build new potassium manufacturing in Brazil. Brazil is currently the fourth largest consumer of fertilizers in the world.

🇨🇦 Canadian Pacific freight train carrying potash fertilizer derails in Alberta.

🇺🇸 A vehicle incident caused 4,000 pounds of urea fertilizer to spill into the Heart River, North Dakota, USA.

🇰🇪 "Kenya's 2022/23 coffee production is forecast to decrease by 10 percent to 700,000 bags due to lower yields caused by reduced fertilizer application. "Post estimates 2022/23 exports will decline to 670,000 bags from 750,000 bags due to lower production.

🚢 "Coffee disappearance," a term indicating the amount of coffee nonproducing countries are actually consuming and not packing for re-export, rose 6.9% in the first quarter.

🚜 BASF, one of the world’s leading chemical companies launches new fungicide for coffee farmers in east Africa. (More chemicals pushed unto African farmers) World Bank-funded coffee programme being roll-out.

🇷🇺 Starbucks announced that it will exit the Russian market, permanently closing 130 coffee shops.

🇷🇺 Russia’s currency has hit its strongest level against the euro since June 2015 as more European companies appear to be complying with Moscow’s demand that natural gas imports should be paid for in rubles.

🇩🇪 🇮🇹 Germany and Italy have allowed national companies to open ruble accounts in Russia’s Gazprombank to comply with the new natural gas payment scheme and avoid a supply cut-off.

🇬🇭 Ghana has started a bulk purchase programme to buy gold locally to raise the gold component of its reserves.

🇨🇳 Egypt considers issuing bonds in China’s yuan. Saudi Arabia may also price oil sales in the Chinese currency.

⛴ ⚓️ A continuous deterioration in the accuracy of transit and arrival times in global container shipping means the sector is in the worst state it has been in for 50 years. Port congestion is up across all regions of the world, with high volumes reported in North America, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. The average transit times for loading and unloading between China and both coasts of the US was in a dismal and unpredictable state, with huge variability.

🇨🇳 🇺🇸 The container ships spotted in the Shanghai and Ningbo-Zhoushan region is still 11 per cent above last year’s median. Shortages of rail, port and trucking workers in China and the US need to get resolved quicker than is currently happening as they are delaying ships at the world’s major ports.

🌾 Wheat prices have surged to record highs over the past two months as major producers like Russia, Kazakhstan and India scrapped exports to protect their domestic markets. Anti-Russia sanctions forced international companies to sever long-standing business ties and leave Russia, which caused supply disruptions.

🇨🇭 World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, David Beasley, executive director at the UN World Food Programme, warned the world's food security conditions are "worse" than what was observed during Arab Spring over a decade ago.

🇺🇸 U.S. spring #wheat planting is advancing at the slowest pace in more than 20 years and was only 49% complete as of Sunday. Average for the date is 83%. Minnesota is only 11% planted vs 90% avg. North Dakota 27% vs 80% avg. Those two states grow two-thirds of the U.S. crop.

🐓 Avian influenza (Bird Flu) has already impacted more than 37 million birds across 34 US states this year. The fast-spreading virus has sent the production of eggs tumbling and prices at the supermarket soaring. 🥚 US eggs in April plunged as millions of egg-producing hens were slaughtered to mitigate the virus' spread.

🇺🇸 The 2021-22 outbreak of avian flu in North America is already the worst in seven years among U.S. domestic flocks. So far about 38 million domestic birds have died in the outbreak, mostly through depopulations at infected poultry farms. 🦃

🇨🇦 Farms in B.C. and Alberta, Canada are latest to have confirmed outbreaks of avian influenza.

🇱🇹 Lithuania claims to have dropped Russian energy imports including oil, natural gas and electricity.
For liquefied natural gas, the terminal in Klaipėda has received cargoes from the US. At the same time, local power generation and imports from EU countries through existing interconnections with Sweden, Poland and Latvia cover the country’s electricity needs.

🇷🇺 Reality- However, Inter RAO, the only importer of electricity from Russia to Lithuania, confirmed the suspension of deliveries. "Inter RAO has received notices from [exchange operator] Nord Pool about the suspension of trading by subsidiaries due to the risk of being unable to pay for Russian electricity,".

📈 Annual inflation in Lithuania was 16.8% in April, compared to the same period in 2021. The price changes were mainly driven by higher fuel and heating costs. The most expensive items in April this year, were water, electricity, gas, and other fuels, the price of which increased by 37.9%

Europe’s primary aluminium smelters are continuing to curtail production in the face of soaring energy costs. The region’s output of the light metal has fallen by an annualised 550,000 tonnes over the last year with the slide still accelerating. European buyers are paying record physical premiums or that aluminium is now being imported from as far away as China. Aluminium smelting is an energy-intensive business and Europe’s smelters are struggling with elevated power pricing.

📉 5.3% demand growth for the aluminium industry in North America (U.S. and Canada) through Q1 2022. Aluminium exports (excluding scrap) to foreign countries declined 29.8%. Imported aluminium and aluminium products into the North America (US and Canada) grew by 37.4% year-over-year in the quarter after growing 21.3% in 2021.

🏭 Aluminium is trading near $3,000 USD/ton, after hitting all-time high of $4,000 USD/ton in March. Main uses include auto industry, construction, long distance power lines, food/beverage cans and electronics.

👉 Update to Monday's post on the Canadian Pacific freight train derailment of potash fertilizer east of Fort Macleod in southern Alberta, Canada which occurred on Sunday morning. Clean up is underway and rail track repairs close to completion. No injuries reported.

🚂 This coincidently comes after last week's collision between a potash cargo train which derailed and a passenger train in Catalonia, Spain, which killed one and wounded 85 people. The collision took place at Sant Boi station in northeastern Spain.

⛏ BHP to accelerate construction timelines on its multibillion-dollar Jansen potash mine project near Humboldt, Saskatchewan, Canada.

🚜 The Canadian government is urging farmers to increase production of wheat, barley and other grains this year.

Europe’s 🇪🇺 energy 'independence' push and sanctions against Russia weigh on the steel industry. Reports of decreasing retail steel sales is preventing any expected price increases due to drop in production. Steelmakers rely on natural gas for ironmaking in blast furnaces as well as for steelmaking in electric arc furnaces.

📊 Traders -“Energy costs are hitting people hard. There are more defaults on energy bills.” "Summer holidays in the Northern Hemisphere will also mean lower building activity and lower demand. This is sure to put further downward pressure on steel.

🇨🇳 Chinese iron ore port inventories registered their sharpest decline of the past 12 months. This is with rebar production well off last year levels. (Photo)

🇮🇳 India imposed an export tax of 15% on some steel products last weekend, at a time steelmakers are looking to make up for tepid local demand. The taxes were part of a series of measures India has taken to rein in retail inflation.

💰Natural gas futures spiked to $9.40 per million Btu earlier today, the highest since the huge twin spikes between 2005 and 2008. Price have have tripled from a year ago, when it was $2.98, and have more than tripled from the $2-3 that predominated from 2011 through the spring of 2021.

🇬🇧 U.K. Treasury Chief today outlined a new 25% tax on the profits of oil-and-gas companies and will be used to fund subsidies for households.

🇧🇴 🇧🇷 Bolivia said it is seeking higher prices for natural gas sold to Brazil's state-run Petrobras. Bolivia's energy ministry said Petrobras pays between $6 and $7 per million BTU for Bolivian natural gas, while alternative private buyers in Brazil are willing to pay between $15-$18 per million BTU.

California adopted an emergency water conservation regulation to “ensure more aggressive conservation by local water agencies across the state”. Commercial, industrial and institutional properties cannot water their turf with few exceptions. Major water reservoirs have been largely used with capacities well below their historical averages. The most intense week of drought in the past 22 years was in late July 2014.

"Exchange contract" is pitting California farmers against each other. This legal agreement never mattered much during wet years, but during droughts it allows a small group of Central Valley farmers to claim enormous amounts of water while their neighbors make deep cuts. Officially, water rights in the U.S. operate on a principle of seniority.

Fire demolished a grain storage facility in Prosser, Benton County, Washington USA, and left one person with burns. M & E Seed and Grain Co. owned the property. A smoldering pile of twisted metal and charred lumber was all that remained. About 22 fire units from various fire agencies through the valley were called out to the old feed store and grain elevator where flames could be seen shooting into the air.

❗️💢❕🛑 Oil Tanker Piracy/Robbery has begun on the high seas between Greece (following US orders) and Iran retaliating!

🇺🇸 The United States has confiscated Iranian oil 🇮🇷 held on a Russian-operated 🇷🇺 ship. The ship🚢 formerly named Pegas, (renamed Lana on March 1st using the same IMO 9256860) is near Greece 🇬🇷 and will send the cargo to the United States aboard another vessel.

🇮🇷 Iran responds in kind - Two Greek 🇬🇷 oil tankers have been boarded by Iranian military personnel while navigating through the Middle East Gulf. 🚢 🚢The vessels had loaded at Basrah, Iraq, and is carrying an oil cargo for the US. Western outlets say 'international waters'. Iran's media says the Delta Poseidon was seized in front of Asalouyeh port, while Prudent Warrior was seized in front of Bandar Lengeh port both in Iran's territorial waters).