Bits and Bites from Around the World > Man fights Polar Bear to save wife; North Sea Storm Wreaking Havoc

 

Man fights polar bear to protect wife from mauling

in northern Canada

By Darryl Coote

Dec. 6 (UPI) -- A man is recovering in the hospital from injuries sustained while fighting a polar bear to protect his wife from being mauled in northern Ontario, Canadian authorities said.

The incident happened early Tuesday in Fort Severn First Nation, located along the coast of the Hudson Bay.

Local police said the couple had exited their home at 5 a.m. local time to find their dogs when a polar bear lunged at the woman in their driveway.

"The woman slipped to [the] ground as her husband leapt onto the animal to prevent its attack. The bear then attacked the male, causing serious but non-life-threatening injuries to his arm and legs," Nishnawbe Aski Police Service said in a statement.

During the attack, a neighbor responded with a firearm and opened fire on the bear. The unidentified neighbor hit the animal several times, forcing it to retreat into the woods, where it died from its injuries.

Police were dispatched to the residence following reports of gunfire and located the deceased bear. The injured husband had already been transported to a community nursing station to receive medical attention.

Nishnawbe Aski Police Service said it will continue to patrol the area to ensure no other bears pose a threat to the community.

Fort Severn, Ontario

Cargo ship rudderless on the North Sea

due to storm; Solar panels landing on cars

A cargo ship on the North Sea is having issues due to the storm. The Valday, which is 82 meters long, is drifting rudderless toward the south, the Coast Guard reported. Attempts to tie up and drag the ship have been unsuccessful.

The ship has no cargo but does have seven crew members on board, and is located 22 kilometers off the coast of Rotterdam, according to the Coastguard. Tugboats are on their way to the cargo ship. A rescue boat from the KNRM station in Stellendam will release the lifeboat from Hoek van Holland to lie nearby as a "safety vessel.”

The waves on the North Sea can go up to four meters high with a wind power of eight or nine. The Coast Guard said that other ships are also struggling because of the storm. Their engines have failed, or they did not stay at their anchorage. The Coast Guard is in contact with these ships.

Heavy winds also resulted in the collapse of a warehouse belonging to a hardware store in Groningen on Friday. Other areas in the city saw solar panels blown onto cars. A wall also moved in the city with fears that it was going to fall. This led to two stores being evacuated, a spokesperson for the Groningen Safety Region said.

The three incidents happened at 10:55 a.m. and 11:13 a.m. The first report about the warehouse collapsing on the Beckerweg came in at 10:55 a.m., a spokesperson reported. The warehouse collapsing was likely due to the strong winds. It was a part of a wholesaler of wood and building materials. No one was present when the building collapsed.

This came two minutes before emergency services were warned about a moving wall with small fragments coming off it onto the Sontplein between the Decathlon and Kwantum stores.The stores had already been evacuated, and the wall has been closed off, the spokesperson said.

Trouble then arose at 11:13 a.m. on the Oliemulderstraat. Solar panels were blowing off of one or several homes and landing on cars.

In all cases, the fire brigade secured the location and then transferred it to the owners or the municipality for further handling.

IEA Predicts Nightmare Scenario for OPEC

© Mike Stone / Reuters

The US will supply much of the world’s additional oil for the next few years, according to a new report from the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Over the next three years, the US will cover 80 percent of the world’s demand growth, the IEA says in its newly-released Oil 2018 annual report. Canada, Brazil and Norway will cover the remainder, leaving no room for more OPEC supply.

The irony is that the substantial gains in output from shale will only be possible because of the OPEC cuts, which has tightened the market and boosted prices. This fact is not lost on OPEC producers. "If you are a shale oil producer, who brought you back? It was OPEC," the UAE’s oil minister Suhail Al Mazrouei, said at a recent industry conference, according to Bloomberg. "Without OPEC there’d be chaos in the market."

Indeed, the IEA’s new report paints a pretty gloomy picture for OPEC members, who are hoping to phase out their supply cuts after this year. With non-OPEC supply rising quickly, particularly in the US, OPEC may struggle to figure out a way to increase output without pushing down prices, according to the IEA’s analysis.

That could put pressure on the cartel to keep the production cuts in place for longer than they had wanted, although it seems hard to imagine they maintain the production ceilings for another three or four years. Doing so would mean handicapping themselves and ceding even more market share to US shale and other non-OPEC producers. Still, it is unclear how this plays out – returning to full production, even if phased in gradually, presents its own problems, if the IEA’s forecast is accurate.

The IEA sees demand for OPEC oil actually declining in absolute terms over the next few years as it is edged out of the market by non-OPEC supply. OPEC production only grows by 750,000 bpd through 2023 under the energy agency’s forecast, although that also takes into account a 700,000-bpd decline in Venezuela.

The bottom line is that the IEA sees oil demand rising by 6.9 million barrels per day (mb/d) by 2023, with more than half of those increases coming from China and India. Meanwhile, supply grows by about 6.4 mb/d, with a whopping 3.7 mb/d coming from the US, nearly 60 percent of the total global supply increase.

By sector, petrochemicals starts to take on a larger role in driving oil demand, especially as the transportation sector starts to see a greater adoption of electric vehicles. But it isn’t just EVs – abundant oil and cheap natural gas are fueling a surge in petrochemical investments.

Nevertheless, while the IEA sees an explosion of shale output for the next five years or so, beyond that the story is different. The massive cuts to upstream investment since the collapse of oil prices in 2014 will begin to cause supply problems at the beginning of the next decade. Spending levels are only now starting to pick up, but are still at a fraction of pre-2014 levels, which means that there will be a dearth of new, large-scale conventional oil projects in several years’ time. “This is potentially storing up trouble for the future,” the IEA wrote in its report.

Moreover, natural depletion from existing fields essentially wipes out 3 mb/d of supply every year. That, combined with demand growth, means that the oil industry needs to replace “one North Sea each year,” the IEA says. But the industry is no longer spending enough to cover that gap. In 2017, new oil discoveries fell to another record low, with less than 4 billion barrels of oil equivalent found. The lack of new oil in the works is sowing the seeds of supply problems in the 2020s.

“The United States is set to put its stamp on global oil markets for the next five years,” Fatih Birol, the IEA’s Executive Director, said in a statement. “But as we’ve highlighted repeatedly, the weak global investment picture remains a source of concern. More investments will be needed to make up for declining oil fields – the world needs to replace 3 mb/d of declines each year, the equivalent of the North Sea – while also meeting robust demand growth.”

The IEA report will provide a fascinating backdrop to the start of the annual CERAWeek conference in Houston, where industry titans and oil ministers will gather this week. No doubt the aggressive forecast for US shale will provide a lot of fodder for conversation for both shale boosters and anxious OPEC representatives.