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AI Computing Is on Pace to Consume More Energy Than India, Arm Says
(Bloomberg) — AI’s voracious need for computing power is threatening to overwhelm energy sources, requiring the industry to change its approach to the technology, according to Arm Holdings Plc Chief Executive Officer Rene Haas.
By 2030, the world’s data centers are on course to use more electricity than India, the world’s most populous country, Haas said. Finding ways to head off that projected tripling of energy use is paramount if artificial intelligence is going to achieve its promise, he said.
“We are still incredibly in the early days in terms of the capabilities,” Haas said in an interview. For AI systems to get better, they will need more training — a stage that involves bombarding the software with data — and that’s going to run up against the limits of energy capacity, he said.
Haas joins a growing number of people raising alarms about the toll AI could take on the world’s infrastructure. But he also has an interest in the industry shifting more to Arm chips designs, which are gaining a bigger foothold in data centers. The company’s technology — already prevalent in smartphones — was developed to use energy more efficiently than traditional server chips.
Arm, which began trading on the Nasdaq last year after 2023’s largest US initial public offering, sees AI and data center computing as one of its biggest growth drivers. Amazon.com Inc.’s AWS, Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc. are using Arm’s technology as the basis of in-house chips that help run their server farms. As part of that shift, they’re decreasing reliance on off-the-shelf parts made by Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
By using more custom-built chips, companies can lessen bottlenecks and save energy, according to Haas. Such a strategy could reduce data center power by more than 15%.
“There needs to be broad breakthroughs,” he said. “Any piece of efficiency matters.”
Europe Is Wargaming a Food Crisis
(Bloomberg) — The combined forces of El Niño and La Niña have crippled Latin American soy output. Ukrainian and Russian grain farmers have gone to war. Indonesia has banned shipments of palm oil to Europe, while China is hungry for crops. The Mediterranean region is getting more like a desert.
The year is 2024. “Food shortage in Europe? The only question is when, but they don’t listen,” says an unidentified voice in a video broadcast. The audience sits quietly — listening.
The dramatic collision of events, of course, hasn’t yet come to pass. But over two days in central Brussels last month, some 60 European Union and government officials, food security experts, industry representatives and a few journalists gathered to confront the possibility of something barely on the radar a few years ago: a full-blown food crisis.
The group sat down in a refurbished art deco Shell building to simulate what might happen, and help design policies aimed at prevention and response. A few streets away, farmers were stepping up their protests against the EU, disrupting supplies to supermarkets as if to sharpen the focus of the participants.
The plush co-working space was hardly a bunker or secure basement in a warzone. But the video images of drought, floods and civil unrest to the pounding beat of ominous music created a sense of urgency.
“Expect a level of chaos,” warned Piotr Magnuszewski, a systems modeler and game designer who has worked with the United Nations. “You may be confused at times and not have enough information. There will be time travel.”
To watch one of the best-fed regions in the world stress test its food system underscores a growing level of alarm among governments over securing supplies for their populations. In the space of four years, multiple shocks have shaken up the way food is grown, distributed and consumed.
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Glencore Says This Time Is Different for Coming Copper Shortage
Glencore Says This Time Is Different for Coming Copper Shortage
(Bloomberg) — Glencore Plc added its voice to a chorus of miners warning of coming copper shortages, arguing that a “huge deficit” is looming for the crucial industrial metal.
Chief Executive Officer Gary Nagle said that while some people were assuming that the industry would lift supplies as it had in previous cycles to meet a forecast increase in demand driven by the energy transition, “this time it is going to be a bit different.”
He presented estimates showing a cumulative gap between projected demand and supply of 50 million tons between 2022 and 2030. That compares with current world copper demand of about 25 million tons a year.
“There’s a huge deficit coming in copper, and as much as people write about it, the price is not yet reflecting it,” Nagle said.
Copper miners and analysts have been warning of growing deficits starting in the mid-2020s, driven by rising demand for copper in wind and solar farms, high voltage cables, and electric vehicles. While most analysts believe that prices will rise from current levels around $8,500 a ton, there is some disagreement about how large the copper shortages might be.
Still, Nagle said that Glencore, which is one of the world’s top copper miners and traders, will wait to lift its own output of the metal until the world is “screaming” for it. “We want to see that deficit,” he said.
Nagle said that Glencore could lift its annual copper production by more than 60% from current levels of 1 million tons with expansions of its current assets. The company is also eyeing a $5.6 billion new-build project at El Pachon in Argentina.
The US Can’t Make Enough Fuel and There’s No Fix in Sight
The US Can’t Make Enough Fuel and There’s No Fix in Sight
The US Can’t Make Enough Fuel and There’s No Fix in Sight(Bloomberg) — From record gasoline prices to higher airfares to fears of diesel rationing ahead, America’s runaway energy market is disquieting both US travelers and the wider economy. But the chief driver isn’t high crude prices or even the rebound in demand: It’s simply too few refineries turning oil into usable fuels.
More than 1 million barrels a day of the country’s oil refining capacity — or about 5% overall — has shut since the beginning of the pandemic. Elsewhere in the world, capacity has shrunk by 2.13 million additional barrels a day, energy consultancy Turner, Mason & Co. estimates. And with no plans to bring new US plants online, even though refiners are reaping record profits, the supply squeeze is only going to get worse.
“We are on the razor’s edge,” said John Auers, executive vice president at Turner, Mason & Co. in Dallas. “We’re ripe for a potential supply crisis.”
The dearth of refining capacity has dire implications for both US consumers and global markets. At home, retail gasoline prices continue hitting new records, exacerbating some of the worst inflation American households have ever seen. Meanwhile, the East Coast is on the brink of a diesel shortage that risks crippling already strained supply chains that have disrupted the flow of everything from grocery staples to construction supplies in the last two years.
The factors fueling the refining shortage won’t surprise anyone: With demand for gasoline and jet fuel practically vanishing during the height of the pandemic, companies closed some of their least profitable crude-processing plants permanently…
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‘I’m afraid we’re going to have a food crisis’: The energy crunch has made fertilizer too expensive to produce, says Yara CEO
‘I’m afraid we’re going to have a food crisis’: The energy crunch has made fertilizer too expensive to produce, says Yara CEO
“I want to say this loud and clear right now, that we risk a very low crop in the next harvest,” said Svein Tore Holsether, the CEO and president of the Oslo-based company. “I’m afraid we’re going to have a food crisis.”
Speaking to Fortune on the sidelines of the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, Holsether said that the sharp rise in energy prices this summer and autumn had already resulted in fertilizer prices roughly tripling.
“To produce a ton of ammonia last summer was $110,” said Holsether. “And now it’s $1,000. So it’s just incredible.”
Food prices have also risen, meaning some farmers can afford more expensive fertilizer. But Holsether argues many smallholder farmers can’t afford the higher costs, which will reduce what they can produce and diminish crop sizes. That in turn will hurt food security in vulnerable regions at a time when access to food is already under threat from the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change, including widespread drought.
The company, whose largest shareholder is the Norwegian government, has donated $25 million worth of fertilizer to vulnerable farmers, Holsether said. But Yara isn’t able to eat the costs of such a dramatic rise in energy prices, he says…
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Exxon (XOM) Finds No Oil at Bulletwood-1 Well in Offshore Guyana
Exxon (XOM) Finds No Oil at Bulletwood-1 Well in Offshore Guyana
ExxonMobil Corporation XOM and partners drilled a dry well at the Bulletwood-1 offshore well in the Canje Block, positioned 180 kilometers off the coast of Guyana.
The company mentioned that it failed to discover commercial quantities of oil at the Bulletwood-1 well, which is the first among the three wells expected to be drilled on the ultradeep Canje block.
During the drilling, the Bulletwood-1 well identified the presence of quality reservoirs and not commercial hydrocarbons. The well was dug 2,846 meters below the water surface and at a vertical height of 6,690 meters, with the help of the Stena Carron drillship.
Notably, this is the third dry hole to be drilled by ExxonMobil in four months offshore Guyana. Earlier, the Hassa-1 well on the Stabroek block and the Tanager-1 well on the Kaieteur block failed to make a commercial find in the primary target reservoirs.
At present, the Canje Block is operated by Esso Exploration & Production Guyana Ltd, a subsidiary of ExxonMobil, with a 35% ownership interest. The remaining partners include TOTAL SE TOT, holding a 35% interest in the block, while JHI and Mid-Atlantic Oil & Gas Inc. own 17.5% and 12.5%, respectively.
ExxonMobil commenced the exploratory drilling in early 2021. Subsequent to the Bulletwood-1 well, the drilling of the independent prospects Jabillo-1 and Sapote-1 is expected to follow in the upcoming months.
Company Profile & Price Performance
Headquartered in Irving, TX, ExxonMobil is one of the leading integrated energy companies in the world.
The company’s shares have outperformed the industry in the past six months. Its stock has gained 64.5% compared with the industry’s 46.3% rally.
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Oil Tanker Owners Pay to Move Crude in Wake of Supply Cuts
Oil Tanker Owners Pay to Move Crude in Wake of Supply Cuts
Supertankers delivering 2-million-barrel shipments of the kingdom’s oil to China are losing $736 a day for the privilege, according to data from the Baltic Exchange in London on Tuesday. While owners might, in practice, be able to mitigate such losses by ordering captains to sail the vessels slower, the reality is that some ships are losing money on Middle East-to-Asia deliveries, according to Halvor Ellefsen, a shipbroker at Fearnleys.
“Even the most economical ships out there are struggling to get positive numbers,” he said. “It’s carnage right now.”
While tanker rates weren’t particularly strong up to the end of last year, they weren’t disastrous either. What really seems to have tipped the balance is when Saudi Arabia, wary of oil demand risks posed by Covid-19, announced that it would unilaterally cut 1 million barrels a day of production to support crude prices. That removed a big chunk of seaborne shipments in a market where cargoes were already curtailed.
It also came at a time when the supply of ships was being bolstered. Huge numbers of tankers had been used to store crude at sea when an oil market glut built up last year, and that’s now tumbling. Since its peak last year, about 132 million barrels of oil are no longer being stored at sea, enough to fill 66 supertankers, Vortexa data shows.
Traders also reported lower demand over the past few days from some buyers in Asia where refineries will soon start carrying out seasonal maintenance programs and therefore need fewer crude cargoes.
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Yahoo Finance Drops in From Mars to Explain Big Money Hasn’t Bought U.S. Politics
Yahoo Finance Drops in From Mars to Explain Big Money Hasn’t Bought U.S. Politics
A recent New York Times/CBS poll found that 84 percent of Americans think money has too much influence in U.S. politics, and 85 percent want the campaign financing system completely rebuilt or at least fundamentally changed. Even politicians themselves will tell you that big money controls most of what they do.
Yahoo Finance, however, has done a study on money in politics, and determined that everyone else in America is wrong:
With so much concern about democracy for sale, Yahoo Finance set out to ask a basic question: Are rich donors buying election results? We scrutinized thousands of federal records on campaign donations in presidential and congressional campaigns in 2012 and 2014, and came up with this simple answer: no.
What Yahoo did was simple and straightforward: Look at the top 10 individual donors to campaigns and Super PACs, as well as the top 10 biggest Super PACs, and then check to see how often the candidates the donors and Super PACs supported won.
And it turned out that big money’s candidates didn’t win every time! For instance, the candidates of the top individual donor, casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, won only 56 percent of the time. The candidates of the biggest-spending Super PAC, Karl Rove’s American Crossroads, only won 51 percent of their races.
So case closed, according to Yahoo: “The return on investment to big donors appears to be less than the fretting over the health of democracy suggests.”
Of course, the flaws in Yahoo’s study are as painfully glaring as the lens flare in a J.J. Abrams Star Trek reboot. Here are the top four, from least important to most:
• Yahoo doesn’t know who the top individual donors were and how much they gave — because nobody does. When you look at Yahoo’s list of the top 10 donors for the 2012 and 2014 elections, you’ll notice something odd: Charles Koch is last, at No. 10, and only contributed a scant $5 million total.
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David Stockman Interview On Yahoo——The Fed Painted Itself Into A Corner, Confidence In The Casino Is Headed For A Fall
David Stockman Interview On Yahoo——The Fed Painted Itself Into A Corner, Confidence In The Casino Is Headed For A Fall
David Stockman is not a fan of the Fed. In fact he claims that the Fed is on a “jihad” against retirees and savers.
The former Reagan budget director and author of “The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America” visited Yahoo Finance ahead of the Fed announcement to discuss his predictions and the potential impact of today’s interest rate decision. “80 months of zero interest rates is downright crazy and it hasn’t helped the Main Street economy because we’re at peak debt,” he says.
Businesses in the U.S. are $12 trillion in debt. That’s $2 trillion more than before the crisis, but “all of it has gone into financial engineering—stock buybacks, mergers and acquisitions and so forth,” according to Stockman. “The jig is up; [the Fed] needs to get on with the business of allowing interest rates to find some normalized level.”
While Stockman believes that the Fed should absolutely raise rates today, he isn’t so sure that they will. But even if they do, he says they’ll muddle the effect by saying “‘one and done’ or ‘we’re going to sit back and watch this thing unfold for the next two or three months.’”
This all fuels an inflationary bubble on Wall Street, according to Stockman. “This massive money printing we’ve had has never gotten out of the canyons of Wall Street. It’s sitting there as excess reserves.”
According to Stockman, the weakness of the U.S. economy has been due to a lack of investment over the past 15 years and inflated labor costs in America that can’t compete on a global scale. “Simply printing more money and keeping interest rates at zero do not help that problem.”
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