Turn Out the Lights

And The Line of the Week goes tooooo…

Zoltan Pozsar of Credit Suisse for this zinger: "In Germany, $2 trillion of value added depends on $20 billion of gas from Russia… …that’s 100-times leverage – much more than Lehman’s."

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No Gas.

The Kremlin announced on Monday that Russia will not resume its gas supplies to Europe in full until the west lifts its sanctions against Moscow.

Speaking to journalists on Monday, Russian spokesperson Dmitry Peskov blamed sanctions “introduced against our country by western countries including Germany and the UK” for Russia’s failure to deliver gas through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline.

Surprising absolutely no one, Peskov said, “Other reasons that would cause problems with the pumping don’t exist.”

Peskov added that Russia’s full resumption of gas supplies via Nord Stream 1 was “undoubtedly” dependent on whether the west would lift its sanctions on Moscow. “It is these sanctions imposed by the western states that have brought the situation to what we see now.”

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No Steel.

ArcelorMittal, the world's largest steelmaker, released a statement Friday about shutting down two plants and idling one.

The European steelmaker said two plants in Germany (one in Bremen and the other in Hamburg) would be partially closed at the end of September. A plant in Asturias, Spain, will also be idled.

ArcelorMittal blamed the coming smelter shutdowns on "the exorbitant rise in energy prices," which is devastatingly impacting the company's "competitiveness of steel production." The decision to reduce metal output was also based on "weak market demand and a negative economic outlook" as Europe continues its descent into a deep recession.

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No Air Conditioning.

The California Independent System Operator (CAISO), which runs the state’s electricity grid, declared a Stage 2 emergency alert on Monday and again on Tuesday.

CAISO president and CEO Elliot Mainzer said, “The potential for rotating outages has increased significantly.” Mainzer said the grid was looking at “energy deficits of 2,000 to 4,000 megawatts, which is as much as 10% of normal electricity demand.” That could take as many as 3 million households offline.

It was well over 115°F on Monday in parts of the Bay Area. Is anybody surprised that people there totally ignored Governor Newsom’s pleas for conservation? Monday was the fifth straight day of CAISO warnings, yet power usage was higher on Monday than any other day that week, reaching 52,646 megawatts.

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Anybody sensing a theme here?

Willie Nelson, The Party's Over

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