By Irina Slav of OilPrice.com,

The New York state authorities have rejected a request by Orsted, BP, and Equinor for raising the price of electricity in future power purchase contracts featuring offshore wind energy.

Offshore wind developers have been pressured by rising raw material and component costs, and higher borrowing costs, which has cast doubt over the viability of many projects. Indeed, Reuters reported that some projects planned for the waters off the coast of New York may need to be reconsidered in light of the authorities’ decision.

"Sunrise Wind's viability and therefore ability to be constructed are extremely challenged without this adjustment," Orsted told Reuters.

Sunrise Wind is an offshore project with a planned capacity of 924 MW that could supply electricity to 600,000 households. According to Orsted, it would also involve several hundred million dollars in investments in the state and 800 jobs.

"These projects must be financially sustainable to proceed," the president of Equinor Renewables Americas told Reuters, referring to the offshore wind projects the Norwegian energy major is leading in the U.S.

Per Reuters, Equinor is involved in three projects with BP—the 816 MW Empire Wind 1 and the 1.26 GW Empire Wind 2, as well as the Beacon Wind farm, with a projected capacity of 1.23 GW.

Indeed, rising costs have compromised the financial sustainability of many wind power projects and earlier this year led to the cancellation of a large-scale one off the coast of the UK.

Swedish Vattenfall, which led the Norfolk Boreas project, said it would quit it after it saw costs rise by 40%, which made the project unviable.

To tackle the rising cost problem, wind developers have turned to governments, asking for additional tax incentives and higher electricity prices, busting the myth of cheap wind power.

The New York Public Service Commission said that if they had agreed to do what the wind developers wanted, that would have added 6.7% to New Yorkers’ electricity bills, which are already among the highest in the State.

By Michael Kern of OilPrice.com

There are no plans for the creation of a natural gas cartel similar to the OPEC cartel in crude oil, Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said on Friday. 

“There are no discussions to set up a (gas) cartel,” Novak told RT Arabic TV as quoted by Reuters. 

The Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) is an organization of gas producers and exporters but it is not coordinating supply to the market the way OPEC does. Russia is a member of the GECF and its top energy official Novak said in the televised interview that the gas organization was “mostly about exchanging views.”  

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the halt of most of Russian pipeline gas supplies to Europe, the EU has turned to LNG imports and increased deliveries via offshore pipelines from Norway and North Africa to replace the Russian supply, which accounted for around one-third of all European gas imports before the war in Ukraine. 

The EU aims to ditch Russian gas by 2027. 

Having lost the European market, Russia has raised pipeline exports to China and its global LNG exports, which are neither sanctioned nor too shunned in gas-starved Europe. 

This year, the exports of Russian gas giant Gazprom to Europe have slumped and dragged its profits down. Gazprom has reported a massive drop in its first-half net profit as deliveries to Europe plunged compared to the same period in 2022 when Russia was still supplying pipeline gas to its European customers.  

The major drop in Gazprom’s gas deliveries to key customers was due to the halt of Russian pipeline gas exports to nearly all European countries.

Gazprom started to reduce supply via the Nord Stream pipeline to Germany in June 2022, claiming an inability to service gas turbine maintenance outside Russia due to the Western sanctions against Moscow for the invasion of Ukraine. This was weeks before the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines at the end of September 2022, which definitively closed all pipeline gas routes of Russia’s gas to Germany. 

Israeli media is reporting a "greenlight" has been given for the expected major Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip as massive convoys of Palestinian civilians have been observed fleeing to the southern part of the densely populated strip. So far there has been limited ground incursions by the army into the strip, targeting Hamas operatives and reportedly to gain intelligence on the whereabouts of hostages. 

The United Nations has issued a report saying at least 423,000 Palestinians have already been internally displaced within Gaza and this massive figure is expected to ratchet further. Likely it has surpassed a half-million as of Saturday, following the Israeli-issued evacuation order, which included dropping thousands of leaflets and warnings over Gaza City. 

The UN said it "considers it impossible for such a movement to take place without devastating humanitarian consequences." Middle East Eye and other regional sources have said over 700 Palestinian children were killed in one week of fighting. As of Friday Israel authorities tallied that over 1,300 Israelis were killed by the Hamas terror attacks on the southern settlements and the music festival, and rocket fire, with at least 3,200 wounded. 27 among the dead were Americans.

Middle East Eye on Saturday reports the following of the mounting Palestinian death toll in both Gaza and the West bank as follows:

Israel has killed at least 2,215 people in Gaza over the past week, according to the Palestinian health ministry. Of those killed, 724 are children and 458 are women. Some 8,714 people have been wounded in the besieged enclave in that time, it added. 

Meanwhile, Israeli forces have killed 54 people and wounded 1,100 others in the occupied West Bank.

According to a review of the last hours of developments, the population is about to run out of water as the remaining supply dwindles after Israel cut off external supply sources: 

• UN agency for Palestinian refugees says its shelters in Gaza “are not safe anymore” as it warns water running our for besieged enclave’s residents.
• More than 320 Palestinians have been killed in the past 24 hours, including many women and children killed in Israeli air raids on convoys fleeing Gaza City, according to health officials.
• The rising toll comes as Israel continues bombing Gaza a day after telling 1.1 million residents to head south ahead of a looming ground offensive following Hamas’s attack inside Israel last week.
• At least 2,215 Palestinians have been killed and 8,714 wounded in Israeli air attacks on Gaza. The number of people killed in Israel has reached 1,300, with more than 3,400 wounded.
• In the occupied West Bank, the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli fire in the past week has topped 50. More than 1,000 have been wounded and hundreds arrested.

????A matter of life and death: water runs out for 2 million people in Gaza

???? No humanitarian supplies have been allowed into Gaza for a week

“It is a must; fuel needs to be delivered now into????#Gaza to make water available for 2 million people”https://t.co/StJVfFn3Xh pic.twitter.com/T1IhCP9C2w

— UNRWA (@UNRWA) October 14, 2023

The fate of the estimated 100 to 200 hostages in Hamas captivity still remains largely unknown, but Hamas in statements which have been underreported in Western press has claimed that over two dozen of the hostages have been killed by the IDF's ongoing aerial bombardment of the Gaza Strip: 

Hamas' Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades said nine more captives were killed in indiscriminate Israeli shelling in the last 24 hours, including a number of foreigners. 

Qassam has previously announced the death of 17 captives in Israeli air stikes in Gaza over the past week. 

Sky News and others are also reporting, based on Israeli sources, that bodies of hostages have been recovered after some of the initial IDF infantry cross-border raids which began Friday into Saturday:

Raids carried out on the Gaza Strip by Israeli forces discovered human remains of those who had been missing since Hamas's attack last weekend, local media is reporting.

According to Haaretz, armed forces entered an enclave where it is thought up to 200 people were being held hostage by Hamas, and retrieved the bodies of several people.

Items belonging to the missing people were also discovered. 

The US said Friday it chartered its first successful evacuation flight, with talk of more to come.

There are Americans (many of them likely dual nationals) among the population of Gaza, which Washington says it is trying to facilitate safe exit for as Israeli airstrikes continue. Dangerously, the lone Raffah border crossing into Egypt has at this point been bombed several times. 

But regional media is reporting there's been a diplomatic breakthrough on this front, as Israel, Egypt, and the United States have forged an agreement to let foreigners residing in Gaza pass through the Rafah border crossing into Egypt.

Scene from the frontlines as the IDF build-up outside Gaza continues:

???????? pic.twitter.com/4OCL2h3zLF

— War Monitor (@WarMonitors) October 14, 2023

Huge civilian convoys have been witnessed fleeing to the southern half of Gaza, creating bottlenecks...

One of the main evacuation routes from northern Gaza, al-Rasheed street, is absolutely flooded with residents attempting to evacuate south.

This footage was taken just south of the IDF-declared demarcation line of Wadi Gaza. pic.twitter.com/EaUZc2tScW

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) October 14, 2023

The Times of Israel cites a senior Egyptian official as follows:

The official says Israel has agreed to refrain from striking areas the foreigners would pass through on their way out of the besieged Palestinian territory. He adds that Qatar was involved in the negotiations and the participants received approval from the Palestinian terror groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

The agreement  does not deal with hostages being held by Hamas.

A second official at the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing point says they received “instructions” to reopen it on Saturday afternoon for foreigners coming from Gaza.

But Egypt is by and large not letting Gazans exit, even erecting bigger concrete barriers of extra border protection, amid what's setting up to be a catastrophic humanitarian crisis as the Israeli pressure ratchets.

The IDF says it is about to attack the northern half of the Gaza Strip with "great force" - while the US and other countries are urging for caution regarding Palestinian civilians. Below is rare footage of an elite Israeli rescue squad in action (intentionally blurred by IDF sources):

Israeli operators from the Special Tactics Rescue Unit 669 conduct a combat casevac near Zikim beach.

(Rough subtitle translation) pic.twitter.com/uQ8IGiBWpE

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) October 14, 2023

Washington has still all the while said it "stands with Israel" - and has not tried to actually halt the unrelenting IDF bombardment of civilian areas.

Meanwhile, things continue ratcheting in south Lebanon, with reports of new strikes being exchanged between Israel and Hezbollah, and other pro-Palestinian factions.