As of the start of April, Mukesh Ambani (66) is the richest man in Asia, with a net worth of $116.1 billion, according to Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaires List,

Ambani is the chairman of Reliance Industries Limited, a conglomerate that focuses not only on petrochemicals, but also textiles and telecommunications. As Statista's Anna Fleck reports, Ambani ranks 11th on Forbes’ worldwide list, which is headed by Bernard Arnault & family (LVMH) with $221.8 billion, Jeff Bezos (Amazon) with $197.5 billion and Elon Musk (Tesla, SpaceX, X formerly Twitter) with $189.0 billion.

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In second place - and some 32.8 billion dollars behind - comes 61-year-old Gautam Adani who is the chairperson of the Adani Group, a conglomerate that deals with businesses exporting and importing raw materials and finished goods, including coal trading, mining, oil and gas exploration, as well as ports, energy and agricultural commodities.

He is succeeded by Zhong Shanshan (69), with a net worth of $64.5 billion. Shanshan is the founder of beverages company Nongfu Spring as well as the founder of Beijing Wantai Biological Pharmacy Enterprise, a private Chinese company and major supplier of Covid-19 testing kits.

Rounding off the top ten comes Savitri Jindal (74), the widow of Om Prakash Jindal who founded the Jindal Group in India, whose interests lay in steel, power, cement and infrastructure, with an estimated net worth of $34.8 billion, followed by Shiv Nadar (78), founder and chairman of the IT enterprise HCL Technologies, with $34.5 billion.

The top ten richest people in Asia have a total net worth of $542.1 billion.

By John Kemp, senior energy analyst at Reuters

Portfolio investors have amassed one of the largest bullish positions in U.S. gasoline futures and options since before the coronavirus pandemic, anticipating that prices will continue climbing over the next few months.

U.S. gasoline has emerged as the most attractive part of the petroleum complex for investors betting prices will rise further this year in the run up to presidential and congressional elections in November.

Relatively low inventories, employment gains, strong household income growth and the prospect of an active hurricane season are expected to keep gasoline consumption high and inventories under pressure.

Ukraine’s drone attacks on refineries in Russia threaten to tighten the international supply situation even further and have prompted the Biden administration to warn Ukraine’s government to change its targeting.

BUOYANT CONSUMPTION

U.S. gasoline consumption is correlated with employment and household incomes so the current rise in nonfarm jobs and wage rates are likely to underpin strong use in 2024.

Domestic consumption has been trending structurally lower since 2007 as a result of improvements in fuel economy, ethanol blending and more recently the deployment of electric and hybrid vehicles. But lower domestic use has been more than offset by strong growth in exports, mostly to Mexico and other countries in Latin America, which has kept overall refinery production trending higher.

Strong domestic consumption during the peak summer driving season is likely to cause inventories to tighten cyclically and exert upward pressure on prices in 2024.

ACTIVE HURRICANE SEASON

Nearly half of the total refinery capacity in the U.S. is located along the Gulf of Mexico on the coasts of Texas and Louisiana.

Every year there is a small but non-zero chance refinery processing will be disrupted by a direct hit from a major hurricane.

The North Atlantic hurricane season lasts from June through November with activity peaking in August and September (“Tropical cyclone climatology”, U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2024).

The precise number of storms, their intensity and the location of landfalls is highly variable and notoriously difficult to predict months in advance.

But the expected shift from El Nino to La Nina conditions underway in the central and eastern Pacific is often associated with an increased number and intensity of hurricanes in the Atlantic (“Impacts of El Nino and La Nina on the hurricane season,” NOAA, 2014).

At the same time, Atlantic storm creation and intensity is strongly correlated with sea surface temperatures in the Caribbean and the tropical North Atlantic.

Tropical storm formation requires sea surface temperatures of at least 26°C, among a number of other conditions (“Cyclogenesis”, Australian Bureau of Meteorology, 2017).

Sea surface temperatures in the tropical North Atlantic were at a record seasonal high in March 2024, according to data from the U.S. Climate Prediction Centre.

Sea surface temperatures surged higher around the world, including a very strong warm El Nino phenomenon in the Pacific, but the exceptional warming was most pronounced in the Atlantic.

Surface temperatures in the Atlantic from 5° to 20° North and from 30° to 60° West averaged almost 27.1°C in March, which was more than 1.5°C above the long-term seasonal average.

If the surface warmth persists into the second and third quarters it is likely to result in an above average number of tropical storms and more major hurricanes in 2024 and an elevated threat to the Gulf Coast refineries.

Colorado State University researchers have predicted an “extremely active” hurricane season in 2024 (“Forecast for 2024 hurricane activity,” CSU, April 4, 2024).

The number of named tropical storms and hurricanes is expected to be more than 50% higher than the long-term average.

BULLISH POSITION

Hedge funds and other money managers owned bullish long positions equivalent to 99 million barrels on April 2, the highest number for more than four years.

After adjusting for a minority of bearish short positions, the net position was 84 million barrels, which was in the 88th percentile for all weeks since 2013.

Fund managers were more bullish on gasoline than on crude (56th percentile) or middle distillates such as diesel and gas oil (53rd percentile).

Bullish long positions in gasoline outnumbered bearish short ones by a ratio of more than 6.4:1 (68th percentile) on April 2.

The long-short ratio suggests positioning is less stretched than the absolute number of long positions, but there is still downside risk to prices when long positions are unwound.

LOW INVENTORIES

On April 5, U.S. gasoline inventories were 5 million barrels (-2% or -0.42 standard deviations) below the prior ten-year seasonal average.

Stocks had been as much as 7 million barrels (+3% or +0.75 standard deviations) above seasonal average in late January.

But a site-wide power failure stopped BP’s massive refinery at Whiting, Indiana, lasting for more than a month from the start of February and resulted in a sharp depletion of stocks.

Since the refinery restarted in March, the deficit has narrowed slightly, but inventories remain below normal for the time of year, putting upward pressure on prices.

EVEN HIGHER PRICES?

U.S. retail gasoline prices (including taxes) averaged $3.54 per gallon in March 2024, almost exactly in line with the average since the start of the century once inflation is taken into account.

Inflation-adjusted prices have risen from a recent low of $3.22 in January 2024 but are still well below the recent high of $5.42 in June 2022 after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Fund managers are betting heavily that gasoline prices will rise further over the remainder of the year.

From a purely positioning perspective, the large number of bullish long positions that must eventually be liquidated has itself created downside risk to prices.

From a fundamental perspective, however, low inventories, strong consumption, threat to Russia’s refineries, and elevated hurricane risk to U.S. refineries are all sources of upside potential.

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

A new U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study does not disprove a link between COVID-19 vaccines and sudden deaths among young people, contrary to claims.

The study, published by the CDC’s quasi-journal on April 11, analyzed death certificates from Oregon for people aged 16 to 30 who died between June 2021 and December 2022.

Among people who died with evidence of vaccination, three died within 100 days of a shot, Drs. Juventila Liko and Paul Cieslak with the Oregon Health Authority found.

None of those three deaths could be attributed to messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccination, or shots from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, according to the doctors. Two of the deaths were attributed to underlying conditions while the cause of death for the third was “undetermined.”

“These data do not support an association between receipt of mRNA COVID-19 vaccine and sudden cardiac death among previously healthy young persons,” the doctors wrote.

The authors failed to note that a much larger, peer-reviewed study from South Korea confirmed vaccine-induced myocarditis caused eight sudden cardiac deaths (SCDs), all among people younger than 45. Myocarditis is a form of heart inflammation.

The new study “is at odds with a higher quality and peer-reviewed journal article published in the European Heart Journal,” Dr. David McCune, who was not involved with either paper, told The Epoch Times via email. “The study, from Korea, found a small but significant group of patients who had SCD and autopsy evidence consistent with vaccine-induced myocarditis.”

Multiple media outlets published stories on the new study, but none mentioned the South Korean article.

The stories also included false or misleading claims.

U.S. News and World Report’s story said that it was an “incorrect idea that COVID-19 vaccines are linked to death in young people.”

NBC’s article said that the study “debunks widespread misinformation that the mRNA shots were connected to sudden cardiac death in young athletes.”

NBC reporter Berkeley Lovelace Jr. also wrote that “there is no evidence that COVID vaccines cause fatal cardiac arrest or other deadly heart problems in teens and young adults, a CDC report finds.”

“I don’t think that is close to an accurate assessment of the CDC paper or the overall level of knowledge we have about vaccine risk,” Dr. McCune said.

The reporters who wrote the articles for U.S. News and World Report, NBC, The Hill, and Medpage Today did not respond to requests for comment.

Other papers that support a link between deaths among young people and COVID-19 vaccination include a study that analyzed post-vaccination deaths in Qatar and determined there was a “high probability” that eight sudden cardiac deaths, including one person aged 11 to 20, were caused by the vaccination. Some death certificates have also described COVID-19 vaccine-induced myocarditis as a cause of death for sudden deaths, including the certificate for an American college student who died suddenly after receiving a Pfizer shot.

Authorities in the United States acknowledge that the COVID-19 vaccines can cause myocarditis but maintain no deaths have been caused by vaccine-induced myocarditis. They have refused to release autopsies conducted on people who died after COVID-19 vaccination. Several long-term studies have identified heart scarring in people who suffered myocarditis after COVID-19 vaccination. Some experts say the scarring may be permanent and could eventually lead to death.

Dr. Ofer Levy, an adviser to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, told NBC that no vaccine has ever been conclusively linked to sudden cardiac death and that the new study “adds to evidence that people don’t drop dead from getting their mRNA COVID vaccines.” Dr. Levy did not respond when asked whether he was aware of the South Korean paper and other literature.

NBC also quoted Dr. Leslie Cooper in promoting the study while failing to note that Dr. Cooper is a consultant for Moderna.

Authors Respond

Asked why they didn’t mention literature that presents evidence of sudden cardiac death among previously healthy young people after vaccination, the authors told The Epoch Times in an email that they had. The studies they included are an Israeli paper that does not mention sudden death; a letter that noted sudden deaths among athletes, regardless of vaccination status, since the vaccines were rolled out; an analysis of 911 calls from Israel; and a case definition for myocarditis that says it can be a cause of sudden death. None of the papers cite autopsy data or other strong evidence that has emerged.

The authors also linked to a 2021 CDC statement and a 2021 CDC presentation, neither of which mention sudden death.

The authors did not say whether they were unaware of the South Korean study or chose not to include it.

The CDC should “not have published their study without acknowledging the international studies that have identified post-mRNA vax-related cardiac death in young people,” Dr. Tracy Hoeg, who was not involved in the research, wrote on the social media platform X.

In the paper, the authors also cited an earlier CDC study that found people who entered a health system were at higher risk of cardiac complications after COVID-19 infection versus after COVID-19 vaccination. The relevance isn’t clear since the COVID-19 vaccines do not prevent infection, and some other studies have found that the risk of myocarditis is higher after vaccination among young people.

Asked why they didn’t cite any of those other studies, the authors referred back to the papers they did cite and said they “also clearly expressed the limitations in the research.”

Limitations of the paper include the small population size, which would make it “less likely” for Oregon to record “a rare event such as sudden cardiac death among adolescents and young adults,” the authors wrote in the study.

“Nevertheless, it is clear that the risk, if any, of cardiac death linked to COVID-19 vaccination is very low, while the risk of dying from COVID-19 is real,” Dr. Cieslak said in a press release issued by the Oregon Health Authority. “We continue to recommend COVID-19 vaccination for all persons 6 months of age and older to prevent COVID-19 and complications, including death.”

The authority didn’t list any data that show the currently available vaccines prevent COVID-19 complications such as death. U.S. regulators cleared them in 2023 without clinical trial efficacy data. Only animal testing data was available for the Pfizer-BioNTech and Novavax shots. Moderna presented antibody data from 50 humans. Observational studies have since provided mixed effectiveness data against infection and hospitalization.

CDC Journal

The CDC published the study in its journal, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), which only publishes papers after officials shape them to align with the agency’s messaging. The CDC has been relentlessly promotive of the COVID-19 vaccines since they were rolled out.

Previous releases of documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) show that CDC officials engage in multiple rounds of editing of papers published in the journal.

The authors of the new paper acknowledged that the paper was edited prior to publication.

“CDC made no edits that altered the conclusions of the study,” they said.

The CDC journal’s editor-in-chief did not respond to a query.

The Epoch Times has filed FOIA requests to ascertain which edits were made, and by whom.

The authors also defended the choice to submit the paper to MMWR, rather than a traditional journal.

“Many times there is a large amount of observational data that is critical for time-sensitive reporting to inform public health practitioners and clinicians. These sorts of time-sensitive publications that might impact the actions of state and county public health leaders have long been published in the CDC’s MMWR,” they said. “In fact, there are numerous examples of CDC’s MMWR being the first source of information during many important historical events, including the beginning of the AIDS pandemic, the discovery of Legionnaires disease, the initial cases of H1N1 in 2009.”