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      Tesla recalls 362,000 vehicles over self-driving software flaws that risk crashes

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      Tesla recalls 362,000 vehicles over self-driving software flaws that risk crashesRegulators say driver assistance system does not adequately adhere to traffic safety laws and can cause crashes Tesla said it would recall 362,000 US vehicles to update its Full Self-Driving (FSD) Beta software after regulators said on Thursday the driver assistance system did not adequately adhere to traffic safety laws and could cause crashes.The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said the Tesla software allows a vehicle to “exceed speed limits or travel through intersections in an unlawful or unpredictable manner increases the risk of a crash”.Tesla will release an over-the-air (OTA) software update free of charge, and the electric vehicle maker said is not aware of any injuries or deaths that may be related to the recall issue. The automaker said it had 18 warranty claims.Tesla shares were down 1.6% at $210.76 on Thursday afternoon.The recall covers 2016-2023 Model S, Model X, 2017-2023 Model 3, and 2020-2023 Model Y vehicles equipped with FSD Beta software or pending installation.NHTSA asked Tesla to recall the vehicles, but the company said despite the recall it did not concur in NHTSA’s analysis. The move is a rare intervention by federal regulators in a real-world testing program that the company sees as crucial to the development of cars that can drive themselves. FSD Beta is used by hundreds of thousands of Tesla customers.The setback for Tesla’s automated driving effort comes about two weeks before the company’s March 1 investor day, during which Chief Executive Elon Musk is expected to promote the EV maker’s artificial intelligence capability and plans to expand its vehicle lineup.Tesla could not immediately be reached for comment.NHTSA has an ongoing investigation it opened in 2021 into 830,000 Tesla vehicles with driver assistance system Autopilot over a string of crashes with parked emergency vehicles. NHTSA is reviewing whether Tesla vehicles adequately ensure drivers are paying attention. NHTSA said on Thursday despite the FSD recall its “investigation into Tesla’s Autopilot and associated vehicle systems remains open and active.”Tesla said in “certain rare circumstances … the feature could potentially infringe upon local traffic laws or customs while executing certain driving maneuvers”.Possible situations where the problem could occur include traveling or turning through certain intersections during a yellow traffic light and making a lane change out of certain turn-only lanes to continue traveling straight, NHTSA said.NHTSA said “the system may respond insufficiently to changes in posted speed limits or not adequately account for the driver’s adjustment of the vehicle’s speed to exceed posted speed limits.”Last year, Tesla recalled nearly 54,000 US vehicles with FSD Beta software that may allow some models to conduct “rolling stops” and not come to a complete stop at some intersections, posing a safety risk, NHTSA said.Tesla and NHTSA say FSD’s advanced driving features do not make the cars autonomous and require drivers to pay attention.TopicsTeslaElon MuskUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Centrica boss urged to waive £1.6m bonus – but refuses to discuss it

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      For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails The boss of British Gas owner Centrica has been urged to waive his £1.6m bonus, after the company’s “monster” record profits of £3.3bn sparked outrage among campaigners. Chief executive Chris […] More

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      Trump pick for World Bank chief makes early exit after climate stance misstep

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      Trump pick for World Bank chief makes early exit after climate stance misstepDavid Malpass’ decision comes after running afoul of White House for failing to say whether he accepts global warming consensus World Bank president David Malpass on Wednesday said he would leave his post by the end of June, months after running afoul of the White House for failing to say whether he accepts the scientific consensus on global warming.Malpass, appointed by Donald Trump, will vacate the helm of the multilateral development bank, which provides billions of dollars a year in funding for developing economies, with less than a year remaining in a five-year term. He offered no specific reason for the move, saying in a statement, “after a good deal of thought, I’ve decided to pursue new challenges”.Treasury secretary Janet Yellen thanked Malpass for his service in a statement, saying: “The world has benefited from his strong support for Ukraine in the face of Russia’s illegal and unprovoked invasion, his vital work to assist the Afghan people, and his commitment to helping low-income countries achieve debt sustainability through debt reduction.”Yellen said the United States would soon nominate a replacement for Malpass and looked forward to the bank’s board undertaking a “transparent, merit-based and swift nomination process for the next World Bank president”.By long-standing tradition, the US government selects the head of the World Bank, while European leaders choose the leader of its larger partner, the International Monetary Fund (IMF).Pressure to shake up the leadership of the World Bank to pave the way for a new president who would reform the bank to more aggressively respond to climate change has been building for over two years from the United Nations, other world leaders and environmental groups.In November 2021, special adviser to the UN secretary-general on climate change Selwin Hart called out the World Bank for “fiddling while the developing world burns” and said that the institution has been an “ongoing underperformer” on climate action.Pressure on Malpass was reignited last September when the World Bank chief fumbled answering a question about whether he believed in the scientific consensus around climate change, which drew condemnation from the White House.In November, special envoy on climate change John Kerry said he wants to work with Germany to come up with a strategy by the next World Bank Group meetings in April 2022 to “enlarge the capacity of the bank” to put more money into circulation and help countries deal with climate change.More recently, Yellen has launched a major push to reform the way the World Bank operates to ensure broader lending to combat climate change and other global challenges.Malpass took up the World Bank helm in April 2019 after serving as the top official for international affairs at US treasury in the Trump administration. In 2022, the World Bank committed more than $104bn to projects around the globe, according to the bank’s annual report.A source familiar with his thinking said Malpass had informed Yellen of his decision on Tuesday.The end of the fiscal year at the end of June was a natural time to step aside, the source said. The World Bank’s governors are expected to approve the bank’s roadmap for reforms with only minor changes at the spring meetings of the IMF and World Bank set for mid-April.Still, World Bank sources said they were surprised by his decision to step down before the joint meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Morocco in October.TopicsWorld BankEconomicsGlobal economyUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Tesla to expand supercharger stations to all electric vehicles, White House says

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      Tesla to expand supercharger stations to all electric vehicles, White House saysFunding for the EV charging network comes from the infrastructure bill that allocates $7.5bn to the expansion The White House is partnering with Tesla to expand electric vehicle charging infrastructure in the US, with the company opening at least 7,500 of its chargers to all electric vehicles (EVs) by the end of 2024, the White House announced on Wednesday.Tesla charging stations currently use a certain power connector that require non-Tesla EVs to use an adapter. The White House said that Tesla will work to include at least 3,500 new and existing 250 kW superchargers along highways and level 2 destination chargers at locations like hotels and restaurants across the country. Tesla is also planning to double its network of superchargers.Electric car enthusiasts tantalized by new idea: converting old vehiclesRead moreThe Biden administration in 2021 set goals of having 50% of new vehicle sales in the country to be EVs and 500,000 EV chargers along highways by 2030. The US currently has around 3m EVs on the road and about 60,000 charging stations across the country.The administration’s goals “have spurred network operators to accelerate the buildout of coast-to-coast EV charging networks”, the White House said in a statement. “Public dollars will supplement private investment by filling gaps, serving rural and hard to reach locations and building capacity in communities.”Along with its partnership with Tesla, the White House is working with other companies, including car manufacturers like General Motors, Mercedes-Benz and Volvo, to build out more chargers. Rental car company Hertz is working with BP to bring chargers to Hertz locations in major cities. Hertz is planning to make one-quarter of its fleet electric by 2024.Funding for the EV charging network expansion comes largely from the bipartisan infrastructure bill passed in 2021. The bill allocates $7.5bn for charging infrastructure, including a $2.5bn community grant program. In September, the White House said that all 50 states have plans to build chargers using funding from the bill.The announcement of the White House’s partnership with Tesla comes after reports that Tesla CEO Elon Musk met with White House officials, though not with Biden himself, in late January. The Washington Post reported that Musk met with John Podesta and Mitch Landrieu, top White House aides charged with implementing Biden’s clean infrastructure policies, on 27 January.Musk has clashed with the administration and other Democrats, particularly over labor unions. In the past, Biden praised GM and Ford, both which work with unions, for their EV efforts over Tesla. In a tweet last year, Musk called Biden “a damp [sock] puppet in human form” after Biden praised GM and Ford for “building more electric vehicles here at home than ever before”.Landrieu told reporters that partnerships with companies, including Tesla, took “many, many months” and that Musk was “very open [and] very constructive” in meetings with the administration.TopicsElectric, hybrid and low-emission carsTeslaBiden administrationUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Breakfast with Chad: Posthumanism

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      The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

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      US pension funds are on the brink of implosion – and Wall Street is ignoring it | David Sirota

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      US pension funds are on the brink of implosion – and Wall Street is ignoring itDavid SirotaPrivate equity firms managing millions of Americans’ retirement savings may be inflating their investments As public officials across America prepare to funnel even more of government workers’ savings to private equity moguls, an alarm just sounded for anyone bothering to listen. It is a warning that Wall Street executives, busy skimming fees off retirement nest eggs, want you to ignore. The longer the warning goes unheeded, however, the bigger the financial time bomb may be for workers, retirees and the governments that pay them.The world economy faces a huge stress test in 2023 | Kenneth RogoffRead moreEarlier this month, PitchBook – the go-to news outlet of the private equity industry – declared that “private equity returns are a major threat to pension plans’ ability to pay retirees in 2023”.With more than one in 10 public pension dollars invested in private equity assets – and with states continuing to keep their private equity contracts secret – PitchBook cited a new study finding that losses from the investments may be on the horizon for retirement systems that support millions of teachers, firefighters, first responders and other government employees.“Private equity returns get reported on a lag of up to six months, and with each update in 2022 values were coming down – which means 2022 numbers were including overstated private equity asset valuations and 2023 numbers are going to incorporate those losses,” noted the study from the Equable Institute.To comprehend this timebomb, you have to understand private equity’s business model.In general, private equity firms use pension money to buy up and restructure companies to then sell them at a higher price than they were purchased. In between buying and selling, there are no transparent metrics for valuing the purchased asset – private equity firms can manufacture an alleged value to tell pension investors (and there’s evidence they inflate valuations when seeking new investments).In a story about an investor receiving two different valuations for the same company, Institutional Investor underscored the absurdity: “Everyone Wants to Know What Private Assets Are Really Worth. The Truth: It’s Complicated.”Meanwhile, valuation and fee terms in contracts between private equity firms and public pensions are kept secret, exempt from open records laws.With that in mind, the new warnings are simple: private equity firms may have told their pension officials that their assets were worth much more than they actually are, all while the firms were skimming billions of dollars of fees off retirees’ money.If write-downs now happen, it could mean that when it’s time to sell the assets to pay promised retiree benefits, pension funds would have far less money available than private equity firms led them to believe. At that point, there are three painful choices: cut retirement benefits, slash social programs to fund the benefits, or raise taxes to recoup the losses.Signs of a doomsday scenario are already evident: some of the world’s largest private equity firms have been reporting big declines in earnings, and federal regulators are reportedly intensifying their scrutiny of the industry’s write-downs of asset valuations. Meanwhile, one investment bank reported that in its 2021 transactions, private equity assets sold for just 86% of their stated value last year.How to fight inflation? (Spoiler alert: not with interest rate rises) | Joseph StiglitzRead moreBut while pensioners may be imperiled, Wall Street executives are protected thanks to their heads-we-win-tails-you-lose business model. While reporting asset losses for investors, some of the firms managing pensioners’ money are raking in even more fees from investors and continuing to raise executives’ pay.Meanwhile, even as some sophisticated private investors rush to get out of private equity, the world’s largest private equity firm, Blackstone, recently reassured Wall Street analysts that state pension officials will continue using retirees’ savings to boost revenues for private equity firms, hedge funds, real estate funds and other so-called “alternative investments”.“The desire for alternatives remains very strong,” the president of Blackstone, Jon Gray, said in an investor call last week. “New York’s state legislature actually increased the allocation for the big three pension funds here by roughly a third.”Gray was referring to New York Democratic lawmakers passing legislation significantly increasing the amount of retiree money that pension officials can deliver to Wall Street. The bill was championed by the New York City comptroller, Brad Lander, just weeks after the Democrat won office promising he would be “reviewing the funds’ positions with risky and speculative assets including hedge funds, private equity, and private real estate funds”.The New York governor, Kathy Hochul, quietly signed the legislation on the Saturday before Christmas, just weeks after the Wall Street Journal reported that analysts have started warning pension funds of looming private equity losses. New York lawmakers simultaneously rejected separate legislation that would have allowed workers and retirees to see the contracts signed between state pension officials and Wall Street firms managing their money.The Empire State is hardly alone in continuing to use retirees’ money to enrich the planet’s wealthiest financial speculators – from California to Texas to Iowa, pension funds controlling hundreds of billions of dollars of workers’ retirement savings are planning to dump more money into private equity, while keeping the terms of the investments secret.While globetrotting to elite conferences in exotic locales, pension officials have defended the high-fee investments by parroting Wall Street executives’ claim that private equity reliably outperforms low-fee stock index funds. At the same time, those officials continue to conceal the terms of the investments, raising the question: if the investments are so great, why are the details being hidden?Perhaps because the investments aren’t as wonderful as advertised. In a landmark study entitled An Inconvenient Fact: Private Equity Returns & the Billionaire Factory, Oxford University’s Ludovic Phalippou documented that private equity funds “have returned about the same as public equity indices since at least 2006”, while extracting nearly a quarter-trillion dollars in fees from public pension systems.A 2018 Yahoo News analysis found that US pension systems had paid more than $600bn in fees for hedge fund, private equity, real estate and other alternative investments over a decade.“The big picture is that they’re getting a lot of money for what they’re doing, and they’re not delivering what they have promised or what they pretend they’re delivering,” Phalippou told the New York Times in 2021.Even some on Wall Street admit the truth: a JP Morgan study in 2021 found that private equity has barely outperformed the stock market, but it remains unclear whether that “very thin” outperformance is worth the risk of opaque and illiquid investments whose actual value is often impossible to determine – investments that could crater when the money is most needed.While the warnings have not halted the flood of pension cash to private equity, they have broken through in at least some corners of American politics.The Securities and Exchange Commission is considering new rules to require private equity firms to better disclose the fees they charge.The US should break up monopolies – not punish working Americans for rising prices | Robert ReichRead moreSimilarly, Ohio’s state auditor, Keith Faber, just issued a report sounding an alarm about state pension officials keeping private equity contracts secret – a practice replicated in states across the country.And following a pension corruption scandal in Pennsylvania – whose state government oversees nearly $100bn in pension money – there’s a potential financial earthquake: during his first week in office, Governor Josh Shapiro promised to shift pensioners’ money out of the hands of Wall Street firms.“We need to get rid of these risky investments,” Shapiro told his state’s largest newspaper. “We need to move away from relying on Wall Street money managers.”Shapiro could face opposition not only from private equity moguls and their lobbyists but also from the pension boards’ union-affiliated trustees. As the Philadelphia Inquirer reported: “Union members [on the boards] have mostly favored the old strategy of private investments, even when challenged by governors’ reps and the last couple of state treasurers.”When investment returns were somewhat better, the unholy alliance between some unions and Wall Street firms flew under the radar, even as pension funds were ravaged by fees. But with warnings of write-downs and losses getting louder, the dynamic could change.Better late than never – though the later it gets, the bigger the risk for millions of workers and retirees.
      David Sirota is a Guardian US columnist and an award-winning investigative journalist. He is an editor at large at Jacobin, and the founder of The Lever, where this article also appeared. He served as Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign speechwriter
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      Fed announces smallest interest hike in a year as inflation ‘eases somewhat’

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      Fed announces smallest interest hike in a year as inflation ‘eases somewhat’Quarter-point increase to a range of 4.5% to 4.75% signals a slowdown in Fed’s fight against soaring inflation The US Federal Reserve signaled a slowdown in its fight against soaring inflation on Wednesday, announcing its smallest hike in interest rates in almost a year.After its latest meeting, the Fed announced a quarter-point increase in its benchmark interest rate to a range of 4.5% to 4.75%, the smallest increase since March last year. “Inflation has eased somewhat but remains elevated,” the Fed said in a statement adding that “ongoing increases” will be appropriate as it seeks to bring prices down.“We covered a lot of ground, and the full effects of our rapid tightening so far are yet to be felt. Even so, we have more work to do,” said Fed chair Jerome Powell.Inflation in the US has been running at levels unseen since the 1980s, triggering a cost of living crisis as the price of everything from eggs to gas and rent has shot up.In order to tamp down inflation the Fed has aggressively hiked rates as it seeks to cool the economy and bring prices back under control.A year ago the Fed rate – which affects the interest rates on everything from business and personal loans to mortgages and credit card rates – was close to zero. After the most rapid series of rises since the 1980s, it is now at a level last seen in 2007.There are signs that prices are coming down. In December, the annual rate of inflation fell to6.5% from 7.1% in the previous month, the sixth straight month of yearly declines and well below the peak of 9.1% it hit in June, its highest rate since 1982.Consumer spending – the largest driver of the economy – fell 0.2% from November to December. The housing market has slowed and many of the major tech companies have announced large job cuts as they have moved to rein in spending.But inflation remains well above the Fed’s annual target rate of 2% and the central bank has said it will keep rates high until price stability is achieved. The Fed also continues to worry about the jobs market. The unemployment rate was 3.5% in December, a 50-year low and on Wednesday the labor department announced there were 11m job openings in the US in December – almost two available jobs for every person looking for one and an increase from November.The tight labor market has driven up wages and Powell, has made clear that the central bank believes rising wages threaten to spur on inflation – a so-called wage-price spiral. “You don’t see that yet, but the whole point is, once you see it, you have a serious problem. That means that effectively in people’s decision-making, inflation has become a real salient issue,” said Powell. “That is what we can’t allow to happen.”TopicsFederal ReserveUS economyJerome PowellEconomicsUS politicsInflationnewsReuse this content More

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      Revealed: how world’s biggest fossil fuel firms ‘profited in Myanmar after coup’

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      Revealed: how world’s biggest fossil fuel firms ‘profited in Myanmar after coup’Leaked tax records suggest subsidiaries of international gas field contractors continued to make millions after the coup In the two years since a murderous junta launched a coup in Myanmar, some of the world’s biggest oil and gas service companies continued to make millions of dollars from operations that have helped prop up the military regime, tax documents seen by the Guardian suggest.The Myanmar military seized power in February 2021 and according to the United Nations special rapporteur on Myanmar, it is “committing war crimes and crimes against humanity daily”. More than 2,940 people, including children, pro-democracy activists and other civilians have been killed, according to Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.Amid this violence, leaked Myanmar tax records and other reports appear to show that US, UK and Irish oil and gas field contractors – which provide essential drilling and other services to Myanamar’s gas field operators – have continued to make millions in profit in the country after the coup.The documents were obtained by transparency non-profit Distributed Denial of Secrets and analysed by Myanmar activist group Justice For Myanmar, investigative journalism organisation Finance Uncovered and the Guardian.The documents suggest that in some cases the subsidiaries of major US gas field service firms continued working in Myanmar – even after the US state department warned in January last year there were significant risks in doing business in the country – including with state-owned entities that financially benefit the junta, such as the national oil and gas company Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE).On Tuesday the US, UK, Australia and Canada announced more Myanmar sanctions, including on the managing director and deputy managing director of MOGE. But they stopped short of sanctioning MOGE itself.Last February the European Union became the first jurisdiction to announce sanctions against MOGE itself in light of the “intensifying human rights violations in Myanmar” and the “substantive resources” MOGE provides the junta.The EU sanctions prohibit European companies from working on Myanmar’s oil and gas field projects. But the US and UK have not yet introduced similar measures and such work – which may involve direct or indirect dealings with MOGE – is not prohibited.Among the findings, the leaked tax documents show that:
      US oil services giant Halliburton’s Singapore-based subsidiary Myanmar Energy Services reported pre-tax profits of $6.3m in Myanmar in the year to September 2021, which includes eight months while the junta was in power.

      Houston-headquartered oil services company Baker Hughes branch in Yangon reported pre-tax profits of $2.64m in the country in the six months to March 2022.

      US firm Diamond Offshore Drilling reported $37m in fees to the Myanmar tax authority during the year to September 2021 and another $24.2m from then until March 2022.

      Schlumberger Logelco (Yangon Branch), the Panama-based subsidiary of the US-listed world’s largest offshore drilling company, earned revenues of $51.7m in the year to September 2021 in Myanmar and as late as September 2022 was owed $200,000 in service fees from the junta’s energy ministry.
      The services provided to Myanmar’s Asia-owned gas field operators by these companies gave vital support to MOGE, which is a major shareholder in all of the country’s most important oil and gas projects.MOGE collects taxes and royalties for the state on gas field projects, ensuring that the junta gets lucrative tax and royalty payments, as well as a vast share of profits. According to the junta’s own figures the oil and gas industry is its biggest source of foreign-currency revenue, bringing in $1.72bn in the six months to 31 March 2022 alone.Yadanar Maung, Justice For Myanmar spokesperson, called the situation “deplorable”.“Oilfield service companies in Myanmar have blood on their hands for operating in an industry that bankrolls the illegal Myanmar military junta, as it wages a campaign of terror against the people,” Maung said.“These companies have breached their international human rights responsibilities and may be complicit in the junta’s war crimes and crimes against humanity by servicing oil and gas projects that fund the junta’s atrocities.”Maung welcomed the latest sanctions but said “far more needs to be done.“So far, only the EU has sanctioned MOGE, which bankrolls the junta. We call on the US, UK, Canada and Australia to follow the EU and also sanction MOGE,” Maung said.Myanmar is one of the poorest countries in Asia but is also rich in oil and gas deposits. The country’s major projects export gas to China and Thailand, with around 20% of the gas retained for domestic use.The major gas projects in which MOGE has significant shareholdings are run by the South Korean corporation Posco International, Thailand’s PTTEP and Gulf Petroleum Myanmar, also from Thailand. Gulf Myanmar Petroleum, PTTEP and Posco were contacted for comment.Map of major oil and gas fields in MyanmarActivists argue that any role played by western gas field contractors in Myanmar’s gas and oil industry after the coup makes them complicit in the junta’s war of aggression. Some legal experts argue the contractors could face future legal issues from their activities in the country.Baker Hughes told the Guardian its contracts were signed before the coup and completed in early 2022. The company said it had not signed new contracts since the coup and had “a very limited number of personnel in the country to support critical safety and operations needs”.Halliburton, Schlumberger and Diamond Offshore Drilling did not respond to repeated requests for comment.Last January, France’s Total and US’s Chevron – which have long been criticised for their roles as gas project operators in the country – announced plans to exit Myanmar.Chevron told the Guardian that it had now sold its 41.1% interest in the Yadana Project to Et Martem Holdings, a wholly owned subsidiary of MTI Energy, a Canadian company.The situation is complicated by the US’s ambiguous stance on MOGE. Myanmar’s state-owned gems, pearl and timber industries have been sanctioned by the US but Washington has not yet tackled MOGE, the linchpin in the junta’s largest single source of foreign revenue.In 2021 the New York Times reported that the oil giant Chevron had led an intense lobbying effort against sanctions that would disrupt oil operations in the country. That report came after the UN’s special rapporteur on Myanmar, Tom Andrews, had told Congress that MOGE was “now effectively controlled by a murderous criminal enterprise” and called on it and other state entities to be sanctioned in order to “meaningfully degrade the junta’s sources of revenue”.Last January, the state department did specifically warn of the dangers of doing business in the country and cited MOGE as particularly problematic. MOGE and other state-owned enterprises “not only generate revenue for a military regime that is responsible for lethal attacks against the people of Burma, but many of them also are subject to allegations of corruption, child and forced labor, surveillance, and other human and labor rights abuses”, it warned.But while the US has put sanctions on the State Administration Council – the junta’s ruling body which controls MOGE through the ministry of energy – it has stopped short of imposing tougher sanctions on MOGE itself. And the US commerce department’s country commercial guide for Myanmar, last updated in July 2022, describes the “dynamic” oil and gas sector as a “best prospect industry” with “significant opportunities for US investors”.The Biden administration is understood to be struggling with a desire to implement stronger sanctions while maintaining good relations with Thailand, a strategic partner, and also a major buyer of Myanmar’s natural gas.Justice for Myanmr’s Maung said the Biden administration’s contradictory approach to Myanmar “has allowed US oil and gas corporations to continue business as usual in Myanmar, enabling the junta’s international crimes”.“While the Department of State has warned that dealing with MOGE risks money laundering, furthering corruption and contributing to serious human rights violations, the US Department of Commerce is advising US companies to seek profits in the oil and gas sectors in Myanmar and to compete for MOGE tenders,” Maung said. “We call on the US to stand with the people of Myanmar by imposing sanctions on MOGE and helping to cut the flow of funds to the junta.”Pressure is mounting on the Biden administration to act. Last year, the Democratic senators Jeff Merkley, Cory Booker, Dianne Feinstein, Edward Markey and Gary Peters wrote to the US treasury urging the Biden administration to impose sanctions to help stem the junta’s brutality, especially by cutting off revenues from MOGE. “MOGE sanctions are one of the most significant actions the United States could take to degrade the junta’s ability to operate,” they wrote.In December, the US House passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which included a section outlining action on Myanmar that raised the possibility of Joe Biden imposing sanctions on MOGE but stopped short of issuing a stronger ruling.“At the end of last year, Congress made great progress in authorizing sanctions on Burma’s energy sector, which represents nearly half of the junta’s foreign currency income. The administration must use these authorities and work with regional partners to cut off the junta’s ability to fuel its brutal campaign against civilians,” Merkley told the Guardian.The European Union toughened its stance on MOGE in February 2022, expanding its sanctions against the junta, becoming the first jurisdiction to sanction MOGE itself and prohibiting the provision of technical assistance that directly or indirectly benefits the state-owned entity, with a narrow exemption for decommissioning a project.One European company, Dublin-based Gavin & Doherty Geosolutions, a specialist geotechnical engineering consultancy, secured a contract to work on Thai-owned PTTEP International’s Zawtika development project off the coast of Myanmar, according to August 2021 reports. The contract was announced before EU sanctions were imposed on MOGE but seven months after the coup. Gavin & Doherty declined repeated inquiries about the nature of the contract or whether it was still working in the country.MOGE owns a 20% of Zawtika and profits from the project flow directly to the junta.The tax documents suggest Intermoor, a subsidiary of UK-based Acteon, a subsea services company, also continued to profit from work in Myanmar until at least February 2022. The UK has issued sanctions against some individuals and entities in Myanmar. But like the US, it has so far stopped short of sanctioning MOGE and no UK sanctions prohibit working directly or indirectly with the junta-controlled entity.Filings to Myanmar’s tax authority by Diamond Offshore Drilling indicate it made repeated payments to Intermoor between October 2021 and February 2022 for work done on behalf of Posco International. Posco runs the Shwe gas project, which in 2020 Intermoor had publicly announced it was working on. MOGE has a 15% stake in Shwe, in addition to the revenue it gets from taxes and royalties.A Justice For Myanmar source, verified by the Guardian, has confirmed the presence of InterMoor personnel in Myanmar in 2021 and 2022.Neither Intermoor nor its parent company, Acteon Group responded to repeated requests to comment on this story.Despite US and UK reluctance to target MOGE, environmental lawyers claimed companies working on gas projects in Myanmar still faced legal risks from their activities.Ben Hardman, Myanmar policy and legal adviser at Earthrights, a Washington-based human rights and environmental non-profit, said: “Oil field service companies are not just working with international oil majors, they are supporting joint ventures with MOGE, a government agency that has effectively been taken hostage by the junta. When the companies submit an invoice, the junta ultimately pays a share of them and the support of these companies ensures that the junta can keep seizing revenues that flow through MOGE.“If these companies have an EU presence, they are at severe risk of breaching EU sanctions on MOGE. Companies in the US and the UK also face risks because both governments have sanctioned the junta’s State Administration Council, which controls MOGE’s management and revenues.”TopicsMyanmarMyanmar coupOil and gas companiesSouth and central AsiaUS politicsIrelandThailandnewsReuse this content More