US: Indian student helps homeless man with food, shelter who later beats him to death with hammer
9 Jan 2024, 10:56 PM IST
A feeling of anger outpoured on social media when it was revealed that Vivek Saini had been helping Julian Faulkner for the past few days
Screengrab of the CCTV footage where the homeless man can be seen killing the Indian man (X)
In a disturbing incident, a 25-year-old Indian man was brutally beaten to death by a homeless man. The incident occurred in Georgia on January 16th, when the accused identified as Julian Faulkner killed Vivek Saini and the video of the incident is doing rounds on social media.
A feeling of anger outpoured on social media when it was revealed that Vivek Saini had been helping Julian Faulkner for the past few days. The victim had provided the homeless man with food and shelter for the past few days and even gave him a warm jacket to beat the cold.
In the video, the homeless man, who was also a drug addict can be seen smashing Vivek Saini's head with a hammer. The incident took place at the Chevron Food Mart at Snapfinger and Cleveland Road and as per reports, Julian Faulkner struck Saini nearly 50 times.
Why Vivek Saini was murdered?
As per the reports, Vivek Saini and the other employees at the convenience store have been helping Julian Faulkner for the past few days. On the fateful day, Saini asked Faulkner to leave the premises due to safety issues. The Indian student warned that he would be forced to call the police if Faulkner didn't comply.
This might have triggered Faulkner and in that rage, he just started swinging hammer at Vivek Saini. The incident was captured on the CCTV camera at the convenience store. When the police reached the spot, they found Julian Faulkner standing over the body of the Indian student.
The incident has sent shockwaves across the United States and Vivek Saini's parents in Haryana are inconsolable. Saini completed his B.Tech from India before flying to the US two years ago to pursue an MBA.
In the past few years, there has been a dramatic jump in the cases of crime against Indian students in the United States. The experts point out that this is due to the growing economic insecurity among the local population amid dismal rate growth in the North American countries.
3,400 Americans are there ostensibly to fight ISIS. But after Sunday's attacks, they may become the reason we fight Iran
JAN 29, 2024
The drone attack on Sunday that killed three U.S. service members at an outpost in Jordan near the Syria border is more likely to increase rather than decrease U.S. military involvement in the region.
This is unfortunate, and doubly so coming at a time when the Biden administration was showing signs of considering a withdrawal of the 900 U.S. troops in Syria and 2,500 in Iraq. Just last week, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin intimated that a joint U.S.-Iraqi review might lead to a drawdown of at least some of the troops in Iraq. Other reporting points to discussions within the administration about possibly removing the troops now in Syria.
It is unclear why the administration chose this time to consider what was already a long-overdue withdrawal of these troops. The answer probably involves the upsurge in regional violence stemming from Israel’s devastating assault on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and associated anger against the United States for its backing of Israel. Since the Israeli assault began, U.S. military installations in Iraq have been attacked more than 60 times and those in Syria more than 90 times.
The attacks underscore how much these residual U.S. deployments have entailed costs and risks far out of proportion to any positive gains they can achieve. They have been sitting-duck targets within easy reach of militias and other elements wishing to make a violent anti-U.S. statement. Even without deaths, U.S. service members have paid a price, such as in the form of traumatic brain injuries from missile attacks.
The now-familiar tit-for-tat sequence in which American airstrikes against militias in Iraq or Syria alternate with more militia attacks on the U.S. installations illustrates a perverse form of mission creep. Whatever was the original mission of the U.S. troop presence gets sidelined as protection of the troop presence itself becomes the main concern. The tit-for-tats also carry the risk of escalation into a larger conflict.
This weekend’s attack just across the border in Jordan is likely to become part of the same risk-laden sequence. A White House statement promised to “hold all those responsible to account at a time and in a manner our choosing.”
This will lead the administration to shelve for the time being any ideas it had about bringing home the troops — out of fear of showing weakness amid the inevitable criticism from domestic political opponents. The better course would be to interpret the attack as one more demonstration of how the troop presence in Syria and Iraq represents a needless vulnerability that ought to be ended sooner rather than later.
The official rationale for the presence on both those countries is to prevent a rise of the group known as Islamic State or ISIS. But the motivations have always involved more than that. The presence in Iraq is in some respects a legacy of the U.S. war begun there in 2003, which has imparted the sense of ownership that often follows a large-scale military intervention. The fixation with Iran and a desire to match Iranian presence and influence in these countries have constituted another motivation.
As for ISIS, although it has shown resilience, it is nowhere near what it was in 2014 when it ruled a de facto mini-state across much of western Iraq and northeastern Syria. If the group ever were to begin approaching that status again, much more than the small U.S. contingents in Syria and Iraq would be needed to counter it. To those who might argue that ISIS already is resurgent, one is entitled to ask exactly what good the presence of those contingents is doing in keeping ISIS down.
With regard to any terrorist group, the foremost U.S. concern ought to be not how the group plays in some local conflict but rather the risk of it striking U.S. interests, either at home or abroad. In that regard, the most relevant fact, repeatedly demonstrated with other terrorist groups in other places, is that anger at a foreign military presence is one of the chief motivations for terrorist attacks.
To the extent that ISIS has been kept down, this is partly due to popular opposition in Iraq and Syria to the group’s brutal methods that it displayed when it had its mini-state. It is partly due to the efforts of security forces in those two countries. And it is partly due to the efforts of the foreign state most extensively involved in those countries — Iran.
Iran is very much an enemy of ISIS. It has been a victim of highly lethal ISIS attacks within Iran, including bombings in the heart of Tehran in 2017 and, earlier this month, an attack on a memorial ceremony in the city of Kerman that killed nearly 100 Iranians. Iran was a major player in the earlier efforts to undo the ISIS mini-state.
Combating ISIS is a shared interest of Iran and the United States, as illustrated by the United States reportedly sharing — quite properly, in conformity with the duty to warn — information about the planned ISIS attack in Kerman. It would be in U.S. interests to have Iran continue to do the heavy lifting in holding down ISIS — and to have Iran, not the United States, risk any resulting terrorist reprisals.
Enemy drone that killed US troops in Jordan was mistaken for a US drone, preliminary report suggests
BY LOLITA C. BALDOR. AAMER MADHANI AND ZEKE MILLER
Updated 10:20 AM GMT+8, January 30, 2024
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. forces may have mistaken an enemy drone for an American one and let it pass unchallenged into a desert base in Jordan where it killed three U.S. troops and wounded dozens more, officials said Monday.
Details of the Sunday attack emerged as President Joe Biden faced a difficult balancing act, blaming Iran and looking to strike back in a forceful way without causing any further escalation of the Gaza conflict.
As the enemy drone was flying in at a low altitude, a U.S. drone was returning to the small installation known as Tower 22, according to a preliminary report cited by two officials, who were not authorized to comment and insisted on anonymity,
As a result, there was no effort to shoot down the enemy drone that hit the outpost. One of the trailers where troops sleep sustained the brunt of the strike, while surrounding trailers got limited damage from the blast and flying debris. While there are no large air defense systems at Tower 22, the base does have counter-drone systems, such as Coyote drone interceptors.
Aside from the soldiers killed, the Pentagon said more than 40 troops were wounded in the attack, most with cuts, bruises, brain injuries and similar wounds. Eight were medically evacuated, including three who were going to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. The other five, who suffered “minor traumatic brain injuries,” were expected to return to duty.
Asked if the failure to shoot down the enemy drone was “human error,” Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh responded that the U.S. Central Command was still assessing the matter.
The Pentagon identified those killed in the attack as Sgt. William Jerome Rivers, 46, of Carrollton, Georgia; Spc. Kennedy Ladon Sanders, 24, of Waycross, Georgia; and Spc. Breonna Alexsondria Moffett, 23, of Savannah, Georgia.
The three U.S. Army Reserve soldiers were assigned to the 718th Engineer Company, 926th Engineer Battalion, 926th Engineer Brigade in Fort Moore, Georgia.
The explanation for how the enemy drone evaded U.S. air defenses came as the White House said Monday it’s not looking for war with Iran even as Biden vows retaliatory action. The Democratic administration believes Tehran was behind the strike.
Biden met with national security advisers in the White House Situation Room to discuss the latest developments and potential retaliation.
“There’s no easy answer here,” said National Security Council spokesman John Kirby. “And that’s why the president is meeting with his national security team weighing the options before him.”
The brazen attack, which the Biden administration blames on Iranian-based proxies, adds another layer of complexity to an already tense Mideast situation as the Biden administration tries to keep the Israel-Hamas war from expanding into a broader regional conflict.
“The president and I will not tolerate attacks on U.S. forces, and we will take all necessary actions to defend the U.S. and our troops,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said as he met at the Pentagon with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.
The drone attack was one of dozens on U.S. troops in the Middle East since Hamas launched attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, igniting the war in Gaza. But it’s the first in which American service members have been killed.
Biden promised on Sunday to “hold all those responsible to account at a time and in a manner (of) our choosing” but said the U.S. wasn’t seeking to get into another conflict in the Middle East.
Kirby also made clear that American patience has worn thin after more than two months of attacks by Iranian proxies on U.S. troops in Iraq, Syria and Jordan and on U.S. Navy and commercial vessels in the Red Sea. The proxy groups — including Yemen’s Houthi rebels and Iraq based Kataeb Hezbollah — say the attacks are in response to Israel’s ongoing military operations in Gaza.
“We are not looking for a war with Iran,” Kirby told reporters. “That said, this was a very serious attack. It had lethal consequences. We will respond, and we respond appropriately.”
Iran on Monday denied it was behind the Jordan strike.
“These claims are made with specific political goals to reverse the realities of the region,” Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency quoted foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani as saying. Iran regularly denies involvement in attacks linked back to it through the militias it arms across the wider Mideast.
Kirby said that U.S. officials are still working through determining which militant group was behind the attack. He noted that Iran has longed equipped and trained the militias.
Republicans have laid blame on Biden for doing too little to deter Iranian militias, which have carried out approximately 165 attacks on U.S. troops in the region since the start of the war.
Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Sunday called the attack “yet another horrific and tragic consequence of Joe Biden’s weakness and surrender.”
The attack hit a U.S. military desert outpost in the far reaches of northeastern Jordan known as Tower 22. The installation sits near the demilitarized zone on the border between Jordan and Syria along a sandy, bulldozed berm marking the DMZ’s southern edge. The Iraqi border is only 10 kilometers (6 miles) away.
The base began as a Jordanian outpost watching the border, then saw an increased U.S. presence after American forces entered Syria in late 2015. The small installation includes U.S. engineering, aviation, logistics and security troops, with about 350 U.S. Army and Air Force personnel deployed.
Iraq’s government condemned the drone strike. Spokesman Bassem al-Awadi said in a statement that Iraq was “monitoring with a great concern the alarming security developments in the region” and called for “an end to the cycle of violence.” The statement said that Iraq is ready to participate in diplomatic efforts to prevent further escalation.
An umbrella group for Iran-backed factions known as the Islamic Resistance in Iraq has claimed dozens of attacks against bases housing U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria since the Israel-Hamas war began. On Sunday, the group claimed three drone attacks against sites in Syria, including near the border with Jordan, and one inside of “occupied Palestine” but so far hasn’t claimed the attack in Jordan.
John Bolton, who served as national security adviser to Trump, said Iran hasn’t paid a price for the havoc that its proxies have unleashed in the region. He suggested the Biden administration could send a strong message to Tehran with strikes on Iranian vessels in the Red Sea, Iranian air defenses along the Iraqi border, and bases that have been used to train and supply militant groups for years.
“So until Iran bears a cost, you’re not going to reestablish deterrence, you’re not going to put the belligerence on a downward slope.”
The attack came as U.S. officials were seeing signs of progress in negotiations to broker a deal between Israel and Hamas to release the more than 100 remaining hostages being held in Gaza in exchange for an extended pause in fighting. While contours of a deal under consideration would not end the war, Americans believed that it could lay the groundwork for a durable resolution to the conflict.
Qatar’s prime minister said Monday that senior U.S. and Mideast mediators had achieved a framework proposal to present to Hamas for freeing hostages and pausing fighting in Gaza.
Prime Minister Mohammed al-Thani’s comments at the Atlantic Council in Washington came after talks Sunday in Paris among U.S., Israeli, Qatari and Egyptian officials seeking a new round of hostage releases and a cease-fire in Gaza.
An enemy drone that killed three American troops and wounded dozens of others in Jordan may have been confused with an American drone returning to the U.S. installation.
A group calling itself the Islamic Resistance in Iraq claims responsibility for the drone attack that killed three American soldiers and wounded 34 others at a base along the Jordan-Syria border.
Israeli cabinet ministers attend the “Return to Gaza” conference to plan illegal settlements in the war-ravaged territory.
Israel pushes on with its assault on Khan Younis as more Palestinians are forced into dangerously overcrowded Rafah city in southern Gaza.
At least 26,637 people have been killed and 65,387 wounded in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7. The death toll in Israel from the October 7 Hamas attacks stands at 1,139.
Ukraine losing Western support makes the US 'more vulnerable' because China is watching the war closely, NATO chief says
Matthew Loh
18 hrs ago
Jens Stoltenberg said China is closely watching how well Putin can achieve his goals in Ukraine. Kent Nishimura/Getty Images and Federico Gambarini/picture alliance via Getty Images
NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg warned that Putin achieving his goals in Ukraine sets an example for Beijing.
China wants to see how long the US can keep up support to Ukraine, Stoltenberg said.
China is closely watching how long the US and Europe can maintain support for Ukraine, Jens Stoltenberg, secretary-general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, said on Sunday.
"It is important that Putin doesn't get his way in Ukraine, because that will embolden other authoritarian powers," Stoltenberg said. "Today it's Ukraine, tomorrow it may be Taiwan."
GOP congressional leaders, concerned by a surge in undocumented migrants entering the US, have increasingly used approval of aid to Ukraine as a bargaining chip for stricter immigration control.
Stoltenberg said the southern US border crisis is "important in the United States as it is in many other NATO countries."
But he said investing in helping Ukraine resist Moscow's advances is a "good deal" for the Western world.
"We need to realize that this is closely watched in Beijing," he said. "So it's not only making Europe more vulnerable but all of us, also the United States, more vulnerable if Putin gets what he wants in Ukraine."
A further advantage for the US is that it can "destroy and degrade the Russian army" using only a portion of the defense budget, Stoltenberg added.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine is often compared to a potential assault by Beijing on Taiwan and has surfaced theories as to how the Pentagon may respond to such a scenario.
On Saturday, top Chinese diplomat Wang Yi warned that tensions over Taiwan and fears that the island may declare independence are now the biggest challenge for relations between both nations.
China's BYD forecasts 2023 net profit to rise as much as 86.5% y/y
FILE PHOTO: A view of the logo of BYD on the BYD Seal at a press day of the Japan Mobility Show 2023 at Tokyo Big Sight in Tokyo, Japan October 25, 2023. REUTERS/Issei Kato/File Photo
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29 Jan 2024 09:45PM(Updated: 29 Jan 2024 10:49PM)
BEIJING :Chinese electric vehicle (EV) giant BYD said on Monday it expects net profit in 2023 to have risen by as much as 86.5 per cent on the previous year, buoyed by strong sales and cost cuts.
BYD forecast net profit for last year between 29 billion and 31 billion yuan ($4.04-4.32 billion), an increase of 74.46-86.49 per cent from a year earlier, it said in a Shenzhen Stock Exchange filing.
That growth will come in at a much slower pace than in 2022, when BYD posted a 446 per cent net profit surge to 16.6 billion yuan.
"Despite the fierce competition in the industry, the company has achieved significant improvement in profitability and demonstrated strong resilience," BYD said.
The results were achieved thanks to factors including its "rapid growth" of overseas sales, scale advantage and cost control ability in the supply chain, the Shenzhen-based company said.
In comparison, Tesla, BYD's biggest EV rival, reported a 19.4 per cent growth in net profit in 2023 to $15 billion.
In the last quarter of 2023, BYD became the top EV maker by sales, delivering 526,409 vehicles, beating Tesla, which handed over 484,507 cars.
For the whole of 2023, the company sold about 3.02 million vehicles, an increase of 61.9 per cent.
In January, BYD unveiled three battery EV models in Indonesia as it eyes the top market position in the segment in Southeast Asia's biggest economy.
Other than automotive, BYD's business also includes sales of electronic components for smartphones.
BEIJING :Chinese electric vehicle (EV) giant BYD said on Monday it expects net profit in 2023 to have risen by as much as 86.5 per cent on the previous year, buoyed by strong sales and cost cuts.BYD forecast net profit for last year between 29 billion and 31 billion yuan ($4.04-4.32 billion), an...
A.Q. Khan always wanted Pakistan to work only on Uranium weapon as compared to Plutonium because (he thought and tried to convince Gen Zia) Plutonium route involved highly complex and sophisticated procedures and processes but PAEC knew better. Plutonium route and all the related activities to establish infrastructure (for eventual bomb) continued in full swing against AQ Khan desire. A.Q. Khan sought to undermine Munir Khan by opposing the plutonium route because Munir was a plutonium expert, having spent 14 years as Head of Reactor Engineering at the IAEA before his joining PAEC in 1972, where PAEC under Munir Khan not only initiated the Kahuta Enrichment project before AQK, but continued to give crucial technical support.
Contrary to popular perception, Pakistan did not forego the plutonium route to the bomb, and pursued it along with the uranium route. Whether by intention to prepare a “nuclear option” or not, decisions made in the 1960s already provided a valuable basis for establishing a weapons programme. In 1971 the Canadian General Electric Co. completed a 137 MW (electrical) CANDU power reactor for the Karachi Nuclear Power Plant (KANUPP), which went critical in August 1971 and inaugurated by the man who would go on to become the architect of Nuclear Pakistan, the new Chairman, PAEC, Mr. Munir Ahmad Khan. It began commercial operation in October 1972. CGEC also provided a small heavy water production facility. These facilities had been contracted for in the mid-60s, thus predating Bhutto's drive for nuclear weapon capability, but perhaps influenced by him in a ministerial capacity. The technology for KANUPP was the same natural uranium/heavy water technology used in the Indian Cirus and later Dhruva reactors used by India for producing weapons plutonium. The facilities were under IAEA safeguards, and have remained so; nonetheless it was the initial intent of the Pakistani nuclear weapons programme to use plutonium from this reactor as the key ingredient in their nuclear arsenal. But to do that Pakistan required a means of separating plutonium from spent fuel. Some advance preparation had occurred here also. In the late 1960s Pakistan had contracted with both British Nuclear Fuels Limited and Belgonucléaire to prepare studies and designs for pilot plutonium separation facilities. The BNFL design, capable of separating up 360 g of fuel a year. The plan for this plant was completed by 1971.
The centrepiece of the PAEC weapon's programme at this time was the effort to acquire a reprocessing plant to separate plutonium from the fuel of KANUPP. The first step after Multan was to build a pilot reprocessing facility called the “New Labs” at PINSTECH, which was completed by 1981, and work on the KHUSHAB Plutonium production reactor started in the 1980s and it became operational in the 1990s. This facility (New Labs) was a larger and more ambitious project than the original BNFL plan. Belgonucléaire and the French corporation Saint-Gobain Techniques Nouvelles (SGN) built it in the early 70s.
The pilot plant was followed by a contract signed with SGN in March 1973 to prepare the basic design for a large-scale reprocessing plant, one with a capacity of 100 tons of fuel per year, considerably more than KANUPP would generate. SGN was the world's chief exporter of reprocessing technology and had previously built military plutonium facilities for France, the secret plutonium plant at Dimona in Israel, and contracted to provide similar plants to Taiwan, South Korea, and (later) Iraq. The Chashma plant, as it was known, would have the capability to produce 200 kg of weapons grade plutonium a year, if sufficient fuel were available to feed it. It would have provided Pakistan with the ability to “break safeguards” and quickly process accumulated fuel from KANUPP when it decided to openly declare itself a nuclear-armed state. One for the final detailed design and construction on October 18, 1974 followed the initial design contract. The original contract for this project did not include significant safeguards to discourage diversion of the separated plutonium, or controls on the technology
India's first nuclear test, known variously as “Smiling Buddha”, the PNE (for “Peaceful Nuclear Explosive”), and most recently Pokhran-I, occurred on May 18 , 1974. It provided an additional stimulus to the Pakistani weapons programme. Bhutto increased the funding for the programme after the Indian test, but since arrangements to secure lavish funding had been underway for more than a year this would have occurred anyway. One consequence of the test was ironically to hamper Pakistan's programme as the test sharply escalated international attention to proliferation and led to increased restrictions on nuclear exports to all nations, not just India.
The French government began to show increased concern about the Chashma plant during 1976. A safeguards agreement for France brought the plant before the IAEA in February 1976, which was approved on March 18 and signed by Pakistan. This at least ensured that the plant would have monitoring so that diversion to military purposes could be made with impunity. Despite Bhutto's overthrow in 1977 by General Zia, the latter continued the project unabated, and continued to press the French to fulfil the Chashma contract. But France had begun gradually turning against the reprocessing plant. In late 1977 the French proposed to Pakistan to alter the design of the plant so that it would produce a mixture of uranium and plutonium rather pure plutonium. This modification would not affect the plant's suitability for its declared purpose - producing mixed oxide fuel for power reactors - but would prevent its direct use for producing plutonium for weapons. Pakistan refused to accept the modification. But by that time Pakistan had received 95 percent of the detailed plans for the plant by SGN, and was thus in a position to secure components and build the plant itself, which it would later at KHUSHAB.
LAHORE: Dera Ghazi Khan region police are on high-alert following reports that the banned terrorist organisation Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has launched a new wing comprising highly-trained, well-equipped and ferocious militants, to specifically target the Punjab police personnel to make inroads into the province’s territory.
As per well-placed sources, at least three DG Khan check posts — Lakhani, Jhangi and Triman — situated in the hard tribal areas along the provincial borders, have especially become vulnerable because of the emerging threat of the new TTP wing.
Given the seriousness of the threat, various military and civil agencies have also been involved in devising a strategy to combat the TTP wing, which, the sources say, is responsible for some recent deadly attacks on the law-enforcement agencies personnel in Dera Ismail Khan in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP).
A senior official told Dawn on Sunday that the TTP, after launching the outfit named ‘Istrna’, which is focusing on targeted attacks on Punjab’s law enforcement agencies, has increased its influence and fear among the local tribal people.
DG Khan RPO confirms the existence of new TTP group
He says that initially, the group comprised only 10 to 12 militants, however, some recent intelligence reports suggest that its strength has now increased to around 50.
The official says the militants of Istrna wing used some local hostages as human shield to enter the DG Khan territory in an attack carried out on the Jhangi border post of Vohawa police station in Taunsa Circl early on last Tuesday, surprising the police. It was also reported that these militants were provided food supplies by some local tribal people, he adds.
He says that the intelligence sources have informed that the group has also made contacts with the notorious Ladi criminal gang in Kutcha area, inviting the criminals to join it to carry out attacks on police check posts.
The official further revealed that the militants planned attack on Jhangi check post after the KP police retreated 13 kilometres away from several border check posts located near DG Khan.
Sensing gravity of the situation, he say, the Pakistan Army has also increased its presence in the DI Khan’s troubled areas to counter the TTP wing, besides the BLA militancy. Taking notice of this group’s activities, he says that Additional IG, Punjab Counter Terrorism Department (CTD), Wasim Sial visited the DG Khan and held meetings with the police high-ups.
The official claims that the new TTP offshoot has also links with a militant group based in a neighbouring country.
He says that the brash attack on Jhangi check post has exposed the inadequacies of local police. He adds that the militants seem to be better equipped and have the latest ammunition, as compared to the local police.
He says that the DG Khan police have no Armoured Personnel Carrier (APC) for safe transportation of policemen to the combat zones and to check militants’ infiltration into Punjab’s tribal areas from DI Khan.
He says that the only APC being used by local police was brought from Rajanpur that was procured in the 1980s and is considered unsafe for transportation of personnel who have to fight the trained militants equipped with the latest arms in the complex hilly terrain of DG Khan.
DG Khan Regional Police Officer Sajjad Hussain Manj confirmed the existence of the new TTP group, saying that local police were using all available resources to trace and eliminate these militants.
Senior official says initially group comprised only 10 to 12 militants, however, some recent intelligence reports suggest that its strength has now increased to around 50.
The global upstream oil and gas sector ended 2023 on a weak note. Despite the geopolitical tensions and other factors like production cuts, oil prices remained lower during the year as compared to 2022 prices. And the outlook for 2024 has been somewhere near moderate growth.
The optimistic lot of the global market is eyeing moderate growth for the upstream oil a gas sector in 2024. This outlook comes despite the significant announcement in COP28 to move towards Net Zero as the proponents and producers of oil and gas sector believe that countries will continue to rely on oil and gas. This could be true as the demand for oil and gas is rising, which means that the supply will continue to propel to mee it. Deloitte in its outlook has highlighted that the oil and gas sector should prioritize low-carbon projects to navigate the changing demand landscape that will potentially be led by geopolitical uncertainty, global macro economy, policy and emergence of clean technologies.
The domestic oil and gas exploration and production sector has lost its shine over the years as it grapples with various challenges. The sector is marred with depleting reserves, declining production flows and smaller discoveries. While some of the slowdown in the sector is the natural decline in resources, the challenges that the sector faced in terms of policy inconsistency, policy redundancy and policy unattractiveness, circular debt accumulation along with security situation– and recently, the shortage of dollars - are factors that have aided the sector’s sluggishness. This can also be seen in flight of capital and foreign investment from the sector.
The sector’s profitability has mostly been driven by the path international oil prices have taken along with Rupee depreciation. As recent as FY23, the sector’s performance was marred with continued decline in oil and gas production despite higher oil prices. In 2024, the profitability of the upstream oil and gas sector is likely to soften due to lower hydrocarbon sales particularly that of natural gas. What hold positive for the sector are the expected energy sector reforms and the circular debt management plan. Also, the sector has witnessed eight new exploration licenses in the bid round towards the end of 2023, which will propel growth in the sector.