Iranian hackers shut down UK power plant for four daysHackers linked to Iran reportedly succeeded in shutting down a British power plant for four days in what is being described as an unprecedented cyberattack against the UK’s energy infrastructure. The targeted facility has not been identified, but British officials said it was a relatively small power station and that its shutdown did not affect the country’s wider electricity supply. Nevertheless, the incident is significant because it appears to mark the first known case in which hackers linked to the Iranian regime successfully forced a British power-generation facility offline. Employees spent four days restoring the plant to operation. The attack was reported to Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre, which operates under the GCHQ intelligence agency. Following the incident, the British government briefed senior energy executives and circulated additional security guidance to companies operating critical infrastructure.

DEATH TOLL FROM MYANMAR QUAKE CLIMBS TO MORE THAN 1K 2,376 people have been injured in the 7.7-magnitude earthquake, the largest to hit #Myanmar in more than a century. Special heavy machinery is now being used for search and rescue operations as electricity and Internet are down in parts of the country, including the capital Naypyidaw.

Syria's oil and gas comes with strategic potential #Syria has the potential to significantly increase its #oil and natural #gas production, which can provide energy and government revenue critical to the country's stability and reconstruction. Syria was an oil exporter in the decades prior to its civil war, and its natural gas production started to increase on the eve of the war. The country was self-sufficient in terms of energy supplies. Sales of oil and gas provided 20% of the government’s revenue. Most of Syria’s oil and natural gas fields are located in eastern Syria, in areas that are currently largely under the control of the predominately Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and where US forces are deployed. The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimated in 2015 that Syria possessed 2.5 billion barrels of proven oil reserves. In 2010, Syria produced 383,000 barrels per day of oil. Estimates of Syria’s oil output on the eve of Bashar al-Assad’s ouster range between 40,000–80,000 barrels per day, while Iran was providing the bulk of Syria’s oil supplies, up to 100,000 barrels a day. In 2015, the EIA estimated Syria’s natural gas reserves to be 240 billion cubic meters (bcm). Syria’s natural gas is used for power production. According to British Petroleum (BP), Syria produced 8.7 bcm of natural gas in 2011, which fell to 3 bcm annually by 2024. According to International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates, natural gas provided one-quarter of Syria’s electricity supplies in 2022.

Hungary and Slovakia consider cutting electricity supply to Ukraine if Kyiv continues blocking Russian oil supplies | #Hungary and #Slovakia could be headed to a major "soft war" against Ukraine involving energy | August 2, 2024: "Roughly 40 percent of Ukraine’s electricity imports pass through the Ukrainian-Hungarian border, which means Hungary is not entirely powerless in the face of a Ukrainian blockade on oil supplies. In fact, Hungary may be forced to cut electricity to its neighbor if push comes to shove. Olivér Hortay, head of Századvég’s climate and energy policy department, noted that Ukraine’s biggest energy problem is the electricity system. Since the start of the war, the country has lost three-quarters of its own electricity generation capacity, leading to Ukrainians having to deal with prolonged blackouts and cuts to production due to a lack of electricity. To deal with Ukraine’s faltering electricity network, the country has been importing energy from neighboring countries."

France shuts down two nuclear reactors over fire at Chinon NPP — authority Two reactors have been shut down after a fire broke out at the Chinon nuclear power plant (NPP) in western France, the French Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) said in a statement on its website. A transformer of Reactor 3 caught fire in a non-nuclear sector of the NPP in the early hours of Saturday. "The loss of main external electrical power to Reactor 3, following this fire, resulted in the automatic shutdown of the reactor," the statement said. It was reported that after the fire had been extinguished, Reactor 4, which shares a water collection system with Reactor 3, was also temporarily shut down to avoid water leaks into the environment. The Chinon NPP has four operating reactors, each with a capacity of 900 MWe, and its other three were shut down between 1973 and 1990. The operating water-water reactors were built between 1982 and 1987. In 2023, the Chinon NPP generated 17.24 TWh of electricity, which is equivalent to 5.4% of France’s total nuclear power production.