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Oil giant Shell denies plan to acquire rival BP in £60 billion merger
Shell issues statement rejecting claims of a £60 billion merger with BP, following media reports citing preliminary discussions
New Delhi
Oil and gas giant Shell on Thursday dismissed speculation that it is planning a takeover of British rival BP, following reports suggesting the companies were in early discussions for a landmark £60 billion merger.
In a press release, Shell clarified that it 'has not been actively considering making an offer for BP' and 'confirms it has not made an approach to, and no talks have taken place with, BP with regards to a possible offer'.
The response came after the Wall Street Journal published a report late Tuesday claiming that Shell was engaged in preliminary talks to acquire BP, in what would be the largest oil industry deal in decades. The article cited unnamed sources who said discussions were ongoing and that BP was weighing the proposal. If true, the merger would unite two of the largest global oil companies, potentially strengthening Shell's position against American energy titans such as ExxonMobil and Chevron.
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Indian Express
38 minutes ago
- Indian Express
Over 90 flights with more than 20,000 flyers had to be diverted: Qatar Airways CEO details how airline managed Iran missile crisis
When Qatar announced a sudden closure of its airspace Monday evening, shortly before Iran launched a volley of missiles at the US military base—Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar—over 90 Qatar Airways flights with more than 20,000 passengers were on their way to its hub Doha, and had to be diverted to airports in various countries, including 15 to India, the airline's chief executive Badr Mohammed Al Meer said in a letter to passengers, detailing how the global airline managed the crisis over the next two days. He described the crisis as 'an operational crisis few airlines will ever encounter, and one that 'challenged the very core of what it means to run a global airline'. The airspace closure snowballed into a major international disruption, given Qatar Airways' extensive network and Doha being a mega hub airport, where thousands of passengers transit daily. Iran's missile attack—in retaliation of American airstrikes at its nuclear facilities—led to other West Asian countries including the UAE, Bahrain, and Kuwait also shutting down their airspaces for a few hours, which deepened the disruption further. 'At the time (of the airspace closure), over 90 Qatar Airways flights carrying more than 20,000 passengers to Doha, were forced to divert immediately. 25 flights diverted into airports across Saudi Arabia, 18 into Turkey, 15 into India, 13 into Oman, and 5 into the United Arab Emirates. The remaining aircraft were re-routed to major hubs including London, Barcelona, and others across Europe, Asia, and the Middle East,' wrote Al Meer, terming the Qatari airspace closure as 'unexpected and unprecedented'. 'At around 18:00 local time on Monday, 23 June, an unexpected and unprecedented closure of Qatari airspace forced Qatar Airways to suspend global operations with immediate effect. Shortly after, airspace was also closed in Bahrain, the UAE, and Kuwait. Hamad International Airport (Doha), one of the world's busiest and most connected global hubs, was brought to a standstill, with almost 100 aircraft en route to Doha, several already on approach to our runways, and others lining up for departure,' he said. Scale of the disruption With all departures from Doha suspended until past midnight (Qatar time), the airline's 'routine, seamlessly synchronised global operation' was instantly scattered into dozens and dozens of disrupted flight scenarios across continents, 'each with their own complexities and requirements'. According to Al Meer, over 10,000 passengers were already in transit at the Doha airport when the disruption began, finding themselves caught in the middle of 'one of the most severe and complex operational challenges in modern aviation history'. 'Around the world, some of our flight crews had timed out of legal operating hours. Most of our fleet, including A380s carrying more than 450 passengers each, were now out of position, some grounded at airports with curfews. Several flights had to wait for clearance to re-enter restricted regional airspace. Aircraft routing plans were rewritten in parallel with passenger itineraries. Over 151 flights were immediately disrupted. Every part of the operation had to adapt in real time — without precedent, and without pause,' Al Meer wrote in the letter. He added that the priority for Qatar Airways was clear—to care for passengers impacted by the unprecedented situation, and to restore its global operations 'as safely and swiftly as possible'. Crisis mitigation efforts in Doha Once the Qatari airspace reopened shortly after midnight on Tuesday, the diverted aircraft began returning to Doha over the course of several hours. As a result, the number of passengers in transit at the Doha airport ballooned to over 22,000 by 5 am (Qatar time). 'As an airline, our business continuity plans were activated, and our teams coordinated on hard resource planning, catering, ground transport, hotel accommodation, and real-time alignment with passenger movements, immigration, customs, and every airport stakeholder. Over 4,600 customers were provided hotel accommodation, using approximately 3,200 rooms across Doha. Many of these passengers received onward boarding passes for their rescheduled flights before even leaving the terminal—allowing for a smoother re-entry once our operations resumed,' the Qatar Airways CEO said. Meanwhile at the Doha airport, Qatar Airways group teams got busy rebooking journeys, and even manually rebuilding complex travel itineraries—some involving other airlines, and even expired visas. The airline also decided to increase capacity to destinations with 'high volumes of displaced passengers'. 'Contact centre resources were scaled up to cope with global demand. We quickly established a flexible travel policy, allowing passengers who had not yet started their journeys to make changes or refund their bookings without fees. Across our global stations, ground handlers and partners moved quickly, supported by live coordination between our airport and airline operations control centres,' Al Meer said. Resumption of normal flight operations On Tuesday, Qatar Airways operated a total of 390 flights as it worked to restore the integrity of its flight schedule. Around 20,000 passengers from its disrupted flights were cleared within 24 hours, with more than 11,000 resuming their journeys on the morning of June 24, while the remainder departed through the evening that day and the morning of June 25. According to Al Meer, after that, there were no passengers from diverted flights that were still stranded. 'Within just 18 hours, our scheduled operations had resumed. Wave by wave, the system began to stabilise. By the end of Tuesday, more than 58,000 passengers had departed Doha—moved not by chance, but by a coordinated effort from across the Qatar Airways Group to fulfil our responsibility during this unprecedented disruption,' Al Meer said. The airline's operations stabilised further on June 25 with the operation of 578 flights. According to data from Cirium, an aviation analytics company, Qatar Airways normally has between 523 and 547 daily flights, depending on the day of the week. Sukalp Sharma is a Senior Assistant Editor with The Indian Express and writes on a host of subjects and sectors, notably energy and aviation. He has over 13 years of experience in journalism with a body of work spanning areas like politics, development, equity markets, corporates, trade, and economic policy. He considers himself an above-average photographer, which goes well with his love for travel. ... Read More
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First Post
42 minutes ago
- First Post
‘Daddy Trump': Why the spinmeister US president is the perfect leader for social media generation
I must admit being among the multitude of Indians with 84% positive rating, India was by far the most optimistic among nations looking forward to Donald Trump's second term in the White House – if not for anything else then the prospect of renewal of trust between India and the United States that took a beating during the Joe Biden interim. Not unlike others I had assumed, going by the history of warmth and friendship between Trump and Narendra Modi – two leaders for whom personal is political – that bilateral ties would shed some of the negativity and wrinkles that had crept in. I was wrong. There's something fundamentally different about Trump 2.0. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD The US president appears totally unhinged, unrestrained, disruptive, arrogant and reckless in this term, a bull on steroids in a China shop. Domestically, Trump is as secure as ever. The Democrats are still licking their wounds and appear in utter disarray to project any sort of meaningful Opposition to Trump's policies. It is in the area of diplomacy that Trump's actions are inviting scrutiny since his unfettered access to the might of American national security and foreign policy machinery is going hand in hand with an unnerving egotism, narcissism and transactionalism. All leaders are transactionalist in various degrees. What sets Trump apart is his fascinating amorality and complete inability to understand even token ethical constraints of the high office that he occupies. For instance, Trump cannot understand why he shouldn't invite '$Trump' memecoin buyers – the crypto token that he has floated – to a tour of the White House or host them for a private dinner at his club. In his view, any president that does not do so isn't smart enough. His MAGA base adores such 'unfiltered' approach. Since Trump is operating within the paradigm of little domestic oversight and uncontrolled executive power he can do whatever he wants, such as appearing disinterested in a conflict one day and barging in with B-2 bombers the next, inviting the army chief of a terrorist state for lunch at the White House and attempting to set up a meeting with the thrice elected prime minister of the world's largest democracy, or as professor Elizabeth N Saunders writes in Foreign Affairs, 'shipping noncitizens to prison camps in El Salvador, imposing sweeping tariffs on countries around the world, gutting congressionally mandated foreign aid commitments, bullying allies, courting autocrats, accepting lavish gifts from monarchies, deploying the military on the streets of American cities, and even marshaling the armed forces in a celebratory parade on his birthday.' In his second term, Trump appears to be a man in a hurry to cement his legacy, conscious of the fact that he probably has time till the midterms to do as he wants. Inside his head, he is constantly shadow boxing with Barack Obama, the two-time former president who received a Nobel Peace Prize. Trump says he deserves 'at least 5 or 6'. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD In as much as can be gleaned off Trump's 'unfiltered' actions, he prefers opportunism over a doctrinal approach and prioritises quick wins over intractable entanglements. He has the attention span of a toddler, shifts interests at the turn of a clock, pivots on a dime and has a pathological craving for attention, even if negative. However, he also loves to project strength, hates losing and won't hesitate to steal credit if that's what it takes to be perceived as a 'winner'. For instance, Indians can't understand why the US president remains fixated on pilfering credit for the ceasefire between India and Pakistan and lies relentlessly at every possible opportunity – 18 times by last count – that he 'engineered it through the promise of trade.' New Delhi has made it clear multiple times that Trump played no role in the ceasefire, and earlier this month, prime minister Modi categorically reminded the US president that 'due to India's firm action, Pakistan was compelled to request a cessation of military operations… and 'at no point during this entire sequence of events was there any discussion, at any level, on an India-US Trade Deal, or any proposal for a mediation by the US between India and Pakistan.' STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Still Trump persists. The reason is simple. Trump's obsession with claiming a moderator's role arises from his desperation to reinforce his self-created image of a 'peacemaker'. 'I stopped the nuclear war between India and Pakistan with a series of phone calls' sounds reasonably impressive, as can be expected from a 'stable genius' who 'can solve anything'. To drive home this message, which strengthens his credentials as a 'peacemaker' who deserves that Nobel, the US president has resorted to what we call the 'illusory truth effect', lying repeatedly and often enough for it to be perceived as 'truth'. Trump has an instinctive understanding of the laws of propaganda, and most of his foreign policy moves are intelligible if seen from the lens of MAGA politics. Trump was at The Hague Wednesday for the Nato summit where he compared the impact of American strikes on Iranian nuclear sites to the atomic bombing of twin Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On the face of it, such a comparison seems bizarre, but it isn't. It's actually quite logical. In Trump's mind, it is intended to convey that the destruction carried out by HIS BOMBS on Iran can only be compared to the obliteration caused by nuclear blasts on the Japanese cities. Faced with accusations that Iran's nuclear program has received only a relatively minor setback – through reports that cited leaked intelligence from America's own intelligence agencies – Trump unleashed the comparison as a weapon to settle the debate once and for all. It might seem frivolous and even onerous to the rest of the world that the bombing of an uninhabited nuclear site was being compared with the unspeakable human tragedy that befell the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but not Trump for whom the success of his bombing campaign on Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities – a veritable bragging right and a clincher for his role as the terminator of Iran's nuclear programme – is critical. The comparison is also meant to convey the importance of Trump's actions – just as the atom bombs ended World War 2, similarly, claims Trump, his bombs shaped the fate of Israel-Iran war. Such ostentatious contrasts also give us an indication on what Trump really thinks about the intelligence of his core supporters. 'Hiroshima', in this context, became a symbolic word for destruction, something Trump wanted to stress on, faced with the discomfort of a realization that the Iran problem might ultimately elude the quick fix that he has been promoting. The leaked intelligence report, albeit an early assessment, was carried by outlets such as CNN and New York Times that cited 'Defense Intelligence Agency', the Pentagon's intelligence arm, as saying that 'Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium was not destroyed.' CNN reported that 'centrifuges are largely intact' and that 'enriched uranium was moved out of the sites prior to the US strikes.' According to The New York Times, 'Before the attack, US intelligence agencies had said that if Iran tried to rush to making a bomb, it would take about three months. After the US bombing run and days of attacks by the Israeli Air Force, the report by the Defense Intelligence Agency estimated that the program had been delayed, but by less than six months.' This set off a catastrophic incendiary reaction from Trump and his top lieutenants and the world has been witnessing a steady stream of Trumpian rage through his social media platform, Truth Social. The US president has been raining fire on the journalists and the media platforms, screaming in all caps that: 'FAKE NEWS CNN, TOGETHER WITH THE FAILING NEW YORK TIMES, HAVE TEAMED UP IN AN ATTEMPT TO DEMEAN ONE OF THE MOST SUCCESSFUL MILITARY STRIKES IN HISTORY… THE NUCLEAR SITES IN IRAN ARE COMPLETELY DESTROYED! BOTH THE TIMES AND CNN ARE GETTING SLAMMED BY THE PUBLIC!' Trump kept up his diatribes even after 24 hours, name-calling CNN as 'DISGUSTING AND INCOMPETENT' and calling the journalists ' SOME OF THE DUMBEST ANCHORS IN THE BUSINESS!' Trump also dropped a parody song 'Bomb Iran,' over a video montage of B-2 bombers, on his Truth Social platform. The 1980 number by Vince Vance & the Valiants is a parody of a 1962 song by the Regents, and features lyrics such as: 'Ol' Uncle Sam's getting pretty hot, time to turn Iran into a parking lot', and 'Went to a mosque, gonna throw some rocks, tell the Ayatollah, 'Gonna put you in a box!' Bomb Iran.' Once again, these actions might seem frivolous, incoherent, and unbecoming of the dignity of the presidential office, but what Trump is doing here is sending across a message to his base and the world that he remains every bit the infallible leader, courageous and strong with incredible leadership skills – someone who cannot do wrong. This myth is central to Trump's appeal as a cultish leader. Whether or not Iran's nuclear programme has been 'obliterated', sent into oblivion or set back by a few years or months doesn't really matter. What matters is that Trump has said so, and facts must fall in line with his political needs. In many ways, in his instinctive understanding of AI-era traits such as algorithmic amplification, audience engagement, elements of cult indoctrination, inciting his base through provocation, emotional appeal and polarization, Trump is the perfect leader of the social media generation where 30 seconds is the height of human attention span. No wonders European leaders are falling on their knees, one by one, and calling him their 'daddy'.
Time of India
an hour ago
- Time of India
India, U.S. trade talks face roadblocks ahead of tariff deadline, Indian sources say
Live Events (You can now subscribe to our (You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel Trade talks between India and the U.S. have hit a roadblock over disagreements on import duties for auto components, steel and farm goods, Indian officials with direct knowledge said, dashing hopes of reaching a deal ahead of President Donald Trump 's July 9 deadline to impose reciprocal tariffs The deadlock marks a sharp shift from earlier optimism, following Trump 's claim that New Delhi had proposed a "no tariffs" agreement for American goods, and officials from both sides suggesting India could be among the first countries to strike a deal on the new U.S. is pushing for a rollback of the proposed 26% reciprocal tariff set to take effect on July 9, along with concessions on existing U.S. tariffs on steel and auto parts. But U.S. negotiators have not yet agreed to the demands, three Indian government officials told Reuters."The U.S. side first wants India to commit to deeper import tariff cuts on farm goods like soybeans and corn, cars and alcoholic beverages along with easing of non-tariff barriers," leading to disagreement between the two sides, one of the sources sources spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the confidentiality of the ongoing commerce ministry, the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi and the U.S. Trade Representative Office did not immediately respond to requests for Indian delegation is expected to travel to Washington before the deadline, although discussions may now focus on a broader agreement rather than a rushed interim deal, a second Indian government source Minister Narendra Modi is trying to position India as a key U.S. partner, seeking to attract U.S. firms like Apple, diversifying supply chains away from trade talks have struggled to make headway."We are keen, but not desperate to sign a deal before the July 9 deadline," the first source said, adding that India has offered tariff cuts on almonds, pistachios, walnuts, and was willing to extend preferential treatment for American imports in sectors like energy, autos and defence."There hasn't been much progress despite several rounds of talks," the second source the sources did not rule out a last-minute breakthrough if Modi and Trump choose to intervene TERM PARTNERSHIPDespite the impasse, Indian officials stress long-term commitment to the U.S. as a trusted economic partner, while maintaining policy and Trump agreed in February to conclude the first phase of a bilateral trade agreement by autumn 2025 and to expand trade to $500 billion by 2030, from about $191 billion in is also advancing talks with the European Union for a free trade pact later this year, and recently concluded talks for a FTA with the United Kingdom - moves aimed at hedging against potential U.S. policy shifts under Trump."The ball is now in the US court. India is not for any win-lose trade partnership," said Ram Singh, head of the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, a government funded in a worst-case scenario, a third official said, India could absorb the impact of reciprocal tariffs, citing its continued tariff advantage over competitors like Vietnam and exports to the U.S. rose to $17.25 billion in April-May, up from $14.17 billion a year earlier, suggesting the U.S. tariff hikes averaging 10% in early April had a limited impact.
