7.3 earthquake hits Mexico-Guatemala border with no immediate damage reported
A strong earthquake has struck the southern Mexican Pacific coast, right on the border with Guatemala
ByEDGAR H. CLEMENTE Associated Press
July 17, 2026, 9:10 AM
TAPACHULA, México -- A strong earthquake struck the southern Mexican
Pacific coast on Friday, right on the border with Guatemala, and was
felt from Mexico City to El Salvador. Authorities have not immediately
reported any severe damage or casualties in any country.
The
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) reported that the earthquake had a
magnitude of 7.3 with the epicenter 48 kilometers (30 miles) southwest
of Aquiles Serdan, near the coast of Chiapas and at a depth of 15
kilometers (9 miles). It was preceded by a smaller quake with an
epicenter a bit farther out in the ocean.
In Tapachula, the main city on Mexico’s southern border, the tremor began mildly but gradually intensified.
“We
were upstairs on the second floor when it started shaking; we thought
it would pass, but then it got stronger, so we all went downstairs and
evacuated in an orderly manner to the front courtyard,” Alejandra
Mendoza, an administrative employee at a public hospital in the city,
explained to The Associated Press.
In
Guatemala City, the earthquake frightened residents because of how long
it lasted. Many people poured into the streets in the middle of rush
hour as the workday was beginning.
In
the Mexican capital, where buildings in certain areas creaked and
shook, the earthquake alert did not sound because, the government said,
“the energy radiated by the earthquake during the first few seconds did
not exceed the activation thresholds.”
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum
said that preliminary reports showed no damage. The navy recommended
staying away from beaches for six hours because of tsunami risk.
In
the town of Suchiate, located along the river that separates Mexico
from Guatemala, coastal areas are being monitored for tsunami risk,
according to Mayor Elmer Vázquez Gallardo.
This isn't the first time this has happened that I have read about and it won't be the last. But, I think you would have to be pretty hefty not to notice that something in your body was changing in ways unusual. So, it must have been quite a surprise to have this baby instead of dying. So, she likely would be grateful to be alive after all this. However, what will happen to the child? That is another story about responsibility of how all this will be handled after the birth.
Putin has sent in 2 million Russian Troops (and mercenaries from other countries into Ukraine) who have become Cannon fodder and died there. Then Ukraine has destroyed 40% of the Capacity of Fuel processing in Russia which is causing untold Suffering of the Russian people as well as people throughout the world indirectly.
I'm wondering which is causing more havoc to the world oil supply? What's happening to Russia or what's happening to Iran?
But, the one thing is true is that Russia as a result of drones blowing up one after another of Russia's oil refineries and shutting down at least 40% of the capacity of them according to Europe, is that Russia has to sell it's oil now when it can ship it safely enough to get it to where they want it to go without Refining it. However, this also means that the Russian people not only don't have enough Gas or Diesel or Jet fuel for everyday life at a decent price because of all of this.
However, I don't think Putin can win this war against Ukraine because it is in the interests of EVERY country in Europe to Defeat Putin in Ukraine now and billions of EU dollars are now funding the extreme level of building drones and missiles to blow up even more refining capacity in Russia.
So, how will this all end? I'm not sure.
It's sort of like "What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?"
information
on how seriously the processing units at Russian refineries have been
damaged is scarce; officials prefer to keep quiet. In its own tally,
Novaya Gazeta Europe estimates that as of mid-June, roughly 40% of Russia’s refining capacity may already have been offline.
Russia is in the grip of a gasoline crisis that developed
in just a month, and there is no telling when it will end. Ukraine has
continued to batter Russian infrastructure with drones, above all the
country’s oil refineries. Officials are withholding information about
how badly Russia’s refineries have been hit. Under such conditions, the
fuel shortage can be gauged only indirectly — through commodity exchange
trading, for example. Meduza analyzed the available public data
to determine the scale of the crisis.
If you don’t need the background, skip straight to the third section (“How have Ukrainian strikes affected oil refining in Russia?”).
How does oil refining work in Russia? Are the refineries Ukraine is striking important?
An oil
refinery is an industrial facility that converts crude oil into
gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, fuel oil, bitumen, and feedstocks for other
products.
The
first stage is primary processing: crude oil is heated and separated
into fractions, from light gasoline components to heavy residues. Some
of the lighter fractions yield “light” petroleum products — gasoline,
diesel, and jet fuel — while the heavy residues form the basis for
“dark” products: fuel oil, bitumen, and marine fuel.
The
second stage is secondary processing, which extracts more “light” — and
more valuable — products from the heavy and intermediate fractions and
brings them up to the required quality. The more secondary units
a refinery has, the greater its refining depth.
Strikes
on refineries can therefore affect production in very different ways.
A damaged primary processing unit can immediately leave a refinery
unable to accept crude oil, let alone process it. Hits on secondary
units keep the refinery running but shift its output mix — it may, for
example, produce less gasoline of the required grade.
If drones strike a nearby rail hub or port, the plant keeps operating, but getting fuel to consumers becomes harder.
According to the latest official data from the Energy Ministry, Russia has:
39 commissioned refineries;
seven under construction;
one under reconstruction (a plant in Belgorod, which was shut down before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine);
42 in the design phase.
The number of refineries actually in operation is probably 35.
Here's the list
One
plant on the official list has already closed: NPK Kataliz in Angarsk,
which the Energy Ministry still lists as commissioned but which Russia’s
Unified State Register of Legal Entities records as liquidated. For
several small facilities — NP Nafta LLC in Angarsk, Krona LLC in the
Ulyanovsk region, and Tatneft’s Kichuyskaya industrial base in Tatarstan
— no public data exist on processing volumes or fuel shipments. Meduza
therefore based its assessment on the 35 refineries for which sufficient
open-source information is available.
Their
combined design capacity — the theoretical maximum they can process —
is about 302 million tons of oil per year. In practice, according
to Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, who oversees the fuel
sector, Russia’s refineries processed 266.5 million tons of oil in 2024,
producing 41.1 million tons of gasoline and 81.6 million tons
of diesel. In December 2025, Energy Minister Sergei Tsivilev said refining volumes for the year were expected to remain roughly at the previous year’s level.
The official estimate of domestic
demand is about 36 million tons of gasoline and 51 million tons
of diesel per year. Gasoline production in Russia is thus almost
entirely tied to the domestic market, while diesel carries a large
export surplus: after meeting domestic demand, a significant share
of output goes abroad. On July 8, the authorities banned diesel exports.
How do refineries sell gasoline? Does it go straight to gas stations?
Fuel leaves the refineries through more than one channel.
Most
of the market is controlled by vertically integrated oil companies —
groups that combine oil production, refining, logistics, and wholesale
operations, and most often their own networks of gas stations. These
include private companies such as Lukoil, Surgutneftegas, and RussNeft,
as well as state-owned Rosneft and Gazprom Neft.
Another
portion is sold under direct contracts to large consumers —
construction companies, airports, and agricultural operations, for
example.
In addition, a fixed portion of fuel must be listed on the St. Petersburg exchange (SPIMEX). Until July 2026, large producers, such as the vertically integrated oil companies, were required to sell at least 15% of their gasoline and 16% of their diesel there; amid the current crisis, the gasoline mandate was lowered to 10%.
For
gas stations independent of the major networks and companies, the
exchange is especially important — in practice, it is the only place
they can buy fuel to resell. According to data from
OMT-Konsalt, Russia had about 27,800 gas stations at the start of 2026,
roughly 65% of them independent. Together, they account for about
30–40% of the market.
Another category of exchange buyers comprises oil depots, small wholesalers, and traders, who purchase fuel for resale to independent gas stations and industrial clients such as utilities and logistics companies.
The
decision to lower the mandatory share of gasoline sold on the exchange
from 15% to 10% therefore looks double-edged. In theory, the government
is trying to stabilize the market — large producers will indeed be able
to route more fuel directly to their own gas stations. But for the
exchange, and by extension for independent gas stations and other
buyers, the pool of available fuel will shrink even further.
How have Ukrainian strikes affected oil refining in Russia?
Ukraine’s
armed forces are striking Russia’s fuel system as a whole. From January
1 through July 2, 2026, Meduza found at least 66 reports in open
sources of attacks on fuel and energy infrastructure — not only
refineries but also oil depots, terminals, and other facilities. The
main target, however, has been the refineries themselves: 44 of the 66
attacks.
The strikes are growing more frequent.
In January and February 2026, they were isolated episodes — Ukraine struck the Afipsky, Volgograd, Ukhta, and Ilsky refineries. By March, drone strikes were forcing shutdowns at major plants: on March 21, the Saratov refinery temporarily halted operations, and just days later, on March 26, so did Kinef in Kirishi, in the Leningrad region, one of the country’s largest refineries; it still is not operating at full capacity, following a subsequent strike.
In April, Ukraine struck across the entire refining chain, from plants to port logistics. Early in the month, Norsi in Kstovo (Nizhny Novgorod region), one of Lukoil’s largest refineries in European Russia, was hit. In mid-April, an attack on port
infrastructure in Tuapse forced the local refinery to shut down. Around
the same time, two Rosneft refineries in the Samara region — the Syzran and Novokuybyshevsk plants — were also struck. At the end of the month, Lukoil-Permnefteorgsintez was hit: reports first described a fire at a primary processing unit, and a few days later the plant shut down completely.
Strikes grew even more frequent in May. Mid-month, the Ryazan refinery suspended processing after a strike; then the Moscow refinery in Kapotnya — the most important plant supplying the capital region — was hit. On May 20, Ukraine’s General Staff again reported a strike on Norsi in Kstovo, saying a primary processing unit had been damaged. The following day, the Syzran refinery halted processing entirely. At the end of the month, the Volgograd and Saratov refineries also shut down.
The strikes peaked — at least so far — in June. The Moscow refinery was hit multiple times, and after the mid-month strikes it was reported that the plant may not resume operations until at least the end of 2026.
After the June 24 strike, Norsi in Kstovo ceased operations; on July 2, Ukraine’s General Staff reported a new strike on the same plant.
On July 6, Ukrainian drones struck the
Omsk refinery — Russia’s largest, located more than 2,000 kilometers
(1,240 miles) from the front line — for the first time. The strike may
have hit ELOU-AVT-11, one of the refinery’s key units: it is designed to process
8.4 million tons of oil and 1.2 million tons of gas condensate per year
— about 41% of the plant’s capacity. A second major primary processing
unit, AVT-10, was also reportedly damaged in the strike and has a capacity of 8.6 million tons of feedstock per year.
Krasnodar
Krai, Bashkortostan, and the Yaroslavl, Nizhny Novgorod, and Samara
regions recorded the most strikes in 2026. That is no coincidence:
European Russia is home to the large refineries that supply densely
populated regions, industrial centers, Moscow, and the country’s south.
According to Meduza’s reporting,
by early July, every single one of Russia’s largest refineries had been
struck. The last to be hit — in the first week of July — was the Omsk
refinery.
More
important than the strikes themselves, however, are their consequences.
When a primary processing unit — an AVT — is damaged, a refinery may
sharply reduce or completely halt its intake of crude oil. At smaller
refineries, a single such unit can effectively be the heart of the
plant, as happened at the Saratov plant when it was struck.
Larger
facilities have multiple units, but losing even one can sometimes cause
a significant drop in processing volumes. Reports on the strike against
the Moscow refinery described damage to AVT-6, which accounts for more
than half the plant’s capacity, while reports on the Taneco strike
described the shutdown of both primary processing units.
Ukraine’s
armed forces have also regularly carried out repeat strikes —
particularly damaging ones — against the same facilities. That has been
the case with the Moscow refinery, Norsi in Kstovo, and the Syzran
refinery.
Even a planned overhaul, prepared in advance, takes weeks
or months. After a strike, the scope of repairs is naturally less
predictable. In the best case, the downtime lasts a matter of days;
if a primary processing unit or a complex secondary unit is knocked out,
it can stretch into months. In Russia’s case, repairs are further
complicated because some specialized equipment is imported. The
Associated Press reported that,
because of sanctions, the search for spare parts and workarounds has
made restoring the plants even more expensive and time-consuming.
Information
on how seriously the processing units at Russian refineries have been
damaged is scarce; officials prefer to keep quiet. In its own tally,
Novaya Gazeta Europe estimates that as of mid-June, roughly 40% of Russia’s refining capacity may already have been offline.
In the
absence of detailed information, exchange trading data offer
an indirect way to gauge how much fuel is falling out of the market. The
data cannot show how much gasoline a given refinery produced, but they
can show something else: whether buyers had access to less fuel —
including fuel produced at a specific plant.
Meduza
examined SPIMEX trading data from January through early July 2026 — 118
trading days and 65,700 transactions in all. To gauge how far volumes
and prices had deviated from normal levels, Meduza separately collected
exchange bulletins for the same period in 2025 and compared the figures
month by month.
At the
level of the exchange as a whole, the picture tracks closely with the
chronology of the strikes. From January through March 2026, average
daily sales of gasoline and diesel combined held in the range of roughly
118,000–150,000 tons. In April, as strikes began hitting major
refineries in European Russia more often, the figure dropped to 104,000
tons per day. In May, it hovered around 106,000 tons, and in June, when
the strikes peaked, it fell to 80,300 tons per day.
For comparison: industry sources cited by Reuters estimated summer
gasoline consumption in Russia at no less than 110,000 tons per day,
while gasoline production in June, according to the same sources, fell
to around 90,000 tons per day.
The
chart below also shows that by June 2026, trading volumes had fallen
to 53% of their January level, while prices had risen to 146%.
The authorities’ decision to cut
the mandatory exchange quota from 15% to 10% does not explain this
decline: it took effect only on July 1, by which point fuel volumes
on the market had already fallen sharply.
The
year-on-year picture is just as revealing: the average daily trading
volume for gasoline and diesel is 38% below June 2025 levels, and the
weighted average price is 37% higher.
For
several major refineries, the data also allow a closer look at specific
delivery bases, not just the overall charts. A delivery base is the
point from which fuel is shipped to the buyer — the refinery itself,
a nearby rail station, or an oil depot. To measure the drop, Meduza
compared average daily exchange sales of gasoline and diesel over the 20
trading days before each strike with sales on the available trading
days afterward.
The sharpest collapse is visible at the
Moscow refinery. Before the June 16–18 strikes, sales from its delivery
bases averaged about 4,400 tons of gasoline and diesel per day. After
the strikes, the figure was about 400 tons per day — one-tenth as much.
At Taneco —
Tatneft’s large complex in Nizhnekamsk — sales from the plant’s
delivery bases fell by roughly 56% after the June 12 strike, while the
average exchange price of fuel from those bases rose by more than 50%.
A similar picture emerged at Norsi,
Lukoil’s Nizhny Novgorod refinery in Kstovo. On the exchange,
it is represented through the Kstovo/Zeletsino delivery bases (Zeletsino
is a rail station near Kstovo through which petroleum products can
be shipped). After the June 24 strike, sales from those bases fell
by roughly 63%.
At Kinef —
Kirishinefteorgsintez, Surgutneftegas’s large refinery in Kirishi,
in the Leningrad region — sales from the plant’s delivery bases after
the May strike were roughly 80% below their level over the 20 trading
days before the attack. And at the Samara group of refineries —
Rosneft’s Kuybyshev, Novokuybyshevsk, and Syzran plants — gasoline and
diesel sales were roughly 65% lower after the June strike than before it.
Under
normal circumstances, a drop in supply from one refinery can be offset
by deliveries from other plants, by stockpiles, or by export volumes
redirected to the domestic market. But when strikes come in waves and
hit several large refineries at once, compensating for the lost volumes
becomes harder. That is why May and June show two processes at once:
part of the supply vanishes from the exchange, and the fuel that remains
gets more expensive.
Amid the shortage, Russia has begun importing gasoline. Reuters reported
that at least 60,000 tons of gasoline were sent to Russia from India,
a country Russia supplies with oil, and that Moscow plans to import
roughly 400,000 tons monthly in total.
The restrictions, however, have not let up. In its fuel-crisis chronicle,
Meduza tracked how gasoline sales restrictions spread across the
regions almost in lockstep with June’s collapse in production and
exchange volumes. The restrictions — imposed region-wide in some places
and at individual gas station chains in others — now cover virtually the
entire country. The charts below show how they followed the Ukrainian
strikes.
According to Reuters data,
gasoline shipments from Belarus to Russia reached a record high in June
— 141,000 tons in the first 25 days of the month, 2.4 times the total
for all of May. Yet the fuel crisis has so far proved impossible to resolve:
the shortage is being felt ever more acutely, prices keep climbing, and
Russians are waiting in enormous lines for gasoline. In one
particularly stark (if by now unsurprising) case, a man in Chita spent 39 hours in line to fill his tank.
a fire burning this hot would disappear not only trees but also any animals, birds or humans nearby too. This remind me of some California Fires where there are Fire Tornadoes now that are this hot sort of like Smelter ovens melting metals. It is true that aluminum wheels melt now regularly off of cars and trucks on all these fires too when cars or trucks burn up. So, no living thing there is going to survive this kind of heat.
A
confluence of meteorological conditions made possible the days-long
system that brought torrential rain and flash flooding to central Texas,
experts told ABC News.
An
upper-level disturbance in the atmosphere contributed to the storm
system essentially sitting over Texas Hill Country, John Nielsen-Gammon,
a professor of meteorological sciences at Texas A&M University and the Texas state climatologist, told ABC News.
The
"unusually strong" upper-level ridge allowed for the system to have a
completely clockwise circulation, parking it over the region,
Nielsen-Gammon said.
The
disturbance then combined with a mesoscale convective vortex, a warm
low-pressure circulation, that pumped moisture from the tropical air
mass in the Gulf -- causing the system to dump heavy rain over the
region for multiple days, Marshall Shepherd, director of the Atmospheric
Sciences Program at the University of Georgia and former president of
the American Meteorological Society, told ABC News.
"It's really kind of an ideal setup from a rain production standpoint," Shepherd said.
Members of the Boerne Fire Dept. rescue a woman from flood waters, July 15, 2026, in Boerne, Texas.
Darren Abate/AP Photo
During
July, a lot of moisture is coming into the state of Texas due to the
low-level jet stream from the western Gulf of Mexico, Nielsen-Gammon
said.
The
Pacific also produces monsoonal moisture as well as cool air masses from
the north that converge to produce extreme rainfall events.
Heavy
rain that began in Texas Hill Country on Tuesday continued into
Wednesday and Thursday, prompting several flash flood alerts along
waterways like the Guadalupe River and Pedernales River.
Precipitation totals have exceeded 2 feet in some areas, Nielsen-Gammon said.
Hardest-hit regions of Texas flash flooding
Map Tiles by Google Earth
The
storm that killed at least 133 people over the Fourth of July weekend
last year was "very flashy," with an intense amount of rainfall in a
short amount of time, Nielsen-Gammon said. This storm had less intense
but more prolonged rainfall and was broader geographically, with flash
flood watches up and down the I-35 corridor, including the Rio Grande
and Texas plains, Shepherd said.
In addition, initial hydrographs indicate that the river levels may be higher this year, Shepherd said.
But
since the flooding took longer to develop, it may have provided more
time for people to "take action and protect themselves," Nielsen-Gammon
said.
Two people have died as a result of the flooding on Thursday, according to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
"Hopefully
we've learned some lessons, and people had more plans and knew what to
do," Troy Kimmel, a retired professor of meteorology for the University
of Texas and an incident response meteorologist for emergency
management, told ABC News.
Flooding blocks off G Street along the Guadalupe River, July 16, 2026, in Kerrville, Texas.
Joel Angel Juarez/AP Photo
Texas
Hill Country one of the most flood-prone regions in the U.S. Known as
"Flash Flood Alley," the region is susceptible to dangerous flooding
because of its landscape, in addition to the weather, according to the Texas Water Resources Institute (TWRI).
The "alley" features steep terrain, shallow soil and repeated high rainfall events.
Much
of the region, which stretches from Dallas to San Antonio and
encompasses the Colorado and Guadalupe River basins, is situated on a
floodplain between tall hills, which funnels any rainfall into rivers
and creeks and causes them to rise rapidly, according to the TWRI.
"From
a geography standpoint, that makes this area so absolutely beautiful.
It's why people love it, why we have so many campers out there along the
rivers and streams, out over the hill country," Kimmel said. "But,
frankly, it makes it that much more dangerous when these big events roll
along."
Water flows along the Guadalupe River, July 16, 2026, in Center Point, Texas.
Joel Angel Juarez/AP Photo
In
addition, the thin layers of clay soil -- with subsoil limestone layers
underneath -- do not absorb any moisture, Kimmel said.
Recent Stories from ABC News
"You have shallow soils and deep canyons, so it makes flooding very rapidly develop and dangerous," Nielsen-Gammon said.
