title: Religion in Bangladesh

text: About 1 million people in Bangladesh adhere to the Theravada school of Buddhism. Buddhists form about 0.63 per cent of the population of Bangladesh as per 2022 census.


title: Religion in Bangladesh

text: In antiquity, the region of present-day Bangladesh was a center of Buddhism in Asia. Buddhist civilisation, including philosophies and architecture, traveled to Tibet, Southeast Asia and Indonesia from Bengal. The Buddhist architecture of Cambodia, Indonesia and Thailand, including the Angkor Wat Temple and the Borobudur vihara, are believed to have been inspired by the ancient monasteries of Bangladesh such as the Somapura Mahavihara. Strange though it may now seem in such an overwhelmingly Muslim country, Buddhism has been no small player in the nation's history and culture.


title: Religion in Bangladesh

text: Most of the followers of Buddhism in Bangladesh live in the Chittagong division. Here, Buddhism is practised by the Bengali-speaking Baruas, who are almost exclusively Buddhist and are concentrated heavily in the Chittagong area as well as few of the Barua Buddhists live in other parts of Bangladesh, such as Comilla, Mymensingh, Rangpur, Sylhet districts. Most of the followers of Buddhism in Bangladesh live in southeastern region, especially in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Chittagong and Comilla district. Most of the Buddhists of Chittagong Hill Tracts belong to the Chakma, Marma, Mru, Khumi, Bawm, Chak, Kuki, Murang, Tanchangya and Khiang tribes, who since time immemorial have practised Buddhism. Other tribal communities who practise animism, have come under some Buddhist influence. The beliefs and rituals of the Buddhist communities in this region are amalgamations of Buddhism and ancient animistic faiths. Buddha Purnima is the most widely observed festival among both Bengali Buddhists and Buddhist tribes.


title: Religion in Bangladesh

text: Christianity arrived in what is now Bangladesh during the late sixteenth to early seventeenth centuries AD, through the Portuguese traders and missionaries. Christians numbering around 5 lakhs account for approximately 0.29 per cent of the total population and they are mostly an urban community. Roman Catholicism is predominant among the Bengali Christians, while the remaining are mostly Baptist and others. Few followers of Christianity are also present among certain indigenous tribal communities such as Garo, Santal, Orao, Chakma, khasi, Lushei, Bawm, etc.


title: Religion in Bangladesh

text: Bangladesh has a small community of the Baháʼí Faith. Baháʼís have spiritual centres in Dhaka, Chittagong, Khulna, Rajshahi, Sylhet, Barisal, Rangpur, Mymensingh, Jessore, Rangamati and other places.


title: Religion in Bangladesh

text: There are approximately 23,000 people adhering to the religion of Sikhism. The presence of this religion goes back to the visitation of Guru Nanak in 1506–07 with some of his followers to spread Sikhism in the region of the present-day Bangladesh. When some Bengali people accepted this faith, a Sikh community was born. This community became bigger when almost 10,000 Sikhs came from India during the Bangladesh Liberation War. This community has made great progress in the country. Today there are almost 10 gurdwaras in Bangladesh. Among them only 7 are well-known, especially the Gurdwara Nanak Shahi beside the University of Dhaka in Dhaka, which was built in 1830, the oldest gurdwara in Bangladesh.


title: Religion in Bangladesh

text: East Bengal (present-day-Bangladesh) had a population of 39.12 million by the year (1941), of which 27.5 million people were followers of Islamic religion representing about (70.3%) of the region's population, while 10.95 million belongs to the Hindu faith constituting (28%) of the region. Smaller number of 6.65 lakhs people follows Buddhism, Animism and Christianity together presenting around (1.7%) of the region.


title: Religion in Bangladesh

text: After 1974, East Pakistan became sovereign nation of People republic of Bangladesh. During that time the population of Bangladesh was found to be 68.7 million, of which majority of 58.7 million people professed to Islamic Faith comprising 85.4% of the country's population, Hindus are second largest community with a population of 9.28 million comprising 13.5% of the country's population, while 1.1% practices other religions like Buddhism and Christianity.


title: Religion in Bangladesh

text: Before the Partition of Bengal, it was found that the Muslim population of West Bengal stood at 26% and the Hindu population of East Bengal stood at 28% respectively. Soon after partition, Muslim population in West Bengal have reduced from 26% in 1941 to 19% in 1951, while Hindu population in East Bengal have reduced from 28% in 1941 to 22% in 1951.


title: Religion in Bangladesh

text: It is estimated that during the time of Bangladesh liberation war, an estimated population of around 10 million people most being 80% Hindus fled from East Pakistan to neighbouring India as refugees following the torture of Pakistani army, and after independence nearly an estimated population of 1.5-2 million Hindus stayed back in India and never went back.


title: Religion in Bangladesh

text: Bangladesh declared itself a secular state with its birth in 1971. Secularism was chosen as one of the four pillars that were to guide official policy of the nation. To certain extent Bangladeshi people were "secular". Secularism in Bangladesh means pluralism of religious faiths as opposed to more expansive definitions of the term. Tajuddin Ahmad, Provisional Prime Minister of Bangladesh (1971-72) have meet with a Buddhist delegation. According to a report in the Bangladesh Observer, the prime minister declared that Bangladesh would be a "completely secular state without state religion and would ensure absolute freedom to every religious beliefs and practices. He said that the state would never interfere in the matter of any religion but at the same time he said it would not allow anybody to exploit the people in the name of religion," like mixing of religion with politics which can be seen in theocratic state like Pakistan. On 12 October 1972, while participating in a discussion in parliament on the draft of the constitution, Banagabandhu literally Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the 1st Prime Minister of Bangladesh who was once a devout member of Muslim league has said: "We Bangladeshis believe in secularism. Secularism does not mean the absence of religion. Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Buddhists everyone will perform their own religion. No one can interfere with others’ religious beliefs. The people of Bangladesh do not want interference in religion." "He further said that Religion cannot be used for political reasons. Religion will not be allowed to be used in Bangladesh for political purposes. He believed that if anyone does it, the people of Bangladesh will retaliate against them,". But soon after his death, the original constitution was changed in 1978 with installment of the phrase "absolute trust and faith in the Almighty Allah" as 5th amendment of the constitution by Ziaur Rahman government in order to replace secularism as a state principle. The military dictator who followed Rehman, Hussain Muhammad Ershad, went one step further and declared Islam as the official religion in 1988. Bangabandhu's party, the Bangladesh Awami League, once again came to the power in January 2009 with the promise to restore the 1972 constitution. They partially did so through the 15th Amendment to the constitution in 2013 but they kept Islam as the state religion. In 2010, Bangladesh Supreme Court declared the 5th amendment illegal and restored secularism as one of the basic tenets of the Constitution though Islam remained the state religion in the constitution.


title: Religion in Bangladesh

text: The main principles of Secularism in the Bangladeshi constitution were described under article 12 of Part- (II) -


title: Religion in Bangladesh

text: Islam is the state religion of Bangladesh by article 2A but this article came into direct conflict with the article 12 of part- (II) of 2nd stanza which states that "The state should not grant political status in favour of any religion" as secularism has been defined as one of the four fundamental principles of Bangladesh. Article (2A) of the constitution also state's that "the state shall ensure equal status and equal right in the practice of the Hindu, Buddhist, Christian and other religions" while giving a special status to Islam which have led to a huge controversy regarding the country's foundation.


title: Religion in Bangladesh

text: The Supreme Court of Bangladesh on 28 March 2016 upheld the status of Islam as the State religion. The ruling was given by the High Court Division of the court while dismissing a petition which was almost about 28 years ago, filed by Samendra Nath Goswami challenging Islam as the religion of republic which directly contradicts with secular foundation of the nation. Petition was also held earlier by Professor Anisuzzaman, one of the leaders of the petitioning organisation who said that Bangladesh was founded as a secular state, and having a state religion contradicts the basic structure of the constitution,".


title: Religion in Bangladesh

text: Although Bangladesh initially opted for a secular nationalist ideology as embodied in its Constitution, the principle of secularism was subsequently replaced by a commitment to the Islamic way of life through a series of constitutional amendments and government proclamations between 1977 and 1988. During the eighties, the state was designated exclusively Islamic. However, in 2010, the secularism of the 1972 Constitution was reaffirmed. The Government generally respects this provision in practice; however, some members of the Hindu, Christian, Buddhist, and Ahmadiyya communities experience discrimination. The Government (2001-2006), led by an alliance of four parties (Bangladesh Nationalist Party, Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, Islami Oikya Jote and Bangladesh Jatiyo Party) banned the Ahmadiyya literature by an executive order.


title: Religion in Bangladesh

text: Family laws concerning marriage, divorce, and adoption differ depending on the religion of the person involved. There are no legal restrictions on marriage between members of different faiths.


title: Religion in Bangladesh

text: A survey, commissioned by WIN-Gallup International, conducted from 5 November 2014, to 25 November 2014, found that fewer than one per cent of Bangladeshi's said they were "convinced Atheists".


title: Religion in Bangladesh

text: In Bangladesh several people especially bloggers, secularists, liberals, non-religious, Non-Muslims have been brutally killed by Islamic militants for mocking and questioning Islam. Jihadist Islamic militants in the nation are seen as a key challenge by the Bangladeshi authorities. The Islamist terrorism was imported into Bangladesh in the early 1990s by the jihadist returnees of the Soviet–Afghan War, who wanted to turn Bangladesh into a full-fledged Islamic state ruled by the Islamic law or Sharia law with 100 percent Muslim population.


title: 9M14 Malyutka

text: The 9M14 Malyutka (; "Little one", NATO reporting name: AT-3 Sagger) is a manual command to line of sight (MCLOS) wire-guided anti-tank guided missile (ATGM) system developed in the Soviet Union. It was the first man-portable anti-tank guided missile of the Soviet Union and is probably the most widely produced ATGM of all time—with Soviet production peaking at 25,000 missiles a year during the 1960s and 1970s. In addition, copies of the missile have been manufactured under various names by at least six countries.


title: 9M14 Malyutka

text: Although they have been supplanted by more advanced anti-tank guided missiles, the Malyutka and its variants have seen widespread use in nearly every regional conflict since the 1960s.


title: 9M14 Malyutka

text: Development began in July 1961 with the government assigning the project to two design teams: Tula and Kolomna. The requirements were:


title: 9M14 Malyutka

text: The designs were based on the Western ATGMs of the 1950s, such as the French ENTAC and the Swiss Cobra. In the end, the prototype developed by the Kolomna Machine Design Bureau, who were also responsible for the 3M6 Shmel, was chosen. Initial tests were completed by 20 December 1962, and the missile was accepted for service on 16 September 1963.


title: 9M14 Malyutka

text: The missile can be fired from a portable suitcase launcher (9P111), ground vehicles (BMP-1, BRDM-2) and helicopters (Mi-2, Mi-8, Mi-24, Soko Gazelle). The missile takes about five minutes to deploy from its 9P111 fibreglass suitcase, which also serves as the launching platform.


title: 9M14 Malyutka

text: The missile is guided to the target by means of a small joystick (9S415), which requires intensive training of the operator. The operator's adjustments are transmitted to the missile via a thin three-strand wire that trails behind the missile. The missile climbs into the air immediately after launch, which prevents it from hitting obstacles or the ground. In flight, the missile spins at 8.5 revolutions per second—it is initially spun by its booster, and the spin is maintained by the slight angle of the wings. The missile uses a small gyroscope to orient itself relative to the ground; as a result, the missile can take some time to bring back in line with the target, which gives it a minimum range of between . For targets under 1,000 m, the operator can guide the missile by eye; for targets beyond this range the operator uses the eight-power, 22.5-degree field of view, 9Sh16 periscope sight.


title: 9M14 Malyutka

text: The engagement envelope is a , 45-degree arc centered on the missile's launch axis. At ranges under , this arc reduces until, at the range, the missile can only hit targets either side of the center line. Accuracy falls off away from the launch axis—falling to approximately half its optimal accuracy at the extremes.


title: 9M14 Malyutka

text: While early estimates of the missile hitting the target ranged from 60 to 90%, experience has shown that it can drop to an efficiency between 2 and 25% in case of less than optimal conditions and lack of skill from the operator. In fact, MCLOS requires considerable skill on the part of the operator, nevertheless, the weapon has always been quite popular with its operators and has enjoyed a constant updating effort both in the Soviet Union/Russia and in other countries.


title: 9M14 Malyutka

text: The two most serious defects of the original weapon are its minimum range of between (targets that are closer cannot be effectively engaged) and the amount of time it takes the slow moving missile to reach maximum range—around 30 seconds—giving the intended target time to take appropriate action, either by retreating behind an obstacle, laying down a smoke-screen, or by returning fire on the operator.


title: 9M14 Malyutka

text: Later versions of the missile addressed these problems by implementing the much easier to use guidance system (though only available for ground vehicle and helicopter mounts), as well as upgrading the propulsion system to increase the average flight speed. The latest updates feature tandem-charge warheads or standoff probes to counteract explosive reactive armor, as well as thermal imaging systems. Even in these latest versions, the Malyutka is probably the most inexpensive ATGM in service today, with a unit cost far less than that of more advanced systems.


title: 9M14 Malyutka

text: In Soviet service, the man-portable version was deployed as part of the anti-tank platoon of motor rifle battalions. Each platoon had two "Malyutka" sections, each with two teams. Each team had two launcher stations. One assistant gunner in each team served as an RPG-7 gunner. The RPG-7 was needed to cover the 500 meter deadzone created by the minimum range of the missile.


title: 9M14 Malyutka

text: On 23 April 1972, the recently organized Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) 20th Tank Regiment was attacked by the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) employing the 9M14M Malyutka anti-tank guided missile for the first time. The 20th was the only South Vietnamese armor unit equipped with the M48 Patton tank. This first employment of the Malyutka destroyed one M48A3 and one M113 armored cavalry assault vehicle (ACAV), and a second ACAV was damaged.


title: 9M14 Malyutka

text: During this engagement with the weapon, the ARVN tankers appeared fascinated by the missile's slow and erratic flight, but through experience, they soon deployed countermeasures against the weapon system. Upon launching by the enemy, ARVN crewmen would fire all their weapons towards the missile's firing position, which would make the gunner flinch and lose control of his missile. Although the gunner could take cover away from the launch site, the joystick control wire only allowed 15 meters of clearance. During the engagement, the ARVN eventually lost eight tanks to the 9M14M missile, but had developed tactics to defend themselves against it.


title: 9M14 Malyutka

text: During the Battle of Kontum (1972), 33 missiles were fired and 32 hit, destroying four tanks, two howitzers, six bunkers and seven other targets.


title: 9M14 Malyutka

text: During the Battle of Cửa Việt (1973), the PAVN put up fierce resistance to the attack, destroying 26 M48s and M113s with 9M14 missiles.


title: 9M14 Malyutka

text: Throughout the war, PAVN gunner Dao Van Tien fired 134 missiles and 130 hit, destroying 23 tanks and APCs, 12 howitzers, 27 bunkers and 17 other targets.


title: 9M14 Malyutka

text: The missile was employed by Arab armies during the initial phases of the Yom Kippur War. Later in the war, the Israelis adopted new tactics and learned to neutralize the threat by employing large concentrations of artillery fire to either distract or kill the missile operators. Other improvised methods used by the Israelis to defeat the Malyutkas involved firing in front of the tank to create dust, moving back and forth and firing at the source of the missile. These Israeli tactics were later adopted by NATO forces to counter the threat posed by Warsaw Pact ATGMs. In total, Malyutkas knocked out more than 800 Israeli tanks and other combat vehicles during the war.


title: 9M14 Malyutka

text: Syrian rebels have also uploaded videos of themselves firing Malyutkas against government forces since late 2012.


title: Death of Alexis Martínez

text: Alexis Martínez (died December 24, 2009) was an orca trainer at Loro Parque’s "Orca Ocean" in the Canary Islands, who was killed by a SeaWorld-owned orca, Keto.


title: Death of Alexis Martínez

text: Loro Parque (Spanish for "parrot park") is a zoo located on the outskirts of Puerto de la Cruz in Tenerife. The park has the world's largest indoor penguin exhibition and the longest shark tunnel in Europe and is one of only two parks in Europe to house killer whales.


title: Death of Alexis Martínez

text: In 2004 and 2005, before the first four orcas were brought to Loro Parque, eight animal trainers from the park were sent to SeaWorld parks in Texas and Florida for training. Four SeaWorld orcas were delivered by wide-body cargo plane in February 2006, and various SeaWorld staff occasionally traveled to Loro Parque. Regular contact was maintained at several levels, such as remote monitoring capability via "Orca Ocean's" video surveillance system. By December 2009, SeaWorld had leased four killer whales to Loro Parque.


title: Death of Alexis Martínez

text: Alexis Martinez, age 29, had worked at Loro Parque since 2004. He was killed during a Christmas show rehearsal when he was attacked by one of the orcas, Keto.


title: Death of Alexis Martínez

text: Keto pulled Alexis under water and then rammed him in his chest. He died of massive internal bleeding and injuries.


title: Death of Alexis Martínez

text: The park initially characterized the death as an "accident" and claimed that the body showed no signs of violence, but the subsequent autopsy report stated that Martinez died due to grave injuries sustained by an orca attack, including multiple compression fractures, tears to vital organs, and the bite marks of the animal on his body.


title: Death of Alexis Martínez

text: According to an Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission Decision and Order in 2012, Keto was not responding to the operant conditioning signals given:


title: Death of Alexis Martínez

text: On December 24, 2009, exactly two months before Tilikum killed Dawn Brancheau, Loro Parque trainer (Alexis Martínez) was working with Keto, a killer whale owned by SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment. During a training session, Keto pulled Alexis under water and then rammed him in his chest. A. M. died of massive internal bleeding (Tr. 408).


title: Death of Alexis Martínez

text: A SeaWorld employee described the event in an incident report. After Keto failed to perform a number of behaviors correctly, Alexis and Keto were floating on the surface of the pool: Keto came up with [Alexis.] and appeared calm but did appear to position himself between [Alexis] and the stage. [Alexis] waited for calmness from Keto and asked for a stage call (underwater tone). Keto responded and was received at stage by Brian. . . . Brian instructed [Alexis] to swim out (toward the slideover). When [Alexis] commenced swimming (sculling) Keto began leaning toward him. Brian attempted another hand target but Keto left control and engaged [Alexis] by pushing him to the bottom with his rostrum. Brian observed the intensity of the situation and decided to initiate a hand slap. Keto did not respond. Brian tapped the bucket, then hand slapped again. It appeared Keto responded, came to the surface for a breath. The alarm was sounded. Keto immediately after taking a breath returned to [Alexis] and then resurfaced near stage with [Alexis] on his rostrum and with his mouth closed. (Exh. C-6, p. 2725). Keto released A. M., who sank to the bottom of the pool. Mr. Rokeach and the Loro Parque trainers were eventually able to get Keto to enter another pool, where Keto could be isolated while Alexis’ body was recovered. While the gate was closing Keto began to play with it, keeping it open. After trainers released a net into the pool, Keto allowed the gate to close. Mr. Rokeach entered the stage pool and retrieved Alexis' body from the bottom.


title: Death of Alexis Martínez

text: SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment temporarily suspended waterwork in all of its parks immediately following Alexis' death, then resumed waterwork shortly afterwards. Loro Parque ceased (apparently permanently) all waterwork with killer whales (Tr. 563-564).


title: Death of Alexis Martínez

text: During the local investigation into the death of Alexis Martinez, it came to light that the park had also mischaracterized to the public a 2007 incident with Tekoa, the other male, and claimed it was also an accident rather than an attack.


title: Death of Alexis Martínez

text: The Canary Islands Ministry of Work and Immigration asserts that water work with orcas is an “inherently risky activity”, the main risk being “precisely in the interaction with an animal that weighs more than three thousand kilos and is also in its natural environment (water)”. It asserts that the only preventive action is a simple one: “prohibition of the activity.”


title: NBA salary cap

text: The NBA salary cap is the limit to the total amount of money that National Basketball Association teams are allowed to pay their players. Like many professional sports leagues, the NBA has a salary cap to control costs and benefit parity, defined by the league's collective bargaining agreement (CBA). This limit is subject to a complex system of rules and exceptions and is calculated as a percentage of the league's revenue from the previous season. Under the CBA ratified in July 2017, the cap will continue to vary in future seasons based on league revenues. For the 2022–23 season, the cap is set at $123.655 million.


title: NBA salary cap

text: The majority of American leagues (NFL, NHL, MLS) have hard caps while the NBA has a soft salary cap. Hard salary caps forbid teams from going above the salary cap. Soft salary caps allow teams to go above the salary cap, but will subject such teams to reduced privileges in free agency. Teams that go above the luxury tax cap are subject to the luxury tax (a tax on every dollar spent over the luxury tax cap).


title: NBA salary cap

text: The NBA had a salary cap in the mid-1940s, but it was abolished after only one season. The league continued to operate without such a cap until 1984–85 season, when one was instituted in an attempt to level the playing field among all of the NBA's teams and ensure competitive balance for the League in the future. Before the cap was reinstated, teams could spend whatever amount of money they wanted on players, but in the first season under the new cap, they were each limited to $3.6 million in total payroll.


title: NBA salary cap

text: Under the 2005 CBA, salaries were capped at 57 percent of basketball-related income (BRI) and lasted for six years until June 30, 2011. The next CBA, which took effect in 2011, set the cap at 51.2 percent of BRI in 2011–12, with a 49-to-51 band in subsequent years.


title: NBA salary cap

text: To ensure the players get their share of the BRI, teams are required to spend 90 percent of the salary cap each year. The salary cap for the 2022–23 season is $123.655 million (minimum team salary, which is set at 90 percent of the Salary Cap, is $111.290 million).


title: NBA salary cap

text: In December 2016, the league and the players' union reached a tentative agreement on a new CBA, with both sides ratifying it by the end of that month. The new agreement will run through the 2023–24 season, with either side able to opt out after the 2022–23 season.


title: NBA salary cap

text: Unlike the NFL and NHL, the NBA features a so-called soft cap, meaning that there are several significant exceptions that allow teams to exceed the salary cap to sign players. This is done to allow teams to keep their own players, which, in theory, fosters fan support in each individual city. By contrast, the NFL and NHL salary caps are considered hard, meaning that they offer relatively few (if any) circumstances under which teams can exceed the salary cap. The NBA and MLS version of the "soft" cap does, however, offer less leeway to teams than that of Major League Baseball. MLB allows teams to spend as much as they want on salary, but it penalizes them a percentage of the amount by which they exceed the soft cap. The percentage increases as the number of consecutive years a team exceeds the cap grows, resetting only when a team falls under the cap. Other penalties related to the MLB draft can also apply effective with the 2018 team payrolls.


title: NBA salary cap

text: While the soft cap allows teams to exceed the salary cap indefinitely by re-signing their own players using the "Larry Bird" family of exceptions, there are consequences for exceeding the cap by large amounts. A luxury tax payment is required of teams whose payroll exceeds a certain "tax level", determined by a complicated formula, and teams exceeding it are punished by being forced to pay bracket-based amounts for each dollar by which their payroll exceeds the tax level.


title: NBA salary cap

text: While most NBA teams hold contracts valued in excess of the salary cap, few teams have payrolls at luxury tax levels. The tax threshold in 2005–06 was $61.7 million. In 2005–06, the New York Knicks' payroll was $124 million, putting them $74.5 million above the salary cap, and $62.3 million above the tax line, which Knicks owner James Dolan paid to the league. Tax revenues are normally redistributed evenly among non-tax-paying teams, so there is often a several-million-dollar incentive to owners not to pay the luxury tax.


title: NBA salary cap

text: The luxury tax level for the 2008–09 season was $71.15 million. For the 2009–10 season, the luxury tax level was set at $69.92 million. The luxury tax level for the 2010–11 and 2012–13 NBA seasons was $70,307,000.


title: NBA salary cap

text: The 2011 CBA instituted major changes to the luxury tax regime. The previous CBA had a dollar-for-dollar tax provision system, which remained in effect through the 2012–13 season. Teams exceeding the tax level were punished by being forced to pay one dollar to the league for each dollar by which their payroll exceeded the tax level. Starting in 2013–14, the tax changed to an incremental system. Under the current system, tax is assessed at different levels based on the amount that a team is over the luxury tax threshold. The scheme is not cumulative—each level of tax applies only to amounts over that level's threshold. For example, a team that is $8 million over the tax threshold will pay $1.50 for each of its first $5 million over the tax threshold, and $1.75 per dollar for the remaining $3 million. Starting in 2014–15, "repeat offenders", subject to additional penalties, are defined as teams that paid tax in previous seasons. In the first season, repeat offenders from in all previous three seasons paid a stiffer tax rate; from 2015 to 2016 thereafter, teams paying taxes in three out of four years are subject to the higher repeater rate. As in the previous CBA, the tax revenue is divided among teams with lower payrolls. However, under the new scheme, no more than 50% of the total tax revenue can go exclusively to teams that did not go over the cap. Initial reports did not specify the use of the remaining 50% under the 2011 CBA, but it was later confirmed that this amount would be used to fund revenue sharing for the season during which tax was paid.


title: NBA salary cap

text: For the 2013–14 season, the luxury tax threshold was set at $71.748 million. The Brooklyn Nets, whose payroll for that season was projected to be over $100 million, would face a luxury tax bill above $80 million, resulting in a total payroll cost of $186 million.


title: NBA salary cap

text: Because the NBA's salary cap is a soft one, the NBA allows for several important scenarios in which a team can sign players even if their payroll exceeds the cap. The exceptions are as follows:


title: NBA salary cap

text: Once a year, teams can use a mid-level exception (MLE) to sign a player to a contract for a specified maximum amount. The amount of the MLE and its duration depend on the team's cap status. In the 2017 CBA, the MLE was initially set at $8.406 million in the 2017–18 season for teams that are over the cap either before or after the signing, but under the luxury tax apron, set at $6 million above the tax line. Teams can use this exception to offer contracts of up to four years. Teams above the apron have an MLE initially set at $5.192 million, allowing contracts of up to three years. Teams with cap room, which were ineligible for the MLE before the 2011 CBA, have an MLE initially set at $4.328 million that allows two-year contracts. In subsequent seasons, all MLE amounts will be determined by applying the percentage change of the salary cap to the previous exception amount.


title: NBA salary cap

text: Before the 2011 NBA, the MLE was equal to the average NBA salary for all teams over the cap; teams with cap room were then ineligible for the MLE. The Mid-Level Exception for the 2008–09 NBA season was $5.585 million. The MLE was $5.854 million for the 2009–10 NBA regular season.


title: NBA salary cap

text: Under the 2017 NBA, the apron was initially set at $6 million above the tax line for the 2017–18 season. In a new feature, the apron changes from season to season, with the percentage change (up or down) set at half of the rate of change of the cap for that season.


title: NBA salary cap

text: The bi-annual exception can currently be used by teams below the apron to sign a free agent to a contract starting at $3.29 million. Like the mid-level exception, the bi-annual exception can also be split among more than one player, and can be used to sign players for up to two years; raises were originally limited to 8% per year, but in the 2017 CBA are limited to 5%. This exception was referred to as the "$1 million exception" in the 1999 CBA, although it was valued at $1 million for only the first year of the agreement.


title: NBA salary cap

text: An example of the bi-annual exception was the Los Angeles Lakers' signing of Karl Malone to a contract before the 2003–04 season.


title: NBA salary cap

text: The exception was eliminated for teams above the tax apron following the 2011 NBA lockout as many high spending teams were using this as a tool to gain top paid players.


title: NBA salary cap

text: A team cannot use this exception in consecutive years; a team that used it in 2016–17 (under the 2011 CBA) could not use it in 2017–18 (under the 2017 CBA). It also cannot be used by a team that has already used an MLE in the same season. Additionally, once a team uses the bi-annual exception, the tax apron becomes a hard salary cap for the remainder of that season.


title: NBA salary cap

text: The NBA allows teams to sign their first-round draft choices to rookie "scale" contracts even if their payroll exceeds the cap.


title: NBA salary cap

text: The 2017 CBA introduced two-way contracts between NBA teams and players in the NBA G League (formerly the D-League). Before the 2017 CBA, all D-League players were contracted directly with the league, and all D-League players could be called up by any NBA team, regardless of whether they were affiliated with the player's D-League team. Now, each NBA team can sign two players to contracts that allow them to assign the players to the G League without risk of being "poached" by another NBA team. The players signed to such deals benefit by receiving a considerably higher salary than other G League players while in that league, as well as earning a prorated share of the NBA minimum rookie salary for each day they are with their contracted NBA team. Salaries of two-way players are not included in salary cap calculations. Additionally, a team can convert a two-way contract to a standard NBA contract at any time, with the player's salary becoming the NBA minimum for the player's years of service, prorated from the time of the conversion; a converted contract also does not count in cap calculations.


title: NBA salary cap

text: Related to the two-way contract, and also introduced in the 2017 CBA, is an attachment to the standard NBA contract known as Exhibit 10. A contract that contains this attachment may be converted to a two-way contract at the team's option. Exhibit 10 can be used only in one-year, non-guaranteed contracts for the minimum NBA salary, with no bonuses except for an "Exhibit 10 bonus" of $5,000 to $50,000. The bonus is paid if the player is waived by his NBA team, signs with the G League, is assigned to that NBA team's G League affiliate, and remains with the affiliate at least 60 days. The bonus is not counted against the salary cap, but is counted in overall league salaries. Each NBA team is limited to six active contracts that contain Exhibit 10 at any given time.


title: NBA salary cap

text: Perhaps the most well-known of the NBA's salary cap exceptions is the Larry Bird exception, so named because the Boston Celtics were the first team permitted to exceed the salary cap to re-sign one of their own players (in that case, Larry Bird). Free agents who qualify for this exception are called "qualifying veteran free agents" or "Bird Free Agents" in the CBA, and this exception falls under the terms of the Veteran Free Agent exception. In essence, the Larry Bird exception allows teams to exceed the salary cap to re-sign their own free agents, at an amount up to the maximum salary. To qualify as a Bird free agent, a player must have played three seasons without being waived or changing teams as a free agent. Players claimed after being amnestied have their Bird rights transferred to their new team. Other players claimed off waivers are not eligible for the full Bird exception, but may qualify for the early Bird exception. Prior to an arbitrator ruling in June 2012, all players that were waived and changed teams lost their Bird rights. This means a player can obtain "Bird rights" by playing under three one-year contracts, a single contract of at least three years, or any combination thereof. It also means that when a player is traded, his Bird rights are traded with him, and his new team can use the Bird exception to re-sign him. Since the 2011 CBA, Bird-exception contracts can be up to five years in length, down from six under the 2005 CBA.


title: NBA salary cap

text: The lesser form of the Larry Bird exception is the "early Bird" exception. Free agents who qualify for this exception are called "early qualifying veteran free agents", and qualify after playing two seasons with the same team. Players that are traded or claimed off waivers have their Bird rights transferred to their new team. Prior to an arbitrator ruling in June 2012, all players that were waived and changed teams lost their Bird rights. Using this exception, a team can re-sign its own free agent for either 175% of his salary the previous season, or the NBA's average salary, whichever is greater. Early Bird contracts must be for at least two seasons, but can last no longer than four seasons. If a team agrees to a trade that would make a player lose his Early Bird Rights, he has the power to veto the trade.


title: NBA salary cap

text: A much-publicized example for this was Devean George, who vetoed his inclusion into a larger trade during the 2007–08 season that would have sent him from the Dallas Mavericks to the New Jersey Nets.


title: NBA salary cap

text: "Non-qualifying free agents" (those who do not qualify under either the Larry Bird exception or the early Bird exception) are subject to the non-Bird exception. Under this exception, teams can re-sign a player to a contract beginning at either 120% of his salary for the previous season, or 120% of the league's minimum salary, whichever amount is higher. Contracts signed under the Non-Bird exception can last up to four years (down from six under the 2005 CBA).


title: NBA salary cap

text: Teams can sign players for the NBA's minimum salary even if they are over the cap, for up to two years in length. In the case of two-year contracts, the second-season salary is the minimum salary for that season. The contract may not contain a signing bonus. This exception also allows minimum-salary players to be acquired via trade. There is no limit to the number of players that can be signed or acquired using this exception.


title: NBA salary cap

text: Ordinarily a team cannot engage in a trade which would leave it $100,000 above the salary cap, regardless of whether the trade reduces or increase its overall payroll, and requires exceptions in order to do so. The traded player exception is one of such.


title: NBA salary cap

text: The exception allows a team to trade for any player, or number of players, as long their collective incoming salary does not exceed a set amount, which is based on whether if the team pays the luxury tax after the trade, and the collective outgoing (of the players the team is trading away) salary. Taxpaying teams can absorb up to 125% of the outgoing salary + $100,000, and for non-taxpayers the amount is as follows:


title: NBA salary cap

text: Also, if a team trades away players with higher salary than of the players they acquire in return, the traded player exception allows them to acquire players with salaries not exceeding such difference + $100,000, for up to one year after the trade in which they acquired such a credit.


title: NBA salary cap

text: Allows a team that is over the cap to acquire a replacement for a disabled player who will be out for either the remainder of that season (for in-season injuries/deaths) or the next season (if the disability occurs during the offseason). The maximum salary of the replacement player is either 50% of the injured player's salary, or the mid-level exception for a non-taxpaying team, whichever is less. This exception requires an NBA-designated doctor to verify the extent of the injury. Under the 2005 CBA, a team could sign a player under this exception for five years; since the 2011 CBA, it has been allowed only for one year.


title: NBA salary cap

text: Note that while teams can often use one exception to sign multiple players, they cannot use a combination of exceptions to sign a single player.


title: NBA salary cap

text: A player banned from the league for a drug-related offense who is reinstated may be re-signed by his prior team for a salary up to his previous salary.


title: NBA salary cap

text: The maximum player salary is based on the number of years that player has played and the total of the salary cap. The maximum salary of a player with 6 or fewer years of experience is either $25,500,000 or 25% of the total salary cap (projected for 2017–18), whichever is greater. For a player with 7–9 years of experience, the maximum is $30,600,000 or 30% of the cap, and for a player with 10+ years of experience, the maximum is $35,700,000 or 35% of the cap. There is an exception to this rule: a player is able to sign a contract for 105% of his previous contract, even if the new contract is higher than the league limit.


title: NBA salary cap

text: The 2017 CBA made a subtle change to the determination of maximum salaries. Under the 2011 CBA, the salary cap was based on players receiving 44.74% of the league's basketball-related income (BRI), while the calculation of maximum salaries used a lower figure of 42.14% of BRI. This difference was eliminated in the 2017 CBA, with the same 44.74% of BRI used for both cap and maximum salary calculations.


title: NBA salary cap

text: First-round draft choices are assigned salaries according to their draft position. The first overall pick receives more than the second pick, the second more than the third, and so on. Each contract is for two years, with a team option for the third and fourth seasons (CBAs before 2011 provided for three-year contracts with an option for the fourth season), with built-in raises every year to compensate for increases in the average salary. A team may elect to exceed rookie scale for a drafted player that was unsigned for which they retained his draft rights three seasons after the draft. The contract would be for at least three seasons, with a maximum value up to the team's available cap room.


title: NBA salary cap

text: Second-round picks are not subject to a scale, and technically can be paid anywhere from the minimum to the maximum contract amount. In practice, they rarely receive more than the minimum.


title: NBA salary cap

text: Prior to the 2017 CBA, the rookie scales for each season were negotiated into the agreement. For the current agreement, only the rookie scales for the 2017–18 season were determined in advance. In subsequent seasons, the percentage change in the salary cap will be applied to all dollar amounts in the previous season's scale. Amounts that are expressed as a percentage of salary, such as the allowable salary change from the third to the fourth season of the rookie contract, remain the same from season to season.


title: NBA salary cap

text: Since the 2011 CBA, each NBA team has been able to nominate a player on his rookie contract to receive a "Designated Player" contract extension. A Designated Player is eligible for a five-year contract extension, instead of being held to the standard four-year restriction. From 2011 through the 2016–17 season, a team could only allocate a single Designated Player contract at any one time (if a team had already extended a rookie contract by using the Designated Player extension, they could not create a second Designated Player contract until the current contract expired, or until the player moved to a different team); however the 2011 CBA allowed teams to sign a second Designated Player from another team in addition to the one they already had. All teams were limited to having a maximum of two Designated Players contracted on their roster at any time (one which they had created from one of their own rookie contracts, and one acquired from another team).


title: NBA salary cap

text: Under the 2017 CBA, the "Designated Player" limit remained at two, but in a new feature, teams are now able to create Designated Player contracts from their own veteran contracts. In addition, teams may now use their Designated Player slots on any combination of their own rookie contracts, their own veteran contracts, or players acquired in trades.


title: NBA salary cap

text: A Designated Player coming off his rookie contract may be eligible to earn 30% of the salary cap (rather than the standard 25%) if he attains certain criteria. Through the 2017–18 season, in order to be eligible, the player must be voted to start in two All-Star Games, or be named to an All-NBA Team twice (at any level), or be named MVP. Officially titled the "5th Year 30% Max Criteria", it has been dubbed (and is more commonly known as) the "Derrick Rose Rule" after the 2011 MVP, due to the fact that when the criteria were introduced, Rose was the only player in the NBA eligible to sign the maximum extension (due to his MVP award). The reasoning for the rule is to suitably reward players being extended off their rookie contract who are considered to be of a higher "caliber" than their peers, without restricting them to the lower (25%) salary level. A player may sign a "5th Year, 30% Max" contract before the final year of his rookie contract and before fulfilling the criteria needed to receive the 30% salary grade. Should the player fail to fulfill the criteria before the start of his Designated Player contract, he will receive the standard five-year, 25% Designated Player contract. James Harden of the Brooklyn Nets and Anthony Davis of the Los Angeles Lakers had such a clause in their contract extensions, but both failed to meet the criteria. The only player in the NBA who was attempting to qualify for a full 30% contract in 2013–14 was Paul George, who signed a provisional 30%/5 year contract in September 2013. George, who had made the All-NBA third team in 2012–13, qualified by again making the All-NBA third team.


title: NBA salary cap

text: The 2017 CBA changed the qualification criteria for "5th Year, 30% Max" contracts. Players who come off rookie contracts at the end of the 2017–18 season, or later, must meet any of the following criteria to qualify:


title: NBA salary cap

text: These criteria are identical to those for the veteran player extensions introduced in the 2017 CBA. Had these criteria been part of the 2011 CBA, Rose would still have qualified for a 30% contract, as he was in his third NBA season when he was named MVP.


title: NBA salary cap

text: Kevin Love was eligible for a designated player contract, but the Minnesota Timberwolves opted for a 4-year contract (with a player option year included, potentially allowing him to become an unrestricted free agent) instead. During Kevin Durant's final five seasons with the Oklahoma City Thunder (2011–2016), he received a Designated Player level salary. His contract was initially drawn up before the lockout—during which the Derrick Rose Rule was implemented—but was officially approved under the provisions of the 2005 CBA by the NBA after the lockout. This led some people to question whether the Thunder had (with NBA approval) effectively signed two players as their Designated Player, as both were contracted for 5 years.


title: NBA salary cap

text: The provision in the 2017 CBA that allows teams to create Designated Player contracts for their own veteran players, officially known as the "Designated Veteran Player Extension" (DVPE), came to be called the "Kevin Durant Rule" because it was seen as a reaction to a wave of veteran superstars leaving their teams in free agency, capped off by Durant's departure from the Thunder to the Golden State Warriors in the 2016 offseason. The contract is also commonly called "The Supermax". The 2011 CBA allowed all of the teams that were trying to lure Durant to offer him the same initial salary of $26.5 million.


title: NBA salary cap

text: For a veteran player to qualify for such an extension, he must be entering his eighth or ninth season in the NBA, and have either:


title: NBA salary cap

text: Additionally, the team offering the extension must have originally drafted the player, or obtained him in a trade while he was on his rookie contract.


title: NBA salary cap

text: Players who qualify can be offered contracts with a starting salary between 30 and 35% of the salary cap. The extension cannot last more than five years after the expiration of the player's current contract (or five years for a player who is a free agent when signed), but can be negotiated and signed one year before the current contract expires. The extension can be offered to a team's own free agent as well as a player with time left on his contract. Additionally, once a player signs a DVPE, he cannot be traded for one year.


title: NBA salary cap

text: Ironically, while the rule was intended to encourage star players to stay with their current teams, the first major move by an NBA team involving a player eligible for the DVPE was the Sacramento Kings' trade of DeMarcus Cousins to the New Orleans Pelicans during the 2017 All-Star break. Cousins' contract with the Kings was not set to expire until 2018, but he was eligible to sign a DVPE after the 2016–17 season for up to $209 million over five years, a financial commitment that the Kings were apparently unwilling to make.


title: NBA salary cap

text: By the end of the 2018–19 season, "Sports Illustrated" writer Andrew Sharp began a story on the supermax rule with the following sentence: "If you've been paying attention to the NBA for the past two years, it goes without saying that the NBA's "supermax" contracts have been a failure." First, he noted that supermax money was not enough to discourage superstars on small-market teams from seeking to join title contenders, even for noticeably less money. Sharp argued that the rule in fact created more problems than it solved:Teams who develop and retain homegrown superstars will find themselves rewarded with uniquely-bloated salary caps and stiff luxury tax payments. Meanwhile, superstars who decide to stay loyal will be asked to spend their prime with shorthanded rosters and handicapped front offices.


title: NBA salary cap

text: Sharp's colleague Rohan Nadkarni questioned the DVPE eligibility criteria, as key players like Klay Thompson and Karl-Anthony Towns are not eligible despite their excellent performances.


title: NBA salary cap

text: Following the announcement of the 2016–17 All-NBA team, four players were eligible to sign DVPE contracts during the 2017 offseason. All four were named to one of the three All-NBA teams for that season; two were already eligible under the new criteria.


title: NBA salary cap

text: Harden and Westbrook would not have qualified under the standard DVPE criteria because both signed extensions to their contracts in the 2016 offseason, Harden for two years and Westbrook for one. The players' union and owners negotiated a special dispensation allowing them to sign DVPE contracts should they otherwise qualify.


title: NBA salary cap

text: The next player to qualify for a supermax contract was Anthony Davis, who at the time had played his entire NBA career with the New Orleans Pelicans. He qualified by being named to the All-NBA first team in , enabling the Pelicans to offer him a five-year extension worth up to $230 million, effective with the 2019–20 season. Davis also became the first player to publicly turn down a supermax offer, notifying the Pelicans during the 2018–19 season that he would not accept a supermax deal and also requesting a trade. Davis would ultimately be traded to the Los Angeles Lakers after the 2018–19 season.


title: NBA salary cap

text: During the 2019 season, four further players qualified for supermax deals. Damian Lillard and Kemba Walker both qualified to immediately sign supermax deals by making a 2018–19 All-NBA Team. While Giannis Antetokounmpo would not have become a free agent until the 2021 offseason, he became eligible to sign a supermax deal in 2020 by making All-NBA Teams in both 2017–18 and 2018–19; he would later meet another supermax criterion by being named the 2019 MVP. Rudy Gobert became eligible by claiming Defensive Player of the Year honors for the second straight season. The Charlotte Hornets did not offer Walker a supermax deal, instead sending him to the Boston Celtics in a sign-and-trade deal in the 2019 offseason. Gobert signed a five-year extension with the Utah Jazz in the 2020 offseason, but chose not to take the full supermax of $228 million, instead opting for $205 million to give the team more cap room.


title: NBA salary cap

text: The first player to sign a supermax contract was Stephen Curry, who agreed to a new five-year DVPE deal with the Warriors, worth $201 million, that runs through the 2021–22 season. Curry signed the contract once the NBA's free agency moratorium ended on July 6, 2017.


title: NBA salary cap

text: Shortly thereafter, James Harden agreed on a DVPE with the Rockets. At the time of signing, his current contract had two years remaining with total pay of $59 million; the extension added another $170 million over four seasons, ending in 2022–23.


title: NBA salary cap

text: The next supermax signing was that of John Wall, who agreed later in July to a four-year, $170 million extension that began in 2019–20. In late September, Russell Westbrook became the fourth and final supermax signing of the 2017 offseason, signing a five-year, $205 million extension that started in 2018–19.


title: NBA salary cap

text: Damian Lillard agreed to a four-year, $196 million extension with the Portland Trail Blazers during the 2019 offseason. The extension starts in 2021–22 and includes a player option for 2024–25.


title: NBA salary cap

text: The largest supermax signing was that of Giannis Antetokounmpo, who agreed to a five-year, $228 million extension with the Milwaukee Bucks during the 2020 offseason. The extension starts in 2021–22 and includes a player option for 2025–26.


title: NBA salary cap

text: The cap also includes a provision to close a potential loophole that would provide incentives for teams to skirt the cap by signing an older player to a long-term deal that would not end until after the team expects the player to retire. Cap analyst Larry Coon outlined how this potential loophole would work:For example, suppose the Non-Taxpayer Mid-Level exception is $9 million. With 5% raises, a three-year contract would total $28.35 million. But if they added a fourth year to the contract, the salary would total $38.7 million. If the player retires after three seasons and continues drawing his salary for the additional season, then he effectively will be paid $38.7 million for three years' work. In essence, they are giving the player a three-year contract with additional deferred compensation.


title: NBA salary cap

text: To address this issue, CBAs since at least the 1990s have included what is now called the "over-38 rule", under which certain contracts that extend past the player's 38th birthday are presumed to cover seasons following the player's expected retirement. The age threshold that triggered this rule was originally set at 35, changed to 36 in the 1999 CBA, and changed again to 38 in the 2017 CBA. The salary for any years that come after the player's 38th birthday is presumed to be deferred compensation, and is shifted for cap purposes to the under-38 seasons of the deal, with the over-38 year(s) being referred to as "zero years" in the CBA. If the player continues to play under the deal (proving the presumption of retirement wrong), the salary that had originally been treated as deferred is distributed evenly over the remaining years of the contract, starting with the second season before the zero years. This rule had been a larger issue before the 2011 CBA, which limited the maximum contract length to 5 years.


title: NBA salary cap

text: While the threshold age was changed in the 2017 CBA, the mechanics of the rule remained the same. Notably, several members of the union's executive committee at the time the 2017 CBA was negotiated were older players who were seen as potential major beneficiaries of a change to an over-38 rule. For example, the change to an over-38 rule gave union president Chris Paul, scheduled to become a free agent after the 2016–17 season, a potential gain of nearly $50 million over the life of his next contract. Similarly, executive committee members LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony, who could opt out of their current contracts after the same season, had the potential for similar gains with this change.


title: NBA salary cap

text: Many NBA contracts are structured with options for either the player or the team. An option simply gives the party that controls the option the right to extend the contract for one more season at a salary no less than the prior year's amount.


title: NBA salary cap

text: There are two types of free agency under the NBA's Collective Bargaining Agreement: Unrestricted and Restricted. Rather than spending salaries on teams like Major League Baseball, the NBA has a policy that strictly prohibits it using the salary cap in that fashion.


title: NBA salary cap

text: A restricted free agent is subject to his current team's Right of First Refusal, meaning that the player can be signed to an offer sheet by another team, but his current club reserves the right to match the offer and keep the player. An offer sheet is a contract offer of at least two years made by another team to a restricted free agent. The player's current club has three days to match the offer or they lose the player to the new team; the CBA prior to 2011 allowed seven days.


title: NBA salary cap

text: For first-round draft picks, restricted free agency is only allowed after a team exercises its option for a fourth year, and the team makes a Qualifying Offer at the Rookie-scale amount after the fourth year is completed. For any other player to be a restricted free agent, he must be at most a three-year NBA veteran, and his team must have made a Qualifying Offer for either 125% of his previous season's salary or the minimum salary plus $200,000, whichever offer is higher.


title: NBA salary cap

text: Teams are limited in what they can offer an unrestricted free agent with two years or less experience. The maximum first-year salary in an offer sheet is the mid-level exception. The second-year salary can be raised a maximum of 4.5%. The third year salary is limited to the maximum a team has available in their salary cap. The salary in the fourth season may increase (or decrease) by up to 4.1% of the salary in the third season. The offer sheet can only increase in the third season if it provides the highest salary allowed in the first two seasons, the contract is fully guaranteed, and it contains no bonuses. A player's original team can use the Early Bird exception or their Mid-Level exception to re-sign the player.


title: NBA salary cap

text: If the raise in the third season is greater than 4.5% of the first year, the offering team must be able to fit the average of the entire contract under their cap. Through the 2016–17 season, the accounting was different for the player's original team, where the player's salary for a given year—not the contract's average—was counted against the cap. In some cases, the offering team could exploit a loophole to create what is referred to as a "poison pill" for the player's original team, potentially forcing the original team to pay the luxury tax by the third season, as the Houston Rockets did in order to sign Jeremy Lin and Ömer Aşık away from the New York Knicks and Chicago Bulls, respectively. This could discourage them from matching the offer sheet.


title: NBA salary cap

text: The 2017 CBA changed the accounting rules for the player's original team in this scenario. If the original team matches, and has enough cap space to absorb the average annual salary of the offer, it can choose to take cap hits of either the actual contract payouts or the average of the contract in each season.


title: NBA salary cap

text: Before the 2005 CBA, the original team could only use an exception to re-sign a player who had been drafted in the first round. The 2005 CBA allowed teams to use exceptions on non-first-round picks, with the extension named the "Gilbert Arenas Rule". In 2003, Gilbert Arenas, who had been a second-round pick in 2001, signed a six-year, $60 million contract with the Washington Wizards after his original team, the Golden State Warriors, were unable to match the offer since they were over the salary cap.


title: NBA salary cap

text: Players on a team's season-ending roster remain under contract with their respective team until the start of the new league year on July 1. From 6 pm Eastern Time (UTC−4) on June 30 and through the first few days of July, teams may begin negotiating with free agents, but trades cannot be made and most free agents cannot be signed; this is known as the "moratorium period". Contracts that are allowed during this period are limited to:


title: NBA salary cap

text: During the moratorium, teams are restricted from commenting on deals. Teams and players can reach verbal agreements, but they are not binding. Contracts can be signed once the moratorium ends. In 2015, DeAndre Jordan had reached a verbal agreement to sign with the Dallas Mavericks, but changed his mind at the end of the moratorium and re-signed with the Los Angeles Clippers. A year later, the moratorium period was shortened from 10 to 5 days in what was unofficially called the "DeAndre Jordan Rule". The change was intended to discourage parties from backing out of their agreements.


title: NBA salary cap

text: The end of a free agent's contract does not remove him from a team's cap calculations. During the free agency period (from July 1 until the player signs with a team, or the free agent's former team renounces its rights), each free agent carries a specified salary cap charge for his last team, most often called a "cap hold". Normally, the cap hold can be no more than a player's maximum salary, or less than his minimum salary, based on years of service. The only exception is for free agents who made the minimum salary in the previous season; if the league reimbursed the team for a portion of his salary in the last season of his contract, the reimbursement is not counted in the cap hold. Apart from these restrictions, the cap hold varies based on the status of the free agent and his salary in the previous season:


title: NBA salary cap

text: When a team is willing to sign an upcoming free agent, but the player's current team wants something in return, it might be in the best interest of both clubs to execute a sign-and-trade deal. This occurs when one team signs one of its free agents and immediately trades that player to another team. A sign-and-trade is beneficial to both the player and the teams; the player receives a bigger contract than he might ordinarily get from a team that he would like to play for, while the trading club gets something in return for a free agent, and the recipient of the trade gets the player they desire. Sign-and-trades are a reality in the NBA because of the CBA's rules: unlike baseball, where teams losing free agents are compensated with draft picks or cash, NBA teams that lose free agents receive no compensation.


title: NBA salary cap

text: When a team initiates a sign-and-trade agreement, it "must" trade the signed player immediately; teams cannot renege on the arrangement and keep the player for themselves, using the other team's financial situation to leverage the signee into a more favorable deal for themselves. Also, the contract signed before the trade must be for at least 3 years, with the first year guaranteed. Because of the contract length requirement, the signing team cannot use an exception that cannot be used to offer a contract of 3 or more years.


title: NBA salary cap

text: Since the 2011 CBA, the signed player must have been on the roster of his previous team at the end of the last regular season. Previous agreements allowed teams to sign-and-trade any player to whom they held Bird rights, which do not automatically disappear with a player's retirement—for example, in July 2012, the Los Angeles Lakers still held Bird rights to John Salley, who had not played since . In the , two teams used sign-and-trades on players who had been out of the league. The Dallas Mavericks signed Keith Van Horn out of retirement as part of a package to acquire Jason Kidd, and the Lakers did the same with Aaron McKie to facilitate their deal for Pau Gasol.


title: NBA salary cap

text: The 2011 CBA put further restrictions on sign-and-trades, with these restrictions maintained in the 2017 CBA. Since the 2013–14 season, the payroll of the receiving team cannot exceed the so-called "apron" (as of 2017–18 set at $6 million above the tax line) as a result of the trade, and a team that has used the taxpayers' MLE cannot receive a player in a sign-and-trade in that season. Additionally, the apron becomes a hard salary cap for the first season after the signing. Teams above the apron before the trade cannot receive a player unless the trade leaves the team below the apron.


title: NBA salary cap

text: The tight salary-matching rules of the 2005 CBA often required what NBA cap analyst Larry Coon called "trade ballast"—extra players added to a deal solely for salary matching, who would typically be waived by their new teams. Under that CBA, such players were restricted from rejoining their original teams for 30 days during the season or 20 days in the offseason. This led to what Coon called "wink-wink deals where players are traded with the full expectation of returning later." A notable example of such a deal occurred in the 2009–10 season, in which the Cleveland Cavaliers included Zydrunas Ilgauskas in their trade with the Washington Wizards for Antawn Jamison. Ilgauskas was waived a week later without ever appearing in a game for the Wizards, and re-signed with Cleveland after the 30-day waiting period passed. Since the 2011 CBA, a player acquired in a trade and waived by his new team cannot re-sign with his original team until one year after the trade or July 1 after the expiration of his contract, whichever is sooner.


title: NBA salary cap

text: Certain players in the first few months of a new contract are subject to base year compensation (BYC). The intent of BYC is to prevent teams from re-signing players to salaries specifically targeted to match other salaries in a trade (in other words, salary should be based on basketball value, not trade value). A BYC player's trade value as outgoing salary is 50% of his new salary, or his previous salary, whichever is greater. BYC applies only to players who re-sign with their previous team and receive a raise greater than 20%. It also applies only when (and as long as) the team is over the salary cap. Since the 2011 CBA, players subject to BYC cannot be traded before January 15 except in a sign-and-trade, and BYC is only applied to outgoing salary in sign-and-trade deals.


title: NBA salary cap

text: NBA teams can release a player to the waiver wire, where he can stay for 48 hours (during the regular season). While he is on waivers, other teams may claim him, for his existing salary. If he is not claimed, he is said to have "cleared waivers", and is treated like any free agent, able to sign with any team (with the special restriction noted above for players who were traded and then waived).


title: NBA salary cap

text: Players waived after March 1 are not eligible to be on a team's playoff roster. The deadline was March 23 during the lockout-shortened 2011–12 season.


title: NBA salary cap

text: Released/waived players with guaranteed contracts continue to be included in their former team's payroll. Players whose contracts are guaranteed are included in team salary in the amount they made while they were with the team. Players on non-guaranteed "summer contracts" are not included in team salary unless they make the regular season roster.


title: NBA salary cap

text: If another team signs a released player who had a guaranteed contract (as long as the player has cleared waivers), the player's original team is allowed to reduce the amount of money they still owe the player (and lower their team payroll) by the right of set-off. This is true if the player signs with any professional team—it does not even have to be an NBA team. The amount the original team gets to set off is limited to one-half the difference between the player's new salary and a pro-rated share of the minimum salary for a one-year veteran (if the player is a rookie, then the rookie minimum is used instead).


title: NBA salary cap

text: Both the 2005 and 2011 CBAs contained a so-called "stretch" provision regarding payment of guaranteed money to waived players and its effect on the salary cap; the 2011 provisions were kept in the 2017 CBA.


title: NBA salary cap

text: Under the 2005 CBA, players and teams could alter the schedule of payments to waived players by mutual agreement. The remaining guaranteed salary was equally spread across the remaining years of the player's contract.


title: NBA salary cap

text: The 2011 CBA dramatically changed this regime. While contracts signed under the 2005 CBA remained under the original scheme, different rules apply to contracts signed since the 2011 CBA went into effect. Today, when a team waives a player, it can spread the remaining guaranteed salary (and its accompanying cap hit) over twice the remaining length of the contract, plus one year. According to Coon, "if a team has an underperforming player with one season remaining at $12 million, the team can waive him and stretch his salary across three seasons at $4 million per season."


title: NBA salary cap

text: The NBA Amnesty Clause provided franchises a means of escaping a contractual obligation to a player whose performance falls far short of the extremely large salary they initially agreed to pay him.


title: NBA salary cap

text: Under the 2005 CBA, one player could be waived prior to the start of the 2005–06 season and not count toward the luxury tax. Unlike the 2011 CBA, the player still counted under the salary cap. The 2005 amnesty provision was derisively named the "Allan Houston Rule", but his team, the New York Knicks, did not actually use the measure on Houston—they instead applied it to Jerome Williams because Allan Houston later retired for medical reasons the same season. Jerome Williams would retire from the NBA just two days after being waived under the amnesty clause for the Knicks that season.


title: NBA salary cap

text: Under the 2011 Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), each franchise was allowed to waive one player prior to the start of any season between the 2011–12 and 2015–16 seasons. The remaining salary still contractually owed will "not" be included in the salary cap or luxury tax totals of the team terminating his employment. Only players signed "prior" to the 2011–12 season can be "amnestied." The clause can be exercised during the seven days following the NBA's July moratorium period on player transactions. The clause's provisions allow a rival team to claim an amnestied player at a significantly (often, dramatically) reduced salary; the waiving team only has to pay the player the remaining balance. The team with the highest bid acquires the player. If unclaimed, the player becomes a free agent. Teams over the salary cap can only acquire an amnestied player if he becomes a free agent and the offer would be limited to the veteran's minimum contract.


title: Russia in the European energy sector

text: Russia supplies a significant volume of fossil fuels to other European countries. In 2021, it was the largest exporter of oil and natural gas to the European Union, (90%) and 40% of gas consumed in the EU came from Russia.


title: Russia in the European energy sector

text: The Russian state-owned company Gazprom exports natural gas to Europe. It also controls many subsidiaries, including various infrastructure assets. According to a study published by the Research Centre for East European Studies, the liberalization of the EU gas market drove Gazprom's expansion in Europe by increasing its share in the European downstream market. It established sale subsidiaries in many of its export markets, and also invested in access to industrial and power generation sectors in Western and Central Europe. In addition, Gazprom established joint ventures to build natural gas pipelines and storage depots in a number of European countries.


title: Russia in the European energy sector

text: The dependency on Russian fossil fuels poses energy security risks for Europe. In a number of disputes Russia used pipeline shutdowns, which motivated the European Union to diversify its energy sources. The rapid expansion of renewables in the European energy market would allow for less imports. As a reaction, Russia is expanding its export abilities towards China, as it has only one pipeline. The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine caused the Russia–European Union gas dispute. The European Commission and International Energy Agency presented joint plans to reduce reliance on Russian energy, reduce Russian gas imports by two thirds within a year, and completely by 2030. In May 2022, the European Union published plans to end its reliance on Russian oil, natural gas and coal by 2027.


title: Russia in the European energy sector

text: The Druzhba pipeline to supply allies in the Eastern Bloc was put into operation in 1964. The Urengoy–Pomary–Uzhhorod pipeline was constructed in 1982-1984. It complemented the transcontinental gas transportation system Western Siberia-Western Europe which existed since 1973. The official inauguration ceremony took place in France. In the early 1980s there were American efforts, led by the Reagan administration, to convince European countries, through which a proposed Soviet gas pipeline was to be built, to deny firms responsible for construction the ability to purchase supplies and parts for the pipeline and associated facilities. Ronald Reagan feared that a Kremlin-controlled European natural gas pipeline infrastructure would increase the USSR's influence not only in Eastern Europe, but also in Western Europe. For this reason, during his first term in office, he attempted – unsuccessfully – to stop the first natural gas pipeline from being built between the USSR and Germany. The pipeline was built despite these protests and the rise of large Russian gas firms such as Gazprom as well as increased Russian fossil fuel production has facilitated a large expansion in the quantity of gas supplied to the European market since the 1990s.


title: Russia in the European energy sector

text: Since the 2000s, natural gas pricing in Europe has gradually shifted from fairly stable long-term contract pricing largely linked to the price of oil, which supported the large-scale investments in developing gas fields and pipelines, to competitive market based pricing. This change was driven by EU regulation, moving from a 30% market price share in 2010 to 80% in 2020, saving EU countries an estimated $70 billion over the 2010s largely driven by the development of cheap U.S. shale gas. However, due to the 2021 global energy crisis, the International Energy Agency estimated the total cost of EU gas imports in 2021 will be about $30 billion higher that year than it would have been under the previous pricing regime.


title: Russia in the European energy sector

text: In September 2012, the European Commission opened formal proceedings to investigate whether Gazprom was hindering competition in Central and Eastern European gas markets, in breach of EU competition law. In particular, the Commission looked into Gazprom's usage of 'no resale' clauses in supply contracts, alleged prevention of diversification of gas supplies, and imposition of unfair pricing by linking oil and gas prices in long-term contracts. The Russian Federation responded by issuing blocking legislation, which introduced a default rule prohibiting Russian strategic firms, including Gazprom, to comply with any foreign measures or requests. Compliance is subject to prior permission granted by the Russian government.


title: Russia in the European energy sector

text: In 2013 the shares of Russian natural gas in the domestic gas consumption in the EU countries listed were:


title: Russia in the European energy sector

text: Gas for northern Europe largely came from the Nadym Pur Taz (NPT) region in Western Siberia, but these large fields are now in decline due to depletion. Since the early 2010s Gazprom has been developing replacement gas fields in the Yamal Peninsula area of the Russian Arctic. As of 2020, Yamal produces over 20% of Russia's gas, which is expected to increase to 40% by 2030. The shortest pipeline routes from Yamal to the northern EU countries are the Yamal–Europe pipeline through Poland and Nord Stream 1 to Germany. During the winter peak Gazprom does not have the capacity to redirect flows to the central pipeline corridor through Ukraine, built for the NPT gas flow. Gazprom intends to decommission some pipelines, over forty years old with high maintenance costs, in the central corridor as NPT production declines.


title: Russia in the European energy sector

text: In 2017, energy products accounted for around 60% of the EU's total imports from Russia. 30% of the EU's petroleum oil imports and 39% of total gas imports came from Russia in 2017. For Estonia, Poland, Slovakia and Finland, more than 75% of their imports of petroleum oils originated in Russia.


title: Russia in the European energy sector

text: In response to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the European Commission and International Energy Agency presented a plan to reduce gas imports from Russia by two thirds within a year, and completely by 2030.


title: Russia in the European energy sector

text: Prices of many minerals and metals that are essential for clean energy technologies have recently soared due to a combination of rising demand, disrupted supply chains and concerns around tightening supply. The global prices of lithium and cobalt more than doubled in 2021, and those for copper, nickel and aluminium all rose by around 25% to 40%.


title: Russia in the European energy sector

text: The price trends have continued into 2022. The price of lithium has increased an astonishing two-and-a-half times from January to May 2022. The prices of nickel and aluminium – for which Russia is a key supplier – have also kept rising, driven in part by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. For most minerals and metals that are vital to the clean energy transition, the price increases since 2021 exceed by a wide margin the largest annual increases seen in the 2010s.


title: Russia in the European energy sector

text: Russia also provides 43% of global supplies of palladium, a precious material used for catalytic converters in cars. Europe accounts for over half of Russia’s palladium exports. As with aluminium, stock levels were already low before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Automakers can switch to platinum, but Russia is also a major producer of that, with a 14% share, the second largest in the world.


title: Russia in the European energy sector

text: In 2021, 45% of the European Union's natural gas total imports originated in Russia. As of 2009, Russian natural gas was delivered to Europe through 12 pipelines, of which three were direct pipelines (to Finland, Estonia and Latvia), four through Belarus (to Lithuania and Poland) and five through Ukraine (to Slovakia, Romania, Hungary and Poland). In 2011, an additional pipeline, Nord Stream 1 (directly to Germany through the Baltic Sea), opened.


title: Russia in the European energy sector

text: The largest importers of Russian gas in the European Union are Germany and Italy, accounting together for almost half of the EU's gas imports from Russia. Other larger Russian gas importers in the European Union are France, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland, Austria and Slovakia. The largest non-EU importers of Russian natural gas are Turkey and Belarus.


title: Russia in the European energy sector

text: In 2017 Russia became one of the main liquefied natural gas (LNG) suppliers to Europe, mostly from Yamal LNG which started operations in 2017, in addition to pipeline supplies. In 2018 about 6% of Russian gas supply to Europe was as LNG.


title: Russia in the European energy sector

text: In response to Russian military buildup and recognition of Ukrainian separatists, Germany cancelled opening of the Nord Stream 2 in February 2022. The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine prompted Western sanctions, leading to a currency crisis in Russia. The 2022 Russia–European Union gas dispute broke out in April, with Russia demanding to be paid in Russian rubles and cutting off natural gas deliveries to Poland and Bulgaria when those countries refused to allow alteration of gas contracts.


title: Russia in the European energy sector

text: The reliance of the European Union and, indirectly, the United Kingdom on Russian gas supplies has increased over the last decade. Natural gas consumption in the EU and UK overall remained broadly flat in over this period, but production fell by a third and the gap has been filled by increased imports. Consequently, the share of Russian gas supplies increased from 25% of the region’s total gas demand in 2009 to 32% in 2021.


title: Russia in the European energy sector

text: Russia also has a wide-reaching gas export pipeline network, both via transit routes through Belarus and Ukraine, and via pipelines sending gas directly into Europe (including Nord Stream, Blue Stream, and TurkStream pipelines) all. Russia completed work on the Nord Stream II pipeline in 2021, but the German government decided not to approve certification in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Meanwhile, the importance of Ukraine as a transit country has lessened due to the build-up of additional transit corridors bringing Russian piped gas to the EU and UK (e.g. Nord Stream). Transit flows via Ukraine accounted for over 25% of Russia’s pipeline deliveries to the EU and UK in 2021, significantly down from more than 60% in 2009. Nevertheless, Ukraine remains an important conduit for Russian gas to Europe. About 8% of the EU and UK combined gas demand transits through Ukraine, and the country also relies heavily on imported gas for its own domestic use.


title: Russia in the European energy sector

text: Over the course of 2021 and the beginning of 2022, Russia created an ‘artificial tightness’ in European gas markets. The Russian state-owned Gazprom reduced its piped gas supplies to the EU market by 25% in the fourth quarter of 2021 compared to the same period in 2020. This decrease in Russian pipeline supply to the EU became more pronounced in the first seven weeks of 2022, falling by 37% compared to the previous year. The last pipeline deliveries to Germany via the Yamal pipeline which goes through Belarus, occurred on 20 December 2021. Gas flows via Ukraine to Slovakia fell from an average of over 80 mcm/d in December 2021 to just 36 mcm/d in the first seven weeks of 2022. Altogether, Russian gas flows via Ukraine averaged only half of the contractually available capacity.


title: Russia in the European energy sector

text: Other pipeline suppliers, including Algeria, Azerbaijan and Norway, increased their deliveries during the heating season to the European market compared with last year, using commercially available supply routes. Lower Russian pipeline flows were compensated in part by higher liquefied natural gas (LNG) inflows to the EU and the UK, which reached an all-time high of 13 bcm in January – almost three times their last year’s levels and about 70% higher compared to Russian pipeline flows that month. Strong supply and milder-than-expected temperatures in Northeast Asia helped to facilitate the redirection of cargoes towards Europe and limit the implications of strong European demand for LNG markets. The United States supplied over half of the additional LNG imported by the EU and UK since the beginning of the heating season. This highlights the importance of the US LNG export industry to European energy security. In 2021, the Russian government released a long-term LNG development plan, with the goal of expanding its LNG capacity in order to compete with growing LNG exports from the United States, Australia, and Qatar.


title: Russia in the European energy sector

text: Russia has also been reducing its piped gas supplies to the EU market, while choosing not fill its storage sites in the EU to adequate levels, even in the middle of the heating season in the fourth quarter of 2021 and in early 2022. As a consequence of low inventory levels at the beginning of the heating season, and the sharp decline of Russian piped flows to the EU, European gas storage levels fell to 30% below their working storage capacity (and standing 28% below their 5-year average levels for this period of the year). Storage sites owned or controlled by Gazprom, the Russian state-owned energy corporation, had particularly low storage levels at the start of the heating season, filled to just 25% of their working storage capacity. While Gazprom storages account for just 10% of the EU total working storage capacity, they accounted for half of the EU’s 5-year storage deficit. Without the strong increase in LNG imports since October 2021, European storage levels would have been less than 15% full by February 2022 (vs 31% in reality), leaving Europe in a much more vulnerable position vis-à-vis late cold spells or supply disruptions. For context, expert analysis suggests that fill levels of at least 90% of working storage capacity by 1 October are necessary to provide an adequate buffer for the European gas market through the winter heating season.


title: Russia in the European energy sector

text: In late 2021, European natural gas prices rose to all-time highs and remained extremely volatile into 2022. These reduced Russian pipeline flows, together with low storage levels and adverse weather conditions, contributed to strong upward pressure on prices in Europe, which averaged more than $30 USD per million BTUs (MMBtu) in the fourth quarter of 2021. Natural gas prices moderated down to an average of $27/MMBtu in the first seven weeks of 2022. Unseasonably mild weather conditions led to a slight decrease in demand (declining by 14% year-on-year according to preliminary estimates), and a 20% increase in wind energy output in the first quarter of 2022 reduced gas burn in the power sector.


title: Russia in the European energy sector

text: Nonetheless, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, European natural gas prices surged by 50% day-on-day, reaching to $44/MMBtu, following the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. On 26 April, Russia announced it would cut off natural gas exports to Poland and Bulgaria, as a part of a series of disputes over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. On 21 May, Russia halted all of its gas exports to Finland. Natural gas prices are expected to remain extremely volatile in the current context of market uncertainty. As a result of the invasion, Brent oil prices rose above $130 a barrel for the first time since 2008.


title: Russia in the European energy sector

text: On the eve of the 2006 Riga summit, Senator Richard Lugar, head of the U.S. Senate's Foreign Relations Committee, declared that "the most likely source of armed conflict in the European theatre and the surrounding regions will be energy scarcity and manipulation." After that, the variety of national policies and stances of larger exporters versus larger dependents of Russian natural gas, together with the segmentation of the European natural gas market, became a prominent issue in European politics toward Russia, with significant geopolitical implications for economic and political ties between the EU and Russia.


title: Russia in the European energy sector

text: These ties led to calls for greater European energy diversity, although such efforts are complicated by the fact that many European customers have long term legal contracts for gas deliveries despite the disputes, most of which stretch beyond 2025–2030.


title: Russia in the European energy sector

text: A number of disputes over the natural gas prices in which Russia was using pipeline shutdowns in what was described as "tool for intimidation and blackmail" caused the European Union to significantly increase efforts to diversify its energy sources. Some even argued that Russia has developed "the capacity to use unilateral economic sanctions in the form of natural gas pricing and gas disruptions against many European North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member states". During an anti-trust investigation initiated in 2011 against Gazprom, a number of internal company documents were seized that documented a number of "abusive practices" in an attempt to "segment the internal [EU] market along national borders" and impose "unfair pricing".


title: Russia in the European energy sector

text: The Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany was opposed by former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, former U.S. President Donald Trump and then British Foreign Secretary and later prime minister Boris Johnson. The United States has been encouraging European countries to diversify Russian-dominated energy supplies, with Qatar as possible alternative supplier.


title: Russia in the European energy sector

text: To compare with alternative sources, Germany produced 10.5% of its electricity from natural gas in 2019 and 8.6% (44 TWh) from renewable biomass, largely biogas. As only 13% of Germany's gas use was for power production, this replaced just above 1 percent of its overall gas consumption.


title: Russia in the European energy sector

text: Due to a combination of unfavourable conditions, which involved soaring demand of gas, less power generation by alternative sources, and cold winter that left European and Russian reserves depleted, Europe faced steep increases in gas prices in 2021. In August 2021 Russia reduced volumes of gas sent to European Union, which was seen by some analysts and politicians as an attempt to "support its case in starting flows via Nord Stream 2". The record-high prices in Europe were driven by a global surge in demand as the world quit the economic recession caused by COVID-19, particularly due to strong energy demand in Asia, as well as lowered supplies of natural gas from Russia to the European Union.


title: Russia in the European energy sector

text: Russia has fully supplied on all long-term contracts, but has not supplied additional gas on the spot market. In October 2021, the Economist Intelligence Unit reported that Russia had limited extra gas export capacity because of high domestic requirements with production near its peak. In January–June Gazprom supplied about 22% more gas to Europe (including Turkey) in 2021 than the same months in 2020, and almost the same amount as in 2019. Algeria also increased supplies in 2021H1, but other countries supplied less than in 2020H1.


title: Russia in the European energy sector

text: In September 2021 Russia announced that "rapid" start up of the newly completed Nord Stream 2 pipeline that had long been contested by various EU countries would resolve the problems. These statements were interpreted by some analysts as a "blackmail" attempt. 40 members of the European Parliament requested a legal inquiry into the Gazprom practices. In October 2021, Russian President Putin said that one of the factors influencing the prices was the termination of long-term supply contracts in favour of the spot market, while Gazprom announced it was accumulating "record" reserves of 72.6 billions m and continued record production at 847.9 millions m per day. On 27 October 2021, Putin ordered Gazprom to start pumping natural gas into European gas storage sites once Russia finished filling its own gas storage sites, by about 8 November.


title: Russia in the European energy sector

text: The former Lithuanian Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius, who is European Parliament's rapporteur on relations with Russia, said it is "impossible" to have good relations with Russia and called for the EU to phase out its imports of oil and natural gas from Russia. A group of five EU member countries have called for joint action, such as group purchases.


title: Russia in the European energy sector

text: On 7 March 2022, German chancellor Olaf Scholz and other European leaders pushed back against the call by the US and Ukraine to ban imports of Russian gas and oil because "Europe's supply of energy for heat generation, mobility, power supply and industry cannot be secured in any other way". However, the EU indicated that it would cut its gas dependency on Russia by two-thirds in 2022, and Germany stated that it would reduce its dependence on Russian energy imports by accelerating renewables and reaching 100% renewable energy generation by 2035.


title: Russia in the European energy sector

text: Scholz announced plans to build two new LNG terminals. Economy Minister Robert Habeck said Germany reached a long-term energy partnership with Qatar, one of the world's largest exporters of liquefied natural gas,


title: Russia in the European energy sector

text: In April 2022, Russia supplied 45% of EU's gas imports, earning $900 million a day. In the first two months after Russia invaded Ukraine, Russia earned $66.5 billion from fossil fuel exports, and the EU accounted for 71% of that trade. In May 2022, the European Commission proposed a ban on oil imports from Russia, part of the economic response to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. In May 2022, Russia imposed sanctions on European subsidiaries of Gazprom.


title: Russia in the European energy sector

text: In June 2022, the United States government agreed to allow Italian company Eni and Spanish company Repsol to import oil from Venezuela to Europe to replace oil imports from Russia. French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said that France negotiated with the United Arab Emirates to replace some Russian oil imports. On 15 June 2022, Israel, Egypt and the European Union signed a trilateral natural gas agreement. In July 2022, the European Commission signed an agreement with Azerbaijan to increase natural gas imports.


title: Russia in the European energy sector

text: With European policy-makers deciding to replace Russian fossil fuel imports with other fossil fuels imports and European coal energy production and to subsidize fossil fuel companies for reduced prices, as well as due to Russia being "a key supplier" of materials used for "clean energy technologies", the reactions to the war may also have an overall negative impact on the climate emissions pathway.


title: Russia in the European energy sector

text: As part of Poland's plans to become fully energy independent from Russia within the next years, Piotr Wozniak, president of state-controlled oil and gas company PGNiG, stated in February 2019: "The strategy of the company is just to forget about Eastern suppliers and especially about Gazprom." In 2020, the Stockholm Arbitral Tribunal ruled that PGNiG's long-term contract gas price with Gazprom linked to oil prices should be changed to approximate the Western European gas market price, backdated to 1 November 2014 when PGNiG requested a price review under the contract.


title: Russia in the European energy sector

text: Gazprom had to refund about $1.5 billion to PGNiG. The 1996 Yamal pipeline related contract is for up to 10.2 billion cubic metres of gas per year until it expires in 2022, with a minimum annual amount of 8.7 billion cubic metres. Following the 2021 global energy crisis, PGNiG made a further price review request on 28 October 2021. PGNiG stated the recent extraordinary increases in natural gas prices "provides a basis for renegotiating the price terms on which we purchase gas under the Yamal Contract."


title: Russia in the European energy sector

text: On 17 November 2021 Belarus has stopped oil supplies over the Druzhba pipeline to Western Europe for "unscheduled maintenance" which happened amidst the Belarus border crisis and one day after Germany suspended certification of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.


title: Russia in the European energy sector

text: The Baltic Pipe between Norway and Poland will have the capacity to replace the roughly 60% of Polish gas imports coming from Russia via the Yamal pipeline, and is expected to be operational by the end of 2022.


title: Russia in the European energy sector

text: On 26 April, Russia announced it would cut off natural gas exports to Poland and Bulgaria, as a part of a series of disputes over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.


title: Russia in the European energy sector

text: The turmoil in natural gas markets in 2021 and 2022 spilled over into European electricity markets, which typically rely on gas as a marginal fuel and are therefore affected when it experiences high prices and volatility. This has been exacerbated by lower than average hydropower output and lower nuclear output highlighting the need for adequate investment in sources of baseload supply and flexibility. While higher carbon prices have also played a role in pushing up electricity prices, it has not been the most significant factor. The International Energy Agency estimates that the effect on European electricity prices of the sharp spike in natural gas prices is nearly eight times bigger than the effect of the increase in carbon prices. Although wind power was unusually below average during the European summer, wind and solar PV provided valuable contributions to meeting European electricity demand in the fourth quarter of 2021. Wind power generation increased by 3% and solar by 20% compared with the same period a year earlier.


title: Russia in the European energy sector

text: Ukraine has been traditionally sourcing fuel for its nuclear power plants from Russia, although with the outbreak of Russian military intervention in Donbass it saw an urgent need to at least diversify supplies of fuel and started talks with a number of Western suppliers, most notably Westinghouse branch in Sweden. In response, Russia started an intimidation campaign which included supplying deliberately incorrect technical specifications of the existing fuel supplies, alluding to "second Chernobyl" and staging protests in Kyiv. In spite of these efforts, Ukraine secured a number of framework contracts with numerous suppliers, eventually supplying 50% of the fuel from Russia and 50% from Sweden.