Opinion: Europe made its energy bed and now must sleep in it — shivering - "One of the more bizarre developments in Europe in recent years has been the twin policy paths whereby fossil fuels have been discouraged in favour of wind and solar, but deals have been struck with autocracies, including Russia, to import more fossil fuel via pipelines. The net effect of the first policy, obvious in the last few weeks, has been to force European consumers and businesses to pay much more to heat and power their homes and run their businesses. That results from the intermittent nature of wind and solar: when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine, the electricity grid needs backup. That comes from natural gas or coal, though coal, along with nuclear power, is increasingly being phased out. Needing backup means Europeans pay twice for power. Now combine the coal and nuclear phaseouts with Europe’s political and policy disdain for local exploration for oil and natural gas, such as in 2017 when France proudly banned future exploration for oil and fracking for gas both at home and in its overseas territories. Then add parallel attempts to label Canadian oil as dirty and thus discourage future Canadian exports to Europe. The result is that the European demand for energy has hit limited supply, causing energy prices to soar. A real-time example is occurring with the natural gas used to back up and power Europe’s electricity grid. On electricity prices, for example, Dutch TTF gas (a European benchmark price) has been reaching as high as €90 a megawatt hour in the last few weeks, more than five times what it was in January. Price spikes have consequences. Even before the recent rise in electricity prices, an estimated 80 million households across Europe struggled to pay their power bills, with 12 million in arrears. A quintupling of power prices will cause these numbers to surge this winter... The best-known example of growing dependence on autocrats is the near-completed Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which will bring Russian natural gas to Germany and other parts of Europe. Initially, some European and American politicians opposed the pipeline, fearing it would make the continent more dependent on Russian whims, including the use of energy as a geopolitical weapon. The concern is legitimate. In 2009, Russia cut off the natural gas supply to Ukraine in mid-winter, ostensibly over a pricing dispute. In reality, it was an attempt to control Ukraine. Since then, Ukraine has bought natural gas from third-party sources rather than directly from Russia. Consider how dependent Europe already is on autocracies and tyrannies for another fossil fuel: oil. Between 2005 and 2019, European countries imported over 61.5 billion barrels of crude oil, worth just over €4.6 trillion or about C$6.9 trillion. About two-thirds of this came from countries with poor records for human freedom — in other words, tyrannies, autocracies or dictatorships"
Presumed liberal logic: fossil fuels from dictatorships don't count because they are assumed to be evil already
Randall Denley: Ontario politicians eager to phase out natural gas only have to look to Europe for the consequences - "For years, Ontario generated so much electrical power that it had to sell it, often at a loss, to neighbouring states and provinces. Now, the province’s ability to produce an adequate supply of reliable power is threatened by an increasing enthusiasm for eliminating natural gas plants that are critical to Ontario’s future. An environmental group called the Ontario Clean Air Alliance is demanding that natural gas power generation be phased out by 2030. It’s a predictable stance for an environmental group, but the worrying thing is that the alliance’s wobbly plan to replace natural gas has been endorsed by 32 municipalities, representing about 60 per cent of Ontario’s population. Among them are Toronto, Hamilton, Ottawa, Mississauga and Windsor. The federal Liberal, NDP and Green parties all promised zero emissions electricity in last month’s election. Zero emissions electricity has to be taken seriously, not because it’s feasible in Ontario in this decade, but because it’s just the sort of simplistic idea that appeals to people who believe the planet will perish without just the right mix of government policies in Canada. These would be the same people who call for a future in which electricity powers all cars and home heating, but they want only their sort of electricity. That doesn’t include natural gas or emissions-free nuclear, which combined provide 62 per cent of Ontario’s generation capacity. Ontario’s power generation sector is a curious target for environmentalists, given that it is 94 per cent emissions free and produces only three per cent of the province’s greenhouse gas emissions. Ontario produces 81 per cent fewer carbon emissions per kilowatt hour than the rest of Canada. That’s due to the phase-out of coal plants under the former Liberal government. That move reduced the power sector’s emissions from 21 per cent of the overall amount, even if Ontarians did pay a steep premium for every part of it. Some of that progress will be lost over this decade because the aging Pickering nuclear reactor is being phased out, reducing generation capacity by 14 per cent. Other reactors are up for refurbishment, meaning the province will have to rely more on natural gas for power generation... The increasing reliance on gas has got the environmental group fired up, but its position is a bit complicated. It backed the coal conversion, naturally, but now it opposes the gas plants that support intermittent wind and solar power. It also opposes nuclear on the grounds of cost and safety. One has to hand it to the clean air alliance. Lobbying municipalities to pressure for an end to natural gas power generation was a clever move. The average municipal politician is quick to rally to a good-sounding cause and knows squat about power generation... If gas plants were shut down by 2030, as the environmental group and myriad city councillors propose, there would be some pretty noticeable side effects. Those would include the need to spend $27 billion on alternative generation and transmission lines, plus additional operating costs of $5.7 billion a year, which would push the average homeowner’s bill up $100 a month. Oh, and there would also be rolling blackouts without the reliable natural gas power. None of that is slowing down the clean air alliance, which accuses the IESO of trying to scare the public. Its own plan relies on Quebec investing in wind and solar so that it can sell its own hydro power to Ontario, plus an emerging idea to draw power from electric car batteries... Before they get too keen on phasing out gas plants, Ontario politicians might want to consider the situation in Europe. Countries there enthusiastically embraced wind and solar but then made the mistake of shutting down nuclear plants and not replacing coal power with sufficient natural gas. Now they find themselves short of power and the price is increasing sharply. Ontario has avoided that fate, so far, but it’s never too late to do the wrong thing."
“Explosive” German Government Audit Report: ‘Energiewende’ Has Become “A Danger For All Of Germany” - "A new German government audit report warns that the Energiewende is exploding costwise, and that there is a real danger of electricity shortfalls…”a danger for all of Germany” Daniel Wetzel at German national daily Die Welt reports on the latest German Federal Court of Auditors’ warning: “If things continue like this, Germany as a business location is in danger. The costs are out of control – and there is a growing threat of an electricity shortfall.” The “Energiewende” (transition to green energies) has seen Germany recklessly rush into wildly fluctuating wind and solar energy without properly planning the grave impacts they would have on the power supply grid and prices"
Energy Crisis Hobbles Biden’s Green Agenda - WSJ - "President Biden may soon have to choose between his climate policy and his overall national strategy. The problem is not just that the energy shortage and price surges threaten to drive a wedge between green activists and middle- and working-class voters struggling with high energy bills—though that is a problem, and voter dissatisfaction with gasoline prices will likely take a toll on the president’s approval ratings. It is not even that the same forces are at work internationally, so that, for example, high energy prices could propel a far-right candidate into the Élysée Palace in France next spring. The real problem is that the green agenda as currently conceived is an effective machine for undermining the economic and political power of the democratic world and boosting the influence of precisely the authoritarian powers President Biden has made it his mission to oppose. By artificially depressing fossil-fuel production and investment in the democratic world faster than renewables and other fuels can fill the gap, Biden policy promotes a multiyear, multitrillion-dollar windfall for countries like Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Fossil-fuel companies in the Western world, responsive to the dictates of regulators and the exigencies of public relations, are scaling back investments in new oil and gas production. But consumers in the West and, crucially, elsewhere in the world will move slowly if at all away from current levels of fossil-fuel use. State-owned oil companies in countries like Russia can choose between equally rewarding alternatives. They can raise production slowly and count their winnings as prices rise or raise production faster and count their winnings as grateful customers absorb the new supply. Russia will have more money to spend on adventures abroad. The Gulf monarchies will think less about reform and renewal as a new wave of oil riches postpones the day of reckoning. This shift won’t only make unregenerate oil producers richer. It will make them more powerful. Already, Mr. Biden is back to begging the OPEC+ countries not to jack prices up too high. But that humiliation is only the beginning. America’s greatest single achievement of the past decade was replacing the Middle East as the swing producer in world energy production, shifting a critical lever of economic power from authoritarian monopolists to market-driven capitalists. To throw this achievement away means, among other things, the return of the Middle East to the center of the American foreign policy agenda—something Mr. Biden desperately hopes to avoid. It is also a greater boost to Vladimir Putin than anything even the most conspiracy-minded Democrats imagined Donald Trump had in mind. To raise energy prices while enabling Moscow to tighten its grip over Europe’s energy supply is to turbocharge a Russian regime that was staggering and showing its age."
Biden Suddenly Loves Frackers - WSJ - "Falling poll numbers concentrate the presidential mind, and the result can be startling. Look no further than this nominee for headline of the year from Politico this week: “ Biden team asks oil industry for help to tame gas prices.” Stranger things have happened, but we can’t recall one. For nine months President Biden has been pursuing policies to squeeze oil-and-gas producers to limit production and eventually go out of business. Having begged OPEC in vain to boost oil production, Mr. Biden is now having to suffer the humiliation of beseeching an American industry he vilifies as destroying the planet to save the day... this “outreach” to the oil industry is “an awkward shift.” No kidding, and it’s worth going down the list of ways this Administration has tried to punish U.S. producers... the Interior Department got the presidential message. It approved a mere 171 drilling permits on federal lands in August, down 75% from April. The Biden Administration also moved to suspend existing leases in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and it initiated a fresh review of Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve that could put it off limits as well. Get it—a “petroleum reserve” will be off limits for petroleum. Mr. Biden also signed a Congressional resolution that vitiated the Trump Administration’s regulation on methane leaks from fossil-fuel production. The White House probably will replace it with a stringent standard that will make fracking more expensive. The Administration is also unleashing financial regulators against the industry. The Federal Reserve and other bureaucracies are looking to impose new rules on “climate-related financial risk,” as a May order from Mr. Biden put it. The purpose is to close off sources of funding and raise the cost of capital for the industry, and it’s succeeding. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which oversees natural-gas pipelines, has signaled it probably will start requiring a climate study before approving even the smallest infrastructure upgrades. That will raise the bar for worthy projects, while creating costs for climate mitigation. As one sign of the regulatory gantlet, two different proposed pipelines in the past two years have won a case at the Supreme Court and then been canceled anyway. Progressives in Congress, meantime, want to use the Democratic reconciliation bill to punish the industry by doing away with expensing for intangible drilling costs, the oil depletion allowance and more. The bill’s Clean Electricity Performance Program is expressly designed to punish fossil fuels, including natural gas. Mr. Biden and his party have sent signals that are loud and clear, in accord with the larger cultural message that fossil fuels are the new tobacco and the world doesn’t need them. That isn’t true, as Mr. Biden is finding out the hard way. Despite all the subsidies for renewables, fossil fuels provide about 80% of America’s energy, and high prices weigh on consumers and the economy. The White House says rising energy costs are a global problem, and that’s true in part. As the economy began to revive from the pandemic, it was only natural, and in fact a good sign, that demand for energy would rebound. But the U.S. has been the world’s leading oil producer and thus a major player in global supply and demand. American crude-oil production in March 2020 was 12.8 million barrels a day, per the Energy Information Administration. That fell sharply when Covid hit, and now it’s barely inching back up. July’s output was only 11.3 million barrels a day, more than 10% below the pre-pandemic trend. In other words, this is Mr. Biden’s energy crisis."
Looks like the Biden administration itself doesn't believe what apologists claim, that he has had nothing to do with the rise in oil prices
Philip Cross: If oil and gas are dead, why are exports booming? - "Despite all the hype surrounding electricity exports, they earn less in a month than oil and gas generate every day... Opponents of Canada’s oil industry gleefully leapt on this one-day anomaly of negative oil prices to chortle that the industry had no future. Their pronouncements at the time make for interesting reading today. Green Party parliamentary leader Elizabeth May told reporters that “Oil is dead and for people in the sector, it’s very important there be just transition funds.” Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet predicted oil is “never coming back” and that “it is clear that there is no long-term future for that kind of industry, so let’s help them go somewhere else, something which is more green.” Wiser heads were more cautious, recalling that sharp declines in oil prices have rarely lasted more than six months. The strong recovery of prices over the past year proves that their nosedive in spring 2020 was just another cyclical decline, albeit an extreme one, given the sharp economic slowdown, and did not signal the end of fossil fuels... The Economist magazine recently summarized the complex of factors boosting overseas natural gas prices. A shortfall of renewable power plays a key role. Drought in Asia curtailed hydro power production there, while power plants shifted from coal to gas for environmental reasons. Gas production dropped in Britain and the Netherlands as firms nervously refused to invest when green energy proponents held sway in European capitals, while calm winds reduced wind generation in northwest Europe. Europe has fingers crossed that exports of Russian and U.S. gas will make up the shortfall of supply entering the winter months — but the prospect of power shortages and outages looms large. Meanwhile the gas shortage encourages Europe to burn more coal, the opposite of what was promised to meet its Paris Climate Accord goals. In their rush to switch to renewable energy, European countries did not ensure the reliability of supplies to replace fossil fuels, a mistake Canada simply cannot afford to repeat, given our harsher winters. Booming oil and gas exports are solidifying energy’s place as our leading export. It now single-handedly accounts for 22.1 per cent of all merchandise exports, dwarfing all other exports and more than double auto exports of $5.6 billion per month."
People freezing to death will lower a country's carbon footprint. So this is a brilliant way to combat climate change
Rex Murphy: This energy crisis has been 30 years in the making. Why is anyone surprised? - "The 26th gathering of doomsday professionals known as COP26 is close at hand, this time in Glasgow, for another massively over-subscribed conference bent on rejecting the great gifts of nature and providence — oil and gas. COP26 will coincide with the very crisis that the previous 25 conferences, with their wild projections of the Earth collapsing if their prescriptions were not taken up, were in large part responsible for. This time there will be as many as 25,000 delegates travelling great distances by jet during a plague and — this will shock no one — as the BBC reports “COVID rules will be relaxed … (delegates) will not require to be fully vaccinated.” Of course not. Global warmers have virtue-signalling immunity. The world we know lives and functions on reliable sources of proven energy. Note the adjective, proven. It’s the key one. Everything from modern medicine and government to transportation, agriculture and research — the wealth of nations and thereby their security and the well-being of their citizens — depends on a secure and proven supply of energy. Which we have already. We also have dependable systems to deliver it. But for the 30 years referenced above, what we already have in place, what actually works, has been set against by the climate-change movement, with its frenzied alarms about the approach of doomsday... There was a time when societies and nations looked back at their pasts, at the work and hardships and deprivations of previous generations, and gave thanks that those generations vaulted succeeding ones into new realms of comfort, security, ease of life, and stability. This is the first one that has fostered a political and activist force built around a philosophy of ingratitude for the privileges we enjoy, the means by which those privileges were earned, and a furious determination to bring the whole house down. No one who attends the grand shindig in Glasgow will experience any hardship, any difficulty, any anxiety, if there are blackouts, unmeetable energy bills, or interruptions in power during the next six months. For as is it written in the Book of Climate Change: “Thou climate warriors, ye who assemble in fine hotels, and ye who squat on the highways and superglue your bottoms to the asphalt thereon, yea, all who vote Green — cold and want shall never visit ye. And much golden press coverage will be yours.”... All one needs to know is that while the western world is self-flagellating, China continues to build the equivalent of more than one coal-fired power plant a week , with no mention nor any consequences from the globalist elites. Finally let me cite the sagacious Lorrie Goldstein, who makes an undeniable point : “Carbon taxes/prices are becoming increasingly divorced from the claim their purpose is to combat climate change and correctly understood as a sin tax for using fossil fuels, raising the cost of almost all goods and services because almost all goods and services are created, grown, manufactured, or delivered using fossil fuel energy.”"
Winter Is Coming: Can Energy Catastrophe Be Averted? - "The energy crisis in Western Europe this summer has been brought on by premature retirements of hundreds of coal and natural gas power plants in favor of massive over-reliance on wind power and, to a lesser extent, solar. Ironically, this crisis is taking place just as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and congressional Democrats attempt to ram through their massive $3.5 “budget reconciliation” bill that is in large part designed to recreate the European model in the United States... the wind has pretty much stopped blowing in Europe, causing governments that spent the last decade retiring coal and natural gas plants to scramble to re-activate them... we see the consequence of a mass decision by European governments to attempt to violate the laws of physics by trying to replace high-density energy sources with low-density energy sources now resulting in their colliding with the laws of supply and demand... Russia is also the only potential supplier that could provide the quantities of coal needed to keep Europe’s lights on and homes heated this winter. “If all the European utilities switch to coal, it will result in a huge spike in coal demand that Russia alone cannot provide for on such a short notice,” Tyrina said. “That would need supply from other countries as well, from the U.S. for example, but the situation there is similar to everywhere else.”... It would be one thing for leaders in Washington, DC to engage in this exercise if the needed battery storage technology for those low-density energy sources existed on a wide scale. But, as I’ve documented here this year, while progress in research has been made, no such technology currently exists on a meaningful, scalable basis. Making matters even more tenuous, the producers of the array of critical minerals needed for the existing lithium-ion technology currently in limited use for power generation and essential for EVs are scrambling to figure out how they are going to meet new demand that is projected to rise by as much as 4,000 percent by 2040 for their products, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA)... Of course the “clean energy transition policies” bear some responsibility for this run-up in energy prices. Every new regulation, no matter how noble-minded, has a cost, and the “energy transition” has already demanded wave after wave of new regulation on fossil fuels. Claiming these actions bear no cost or consequence is simply absurd. Plus, it’s not just the policies of the transition at play here. The ESG-related demands of the investor community, which have limited access to capital for fossil fuel producers and demanded that they shift big portions of their capital budgets over to “green” energy initiatives, have also played a significant role in driving up fossil fuel prices. This is not even arguable: In fact, it’s a key part of the “green” strategy to raise the cost of fossil fuels so that these other “green” energy sources become more competitive in the marketplace. Birol’s remarks are just in keeping with the seeming vow of Omerta (code of silence) among many public leaders against ever uttering any critical remarks related to these renewable energy sources... At the end of the day, despite all the prevailing narratives flying around, the world’s energy future will be governed as it always has: By the laws of physics, supply and demand. It is becoming fearfully evident right now that the policy decisions made by governments in Europe, the U.S. and other parts of the world during the last decade have violated all three of those immutable laws. As a result, winter is coming, and potential energy disaster is coming with it."
Latter-day Luddites | The Spectator Australia - "Queensland LNG exporters are being forced to bail out Victoria, but the state’s pain is all self-inflicted. Nobody bears more responsibility than Ms D’Ambrosio for the farcical reality that Victoria is sitting on top of massive onshore reserves of natural gas in the Gippsland and Otway basins, while power prices skyrocket, industries shut down, and the poor shiver in unheated homes. But there’s plenty of blame to share around. For more than a decade Victorians have voted in governments of the right and left that have banned the fracking of unconventional gas and then enshrined the ban in the constitution to make it harder to undo. They even put a moratorium on conventional gas exploration and when it ran out, government incentives all subsidised the development of renewable energy. Australia has built four to five times more solar and wind energy than Europe, the US, Japan or China but now hapless Victorians are discovering that to get through a ‘renewable drought’ which analysts forecast could cause a one-terawatt shortage between now and September, the state would need about 7500 batteries like the one Elon Musk built for the South Australian government, after it cheerfully blew up a coal-fired power plant. The cost? A cool $700 billion. The energy shortfalls come because our giant energy producers across the National Electricity Market – stretching from South Australia and Tasmania through Victoria and NSW to Queensland – are accelerating the closure of coal-fired power plants... You can hardly blame the providers. Ever since the introduction of the federal renewable energy target by the Howard government in 2001, followed by state targets, governments have ensured power companies receive hefty subsidies for unreliable renewables and crushing penalties for reliable fossil fuels. Why wouldn’t they shut down coal and not build gas when there was an 85 per cent increase in power prices after the accelerated closure of Victoria’s Hazelwood power station? Victorian Premier Dan Andrews sneered when former federal energy minister Angus Taylor tried to get the states and territories to see sense and sign up to an energy security mechanism that would prevent power companies closing coal-fired power plants until they were replaced with dispatchable energy... The Russian invasion of Ukraine has provided a brutal wake-up call to Europe, the UK, and the US. Faced with soaring energy prices enriching Mr Putin and funding his war, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, and Austria opted to fire up their coal-fuelled power generators. Indeed, 345 new coal-fired power stations are being built around the world and China and India are expanding their coal mining operations by 700 million tonnes a year, almost twice Australia’s annual production. Yet Australian politicians seem oblivious to this reality, still in the grips of carbon dioxide-driven delusions, with Prime Minister Albanese fighting to legislate his economy-killing emissions reduction target of 43 per cent by 2030 while the Greens push for a target of 75 per cent."
Short of gas, wind, and power: How a perfect storm is roiling the world's energy market - "Wind power, which now makes up around 20% of the European energy mix on average and directly competes with gas for power generation, has long grappled with a supply conundrum: what happens when the wind doesn't blow? This summer, that's exactly what happened—producing a shortfall that Mads Nipper, the CEO of Danish wind giant Ørsted likened to being a farmer, "and it doesn't rain". This shortfall (and the solar equivalent: cloudy skies) hits at the problem of renewable intermittency, which forces those who rely on renewables to either store energy generated by those energy sources in batteries in order to shore up low periods, or rely on traditionally stable sources of energy like nuclear power, gas, or coal to fill the gaps. Because battery storage on a wide scale is expensive, Europe relies on highly-interconnected systems of power, moving renewable energy around on the continent to try and balance out supply. But low renewable supplies—currently paired with tight gas supplies, which typically step into the gap—is momentarily re-carbonizing the European power system, and doing so at a high cost. "When wind is down, solar is down, [and] gas is also quite tight, then coal has to be up, with a higher cost," said Xi. Because coal faces high carbon prices, as the highest polluting fuel, that pushes up the "baseline" energy cost, she points out."
The German economy is on the brink - "Most of Europe’s 100 largest companies were founded in the 1980s or before, which means that the old continent has entirely slept through the digital revolution of the 1990s and 2000s. There is no European counterpart to American corporations like Facebook, Amazon, E-Bay or China’s Alibaba or WeChat. This became painfully clear during the Covid pandemic, when the once vaunted German bureaucracy was revealed to rely on paper, pens and fax machines in its health care system due to a complete lack of digitalisation in key areas. Not surprisingly, the German economy shows cracks elsewhere as well. Measured by market capitalisation, only one German company makes it into the top 100 worldwide, and German market capitalisation as a share of global market capitalisation has shrunk to 1.97%, an all-time low. These are devastating numbers for a country that just a few years back was seen as a model for the world with its transition to Green energy and the planned exodus from nuclear power. In fact, to add insult to injury, one of the largest German producers of rotator blades for wind turbines has announced it will close down production in Germany and move to India. Similarly, Villeroy & Boch, a company that has produced tiles in the German city of Merzig since 1879 will retire its factory and move manufacturing to Turkey, quoting high energy and labour costs as the main reason... Electricity prices have been surging to an all-time high, with current 1-year forward electricity contracts clocking in at EUR 340 per MWh. Just to put this number into perspective, for the last three decades this value never surpassed €100 per MWh. In other words, the year 2023 will see electricity turning from a utility into a luxury good for many Germans. With the war in Ukraine and Germany’s dependency on Russia exposed, energy has become a scarce resource for Germans almost overnight, with major cities like Hamburg already preparing for rationing of gas and warm water supply... without sufficient gas entire industries could collapse. One thing, however, remains true despite all these problems: they did not cause but reveal the German economy’s malaise. An ideological fixation on renewables, paired with the rejection of nuclear energy and an addiction to Russian gas, led to a focus on everything except the things that matter. From internet technology to electric vehicles, Germany is behind, and the once-revered label “Made in Germany” rings increasingly hollow. One can only hope that this clash with reality will put an end to a cognitive dissonance that could derail the entire European economy and, with it, the European project."
Too bad they will just double down and claim the problem is that they didn't transition to "green" energy fast enough
Biden’s Fossil-Fuel Blockade - WSJ - "Asked Thursday how high gasoline prices would need to rise before she’d support opening federal lands to oil-and-gas production, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi coolly replied: “I’m not for drilling on public lands.” That’s no doubt how Tesla -driving Democratic donors feel. But why is President Biden letting them steer his energy policy? We reported last month that a federal judge slapped down the Biden Administration’s inflated “social cost” estimate for greenhouse gas emissions. The Administration’s estimate captured all of the potential harm from carbon emissions globally over three centuries—yes, centuries. They threw in everything from property damage to health harms and war. Biden officials were furious at the judge’s decision because they planned to use this grossly inflated social cost estimate to support restrictions on fossil fuels—from stricter fuel-economy rules to methane emissions curbs for oil and gas production. Now they can’t, so dozens of rule-makings are stalled. But here’s the kicker: The White House budget office says the injunction has caused it to halt permitting work on at least 18 wells on federal oil and gas leases in New Mexico and new lease sales. The White House is blaming the judge for what it was already doing or, rather, not doing... Mr. Biden hasn’t held an onshore lease sale and is the only President in at least two decades not to have done so in a given year. Approvals for new liquefied natural gas terminals and expansions are also sitting at the Department of Energy and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, according to the American Petroleum Institute... We take the point that reducing regulatory barriers to development won’t increase production or reduce energy prices overnight. But as one oilfield services executive recently told Bloomberg, “Biden is signaling that his environmental goals trump energy security and consumer prices,” and “that’s not lost on public companies or the banks they rely on.” Regulatory uncertainty and political hostility to fossil fuels discourage long-term investments, which are needed to increase supply and keep energy prices in check."
Is gas really heading to $2 a litre in Canada? - "geopolitics has derailed the supply side of the equation. Investment in the oil industry has virtually dropped off a cliff, mainly because investors are shunning oil exploration. Classic economics dictates that as a commodity’s price increases, so does investment in sourcing that commodity. But according to The Economist, unlike other resources in high demand — copper, lithium, etc. — capital expenditures in the oil industry, including new drilling, are less than half of what they were six short years ago. Rozencwajg says much of this seemingly self-destructive tightening of budget is due to activist investor groups. By way of example, he cites the case of Engine No. 1, an environmentally active hedge fund not even a year old; and ExxonMobil, the world’s largest oil producer not sporting a Saudi flag. Through the vagaries of proxy voting — and truly, you don’t want the entire intrigue explained — Engine No. 1, with but 0.02 per cent of ExxonMobil shares, somehow hoarded three board seats. Next stop, says Rozencwajg, is Chevron, the goal in both instances to choke off oil supply. Now, before environmentalists start rejoicing that this price squeeze actually is the rabbit hole you want to follow these activist groups down, be aware that one of the main accomplishments of all these machinations has been to put OPEC+ back in control of the world’s oil market. With demand up and your activism shutting down non-OPEC investment, we’re back on the same knife-edge precipice we were back the 1970s. That might not be the worst of it. According to Rozencwajg’s analysis, if demand were to return to its previous peak of 101 million barrels a day, there simply might not be enough oil to go around. Indeed, this might be the oil crisis to end all oil crises. As Rozencwajg explains it, previous oil shortages were artificial — someone, usually the Saudis, cutting supply in a deliberate attempt to raise prices. There was enough oil to supply demand; they simply chose not to sell it to us. Now imagine a situation where the Saudis, even if they don’t want to hold us hostage, simply can’t produce enough oil."
Of course, it hit $2
Restricting Reliable Energy Sources Is Expensive and Dangerous - "Government officials fail to serve citizens when their policies deliberately limit access to affordable, reliable energy sources like gasoline, natural gas, nuclear, or propane. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's campaign to close the Line 5 pipeline is one of the more pressing examples of this failure. Unfortunately, this reality is hindering a growing number of American lives, as no reasonable alternatives exist for transportation fuels like gasoline or jet fuel, or for heating and cooking fuels like propane for rural households... Texas has spent tens of billions over the past decade shutting down reliable energy and trying to replace it with "reliably unreliable" wind. Generous federal subsidies and a laser focus on the lowest prices, rather than valuing a reliable service, skewed electricity markets and ensured new wind was prioritized over constructing and maintaining reliable, properly weatherized power generation equipment. The consequences of this were seen in February when an unusual, but not unprecedented, bout of extreme cold led to a systemwide failure of Texas' increasingly fragile grid, leaving millions of Texans in the cold and dark. In California, green priorities have led the state to build solar panels rather than complete essential maintenance on transmission lines. Strong winds during the 2019 summer heat wave caused aging transmission infrastructure to fail, sparking massive wildfires. Similarly, California's 100 percent clean energy target was at the root of the summer 2020 rolling blackouts when increased energy use during a heat wave ran headlong into what an official report called solar's inability to "meet demand in the early evening hours." The California Public Utilities Commission's nonsensical commitment to closing the state's primary sources of reliable, emissions-free electricity (the San Onofre and Diablo Canyon nuclear plants) has only added to their problem. And Gov. Gavin Newsom's ban on the sale of new gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035 will force the state's already struggling grid to take on the stress of charging millions of electric vehicles each night. In Washington state, green politicians and activists routinely advocate for breaching large hydroelectric dams, claiming (wrongly, it would seem) that doing so is essential to maintaining salmon populations. But relying on non-hydro renewables would leave citizens exposed to situations like November 2019, when the state's wind resources went to essentially zero for an entire week. At the federal level, President Joe Biden has reentered the Paris climate agreement and canceled the construction permit for the Keystone XL pipeline. Strangely, however, he appeared willing to overlook climate concerns when he bucked bipartisan congressional opposition and waived sanctions against the Russian Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which he had previously called a "bad deal for Europe." Yet while the president bans American energy and gives his tacit blessing to Russian energy production, numbers from the Energy Information Administration, published in late March, indicate that U.S. gasoline prices had increased for 17 consecutive weeks"
From 2021
