Category Archives: Energy

Anti-Russian Alliance Fractures After Japan Decides To Stay In Russia’s Sakhalin-1 Energy Project, by Tyler Durden

Posted on November 1, 2022 | Leave a comment

Unlike the Europeans, the Japanese have chosen not to freeze in the dark this winter. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

While Europe continues the unvarnished hypocrisy of pretending it is imposing draconian sanctions against Russian oil and gas, when instead it is merely buying the country’s natural resources via such middlemen as India and China (an exercise in virtue signaling that costs it a 20% mark-up to Russian prices), less than a year since the start of the Ukraine war, some countries have had enough of pretending.

Today, the Japanese government decided to officially screw the sanctions, and remain involved in the (formerly Exxon-led) Sakhalin-1 oil and gas project in Russia, as it seeks a stable supply of energy (who doesn’t) despite international sanctions on Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine, the Nikkei reported.

ExxonMobil, which held a 30% stake in Sakhalin-1, announced in March that it would withdraw from the project. But after vacillating for more than half a year, Japan decided not to follow in Exxon’s footsteps.

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Life Without Oil

Posted on October 30, 2022 | 2 comments

From The Automatic Earth

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‘Zero Emissions’ From Electric Vehicles? Here’s Why That Claim Has Zero Basis, by John Murawski

Posted on October 29, 2022 | Leave a comment

EVs require a lot of energy to make (more than comparable IC cars) and that charge comes from somewhere, usually a fossil fuel burning power plant. From John Murawski at realclearwire.com:

As California, New York, and other states move to phase out the sale of gasoline-powered cars, public officials routinely echo the Biden administration’s claim that electric vehicles are a “zero emissions” solution that can significantly mitigate the effects of climate change. 

Car and energy experts, however, say there is no such thing as a zero-emissions vehicle: For now and the foreseeable future, the energy required to manufacture and power electric cars will leave a sizable carbon footprint. In some cases hybrids can be cleaner alternatives in states that depend on coal to generate electricity, and some suggest that it may be too rash to write off all internal combustion vehicles just yet. 

“I have a friend who drives a Kia he’s had for about 15 years,” said Ashley Nunes, a research fellow at Harvard Law School. “He called me and said, ‘Hey, I’m thinking of buying a Tesla. What do you think?’” 

“I said, ‘If you care about the environment, keep the Kia,’” Nunes said. 

Nunes’ advice points to the subtle complexities and numerous variables that challenge the reassuringly simple yet overstated promise of electric vehicles. Few dispute that the complete transition to EVs powered by cleaner electricity from renewable energy sources will have a less dire environmental impact than today’s gas-powered automotive fleet. But that low-carbon landscape exists on a distant horizon that’s booby-trapped with obstacles and popular misconceptions. 

In the meantime, the growing efforts by governments in this country and abroad to ban people from buying a transportation technology that has shaped modern society for the past century is prompting some electric car advocates to warn against using best-case scenarios to promote unrealistic expectations about the practicalities, costs, and payoffs of EVs. 

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What’s happening to your money?, by Dr. Vernon Coleman

Posted on October 27, 2022 | Leave a comment

The currency is being debased even faster, and the government even more tyrannical, in Great Britain than the U.S. From Dr. Vernon Coleman at 2ndsmartestguyintheworld.substack.com:

  • Central banks (including the Bank of England, the European Central Bank, the Federal Reserve) all failed to spot that inflation was coming. Why in the name of everything fiscal do we give money to these incompetent, overpaid buffoons? And why does anyone take any notice of what they say? It wasn’t difficult to see that inflation was coming. (I warned that inflation was coming fast and hard two years ago. I told you it was going into double figures.) Similarly, it was easy to see (and again you could have read it on this website) that interest rates were going up. The days of absurdly low, artificial interest rates are over. They’ve served their purpose – and lined up millions of people for penury, bankruptcy and homelessness. (You’ll find more about inflation in my book Moneypower.)
  • The idiots in governments keep saying that energy prices will fall next year. But they’re either being very, very stupid or they are lying. There is no way that energy prices are going to fall. They may go up and down a bit but the trend will be upwards. The officially supported and protected global warming cultists will ensure that energy prices go higher by helping to prevent oil companies finding new supplies. This winter is going to be a doddle compared to next winter. If you agree with me it might be a good idea to make appropriate plans. Congratulate yourself if you have a working chimney.
  • In the UK, the crypto-fascist-communist Government is now telling us how to heat our homes. They’re banning gas boilers and log burners and they want us all to install heat pumps and cavity wall insulation. They can sod off. When they pay my heating bills they can decide how it’s heated.

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Posted in Banking, Business, Civil Liberties, Collapse, Currencies, Debt, Economy, Energy, Government, Media, Politics, Tyranny

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Energy Execs Tell Granholm Shuttered U.S. Oil Refineries Won’t Restart, by Julianne Geiger

Posted on October 27, 2022 | Leave a comment

What kind of a return would a refinery investment be looking at if the federal government eventually stops the use of the refinery’s raw material? From Julianne Geiger at oilprice.com:

U.S. energy executives told Jennifer Granholm that shuttered crude oil refineries won’t restart, Valero’s Chief Executive Joe Gorder said on Tuesday.

The comments were made to the U.S. Energy Secretary at a recent White House meeting with energy executives, Reuters reported on Tuesday.

“The one interesting thing that came out of it, too, was there was consideration for the ability to restart refining capacity that had been shut down, and  I think the general sentiment was that wasn’t going to happen,” Gorder said.

Limited U.S. refinery capacity—and perhaps more critically, refinery capacity in specific U.S. geographic areas, known as PADDs—has spared worry in the United States over high gasoline prices and energy security.

US refinery run rates were north of 90% for much of the summer, according to the EIA’s Weekly Petroleum Status Report.

Shuttered refineries unlikely to start back up are the latest nail in the U.S. refinery coffin. In June, Chevron CEO Mike Wirth posited that there would never be another new refinery built in the United States.

“Building a refinery is a multi-billion dollar investment. It may take a decade. We haven’t had a refinery built in the United States since the 1970s. My personal view is that there will never be another refinery built in the United States,” Wirth said at the time.

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The End of the “Growth” Road, by Charles Hugh Smith

Posted on October 26, 2022 | Leave a comment

Economically, don’t count on the future being even remotely close to the recent past. Be prepared. From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:

Everyone caught by surprise that the infinite road actually has an end will face a bewildering transition.

The End of the “Growth” Road is upon us, though the consensus continues to hold fast to the endearing fantasy of infinite expansion of consumption.

This fantasy has been supported for decades by the financial expansion of debt, which enabled more spending which pushed consumption, earnings, taxes, etc. higher.

All the financial games are fun but “growth” boils down to an expansion of material consumption: more copper mined and turned into wire which is turned into new wind turbines, housing, vehicles, appliances, etc.

There are three problems with the infinite expansion of consumption “growth” paradigm.

1. Everyone in developed economies already has everything. The “solution” is planned obsolescence and the obsessive worship of marketing, which seeks to manipulate “consumers” into buying stuff of marginal utility that they don’t actually need with credit. This is sold as “fashion.”

The reality is many consumer goods are of far lower quality than previous generations of products and services. Some of this can be attributed to lower quality control and the relentless pressure of globalization to lower costs, but it’s also a systemic expansion of planned obsolescence: product cycles, low-quality components, designs intended to be unrepairable, etc. have all been optimized for the LandFill Economy where products that once lasted for decades are now dumped in the landfill after a few years of service. (As for recycling all the broken stuff–that’s another endearing fantasy.)

Bright Panels, Dark Secrets: The Problem of Solar Waste: Generating photovoltaic electricity takes more than sweetness and sunshine.

The purchase of “fashionable” replacements and marketing gimmicks are the only real driver of “growth” in developed economies. Life is not being enhanced with better quality or utility; it’s supposedly being enhanced by “new” stuff, the only benefit of which is that’s it’s “new.” The claimed benefits are marginal.

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Posted in Business, Debt, Economics, Economy, Energy, Environment, Governments, Trade

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Amid Energy Crisis, the Green Delusion Collides With Reality… Here’s What Happens Next, by Nick Giambruno

Posted on October 26, 2022 | Leave a comment

There’s absolutely no way the electric grid can support the mass adoption of electric cars. From Nick Giambruno at internationalman.com:

Energy Crisis and the Green Delusion

25 refrigerators.

That’s how much the additional electricity consumption per household would be if the average US home adopted electric vehicles.

Congressman Thomas Massie—an electrical engineer—revealed this information while discussing with Pete Buttigieg, the Secretary of Transportation, President Biden’s plan to have 50% of cars sold in the US be electric by 2030.

The current and future grid in most places will not be able to support each home running 25 refrigerators—not even close. Just look at California, where the grid is already buckling under the existing load.

Massie claims, correctly, in my view, that the notion of widespread adoption of electric vehicles anytime soon is a dangerous fantasy based on political science, not sound engineering.

Nevertheless, Western governments are falling over themselves to shun hydrocarbons—especially of Russian origin—and promote so-called “green” technologies like electric vehicles and supposed renewables such as wind and solar, which are better termed as unreliables.

Here’s the big problem, though…

Wind and solar power might be useful in specific situations. Still, it’s ridiculous to think they can provide reliable base load power for an advanced industrial economy even as they are now—never mind when every household is running 25 refrigerators.

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Chaos Is As Chaos Does, by James Howard Kunstler

Posted on October 24, 2022 | 1 comment

Garbage in, garbage out; the consequence of chaotic thinking is chaos. From James Howard Kunstler at kunstler.com:

When this future becomes the present, that present will look obvious. It always does. And from that present, this past we are living in will look ridiculous…. — Curtis Yarvin

It’s hard to escape the awful feeling that Western Civ has a death wish, or to say which of its constituent nations wants to get to the graveyard first. Great Britain might be leading the pack with its Three-Card-Monte financial finagling economy and hot potato political leadership. Old Blighty sinks visibly by the day into sclerotic torpor — even while its MI-6 intel gang works overtime scheming to blow things up, to make the Russia-Ukraine mess even worse. Newly-tapped Prime Minister Rishi Sunak faces the same set of quandaries that sank Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, and his country will have to call a painful general election before long to make its government legitimate. Oh, to be a fly-on-the-wall at the first meeting between Mr. Sunak and King Charles.

Germany took a wrecking bar to its own economy this summer while its people kept goose-stepping to the absurd Covid “vaccine” tyranny narrative. The German gene for obedience marches them into their third national calamity in a hundred-odd years, with hardly a peep of political objection. Yet, deep inside them lurks that age-old Teutonic libido for violence. When will that break against the feckless head-of-state Olaf Scholz, with all the charisma of a Dampfnudel?

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Useful Idiots, by Joel Bowman

Posted on October 23, 2022 | Leave a comment

It’s simply impossible to make too much fun of the group Joel Bowman makes fun of in this article. From Bowman at bonnerprivateresearch.com:

How one group of Scientists got a glimpse into the coming Dark Ages…

(Porsche Abarth Carrera. Source: Getty Images)

Welcome to another Sunday Session, dear reader, that time of the week when we pull up a barstool at the virtual watering hole, take stock of the week just gone, and try to recall a little perspective to our lives… one nip of flu medicine at a time (we’ve been “crook as a dog” all week, to put it in Australian vernacular, but seem to be on the mend now)…

It ought to go without saying that we live in an unprecedented Age of Abundance. Our modern economy is one brimming with cheap and abundant goods… manufactured using cheap and abundant energy… financed using cheap and abundant credit.

For better and worse, modern man scarcely wants for his bare necessities. His physiological requirements, the base of Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs, he takes more or less for granted. If anything, he is overburdened with worldly goods, a slave to his possessions.

But when he requires painkillers – as we did during the week – he need only visit a drugstore and choose from a variety of on- and off-label products. Pills, potions, capsules and caplets… daytime, nighttime… drowsy, non-drowsy… balms, rubs, ointments. You name it.

As Bill wrote during the week, such a casual cornucopia of pharmaceutical remedies and therapeutics were not so readily available in the recent past… not even to a man whose word was law and who ruled over the richest land on earth. (Read Bill’s excellent essay about King Louis XIV’s toothache ordeal here.)

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Net Zero Bombshell: The World Does Not Have Enough Lithium and Cobalt to Replace All Batteries Every 10 Years – Finnish Government Report, by Chris Morrison

Posted on October 23, 2022 | Leave a comment

There are some things that wishing just doesn’t make true, and net zero is one of them. From Chris Morrison at dailyskeptic.org:

Net Zero Bombshell: The World Does Not Have Enough Lithium and Cobalt to Replace All Batteries Every 10 Years – Finnish Government Report

To cite just one example of how un-costed Net Zero is, Michaux notes that “in theory” there are enough global reserves of nickel and lithium if they are exclusively used to produce batteries for electric vehicles. But there is not enough cobalt, and more will need to be discovered. It gets much worse. All the new batteries have a useful working life of only 8-10 years, so replacements will need to be regularly produced. “This is unlikely to be practical, which suggests the whole EV battery solution may need to be re-thought and a new solution is developed that is not so mineral intensive,” he says.

All of these problems occur in finding a mass of lithium for ion batteries weighting 286.6 million tonnes. But a “power buffer” of another 2.5 billion tonnes of batteries is also required to provide a four-week back-up for intermittent wind and solar electricity power. Of course, this is simply not available from global mineral reserves, but, states Michaux, it is not clear how the buffer could be delivered with an alternative system.

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