Tag Archives: Oil and gas

The Biden Administration’s Ignorant Energy Policies: Higher Gas Prices Are Only the Beginning, by Doug French

Posted on June 19, 2022 | Leave a comment

The stupidity compounds. From Doug French at mises.org:

While Americans angrily grit their teeth while filling their gas tanks, the very first United States special presidential envoy for climate said:

This year, we have to implement those promises and what it means is that we have to decarbonize the power sector five times faster than we are right now. We have to deploy renewables five times faster than we are right now. We have to transition to electric vehicles about 20 times faster than we are right now. And we have to fully transition to a resilient Net Zero economy faster.

If reality was beyond his reach before, John Kerry surely lost touch when he married into the Heinz condiment colossus in 1995. He talks as if he were ordering lunch from his harried house staff, “Faster, Jeeves. Can’t you hurry up and decarbonize already?” All of this service to the country has left Kerry clueless as to physics, not to mention economics.

“And to say it is to expose a level of ignorance that is scary,” the green cartoon chicken known as Doomberg told Tony Greer on Real Vision:

Actually, that our politicians would think despite all the evidence before them, that somehow, we can wave a magic wand and accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles by a factor of 20 when we don’t have enough lithium, nickel or cobalt to even support the current growth trajectory. It’s just crazy. Where’s the diesel going to come from to mine all the cobalt and nickel and lithium that we’re going to need?

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“It’s Appalling”: In Hilarious Reversal, Biden Admin Now Slams Shale For Not Raising Output, by Tyler Durden

Posted on March 10, 2022 | Leave a comment

Since Biden took office his administration has done everything possible to hinder the production of oil and natural gas. However, with rising oil and gas prices part of a generalized trend that will cost Democrats dearly this November, all of a sudden the administration wants producers to produce full speed ahead. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

It was just last June when we asked if “ESG will trigger energy hyperinflation“, explaining that the progressives’ ESG agenda, “is unwinding the shale oil revolution. As recent events at Exxon and Shell have shown, the pressure on oil companies to reduce oil and gas exploration and adapt their business models has increased significantly over the past few months” (incidentally the answer to our rhetorical question was “yes”).

We added that “ESG is a negative supply shock that internalizes the climate cost of the production of goods and services. This negative supply shock will be inflationary until technological progress absorbs these costs. That could take years.  Moreover in Europe, it could garner enough of political support to justify a more aggressive fiscal policy despite the constraints at the German or EU levels.”

Meanwhile, the impact of ESG on oil companies has been to depress Capex spending to the lowest level in decades, leaving the energy sector entirely unprepared for any energy price spike, as it simply did not have the capacity to pump as much oil as may be needed.

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Russian Judo Tears the West Apart, by Pepe Escobar

Posted on March 9, 2022 | Leave a comment

Sanctions on Russia could destroy the U.S.’s and Europe’s financial and energy markets. From Pepe Escobar at unz.com:

Washington’s ‘replacement strategy’ for sanctioned Russian oil and gas imports appears to be to cozy up to its oil-producing arch-enemies Iran and Venezuela. Photo Credit: The Cradle

The official Russian blacklist of hostile sanctioning nations includes the US, the EU, Canada and, in Asia, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore (the only one from Southeast Asia). Notice how that ‘international community’ keeps shrinking.

The Global South should be aware that no nations from West Asia, Latin America and Africa have joined Washington’s sanctions bandwagon.

Moscow has not even announced its own package of counter-sanctions. Yet an official decree “On Temporary Order of Obligations to Certain Foreign Creditors,” which allows Russian companies to settle their debts in rubles, provides a hint of what’s to come.

Russian counter-measures all revolve around this new presidential decree, signed last Saturday, which economist Yevgeny Yushchuk defines as a “nuclear retaliatory landmine.” .

It works like this: to pay for loans obtained from a sanctioning country exceeding 10 million rubles a month, a Russian company does not have to make a transfer. They ask for a Russian bank to open a correspondent account in rubles under the creditor’s name. Then the company transfers rubles to this account at the current exchange rate, and it’s all perfectly legal.

Payments in foreign currency only go through the Central Bank on a case-by-case basis. They must receive special permission from the Government Commission for the Control of Foreign Investment.

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Posted in Banking, Business, Collapse, Economy, Energy, Financial markets, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, Politics, Propaganda, Trade, War

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The Next “Crisis”, by Eric Peters

Posted on March 9, 2022 | Leave a comment

A real crisis comes when Russia refuses dollars for its oil. From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:

Now that Putin Bad! Ukraine Good! has sidelined Ronamonomania, a new “crisis” is needed to deal with a real one. Rather than “rearing his head” – per Sarah Palin – Putin may do something a lot more damaging to the people who gave us Ronamonomania and who are desperately trying to get us to forget it, via Putin Bad! Ukraine Good!

Ready?

Putin could decide to offer up Russian oil – of which there is a lot – for maybe a few bucks more than the $10 or so per barrel it costs to extract. With payment accepted in anything except American dollars.

If you think we’re in a “crisis” now, just wait.

This may be precisely why one of the American political psychopaths who gave us Ronamonomania – Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley – urges a “climate crisis” be declared and that the world “transition” to “renewable energy.” (The video is available on Breitbart; see here.)

He means expensive energy – under the control of political and corporate psychopaths such as himself. “Green” – he means red – energy. Rationed energy. No power for you. Of course plenty for him.

The latter being another way to elaborate the World Economic Forum’s slogan about us owning nothing – with WEF’ers owning everything – and us not happy about it.

Speaking of which…

Who are these WEF people? Did anyone elect them to anything? Or did money – the dangling thereof, by Klaus Schwab, who invented the WEF and styled it in such a way as to give people the impression it’s some sort of elected group of “global leaders” (as opposed to plutocrat-vultures) select them, by the dangling thereof? Knowing that those who rose to the bait were precisely the sorts of grifters on-the-make that would be useful to an uber psychopath such as himself?

Back to the crisis . . . the real one.

It’s not Russian troops marching into a former Russian province. It is the leader of Russia selling oil cheaply and for gold or some other currency that has value, unlike the American “dollar” – the pieces of paper that are almost not worth the paper they’re printed on.

Americans are forced to use these pieces of paper to buy whatever oil the hair-plugged febe who fronts the U.S. government permits them to buy – assuming they can afford to buy it. But the rest of the world – or large parts of it – is not so constrained. And there’s nothing – shy of letting the nukes fly – that the old hair-plugged febe who fronts for the U.S. government (which has become another front of the WEF) can do about it, in that event.

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Biden’s Sanctions on Russia Will Cause Havoc in Western Markets, by David Stockman

Posted on March 9, 2022 | Leave a comment

It’s a better than even bet that the sanctions imposed on Russia will end up hurting the sanctioners more than the sanctionees. From David Stockman at antiwar.com:

What a tangled web these war-loving fools spin. We are referring, of course, to Washington’s belated attempts to ease or remove sanctions against oil producers Venezuela and Iran. That’s so it can crank up the sanctions against the new villain of the month, Russia, without monkey-hammering American consumers with $7 gasoline prices.

Then again, why is Washington in the Spanker-in-Chief business in the first place?

Yes, the Venezuelan people foolishly elected a socialist government which proceeded (predictably) to wreck their economy. But why did Uncle Sam have to administer a spanking, especially since the strapping occurred during a Republican Administration that should know better than to indulge in the folly of nation-building? Yet that’s the whole purpose of sanctions – to force recalcitrant nations to reshape themselves according to Washington’s dictates.

Then again, who ever said the Donald was a Republican or rational for that matter? The sanctions on Venezuela that Sleepy Joe is fixing to lift where actually slapped on by the Donald in a bid to consolidate the Cuban/Latin emigre vote in Florida.

Still, couldn’t Washington have let well enough alone and wished the people of Venezuela better luck next time rather than viciously hobble what remained of their energy industry?

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Decarbonization Cannot Manufacture the Products Demanded by Civilization, by Ronald Stein

Posted on December 20, 2021 | Leave a comment

Getting rid of oil and gas would only set us back a century or two. From Ronald Stein at lewrockwell.com:

As late as the 1800’s, the world was “decarbonized” as there were no coal or natural gas power plants, and what the Beverly Hillbillies situation comedies of the 1960’s theme song called “oil that is, black gold, Texas tea”, had not been discovered as something that could be manufactured into usable products.

Before the 1900’s life was hard and dirty, and most people never traveled 100-200 miles from where they were born, and life expectancy was short. Today, crude oil is manufactured into all the products used in the medical industry, fertilizers, electronics and more than 6,000 other products that are the basis of lifestyles and economies.

Now, worldwide efforts are in place to have electricity generated by breezes and sunshine to decarbonize the electricity being generated by coal and natural gas. The “other” fossil fuel of crude oil is caught on the chopping block efforts to eliminate ALL 3 fossil fuels, but crude oil is seldom ever used for electricity generation!

Saule Omarova, who withdrew as Biden’s nominee for Comptroller of the Currency, wants coal, oil, and gas industries ‘to go bankrupt’ is a reflection that she is either oblivious or ignorant to how life and the economies of the world were before 1900. The world had no coal and natural gas generated electricity, nor any of the products, nor fuels manufactured from crude oil needed for airlines, ships, and militaries around the world, as none of those existed before 1900! Had she been confirmed Saule Omarova wanted to push the world back to those decarbonized days of the 1800’s.

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Why the Utes Opposed Biden’s Plans to Limit Oil Drilling, by Ryan McMaken

Posted on January 29, 2021 | Leave a comment

Any group that’s trying to get out from under the thumb of the federal government should be cheered. From Ryan McMaken at mises.org:

Within a day of the inauguration, the Biden administration issues a bevy of new executive orders designed to please a variety of the Democratic Party’s core special-interest groups. Among these was an executive order curtailing oil and gas leasing on federal and tribal lands.

But a problem quickly presented itself: many tribes earn a significant amount of income through oil and gas drilling on their lands. These operations also provide jobs for tribal members. The administration’s new orders would curtail tribal control and instead place decision-making authority over these drilling operations on a handful of federal officials.

Not surprisingly, at least one tribe reacted with alarm to these new federal limits. Reuters reports:

An oil-producing Native American tribe on Friday asked the U.S. Interior Department for an exemption from the recent temporary suspension of oil and gas leasing and permitting on federal and tribal lands, saying the move would hit its economy and sovereignty.

The pushback from the Ute Indian Tribe reflects the financial strain some communities will face from a freeze of the government’s fossil fuel leasing program. The new administration of President Joe Biden announced the move this week as part of a raft of measures intended to combat global climate change.

In a letter from the Ute Indian Tribe in Utah (i.e., the Uintah and Ouray Reservation), the head of the tribe’s business committee demanded the federal government exclude tribes from the new orders:

The Ute Indian Tribe and other energy producing tribes rely on energy development to fund our governments and provide services to our members….Your order is a direct attack on our economy, sovereignty, and our right to self-determination. Indian lands are not federal public lands. Any actions on our lands and interests can only be taken after effective tribal consultation.

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The Great American Shale Oil & Gas Massacre: Bankruptcies, Defaulted Debts, Worthless Shares, Collapsed Prices of Oil & Gas. by Wolf Richter

Posted on July 11, 2020 | 1 comment

The carnage in the oil and gas patch has been gruesome. From Wolf Richter at wolfstreet.com:

The bankruptcy epicenter is in Texas.

The Great American Oil Bust started in mid-2014, when the price of crude-oil benchmark WTI began its long decline from over $100 a barrel to, briefly, minus -$37 a barrel in April 2020. Bankruptcies of US companies in the oil and gas sector started piling up in 2015. In 2016, the total amount of debt listed in these filings hit $82 billion. Bankruptcy filings continued, with smaller dollar amounts of debt involved. In 2019, the shakeout got rougher.

And this year promises to be a banner year, as larger oil-and-gas companies with billions of dollars in debt collapsed, after having wobbled through the prior years of the oil bust.

The 44 bankruptcy filings in the first half of 2020 among US exploration and production companies (E&P), oilfield services companies (OFS), and “midstream” companies (gather, transport, process, and store oil and natural gas) involved $55 billion in debts, according to data compiled by law firm Haynes and Boone. This first-half total beat all prior full-year totals of the Great American Oil Bust except the full-year total of 2016:

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