Posted by Terry Etam on February 19, 2022 in Industrial Energy
If you feel comfortable with everything that’s going on in the world today, you are either a complete freak or perhaps more optimistically have mastered the not-crazy goal of isolating yourself from every media stream that is not slapstick comedy. It is hard to isolate – there is no respite in movies; they penetrate your brain like ear wigs with political messaging both subtle and not. Sports have been similarly overrun, whether in the professional realm where you must either love or hate someone for taking or not taking a knee, or in the amateur realm where you are supposed to be either uplifted or flaming with rage as some transitory individual mops up the ladies swim competition because, well, you can finish that sentence in your own head, I’m at a loss (and if I did my bank account would be frozen). You can’t find respite in ‘comedy’ shows because they’ve gone full politics too. A comedy industry that shuns Dave Chappelle is of no value to anyone.
While I would love to turn this site into pure slapstick, and I might, and some might argue that it is already, I would argue that there is one thing worth keeping in mind, something even more important than Russia/Ukraine, more important than truckers, more important than beer. What you should pay attention to is:
We are running out of fuel.
Throughout history, those have been bad words, and they are happening. I’m neither kidding nor being sensationalistic. Go do some homework if you are unsure. Stories aren’t in the mainstream; the media is obsessed with trucker donation lists and/or the people that use them, or whether windmills are going up too fast or too slow, or whether someone is weeping over a latte with hurt feelings. But the stories can be found.
This isn’t about running out of oil, or natural gas, or coal as resources. Those are there for the taking, underground. The problem is, few are doing the taking. Hydrocarbon producers are being hounded to move on from hydrocarbons, to pour their cashflow into emissions reductions infrastructure, or send it to the pockets of investors. National oil companies, who actually control much of the world’s hydrocarbon resources, are pretty much tapped out, according to both OPEC production stats and/or the lack of production growth at $90/barrel.
No, this is about a shortage of fuel, due to strangulation and abuse of our existing hydrocarbon system. Here are some consequences of the global war on hydrocarbons that seems like such a fantastic idea in sociology departments and political science think tanks. Let’s see how it plays out in the real world.
Europe this winter has been so desperate to obtain natural gas that LNG prices were bid through the roof to scoop cargoes from Asia. But that wasn’t enough, and both coal and fuel oil were burned in copious quantities to get through the winter. Enduring what are described as “crippling costs”, Euro governments are without a trace of irony unleashing fossil fuel subsidies as fast as they can to shield consumers from skyrocketing utility bills, just as many developing countries do with gasoline and heating fuel prices. Those are called ‘fossil fuel subsidies’ when other countries do it; when rich western countries do it it’s called ‘Hey look over there! Is that an eagle?’
That fight for LNG had some massive consequences that we do not readily hear about because we are self-absorbed, fat and wealthy, generically speaking. In Pakistan, in one province alone, three hundred CNG (compressed natural gas) fueling stations have been closed since December because no fuel was available. In that province, 2.7 million rickshaws, taxis, and flying coaches (whatever that is) have been parked due to lack of availability of CNG. Passengers and students are paying the price, in a population that has little of anything. And it gets worse. “The condition of low pressure was that our daily children have been forced to go to school without breakfast. Domestic women were facing severe difficulties in everything from providing milk to infants to preparing food in the kitchen,” the article stated.
In Africa, Nigeria is suffering gasoline shortages because external suppliers of gasoline have stopped supplying the country (though Nigeria is a huge producer, it relies on imported fuel significantly) in developments that a government official called “completely unavoidable” and that they did not see coming. A taxi driver in Abuja, Nigerial’s capital, tells of sleeping 14 hours in line to get gasoline so as to able to work, and of daily earnings falling from $17 per day to $5, if there is gasoline at all. Correspondingly, fares have more than doubled, which is a considerable inconvenience for a country that lives somewhat dissimilarly to, say, NYC residents.
Those are but a few examples; others are out there if one is interested in real global problems.
What are the elites doing, the western powers that be? They are putting on brave faces for the camera, and behind closed doors are either hounding producers to produce more, or are presumably laying on the floor and either crying or hyperventilating. Well, that might be an exaggeration, because they might be smart enough to have scapegoats lined up. They’ve been listening to the likes of the International Energy Agency, who famously said late last year that the world must not develop any more fossil fuels, period, to meet the net-zero 2050 emissions targets. That same IEA has been in the past few days hectoring OPEC to produce more oil because global inventories are falling like a rock, and global consumption is hitting new record highs.
OPEC itself has long insisted it has tons of spare capacity, and pledged to bring back additional volumes at a rate of 400,000 barrels per day every month, starting last September. They have yet to hit that target, and the most recent month saw them bring on less than half of that.
Biden has also been scouring the world to line up natural gas supplies for Europe in case Russia Russias, to no avail – even Qatar (one of the world’s top exporters) said nope, the pantry is empty. Biden has also badgered OPEC to produce more oil, and they have shrugged and went on their way. (Biden is rushing to stitch up a nuclear deal with Iran to get their barrels back on the market, but suspicions are high that Iran has been selling a lot on the black market anyway and a new nuclear pact wouldn’t make that much difference (except to free Iran to do whatever it wants, but that’s a problem for another day. Beggars can’t be choosers.).) We do hear about those attempts, because they are threads necessary to keep western populations from revolting. We hear endlessly about Europe’s woes, because like most western institutions, it is Very Important.
So we are are made acutely aware of the feelings of the 700-odd million in the west; when was the last time you read about fuel shortages in Pakistan, or Africa, or India, or anywhere else that is not on the global elite travel circuit? They are happening, and happening now, but seriously, who cares about those people when we have our current set of western crises to worry about, like hauling truckers to prison and death matches over gender terminology?
In a twist due to global bottlenecking, our fat asses in North America are blessed with natural gas prices that are a fraction of global prices. Few notice or care, because no one understands the role natural gas plays in the world. Without massively more LNG export capability, we will remain lucky to have that.
But North America is not immune to any fuel that is easily transported intercontinentally. Again, it is fuel we are talking about Even the US is suffering from diesel stocks that are falling “critically low”. Beyond that, consumers may be comforted by no obvious fuel shortages, but we will see the consequences of global shortages indirectly. Fertilizer plants are shutting down due to lack of affordable natural gas, which will drive up food prices and possibly lead to food shortages that will even impact our hallowed supermarkets. Global metals producers are cutting output, which will indirectly cause us grief when we can’t buy whatever we want whenever we want. This is starting to happen already. That’s what happens when we offshore manufacturing of pretty much everything.
Capital has been chased away from the hydrocarbon sector by the ‘divest fossil fuels’ movement, and a lot of spineless money managers have followed that path. The petroleum industry is not immune from judgement either; poor returns have eliminated investor enthusiasm for growth stories. Either route spells less supply on the market, at the same time that US and global demand hits new records for oil and natural gas.
All the nonsense in the news is comparatively irrelevant. The world is running out of fuel. We are going to pay.
This, like the 1970’s, is a political crisis. The gas lines in the US were due to price controls, not supply as such. And the solution is the same, getting different politicians with different policies.
This is even more complex than that: The people need to confront the problem and make it abundantly clear that any continuation of these policies means real trouble. With an MSM that collectively feels that every human death is a win for Gaia, with centuries of practice in fixing elections, amoral armies that will suppress any public dissent with as much violence as necessary, with an innumerate population that can’t process second order events, with data and studies that are coin-tosses as far as reliability and integrity, a Western culture that has rotted to the point of collapsing on its own – don’t expect to see material changes in policy.
I’m not even sure that a profound change in policy, a Manhattan project for thermal energy of all types, would even avoid the upcoming calamity. It takes a lot of talent, material and energy to make energy. Holes need to be punched, pipes connected, refineries built, all of this takes capital, talent and material. I don’t know where any of that is supposed to come from. They don’t teach welding much, in favor of humanities. Too many people don’t want to see the open pit excavation for the metals, the smokestacks for refining and manufacturing, and I’m pretty sure we don’t have vast warehouses filled with equipment to convert raw materials nor the engineering grads to convert all of this stuff in to functioning fuel and energy generators.
Why didn’t we fight off the Malthusians for the preceding decades?
The Chinese don’t care about any of that. Nor do the Russians.
After the gigantic and continuous effort over the last decades by the USA to gaslight the whole world into believing that both Russians and Chinese are subhuman and are eternal racial enemies – can you perhaps suggest a reason why they would give a damn about western countries’ self-inflicted pratt-falls? I’m struggling to think of one.
It only makes sense that Russia and China partner to control the industrialization/consumerization of central Asia and Eastern Europe. A better choice than fighting over it. All that is needed is control over the hydrocarbon markets and the energy infrastructure in those regions needed to make it happen. Putin needs Western Europe NG revenue for Russian to partner with China to turn itself, Eastern Europe and Central Asia…etc into a economic powerhouse they control.
China only exists as a world player because they manufacture so many items the west buys. The solution is simple, the west can simply force its companies to manufacture their goods in a different country and China dies almost instantly. So, sorry if I fail to see China as the major threat that you want them to be. They are more of a self-inflicted stupidity the west has accepted for unknown reasons, but the solution is simple. Just move the manufacturing and watch China die.
Plus, China has an almost $100 trillion national debt. Granted they hide it by saying that most of that debt belongs to this province or that province, but they are all controlled by the central government and the total debt of all of them is just over $93 trillion. So, moving manufacturing out of China will almost instantly crush the country under a mountain of debt that they can no longer afford to pay for. They won’t be able to pay Russia for their oil, or gas, and Russia sure as hell is not about to give it to them for free! The only option China has at this time is to start wars to take over small Asian countries in the hopes that the wealth of those countries can prop them up. Which is why they are threatening Taiwan!
“our fat asses”, just like the ancient Romans, are distracted by media minutia while the globalists set us up to be their serfs (servus). The pompous media celebrities seem to believe they will be part of the elite but fail to read history – they will be hoi polloi to the new regime when no longer needed to provide the distractions and spread the propaganda. Same with the political class who will no longer serve any purpose.
We “fat ass” ugly Americans of the past few decades are living up to the rest of the world’s unseemly perceptions of us.
I recently saw a historian on a WWII museum panel denigrating “the greatest generation” military as little better than the Axis powers.It sickened me.
Re vast warehouses of equipment to convert raw materials, part of the IEA in a moment of sanity calculated that we will need to mine 4,200 times as much lithium to meet green goals but they also said that plans are not even on the drawing board for the infrastructure. https://www.iea.org/reports/the-role-of-critical-minerals-in-clean-energy-transitions
the humans I work with only care about 3 things
which restaurant they ate at and was it good for bragging rights
Who will win the footie at the weekend
and when they can go to Bali
Intelligence is not a prerequisite
we are the dumbest humans in human history
Social media makes it even worse
I complete agree we are in an energy crisis right now
I WA they blame the empty shelves in the supermarkets on a train line
in reality it is a broken just in time supply line
Politicians have zilch to do with the current supply vs demand shortfall. Do you actually believe that politicians control the markets?
SMH
Politicians do seek to control the market, Duane. Do you actually believe that the lawsuits against oil and gas producers aren’t politically motivated?
They seek to play the market, not quite the same thing.
The lawsuits and green policies will cause bankruptcies as Marc Carney clearly said. Be sure the players know that.
Yes, it only took two weeks to flatten the curve. There was no effect on the markets whatsoever.
Politicians, no, the FED, BlackRock, City of London yes.
Politicians today quiver at the knees on the thought of taking these on – hey ye will crash the economy and look what that will do to your ratings! – is the reply.
That is control .
Remember, the study of markets & resource allocation was called Political Economy in the 19th century.
It is still true today.
“Economics” as such is not a science, but a study of human activity and human activity involves politics.
Sure, there are hard & fast rules, like supply & demand, but there are few markets that are immune to political interference or control.
With energy markets, that political interference is on steroids.
Get Bitme to open up oil exploration in the US and watch the prices drop. Politicians do control the markets with legislation
“I want you to look at my eyes. I guarantee you. I guarantee you. We’re going to end fossil fuel.”
–US Presidential Candidate Joe Biden.
https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2019-09-06/in-intimate-moment-biden-vows-to-end-fossil-fuel
In 1974 the US Senate voted on the new Alaska pipeline – 80 for – 5 against. Biden was one of the five. He hasn’t changed a bit.
That is not so the US has gas because of a regulatory framework that allowed the shale project to flourish.
In NZ we have decided to kill ours price signals help but Politicians matter a lot.
You clearly have no idea how the world around you works. Politicians control the purse strings (“follow the money”) holding TRILLIONS of dollars–and penalize some while rewarding others, that’s really all they do. If you actually con’t believe that politicians control the markets, then, I kindly suggest that you, Duane, seek professional help immediately.
Your comment promotes a bigger question – who controls the politicians? I wonder if the current western leaders have the intelligence to orchestrate the goings-on. All politicians are slaves to big money and big contributors to their parties.
Politicians are the faces, but big money is where the power lies, and where the battles are being bought. My opinion.
To ascertain what is or is not going on than I suggest we allow the marlet to operate without any government or political intervention. I believe we would find out the true extent of government and political influences on our fossil fuel industries. Fossil fuels were cheaper when the Trump Administration were in power. That was both government (policy) and political influences in play. Biden and his cronies are interfering and have only added roadblocks in accessing our energy reserves. This of course is all about “green energy.” Barf!
Fixed that – my version is more in line with reality.
Wake me up when the first windmill is produced, inclusive of all material components, and placed into service and maintained, and demolished and hauled off to the landfill, all without fossil fuels.
Ditto for solar panels.
Until then, windmills and solar panels are nothing but a less efficient way to deliver energy FROM FOSSIL FUELS.
In your world Duane, regulations have no impact on either supply or demand?????
Duane, you must be listening to our clueless Secretary of Energy, you know, the one that doesn’t know how much oil and natural gas we consume every day. Keystone Pipeline, 500k bopd not arriving at gulf coast refineries, banning of leasing on federal lands and regulations on methane emissions limiting supply, appointing global warming zealots to Fed and other banking regulators who see eliminating funding to fossil fuel producers as their main goal, etc etc etc. All these are political and all impact supply. Oil production in the US is down 1.5 million bpd over the past 2 years, much of it due to the policies and threats of the current administration. Biden did that.
When you set the context, you pretty much control the market.
And who was that guy whose first act in office was to kill THE pipeline? Oh yes, and he has been shutting down leases on government land! Have you been living under a rock?
The ecofascist website Skeptical Science are boasting that the global climate alarmist movement has achieved 39 Trillion (yes, trillion) divestment from fossil fuel industry. That movement includes every leader of every western country.
https://skepticalscience.com/dollars-institutions-divestment.html
In what sense that not mean politicians causing the incipient fuel shortage?
Or is 39 trillion an insignificant amount of money?
SSYH
seems youv’e hurt yourself
Ah, yes: the Arab oil embargo!! I remember it well: gas lines at the pumps while people added a half gallon of gasoline to the tank. The price was $0.359 and went to $0,519 almost overnight! There were news media reporting threats of the price for regular going to (GASP!!) as much as $0.749!!! It was nothing if not silly, but people fell for the propaganda (SHORTAGES!!!) and lined up at the pumps after a brief trip to the grocery store, and drove off with the gas cap sitting on top of the car. There are films about it all somewhere….
Then things straightened out and the media looked downright sad that they couldn’t milk that lame cow any further.
And now we have cars with 8 to 10 gallon tanks and regular unleaded costs upwards of $3.659, but I don’t see people lining up at the pumps in droves these days. The car wash, yes, but not gas pumps. High efficiency engines do have their benefits.
But let’s take a chill pill about this, shall we? We are assured by various prognosticators that there is plenty of untapped fuel in the ground to keep the wheels turning and the furnaces and stoves burning, but now this “running out of gas” thingy is raising its head again – after all these years???? Seems to me that someone has either forgotten the past or never knew about it, but if it’s “real”, then why is no one having panic attacks over it? I find nothing that says we will have to refurbish the kitchen with a huge woodburning fireplace, in addition to several other such facilities, just to cook and keep the house warm.
I do feel a bit confused about this, because we’re told repeatedly that there are still vast quantities of untapped raw fuels in the ground, but no one is doing refining. And yet, I have yet to find (through Gas Buddy, a pump price purveyor) that any gas stations are running low or out of fuel. Should I run across any such things, I will, of course, relay that, but so far, prices are ridiculously high but stable, so just what is going on here? If there were outages, they’ll show up on the Gas Buddy map, but so far, no such thing has occurred.
Granted, I’m only addressing local venues, but with that memory of the Arab Oil Embargo still pinging, I think it’s a good idea to pay attention.
The US is embargoing Russia’s NordStream2, using as in 1974 and 1979, this time Ukraine.
In Germany many remember Autobahn-free Sundays, with roller-skate crowds out!
It is heading straight there again. How long will Biden, the EU keep up this charade?
IMO everything is driven by market fear. Back in the day few were invested in stocks and bonds and the markets were not as volatile. Today with IRAs and 401ks everyone is invested and perception rather than reality influences prices and supplies. The toilet paper hoarding for an analogy. And there is the Fed dumping $trillions into the economy – all of the $$ can’t be loaned so it is dumped into an already over inflated stock market which will eventually burst. My grandparents and parents were very frugal and cautious investors; they lived through a depression.
There were shortages. Maybe it didn’t happen where you live, but I remember many gas stations hanging up signs declaring that they were out of gas. The market wasn’t allowed to adapt and adjust because the Democrats declared an emergency and had government take over the oil market.
The problems didn’t go away until Reagan de-regulated the oil markets.
Just because your local gas stations are still able to get more fuel, is not evidence that supplies aren’t getting tighter.
You have to realize that with inflation, most things cost about 10X what they did in the 1970s. As I recollect, the Dow-Jones was under 700 for the latter part of 1974, and it is over 34,000 today!
No, unfortunately, putting a different political gang in charge is not the solution. Democracy is utterly useless if there’s no-one worth voting for. Thatcher and Reagan might have seemed at the time to make things a bit better, but in the long run their ideas and policies failed. What is needed, in my view, is cultural change. In particular, a revival of the Enlightenment idea that government is supposed to serve the people they govern, not rule over us.
“but in the long run their ideas and policies failed” No they did not, they were abandoned after all they empowered the people and the elites can’t have that.
Tax cuts work every time they are tried.
The US idea that the Government is to serve the General Welfare, not private interests. Constitution Article 1 section 8.
“…promote the general welfare…” not serve nor fund it
More government is never a good thing. Less government equals more freedom. I’ll take freedom over government anyday. Leftist ideology fails everywhere it has been tried.
I believe it was Will Rogers who said: “Be thankful we’re not getting all the government we’re paying for.“
Not sure about that, more government certainly helped the world fight against some truly horrific things in WW2.
I think the problem is how to wind back bigger government, when its limited reasons for being, are fulfilled.
John Adams is noted as saying that “Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
The problem is that we as a nation have departed from what is considered moral. As such, our politicians serve themselves at the banquet of our taxes. Rewarding friends and family with jobs or appointing them to committees.
I have heard it said that we get the government we deserve.
Perhaps we do.
You are so wrong! The 1974 gas crisis resulted in gas lines not because of price controls but for the same reason there is a fuel shortage now ….that is political leveraging of hydrocarbon an commodities markets. OPEC/Saudi Arabia cut supply after the 1973 Middle East War because the US sold Israel fighter jets.. Nixon did not impost price controls until several months after the gas lines began, and the price controls and 55 speed limit both worked to stop the gas lines. In 1974-1976 the American hydrocarbon industry went into full bore effort to convince American’s hydrocarbon fuel supply in the ground was drying up fast. The tried to convince the American’s that the issue was a rapidly dwindling natural supply not a market collusion issue. They lied. The American energy companies participated in de facto collusion with OPEC while making a killing. Two years later, the Nixon administration fought for the windfall profit taxes to punish the American Energy companies for their obvious lies and their collusion with incipient OPEC. Same thing is happening now. American hydrocarbon companies are not increasing supply, they are slackening it and blaming it on lack of sand…why spend money to increase supply when the marginal profit is near zero as the price continues to rise globally. Welcome to the energy reset… while the oligarchs line their pockets.
I mean marginal return on investment is near zero as price continue to rise and profits and revenue increase washout spending an additional red cent.
It is simpler than Tom Halla’s comment. Countries run on energy. We in the US, Canada, UK, Australia, EU, and so on all have reliable 24/7 electricity and no shortages of fuel, natural gas, and so on.
The green scams will never work for basic fundamental engineering reasons regardless of the amount of money spent because there is no magic battery. As Germany has proved the green scams saturate and just make electricity very expensive. At point of saturation the ‘green’ intermittent energy cannot be used and there is no means to store the energy produced for use later like in the winter when there is a shortage of ‘green’ energy.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/01/business/germany-inflation-eurozone/index.html
German inflation hits 29-year high as energy costs spike across Europe
Germany has spent $500 billion dollars, saturating their electrical grid with intermittent wind and sun gathering, which has tripled the cost of electricity in Germany.
Half of the German intermittent green energy is exported (at a loss) to other EU countries and then Germany buys back at a higher prices, reliable power from nuclear or natural gas.
And where I live, the local government has declared a climate emergency and banned use of wood burning stoves & heaters, and no new gas supply pipes for new residential construction estates.
So readily available energy sources are choked, so we can all fight over elaborately produced, expensive electricity.
Policy insanity is in abundance though.
It sounds like the thieves want you dead.
They have literally stated this many times. Why do people continue to think this is incompetence is mind-boggling to me.
Climate emergency is a joke. The left believes in things that are not true so they can slay dragons and be thought of as heros.
Bribem could ease the problem by reviving the Keystone XL pipeline, carrying Canadian tar sands crude to Gulf Coast refineries.
If it is actually a problem I think it is “manufactured” out of whole cloth. Pure baloney.
As I indicate elsewhere, there are NO shortages (just high prices) in my state, or even above the state line north of me.
Yeah, but does the former United States want Commie oil?
Seems Canada has chosen to be the junior partner in a Canada-China relationship and is trying to be more politically compatible with Beijing.
Where was Canada suppose to go with their oil, our political made it plain they did not want it.
Political shortages are actually not an existential threat as far as I’m concerned. Once people actually start to experience the consequences of those policies the people in democratic countries are not going to simply revert back to a primitive lifestyle. They are going to demand changes to the policies that caused their problems.
And I’ve noticed that totalitarian governments currently might give lip service to such policies, but in reality they are going for bore ahead with development and acquisition of energy sources.
The issue is timing and if we run short at an inopportune time, like the dead of winter
And in the middle of an election cycle…
Funny how oil prices always lower before and election, aint it?
Do they?
The people are being fed “news” stories that absolve the very politicians who are responsible. The people won’t make different choices when they’ve been misinformed so thoroughly for so long.
Yes, misinformed voters are a very big problem. They might be the death of us all.
but consider how easy it has been to convince a large part of the population that the “emergencies” really exist. Those people don’t believe rational changes are required, they believe the solution is just being held back by the enemy among us — you and me.
The part I don’t get is the US frackers who are choosing to go along with this insanity.
I thought they were small and smart enough to choose market forces over politics.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/shale-wildcatters-send-bullish-oil-002829906.html
The shale plays over the past 10 years are still working on paying for themselves. No sense in chasing even more oil when the low hanging fruit has yet to make a return.
Profiting from high prices is preferable to lowering prices by increasing production. They may have learned from past market collapses due to overproduction.
They got a memo from BlackRock.
“Pharmaceuticals represent about 3% of petrochemical use but almost 99% of pharmaceuticals contain petrochemicals. Petroleum is also the foundation of transporting medicine so that patients can have it when they need it. In fact, this is the main area in which petroleum is used for the medical field.”
https://petroleumservicecompany.com/blog/history-evolution-medicine-2/
This is all by design. Our leftist masters are very aware that plentiful cheap energy = freedom for the people. The plan now is to squeeze it off. President Trump was an unforeseen anomaly for the leftist. His stunning success (it was easy) to make America energy independent and an exporter as well, vastly increased the the standard of living and wellbeing of all the citizens. That will never ever be allowed or tolerated again. The little people got just a bit to uppity electing the likes of Donald Trump. Thus, we now have institutionalized vote fraud to guarantee who gets in power and the the destruction of the energy business will proceed unabated. Dark days ahead indeed folks.
Long live the Queen.
So Chy-nah is expanding its Silk Road operations all over the Eastern hemisphere and want to grow particularly in resource rich and cheap-labor market Africa and Pakistan. This article intimates that the West is presently able to print enough fiat to outbid poorer nations, starving out underdeveloped people.
Chy-nah wants growth, the West want death. Who wins?
Start learning mandarin
Lighten up, Steven!
Sara, left wing politics are in charge nearly everywhere, and you need to understand that they really say that all the coal mines, oil & gas wells need to be closed along with all the fossil fueled power stations, and nor do they want anything to do with nuclear power. They really do believe the world’s economy can be run on solar panels and wind farms. You should take them at their word. Most of them want to substantially see world population reduced. Steve Kardas interprets their goals based on what they say, it’s just a question whether or not they can pull it off.
Regarding institutional voting fraud, in a few months we will find out if they pull another rabbit out of the hat. They’ve will have had two years to correct any errors they made in November 2020, and I’m rather sure they’re up to the task.
There’s plenty of fuel. The problem is the politicians hate us and want to kill off the elderly, useless eaters. The solution is lynching our ‘beloved leaders’.
And Chinese viruses?
Those viruses are rapidly losing their punch, Thomas.
Unless the CCP19 bioweapon was a dry run for more deadly viruses to allow daddy to dictate to us what to do. They now know how stupid people are and easily will do as told. Just look around and see all the imbeciles wearing masks.
https://dailysceptic.org/2022/02/20/is-this-the-first-of-many-sage-modellers-to-recant/
“The first good data on this started to emerge in late February 2020,” he says. And as Britain endured the first Covid wave, this data was borne out in the facts. Those over 70 had at least 10,000 times the risk of dying as those under 15 years old.”
Clear headed commentary that everyone needs to hear. I always knew there would be a correction but have learned to expect it only when the average voter feels their own life significantly impacted by the ridiculous policies we have been voting for. Well the time is upon us. Energy runs human civilization. Voluntarily starving ourselves of reliable affordable energy is autogenecide.
While I agree on the baseline of your premise it will not be as easily fixed this time simply by voting nor can it be fixed by voting…
Every single western institution is in fact a cancerous tumor on human life and well-being. Not a single individual in government at any level cares for you….
Most voters barely pay attention to who’s running for office and when they choose to do so they only start paying attention around the August time frame of said election year. They have no idea of the horrible state of the country or news media’s failure to be a watchdog of government and a champion for The People. Nor do they have any memory, knowledge of said politicians; they get a photo shopped cliff notes from whatever news source they watch and think they are informed. These are the “so-called “undecided” voters. They are people who are generally choosing the winners.
These are only two reasons- and they more convoluted and nuanced than I have given the effort in explaining.
Yes I agree this will not be easy to fix. There needs to be a very thorough political house cleaning which can’t happen over night and along with that or soon after the administrative masses need to be severely diminished and filtered for those with critical thinking. We could be in for a very long and painful period with the many developed and developing nations fighting over a rapidly more oversubscribed supply of energy products and all the other things that depend on them.
At this stage, a voter need only do one thing – vote against every candidate for ANY office braying about what needs to be done to “solve” (NOT) the imaginary “climate crisis.” No matter how distasteful in how many ways the “other” candidate might seem. And they need to keep doing that until there are no more politicians pushing that agenda.
The voters need to ignore all the other bullshit used to divide and conquer them, be it ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, abortion, etc. ad nauseum.
Because their precious “rights,” entitlements, need to be accepted or other pet political “causes” will mean nothing when they are starving to death and freezing to death in the dark, exactly where we will all be without so-called “fossil fuels.”
If every choice of candidates is singing the Climate Fascist hymns, we’re all shit outta luck.
Daddy gov to the rescue, just do as you are told and we will give you life needing oil, food, medicine, housing, etc….
I read on Oilprice that US total refinery capacity went down in 2021(?) for the first time in 30 years.
That’s the California way to raise gas prices…
Yep. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=48636
The three big refinery closures of late are in Philadelphia, Martinez, CA and Convent, LA. I heard something about plans to reopen the Convent refinery.
This post is a full load of bullshit.
Oil and gas production is always a lagging function of demand and prices. The COVID pandemic caused the largest and sharpest plunge in world wide oil and gas demand ever experienced – in just one month, April 2020, demand dropped to just 70% of pre pandemic demand. Crude oil literally could not be given away, with prices dropping for a few days to NEGATIVE $40 a barrel!!!
Naturally crude oil and gas producers stopped producing, shutting down thousands of wells, and nobody knew how long the Great COVID Recession would last, and whether and when commuters would return to work and businesses reopen.
As it turned out the recession was a deep V shape and was over by the fall of 2020, and by late 2021 world wide oil and gas demand actually exceeded pre pandemic levels. But production cannot possibly be cranked up that fast, so obviously inventories decreased and prices shot up.
Adding to the shortfall of supply vs demand was the deliberate hold back of production by OPEC+, especially by Russia and Saudi Arabia, in order to keep prices high.
US shale producers are still holding back production in hopes that crude oil prices will top $100, which we are not far from, in the low $90s now.
This situation has zero to do with warmunism or environmentalism, or any fantasized conspiracy of lefties to end oil and gas use. This is no more or less than the result of the greatest disease pandemic since the industrial revolution, the short lived economic crash that resulted in an unprecedented economic recovery, supply manipulation by OPEC+, and the market relationships between demand, supply, and prices.
Explain why they are shutting down pipelines, both planned and existing.
Also, the mining auctions in legal limbo. Or how ESG investment is somehow compatible with growing petro-industry? Also why are thermals being decommissioned early and nothing new is on the drawing board?
I’m referring to the West, not BRIC nations who haven’t lost their senses yet.
Sorry Duane, but we have never before seen such a full court press on oil companies including trying to get the financial system to stop all lending.
How long before the silly SJW elites demand banks stop credit card transactions at gas stations. You know they want to stop people from getting gas and are trying this tact with banks to stop people from buying guns. Same logic would work with gas. The idiot leftists think we are all gonna die if the earths temp increases 1.5 degrees over 100 years.
The idiot leftists think we are all gonna die if the earths temp increases 1.5 degrees over 100 years.
________________________________
The useful idiots are true believers, but the big Kahunas certainly know that it’s a means to gain power and not anything else.
“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.” – Timothy Wirth, former Colorado Democrat Senator
The COVID pandemic created by the MSM caused the largest and sharpest plunge in world wide oil and gas demand ever experienced.
Wrong. You are trying to just ignore the fact that there is a War on Carbon ongoing. Sure, the pandemic has aggravated things. So what? And the vicious attack on coal has meant an even greater reliance on gas. But market forces didn’t attack coal; politics and ideology did.
I see we have a couple of new trolls in our midst…”Sara” and “Duane”.
Really love Duane’s “short lived economic crash” comment…it really shows how far from under the bridge he came for this.
Sara’s no troll and no noob
Sara is not new, and she is not a troll. Sometimes people just see things differently.
It is amazing how petroleum afficiandos miss completely what BlackRock, the worlds largest hedge fund, have openly stated, what UN Climate Finance czar Marc Carney clearly and openly stated in Bloomberg, that those firms that invest in so-called fossil energy exploration, processing, will go bankrupt.
The Carbon Disclosure Project, driving the EU and US Carbon Credit trade was first proposed by none other than UK Tory major donor Goldsmith. That is BoJo’s party. The FED and BlackRock openly endorsed this, along with a digital currenct to facilitate CDP.
To be blinded by Adam Smith’s and Hayek’s ‘supply and demand’ mummery and miss reality, is after all the invisible hand making an utter fool of you.
To put it bluntly…
“openly stated in Bloomberg, that those firms that invest in so-called fossil energy exploration, processing, will go bankrupt.”
No sign of that yet. It looks like wishful thinking by Bloomberg. My coal and gas shares are rising nicely, while the rest of the market isn’t doing too well. I take comfort from the thought, as I drive past massive grotesque arrays of wind turbines, that it took an awful lot of fossil fuel to put them up, and it will take some more to take them down.
An intelligent person with the ability of critical thinking is not going to take their lead from Bloomberg or my countryman Marc Carney. It doesn’t really matter where the message comes from, what matters is the logic and evidence that underpin it. If you make your decisions based on the reputation of the messenger you are a fool. The veracity of the message based on facts and logic should be how you determine the reputability of the messenger. You have it backwards.
The same hedge funds who performed so well in 2008……
Duane, you are always great at seeing the trees, often small ones missed by others. Sometimes you have trouble recognizing the forest though.
Everything is seldom black or white. You know that. Sometimes zilch is more than zilch. Sometimes, cancelling a pipeline has a psychological effect greater than its actual quantitative effect. Very likely, though, political decisions to close borders had something to do with that precipitous drop in demand.
You can argue nuance. Let us do the same.
BTW, I find your comments interesting and I most often agree with you, especially with your premises.
Duane is a shill.
He copies/pastes stuff from other sites when he ‘discusses’ common causes so he can be your buddy and appear well rounded.
He makes up stuff and steadfastly rallies against ‘Bad Oil’, against all logic and reason.
He is a turd.
When I see a post such as yours it is hard to tell if you are stuck at only being able to think one dimensionally, completely misinformed, naively try to see the best in people all time regardless of the words that have come out of their own mouths’.
Sure the post is an opinion and you are free disagree with it. However, the evidence seems to fit and be inline with the post. These events and consequences are not unintended. These policies are the willful carefully crafted actions of the various government institutions and activists groups involved and have been ongoing for at least 50 years.
I don’t know where you get your data, but you need to find better sources.
Oil and gas demand dropped 70%???? Complete and utter bullocks. Demand barely budged, then quickly returned to normal.
“This is no more or less than the result of the greatest disease pandemic since the industrial revolution… ”
Lulz, I’m going to guess you’ve never heard of QALY, smallpox, or the Spanish Flu.
Or the “Asian” and “Hong Kong” flu in ’58 or ’68, either.
Civilization requires Energy. Sine qua non. Civilization = Energy
One group that shares a small part of this blame are the private mineral holders – they have become too greedy. It is now standard in major hydrocarbon regions of the US to insist on a 20% royalty (yeah twice the standard royalty of an artist that created something entirely new) and outrageously high bonuses up to over $1,000 per acre. The public companies are the ones that drove these bonuses and royalties up and now we see that even at these prices they aren’t exactly returning enough to jump right back into exploration.
When 20% of your revenue is immediately taken off the top, and then you have local property tax of about 12%, state severance tax of about 5%, acquisition costs, operating expenses, and an expected return to investor, then you are basically spinning your wheels even at these oil prices with these leases. Now the well is poisoned, and it’s hard to get mineral owners to come back off the deals they were offered last time.
So don’t be looking for on-shore US to make up for the shortfall in production any time soon, the US rig count is still below pre pandemic levels when the price of oil was half of what it is now. And with Huangdi Biden making excellent decisions, like cancelling a pipeline that was already contracted to deliver 2 billion bbl to US refineries as well as cancelling all new federal oil and gas leases, expect $100+ oil prices.
Is it about forcing people into EVs? Well the hottest commodity as far as price surge goes is lithium – up about 600% from this time last year and currently accelerating. The world’s second largest lithium producer and largest on western stock exchanges, Albemerle, just posted a loss for Q4 2021. This should be a big red flag, as ALB is currently one among about 10 significant global producers already tapping into the commodity’s low hanging fruit and by far most economical.
The vast majority of new projects coming online in the future are higher cost hard rock spodumene. I even know of a new public company that currently has a market cap higher than the entire company’s worth of recoverable lithium at today’s prices. Clearly, the lithium industry is not sustainable at today’s record high lithium prices and we’ll likely see market prices climb over $150,000 per tonne. To put that price pressure into perspective, Tesla was charging customers $20,000 for high end battery replacement as of December 2021 at about $30,000 per tonne lithium prices. With other metal prices and graphite prices also increasing, along with labor costs, EVs are simply going to be unaffordable to everyone except the wealthy, but I can’t help but suspect that is intended and just one cog in the Great Reset.
“US rig count is still below pre pandemic levels ” The rig count will never be a pre pandemic. levels, new rigs can drill wells three time faster with on a crew of three. Automation has taken over the oil field. Water is no longer hauled in trucks it piped in. Most oil movement in the oil field is now moved by pipelines not by trucks. I was in western North Dakota in the late 70s and 80s boom, how things are done today as compared to then is night and day. I do know drilling and fracking is gearing up there today as I type this.
Pre pandemic isn’t exactly 1980s North Dakota. Not much has changed in drilling since 2019 and it certainly isn’t automated. When was the last time you were on a rig because I was on one just a few months ago.
Another major problem I didn’t mention is finding labor and getting iron unstacked. It’s a hard time to get workers back and the service industries took the hardest hit during the pandemic.
I was once the owner of mineral rights. I was offered about $100/acre to lease the rights. Eventually I was force pooled and got about $300/acre. I never saw that royalty % was negotiable.
Shutting down medium sized refineries and converting them to produce Renewable Diesel which uses FOG (Fats, Oils, & Greases) as feedstocks one way oil companies are hoping to appease the Greens. However, FOG is essentially an oil crop mostly made by growing soybeans. Animal fats are another but much smaller source of fatty oils. As with any commodity, as you increase demand for that product, the price increases. Right now, Soy Oil is over $0.60/lb and it takes 8 lbs of FOG to produce 1 gal of RD. Thus the price of Raw Materials (RM) is $4.80/gal. And that doesn’t include transportation of FOG to the refinery, refining it to RD, and shipping it by rail to California where 90% of it ends up.
And RD has GHG emissions associated with production of the oils and refining to RD. From virgin soy oil, there is only a 50% reduction in GHG emissions. If animal fats and Used Cooking Oil are used, this can increase (or is that decrease emissions) to a 70% reduction from fossil fuels.
But the cost of RD is only going up. Marathon and Philips 66 proposed converting refineries in Martinez and Rodeo, CA to produce RD shutting down 120,000 bbl/day of crude capacity at Rodeo and 161,000 bbl/day at Martinez. They propose producing about 40,000 bbl/day of RD at each refinery. However, lack of FOG needed as feedstock has limited Rodeo to 9.000 bbl/day production. The soy oil which is railed in from the Midwest is not available in the quantity needed to meet the capacity claimed by Philips 66.
And just this week, Italian oil company ENI which converted refineries to RD production just reported that it didn’t make a profit on RD last year. Most likely due to high feedstock costs.
The World’s capacity to produce RD is limited by feedstock availability, so there is no way you can replace crude derived diesel fuel with RD at the volumes needed to keep the country running.
There is much more on this topic, but most people think fuel comes from a gas station, Electricity from a wall outlet, and food from the grocery store. So I doubt anyone really pays attention to these issues
Michael Moore’s fat storage would be enough to get me to Lost Wages and back.
They will when they are cold, hungry and can’t drive anywhere…but their being under the spell of the msm does make one wonder just what they will do about it? I don’t think they will voluntarily starve to death for their masters but what other real choices will they have?
There are suicides and accidents and drug overdoses. It seems these have increased over the past couple of years and are of continuing concern.
I get the feeling that there are forces nudging us toward violence intentionally.
Yeah, left killing right serves the puppet masters and saves the cost of them having to finance it themselves. The survivors then liquidated by a real engineered virus and then, at last, the “meek” will have inherited the earth…coming to a neighborhood near you soon, perhaps 2023 just in time for the next “election” lockdown?
Mineral owner lease payments were so high because the largest mineral owner refused to lease at any price, the irresponsible idiotic US federal government, controlled by brain dead democrats. It’s not complicated.
It gets worse. Since the price of fertilizer is so high, farmers are letting their fields go fallow or plant turnips. A lot less soybeans and corn will be planted this spring so the feedstocks for “renewables” will not be available.
Good. “Bio fuels” are just another stupid way to make energy more expensive and more scarce, while driving up food prices as well. Lose-lose.
I appreciate your discussion with numbers and examples. Have been wondering about the viability of RD and the feedstock sources.
If soy oil prices increase or remain elevated, are we going to drawdown more of the Ogallala aquifer or other irrigation sources, till ever more marginal lands (reducing edge wildlife habitat), putting more pollutants into the Mississippi River, burning more diesel to produce and transport expensive RD, and so forth and why?
The coal and oil we have eschewed burning is still there, still available for harvesting. Only the political will is missing to extract it and to burn it But when times get hard, that political will will come storming back.
I’m so sick of the pundits and analysts of the idiotic media concluding that the Covid pandemic (which is now endemic) is responsible for most of the inflation we currently face. The prime reason for out of control inflation is energy prices being artificially forced upward by crazed climate loonies, worried about a gas that is a net benefit when released into the atmosphere. All we need to do is to once again open our biology books, open our history of the Earth textbooks, to remind us that 1000 ppm of CO2 in the air will be a boon to mankind, a boon to all life, and once again, the invisible hand of free markets will clean up the sorry state that repeatedly devolves every time Utopian Socialists gain political control.
Kick those bastards out with your vote. The trucks will roll, the producers will produce and the poor will benefit the most, as they have throughout the checkered history of Western Civilization. The poorest people are the ones who will see and grab at the myriad opportunities, if we just have the courage to let them be free. So stop listening to Bill Gates and the Rockefeller Foundations. Stop funding them and stop funding the Greenpeace idiots. Stop funding major corrupt research universities and yes, I’m sorry to say, stop funding public teachers unions. In fact, let’s end the legality of public sector unions altogether.
Peak Oil by design. The war against oil replaced the so called wars for oil.
The problem is Peak Oil was supposed to occur 10-20 years ago because of declining conventional oil reserves. No one in 2000 foresaw a technoliogcal leap in hydraulic fracturing converging with horizontal drilling and high res 3D seismic mapping technologies, and what that convergence menat for unlocking new reserves.
Not only have more reserves continued to be found, fracking changed the very nature of the game by unlocking tight oil much deeper than conventional shallower reservoirs that sit above shale oil source rocks.
That tight oil is still there. The leases in the Gulf of Mexico are still there waiting for rigs.
Once the political environment changes away from the Democra’s climate scam, the oil can begin flowing to meet demand once again.
Same with coal.
I actually think some of the are laughing. None of this is by accident. One of first things the Biden Administration did was to make the USA energy dependent again. These are stated goals straight from Klaus Schwab’s book as well as many other places from many people.
All of the other things are distractions. It is all kabuki theater.
Terry this is such a depressing story and I’m sure you are right, but it makes me sad. I am already paying $5.25 per gallon for outboard gas (ethanol free), and don’t see any end to the rising prices. I live in Coos Bay, Oregon where they proposed a LNG plant since we have a nice deep-water port here, and it was shot down. Not just by politicians, but by many of the people who live here. I just don’t understand this way of thinking. I believe they tried to get a plant on the Columbia near Astoria a few years back, but that was shot down as well. Too many people on the side of the greens who have a very loud voice, I guess.
Effective brain washing by the left/eco loons.
And, most people have trouble seeing more than a few days into the future.
“Going to pay”? Well, yes, it’ll get a lot worse, but we’re already down the spiral a ways.
Welcome to the Great Reset. It has been going on for decades but now starting to show its’ teeth. Globalists ….. or “stakeholders” as they refer to themselves ….. are intimidating businesses to comply with their Marxist ideology or face the wrath of their wealth, numbers, and power with the ability to destroy them. Hence the term ‘woke’. The world’s economy is being manipulated by these stakeholders to rid it of Capitalism and replace it with …. pick a name like Democratic Socialism, Socialist Democracy, or whatever term used to put a likeable face on Marxism and they are robbing the Capitalists to fund their dream while causing social unrest through propaganda to divide and conquer. So they can institute their One World Government nirvana. Conspiracy theory? Read anything about the World Economic forum and its’ members and what they’re saying? Prove me wrong.
Paranoid, untrue, conspiracy theory.
Right on cue, here’s our resident death cult member to remind us about the mentality we are up against…
Just in case you were interested (though surely you’re not): https://www.weforum.org/focus/the-great-reset
It is all right there under your nose griff-ter.
Flowery, unicorns and pixie dust talk here:
https://sdgs.un.org/2030agenda
With nothing specifi other than just terms like stakeholders” and equity” and environmental justice.”
All the catch phrases of the Marxists duping ignorat folks like you into their honeypot of junk words The entire UN 2030 sustainability “manifesto” is a clap-trap of meaningless jingoisms, while hiding a real trap of energy poverty as sustainability. Sustainability really means continuation of the lifestyles of the elites, while the rest of the world is returning to feudalism and energy poverty.
Yes, they’ve learned not to explicitly use the NWO phrase or One World Government phraseology, but everything about those terms and the outcomes and meaning is there.
As usual, griff denies reality in order to protect the interests of his pay masters.
Who cares what the people who run the scam say, griff says it isn’t about replacing capitalism with socialism/communism, therefore it isn’t.
Build back better is even a catch phrase coined by the WEF. Only smooth brains think that something being advertised openly in public is a “conspiracy theory”. The future is medieval if the WEF has anything to do with it.
Soros the Hutt is part of the problem
Where is Carrie Fisher when we need her?
The Russia/Ukraine conflict is about fossil fuels!!!
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/81701/
In my opinion this guy has it right.
https://supermacro.substack.com/p/biden-hyping-russia-threat-for-partisan
Putin is achieving a lot of goals exploiting the fecklessness of Brandon and the EUSSR, but is not planning on actually invading. The Brandon puppeteers are trying to engineer the appearance that Dementia Zhou averted a war, just in time for his State of the Union speech. A good number will probably fall for it.
It was just announced that Biden has agreed “in principle” to meet with Putin in a few days if Putin does not invade Ukraine.
I wonder if Biden is getting ready to give Putin something he wants? It kind of smells like appeasement.
It would be good to make a deal that stops innocent people from being killed, but it must be remembered that Dictators are never satisfied, so if you give in to them now, then expect them to make more demands of you in the future.
Are you suggesting that Kamela won’t get the credit owed to her for her bang up job negotiating peace? /sarc
The only shortage in conventional energy supply is in the lack of honest representation.
“In Pakistan, in one province alone, three hundred CNG (compressed natural gas) fueling stations have been closed since December because no fuel was available.”
Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of guys. /sarc
It’s a fourth turning (Strauss &Howe generational theory), which is defined by Crisis. The world is going to suffer for a while, until we come out of it into a period of calm (peace?) I suppose it will really depend on what the PEOPLE want for their future as to what we get. Seeing how easily the masses have been lead to their own downfall, I’m not all that optimistic for this turning, but then the default nature of humanity is freedom, so who knows. As the author of the piece in discussion says, the resources are in the ground. It will just take a much different mind set to bring them to market.
The nature of humanity is stupidity, period.
https://brilliantlightpower.com/quantification-of-the-first-optical-power-measurements/
I don’t think an optical spectrometer, with CCD detector, is a good way to measure output power, which raises the question of why did they abandon calorimetry?
“more important than beer.”
Sex is probably one thing more important than beer (for most people).
And money is more important than both, because it can buy both.
And Power is more important than money, because with more power comes more money.
Which is why the climate scam is so important to the Left. It offers the chance at unlimited power.
“Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Lord Acton
As long as zombies keep electing the same idiots as “leaders” this will only get worse. As long as the “educators” fail to expose the real costs of “green energy” and how IMPOSSIBLE it actually is to replace fossil fuel energy with solar and/or wind, this will only get worse.
Some simple (yes–it does need to be really, really simple at this point) graphs displaying the energy needs and how each method may provide supply are needed, and somehow posted on front pages of USA Today, NYT, etc in addition to the outlets that are already singing to the choir.
For us not in the USA, salvation will come as the incompetence and avarice of our politicians will ensure that we become part of the Chinese empire. Then it is just over and everything will be fine!
Obey not over! Damned prodoctive toxt!
If one thinks about it for just one second, it is clear that all of the maladies listed in this post and most listed in the comments ultimately originate from bullying greenies. I am completely serious when I say (IMO) they are currently the single greatest source of collectively inflicting pain on humanity. When have you ever heard a greeny say some is good? Everything is bad in their book. They reality is they are the “bad” in the world. It is time we start calling them out before they wreck everything good in this world.
So with fossil fuels rising in price what is the impact on RE costs.
We can see that that mega batteries will be problematic given the cost of Li but even just making PV generation which are pretty close to solidified fossil fuels could see the cost of energy move ever further away.
I back the US to wake first with greatest opportunity of any place and the most capable drilling and production industries.
Countries on the edge like NZ are IQ constrained at decision level so may simply be priced out of existence.
Japan etc are wealthy and understand nuclear so will make it.
China are solving this as we speak and are aiding and abetting the process.
India will use their coal and be OK.
They’re saying that the European luxury EVs are ahead of Tesla’s because they spontaneously combust even before their delivery.
Western Europe, North America and Australia are lead and influenced by knuckle dragging numskulls. It is past time to wake up and get rid of them.
And yet. The renewables lobby will push the view that this fossil fuel shortage can only be fixed with yet more renewables. They see it as a positive.
I have to believe that the Permian Basin, Marcellus and Utica, and Bakan shale frackers are really holding back expanding production to put the thumbscrews to Dementia Joe and his Democrats this November at the polling booth. With US voters seeing skyrocketing gas prices and electricity prices thru the summer, the Republicans will be able to blame Democrats’ War on Fossil Fuels. And from all the confirming statements from Democrats, including Secretary of Energy Granholm herself, the Democrats won’t be able to deny it or dig out of the hole they’ve dug for themselves regarding fossil fuels and their net-zero idiocy. It’s all there on videos, newspapers all over the internet, and the internet never forgets.
Yes, Fracker aren’t reinvesting capital back into expanding well-rig counts to increase production they happy for now to keep it flat, as they are using the record profits from high oil and gas prices to pay fat dividends after years of losses to investors. And Wall Street is happy with that for now. The Wall Street Journal had an entire article on this a few days ago:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/frackers-hold-back-production-as-oil-nears-100-a-barrel-11645150760?mod=Searchresults_pos2&page=1
quoting some of it:
Is that why China and Russia ordered 300 million (?) of coal. America has coal AND oil within our own borders. So, what is the problem here? BIDEN and the Democrats and a few repubs.
The news just keeps getting better and better ☹ I should have stayed in bed.
In the last month there have been a lot of ads for petroleum engineers to work in Saudi Arabia, but no-one else seems to be looking for PEs. The Saudis must be thinking demand won’t be met without producing a lot more crude
I read to day in Australia, billionaires are plotting to take over AGL, Australia’s largest energy company, and immediately shut down its coal assets. I kid you not, but so far the offer has been rejected by AGL’s board.
Let them burn cake
I felt like I was reading Atlas Shrugged.
Self imposed reduction/ destruction of reliable energy and sources .
Who ever could of thought of that , let alone make it happen .
Outside influences and the new msm and social media are far more powerful than democracy as we use to know about .
Voters only will worry when they are struggling to put food on the table , pay the bills and wonder how long before electricity goes off again plus putting gas in the car .
Ecofascism is achieving de-globalisation. Countries are being forced to become self-sufficient. Brexit is an indirect example. Today here in Belgium diesel neared 2 euros per liter, the highest ever, almost doubling in less than a year.
While in the UK the inbred aristocratic buffoons styling themselves as environmental protesters who killed Britain’s fracking industry, then sabotaged transportation with their moronic extinction protests, can now take pride in damaging the country more than all the Luftwaffe’s bombs a century ago.
Skeptical Science are boasting that the global climate alarmist movement has achieved 39 Trillion (yes, trillion) divestment from fossil fuel industry.
https://skepticalscience.com/dollars-institutions-divestment.html
So they will be glowing with pride at the unfolding enormous human suffering that they have achieved.
One can easily imagine John Cook beaming from ear to ear.
What’s that in ‘Hiroshima’s’?
>>So they will be glowing with pride at the unfolding enormous human suffering that they have achieved.<< Such as? What suffering does moving away from reliance on the fossil fuel cartels cause “suffering?”
Can’t you understand why rising energy prices are a problem?
Here’s what’s happening
Brussels warned of ‘big dilemma’ as Germany inflation cripples families (msn.com)
Fossil Fuel is freedom,everything else is politics.
How is an addiction to dirty and expensive fossil fuels “freedom,” exactly…?
And you think tesla P O S are affordable to buy and operate?
B A,
dirty???
Societies using fossil fuel in its most efficient manner are healthier than those that don’t use oil & coal.
expensive ????
Relative to the alternatives (‘cept nuclear) it is most efficient (meaning least expensive)
addiction???
Societies using fossil fuel, in its most efficient manner, are the most successful and will have the best chance of a reasonable transition to nuclear, if it is ever necessary. (I should add that my addiction to food has allowed me to have a reasonably comfortable life and my continued use will allow me to transition to something else if it becomes available.)
My suggestion to you is to stop using products that utilized fossil fuel (as a production energy source), and don’t use energy that is produced directly from fossil fuel, and see if your level of freedom increases of decreases.
I have argued all of your points except the last paragraph. I love it and plan to store it for future use.
Unfortunately the author is wrong on ONE count: we ARE running out of oil and gas reserves. While it’s true that large amounts remain buried in the ground, those remaining reserves are increasingly hard to extract. This means prices have to rise to justify extraction and transportation to customers. And there comes a point when the amount of money, manpower, and materials we have to use doesn’t justify the risk.
While it’s true that governments can discourage some production, the sad truth is that the lack of investment is mainly caused by lack of decent reservoirs we can develop at $80 per barrel. We will need to see $90 to $100 per barrel hold for a couple of years before we get to work seriously on undeveloped fields, most of which are mediocre. And in 20 years we will need $120 per barrel. And that price sure makes sugar cane ethanol and palm oil very attractive. Get it?
be certain that the leaders and the elite will not be short of fuel. Further, their having fuel and the “non elite” NOT having fuel will make for the better control of those who are ruled by the elite. This isn’t about “climate” (NO one anywhere that i’ve seen has ever stipulated what, exactly, is the “ideal climate”, just that any change from 1970 is somehow “bad” and caused by humans who are therefore “evil”). The control of resources and the power (both in energy and in weaponry) to maintain that control is the dream of any tyrant and any who would benefit from that tyranny.
I’m paying already. Petrol in Brisbane is shockingly expensive.
As you said, the world is NOT running out of fuel. “This isn’t about running out of oil, or natural gas, or coal as resources. Those are there for the taking”
So, just more bull shit rhetoric, with a click bait headline. You have proven the age old saying; “If you are not part of the solution, then you are part of the problem”.