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DAILY ENERGY NEWS | 05/08/2023

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America is going to need to dig a lot more rocks under the green regime and Biden isn't making it any easier.

Colorado Biz Magazine (5/4/23) op-ed: "In the United States, our regulatory regime for mining project development is broken. It takes between 7 and 10 years to get the necessary permits to operate in the U.S. This makes it incredibly difficult for U.S. mines to compete on a global scale and to get the investment necessary to start in the first place. In Australia and Canada, this same step takes on average 2 years. These issues are important for Colorado because of the state’s significant mineral endowment. Colorado has historically been a major producer of gold, silver, molybdenum, lead, zinc, uranium and tungsten, and has deposits of a litany of other critical minerals. A new paper from the Institute for Energy Research, The Economic and Strategic Importance of Domestic Mineral Production, explores these issues and offers pathways to unlocking potential mineral resources in Colorado and elsewhere. The market for critical minerals is only expanding at present. Because of new net zero policies that favor investment in wind, solar and electric vehicle technologies, the demand for these materials is ever-increasing. Currently, a majority of critical minerals are controlled by China in some way, whether that be the mining itself, or the refining process."

"Despite serious technical hurdles and overwhelming preference by consumers for gas-powered vehicles, Team Biden seems done with the carrot approach and is using a regulatory stick to force its all-EV future on Americans."

– Mandy Gunasekara,
The Independent Women’s Forum

Dear Texans, I hope you have your backup generators ready...

Bloomberg (5/3/23) reports: "Texans are expected to consume a record amount of electricity this summer, forcing the state’s power grid to rely on wind farms and solar plants for the first time to meet peak demand during the season. Electricity usage on the state’s main grid is expected to top 82.7 gigawatts during normal summer weather to surpass last July’s high of 80 gigawatts, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas said Wednesday in its summer assessment. One gigawatt is enough to power about 200,000 Texas homes. Ercot, as the operator is known, said more than 97 gigawatts of capacity is expected to be available during summertime periods of highest demand for a grid that serves more than 26 million customers. But for the first time, that demand is seen exceeding what can be generated from fossil-fueled or nuclear power plants alone. 'The Texas grid faces a new reality,' Peter Lake, who heads the state regulator that oversees electric utilities, told reporters on a conference call. 'We will be relying on renewables to keep the lights on.'”

It turns out wind power does have an impact on man-made warming.

Cowboy State Daily (5/5/23) reports: "Several studies over two decades have found that wind turbines impact local meteorological conditions by raising temperatures at the surface level. The impacts are different from the warming effect of carbon dioxide emissions from oil, gas and coal in that they only last while the wind turbines are in operation. However, driven by federal subsidies, wind farms are being built across Wyoming at a rapid pace. As these spread across the Cowboy State, there’s a growing concern of the cumulative impacts all these projects will produce. Anne Brande, executive director of the Albany County Conservancy, told Cowboy State Daily there are 13 wind projects planned around Laramie alone. 'I’m concerned about the impacts, as are the conservancy members. And no one is really taking a look at all this,' Brand said...In a 2010 study, University of Illinois researcher Somnath Roy found that wind farms affect temperatures and humidity near the surface. Roy warns that the “explosive growth” of future wind farms, which has occurred since the study was done, could impact agriculture. Roy was co-author on a 2013 study that found the same impacts. 'More and more wind farms are being constructed on agricultural land that is sensitive to changes in the microclimate,' the authors write. Roy was also co-author on a 2015 study that found wind farms raise nighttime temperatures. A 2011 Purdue study found increased temperatures at the surface as a result of wind farms, as did a 2016 study in Scotland. A 2018 study in Joule estimated that generating the United States’ electricity demand with wind power would warm surface temperatures by 0.24 degrees celsius, which is nearly one-fourth of the amount of warming the globe has seen since 1800."

President Biden’s push for “equity and inclusion” demands that we don’t industrialize the countryside with more wind turbines and transmission lines, right?

Wall Street Journal (5/8/23) reports: "The federal government has ignited a green-energy investment spree that’s expected to reach as high as $3 trillion over the next decade. The road to spending that money, though, is increasingly hitting speed bumps from the likes of Gerry Coffman. About an hour southwest of Kansas City, she turned down a wind lease last year on a farm that has been in her family since 1866. Someone knocked on her door a few months later, paperwork in hand, and offered $6,000 to hang a wind-power transmission line across her land. If she agreed to store construction equipment, she stood to make an additional $4,000. Ms. Coffman said no."

Energy Markets

WTI Crude Oil: ↑ $72.95
Natural Gas: ↑ $2.20
Gasoline: ↓ $3.53

Diesel: ↓ $4.04
Heating Oil: ↑ $235.91
Brent Crude Oil: ↑ $76.68
US Rig Count: ↑ 784

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