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DAILY ENERGY NEWS | 05/16/2023

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At least one reporter is principled enough to report this story.

Real Clear Energy (5/15/23) reports: "After making repeated attempts to determine how much influence environmental advocacy groups are exerting over federal energy policy including what level of assistance progressive agency appointees are providing them, a transparency project that is now a year old scored a direct hit during a May 4^th Senate hearing. That was when Sen. Josh Hawley, R-MO, questioned Allison Clements, a commissioner with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), about the 'closed-door' meetings she had with the funders of a left-leaning grantmaking institution known as the Energy Foundation. That Foundation was Clements’s client immediately before she took the position as FERC Commissioner. Hawley inquired about emails and text messages obtained through the Freedom of Information Act that show Clements briefed an EF 'funders event' that delved into her agency’s 2022 priorities, specifically in her view addressing 'FERC as an opportunity.' Hawley asked Clements 'who are the donors that attended that session?' In response, Clements told Hawley fundraising did not occur at the meeting in question. Instead, she described the event as a “convening of foundation staff from across the country” that resulted in 'straightforward, above the board conversation about 2022 priorities' that were subject to her ethics agreement. Clements also insisted that she only gave her standard 'stump speech.' However, one email after the event thanked her and declared '[w]e greatly enjoyed having an hour to discuss these thorny issues.' That email showed that participants included the litigious, pro-renewable energy activist groups Sierra Club, EarthJustice, and Natural Resource Defense Council (another former Clements employer)."

"We are told to expect yet more such regulations, notably in the area of home appliances, in the near future. Put it all together, and the term 'war against the economy' no longer does justice to what is going on. This is a full-blown attack by suicide bombers. They are so crazed with the righteousness of their cause that they couldn’t care less about the destruction and devastation they might cause to the innocent people around them, let alone even about their own death."

– Francis Menton,
Manhattan Contrarian

You mean Biden and Granholm aren't telling the truth? How is that possible?

Zero Hedge (5/15/23) article: "With oil stubbornly the only asset class that is pricing in if not a depression then certainly a deep recession - even as every other asset is already pricing in the inevitable Fed easing in response to said recession - and the price of WTI tumbling as low as $63 at the start of May, the credibility behind the Biden administration's promise to restock the recently drained SPR has become the butt of all jokes. As a reminder, last Fall the White House said the aim was to refill the reserve when prices were at or below about $67-$72 per barrel. Since then oil prices had fallen far below without as much as a squeak from Biden's energy guru, Hunter. But that doesn't mean the pathological liars in the presidency will stop lying about refilling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve; in fact just the opposite... and mere days after the DOE again moved the goalposts to a June 'refill', moments ago Bloomberg reported that the US is preparing to buy up to a whopping 3 million barrels of crude oil - or one tanker's worth - to begin refilling its depleted Strategic Petroleum Reserve. After selling more than 200 million barrels from the emergency stockpile last year to curb high energy prices and arrest the collapse of Democratic approval ratings, the Energy Department plans to solicit offers to replenish the reserve, which has fallen to the lowest level since 1983, according to Bloomberg. Which would be believable if only it wasn't one of the most recurring lie dispensed by an admin that views the price of gas like a hawk as if only gas prices will decide if the 80 year old Biden will get reelected. Of course, you will forgive us if we call even more bullshit from the admin that has taken lying to an artform, and which just last week drained 2.9 million barrels of oil from the SPR, long after it was supposed to have restarted refilling it."

The world’s largest copper miner is struggling. How about we mine some right here at home? If you want an idea of what that would look like, check this out.

Bloomberg (5/16/23) reports: "André Sougarret won global acclaim in 2010 as the chief engineer on a rescue of 33 Chilean miners who’d spent more than two months trapped 2,300 feet underground. Now, as chief executive officer of Codelco, he must attempt another difficult feat: digging the world’s No. 1 copper producer out of its current hole. At the state-owned behemoth, output is running at its lowest in a quarter century, costs have surged, and profit has slumped—all at a time when Chile’s government needs more money to fight festering inequalities and the world needs more copper for batteries and electric grids as it transitions away from fossil fuels. Codelco’s production is down by about a fifth from only six years ago. After a double-digit-percentage drop in 2022, it’s expected to fall as much as 7% this year, to 1.35 million metric tons. Ore quality is deteriorating around the world as existing deposits are depleted and new ones are more difficult and costly to develop. 'There’s no easy mining left—not in Chile nor the rest of the world,' said Sougarret at a shareholders meeting on May 2."

The $400B worth of green pork loans that the DoE wants to push out by 2024 is enough for nearly 750 Solyndras. No wonder the inspector general is worried.

New York Times (5/11/23) reports: "The hotel ballroom was packed before breakfast as Jigar Shah took the stage at the oil and gas industry’s annual conference in Houston this spring. The host joked he was confident a huge crowd would come out for Mr. Shah, even at 7:30 a.m. It’s rare for a midlevel federal official to attract so much attention. But the small, obscure office that Mr. Shah oversees, the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office, has become an engine of the Biden administration’s efforts to aggressively advance clean energy. And Mr. Shah is no ordinary bureaucrat. As part of last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, Congress supersized the office’s authority to arrange loans to companies trying to bring emerging energy technologies to market, increasing it tenfold from $40 billion to more than $400 billion. That makes it potentially one of the biggest economic development loan programs in United States history. Mr. Shah, 48, is the gatekeeper for that gusher of tax dollars. And the clock is ticking; he has roughly a year and a half to get the money out the door before the 2024 elections could mean changes in the White House that would curtail the program."

Energy Markets

WTI Crude Oil: ↓ $70.69
Natural Gas: ↓ $2.44
Gasoline: ↑ $3.53

Diesel: ↑ $4.01
Heating Oil: ↓ $235.86
Brent Crude Oil: ↓ $74.80
US Rig Count: ↓ 778

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