EVs ❤️ Coal

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DAILY ENERGY NEWS | 09/25/2023

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Coal keeps the lights on...even at the EV plant.

Cowboy State Daily (9/25/23) reports: "A $4 billion Panasonic electric vehicle battery factory in De Soto, Kansas, will help satisfy the Biden administration’s efforts to get everyone into an EV. It also will help extend the life of a coal-fired power plant. Panasonic broke ground on the facility last year. The Japanese company was slated to receive $6.8 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act, which has been pouring billions into electric vehicles and battery factories as part of its effort to transition America away from fossil fuels. The Kansas City Star reports that the factory will require between 200 and 250 megawatts of electricity to operate. That’s roughly the amount of power needed for a small city. In testimony to the Kansas City Corporation Commission, which is the state’s equivalent of the Wyoming Public Service Commission, a representative of Evergy, the utility serving the factory, said that the 4 million-square-foot Panasonic facility creates 'near term challenges from a resource adequacy perspective,' according to the newspaper. As a result, the utility will continue to burn coal at a power plant near Lawrence, Kansas, and it will delay plants to transition units at the plant to natural gas.

"EPA’s efforts to restrict greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and other sources represent a dangerous overreach of executive power. Congress never authorized EPA to regulate greenhouse gases in this expansive manner. By trying to reorganize the country’s electricity-sector limits through executive fiat, rather than the legislative process, EPA is abusing its authority and circumventing democracy."

– Mario Loyola,
The Heritage Foundation

Biden's restrictions on lease sale 261 may be illegal...

Fox News (9/22/23) reports: "A federal court struck down the Biden administration's last-minute restrictions on an upcoming offshore oil and gas lease sale in a ruling late Thursday evening. Judge James Cain of the Western District of Louisiana granted a preliminary injunction request from plaintiffs — the State of Louisiana, industry association American Petroleum Institute (API) and oil companies Chevron and Shell — to block the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management's (BOEM) restrictions on Lease Sale 261. The lease sale spanning millions of acres across the Gulf of Mexico is slated for next week. Cain ruled the federal government must proceed with the lease sale by Sept. 30 under its original conditions. As a result of a July settlement with environmental groups, BOEM removed about six million acres from the sale and imposed various restrictions on oil and gas vessels associated with the leases auctioned to protect the Rice’s whale species found in parts of the Gulf of Mexico. 'The court observes that plaintiffs have demonstrated substantial potential costs resulting from the challenged provisions,' Cain wrote in his decision. 'While the government defendants largely focus on the acreage withdrawal and dynamics of the sale itself, many of plaintiffs’ alleged hardships arise from the vessel restrictions.'"

Of course, this is just the latest in a long, long list... (over 175 and counting)

Washington Examiner (9/23/23) column: "Thursday night, the Biden administration lost yet another court battle in its ongoing jihad against domestic fossil-fuel production. Thank goodness. The legally and economically unwarranted jihad is bad for American jobs and living costs. It should end. The administration was trying to put severe restrictions on a lease sale involving millions of acres in the Gulf of Mexico. Not only had the lease sale already been approved before earlier Biden attempts to hobble it, but Congress, as part of the (misnamed) Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, specifically directed that the planned sale be reinstated...Even so, Biden’s hostility to domestic production has proved costly when he has succeeded in early rounds of court fights or administrative battles, such as when he stopped the Keystone Pipeline, and the damage will get worse still if he can succeed in defending his decision this month to bar drilling on millions of acres in Alaska. Overall, Biden used his first two years in office to slow federal oil and gas leases to the lowest level of any administration since World War II. By April of this year, Thomas Pyle of the Institute for Energy Research had identified at least 151 ways Biden “has made it harder to produce oil and gas.' The deleterious results have been considerable and multi-faceted. The two most obvious ones have been massive job losses in the energy sector – as many as 59,000 forgone jobs from killing the Keystone Pipeline along, according to the Department of Energy itself – and big spikes in energy prices across the board, including gasoline per-gallon prices rising from $2.39 to an even $4.00 during Biden’s term."

Bidenomics is paying political dividends.

ABC News (9/24/23) reports: "President Joe Biden's job approval rating is 19 points underwater, his ratings for handling the economy and immigration are at career lows. A record number of Americans say they've become worse off under his presidency, three-quarters say he's too old for another term and Donald Trump is looking better in retrospect -- all severe challenges for Biden in his reelection campaign ahead. Forty-four percent of Americans in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll say they've gotten worse off financially under Biden's presidency, the most for any president in ABC/Post polls since 1986. Just 37% approve of his job performance, while 56% disapprove. Still fewer approve of Biden's performance on the economy, 30%. On handling immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border, Biden's rating is even lower, with 23% approval. In terms of intensity of sentiment, 20% strongly approve of his work overall, while 45% strongly disapprove. And the 74% who say he's too old for a second term is up 6 percentage points since May. Views that Trump is too old also are up, but to 50% in this poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates."

Energy Markets

WTI Crude Oil: ↓ $89.58
Natural Gas: ↓ $2.63
Gasoline: ↓ $3.84

Diesel: ↑ $4.57
Heating Oil: ↓ $325.68
Brent Crude Oil: ↓ $93.17
US Rig Count: ↓ 676

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